Innocence Read Online Free Page A

more about it until the end of the day when we get into the car again, and then he doesn’t say much, only “Couple of guys might want to meet you over at the camp.”
    And instead of driving me home, that’s where he takes me.
    The camp is a good twenty minutes across town and then out into the green gold of the countryside. The sky is the sort of deep azure you usually associate with an Indian summer, but it’s only July. Everything has peaked too early this year, the flower heads blown apart already, fruit fallen and full of wasps. If this heat wave carries on, the green will be gone and a dead brown wasteland will rule August. I open the window of the gray saloon car we have this afternoon and stick my hand out into the warm, heavy air that rushes past. The heat doesn’t bother me, not when it all seems so full, everything brimming over, exploding with life.
    As we swing wide up a dirt track between two fields full of cows and bound sickly over the potholes and ruts, I realize why the suspension on all the cars is shot. My body untenses only when Finn turns the ignition off.
    It’s a small camp, maybe ten small caravans set out in a rough semicircle, overlong grass brushing the windows, making it seem as if the camp grew there out of the ground a long, long time ago. The remainder of a fire is blackly evident in the not quite center of the grass, the scent of wood smoke still in the air. Somewhere a dog barks ceaselessly. I crane my head till I see it chained up outside one of the caravans. A smallish brown mongrel, some sort of terrier cross.
    A couple of cars are parked along the hedge next to us, the ground all churned up around them. I recognize the Renault from the first day, bonnet popped up in the heat, tarpaulin spread across the ground in front like a dog lolling its tongue.
    “This is Bosco’s field,” Finn tells me by way of introduction before we get out of the car. “He owns it and we work mostly for him, but some things we do for ourselves, and we don’t always want him to know what they are. Like you don’t want your dad to know. Do you understand?”
    His gaze is sharp. I nod.
    Warmly, he clasps my hand where it lies on the seat next to my thigh, his thumb making small circles on my wrist, his fingers doing the same on my jeans. It’s just the outside of my thigh, but the sensation makes me light-headed, and my cock starts to stiffen. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react.
    “Welcome to my home,” he says in a whisper, squeezing my hand once more, then unclasping it.
    Unsteadily I exit the car, still high from his touch, and follow him across the grass towards the vans.
    As Finn approaches the caravan with the barking dog, the dog becomes a floppy mess of excitement, no longer barking a warning but yelping in delight. She sniffs at me, just as wildly excited to lick my hand as she was to lick Finn’s.
    “You’re a rubbish guard dog,” I whisper, smiling as I crouch down in front of her.
    “Maisie.” He introduces her to me. “She belongs to Malachi, but he’s too pissed to care.” He speaks loudly, his tone sneering.
    Scratching the dog behind the ears, I look at the tatty, off-white van she is chained to and wonder if anyone is inside to hear him.
    The whole field is virtually silent apart from Maisie’s yaps.
    We move on, leaving Maisie straining against her chain.
    “Mine.” Finn grinningly points to a rounded little van set up on bricks near the edge of the semicircle. “Care to take a look?”
    My heart hammering like a wild gypsy song, I nod, trying to look casual but feeling a war beginning within me. I want him to be making small circles on my thigh again with his fingertips and at the same time want to run and run home to Jay and everything warm and known.
    Apprehensively I follow him inside the van, suddenly unsure whether the whole pretense of a job and meeting people was just that—a pretense to get me here—and if it was, I don’t think I want to be here at