Free Thrill Seeker by Kristina Lloyd Page B

Community Crafts, the location of Liam’s workshop, is a council-supported, cooperative venture housed in former stables in the shabby Georgian part of Old Town. Centuries ago, when storms sent the fashionable set hurrying back to London, mud on their breeches, seaweed in their ringlets, the townhouses were left to rot.
    Today, they’re B&Bs and cheap hotels. Several are derelict, their windows boarded up, puny buddleia sprouting from their cracks. When I’d spoken to Den while leaningagainst one of these buildings, I hadn’t thought it might be unwise to linger in a slightly dodgy part of town. Ah well, I’d survived, hadn’t I?
    Community Crafts is one of the areas small successes. The workshops edge the old stableyard and when the weather’s good, some of the artisans set up stalls on the cobbles or open their doors, inviting the public to watch them work.
    The place was quiet when I arrived, just a couple of guys across the yard from Liam’s place smoking by a cluster of reconditioned furniture. At the security gate, Liam greeted me with a kiss, his copper curls flecked with sawdust, scruffy T-shirt hanging from broad, angular shoulders. He smelled of wood and sweat. I wanted to eat him. In the workshop, he opened two ciders. My groin gave a quick thump at the sight of his enormous, long hands, his thumb on his Swiss army knife, his wrist angling in a flick on the bottle tops.
    He passed me a bottle and our fingers brushed together. He has such beautiful hands, big, knuckly, vigorous and clever. Even when they’re at rest, those hands seem full of life, as if every action they ever performed simmers below the surface and every future action is on the brink of being realised. They are hands that can carve wood, slice leather, fashion rope from nettles, build fires in forests, break the necks of small mammals, roll joints, construct shelters and make me come and gush, time and again.
    ‘Cheers!’ We clinked bottles and I sank into a low chair of chrome and torn leather, feet on the cluttered worktop. A fluorescent strip light hummed faintly above us, its cold glare outshining mellow sunshine filtering in through high, dusty windows at the rear of the room. Scraps of leather, chunks of wood, sawdust and twists of metal littered the cobbled floor while all around us, tools poked from pots or dangledfrom racks like small, medieval torture implements. Liam stood, arse perched on the worktop’s edge, and circled my bare ankle with his fingers, rubbing while I moaned about my boss.
    ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Well, about your vagina, to be precise.’
    I laughed, taken aback. Liam and I generally take a while to catch up and settle into each other’s space before we start getting sexy. By now, Baxter Logan would have had my clothes off and his cock in my mouth, but not Liam. We don’t share that lustful frenzy. The ‘buddy’ takes precedence over the ‘fuck’.
    ‘Oh? And what did you conclude about my vagina?’ The word was amusingly clinical between us.
    ‘I’m making you a dildo out of cherry wood.’ Liam reached across the table and held up a thick, L-shaped dildo, curved in unusual ways. The wood was pale and unpolished, its surface channelled with rough, narrow grooves, its bulky length striated with a deep pink grain. Liam turned the object in his hands. I sat up for a closer look.
    ‘See, it has an upright handle. Easy to manipulate if you’re on your own. I’m thinking of drilling a hole in this ridge so a bullet vibe could go in.’ Liam’s slender fingers moved across the wood in synch with his explanation. The object seemed an expansion of him, a natural creation flowing from his body. The connectedness of his hands and the carving struck me as having a profound simplicity. This was a timeless craft being employed to enhance a timeless activity.
    ‘This flared part should stimulate your G.’ He ran his thumb over the