Master of the House (14 page)

It had to be the handle of the whip.

Joss was going to fuck me with the riding crop.

‘Oh, sir,’ I sighed out, loving the way it spread and stretched me and made me its bitch. The instrument of my punishment was now going to be the instrument of my shame. The only way it could be more embarrassing was if I was untied and able to push myself back on it, showing Joss how much I wanted it.

Perhaps he sensed this, because he held it still a few inches in and said, ‘Do you want this inside you?’

I would have to say it. Damn him. He knew exactly how to make me hot and bothered.

‘Hmm?’ he prompted, smacking my bottom with his free hand. ‘Answer me.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, tears gathering in my eyes at how cruel and yet how perfect this was.

‘Tell me what you want. I want to hear the words.’

‘I want you to put the riding crop inside me, sir,’ I said.

‘And what do you want me to do with it when it’s inside you?’

‘I want you to fuck me with it, sir.’

‘All the way inside?’

‘As far as you can, please, sir.’

I was crying now, tears dripping out of my eyes and making wet patches under my cheeks on the duvet. But I was hardly aware of it, so focused on my shaking legs and my throbbing sex and how much I wanted and needed to come.

He put his hand on my shoulder, leaned over me and thrust the whip handle inside me, in then out, in a rhythm.

I pulled on the bonds, not because I wanted to escape but because I wanted to heighten that feeling of being restrained while I was taken.

The handle made squishy sounds inside me. Joss pushed it as far as he could then left it there and twisted it round and round inside me. Meanwhile, his fingers tinkered with my sex, and it only took the merest feather of a touch to tip me into the longest, loudest, most draining orgasm of my life.

‘Oh, Lulu, yes, oh, yes, you sweet hot little bitch of a darling girl,’ he murmured through it.

Then, when I was limp and done for, ‘I knew you’d be like this. You’re even more submissive than I hoped.’

‘Uh?’ It was all I could say. The duvet against my face was damp with my drool and sweat.

‘I mean,’ he said, leaving the whip inside me while he climbed over to straddle my thighs, ‘you
did
enjoy that, didn’t you?’

‘Mm hmm.’ I was reluctant to admit it, but I had to. The evidence was clear and compelling and smeared all over his fingers.

He used those very fingers to stroke my sore bottom while he leaned down and kissed my neck and shoulders and the dip of my back and the lobes of my ears.

‘I didn’t even mean to go that far,’ he whispered. ‘I wasn’t going to fuck you with the whip. I wasn’t even going to spank you. Just tease a bit, tickle a bit. But you got so into it … Jesus … you gorgeous little slut … I couldn’t resist.’

His lips and teeth kept my desire high, refusing to allow it to wane even after such a monster of a climax. He sucked and nipped and licked and fastened his mouth to the most sensitive areas of my skin until my breath was heavy and fast again, turning to moans when he found the sweet secret spot on my neck that converted me to jelly.

‘I’m going to untie you now,’ he whispered. ‘And turn you on to your back and have you. Is that all right with you?’

‘Oh, God.’

I shouldn’t let him. I shouldn’t let this become a full-blown affair. But my body wouldn’t listen to reason and I let him do exactly as he promised.

My eyes were blurred at first and his face above me was a cartoonish collection of focal points – semi-beard, nose, high forehead, dark, dark eyes.

My arms and legs were stiff, my hands and feet pins-and-needly at first. But it was nice to move and to see again, and especially nice to have Joss’s quickly stripped body on top of mine and to be able to hold it close.

He was warm and supple against me and I could feel his heart pound at my breast. He kissed me hard and long, then pulled the whip out of me and replaced it with his own cock, thicker and hotter and much more vigorous than the inert handle.

I put my hand on his buttocks, loving the way they flexed and moved so furiously beneath my palm. He thrust in me, as if it would kill him to stop, or even slow down, and I opened wide and accepted everything he did to me gratefully.

Why did it have to feel so good? Why did it have to feel so
right
?

He kept at me until I came again, a much weaker version than the first, but still a delicious creeping warmth that bonded me to him and made me wish he would stay in me always.

He stayed until he came, his head raised to the ceiling, his hands gripping my shoulders, his cry surely audible to the entire caravan site. Then he fell upon me and half-sobbed, ‘Oh, God, Lulu.’

We lay like that, used up and wrung out, until we both drifted into sleep.

I was woken up by a rattling at the toughened plastic door.

‘Yer lordship? Yer lordship?’

I was too dazed and sticky to sit up properly and besides, Joss weighed me down with one arm and one leg. He snored sweetly on until I woke him with a pinch to his arm.

‘Joss. Mrs Wragg. At the door.’

‘What the hell?’ He yawned and sat slowly up. ‘What is it?’ he shouted.

‘I’ve got that power cable you wanted.’

‘What … oh. Yeah. Hang on.’

He pulled on his shorts and went, bare-chested, barefoot and still shiny with sex, to the door.

If Mrs Wragg understood that she had disturbed something, she didn’t say so.

‘See? I’ll come in and sort it out for you, shall I?’

‘Oh, no, I can …’

But she was in.

I heard the hurried zipping up of a bag – Joss’s bag of BDSM tricks, no doubt – underneath her attempts to make conversation.

‘So you’re cut off for the weekend?’ she said. ‘Must be a big job up at the Hall.’

Oh, that was what he’d told her, was it?

‘Complete rewiring,’ he said. ‘Thanks, but I can do that perfectly well … all right? It was very kind of you to go to all this trouble, Mrs Wragg, but I think I can take it from here.’

I had to use the toilet. There was no way I could hang on.

I grabbed the duvet, wrapped it round me and made a break for the tiny bathroom. Unfortunately, Mrs Wragg was right by the door and got a full eyeful of my dishevelled dash.

‘Oh,’ she said, stopping dead while I banged the bathroom door behind me. ‘That’s …’

‘Thank you, Mrs Wragg.’ I could hear Joss at the door by now. He was probably ushering our visitor out.

‘Ooh, is that …?’ She’d seen me. Damn. ‘Hello, our Luce,’ she called out cheerfully. ‘Long time no see. How’s your mom?’

I had no intention of engaging in conversation while I was peeing, so I didn’t reply. Everyone in Willingham was going to know my business now. Marvellous.

Having flushed and washed my hands, I poked my head around the bathroom door.

‘Hullo, Mrs Wragg. Karen’s fine, thanks.’

‘Tell her to pop over for a cuppa. It’s been a while. How are you, love? Thought you were in Russia.’

‘Hungary. No. Back now. Um, if you don’t mind …’ I looked down at my duvet-wrapped body.

‘Of course. Sorry, love. You’ll have better things to do than catch up with me. Well, ta-ra, your lordship.’

‘Goodbye. Thanks for the … the …’

But she had bustled off and left Joss to shut the door and give me an apologetic grimace.

‘Why did you open the door?’ I grouched, flinging the duvet back on the bed and sitting with my arms clasped around my knees. There was a gratifying residual ache on my behind that prevented my being too pissed off with him.

‘I didn’t think you were going to come out,’ he exclaimed, standing in the doorway with his arms folded. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘I was desperate. So would you be if you’d been tied to a bed and teased for an hour.’

His crooked smile gave me a hot flush around my neck and collarbone.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said.

‘Mrs Wragg,’ I moaned.

‘Oh, come on, does it matter?’

He came to sit beside me on the bed, looking as if this question deserved a serious answer.

‘Matter? Joss, she’ll tell everyone. She’s already told everyone you’re staying here, trust me. Now she’ll be telling everyone that you’re staying here
with me
. I’d put money on my editor ringing up within the next hour asking me for the exclusive engagement spread.’

Joss laughed.

‘Oh, come on, everyone gossips. I’m sure they’ve said a lot worse about both of us before.’

‘Yes, but now we’ll be
linked
.’

‘Darling, we’ve been seen at various restaurants and public places around Tylney several times in the last few weeks. If there’s some form of Tylney bush telegraph in operation, I imagine we’re already in it.’

‘What if it gets to the ears of your Mystery Man? What if he knows you’re involved with a journalist? Won’t that blow everything apart?’

‘How would it get to his ears? He doesn’t give a toss what I do. I’m insignificant, a nobody to him.’

‘Can you be sure of that?’

‘He has no input in local life. He knows nobody down here. I swear, it would be well beneath his notice.’

I bit my lip but decided to accept this.

‘Besides,’ he said in a lower tone. ‘What if he does find out?’

‘Joss!’ I could hardly believe he was saying this. ‘We’re supposed to be getting the Hall back for you. That’s the whole point.’

‘Is it?’ he said, looking into my eyes. ‘I’m not so sure any more. I’m not so sure I wouldn’t be perfectly happy living here with you in a caravan by the river, fishing for our supper and reading poetry round a camp fire at nights.’

‘You … you don’t mean that. You’re such a dick, Lethbridge.’

My anger covered the starry-eyed nonsense that was going on underneath it.

‘Why?’ he said, leaning closer to me, putting his hand to my face so I turned it away. ‘What’s so wrong with that? Tell me. Why wouldn’t that work?’

I hid from him, face-down on the duvet. I knew he was leaning right over me. I could feel his breath, then his fingers drifted along my spine.

‘Talk to me, Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds,’ he whispered.

I turned over and lay on my back, looking up at the familiar ceiling. I’d been surprised at how tiny these vans were when I came in. I’d forgotten.

‘If you think I ever want to live in a caravan again, you must be insane,’ I said. ‘It’s all very romantic when you haven’t lived in a poky tin can that’s freezing in winter and stifling in summer with nowhere to put anything and all the site knowing your business if you raise your voice above a whisper. But when you have …’

Joss lay down next to me, his shoulder against mine.

‘Yeah,’ he conceded. ‘That was a bit of a daft thing to say. I know I’m painting a rose-coloured picture for myself. But you make me feel like that. And I feel something, a kind of strange affection for this site, because it’s where you lived and grew and became what you are.’

‘Joss, why are you doing this? I wish you’d stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Making out that this is some kind of … love affair.’

‘But I do love you. And you love me.’

I believed him, but I had believed him before.

‘I loved you then, Joss. And you said you loved me, but you didn’t.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ he said. ‘I did love you, always. Just because I left you didn’t mean –’

‘Oh, what a crock of shit!’ I shouted, punching a fist into the duvet. ‘Either you were cruel or you were lame. Either way, it’s not exactly attractive. And nothing’s changed. You’re still the lord. I’m still the caravan girl.’

‘No, listen,’ said Joss, and he sounded so agitated I propped myself up to stare at him. ‘There’s one thing that has changed everything for me. It’s made some things difficult, but it’s made other things possible, and it’s set me free.’

‘What? What are you on about?’

‘Father’s death. Lucy, I laughed when I heard the news. I laughed.’

I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. All I could do was carry on staring and hope that my bug eyes might bring forth some kind of elucidation.

‘You remember the way I was when we were kids?’ he added.

‘How could I not?’ Again, I lived through a sense-memory of being slashed on the legs with a bramble, not once, but repeatedly. How different that seemed from what he had just done to me with his riding crop – the terror all translated into exhilaration.

‘That’s how he was to me. ‘“Man hands on misery to man.”’ Or girl, in my case.’

‘“It deepens like a coastal shelf,”’ I capped, seeing a great big piece of missing jigsaw puzzle slotting into its place. ‘Your father was abusive?’

‘In the modern parlance,’ he said, with a little smile that tugged at my heart. ‘When I was small, it was called being a disciplinarian. “The boy needs to know what’s what.” That was me – “the boy”. Always “the boy”. Blind eyes were turned. But I don’t think anyone really thought it was normal.’

‘Oh, Joss.’ I reached for him. He was twitchy, and a little reluctant at first, but he allowed me to take his hand. ‘Didn’t you ever tell anyone?’

‘Who could I tell? Everyone around me knew about it, on some level or other, but they didn’t want to challenge him. My mother agreed with him. She always did. She put him before me, every time. She never hurt me, physically, but she knew exactly what to say to make me feel …’

He swallowed, unable to continue for a moment.

‘Sorry, Lulu,’ he said unsteadily. ‘Didn’t mean to put this downer on you.’

‘Shut up. I want to hear it. I want to. Talking can help.’

‘Hmm, so can brandy.’

Yes, well, that made a lot more sense now. He gave me a sideways look.

‘I got quite pissed yesterday. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I’m back on the wagon now.’

‘I know it’s a long, hard road,’ I said, dismissing his slip. ‘I know that. As long as you don’t give up.’

He patted my hand. ‘Thanks for being understanding.’

‘I want to understand,’ I said. ‘Have you talked about this to anyone who wasn’t around at the time? I mean, friends or counsellors or …?’

‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘I mean, sometimes, I tried. I prepared the ground. But I always shied away when it came right down to it. I was afraid I’d be rejected for it, or disbelieved or laughed at … I don’t know.’