Jon Grimwood - redRobe

Ketzia moaned. There was no sublety after that as Axl slid his hands to her hips and yanked up her skirt. She stank of salt and blood, like an animal in rut, but then so did Axl when her fingers finally freed him.

He let her tug roughly at him, dropping his own hand between her open legs, smoothing his fingers down her soft abdomen until he reached damp body hair that was fine like silk.

Axl groaned. The tiny hood of her clitoris peeled back as he dragged his index finger up the sodden line of her vulva, trapping the swollen outer lips between his other fingers.

Then she was biting at Axl’s mouth again as he hooked one hand under her left thigh and scooped that leg off the ground, opening her wide. Ketzia was tight and slippery and swollen and Axl eased back out of her just to get the feeling of sliding in again between her thighs.

But before he could withdraw a second time, she’d hoisted up her other knee and locked both ankles behind his legs, moving down onto him as Axl supported her weight. Anyone who wanted to could have walked up behind him and taken off his head with a rusty length of molywire, but somehow Axl found it hard to care.

‘Deeper. . .’

Faint moan segued into words as her knees locked tighter and her hips swivelled frantically against him. Axl could smell the grease in her long hair, rank like an animal, and it just made him want to fuck her more. Sliding hands down Ketzia’s spine, Axl hooked his fingers into the base of her back, just above her broad buttocks and yanked.

It was enough.

She came against him, hips rocking, her mouth buried in the crook of his neck. A low stream of raw Valenciana was growled out into his ear. He didn’t know some of the words she was using but they still sounded obscene.

Later, after Axl had loosed his grip on her back and Ketzia had lowered her legs, he’d turned the still-panting woman around to position her against the outside wall of a house, waiting while she braced her hands against damp polycrete.

Then he pulled up the back of her skirt, positioned himself carefully and slid into her, his fingers gripping the side of her hips so her buttocks pulled apart enough to let Axl watch himself as he rode her.

She stank. And mixed in with the basic pheromones of sex and body fluid were darker traces of shit and sweat. But as the Cardinal had once told a teenage Axl before buying him his first whore, if there wasn’t shit and sweat, blood and semen at the end of it then you weren’t doing it right.

Ketzia groaned with each thrust, as his thighs slapped hard against her exposed arse and little shock waves ran up her back. And then Axl came, his fingers roughly gripping her waist as he ploughed deep inside her, spasming.

As he slumped over her back and wrapped his arms round her soft gut, Axl knew one thing only. That the figure he’d started out following was long since gone. Vanished cat-like into the night.

The girl crept down the gravel path into Cocheforet as silently as she could manage, heavy canvas satchel banging against her hip, head hidden by the hood of a grey fleece. Mai still wore the dumb-fuck soulcatcher but her dark hair had recently been cropped tight to her skull and what little she owned was in the satchel. From anything but up close and very personal she could pass for a boy.

It could have been the valley wind Mai was avoiding because it buffeted hard enough to rock her on her feet and dampen the sound of church bells into almost-silence. But the wind wasn’t what Mai was really dodging as she slid out of the night to rest briefly against the stable wall. It was everything and everybody. The village, that weird guy from last night, Kate and Louis from the monastery, but mostly Kate’s pet clone.

‘Fucking freak ...' The girl spat expertly and a black tom exploded into a ball of ragged fur, back arching as hair ruffled around its shoulders and down its bony spine. ‘Yeah, fuck you too, fuck eyes.’

She wasn’t allowed to swear when she was with Kate at El Escondido. Mind you, there were a lot of things she wasn’t allowed to do. Most of them plain stupid, like not eat with her fingers. Others were merely irritating, like don’t spit, don’t skin up, don’t ice…

Chance would be a fine tiling.

The only one of Kate’s rules that Mai didn’t mind was don’t fuck. She’d done enough of that to last a lifetime and probably the lifetime of several Kates as well. And Mai didn’t intend to, unless it was on her terms. Mai still wasn’t exactly sure where she was, she was only certain it wasn’t Spain. The weather was way too cold for summer, the air too thin and the mountains too tall. Besides the heavens were blacker than squid ink and the stars were missing, banished to a speckle of light along one edge of the night sky.

Mai figured it had to be Latin America. Maybe Argentina or Peru. They spoke Spanish there and had weird-shit mountain Indians. And she had to be south of the equator. That was how it worked wasn’t it? If it was hot up North then it was cold down South. Christmas barbies at Bondi and all that. . . She’d watched WorldFaX on CySat 13 with the Judge. He always used to sit with her and watch boring stuff before folding her over his knee.

First time round, she’d expected to get smacked with a shoe or something stupid. But the old perv just brushed her hair for an hour before shuffling her down his lap so she could give him the full il president!.

Mai spat again, blindly and aiming at nothing.

Enough already. She didn’t need to go there. She needed a way out of this valley and was counting on last night’s stranger from the inn to provide it. Louis was frightened by the stranger and anything that upset Louis he took to Kate, like some child running for its mother. And then Kate would sit in that big kitchen and get all sensible while she ‘worked through the options’. Only options didn’t interest Mai and neither did their precious stranger, not the man himself. What interested Mai was the stranger’s horse and that interested her very much indeed ...

Pulling a rusty metal bar from her satchel, Mai slid one end of it into a gap in the stable doorframe and pushed. The crack of wood splintering froze Mai to the spot, but then she was opening the heavy door and shutting it quickly behind her.

The Japanese girl stood, breathing in the hot stink of horse piss, dung and the sweet, wet breath of three animals. All were awake. At least Mai figured they were, unless horses slept standing up which was possible, they had legs at each corner.

‘Okay,’ said Mai. ‘You and me are going to get the fuck out of here, right?’ She knew which animal to choose by its size. The beast was smaller than the other two, not as tall or thick shouldered and it didn’t have crude tufts of hair round its hooves like moonboots.

‘I’m Mai, okay?’ She stood in front of the animal and tried to remember what else Kate had said about making friends with horses. Introduce yourself, and then something about noses and blowing. Kate was happy Mai’d asked about animals, she imagined it meant the girl was settling in.

Mai snorted.

‘I’m Mai,’ she told the horse. ‘Well, I was Mai. Kate says I’m Joan but she’s wrong…’ Mai stared at the animal’s silhouette in the darkness of the stables but its head was lost in shadow and she had no idea if it was listening or not.

Okay, next bit. The girl crouched in front of the animal and then blew out, sending a puff of warm breath deep into the horse’s nostrils. The mare jerked back fast and shook her head from side to side, ears flat back to her skull, long neck shivering. Mai sighed and shook her own head. Apparently no one had told this animal that was how humans said hello.