Justine Elyot - Game

‘You know this might hurt, yes?’

‘I don’t care. I hope it does. I want to feel it. I want something to remember you by.’

‘Here it comes then.’

He crouches over me and pushes in, slowly at first, oh, too slowly. I try to remember that I am meant to be virginal, but I am so eager I just can’t wait.

‘Do it,’ I gasp.

‘Hot little bitch, what do they teach you at the palace? Oh God.’ He pushes through and I rejoice in the blunt force of it. ‘Oh fuck. They teach you how to use your cunt, I think. Jesus, you’re tight, so wet.’

‘Oh, you feel good; you’re so big. You fill me right up. This is what the peasant girls get. Why can’t I get it too?’

‘You’re getting it now.’ He thrusts, deeply and steadily, in and out, dropping lascivious kisses that leave teeth marks on my neck. ‘Oh yes, you’re getting it. You’re feeling that, aren’t you?’

‘Oh.’ I can’t say much more. ‘Yes.’ The air mattress rolls and waves madly underneath me. I hammer my heels on the tight cheeks of his arse.

‘Remember this, Princess.’ He seats a brutal thrust, buried so deep inside me that I feel impaled. ‘It’ll be the fuck of your life. Your princes and courtiers won’t know what a princess really needs.’

I have time for one luxurious moan before he speeds up, jackhammering like a red-headed blur, pounding me to my second orgasm.

His face in the torchlight contorts in a sort of pain. I feel the tension, then the ecstatic release beneath his skin as he pours himself into me, roaring.

His stalwart strength drains from him and he flops on top of me, groaning and shivering. I kiss the top of his head and think how lucky I am not to be that princess really. For one thing, what if she got pregnant? Imagine the king’s face. Whatever kind of face he had.

No, I much prefer being a twenty-first century woman with a lover whose filthy-mindedness matches my own. I never thought I’d take to relationships, but this one actually seems to have some mileage in it.

Lloyd stirs and rustles among the sleeping bags, then unties my wrists. ‘Did that work for you?’ he asks with a yawn.

‘You know it did.’

‘I know how you love a forced seduction.’

‘And you don’t?’

He chuckles guiltily. ‘Bang to rights.’

‘In fact, I’m considering a sequel. I want to know what happens when she turns up at the Dark Prince’s lair now. I’m imagining lots of pointy towers and turrets on the side of a crag. She’d turn up and the Dark Prince would subject her to a virginity test.’

‘Surely he’d just go ballistic and run her through with his mighty sword?’

‘Well, yeah, running through with your mighty sword is always good, but my Dark Prince isn’t as dark as all that. He’s miffed, of course, but he’s still interested in the dowry the Princess brings, so he decides to go through with the wedding.’

‘Really? You think he would?’

‘He wants that alliance. But the wedding night would be pretty fierce. Quite a BDSM scene, I think. Some punishment, maybe a bit of bondage. And anal sex. He wants to take a virginity, even if it isn’t the traditional kind.’

Lloyd exhales heavily. ‘Don’t turn me on again, Sophie. I seriously think you’ve broken my cock, what with all that shagging al fresco on the forest floor earlier.’

‘Aww.’ I reach down and fondle the poor little semi-tumescent soldier. ‘I won’t make you fuck me again,’ I promise. ‘Not tonight. But that scene has to be played sometime soon.’

‘Oh yes. I’m not arguing about that.’

He removes my hand from his cock and puts an arm around me, drawing me against him so that we make one big bundle of satiated sleepiness.

‘Soph,’ he says, just before I nod off.

‘Hmm?’

‘Do you think we’ll ever get into a rut?’

I am amused. ‘Our relationship is one long rut, isn’t it?’

‘You know what I mean, Oscar Wilde. Do you think you’ll ever get bored with this?’

‘What, with a metric tonne of quality sex? I don’t think so.’

‘It’s just … I can’t help wondering why you carry on paying rent on that flat when my suite at the hotel is big enough for –’

Ah. This again.

‘Lloyd. I said I’d think about it. I’m still thinking.’

‘Your thought processes are seriously slow. You said that six months ago. You can’t fob me off forever.’

‘I won’t.’

‘I know you, Sophie Martin.’ He turns, props himself on an elbow and puts a finger to my protesting lips. ‘You will.’

He’s right. But I don’t understand the big deal. We see each other all the time – we work together, for heaven’s sake. We couldn’t be any closer. Why do we need old-fashioned symbols of commitment to prove it? I’m a person who lives for the day, and the day is sunny right now. It makes no sense to change that.

I can’t be bothered to argue though, so I mentally prepare myself for the nth recitation of Why Sophie Should Move In With Lloyd.

It doesn’t happen. What he says instead is exponentially more interesting.

‘You won’t ever make the decision, Soph, so I’m going to help you.’

I try to say ‘How?’ but his finger prevents the framing of the word.

‘I’m going to make it a game. If you lose, you move in with me. If you win, you don’t.’

He removes the finger.

‘I don’t understand. What sort of game? Cluedo? Chess?’

‘It doesn’t have a name. It’s a sex game, our favourite kind.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘The stakes are potentially high – for me at least. I’m going to set you a series of challenges. You don’t have to take them, but if you turn them down you incur a fail. You might find a scene or a person that attracts you more than I do – that’s the risk I’m taking. But if you don’t, and if you incur three fails, or decide to quit, you move in with me.’

‘Hang on. So – you’re going to send me off to have sex with various strangers or groups of strangers?’

‘Yeah, basically.’

‘And if I take them all on, I keep my flat?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But if I chicken out or get fed up with all the shagging, I have to move in with you?’

‘Are you up for it? Do you dare?’

Lloyd knows my weakness for a dare, the bastard. But it takes the pressure off me. All the tedious weighing up and sifting of pluses and minuses. Not to mention the fear. The fear is what really holds me back.

‘Would you be involved in these challenges?’

‘Sometimes, perhaps. Sometimes I’d just want your post-match report. You know I like hearing about your adventures. It turns me on.’

I smile, thinking back to the days when I used to sit at his cocktail bar and tell him all about the threesome I’d just enjoyed, or whatever I’d been doing. I did it to wind him up, but obviously it had had a bigger effect than that.

‘You’re sure you’d be OK with it? You wouldn’t be jealous?’

‘When have I ever been jealous?’

‘Good point.’ Then some other words tumble out, slipping past my careful emotion-filter like undisciplined fish. ‘I wouldn’t ever want to hurt you.’

He strokes my brow, smiling sadly. ‘That’s nice to know. That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me. In fact, it might be the only sweet thing you’ve ever said to me.’

‘Fuck off. I’m not that bad.’

‘You are, my darling. You are very, very bad. That’s why I like you.’

‘OK. So, these challenges?’

‘I shall deliver one a week in a sealed envelope to your pigeonhole at the hotel. You will send me a reply, telling me whether it’s a go or not. Then, on your day off, you make it happen. I’ll design the challenges so that some kind of proof of your success gets back to me, if I’m not there to watch or take part. It could be anything from, say, performing in a strip club –’