Free After Purple by Wendy Perriam

swooped past, an insect ran across my hand. I opened my eyes and saw the sky sweeping down towards us, clouds wrapping round our bodies like a duvet, stars and moon blanked out to keep us private. The bell was clanging for closing time. They were shutting all the gates, turning people out. They couldn’t turn us out — they would never find us. The rain was muffling all our cries. It was joining in with us, slamming down on me in time with Leo, forcing its way inside me like another lover. The whole world was inside me, sky and earth, clouds, great trunks of trees.
    Suddenly, the lights went on, further down the park. Leo stopped, sat up. I could have wept for those few lost moments before he entered me again. I was nothing on my own. But joined to Leo, I was a king, a priest, a god. My body only worked when it was under him, over him, sharing the same wild purple rhythm, the same crashing heartbeat.
    He rolled me on my belly and licked the mud off my shoulders. His tongue was rough and humble at the same time. He was like a dog, a great, dark, dangerous animal mounting me from behind. His own dog was blundering through the undergrowth, but he hardly heard it. He had pressed my face against the earth. I could feel the sting and prickle of holly leaves, the nudge of a tree root underneath my breasts. My hair had fallen over my head so that I lay in a tent of drenched, soggy strands. The gardens were floodlit now, the park shut, but here everything was dark and open. We were in our own private park, which had no lights, no gates, no rules. Leo had twisted his body at an angle to my own. I was burning hot inside, freezing outside. My hands and feet were numb. Cold was darting through me like a snake. I hardly cared. Cold and rain were all part of it, part of us. I couldn’t tell where Leo ended and I began, where the numbness at the edges melted into the scorching, spinning feeling, further in.
    Leo refused to let me move. He knew exactly how to trap me, muzzle me with his body, until I was wild with having to be still. Any man can let you thrust. I worshipped Leo because he didn’t let me, and yet he made my stillness more fierce, more frenzied, than any amount of movement. I could hear myself shouting out above the rain. I could also hear Karma howling for his master. His howls drove me on. I came three times just thinking of him jealous and outraged. We had snuffed him out, so that he was only a broken shadow at our heels. Leo was my master now.
    He was coming. I clung on. Leo has great seething, swelling, violent, anguished comes which swallow up me and him and everything around us. It was starting now. I dug my fingers into the earth to get a grip. He likes me to squeeze and squeeze and yell out words and almost fight with him. I shut my eyes and saw a shadowy group of swarthy park-keepers creeping up on us, bending down to watch, the gold braid of their uniforms scratching rough against my back. Their flashlights were blinding me, the hot breath of their tracker dogs panting through my breasts. I was moving now. We were all moving, all coming. Shouting, pounding, bucking, hurting, coming. Karma was coming and the keepers coming and the whole world and sky and earth and world and Leo Leo Leo Leo Leo …

Chapter Five
    We slept together that night — I mean really slept, in the same bed, in the same bedroom, with all twenty dragons crouching and rejoicing over us. In the morning, Leo left for work like a normal man, and I sat down with a piece of paper, Adrian-fashion, and tried to make a plan. Normally, I hardly listen when Adrian rattles on about getting jobs and settling down. But things were different since the baby. I knew I’d really lost him now. He wasn’t just a couple, but a family. There’d be other kids (all Daddy’s boys); bright, shining, cheerful, jolly Christmases; parent-teacher meetings; football workouts in the park; bruised shins, broken legs. I sat and thought about