Fractured Crystal: Sapphires and Submission Read online

  There wasn’t much light inside the shop, and for this Kris was glad. She stood in absolute silence for a while, not daring to move until—at last—she heard the stranger step away from the door. Even then she remained silent and still while the Land Rover outside started and slowly drove away. Then, only then, did she feel safe enough to move.

  “Well, well,” she heard a voice speak a few feet ahead of her. Raising her head at last, hoping all the time that her furious blushes were at last fading away, she saw a woman in her fifties with a not unkind face watching her. “You caught his attention, and that’s no mistake. What can I do for you?”

  “Erm...” Kris fumbled for words. “I was just... I mean... I would want... I was just looking for a few things. I’m staying at the cottage—Dalrigh.”

  “Oh, so you’ll be a friend of the woman who owns it then, Anne Yarrow?”

  Kris nodded her head. “That’s right. I’m staying for the next couple of weeks, but I need to get a few things to clean up first of all.”

  “That’ll be a first, I’m sure,” the woman laughed, her grey-blonde hair catching the light from the window. “Oh, don’t mind me—I don’t mean any harm. Not like all around here, and that’s the truth.” Her final words appeared directed at the door behind Kris, but then the woman shook her head and smiled. “I’m Mary. Anything you need, just come to me.”

  “Thanks,” Kris replied with a bashful smile. She paused and, once again looking for the right words but this time with a more subtle motive, finally remarked: “He didn’t say much, did he? Is he always that rude?”

  “Him? Don’t you bother with him—though I think that was almost civil by his usual standards. Daniel Logan don’t say much to anyone whenever he shows up round here.” Mary tutted and turned her attention back to the list of items which Kris placed in front of her.

  As the older woman uhmed and ahed over various things on the list, Kris returned her own gaze to the door of the shop. Daniel Logan. She couldn’t explain why she wanted to know that name.

  Chapter Two

  When Kris had finally cleaned the cottage more or less to her satisfaction and settled down with a simple meal of pasta and a glass of wine, the sun had already descended across the hills that lay between her and the Atlantic. Though the clouds had never entirely departed from the sky, nonetheless the weather had been generally clearer and as she ate her food hurriedly she felt more optimistic though she could not explain why.

  Having attended to one physical urge in a fairly cursory manner, Kris decided that the next of her needs—the desire to clean herself—would be better dealt with in a more leisurely fashion. Fortunately, she had received full instructions from Anne on how to work the rather antiquated oil burner that came with Dalrigh, and so when she had cleaned the small bathroom and placed her still half-full wine glass on the side of the bath the steam from the hot water was filling the room pleasantly.

  Kris had removed her fleece upon returning to Dalrith, the temperature and weather—slightly more humid than she had expected—having made her sweat a little. This general unfemininity of her condition had not been improved by the unanticipated hard labour required in cleaning out Dalrigh, and so she removed her somewhat soiled T-shirt with considerable relief, flinging it down onto the floor in triumph.

  Her shoulders ached from the driving and her breasts were a little uncomfortable in her bra. Unclasping herself, Kris let the fabric of her bra fall away onto the floor beside her shirt and, bending, unzipped and pulled down her jeans.

  Turning, she caught sight of herself in the mirror that was already becoming half-obscured with steam. She looked pale at the moment, and her dark hair made her skin look paler than usual. As an Avelar, however, she could still take on a delicious lightly honeyed tan in the sun when she chose to—unfortunately, she had not really seen the sun in a long time.

  Seeing her body, her breasts firm and standing forth from her chest with only the slightest curving fall of flesh below, her belly not rigidly lean but still trim enough, and her hips swelling out in her knickers, Kris once more experienced the same old feeling of anger and frustration. She was tired, yes, and she didn’t have a model’s body, but goddamit! She was still attractive! Why did her sexual encounters have to be such failures?

  Shrugging and realising that there was no point fretting over this matter now, she slipped out of her panties, the darker, neatly trimmed line of her pubes peeking from the base of her abdomen as she opened her legs, placing first one foot then the second into the hot water. As she slid down into the bath, the deliciously warm water flowed over and between her thighs, splashing against her vulva in a pleasant fashion before rolling in waves over her lower belly as she creased herself into position, sitting upright so that she could continue to drink her wine as she soaked herself.

  Steam curled and rose about her, forming soothing fronds around her hair, almost caressing her face as she settled into place. Balancing her glass carefully on the chair beside her, she reached across for the soap, lathering it between her nimble fingers and sliding her hands across her arms and chest, soaping up her breasts and enjoying—at last—the sensation of her hands on her own skin.

  Taking time to pleasure herself in this simple way, Kris thought about the ostensible reason for her sudden departure from London. It had been a mistake to start sleeping with Mark Travis. What was it, she thought, about her fascination with married men? Older men at that? The worst thing was that while his insistence that they stop fucking each other had hurt her (he, of course, being scared that his wife would find out), the truth was that the sex between them had hardly been anything special. As she thought of Mark pumping away between her legs, his soft, middle-aged paunch rising and falling, she gave a little shudder. No. That was hardly the stuff of fantasies.

  And yet she came back to this type of man, again and again. Deep down, she knew why: but working out the full answer to her unspoken question led to madness, so instead she returned her attention to Mark. Perhaps the most irritating thing about him was that while he considered himself a kind of alpha male, he was really an insecure, rather whiny individual. Kris had been working at the insurance firm as a secretary for the past two years, and it had taken Mark all of two hours to notice her. Despite her downer on herself, she was really a very attractive woman if an observer took time to look.

  After that, it had been a month, perhaps, until they had their first fumbling sex after a Christmas party. So clichéd. So normal. So nothing-special. Kris wondered if she was even becoming frigid: after all, she had not particularly felt anything at the time—indeed, during all their sessions together, she had only really climaxed twice though she had faked it much more often. And each of those unfaked orgasms had been nothing special: she could do better with her fingers or a toy.

  Shaking her head, she sank deeper into the bath, letting the water pool around her armpits so that her breasts formed small islands, the pink nipples rising up in the steamy air. It had been too long since she had really—really—soaked herself. To her surprise, she was becoming rather horny in the hot water and, raising one leg through the translucent surface began to soap it sensuously, letting her hand flick down to the sinews of her thighs.

  It was certainly not Mark who came into her imagination then, however. Rather, as the tips of her fingers brushed against her pubis and lingered for a moment, rubbing soap softly into her outer labia that were flowering ever so slightly more than usual, her mind was filled with a vision of the stranger she had briefly met earlier that day, his hazel eyes and the mismatched pupils staring down at her intently.

  She shuddered as she recalled the intensity of his gaze—and the fact that he had said nothing, not even the cursory greetings or apologies that one usually said in such circumstances. That was kind of weird, she thought to herself, as well as the fact that he had made no attempt to move when she squeezed past him. In any other case, she would have (to her admitted shame) wondered if there was something mentally wrong with
him, but the gleam she had clearly seen in those eyes indicated that this was not a man lacking in intelligence whatever other social graces might be missing.

  She was a little surprised at how clearly she saw that face before her now. She was an artist, admittedly, but it had been a long time, she realised, since she had really looked at anything. In any case, she had only glanced up at him for a few seconds before dropping her eyes—and yet he was now virtually etched into her memory. His face was unusual, a man in his early forties perhaps, and though she had not appreciated it at the time he certainly was handsome. His scars made him unusual, and the beard—well, the beard she could do without, but there was something to him that went well beyond the glib appearance of Mark Travis.

  Returning her glass of wine to the seat beside her, she let her hand fall lazily to her right breast, circling the nipple with her finger tip which she had dipped into the warm water, enjoying droplets of liquid fall onto the areole and harder pink flesh. Any semblance of soap that had been on her other hand was now long washed away in the bath, but she continued to rub herself, her fingers forming a slow ridge that undulated along the slit of her sex, her breath rising and falling slightly.

  She wondered at his scars. Now she could see them more clearly in her mind’s eye, two being particularly prominent—the first across his forehead and right eyebrow, the other on the cheek starting beneath the eye and cutting into his dark beard. These were matched by other fine lines that creased and folded his skin, which now—she realised—was somewhat darker than she would have expected to one holed up here all year round so near to the Highlands.

  Biting her lips, she imagined what it would be like to reach up with her small hands, lifting them up parallel with her head, and press down on his shoulders which were so much wider than her own body. She had a sense of iron hardness beneath the shirt—no middle-aged paunch there, she was sure, though she suspected the stranger must be the same age as Mark. She wondered if Daniel Logan was married and then quickly dismissed the idea—though she would have been at a loss to explain why she did so quite so quickly had she reflected on the fact. In any case, it was clear that a strange... loner like this Logan probably had little experience of women.

  Before she knew it, Kris’s fingers were dipping inside her as she squeezed the nipple of her breast with the other hand, twisting the hard surface somewhat savagely as she masturbated herself. She wondered about his cock, the size and weight of it, what it would feel like in her hands. How would he fuck her, perhaps he could take her here... just the two of them.

  Then her fantasy was brutally interrupted. A fifteen year old girl, tied to the bed, her father furious with her disobedience, belt in his hand...

  Instantly she froze. She always froze when this image entered her mind, and she didn’t really know why. Yes, he had hurt her, but it wasn’t the worst beating she had received, and in any case nothing really bad had happened that day...

  Nope, don’t go there. She could feel all the hackles rising along her body and a sudden chill covering her limbs despite the warmth of the water. She suddenly felt sick and she couldn’t explain it. Sighing and shaking her head, she climbed slowly from the water, liquid dripping from her slender limbs. She knew from bitter, bitter experience that an orgasm would be further away from her than ever that night.

  Folding a dressing gown around her still wet body, she went through to the bedroom where she would be sleeping. With a hope almost as forlorn as that of achieving sexual satisfaction, she had placed one of her drawing pads on the table that lay at the far end of the bed. The window beside it was dark now, and she could only make out the silhouettes of the hills beyond, but she had hoped that when sitting here she would take inspiration from the landscape outside.

  Gently she lowered her half-empty wine glass onto the wooden surface and let her finger tip linger over the cover of the pad. Beside it were some graphite and charcoal pencils—she had hoped perhaps to sketch rather than paint. Again an image of her father returned to her mind, this one sad and sweet rather than forbidding, her daddy’s large head next to hers as a child, the warmth of his body as he leaned over her shoulder, guiding her hand, encouraging her to draw, to draw, ceaselessly to draw, transforming the white surface of the paper into a series of delights.

  Now when her heart froze it was for a very different reason. She wondered whether she would ever draw again. She had a terrible, superstitious belief that the ability to draw—her talent which her tutors had clearly recognised at school and when first she attended interviews at Saint Martins—would wither up inside her the less and less she exercised it. She had some half-conscious sense that her ability to experience, to enjoy, life was somehow bound up with her ability to create. If she lost the one, then she would be empty inside—dead even—forever.

  And yet the inspiration did not come. Simply thinking about it, all this endless analysis without end, was anathema to her ability and talent. When she had been younger, when she had been careless and carefree, she had utterly lost herself when painting. There had been no Kris Avelar, no sense of an identity separate to the brush or pencil she held in her hand.

  Now that memory, a memory of a very different kind of loss of selfhood, the loss where all dissolution of self was a gain beyond all reckoning, was now nothing more than bitter-sweetness at best, sweet because she knew that this was once a state that had come to her as easily as breathing, bitter because she wondered if it would ever return again. Indeed, her greatest fear was that the very sweetness of her former acts of creation would in turn become her worst torture, punishing her with a sense of failure that would break her completely.

  She was tired, too tired. She knew from experience that going over such ideas again and again would bring neither profit nor pleasure. Analysing her inability to draw or paint was like picking at a scab, not allowing it to heal but causing pain again and again. The only way to heal herself was to draw.

  But not tonight. She had been travelling a long way, she rationalised to herself. She had come here to create—at least that was what she hoped—but that would have to wait for tomorrow. For a few moments she hung beside the desk, a ghost of herself, fingers brushing against the surface of the pad again, feeling the texture of the rugged card cover beneath the pads of flesh, pressing down for a second then lifting. After this, she slipped the gown from her shoulders, her pale skin glowing softly in the low light, shadows forming in the cleavage between her breasts and thighs. Placing the dressing gown on the chair before the pad, she climbed into the bed and quickly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Three

  When she awoke next morning, Kris felt much fresher and more alive than she had for a long time. Looking out through the window, she was also extremely pleased to see that the heavy clouds that had hung over the landscape the previous day were largely absent now, so that sunlight streamed into the room, bouncing from the whitewashed walls. If only Anne could improve her personal habits, Kris thought to herself, it was easy in such circumstances as existed that morning to see how this could become an almost idyllic retreat. It wasn’t Portugal, admittedly, but even she had to admit that the view across to the Highlands was stunning.

  Still naked, she lifted her arms above her head and stretched sensuously, enjoying the sunlight as it drew its bright yellow fingertips along her rising breasts and the curve of her sternum and rib cage. Smirking, she imagined such fingers sliding down, tickling her navel and more below.

  For a few moments, she lingered by the table, pulling back the coarse cover of her drawing pad and staring a little while at the virgin paper that lay beneath. Not yet, she told herself. Better to dress and prepare for breakfast first.

  As such, she spent a great deal more time than usual on her morning repast. Normally breakfast, as with most meals, was a cursory affair, but today Kris prepared herself a very simple meal—little more than toast and fruit with orange juice and coffee—with more attention, enjoying the frugal tastes with a richness
that surprised her. No doubt, after a decade of living in London, it was the fresh air that was improving her senses, making her more alive to the conditions around her.

  Her phone lay on the table where she had left it the previous night and she absent mindedly picked it up. The charge was almost dead and she would have to find her power lead sooner or later. There were three messages, one from Anne hoping she had found everything to her advantage—to which Kris quickly replied in the affirmative—as well as one from her carrier. And another from Mark. She did not even bother to open that, but simply deleted it.

  She probably had twenty minutes or so of battery life left and, idly curious, she fired up the browser and searched for a particular name. Daniel Logan turned up some results for an actor who clearly wasn’t the stranger she had encountered the day before, as well as a few other mundane entries that didn’t seem to provide any match. She shrugged and smiled at herself: she wasn’t even sure why she was at all interested. For a second, the fantasy that she had experienced the night before flickered inside her mind—but so did the added complications that had dogged her for the past few years. Unconsciously, she did a little sign of the cross as the familiar censor closed down her mind and the familiar prickle passed over her skin.

  Not for the first time she was annoyed with herself. She didn’t even believe any more, but her absent Catholicism was just one more irritating and unwanted legacy bestowed on her by her father. Actually, he hadn’t believed either, but both of them had indulged the sick, wallowing unpleasures of an unspoken and undeserved guilt.

  Shaking her head, she decided that for one day at least she would try to banish any blue thoughts by spending some time outdoors. She wasn’t ready to draw—not yet—but she was sure that with just a little more time here some of her old inspiration would return.