Red Grow the Roses. Janine Ashbless

thumbs, then working the rest of his fingers into the hot oil she was leaking, getting them good and slick, opening her up. ‘Three,’ he concluded, entering her with three fingers at once, his right wrist locked like a weapon, the muscles of his forearm tense as he pushed those fingers in deep, right past all those thick knuckles until he was holding her by her pussy, his thumb in possession of her clit – then out, then in again. His fingers were blunt and determined and brooked no refusal. Sophie jerked her hips and squealed and writhed, raking his skin with her nails. He pinned her with his other arm, pulling her hard against him. ‘Did I guess right?’

      ‘Mm,’ she nodded frantically, her lips bruising themselves on his hard jaw. She wanted his cock even more, but his fingers certainly had the right idea.

      ‘Then guess what I want, love.’

      ‘You want to fuck me,’ she whispered.

      He chuckled – that dark low rumble again, deep in his throat. Lingeringly he withdrew his hand, enjoying her little whimper of loss. ‘Let’s go see my friend,’ he whispered, confounding her.

      ‘What? Now?’

      ‘We walked all this way.’

      ‘Oh … can’t we … first …’

      ‘Don’t be impatient. Everything comes to those who wait, love.’ He tickled her clit teasingly, then slipped from her embrace, secure in the knowledge that she would follow. Sophie slid off the stone feeling like there was a hollow void inside her, and sure that Ben was getting off on her discomfort. She tugged her skirt back down over her thighs and brushed specks of lichen off her behind. She couldn’t care less about Ben’s friend or his artwork now, to be honest, but she wanted his cock so badly she would have followed him almost anywhere.

      ‘Ready?’ He took her hand and led her off, surefooted even in the darkness. He led her to a small door in the north wall, one so low he had to stoop under the arch. It was unlocked, and a light burned in the room beyond.

      Sophie knew almost nothing about church architecture; she was expecting them to emerge into the main body of the building among the pews. She’d expected gloom and age. She wasn’t expecting a small room full of shelves and cupboards, or a set of unpainted plywood stairs that took them up into the roofspace. There was a strong smell of new plaster and paint.

      ‘I knew you were lying,’ she said, trying to be sparky, as Ben led her up. Her thighs felt sticky.

      ‘What?’ He frowned back at her.

      ‘About the vampire thing. You wouldn’t be able to walk on consecrated ground.’

      He turned away again. ‘This was deconsecrated in the nineteen-nineties.’

      They came out into a big white space – almost the whole of the interior of the church roof – illuminated by a few floor lamps. Every surface was painted white. There were pale human figures dotted about the place, on dustsheet islands spattered in paint, but none of them moved. Only one was animate: a slim figure crouching over and dabbing at one of the sculptures with a brush.

      ‘Hello, Naylor.’

      The young man stood. He moved with great fluidity and, though Sophie’s spike heels made a terrible racket on the wooden floor, his bare ones made no sound at all. He was standing in front of them almost before Sophie, transfixed by his grace, had grasped that he was moving at all.

      ‘Ben. Hi.’ He smiled at Sophie, not even bothering to hide the fact he was checking out her tits, her hips, her legs. ‘You’re a pretty one.’

      ‘Sophie,’ she said weakly.

      He was breathtaking. Slight, not tall, with sharp cheekbones and slanted, narrow eyes that turned out to be a wild pale green when they caught the light. A full lower lip gave him an incongruous pout. He was startlingly pale. Black hair flopped over those eyes, partly veiling the finely angled brows but not the wicked glint beneath them. There was a grace about his narrow hips and wiry limbs that seemed almost dangerous, as if he were poised in readiness for something. Something swift and ruthless, she thought; something never regretted. He looked younger than Ben and considerably more slender, but there was nothing weak about him at all. He folded his arms, having looked her over.

      ‘I can smell pussy,’ he said, gazing into her eyes, the corner of his mouth hooked in a smile.

      ‘Yeah … it’s all over my hands, I’m afraid,’ Ben answered, as she started and flushed.

      ‘You been taking her out for a trial lap, you dirty beggar?’

      ‘Just warming the engine.’

      ‘Huh. You want a beer, Sophie?’

      The abrupt switches in conversation stunned her a little, and she barely managed to nod and squeak an affirmation. Ben had been right: she did like Naylor. He looked like bad news – but wasn’t that always more fun in a man? She had a clear idea where this was going, she thought, and she didn’t object – but a little Dutch courage wouldn’t hurt. She’d never been with two guys at once. It excited her a lot more than the thought of her and Netta and Ben. It scared her quite a lot more too.

      Naylor retreated to a cool-box that stood near one wall, near a pile of dustsheets. She watched as he groped inside for three bottles of beer, then prised the caps off against the angle of the lid with three casual flicks.

      ‘Sophie works at an art gallery,’ said Ben.

      ‘Is that so?’

      ‘Just Yardley’s,’ she answered, her voice husky.

      ‘What do you think of my stuff, then?’ he asked, indicating the sculptures with a twist of his head.

      Politely she turned to look them over. A standing figure nearby appeared to be a resin cast of a naked woman, her skin the stippled grey of poplar bark, her nipples black knots. But her eyes were only holes and from behind she was hollow, the bark curled and flaked at the edge, her insides cobwebbed. Sophie swallowed. How was she supposed to judge real art? Yardley’s didn’t cater to the high-concept end of the market, just to people who liked a nice picture and wanted something that would match the wallpaper. Sophie worked selling the products of conveyor-belt artists. There was the one who painted nice autumnal landscapes, and the one who did portraits of cheeky 1930s urchins, and the one who did the red canal perspectives … Nothing like this. What did she know?

      She moved to the next sculpture, a heap of reclining naked women. Their skin had the texture of sand and their sleeping faces were peaceful and beautiful – but once again they were hollow, this time from the ribs to the hips, their abdomens smooth white concavities.

      ‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Powerful.’

      ‘You think?’ Naylor was at her shoulder, though she hadn’t heard him approach. She turned a little abruptly, and he slipped a cold bottle into her hand. ‘Cheers.’

      ‘Cheers.’ He was standing unsettlingly close, almost touching her.

      Naylor tilted his own bottle to his mouth. Sophie glanced at the label, but it was some Continental brew she’d never heard of. She took a sip of her beer, all too aware that both men were taking a very personal interest in watching the neck of the bottle ease between her lips. She felt self-conscious: she’d never been the focus of such undisguised greed. She normally was the sort of girl that men could take or leave; rarely without some sort of masculine action in her life, yet never the centre of any drama. Procrastinating, she glanced away at the room again.

      ‘Is that one of yours?’ she asked, peering at something a bit different: two large wooden boards mounted on a wall that part-divided the roof-space. They were covered in black and gilt lettering that was hard to decipher.

      Naylor snorted. ‘Nah. Fixtures and fittings, doll. This was a church, remember.’

      ‘Oh. Yeah.’ She could make out some of the words now: Thou shalt not …

      ‘The Ten Commandments. Not that anyone takes any bleeding notice of