Chapter One

Folly

‘BLOODY THING! BLOODY bloody bloody thing!’ Belinda Seward kicked out viciously at the bumper of Jonathan Sumner’s car and wished the whole damned thing in hell. ‘What on earth are we going to do now?’ she demanded, wiping the rain off her face, and looking up into the glowering black sky.

At that moment the darkness above seemed to split in two, as if a giant hand had torn a velvet curtain. Forked blue lightning sheared wildly across the heavens in a bolt that seemed far closer than the last one had been. Belinda felt suddenly convinced that the elements themselves were after them, or at least after Jonathan’s ancient yellow Mini.

‘We could shelter in the car,’ offered Jonathan Sumner, pushing his wet, brown hair out of his eyes. It was a hopeless gesture because his hair, his clothes and every inch of his skin were all completely saturated. It had only been raining ten minutes but the pair of them were already soaked through to the bone.

‘Oh yeah? And get struck by lightning?’ enquired Belinda, knowing that all this wasn’t really Jonathan’s fault, but still needing to blame someone. The anger of the storm was getting to her, she realised; creating a tension that had to be released.

They had been lost for an hour or so now, and thunderbolts and torrential rain just seemed to put the cap on things, especially as the Mini – which Jonathan had assured her was reliable – had just broken down and was leaking like a sieve. Their plight wasn’t all Jonathan’s fault, Belinda had to admit, but somehow she couldn’t seem to keep herself from blaming him anyway – something she had told herself she would try not to do.

‘Well, I’m not staying here!’ she said, reaching into the car for her shoulder bag, then staring first one way down the narrow road they were on, then the other. In both directions the vista was grim, wet and unpromising, so with a shrug, she set off along the route they had been planning to travel.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded Jonathan, catching her up. ‘We can’t just leave the car –’

‘We bloody well can! I’m not standing around waiting for that pile of scrap to be struck by lightning. I’m going to find us a place to shelter.’

‘There’s shelter there!’ Jonathan grabbed her arm then pointed to the heavy, mournful-looking trees that flanked the road on either side. At that moment, another great thunderflash came, making the trunks glisten momentarily in the teeming water, the knotty bark appearing silver and blue.

‘Don’t be a prat, Jonathan,’ snapped Belinda, shaking him off and spraying water across him in the process. ‘Trees are just as likely to be struck as a car is. I’m going to find a building of some kind. Maybe a house or a barn we can shelter in.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Jonathan, falling into step beside her and automatically taking the bag. ‘But there doesn’t seem to be much life around here, does there? That is, wherever “here” actually is.’

They had lost their bearings quite a while ago, about the same time as the storm had started brewing. It was weird, really; they had been doing quite well up until then, finding all their planned stops and keeping to their pre-arranged itinerary.

As they trudged along the ever narrowing road, chances of finding suitable shelter seemed to narrow too. The trees on either side loomed over them, moving in like tall, battle-blasted soldiers closing ranks around a helpless enemy. Whenever it was possible to see beyond the lines of trunks, there seemed to be very little to see – just desolate fields and scrubby sodden bushes. It seemed so different from the pleasant farming vale they had been travelling through just a couple of short hours ago.

Belinda flinched as another crack of thunder broke right over them, and the lightning seemed to fork both in front of them and behind. She could almost imagine that the little yellow car had just been blasted, and up ahead, the as yet unknown shelter they sought had also taken a bolt of white flame.

‘Don’t worry, Lindi,’ said Jonathan in her ear, as he slid a wet but warm arm around her waist, ‘the odds of being struck are astronomical. And if it gets us, at least we go together.’

Funnily enough, the inane remark soothed her, as did the strong male arm. There was something comfortingly solid about it; a safeness and reality that had an unexpected but not unwanted effect. They were both soaked through, but Jonathan’s body, close as it was and moving against hers to the rhythm of his stride, seemed filled with an exceptional heat and vibrancy that filtered clean through the wetness of their clothes.

Saying nothing, Belinda let her own body lean in a little closer, and for the first time became aware of strange feelings. The sort of feelings that thunderstorms didn’t usually engender.

The beating of the rain on her skin was insidious, and her wet clothes, pressing close against her, created the sensation of a sly but continuing caress. She could feel the water flowing everywhere; teasing her, cascading down across her breasts and dribbling between her legs, soaking a furrow that was already damp with a wetness of its own.

She was acutely aware, too, of the presence of a man beside her. Her brain said it was only Jonathan – her familiar Jonathan, her workmate and sometime lover – but her blood simply sensed him as a male. A strong, lean, muscular form with the pure power of sex between his legs.

Oh God, I’m aroused … It’s insane, but I am! I’m turned on, without trying, just for Jonathan!

There was nothing she could do about it at the moment, but the realisation of her desire almost scared her. She hadn’t felt this aroused for many weeks.

As the lightning flashed again, she snuggled a little closer to him, adjusting her stride to fit his as the side of her breast rubbed lightly against his ribcage.

‘OK, love?’ he enquired, giving her a squeeze.

Belinda nodded, smiling up at him, then laughed as she swallowed a mouthful of warm rain.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ he went on, glancing up at the blackness of the sky as if it really was his fault. ‘I mean … I serviced the car, and it’s in good nick for its age. It must be all the rain on the carburettor or something.’

‘Don’t worry, Jonathan,’ Belinda shouted, competing with another roar of thunder. ‘We did say we wanted a change of routine, didn’t we?’

Jonathan grinned down at her, then nodded his head towards hers. ‘At least it won’t spoil your hair.’

‘Bastard,’ replied Belinda without rancour. They were both still deciding whether they liked her new look or not. After years with long hair, a mad, out-of-the-blue impulse had made her have her red-brown waves shorn to a short crop. It had been a shock to the system, and she still got a surprise sometimes when she looked in a mirror, but on a night like this she blessed her decision. The neat, elfin style shaped sleekly to her skull, and felt far, far better than a dank, unmanageable mass trailing down over her neck and her shoulders.

And her new haircut didn’t make her feel any the less feminine. In fact, she felt supremely female at the moment, as if the raving elements had transformed her into a nymph of the storm. She looked up again at Jonathan, just as he turned to look down at her. He seemed puzzled for a second by the heat of her glance, then he smiled, his grey eyes slowly widening in delight. Neither of them said anything, but Jonathan’s arm tightened and he gave her a rakish wink.

It was more imperative than ever they find shelter.

After a few minutes more of splashing along the streaming road, it seemed as if some kind spirit in the tempest had been watching out for them. They found themselves by a wall that ran parallel to the road. It was dark and moss-grown, but a wall none the less; a high grey stone boundary that indicated an estate of some kind within, which would be sure to have somewhere they could shelter in, even if it were only a stable or outhouse.

Withdrawing his arm from around her shoulders with obvious reluctance, Jonathan took hold of her hand and by consensus they quickened their pace. Belinda wasn’t sure if she was imagining things or not, but the road seemed to wind more now, and the wall with it. A little way on, after a particularly tortuous twist, an imposing set of gates interrupted the seemingly impenetrable stone barrier.

‘Looks a bit dodgy,’ observed Jonathan. The gateposts were somewhat broken down and the masonry crumbling, although the shape of two heraldic beasts atop each one was still quite clear, especially when the lightning lit them up. Belinda shuddered. The two statues looked like cats of some kind; not the usual lions but some sort of giant domestic cat made grotesquely malformed and ferocious.

‘Here, pussy pussy,’ said Jonathan with a grin.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Belinda said shortly, a bit shaken by the peculiar stone animals.

The gates themselves were iron, and rusted here and there. They would have been as impenetrable as the wall itself was, but a broken hinge made one of them sag. Where the gate lolled lopsidedly towards the path beyond, there was a gap that could easily be squeezed though.

‘What do you think, shall we try it?’ asked Jonathan. As he spoke, another huge flash of blue light silhouetted his lean body in his clinging shorts and top, and Belinda felt an answering flash inside her. The strange desire that had kindled while they trudged seemed to flare up again with all the violence of the disorder above them. The sinuous forms of the cats on their pedestals appeared to writhe as if they too were consumed by lust, and though their eyes were only suggested by the stone, Belinda had a notion they were real and watching her. Or something was watching her. Maybe it was the storm itself; like a discarnate intelligence observing its own effects on her body.

‘Yes, let’s go for it!’ she said, her voice rising to match the increasing loudness of the wind and rain. As she moved closer to one of the gateposts, she noticed something she hadn’t seen before – the words ‘Sedgewick Priory’ cut into the stained grey stone.

Five minutes walk up an overgrown gravelled drive brought them out of the trees and face to face with the priory itself.

‘It looks a bit grim, doesn’t it?’ said Jonathan with a resigned shrug. ‘I don’t think it’s lived in.’

Belinda supposed the priory was built in what was termed the Gothic style; all tall brooding turrets and long narrow windows with a multitude of tiny diamond-leaded panes. The walls were dark, dark grey and sternly secretive, and had the same run-down quality as the perimeter wall and its gateposts, a decrepitude that masked a lasting strength. It looked far more like a warrior’s fortified residence than it did an ecclesiastical structure, although there did appear to be what looked like a ruined chapel standing a short distance from the house, overgrown with greenery and half in the trees.

‘There’re no lights,’ Belinda began doubtfully, ‘but then again it must be the wee small hours of the morning. We were driving for ages, weren’t we?’

Indecisive, they stood on the path in front of the house, kept from it by a soggy, forlorn-looking formal garden gone wild, and a series of low but straggling hedges. The house itself seemed to be staring at them, glowering and forbidding their entrance, its windows like lifeless blank eyes.

‘I don’t think I want to go in there,’ said Belinda, pushing the shaggy wisps of her fringe from her brow and flicking away the water running into her eyes. ‘I somehow don’t think we’d be welcome.’

‘But there’s nobody in there, I’m sure,’ murmured Jonathan, stepping forward and escaping her restraining hand. Belinda was impressed by his sudden boldness but still couldn’t ignore the house’s bleakness.

‘We could break in, I’m sure. At least it’d be dry,’ Jonathan said reasonably.

‘No! Don’t!’ cried Belinda, cringing inside at a great wave of strange diffuse emotion. Something in the house had cried out at the thought of violation; it sounded crazy in her mind as she thought it, but nevertheless, it was what she had felt.

‘Are you OK, Lindi?’ said Jonathan, returning to her and sliding his arm around her waist again. The casual embrace was comforting and very welcome. The dour grey priory had spooked her, and Jonathan’s arm was a touch of human warmth.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she murmured in a moment of quiet as the winds seemed to still. ‘I just seemed to have a funny feeling about the house … the priory. It was almost as if there was someone in it … and they didn’t want us in it.’ She paused, feeling the quality of her awareness changing. ‘Well, not now at least.’

Jonathan looked bemused but seemed to accept her explanation, as he did so often in his easy-going way. ‘Maybe you’re right. It’s probably dangerous anyway. Broken floorboards, rotted beams and such. We might be safer looking for an outbuilding or a shed of some kind.’

‘What’s that over there?’ said Belinda, turning her back on the priory, the hairs on the nape of her neck prickling. Well, as much as they could when they were slicked to her skin with rain. As she squinted through the downpour, the lightning came again in its brightest flash yet, seeming to split the sky with a slice of blue flame. She was at once aware of seeing a small, pale structure that she hadn’t seen before, about a hundred yards away across the lawn; and at the same time feeling the thick, almost tangible presence of the greater house behind her, watching her back with its dead, leaded eyes.

‘I dunno … I didn’t notice it before,’ said Jonathan, turning in the direction of the little building away across the grass. ‘It looks like a summer house or something.’ His arm tightened and he gave Belinda a reassuring hug. ‘Shall we try it? It looks in better condition than the house.’

The grass was waterlogged and squelched beneath their feet, and by the time they reached the summer house their trainers were soaked.

‘I wonder if it’s locked,’ said Jonathan as they surveyed the odd, circular building that stood before them. It looked like a pseudo-Greek temple complete with tall, fluted columns, and its windows were narrow and shuttered. The white painted door was closed and looked as solid as the priory looked shambolic.

‘Let’s see.’ Feeling her own rush of boldness and a determined desire to get out of view of the main house, Belinda tried the door handle, a great globular chunk of cut crystal. After a few abortive twists, it suddenly seemed to click from within, and the white door swung slowly open.

The room inside was circular, naturally, and as Belinda stepped over the threshold the lightning lit it up, bouncing jagged radiance off the pale, painted walls. There was no furniture of any kind, except a low circular divan, upholstered in a faded grey velour, but a second flash of light showed what looked like an ornamental drinking fountain set into a niche at the far side of the room.

‘Weird,’ whispered Jonathan, following her in.

‘But dry,’ pointed out Belinda, surprised that the room should be so, given the quality of the torrent outside. ‘And there’s a bed,’ she added softly, feeling a return of the heat that the eerie house had cooled. ‘A real bed. Isn’t that better than being squashed up in the Mini?’

‘Mmm …’ Jonathan moved closer, as if catching her drift, then looked down at her, nibbling on his lip in a way that she always found appealing, particularly at special times like these. ‘Are you tired?’

The logical answer was, ‘Yes, of course I’m tired, I’ve been slogging up and down country lanes in a thunderstorm in the middle of the night’, but Belinda found that she wasn’t tired at all. She felt exhilarated, fired up by the storm, and strangest of all, aroused by her vague, formless fear of the priory. She felt its presence again, all around her; reaching out from the tall, grey building across the grass and enveloping her in a dark sensuality. Making a low sound of need, a moan in her throat, she pressed her wet body close against Jonathan’s.

‘Yes … oh yes, love,’ he whispered as if he’d only been waiting for her signal. His lean, wiry arms snaked tightly around her, and his hands clasped her bottom through her shorts, pressing her loins against a hard, lively erection that she was surprised she hadn’t noticed a lot sooner. She felt his breath warm and sweet on her face, then he was kissing her cheeks and her jaw and her lips and licking the trickling drops of rain from her face.

‘I don’t get this,’ he said against her lips as they parted in readiness, ‘thunder used to scare me witless as a kid –’ He ground his hot crotch emphatically against hers ‘– and feel what it’s done to me now.’

Belinda felt, and rejoiced in what the thunder had done. Her mouth was open now, sucking in his tongue, feeding on it. Jonathan’s body felt harder than it had ever done; more manly, more appetising. Their moisture-soaked clothing was only the flimsiest of barriers between them and she fancied she could see steam rising as the heat of their bodies evaporated the wetness of the rain. Her nipples were like stones against his chest and she felt shameless, wanton. She rubbed herself against him, deliberately pleasuring herself, then parted her thighs, opening them around one of his to massage the demanding centre of her need. She was putting on a show, she knew, but didn’t know for whom – it didn’t seem to be for her familiar old Jonathan, no matter how much he was enjoying it.

‘Oh, Lindi, you’re so lovely,’ he moaned when she released his mouth, his voice hoarse with surprise. She had sometimes been unenthusiastic lately, but now she felt eager, almost frantic, for sex.

Running her hands around his narrow male waist, she pushed her fingers into the backs of his shorts and slid them down over his rump, caressing the muscles and dipping into his furrow. He was tender there, as most men were, and he cried out loudly when she flexed her wrist, drove in deeper, and rubbed the tiny ring of his anus.

‘Please … Ooh, love, that’s too nice,’ he chanted, wriggling against her. ‘Stop a minute, please … Oh God, I need to pee before we go any further.’

‘Ever the romantic,’ crowed Belinda, pressing harder and massaging her pelvis against Jonathan’s ready groin.

‘Little bitch,’ he answered, groaning but obviously loving what she was doing. He squeezed her buttocks in return, then brought his wet lips down on hers again in a comprehensive, jaw-stretching kiss.

Belinda felt exultation surge through her. Her Jonathan was never like this; never so animal, so uninhibited. It was as if the tumult of the night had seeped into them as the pounding rain had soaked through their clothes.

‘Go on then!’ she almost shouted to be heard over the rolling of thunder in the air. ‘Go and have your pee, then come back to me. I want you!’ She abused his body once more – with a squeeze and a press – and felt her belly quiver as he groaned and twisted his wet face.

‘Witch!’ he hissed, then whirled away and almost ran from the folly, presumably into the undergrowth nearby, to relieve himself.

You’re a wimp, Jonathan, she thought, half-fondly, half-despairingly, her head filled with a lewd, enticing picture of Jonathan’s stiff, reddened penis and the long, twinkling torrent of his golden water.

What’s happened to me? she thought suddenly, banishing the image, yet still feeling its forbidden fascination. She realised that she too needed to urinate, and without thinking she crushed her fingers to her crotch.

The pressure both eased and exacerbated her discomfort, and the sensation was so intense she let out a startled yelp. Pressing herself again and feeling both pleasure and pain and relishing them equally, she almost imagined she heard laughter within the thunder. Someone laughing at her antics and encouraging her; someone feeding off her hunger and erotic wildness. Still holding herself, she whirled around expecting to see Jonathan, but found the folly still empty but for herself.

‘Who is it?’ she whispered, rolling her hips and feeling hot darts shooting through her belly. ‘Who is it?’ she said, louder, then bit down abruptly on the question when the closed door of the folly flew open, and the wind seemed to fling Jonathan into the room.

‘My turn now,’ she said as he reached for her. In her somewhere was the urge to do something outrageous: to drop her knickers and pee in front of him – she knew that he would love it – but the fact that this was somebody else’s property cooled her madness. It was enough just to break in and shelter there.

‘Hurry then,’ urged Jonathan, his penis already rising up.

Out among the trees the blackness was bordering on total. By the light of the flashes, Belinda picked her way to a clearing a short distance from the folly and started unfastening the buttons of her shorts. As she peeled them down her thighs then hitched down her panties and squatted, the incongruity of what she was doing made her laugh.

God, she was wet through in the middle of a rainstorm – why was she so delicately tugging her knickers out of the way and only exposing her bum to the elements? In a few quick movements, she stripped off all her clothes: trainers, socks, T-shirt and shorts, pants and bra. Naked, she stretched her fingertips towards the raging sky, then parted her legs and angled her hips.

The release of her water was a relief so intense she almost climaxed. Whooping with manic joy, she felt the hot golden flood cascade down her smooth, shining thighs and blend with the rain on the grass.

‘There! Are you satisfied?’ she cried to no one in particular, then almost immediately felt a sense of being watched again. During the next lightning flash, she looked down at her own body and saw it lit weirdly, as if by a strobe, with streaks of blue radiance glancing off her wet skin. Her erect nipples shone like a pair of black jewels, and her pubis was a dark, eldritch smudge. ‘Watch this!’ she called out to the lightning-filled sky, then pushed her fingertips inward through her sodden female curls to seek out the tiny treasure within.

Gasping, she worried her clitoris roughly until she came, beating her hips to and fro through the downpour and the storm, then rising up on her toes as she peaked.

‘Yes!’ she called triumphantly. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ As her pleasure swooped and spiralled, the black sky seemed to answer, as if roaring out a climax of its own.

‘Who were you yelling at?’ enquired Jonathan as she re-entered the folly. He was lying on the divan and his hand was near his crotch, so Belinda guessed he had been caressing his penis. He snatched away his fingers as she approached him across the tiles, as if not wanting her to think he needed manual stimulation.

Belinda knew she didn’t need it. Her climax in the forest had primed her erotic spirit, and her sex felt empty and in need of male possession. Half throwing herself on to the divan beside Jonathan, she crawled on to her hands and her knees and offered him her body in the most enticing way she knew. Poised on all fours, she undulated her hips, her thighs wide apart and her vulva bare and gaping. Her whole body was wet but her female flesh was wetter still, and she knew that with the next bolt of lightning, he would see that.

Right on cue, the sky opened and pealed, and with a hoarse cry, Jonathan hurled himself upon her.

He slid in with such speed and to such a depth that Belinda was pushed forward and squashed under him. As he pounded her and pushed her, she gnawed the old velour beneath her and gouged it into bunches with her fists.

Gentle Jonathan seemed possessed with the same storm demon that she was, and his thrusts were savage and unfocused. He was hurting her but she was loving it. In seconds, she was soaring back to a climax. Rotating her hips, she shoved her bottom hard against him, then reached in between her legs to rub her centre. As his belly slapped her buttocks, she felt a flash of inner lightning, and as she climaxed, she stifled her screams in the soft grey cover.

‘Lindi!’ she heard Jonathan sob, then felt him lunge, then lunge again, as he jerked inside her. She was squashed like a star as he shuddered out his pleasure, but in her ecstasy there was no awareness of discomfort.

Floating in stillness and contentment, she felt Jonathan soften and slide out of her channel then roll over to lay his body down beside her. Remotely, she perceived the brutal storm was over.

The sky was quiet and the air was dark, and she and Jonathan were alone in their round, white folly. The night was all peace, and half gone, but to her surprise, she still felt that she was being watched; scrutinised in intense detail, by a pair of eyes that seemed to observe her from within. Brilliant blue eyes that were both hot and icy cold.