Contents
Cover
About the Book
Also by Janine Ashbless, Olivia Knight, Leonie Martel
Title Page
Bear Skin: Janine Ashbless
Bear Skin
The Three Riddles: Olivia Knight
The Engagement
The Necklace
The Tangled Path
The Island
The People in the Garden: Leonie Martel
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Copyright
About the Book
Three writers from Black Lace show you there’s nothing childish about fairy tales. In Bear Skin Hazel is whisked away from her tedious job and humdrum life by the mysterious Arailt, to be his lover. The only problem is there is more to Arailt than meets the eye – much more. In The Three Riddles, the elves, they say, know the secrets of events – but the queen has no time for superstitions. As her kingdom crumbles, she longs for her lost love, but can she risk her country on a whim? Finally in The People in the Garden, strange things are happening in the grounds of Count and Countess Malinovsky’s Gothic manor house. Local people tell of fairies, goblins and unnameable creatures, and there are stories about a ghostly girl with an uncanny resemblence to the decadent couple’s beautiful servant Katia.
Enchanted: Erotic Fairy Tales
The countess stepped inside, Peter beside her on a short rein. Katia stared at the gardener in his strange bonds. To see the bandages wound so tight around his thighs aroused her, and the package at his centre swelled promisingly. Could she, would she, be allowed to touch him? The thought made her shudder with excitement.
Irina handed her the leash, and for the first time she had a man under her command. He refused to look her in the eye, so she jerked the leash and demanded it, and the countess laughed.
‘You do make an eager student!’ she said.
The countess then lifted Peter’s right arm and secured his wrist into a cuff that hung from the ceiling. She did the same with the left arm. Now he was completely helpless and at the women’s mercy. Katia watched as the countess trailed a finger down the front of his bandages. The mass of crushed petals sewn inside his garment added to the already pleasing bulge. She prodded gently at the material, then cupped her hand between his thighs to determine what was padding and what flesh. How Katia longed to do the same.
‘I think our holy little gardener is getting hard,’ she declared, making him cringe with embarrassment. ‘He obviously wants it.’
Also by Janine Ashbless, Olivia Knight, Leonie Martel
JANINE ASHBLESS
Cruel Enchantment
Divine Torment
Burning Bright
House of Dust (In the Black Lace novella collection Magic and Desire)
Wildwood
www.janineashbless.com
OLIVIA KNIGHT
The Ten Visions
The Dragon Lord (In the Black Lace novella collection Magic and Desire)
http://oliviaknight.co.uk/home.htm
LEONIE MARTEL
The Private Undoing of a Public Servant
Enchanted: Erotic Fairy Tales
Bear Skin
Janine Ashbless
Bear Skin
I FIRST SAW the bear as it came down the aisle between Travel and Biography. Perhaps the squeals of panicking shoppers should have alerted me sooner, but I was trying to find a misshelved copy of Slowly Down the Ganges that someone had ordered and I wasn’t really tuned in to anything else. We’re a big chain and the branch on Park Street is a big one too – the kind with a coffee shop at the back and piped classical music and late-night opening – but not really big enough to cope with a fully grown male grizzly. I looked up as it brushed over a rack of remaindered calendars and a squeak escaped from my lips as Labrador puppies and Rajasthani architecture and Italian vegetables spilled across the carpet under the bear’s massive paws. I didn’t get off my knees; I was trapped in a dead-end aisle and, besides, I don’t think my legs would have worked.
The bear stopped a few paces from me and lowered its head to inhale deeply. The store lighting brought up the gloss of its thick pelt and I could see the depths of its dark eyes and the moisture on its nose. Its breath smelled of honey. ‘Will you come with me then, Hazel?’ it said.
My order form slipped from numb fingers. Its voice was deep and rich and masculine, with a strong Scottish lilt. ‘What?’ I whispered.
‘You said you’d do anything to get out of this job: anything at all.’
If the blood hadn’t already drained from my face I would have gone scarlet. Over the bear’s shoulder I could see the peering horrified faces of customers and staff, including that of Gwen my senior manager, who treated the shop as a domain granted unto her by God. True enough, I had been complaining about my job, but only to trusted friends, and certainly not anywhere I thought I might have been overheard. Our chain is the sort that pays minimum wages but only employs graduates, so that they can bring their years of education to the challenge of shelving books in alphabetical order and coping politely with customers who are Looking for a book, it was talked about on the radio last week, it’s by Patricia someone and it’s about this woman who goes to America – I think there’s something about flowers in the title, but it might be fireworks or something like that, you know? This job was driving me out of my mind, all right.
‘Um,’ I said, proving that my wits had already left me.
‘That sort of thing gets heard, you know.’ He shifted his weight from paw to paw, swinging his head. ‘Will you come with me, Hazel? For a year and a day, that’s all I’m asking.’
‘And do what?’
‘Be my true love.’ His eyes were like honey too; a dark amber honey from bees that fed in northern pine forests. I felt his gaze drizzle across my skin.
‘Your true love?’ I became horribly aware of my body, all tender honey-glazed skin and warm flesh. Those jaws could crunch up even my bones without difficulty. ‘You mean …?’
One round ear flicked. I could see the hint of a pink tongue between his lips. His breathing was heavy; I imagine the shop was far too warm for a creature with such thick fur. I wondered what else that long pelt concealed.
‘Why should I?’ I whispered. ‘I mean, I don’t know you.’
‘No.’
‘What’s in it for me?’
‘Nothing. No profit in it; only danger. No reward; only nights of my company and the risk that you might find pleasure in it.’
It helped being an animal, I reflected, to say such things in front of an audience. As for me, I blushed – but not my face only; a secret warmth blossomed down the whole length of my body.
‘And I might search the whole world for a lassie bold enough to do this for me,’ added the bear; ‘and still not find her. Or maybe I’ve found her here, kneeling among the pages of other people’s lives.’
I blinked. I’d never been called a lassie in my life. ‘I need to think about it,’ I said, stumbling over my words. ‘Give me some time …’
A deep rumble sounded from his chest, and I couldn’t tell if it was a growl or some noise of satisfaction. ‘I’ll come back for you then.’ The aisle was too narrow for a bear to turn in so he reared up on his hind legs, paws dangling. His head was up on a level with the topmost shelves. I caught a glimpse of his cream chest and underbelly before he swung gracefully away and dropped back down on all fours. The watching faces vanished.
‘Wait!’ I called. He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know your name.’ I didn’t even know if bears had names.
‘It’s Arailt.’ As he walked away booksellers and customers scattered from his path. I started to pick myself unsteadily off the floor and was shocked to find a warmth and a slippery wetness in my knickers that had nothing to do with fear.
‘You can’t go with a bear,’ said Lynn, pouring more sugar into her cappuccino. ‘I mean, what were you even thinking of, talking to him like that?’
‘In front of Gwen too.’ Rosa blew onto her raspberry tea, fogging up her glasses. We were in Café Parisienne, two streets from the shop and our first port of call most evenings after finishing our shifts. ‘She’s livid, you know. I heard her on the phone to head office and she sounded like a wasp that’s just been swatted from the jam. You can’t bring a bear into her department and expect her to like it.’
‘I didn’t bring him.’
‘Especially if you’re going to talk to him about wanting to leave. You’re in serious trouble, Hazel!’
‘I didn’t talk to him about leaving! He already knew!’
Lynn snorted. ‘What sort of a name’s “Arailt” anyway?’
‘It’s Gaelic,’ I muttered.
Nikki swallowed her biscotti. ‘Well, what I don’t get is why he picked you.’
Looking into the mirror past her shoulder I couldn’t help wondering that too. Was I so different from other junior booksellers? Did I stand out from all the other young women in the world bored with their jobs and clueless as to where they wanted to go in life? There must be millions of us. Was my hedgehog of black hair and neat body any more attractive to bears than Lynn’s brown ponytail and wicked grin or Nikki’s untidy bob and big boobs or Rosa’s orange highlights and husky voice? A lassie bold enough, he’d said. I shivered. I didn’t feel bold: I felt uncharacteristically cowed. Normally I’m opinionated and acerbic and ready for a giggle. Not tonight.
‘He wants to lurv you,’ Lynn mocked.
‘He wants to do it to you bear-fashion,’ Rosa chimed in. ‘Wuff wuff!’
‘What does a bear’s prick look like, I wonder?’
‘Lynn!’
‘You could look it up on the Net,’ I suggested, sipping my spicy chai.
‘You reckon?’
‘Oh yeah. Someone somewhere will have posted a picture of a grizzly-dick.’
‘I’ve seen some grisly ones in my time,’ said Nikki dryly, and we groaned.
‘You think it’s going to be big?’ Lynn flashed me a look of delighted horror. ‘Oh, Hazel – do you think it’ll make up for Evan’s?’
‘I doubt it,’ I said, wishing I’d never discussed my ex with them. I was trying to forget Evan, though it wasn’t anything to do with the size of his equipment.
‘He’s a big boy,’ she warned. ‘I mean, a big fuzzy boy. And I bet he goes in hard. Think of the muscle on him.’
‘Oh my God.’ Rosa rolled her eyes. ‘He’ll squash her flat.’
‘Her poor little pussy won’t know what hit it.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Nikki’s voice was sharp. ‘She’s not going to say yes to him.’
‘Of course not,’ Rosa agreed. ‘I mean, he is a bear. He’d just eat her as soon as he got her out of sight.’
‘I agree; the whole thing’s a trick. You mustn’t trust him, Hazel.’
‘Well,’ I said, trying to be fair, ‘it’s not like he’s a wolf. Or a fox.’
‘He’s still a predator though, isn’t he? I mean, they do kill people, bears. They just look cuddly.’
‘OK, they’re dangerous,’ I admitted.
‘Don’t even think about it: it’s disgusting,’ said Nikki, who is Catholic and occasionally suffers dizzying reversions to type. ‘He won’t even have a soul.’
For a second there was silence. Then Lynn laughed. ‘It’s not his soul Hazel’s interested in.’ She did a wriggly little dance in her seat. ‘It’s his … bear necessities.’
They broke into song and shrieked with laughter all the way through the chorus, until the waiter came over to shut us up.
It was Arailt’s voice, I think, that did it. The next morning as I crept downstairs in the dark to make breakfast – I have to get up stupidly early in order to get into the bathroom before my housemates, one of whom locks herself in for nearly an hour – it was his voice that I was thinking of; that deep burr and the flattened Scottish vowels. And the warmth of it, and the hint of humour, as if behind that ursine mask he was smiling. It was hard to think of him as an animal. But it was hard to think clearly at all, stood in the kitchen waiting for the toast to pop; I’d hardly slept all night, waking from a doze every half-hour or so with my heart in my mouth and a sense of impending crisis. The only way I’d been able to sleep in the end was to turn onto my stomach with my hand beneath me and masturbate myself to unconsciousness. My fantasies as I’d done it had been disturbing; starting with the memory of Arailt’s warm voice, then imagining him there in the room behind me, watching my upthrust backside and my spread, quivering legs; then spiralling out of control until I was picturing him pulling back the duvet and sinking down to cover me in its stead and pushing into my eager, open sex …
I’d come three or four times before drifting into oblivion.
Funny, but I’d pictured hands sliding between me and the mattress, cupping my breasts as he entered me. Hands, not paws.
I took my coffee back up to my room and sat on the edge of my bed. One room was all I had, and in the first steely light it looked bleak: a single bed, an old computer, a spherical plastic bowl in which my torpid goldfish, Moby, floated. The posters on the wall were all of countries I’d never visited. I shivered, then put on my coat and opened the window. My room has the advantage of overlooking the flat garage roof, and I can climb out and look over the back garden and the drop down the hill to the roofscape of Greater London. I stood clasping my mug, taking small sips and watching the watery sunrise. The grass below me was pale and lank; none of us ever mowed the lawn. It was late January and the trees stood naked against the sky. I could hear the murmur of traffic but nothing moved, all life hidden away in and between the rows of houses. Out there people were getting ready for work; they were feeding children and backing cars out onto their drives and hurrying to bus-stops and tube stations. They all, I thought, knew what they had to do with their lives. I had nothing but a job that drove me to distraction, no one to offer up my efforts to but Gwen, whose disapproval would by now be at arctic temperature, and no one to come home to at night but my goldfish. No boyfriend at the moment, no family that gave more than a passing thought to my existence, no friends except the ones I worked with, no career, no goals. That was my problem. In a world of possibilities, I had lost my way.
When I turned, Arailt was sat behind me, as if he’d been there all night. His fur was silvered with dew. I put my hand over my mouth to hold back the cry that filled my throat. Face to face once more, it was suddenly only too easy to think of him as an animal. He was enormous: even sitting back on his haunches his head was at the same height as mine. His claws were not retractable like a cat’s but jutted from his paws like curved knives. I cast a covert glance between his spread thighs but long fur thwarted any glimpse there.
‘Hazel.’ His voice was as I remembered it and I wanted to rub its rich sweetness all over my skin. ‘Are you ready to come with me then?’
I flinched from the point of decision. ‘You didn’t give me very long to think about it.’
‘Thoughts run fast as lightning. How far did yours have to go?’
My thoughts had been round the world a dozen times and more that night and my mind was exhausted by the effort. I took a deep breath. ‘Tell me: why me? Why’d you choose me, Arailt?’
‘Why does anyone choose anyone?’
It seemed a fair question, if it was not simply evasion. ‘Instinct,’ I replied cautiously.
His mouth opened a little, revealing teeth that made the hair stand up on my neck. Then I realised he was grinning. ‘And what do your instincts tell you, Hazel? What choice do you make? Are you to be my bold lassie?’
‘Will I be safe? You won’t hurt me?’
‘I can’t guarantee that. But … if we’re not suited to one another, then I promise that I will try to return you here.’
I didn’t want to come back here, I realised. Even if our liaison was disastrous I didn’t want to come back here, not to my rented room and my cosy, claustrophobic job. I’d do anything to get away from that. ‘OK,’ I whispered.
‘Good.’ His eyes were like polished amber. ‘But there are rules.’
I was surprised; I’d assumed that he was in no position to make further demands. ‘Yes?’
‘From now on, you ask no questions. Whatever you see, whatever I do, however puzzled you are, you don’t ask me.’ His tone was gentle, almost apologetic; it took the sting out of a command that seemed wholly unfair.
‘OK,’ I said cautiously. There would be ways to get round that stricture if needs be, I was sure.
‘The other rule is that when we love, we do it in darkness.’
It made no difference to my bewilderment and my trepidation whether I’d be able to watch or not. I shrugged helplessly. ‘Fine.’
He let out a great sigh and sagged forward onto his forepaws. I wondered if he’d been as nervous as I. ‘Come here then. You’ll have to ride my back.’
I swallowed. ‘Wait a moment.’ For a second there was fire in his eyes and I nearly changed my mind. ‘I have to sort out my goldfish. He can’t wait a year for me.’
‘Go on then.’ His voice was nearly a growl. ‘I’ll meet you on the lawn.’
I wanted to ask if there was anything I should bring, but I couldn’t. I climbed back into my room, carried Moby’s tank round to Rob’s door and left it by the jamb. ‘Good luck,’ I whispered. In the end I didn’t bother to fetch anything from my room or even to lock it. If I was going to jump I was going to do it now, without looking back.
Arailt was pacing the lawn anxiously, leaving dark tracks in the dew, as I unlocked the back door. He hadn’t really believed I was coming, I realised. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, closing the door and stepping out onto the concrete path next to the sodden barbecue no one had cleared up in five months.
He swung toward me, then suddenly twisted away, rearing, as something black came fluttering in over his head. In my confusion I thought at first it was a bat, and then a wind-caught bin-bag because it was far too big for a bat. ‘Leave me alone!’ roared the bear, taking a swipe with his claws and snatching the object from the sky. It crumpled helplessly into the grass where he ripped it apart, and only when it was in shreds did he seem to remember me. I stood with my mouth open, aghast. The gape of his jaws had been wide enough to engulf my whole head.
‘One of her Shadows,’ Arailt growled, ‘sent to spy on me. Don’t ever let them bite you.’
I had no idea what he meant but even if I had been allowed to ask I wouldn’t have been able to find my voice. I was shaking.
‘I need to get you somewhere safe,’ he added, looking around. ‘We can’t stay here. Let’s go.’
It took a lot to make myself approach him. I cast a glance down at the broken Shadow and saw what looked like a swatch of shredded black leather with a blind and crumpled face. It had shed no blood as it died, and was already beginning to thin and dissolve.
‘There’ll be more of them about. Hurry.’ He turned side-on to me and I mounted. It was like plunging into a sea of bear – the scent of him so strong; the thick, soft waves of his fur washing over my hands and thighs. I settled precariously astride his back, feeling his warmth leak into my skin and the solid bulk of his body heave beneath me. ‘Hold tight,’ he admonished and I gripped the coarse fur of his ruff with both hands. He plunged straight for the willows at the bottom of the garden and I threw myself face down in his pelt as their branches flashed toward my face.
Then he was running, really running, his shoulders pitching beneath me, his breath coming in steam-engine puffs, and the wind was so cold in my face that I could not see for tears and all I could do was hold fast and pray that I would not slide off. The world fell away, blurring to grey. Though my streaming tears and the battering of his hair on my eyelids I caught occasional glimpses: a man frozen mid-stride on the edge of a pavement, a starling nailed to the air mid-flight. I swear that some time in the first few minutes we crossed all eight lanes of the M25 motorway, cutting a line through traffic that wasn’t just stationary but held fast in the iron grip of a splintered moment, like Zeno’s Arrow. I thought of my mother washing dishes on a Sunday evening, fallen distracted and motionless, elbow-deep in suds as she gazed out across the golf course that backed onto her house. I thought of what my broken body would look like if I slipped from Arailt’s back to be smeared across the unyielding surface of reality.
The wild ride was exhilarating at first, but grew terrible. It went on until my legs clenched around Arailt’s ribs went from painful to numb. It began to rain and the water drops struck my skin like stabbing tines. Only my stomach and legs were warm where they were pressed against him, while my exposed back and thighs set like ice. My mind froze too, my thoughts whipped away by a slipstream faster than any natural wind. ‘I’m falling,’ was all I managed to murmur as I felt myself slide off.
I awoke in a bed. For a while I lay without moving, looking at the wooden panelling of the wall, remembering a long plunge into darkness and the sensation of strong arms catching me. I felt warm again and wriggled my toes luxuriously. Then suddenly realising I was naked between the sheets, I sat up fast, clutching the covers to me.
I was in a large old-fashioned bedroom. Heavy velvet drapes blocked off the windows from floor to ceiling, and wall-lights with nasty yellow-fringed shades provided the only illumination. All the furniture was big and clunky and made of very dark wood. My gaze swept across the bed, which looked huge and solid. Of course, it occurred to me, it would have to cope with the weight of a bear.
I shivered, though the room wasn’t cold. I was alone, but I was naked – that meant someone had undressed me. Given my memory of rain-sodden clothes, I wasn’t outraged, but I couldn’t imagine bear paws being delicate enough for such a task. Maybe he’d simply sliced them off my unconscious form with those claws, I speculated, and froze as another memory welled up from the depths – this one much fainter, almost too tenuous to be a memory at all: a terrible sensation of cold and weakness as if my whole body had turned to clay, and then a warmth between my thighs, a hot wetness as of a licking tongue and the heat spreading up my belly from it.
‘Arailt?’ I whispered. The only sound was the murmur of the water in the radiators. I sneaked a look under the coverlet and saw no sign of ursine kisses, but the faintest smell of honey mingled with my own scent. I blushed from head to toe.
I got up at last and padded over to the big wardrobe, my feet sinking inches into the pile of the rug. But when I opened the door – gingerly, unable not to think of B-movie corpses tumbling out – I found not my own gear but racks and shelves laden with women’s clothes. I pulled out a dress at random and found it was a silver evening gown, trimmed with ostrich feathers and bearing a designer label on an inside seam. A bit garish, I thought, stuffing it back onto the rail. My next, rather more careful choice, was a crimson silk chemise, the sort you might wear as an underslip or a party dress. I shrugged into it, enjoying the cool whisper of the fabric on my skin, and paused to look at myself in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. For just a moment I thought I understood what Arailt saw in me; the hemline just above the knee showed off my legs and the simple flattering lines of the dress made me look straight and fit and somehow fearless, as if I had nothing to hide. My hair, battered by wind and rain, had turned from its usual moussed spikes into a tousled boyish mop. A bold lassie indeed.
Then I laughed. It was just a dress. But I kept it on as I sought in vain for a hairbrush or a pair of knickers, and then gave up and headed for the door.
The house was enormous. I realised that the moment I saw the corridor, its strip of red carpet stretching away toward an arched staircase well. It was also old, and rather badly lit by dim bulbs. The huge panel of stained glass at this end of the corridor was blank against the darkness outside. It was night already, so I’d lost a day. For a moment my courage failed me. Then I told myself that this place was just like the slightly run-down country hotels my parents used to take me to when I was small and we were still going on holiday together. I was probably somewhere in Scotland, I reasoned, thinking of Arailt’s accent.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I set to work exploring the main rooms. Be bold, be bold, I told myself: he’s not a fox, or a wolf. Bears are grouchy and hot-tempered and prone to solitude, but they’re not bad, are they? I wasn’t going to find a roomful of his previous victims swinging from meat-hooks … surely.
Many of the doors were locked, in fact. Others opened onto bedrooms and bathrooms, clean and warm but apparently unused. Then as I worked my way round the lower floors I discovered sitting rooms and studies and a library – the books were all hardbacks, but several were modern, printed this year. A television room held a huge collection of films on DVD, but when I switched the screen on to look for a news channel I couldn’t find an outside signal, just pale static. A dining room enclosed a vast table laid at the far end for one; I gave it an unkind look and shut the door quickly because there was something about that lonely place-setting that was chilling.
All the windows I investigated had barred interior shutters. I feared the front door would be locked too; but when I found it, it opened easily enough – onto a black gusty night filled with the creak of trees and the hiss of rain. Not one light glimmered out there, not even the moon. I retreated into the hall, my skin covered in goose bumps from the chill.
There was a photographic print hung at the foot of the stairs and I paused to look at it. It was modern and seemed out of place in this oak-panelled pile. It was a full-length and life-sized portrait of a rather beautiful woman, framed in brushed silvery metal. Standing against a featureless white backdrop, she was so pale that she almost merged with it and with the shoulderless white dress she wore. Her hair was an arctic-blonde glissade, her irises colourless and picked out only by their dark rings, and her lips so bloodless that their shape was only a pencil sketch upon the paper of her skin. You’d think that the photograph was hopelessly over-exposed, except for the area of shadow under her mantle: that was so dark that it looked black. It was, I thought, as if she’d taken all her natural shade and colour and trapped it in that one area of her apparel. Pallid as she was, there was nothing bland about her; the expression on her face was intense and even disturbing. It was a lovely picture, I thought, but I wasn’t sure I’d want to meet the model in the flesh.
Nearby I found the kitchen. That was a shock too; it was brightly lit by fluorescent strips and sumptuously appointed to modern standards. Definitely a hotel kitchen, I thought, looking at the stainless steel counters and the huge ovens. One thing that surprised me was that the hobs were all electric, not gas. I recalled that in all my wanderings I hadn’t seen a single open fireplace such as I’d expect in a Victorian pile like this. I opened a cupboard at random, to be confronted by rows of jars and packets.
‘Wow. Somebody shops at Fortnum and Mason.’ I reached down green olives stuffed with pine nuts with one hand and white-chocolate-dipped raspberries with the other. My stomach flipped; I realised that the uneasy feeling in my belly I’d had since waking was at least partially hunger. I quickly assembled myself a truly sybaritic meal, snatching mouthfuls as I hunted out of sheer greed: swathes of Parma ham, a creamy block of some Swiss cheese, delicate smoked trout, baby tomatoes tossed in fresh basil and truffle oil, and asparagus parboiled while I broke and buttered a stick of fresh French bread. Looking for pâté or something to put on the bread I found a jar of honey and broke the seal. The wild, sweet scent took my breath away and without thinking I plunged two fingers inside and sucked the stickiness from my hand as it oozed down toward my wrist. I opened a bottle of what looked like vintage wine and poured myself a generous glass, before sitting down to eat my hoarded treasures at the bench.
Then the lights went out.
It wasn’t a bulb failure. I should have known that, but I still looked for the illuminated display on the microwave. Not even those blue glimmering digits were visible in the now pitch-black kitchen: the electrics were all down. As I pushed back my stool it occurred to me that someone could have thrown the mains switch. My mouth seemed to fill with ash. I strained my hearing. Nothing stirred. Without the light I felt irrationally cold and shivers chased up and down my spine.
We do it in darkness.
I started to feel my way down the kitchen bench, and nearly screamed when my stool went over with a crash. My heart was thudding like a horse trying to kick its way through a stable door, and I pressed my hands to my breastbone. ‘Oh God,’ I whispered, ‘please;’ but even I didn’t know if I was begging mercy from a higher power or from Arailt. In the end though, because it was either that or hide under a bench, I sidled toward the door, cracking it open as softly as I could.
The hall beyond was in utter blackness. I slid out, keeping my back to the wall and blinking hard as if I might be able to dispel the darkness from my eyes. It didn’t work, but something new stole upon another of my senses: a thick animal reek, like wet dog.
I know I shouldn’t have panicked. I knew even then that Arailt had never offered me any overt threat, but there was something about being alone in the dark with a big predator that woke such an atavistic dread that I could hardly breathe. The blood roared in my ears. He’s wet, I thought: he’s come in through the front door. Get away from the door quick! To my left was the dining room, and I inched my way blindly toward that, one hand on the panelling, one outstretched and dreading what it should touch.
‘Hazel.’ The voice came from behind me, and with it came a heavy tread. I blundered into the door and groped for the handle. ‘I smell on you sunlight and grapes, sweet pork and pollen-laden bees and the dry earth beneath the grey olive groves.’
I wished I hadn’t eaten the ham. Bears are carnivorous, you stupid girl! I roared inwardly, as I forced open the door and stumbled into the room beyond.
‘Hazel, you remember your promise, don’t you?’ The floorboards creaked; he was following me. I kept going in a straight line until I bounced off a high-backed chair and whimpered. I hadn’t forgotten my promise, but I could not bring myself to honour it.
‘This room is wood from tropic shores and beeswax, food served half-cold and conversation served icy.’ His voice was soft; he was in the doorway. I retreated hand-over-hand down the row of dining chairs. ‘I cannot miss your scent in here, Hazel.’
Stumbling into the void, I grazed my hip against a sideboard and scrabbled for the connecting door into the library.
‘Are you running from me?’ He didn’t sound angry or gloating, just a little unhappy.
Of course I wasn’t running from him: how could I? I was blind and lost, navigating by luck. He never made a wrong step, moving with heavy grace between the unseen islands of furniture. I had no chance of escape. My retreat was driven solely by instinct.
‘Book-dust,’ he murmured. ‘Printer’s ink and long wet afternoons while the shrubbery drips and the river roars in its bed. You smell of books too, Hazel, but not enough to hide in here.’
I collided with a sofa and it nearly knocked my legs from under me. Gasping, I waited for the sudden rush, the hot breath, the teeth. Nothing happened.
‘Your fear is sharp. I thought … I thought you braver than that.’
His voice was no closer. If he’d intended to catch me, I told myself, he could have done it long ago. I forced myself to straighten up, smoothing down my dress, swallowing the lump that was filling my throat. ‘The dark,’ I said hoarsely. ‘The dark’s frightening.’
‘I warned you about the dark.’
‘Yes. You did. It’s stupid of me.’ My backside was braced against the padded leather back of the sofa. ‘The dark shouldn’t make any difference.’
‘It makes all the difference in the world.’
Not to what you’re going to do to me, I thought, running my hands helplessly through my hair. ‘Well, you’re right. I made you a promise. Come on then.’
I heard him move into the room, his claws scraping on the polished boards then muted on the rug. I breathed deep and let the smell of him fill my nostrils. I heard the wuff of his breath in those heavy jaws and thought, better if he takes me from behind. Turning, I gripped the leather sofa-back with slippery hands and set my feet apart.
He stopped. ‘Is that how you want it?’
‘It’s easier for you this way … I’d have thought.’ I didn’t dare admit that the desire to shield my vulnerable throat and belly was overwhelming. He didn’t reply. But I felt for the first time the moist touch of his nose against the back of my knee, and then that great muzzle pushed up between thighs, lifting me onto my toes. I gasped. When my heels hit the carpet again I spread them wider, bending at the hips to push my bum out toward him, nearly choking with terror. I felt the hot gusts of his breath on my bottom. With one hand I reached behind me to pull up my flimsy skirt. Then he licked me with his great wet tongue, long enough to lap me from clit to bum-hole in a single stroke, and I cried out, unable to conceal a pleasure so shameful that it could only be confessed under cover of darkness.
Arailt uttered a low rumbling moan and then said, ‘Turn round.’ His voice was thick with urgency; I knew that sound.
I wanted him to lick me again. I was wet to match his mouth. I let out a sob.
‘Turn around.’
I obeyed, tears running unseen down my face.
‘Hazel …’ He rose up suddenly and planted his forepaws to either side of my hips. His fur was damp from the rain. I flinched, shutting my eyes though it made no difference to either of us. His breath smelled of honey, as it had done the day we met.
Oh God, I moaned inwardly, my heart running riot. ‘Arailt,’ my lips whispered as I reached for him, plunging my hand into the soft pelt of his chest – and encountered smooth skin. For a moment I froze, speechless. Under my moving palm the fur parted as if along a seam, and I slid my hand beneath it down a hard musculature: pecs and flat breastbone, the torso of a man. I touched his forelimb and the fur fell away to disclose an elbow, a hard bicep, a shoulder. ‘Oh God – What –’
Arailt’s fingers covered my lips, pressing the words back. ‘No questions, ever,’ he whispered in my ear, his voice the bear’s voice and a man’s voice, the same as it always had been. Fingers, not claws or paws, I thought – and then they were withdrawn and his mouth took their place and any questions I had were stolen from my lips along with my breath as he kissed me. He tasted of honey, and of my sex. I ran my fingers along his jaw and felt stubble a week old but no fur, then down his throat and found his Adam’s apple. His lips were hungry, his kisses laden with intent, but his teeth were not like shears. When he caught my bottom lip between them he drew no blood, only a leaping stab in my heart and a low cry from my throat.
Gently, he released my mouth. I passed one hand over his face. His eyelids trembled under my fingertips. He kissed the palm of my hand. ‘Arailt,’ I repeated as if it were a spell, a word of profound magic.
My other hand slid across his shoulder and I felt the bear-pelt finally slip from his back, heavy as sodden velvet, heavy as a bear-hide would be with skin and fat still adhering, sliding to the carpet. Underneath he was naked. Christ but he was a big man – not anything like as big as a brown bear of course, but broad-shouldered and solid with muscle. He made me feel fragile. I felt his strength as he put his arms about me and pressed up against me, his skin hot on mine. His strength – and his desire. He was immensely aroused and his erection was insistent. His lips sought me out again, needing no light. For a moment we clung together, face to face, breath mingling. ‘Not too much of a disappointment, I hope?’ he asked, laughter bubbling under his words.
‘No.’ Suddenly, out of nowhere, I began to shake.
‘Don’t be like that.’ His hand cupped my face and encountered the wet smear of my tears. ‘Hey, my Hazel; is it so bad?’
‘Just a shock.’ My voice was quivering too. I’d steeled myself for the bear; I’d been ready for him. I was not ready for a man. I hadn’t been for months. There was an intimacy and a danger in the man’s embrace that there could never be in Arailt as a bear, I realised. A bear, even a talking bear, can only treat you like meat: it takes another human being to treat you like shit.
‘Oh God,’ I gasped, ‘oh God …’
‘It’s OK …’
Was it? Was it OK to yield to him now? I couldn’t get him and the bear straight in my head. Heart racing, I ran my palm down his chest, smoothing the slight roughness of his body hair, all the way to his groin. He had a lovely big cock with a velvety foreskin, hot in my nervous hand. ‘You’re real!’ – it came out as a hiccup and a giggle.
‘Too right,’ he said with fervent delight, folding his hand around mine, guiding my grip on his member up and down the shaft.
‘Oh …’
He kissed me on the lips and then the throat, biting and licking the line of my neck as I offered it up to him. It didn’t occur to me to be afraid of his teeth. I was lost in his kisses in moments, forgetting eventually even to stroke his prick. He didn’t seem to mind; he slid to his knees before me, pulling out of my grasp and setting my bum firmly against the sofa-back. He kissed his way down over my bare shoulders as he eased aside the spaghetti-straps of my slip, and then his mouth was on my breasts and I forgot to breathe. The darkness was total but now my blind eyes were filled with crimson stars as he ate his way in honeyed kisses across my breasts, suckling at my nipples, breath hot on wet skin. I grasped his head, running my fingers through his short hair, raking the nape of his neck. The silk dress ran down my legs like cool water. Then he stooped to the taut line of my belly and he was nuzzling up against my mound and parting my thighs and I had to let go of him to grasp the leather and lean back, opening for him, almost on tiptoe. His tongue was sweet fire. He lifted my left thigh and draped it over his shoulder – all the better to eat me with.
Arailt: a stranger pressed between my thighs in the dark, his tongue taking possession of my clit and my mind. A man whose face I couldn’t picture. A man I’d never even seen. I thought I’d melt on that hot, avid mouth. I thought he’d lick me away like an ice-cream. But I didn’t go quietly into dissolution though I’d lost all ability to construct a sentence; my evocations were half poetry and half blasphemy and all helpless surrender, as the inky darkness turned to pulsing crimson and then the stars in my head went nova.
Almost as soon as I was done he stood, scooped me up bodily and dropped me over the sofa-back onto the padding below. Then he stepped over in one stride and descended on me, urgent now. It wasn’t graceful, our coupling; in the blackness we tangled our limbs and fumbled for access, gasping and giggling and heaving until somehow I guided him into me, and after that he knew exactly what he was doing. He did it hard, just as Lynn had warned – and it was so good. I arched beneath him and bit his shoulder and urged him on with whimpering cries. I had one leg up the sofa-back and one foot on the floor and my head hanging over the side, jerking with every thrust: What after all was the value of decorum, there in the dark? What was there left, here in the dark, when all that was familiar and normal belonged to the daylight? Certainly no regret or guilt or fear any more: only his weight and the friction and the smell of our bodies and the need and the pleasure and the igniting fire of orgasm.
The fire consumed us both.
When we’d finished gasping Arailt slid from me and dropped with a thud to the carpet. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered, cradling his hot face on my heaving breast. ‘I want to do that again.’
I dissolved into spluttering laughter.
‘What’s so funny?’ His tone was comically offended, but he ran his hand accurately down the length of my abdomen until he could sink his fingers into my muff.
‘If you can do that again I’ll –’ The words caught in my throat as his fingers circled my clit.
‘You’ll what?’ Raising himself, he explored my throat and face with his lips until he found mine and planted a questioning kiss there.
‘I’ll be very very happy,’ I said in a small voice.
He chuckled. He had a rich and deeply dirty chuckle. ‘I didn’t say right now. Or here.’ Standing, he pulled me up. ‘There’s a lot more room on the bed, for a start.’ He slid my arms around his neck. ‘Come on, you wee slip of a thing. I’ll carry you up.’
‘Wee slip?’ I mocked, wrapping my legs around his waist. ‘Oh, the big man reckons he can carry me all the way up to bed …’
He didn’t even catch his breath. ‘No problem. Except …’ He took my bottom lip in his teeth and tugged it gently. I moaned. His hands, which had slid under my bottom to support my weight, took a lascivious squeeze. ‘Except that I might have to stop and put you over the top banister and fuck you there,’ he added.
In the morning I awoke alone. That was the pattern of my time in Arailt’s house; he came to me every night without fail and he was always gone in the morning. During the day I was left to amuse myself how I liked, but I had no contact with another soul and that took a lot of getting used to. I craved Arailt’s presence, longing for the moment the lights went out and the draught from the front door gusted down the hall. I wanted his voice warm in my ear and the touch of his hands on my shivering skin. I needed some interaction with another sentient being. I needed jokes and argument and empathy. Most of all I needed his sexual desire; the moment he pulled me against him, the taste and the texture of his rising excitement, the appetite that brought my inchoate self into focus, there in the dark.
I was crazy for that unseen body so hard with muscle, so strong and sweet and responsive to my caresses. The way his skin yielded to my teeth, the prickle of goose flesh as I whispered up the line of his back, the jump of his shaft beneath my tongue – I was all hunger. I starved all day for him, and gorged at night. I tasted the salt of his sweat and the musk of his desire, and he in turn ate every inch of me. Deprived of our sight we knew each other by taste and scent instead. There were no secrets in the dark.
I got to know Arailt’s body well; what it liked, what it dreaded, what it needed. Sometimes they were the same thing. But I never got to know him. He never spoke about himself. He volunteered not one thing about his life and I bit back the forbidden questions.
It was hard finding the right rhythm to live by, to find enough to occupy my mind while he was away. I read in the library, catching up on literature I’d never had time for despite my best intentions; Dickens and Burgess, Plato and Steinbeck and Kerouac. Just because you work in a bookshop doesn’t mean that you get much chance to read. I watched films on the huge plasma screen TV. I cooked, creating more and more ambitious dishes as I learned from the recipes, and I washed up after myself, but there was no other work to be done round the house; by dawn everything was tidied and swept clean and the cupboards restocked. There would be presents for me too most mornings: a new book or a DVD, a wooden puzzle or a sudoku pamphlet; once a loaded MP3 player which I seized upon eagerly. A newspaper always waited on the doormat, though no delivery boy could have made his way to that house.
I explored the exterior of the building on the second day. The house was situated in a wooded valley and the grounds were so overgrown that it was impossible to venture more than a few yards before running up against an impenetrable wall of rhododendron and holly. There were traces of a driveway, but it was almost as thickly barred by intertwining branches as the rest of the grounds. But that wasn’t my greatest problem out of doors; within a few moments of my emerging a dark fluttering shape flicked over the roofline and circled down toward me. I retreated to the back door, grabbed a rake and scooped the leathery Shadow from the air on its next pass, flinging it to the mossy gravel and battering it with the rusty iron head until it stopped moving. After that I did not dare venture out without a weapon.
There were days I was restless to the point of panic. Once I went round and cut the fringes off every lampshade in the building: once I took up a tin of varnish stripper from under the kitchen sink and painted blistering graffiti down the black Victorian panelling. Arailt, if he noticed, said nothing.
The shutters on all the windows were padlocked shut, which added to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house. No natural light made its way into any room but the hallway, and few artificial sources either. In the whole building I could not find a single match, candle, torch or any light source that did not draw its power from the mains electricity.
Gradually I learned to pace myself, to set myself goals. I asked for canvas and paints and, taking them to the old conservatory – which once I’d scrubbed the algae off the glass panes was the only room with good light – picked up the hobby I’d last indulged at college, experimenting with colour and filling the white spaces with searing abstracts. I could look up through the roof while I was painting and see rows of ragged Shadows waiting restlessly in the treetops. When spring sent armies of sparrows to bicker and shrill before the windows I went outside – armed and wary – and began to hack back the encroaching shrubbery with shears. I didn’t make much headway down the smothered drive but I uncovered carpets of snowdrops and primroses and bluebells as the year unfurled, and let the light in upon them so that they flourished. The Shadows kept their distance once they found I could fight back.
As the days grew longer Arailt began to arrive before darkfall and he’d spend time with me in animal form before, without warning, the lights would go out. I’d sit with my naked feet buried in his thick pelt and read aloud to him from my latest book. We’d watch movies together, and argue because our tastes did not coincide. He was fond of foreign-language films, particularly French ones that seemed to me unendurably slow and affected. Such an inclination didn’t seem to fit with his rugby-player physique and it reduced me to giggles, but when I chided him about it one night he rose and chased me squealing through the pitch-black house until he had me cornered and then he fucked me thoroughly on the dining table, excoriating me the whole time in the filthiest French.
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