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As he bumps his car along the track through Jack-O’-Lantern Woods, peering out of the windscreen at the night, he still can’t quite believe this is happening. Can’t quite believe what he’s about to do.
Whatthey’reabout to do.
His headlights paint the trees in shades of emerald and bone. So far, they haven’t seen another vehicle. This late, they’re unlikely to meet one. The overnight carp fishermen often set up camp around Critchfork Lake, a few miles east, but they don’t use this track to reach it. Not until dawn will the first dog walkers arrive. By then, there’ll be nothing to see.
On his left, beyond a pile of sawn logs and branches, he notices a clearing. Stones pop and crunch as he turns the wheel. ‘Here’s a good spot,’ he murmurs, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The temperature outside has barely dropped since sunset, but the humidity hasn’t stopped climbing. ‘No chance of being disturbed.’
Fronds of giant bracken fold beneath the bonnet, their stems crushed by the tyres. He kills the engine, then the headlights. Moments later the cabin lights fade up, turning the windows into black mirrors. When he sees his passenger, he hardly dares breathe – as if she’s a creation so fragile and finespun that the merest movement of air will dissolve her into smoke-like threads.
But breathe he does. Her perfume is a hot and languid flower in his throat. Beneath it he detects her real scent – teenage musk and sharp fresh sweat. On her breath, something vaguely like blood.
Did she eat steak before she came out? He’s heard that red meat, like oysters or avocados, can boost female arousal. His eyes slide over her, taking in her watermelon-pink minidress, her tanned legs. She’s done something to her eyelashes, he thinks. And to her lips. Her cheekbones shimmer. Her blonde hair has a liquid sheen.
And it’s all for him.
His fingers twitch. He feels like he’s sitting in a Heston Blumenthal restaurant, staring at a concoction so artfully assembled it’s almost too perfect to eat.
She’s been quiet so far, but now she releases her seatbelt. The leather upholstery squeals against her bare thighs as she turns to face him. ‘It’s sohot. Can you put the windows down?’
He thumbs two buttons on his door rest. Warm night air feathers in, carrying sounds of the forest. Close by, something shrieks in the darkness.
She glances past him, through his side window. Then she grins, flashing white teeth. It feels like an invitation – and suddenly he can’t wait any longer. He needs to touch her, taste her, mess up that Michelin-starred perfection and hear her breathing quicken.
She’s still grinning when he kisses her, when his tongue pushes into her mouth. And then he’s popping his own seatbelt, hissing with satisfaction as his hands start to map her curves.
For a while, he loses himself to sensation – until he feels pressure against his sternum and realizes it’s her hand, pushing him away. Confused, he pulls back. And when he sees her smeared lipstick, her flushed cheeks, his heart thumps with excitement.
‘Easy, Romeo,’ she laughs, wiping her mouth. ‘I don’t know what you’re used to. But with me you don’t get everything all at once.’
He smiles, lunges forward, snatches another kiss. ‘Is that right?’
‘Play nice,’ she tells him. ‘Be a good boy. And eventually you’ll get rewarded.’
‘How nice?’ he asks. And realizes that once again she’s looking past his shoulder at the night.
She frowns. ‘You hear that?’
He cocks his head, turns to the open window and scans the darkness. ‘Nope.’ Firstly because he can’t, and secondly because he doesn’t care. Rearranging himself in his seat, he slides his hand up her thigh.
She squirms away. ‘Seriously, I think I heard something.’
‘We’re in the woods, at night,’ he tells her. ‘Of course you’re going to hear something.’
‘Still, maybe we should find a different spot. Somewhere closer to town.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’
His frustration slips out and he knows, instantly, that he’s screwed up. Her expression changes. He sees the thought as clearly as if she’d voiced it: a calculation of just how far she is from help, should it come to that. His gaze travels down her legs to her footwear: strappy pink heels, not exactly tuned for running.
He hears the snap of a twig, but it’s only a night creature nosing around in the undergrowth. The unease he sees in her eyes is no longer focused on anything outside the car.
He reaches out, touches that liquid hair. Feels, beneath it, the warm skin of her scalp, the smooth curve of her skull. ‘What if I don’t want that?’ he asks.
She blinks. ‘Don’t want what?’
‘To be a good boy.’
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