Wildwood Read online

  ‘OK …’ I looked into the embers, words failing me for the moment, as I tried to think my way past the tangle of words. ‘OK. No blood. We don’t do the blood thing. Well, I don’t mind …’ I hesitated. ‘I mean, I don’t have a problem with other stuff.’

  Ash choked back a cough, his eyes flashing above his fist. ‘Huh?’

  I shrugged. ‘You said saliva. I don’t have a problem with that. You’d have to … What? Lick me?’

  His look was very nearly a glare, but his words were soft and carefully considered. ‘This isn’t some sort of kinky game, Avril.’

  ‘You’re the one who brought up the possibility.’

  ‘So I did.’

  ‘Then yeah … I’m up for it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  He looked very wary, but eventually he nodded. ‘All right. Follow me.’

  Pouring his mint tea into a mug he led me out of the encampment and over a rise into a natural hollow in the ground. All around us were oaks, but the centre of the dell was a clearing and the summer sun lit a carpet of dog’s mercury.

  ‘Go down into the centre and wait for me.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To get you some of my clothes.’ He looked me up and down. ‘You need to take your own off, down to your knickers. We need a lot of bare skin for this. Take them off and wait.’ I think he must’ve spotted the sudden doubt on my face, because he added, ‘You have to trust me, remember. Like I have to trust you.’ He handed me his mug. ‘Take that.’

  As he slipped away I descended into the hollow and slowly removed my trainers and socks. The leaves felt cool beneath my feet and I shifted into the brightest patch of sun before following suit with trousers and top, which I folded neatly and laid aside. I couldn’t stop myself checking my narrow horizons, but there was no sign of anyone watching. A woodpecker rattled in a stag-headed oak. Standing there in sports top and knickers I shifted my shoulders in the sun, getting used to the lick of the breeze on my skin and relaxing just a little. What better way to spend a spare Sunday afternoon, I asked myself flippantly, than getting involved in a little perverse ritual magic?

  This wasn’t about prurient curiosity though. I knew that really. It wasn’t even about taking sides. This was about vengeance on Michael. This was about getting my own back before the humiliation gnawed a hole in my self-confidence that I wouldn’t be able to heal.

  Ash took his time returning. I wandered around the hollow, careful where I put my bare feet. Without pockets I hardly knew what to do with my hands. God, I thought, as the quiet of the woodland settled upon my mind and my determination started to cool, how the hell had I got myself involved in a situation like this? Michael was using me against Ash and Ash was using me against Michael. Did I care so long as I could make my own decisions? I had to know what this was all about. I had to see for myself before I acted. That meant I had to trust Ash. The question was, did I? I scanned the walls of the hollow yet again. For all that he painted himself as the good guy, he wasn’t above a certain ruthlessness. Wolves and wasps were hardly non-lethal weapons. He’d shown no remorse over the man who’d died.

  And did Ash trust me? He clearly feared that I was working in Michael’s interests, yet he was desperate enough for allies to risk showing me his most closely guarded treasure. Or maybe he was luring me into a position more advantageous for him.

  This was a weird, weird situation. Was I getting in too deep?

  ‘Don’t turn around.’ Ash spoke from behind me and up the slope. I half-turned anyway, automatically, before his words registered and I forced myself to swing back. My hands were clenched as I listened to him descend towards me, and my spine prickled. ‘OK?’ he asked as he got to within a couple of paces.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good.’ He dropped a bundle on the ground nearby and I couldn’t help taking a sideways glance at that. It was a heap of clothes, with at least two pairs of boots included. Was he barefoot himself then? I thought I recognised a khaki shirt he’d been wearing when I saw him by the fire too.

  ‘Right, Avril. You need to take your top off.’ His voice was soft.

  ‘Are you starkers?’

  ‘That’s the way I usually work – bare to the air and earth.’

  ‘Right. That’s …’ I didn’t know what to say. My heart was racing.

  ‘Believe me, I’ve taken precautions.’ I heard an edge to his voice. ‘We’re being careful, remember? Now, please, take your top off. You can keep the pants on.’

  With an effort of will I obeyed, dropping the Lycra sports top among the dog’s mercury. It felt like I’d taken a huge leap into the unknown. My skin went to gooseflesh though the air wasn’t cold.

  ‘Where’d you put the tea?’

  I pointed to where I’d propped the mug against a root. ‘Is it magic then?’

  I actually heard him smile. ‘No. It’s because my mouth’s going to get a bit dry. No more questions, please. Don’t talk. Try to empty your mind.’

  I tried, but there’s no way anyone can maintain an empty mind when a naked man steps up behind them. I tried to steel myself for his touch too, but that didn’t stop me jumping when he put his hand on the nape of my neck. He waited until my shiver had passed. Then he bent and I felt first his breath warm on my skin and then the soft brush of his lips and then his tongue, hotter and wetter. I forced myself to hold still but in secret I squirmed. My sex felt a rush of heat, my nipples tightened and I could only hope Ash hadn’t noticed.

  Oh God, this was not playing safe.

  Ash worked carefully, touching moisture to my skin and smoothing it over, patch by patch, then writing upon the new vellum with his fingertip letters or symbols that I could not decipher. He did my shoulders and arms first, to the tips of my fingers, which he sucked. The evaporating moisture chilled my skin slightly, raising exquisite shivers. I set my legs and looked into the distance, my head spinning. I could feel his every breath and it was extraordinarily intimate. He wet his hand and passed it over my hair, then worked down the length of my back, his mouth and his fingers warm and strong and gentle, and I felt my body responding to his touch in ways that had nothing to do with magic. Standing there all but nude in broad daylight, exposed to the wood, exposed to the man caressing my body – that was frightening, but the gentle ticklish sensation was nothing but pleasure. Who wouldn’t respond to such a feast of sensation? I certainly did. I liked the fear and the trust and the vulnerability. And God knows I liked Ash – meaning as Michael would say, that yes I wanted to fuck him – for all his mixed signals and his rejection.

  Span by span he worked his way down to the base of my spine. My Sunday knickers were wine-coloured and on the skimpy side; carefully he tucked the cloth into the cleft of my arse and kissed his way over first one bum cheek and then the other, taking his time. I swear I felt his teeth and I had to bite my lip.

  When he’d finished with my bum he moved round to my right leg, kneeling to anoint the long lines of my thigh and calf. I’d never realised how sensitive the backs of my knees were until then. He lifted my foot behind me to lick the sole and each individual toe, and I had to put my hand on him to keep my balance, leaning my thigh against his bare shoulder. He felt smooth and warm. When I dared to glance down I could see his leg and bare back and the muscles of his upper arm, and I wanted so badly to wrap my fingers in his red-gold dreads and turn to press him against my muff that I nearly cried out. It was wonderful, beautiful torture and it got worse as he turned his attention to the front of my thigh, working his way up till his lips brushed the edge of my panties. The microclimate in there was by this point like that preceding a tropical storm.

  I tried to empty my mind but the inrushing tide of sensation filled it to overflowing. Put your hand in my panties, I prayed. Please. Please.

  My prayers went, it seemed, unheard. He moved back round behind me and ministered to my other leg with exactly the same thoroughness while I stared desperately at the bra
nches criss-crossed overhead. Then he rested his forehead against my hip. ‘Avril … I’m sorry.’ His voice was husky.

  ‘Sorry?’ I didn’t know what he meant until he rose to his feet and his erect cock brushed my thigh on the way up. Oh, was he hard.

  ‘It’s … not supposed to happen like this.’ He pulled a face as he took himself in hand. ‘I mean, there’s no way …’ He looked tormented. I had to stifle a laugh; this pierced and tattooed eco-terrorist was so much more gentlemanly than Michael Deverick.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I murmured. I was dizzy with excitement, but I tried to sound calm. ‘It won’t harm the magic, will it?’

  ‘Um. Technically it’ll help.’

  ‘Then that’s all right, isn’t it?’ I slipped my fingers around and past his, circling the hot shaft. The look of relief on his face was as sweet as honey. He put his arm round the small of my back and pulled me closer. There wasn’t much room for my hands.

  ‘Want some help?’ I whispered.

  He bit his lip. ‘That’s not …’

  ‘OK.’ I let my head rest against his collarbone as I watched. Very carefully he began to squeeze his cock, pressing it against my skin and rubbing it up and down against the silken skin of my belly. I let him get on with it, leaning into him, giving him the friction and the solidity he needed. But as he pumped I reached down and caressed the silky and nearly hairless balls I remembered so well, my fingers dancing across his skin until he groaned out loud.

  Tell me now you don’t want me, Ash.

  It couldn’t last long enough to satisfy me. Sliding his arm tighter around me and burying his face in my hair, Ash clenched to his climax and unloaded in wet gouts upon my skin. His stifled groan sent a quiver through my whole body. Then he pulled away, steadying himself by gripping my hips until he got his breath back.

  ‘Avril …’ There was an expression on his face like that of a man who’s just looked over the edge of a precipice and seen the vista beneath his feet, glorious and utterly terrifying. For a moment he visibly struggled to refocus.

  ‘You OK?’ I couldn’t keep the wicked grin off my face.

  ‘Uh … yeah. Now … shut your eyes for me, Avril.’

  I obeyed. As I held my breath he baptised me in kisses, his mouth feather-light on my eyelids, sensual across my nose, my cheekbones, my chin. He traced the whorls of my ears and ran his tongue around my lips. And all the while he did this, he gently caressed his jism into the skin of my stomach and flanks. I tried not to squirm as he smoothed his way from my hips to my armpits and wrote his secret alphabet upon my ticklish flesh. His mouth descended to my throat and I lifted my chin for him like a sacrificial lamb. His hand reached for my breasts.

  I can’t cope with this, I thought, I can’t cope. His hand was writing poetry on the cleft and the swell of my tits. My nipples were standing out hard like acorns and his fingers brushed them with unintentional cruelty. I wanted to cry out but the cries were bottled up in my throat, choking me. I felt like if Ash didn’t fuck me then I was going to die, right there in his arms. Then his hand was gone from my breasts and moving back down over my belly. My hips twitched involuntarily. He was pressed up against me, one arm taking my sagging weight, and I was on fire inside. I shut my eyes, water oozing out from under the lashes.

  All done then. All but the last few inches. He slid one firm hand over my pubic mound and squeezed me through my soaking panties. I dissolved in fire and water, a liquid ripple of orgasm spilling through my body, and slumped against him.

  When the world stopped burning and I opened my eyes he was holding me upright. ‘Ah,’ I said weakly. ‘Have I gone and wrecked it all?’

  ‘I think we’ll manage.’ His voice was dry. I could only imagine what he was thinking as I covered my burning face with my hands. As he released me I felt bereft. The pulse in my crotch was so strong it actually sent aftershocks through my clit.

  ‘Oh,’ I whimpered as my legs wobbled.

  ‘You need to get dressed,’ was his next instruction.

  We both dressed, he in a new set of clothes and I in the ones he’d been wearing earlier. They weren’t really skanky but they did smell of him; I suppose that was the point. The pheromone rush made my head spin. We were both a little self-conscious, I think, as we stood fully clothed once more; the desire we’d both given way to was at such odds to our expressed purpose. The clothes weren’t too bad a fit, considering, but his boots were far too big for me. Even with two pairs of his socks on they slopped around on my feet. ‘Do I have to?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t recommend going barefoot.’ He looked me over one last time and nodded. ‘You’d better hold my hand.’

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Ah.’ He actually looked embarrassed. ‘Just in case. It’s still easy to get lost.’

  I couldn’t help grinning.

  Taking my hand he led me out of the hollow on the far side and we turned uphill. I felt like a little girl being led by her big brother, which tickled me.

  Climbing the slope all the time, we went deeper into the wood. The canopy was closing over now that we were well into summer, the leaves turning a darker, more opaque green, and soon we were in deep shade. Underfoot it was damp, every rock surface slippery with moss, and the lack of light ensured that ferns and dead wood were the mainstay of the shrub layer. Ferns and mosses grew overhead too on the twisting oak branches and, in the sunnier patches, tufts of grey-green lichen hung like Hallowe’en cobwebs from the twigs. My oversized boots found it hard going on the broken ground and I was glad of Ash’s firm supporting grip. We crossed many tiny gullies where streams hurried down the slope, clambered over fallen trunks and skirted great upthrust boulders which looked ready to slip from their mossy sockets at any moment. Once, from within an earthen burrow scraped beneath the roots of a fallen oak, we caught a sudden sharp reek of pig, but nothing stirred. As we stooped to follow the faint path under a hanging deadfall heavy enough to break every bone in my body, I was suddenly fiercely glad I hadn’t come this way on my own. The threats here were unconcealed. I felt like I was here on sufferance.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked as we passed one of the bundles of twigs hanging from scarlet thread.

  ‘Rowan.’

  ‘Rowan doesn’t work against Michael Deverick. Neither,’ I added, ‘does holy ground.’

  Ash cast me a questioning look.

  ‘I first met him in a churchyard.’

  ‘Necromancy?’ he enquired.

  ‘My cousin’s wedding.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Necromancy would have been far more entertaining.’

  ‘It has its moments.’ Ash didn’t give me a chance to follow that one up; he stopped dead and I nearly ran into him. I followed his fixed stare up the slope. The tangle of dead branches and twisted living trunks made it impossible to get a clear view of anything, but I was sure there was movement and a moment later the crunch of breaking twigs confirmed it.

  ‘Wild boar?’ I whispered. There are feral boar running loose all round the South of England and they’re no joke. The smell from that lair had really worried me.

  ‘No.’ Ash stepped off the path, pulling me into the lee of a big rock. He put my back to the stone and stood before me, facing out but shielding me from the woodland beyond. The sensation of his body against mine was almost enough to distract me from whatever our peril was. His back was warm, his outstretched arm rigid, and I could only get a partial glimpse over his shoulder. I took hold of the back of his belt, mostly for security, but my fingers slipped down the inside of his waistband and nested against the small of his back where the skin was satin smooth, and I felt him shiver.

  Then something came down off the path, moving ponderously, and passed by heading downhill. I couldn’t get a proper look but I heard it: the stertorous breathing, the rumble of its guts, the branches snapping under its mass. It was grey and brown and green, the same colour as the woodland, shaggy with moss and bearing – high on one shoulder – a livid yellow clust
er of fungi. And it was about as big as a rhino would be, if a rhino walked on two legs.

  I don’t know if it saw us. Slowly the noise faded as it disappeared downhill. Ash wiped the sweat off his upper lip.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ I breathed.

  ‘A troll.’

  I goggled. I hadn’t let go of his belt and I had no plan to. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I told you, this is Wildwood. The forest as it once was.’ He twisted to face me, and with that movement my hand slid round his waistband to his stomach. The skin there had more heat than at the small of his back. He put his hand over mine and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to keep my fingers out or to trap them there. He bit his lip. ‘Careful, Avril.’

  ‘Or what?’ I said weakly, but I pulled my hand away.

  For a moment he seemed to hold on to my fingers. Then he blinked and shook his head. ‘Come on. We’re nearly at the top.’

  As the ground underfoot levelled off the trees changed: instead of big trunks with wide-spread branches this was scrub oak and birch, their narrow branchless stems tightly packed together, one canopy indistinguishable from the next. The ground between the stems was wetter – in fact standing water in some places, black and evil smelling. Devon, I thought grimly as I put my boot up to the ankle in a pool and felt the cold water rush in over my toes, was a county without the good sense to put its bogs at the bottom of hills where they should be. The water wasn’t doing the trees much good either; many were dead, and those gaps in the canopy were the only places where shafts of light found their way in. The ferns, the mosses, every sign of the verdant burgeoning life in the lower reaches of the wood had vanished.

  Ash’s grip tightened as he led me through the maze, choosing with care which trunks to step between. I clung to him and tried not to get impatient, uncomfortable though it was with my soggy feet and the stagnant tang of the mud and the buzz of insects in my ears. Or at least I thought they were insects until one whipped past my left cheek drawing a stinging razor line of blood and, as I turned, I caught a glimpse, just for a moment, of a face made up of shimmer and shadow: a face so horrible that I yelped in shock and grabbed Ash’s wrist with my free hand.