Game

Game

Justine Elyot

Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

More from Mischief

About Mischief

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

In the forest, it’s reached that point of perfect darkness. The tree branches no longer provide a visible tracery against the gathering gloom, just a sighing canopy above my head and I have to reach out to avoid stepping into a bramble bush or hitting a trunk. Much as I want to stop moving, to crawl into my bivouac and wrap myself in my blankets, I know I can’t. The steady dry crunch of distant leaves tells me I am being followed.

I hear it now and then, sometimes coming from my left, sometimes my right, or my rear or ahead, never in the same place twice. I know I can’t elude the stalker because my own feet, tiptoed as they are, inevitably disturb the brushwood forest floor. Tiny snaps and crackles accompany every hesitant step. North, south, east or west? It doesn’t matter. He, she or it will be on my tail.

I crouch against a tree and everything goes quiet. I concentrate on training my eyes and ears to pick up every single piece of information that they can, but all they process is that mournful branch chorus and a faraway neighing from one of the many wild ponies in the forest. That, and a load of looming dark shapes that don’t help me one little bit.

Once I can no longer hold my breath, I creep forwards, my sense of direction pulling me in a north-easterly direction, further into the depths. There is a sudden, sharp crack of twigs and a heat, a human male smell that cuts through the piny forest scent, and I am lost. Taken.

Of course, I put up a fight, but he is much taller and stronger than I am, spare-framed but steely. My stupid dress doesn’t help either. If only I’d had time to organise my escape from the palace I’d have sourced buckskins and stout boots, but circumstances were sprung on me and I had to flee in what I stood in. Stained, torn satin slippers don’t pack much of a kick.

Although there is nobody to hear us, his hand clamps straight away over my mouth.

‘Easy,’ he says, and his voice is incongruously soft and gentle. ‘You know you can’t fight me. Hold still and I won’t hurt you.’

He is right. I might as well preserve my energy.

I let him pin my wrists together behind my back and nudge me, hand still covering my lower face, forwards to some unspecified location.

When I hear the sound of a zip, I have to bite my cheeks to squash down the smile. Of course, it would have been too much to expect him to construct an authentic woodsman’s hut out of branches and tree roots and whatnot just for the sake of one night’s entertainment, but a tent will have to substitute. At least it’ll be much more comfortable. Less risk of creepy-crawlies in the nooks and crannies.

With his hands on my shoulders, he pushes me down to my knees on the pile of sleeping bags and attends to tying my wrists together above my head.

‘That’s a good girl, Princess, nice and quietly,’ he says, approving of my compliance. ‘Now lie down and I’ll get you something to drink. You must be thirsty and hungry – you didn’t stop to grab any provisions, by all accounts.’

I let him manoeuvre me into a supine position, arms arched over my head. He brings a hip flask to my lips and water trickles around my mouth and, occasionally, into it. Yes, I hadn’t realised it, but I am thirsty, my throat parched by panic and exertion. I probably couldn’t have screamed much even if I’d been allowed to.

The air mattress shifts as he lengthens out beside me, propped on one elbow. I can make out the shape of a face looking down at me in the dark. Suddenly there is light and I squint and turn away from it for a moment, but he steers the back of my head round to face him.

There he is, my captor, pale and intent, full lips curling in pleasurable triumph.

How dare he smile at me?

‘When my father hears about this,’ I tell him, ‘he’ll have your head on a pike.’

He puts a long finger on my lips and shakes his head, tutting, still smirking.

‘Princess, your father is paying me for this.’

I try to toss my head, but his finger remains at its station, sealing my mouth.

‘He won’t suffer the dishonour of having to tell the Dark Prince that the deal is off. Do you really think your father would just sit back and let you ruin his historic accord? He is going to have you delivered to the Dark Prince whether you like it or not – but first, I’m taking you back to the palace.’

‘You’re a bounty hunter?’ I manage to drive the words past his gate-keeping digit.

‘I prefer “personnel retrieval operative” myself,’ he says.

‘How about “mercenary scumbag”?’ I try to bite his finger but, quick as a whip, he silences me with an alternative method, one that involves the hard pressure of lips against lips.

This low-down piece of peasant flotsam thinks he can kiss a princess of the blood royal! It is not to be borne.

But my struggles lead only to capitulation and heaving of the bosom, because this low-down piece of peasant flotsam kisses like no man I have ever known. His lips are skilled, his tongue firm in its probing. Against my will, against every noble instinct I possess, I yield to the pleasure it brings.

Or rather, I forget my role and slide, so easily, so sweetly, into my lover’s kiss, pushing my tongue against his, tasting and scouring him, greedier than ever for him.

But this isn’t the game. The game is about resistance, about dubious consent that turns, eventually, to desire.

So I try to shake him off, working against the craving in the pit of my stomach, the blossoming in my crotch.

‘You’re passionate,’ he says. ‘Feisty, yes, but what a little firecracker you’d be in my bed. I’d like to take you, but the Dark Prince …’

‘Fuck the Dark Prince and fuck you, peasant. How dare you kiss me!’

His hand smacks down on my hip and he yanks me around on to my side. ‘It seemed the best way to shut you up,’ he hisses into my ear. ‘Besides –’ he pulls back, makes sure he has my full attention ‘– I have licence to do more than that.’

A warning flare shoots from solar plexus to groin.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Lie back down, Princess. I’m going to clean you up. And don’t argue – I’ll gag you if you swear at me again. Consider your rank and station, for heaven’s sake.’

I nearly laugh out loud at his tone of schoolmasterly disappointment. He’s got so good at this lately, not that he was ever bad.

‘That’s exactly what I am doing,’ I grumble, watching him retrieve a bottle of soapy water from a backpack and pour it into a mess tin. ‘That’s why I object to your … familiarity.’

‘The familiarity’s only going to get more … familiar,’ he warns me. He’s looking in the backpack again. This time he draws out an odd thing, a small round sponge attached to the end of a wooden handle. ‘I’m instructed to clean you up.’

‘What?’ I try to lift my spine, but the best I can manage is a tilt of the neck.

He dips the sponge in the soapy water. I hope to goodness it’s warm.

‘Don’t say you don’t need it,’ he says teasingly. ‘You’re tattered and torn to pieces and covered in bits of leaf and thorn. Here.’

My dress is low-cut and he begins by dabbing the sponge over my collarbone then along the square-necked edges of my décolletage. The water is not completely cold, but I shiver all the same as the suds slide along my skin, sinking in while the tiny bubbles burst.

‘Forgive me, Princess,’ he says gruffly, and then he unlaces my bodice so that the sponge can glide underneath the material, wetting my breasts, circling my nipples until they are hard, soaked little bullets dimpling the damp cloth.

‘Surely I’m not dirty there,’ I protest, but it’s a gasp, almost a yelp, and I can see my chest rise and fall in front of me, faster and faster with each breath.

His voice is almost a whisper. ‘Oh yes you are.’ He sucks air through gritted teeth. A steam cloud of lust takes its form in the space between us.

He removes the sponge from my bodice and runs a palm over the peaked mounds, his face down low, his breath warming the goose-pimpled flesh.

‘Mmm,’ he says. ‘Now spread your legs for me, Princess. I’m going to lift your skirts.’

‘Oh,’ I whimper, the resistance draining fast. ‘Why? Why must you …?’ But I spread them and raise my knees as well.

‘Because the Dark Prince wants you clean there, runaway Princess. Among other things.’

He pushes up the layers of skirts until they lie heavy on my stomach. Underneath, no knickers. Apparently they were a Victorian innovation. I’m not sure what time period we’re in, but it’s a draughty one.

I watch with thrilled dread as my captor loads his sponge with soapy water once more then carries it, dripping on to my breasts and stomach, down to my split thighs, drenching them so that rivers of liquid run down to my open sex.

Not that it needs to be any wetter.

‘Oh fuck,’ I say, having lost control of my voluntary reactions at the first brush of sponge on clit.

‘Nice and clean,’ he croons, sweeping it between my pussy lips and over my pulsing vagina, letting soapy suds impart their mild sting to the crack of my arse. He increases the pressure when the sponge returns to my clitoris, pushing it against the swollen bead, rotating it very slowly until I arch my back and voice an inarticulate plea.

Before I can come, he removes it. I feel its loss, my entire lower body seeming to collapse in on itself in an effort to suck it back.

The tips of his fingers flutter and waft around my cunt.

Use them.

‘The King suspects,’ he whispers, never quite letting them close enough to touch while I moan and strain towards them, ‘you may have conspired with a lover. He has asked me to gain proof of your virginity.’

‘Oh God.’ My hips tremble.

‘Lie very still, Princess. Don’t move a muscle.’

One finger sheaths itself and my cunt seems to sigh with relief.

‘Mmm,’ he says, adding another, then another, until I am stretched and feeling the invasion. His thumb lands on my clit, lightly, tenderly, but enough to bring every nerve ending to rapt attention.

‘Hmm, still intact,’ he lies. ‘I’ve done the King’s bidding. Shall we prepare for the journey back to the palace?’

‘Oh.’ I want to cry with the pitch of my need. He is holding me on that edge, skimming it so expertly, keeping me in piteous thrall. ‘No. Please.’

‘No? Wilful spoilt princess is lying on her back with her legs spread and a peasant’s fingers up inside her and she doesn’t want him to stop? Is that right?’

‘Yes. Yes.’

‘She wants him to make her come?’

‘God, yes.’

‘Then she’d better tell him so, because humble serfs need royal permission to finger the royal cunt, don’t they? Not to mention fiddling with the royal clit.’

‘Jesus, Lloyd …’

‘Nuh uh.’ His fingers slide halfway out and I clamp my thighs, trying to catch them. He smacks the accessible part of my bum and tuts at me. ‘None of that, missy. We’re finishing this in character. Come on. Do as you’re told.’

‘Please, peasant, make me come. Please, please, now, please.’

He presses down; the fingers reinsert themselves.

I come, thrashing and snarling, twisting into his hand.

‘How about that?’ He sounds so smug I’d slap him if I weren’t both bound and sapped by the force of my orgasm. ‘Princesses come just the same as wenches. You’re just a wench underneath it all, aren’t you?’

‘Insolent,’ I pant, but I can’t finish the thought. I don’t have it in me.

‘That’s me.’ He stretches himself out at my side, watching me so hard that I have to turn my face away. ‘Oh, are you shy now? Now you’ve begged me to finger you. Bit late for that.’ He chuckles. ‘What a pisser about the Dark Prince and his insistence on you being virgo intacta. I’d love to show you how a man can make you feel.’ His fingers are gentle on my waist, running up and down its slopes until I can’t turn my back on him any more.

My eyes meet his.

‘What would the Dark Prince do if I were no longer a virgin?’

My captor doesn’t understand me at first, frowning in vague bemusement.

‘I mean,’ I expand, ‘would he still want me for his bride?’

‘He would shame you before the populace and send you home.’

‘Send me home. And the marriage would be dissolved?’

‘Most certainly it would. And your father would vow to kill the man who had touched you first. So if you’re thinking …’

‘I would lie. Tell some story of a band of brigands in the forest.’

‘Who would be sought. Then some innocent man would be arrested and killed. Your father wouldn’t rest until he had somebody to hold accountable.’

‘You’re right.’ I sigh, bite my lip. ‘I shall say I forced the man to do it.’

He laughs. ‘Who would believe that?’

‘My father knows me. He knows I’ll do anything to avoid this match. He would believe it. I would simply refuse to name my deflowerer.’

He strokes my forehead with a thumb. ‘You put yourself in terrible danger, Princess, if you do this. The Dark Prince isn’t a man many would cross.’

‘I’d rather risk it than face the certainty of having to spend the rest of my life with that brute.’ I drop my voice to a whisper. ‘Do it for me. Take my maidenhead for me.’

‘Gods, Princess, I … it’s not …’ He struggles.

I watch the weighing-up process through his shrewd blue eyes. I see it all – doubts, temptations, fears, rationalisations, temptations again, settling finally into outright lust.

I seize my moment. ‘Take me.’ I let my spine arch and my leg rub against his. ‘Let my first time be with a man who knows how to pleasure.’

‘Princess …’

‘Let your cock sink into my tight sweet embrace and …’ The florid language isn’t coming so easily now. I want him too much. My imagination is failing, hamstrung by my need to be shagged, good and proper, with my wrists tied and my pretend hymen breached. ‘Look, just fuck me, all right? Just give me what I need.’

With a growl, he almost tears off his shirt then rolls himself over me, palms flat by my ears, his milky freckled chest hovering over my straining breasts. He dips his head and takes the bodice between his teeth, wrenching it down over the small portion of my chest that remains concealed. He buries his face between my breasts, consuming and devouring, suckling the nipples and biting the soft flesh.

‘I’ll give you what you need all right. Get ready.’

He rears up on his knees, yanking his belt through its loops, snarling down at me. My body sings with triumph at the light in his eyes, the hard gleam that shows he has gone past the point of caring about anything but sex. I have him.

He frees his cock then takes my buttocks in his hands and yanks my thighs wide, lifting me towards him.

My tethered hands want to grab the back of his head and pull him down on top of me, but they can’t. I know what’s coming, but I want to have it quicker, harder, more urgently than is even possible. I manage to hook my knees around his hips, drawing the tip of that fat feast of a cock into me.

‘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 –’

‘Been there, done that.’

‘I see I shall have to use my imagination. Hmm. Anyway, it could involve fetishes, groups, unusual situations. Or it could be something very simple. I’ll have to give it some thought. Actually, I might do a bit of research now. Exactly what haven’t you done, Soph?’