Jack realised he’d got lost the third time around the inner expressway, as he passed once again the squat, redbrick shape of an old factory building now converted into a set of high-rent apartments. He cursed the road ahead, unable to switch lanes because of a grey Volkswagen on his inside and a blue flatbed on his outside. The gaping maw of an underpass sucked him in once again as orange roof lights cast the dashboard into a sickly glow. The colour made his skin crawl with formless shadows. Jack’s eyes rested momentarily on the GPS, sitting mute in the bottom corner of his windscreen. A lot of good it had done him as he fired a curse at the unchanging map of the city. On the road, the Volkswagen shot ahead, cutting in front of Jack, giving him a space to drop into as the underpass curved to the right.

Jack saw the pull-in appear, a hundred yards ahead, red signs warning that only official vehicles should use it. He didn’t care. Jack braked hard, swerving into the service lane, catching a glimpse of a doorway to his right as the car stopped. Traffic continued to race by, rocking his vehicle as Jack reached into the glove compartment. He knew that buried under all the crap that had accumulated he should find an A to Z map book of the city. The car shook again at the passage of a truck. Jack sat up, head aching, as he realised how stifling and hot the vehicle had become. He stared forward, unable to see daylight, wondering how the fuck he’d ended up sitting in a concrete tube at three in the afternoon.

The knocking on the passenger window made him jump, his pulse racing. He looked across to see a young woman bending down and smiling at him. She waggled her fingers in greeting and made a wind-down-your-window gesture. Jack fumbled for the button, still trying to steady his jangling nerves, and buzzed down the window.

‘Lost?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Jack nodded, his dry mouth making speech difficult.

‘Found,’ she said. Her accent was local but edged with a trace of something Jack couldn’t quite identify.

Jack tried to guess her age. At first glance, with her pale, almost translucent skin and hair cut in an irregular pattern that didn’t reach her shoulders, she looked like a teen. His first thought, hooker, and then, drug addict. Why else would she be down in the underpass with nothing but traffic for company?

Another volley of vehicles swept through the tunnel. Jack could taste their exhaust fumes, but the girl kept staring at him, ignoring the traffic as if it weren’t there. She was pretty, in a malnourished way, and on closer inspection was somewhere in her twenties. Jack found himself staring at her longer than he should because she stirred something in him that filled his throat with emotion. The girl smiled, amused by his inspection, and then stood, walking away from the car, along a narrow footway protected from the road by an iron railing barrier, to the door Jack had seen from the corner of his eye.

Jack heard himself sigh as he watched her walk. She wore ankle boots, black tights, and denim shorts that moulded to her sweet ass like a second skin. Beneath her denim jacket he'd seen a white T-shirt with a blue logo for some punk band and a boyish figure that Jack suddenly wanted to see revealed. He shook his head, trying to clear the images that bounced through his mind. She reached a door painted a dull grey; the only splash of colour was a red sign saying Authorised Personnel Only. The girl looked over her shoulder as she twisted the heavy-duty door handle, inviting him to join her. Jack sat, unmoving, patting the steering wheel in time to his racing heart. She turned in the doorway and crooked a finger to pull him in like a fish on a lure.

Jack went to her, hurrying across the oil-stained concrete of the service road. As he reached the door, another burst of traffic went by. The door slammed shut behind him, sealing off the noise of the underpass. He entered a narrow corridor formed of smooth concrete that ended in a set of steps rising to another featureless door.

The girl waited for him at the bottom step. She leaned on one shoulder against the wall, arms folded, smiling as he approached her. The corridor stank of oil and engine fumes, but beneath that smell rested something else, perfume and spices that teased Jack’s senses. When he got to her, she turned, hips swinging, taking the steps one at a time. Jack’s eyes zeroed in on her pert ass as she reached the top and looked back at him.

‘Do you want to come through?’ She worded her question in a way that made Jack frown.

‘Why? What’s on the other side?’

‘My world,’ she said, and opened the door.

Jack followed her through and walked into a soft breeze that carried the scent of lemon and honeysuckle. He stared around him, not at another concrete room but a garden lined by low trees and shrubs bordered by a moss-covered brick wall. The girl strolled along a gravel path that wound between beds of lavender and rose. At the centre of it all stood a fountain and pool. Jack looked around. He couldn’t see any high-rise buildings that crowded this part of the city, nor could he hear any traffic noise, which he put down to the garden walls acting as a sound barrier. It disoriented him. He should be able to see the cityscape, but couldn’t. Jack followed the girl to the fountain, stopping beside her and loosening his tie as he realised the garden formed a suntrap. The pool water looked calm and inviting, and the sound of the fountain made him remember his thirst. He licked his dry lips and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

The girl looked down into the pool, where water lilies lay like soup plates, giving shade to the slow-moving shapes of koi carp. The carved figures of the statue occupying the fountain's centre caught Jack’s attention. He felt his mouth drop open in shock. Jack didn’t consider himself a prude, but the sight of the statues, a man and a woman, carved in all their exquisite naked arousal, made him look away in embarrassment. It felt like being a voyeur. The artist had rendered the moment of the male subject’s orgasm perfectly as the female knelt before him holding his erect cock to her lips.

The girl brushed against him as she moved away from the pool towards a stone bench. A sudden surge of lust rushed through Jack; her deliberate contact rolled her body across his as she went in front of him. Jack cursed himself for being too slow to reach and touch her in return. He glanced at the carvings again, more prepared to study them and felt his cock harden at the erotic quality of the work. The girl had sat on a nearby bench, knees sedately together as Jack slipped off his suit jacket and pulled off his tie. The sun beat down onto him and reflected off the path. He’d begun to feel dizzy and knew he should sit beside her before he passed out.

‘Jack Cole,’ she spoke for the first time since entering the garden. Jack looked at her in surprise when he heard his name and saw her with a wallet, reading from a driver’s licence. Jack patted his suit and stared at her as she flicked through a series of credit cards.

‘Did you take that off me?’ he asked, still patting at his clothing in the vain hope she’d not picked his pocket.

She smiled. Jack walked to her. He stayed on his feet and stared down at her, angry but unable to forget the touch of her body against his.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You know my name, but I don’t know yours.’

‘Bec.’ She parted her legs, gazing at him with a severe expression as the shape of her body within the shorts drew in his gaze like a magnet.

‘Like in Rebecca?’

‘No. Just Bec.’ She studied a snapshot of Jack’s kids, which made him feel a pang of shame and guilt, because here he stood, in a strange garden, with a pretty girl, a hard-on and the growing desire to fuck her.

He sat heavily beside Bec, wishing they were in the shade rather than full sun. Bec put the wallet down between them.

‘Do you like my garden?’ she asked.

‘Is it yours?’ he looked around in surprise.

‘I live here.’ She gestured at their surroundings with one hand resting on his thigh. Jack felt himself tremble with anticipation. He continued to study the garden, trying to be casual about her closeness and touch. He noticed more statues scattered throughout the borders and beds, each set featuring two figures. His eyes settled on the nearest, the carving of a woman, who was naked and kneeling with her thighs spread wide. One hand cupped a breast whilst the other lay hidden between her legs as a man watched her. Jack frowned and stood, walking across gravel and grass to stand before the statue. Up close, he could see how the sculptor had perfectly defined every curve of the woman’s figure. Jack stared at the way her fingers plunged into the folds of her cunt. His eyes rose to the statue’s face, head flung back in ecstasy, captured so perfectly that he could almost hear her cry of delight.

For a moment, time stood still. Jack could feel his cock thrusting down one trouser leg, but it wasn’t that that held his attention. He looked from the statue to Bec. Her lips twitched in amusement. Jack walked to the fountain, studying the face of the woman making her lover come. Then he half-ran to another statue. This one showed a man taking his lover from behind. She was on all fours, her face reflecting the power of the cock as it entered her. Jack recognised the statue. He went back to where Bec waited.

‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘All of the women. They’re you.’

She nodded and stood, putting her hands on her hips. ‘That’s right.’

Jack looked around again. Half of him wanted to go to every plinth and study each set of carvings, and the other half wanted Bec. She made up his mind for him by taking his hand. Jack found he was shaking, his heart racing.

‘Do you want to?’ she asked, and her lips glistened in the sun as her tongue stole out to wet them. Jack felt himself sway, and before he knew it, he kissed her, Bec’s hand coming around his neck to tangle in his hair. Jack was panting, and Bec was smiling when their lips parted. She pointed to the corner of the garden. Jack wondered how he hadn’t seen the summer house before. A laurel tree shaded the white painted frames of the hexagonal building—the glass between the frames lined by fabric blinds to add more shade. In the domed ceiling, a five-bladed fan turned lazily and soothed Jack with a cool breeze as he followed Bec inside.

Black and white parquet tiles gave the floor a chessboard effect. Cushions and pillows lay in random heaps on the floor. Bec kicked her way through the cushions before turning to face him. Jack had stopped just inside the door. The cool interior of the summer house made his head spin again, and he felt his heart skipping beats as Bec lifted her top up and over her head. Her breasts were small, mere mounds upon her ribcage, tipped by soft pink nipples. She looked so fragile and so sexy that Jack didn’t want to move until she unbuttoned her shorts and pushed them and her tights down her slim thighs. She was naked beneath them; her pussy covered by the merest hint of hair that invited Jack to kiss the dark outline of her labia.

He went to her, stumbling on cushions, stripping off his shirt and pants as she lay back, arching herself to show how ready she was. Jack fell upon her, his cock pressing into Bec’s smooth stomach as he showered her face and neck in kisses. He felt her hands on his back, and then on his hips, pushing him down so that his cock nestled into the warm embrace of her thighs. Jack lifted himself, gazing into her hungry eyes as one hand slipped between them and guided him to the moist touch of her cunt. Jack felt her resistance, the tight grasp of her outer lips, before he entered her warmth and felt her body tremble beneath him.

Bec’s head went back, her neck exposed for him to kiss again as he thrust his cock deep into her. Her arms were around his shoulders, her legs hooked at his waist, and her body open. Jack couldn’t resist the urgent need to come, the heat that built in his cock and made him fuck her hard, Bec’s body bucking to meet him. Jack felt, for a moment, as if they were one, meant for each other, melding together in a fire of flesh and bone as he came. Bec gasped a half-shout that caught in her throat and sounded so familiar to Jack that his heart leapt. She curled her body around him, drawing Jack down onto her and the cushions, smothering his face upon her taut breasts and grinding her cunt upon his cock.

Jack lay in Bec’s arms, sliding upon the silky sweat of her flesh as his cock slipped from her body. She moved beneath him, sinuous waves that glided him further down her frame until his face nestled against the pouting lips of her sex, and he tasted his seed and her fluid with his tongue. Bec whimpered, her knees drawn up to offer herself. Jack parted the dark folds of flesh, exposing her swollen clit that throbbed to the beat of her heart. He set up a rhythm with the tips of tongue and finger and watched in rapt fascination as her body opened, her orgasm making her cunt gape with flowing ripples that sucked his fingers into her heat.

Bec caught his hair, pulling Jack up until his face levelled hers. She kissed him, her eyes glittering with lust, as her free hand snaked down to take hold of his cock. They lay side by side, still kissing, Jack cupping her ass and pulling Bec close as she stroked his cock until he became hard again. Jack began to pant at the feelings within the base of his cock grew in intensity. He groaned in frustration as Bec released him. Jack rose above her, his cock hot on the flesh of her stomach as Bec’s hands glided down to her cunt. Jack felt his mouth go dry as she opened herself, three fingers thrusting into her gaping hole. Jack grasped his cock, masturbating to the same rhythm of her hand as she finger fucked a cunt that made soft, wet noises to her movements.

Bec orgasmed, and Jack wasn’t far behind. She writhed beneath him; skin flushed, nipples hard. Jack pumped swiftly on his cock as she whispered his name. He rose to his knees, leaning over Bec as the jagged rush of his orgasm spattered come onto her breasts and throat. Bec shouted, doubling up beneath him, her face so close to his cock that Jack brushed more come onto her cheeks. He slumped beside her slim form, unfocused eyes suddenly fixing on her fingers as she scooped his come up to her lips. Jack watched as she tasted him, and then she rolled close, lips and tongue still coated in his seed, to kiss him. Salt filled his mouth as her tongue danced against his. Jack rolled onto his back, Bec above him, straddling him. He held her hips, feeling the wet thrust of her cunt on his thigh. Slowly, Bec began to ride his muscle, grinding her flesh into his. He saw the flashes of passion in her eyes before she closed them in the rush of another orgasm, bucking upon him until her energy drained away in a tumble of uncontrolled limbs.

They lay beside each other, Bec whimpering as Jack stroked her cunt, unable to resist both her and the lust that filled him. He found her clit again, swollen and exposed between damp lips, and rotated his finger upon the tip. Bec jumped in his arms, clung to him, scratched him and finally came in a gush of fluid that soaked Jack’s hand. Jack gave her no chance to rest. He grew hard again and desperate to fuck her, the need to take her burning in his bloodstream. Jack rolled Bec over, feasting his gaze on her slim ass and pulling her hips up so that he could push cushions under her to form the perfect shape. Her thighs parted in anticipation, cunt open and still leaking her last orgasm. Jack held his cock, enjoying the view, when Bec’s hands appeared, cupping her ass and pulling the cheeks apart. He saw the puckered entrance to her anus and then heard her say.

‘Fuck me there.’

In a trance, Jack leant into her, her body resisting the crown of his cock. Bec screamed as he entered her, a tight clutch of flesh that almost folded Jack as he forced deeper with a series of wild thrusts of his hips. Bec’s pelvis heaved upward. Jack felt her come again as the ripple of her muscles on his cock electrified his whole body. He grasped her hips, resting his full weight upon her small frame. Bec sobbed and shouted as Jack came into her with a hot flow of liquid.

Jack lay in a daze, the sun's heat touching him again through the glazing and blinds of the summer house. His eyes went to the garden and the statues. He thought for a moment that he was hallucinating, for the sculptures were moving. Each couple were together, fucking and sucking, their features creased with stark pleasure. Jack got to his feet, mesmerised by the sight, and stumbled outside. The carvings made no sound, but each transmitted utter joy at their completed act. Jack watched a female gently suck a male to orgasm, his eyes going from the image of Bec’s face to the man’s. Jack’s heart skipped a beat. He recognised the man.

The statue had Jack’s face, his body, his cock.

Looking around, Jack stumbled to the next plinth, and again he saw himself with Bec. This time she rode him with her head thrown back in ecstasy. Another plinth, and once more, he saw Jack and Bec at the point of orgasm. Jack ran on, barely conscious of the stones on the path that dug into the soles of his feet. Everywhere he looked, he saw the truth. Jack fell to his knees, flashes of light filling his head in a strobe-like burst, blinding him to the garden.

His flesh burned, not just from the sun overhead but from the heat of Bec’s lovemaking. He ran to the summer house. Bec is still lying on the floor, her pale form doll-like in its stillness. Jack couldn’t breathe; his heart hammered at the thought of the statues. Jack felt his sanity stretch to breaking point. It must be the sun or the sex or both. Maybe she drugged him when he wasn’t looking. He pushed away from her as she rolled over and sat up. He grabbed his clothes and scrambled out of the door. He stopped on the grass to dress, watching her watch him through the windows of the summer house. Jack ran across the garden, seeking the doorway out. He found it and lunged into the cool of the corridor, not questioning how he could now be enclosed when the garden was so open.

He ran into the shadowed darkness, where the overhead lights didn’t reach. He ran and ran and only slowed when he realised the corridor seemed never-ending. When he had arrived with Bec, it had only been ten or twenty paces? He stopped and looked back into the gloom, suddenly struck by disorientation that made him reach out and touch the wall for support. He took a hesitant step one way and then turned back, walking at first and then running with a scream bubbling at the back of his throat into a funnel of darkness.

The door appeared abruptly, shocking him. Jack slowed, hesitant again, reaching out to turn the handle and look out into the garden he had fled. Shaking, Jack went out into the sunlight. Bec stood by the fountain. She wore her T-shirt and nothing else, rising to meet him from the bench where she had sat. Jack couldn’t stop his gaze from going down to the exposed shape of her pussy.

‘I’m lost,’ he said. ‘I need to get out of here. I need to get home.’

‘Always the lost,’ she spoke so quietly that Jack had to lean forward to hear.

Jack looked at the nearest statue. He looked away when he saw it was still his image copulating with Bec.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘Life,’ she said.

Bec turned, walking away from him, her ass on display beneath the hem of her top. Jack followed, feeling weaker now. He wanted to escape, and at the same time, he wanted to fuck her again. Jack wanted to fuck her ass and her cunt, and he wanted to come over her face. He had to stop himself from leaping on her as she paused beside another plinth, this one empty.

‘Do you want me?’ She asked.

‘Yes,’ Jack nodded, his hands moving towards her.

‘Forever?’

It was a strange phrase to use. Jack frowned, hearing a voice warning him not to, but unable to prevent himself from reaching out. Her hand came to meet his—the briefest of contacts that made Jack leap in shock at the ice-cold touch of her flesh. A shadow, like giant wings, lifted around her, engulfing him. Jack fell into the shade and instantly felt his body transported, swept up and then dropped.

Jack knelt, unmoving, gazing at Bec as she lay upon cushions of stone, pulling the cheeks of her ass apart, his cock about to enter her. His body held a chill that numbed his heart and fear, too—a dread uncertainty of his surroundings. Only slowly did he come to understand where he was. What he was.

Forever.

The word echoed through the stone of his head. Beside the plinth, on the path, Bec looked up at Jack, admiring the form the statues took. He could see her from the corner of his unmoving eyes. The question formed in his head and could go no further, but she seemed to understand.

‘I am the garden and the city,’ she said. ‘I was the river and the forest before men came, and I feed on the energy of the life that grows around me. You are not the first, you will not be the last. One day I will return with another lost traveller and on that day I will free your soul to continue its journey.’

Jack’s marble eyes watched Bec walk away, vanishing into the summer house. The sun moved through the sky, and his sculpture cast shadows across the garden. At his knees her ass called to him, but Jack couldn’t move, nor could he cry or scream. All he could do was wait for the day that Bec freed him.