Seeing the stark need in his eyes is an incredible thrill. Jackson wants me. Needs me.
But then the hunger in his eyes is replaced with something else. Something deeper and more intense. He stops what he’s doing.
“Before we do this. Before we go any further. I want to be clear.”
I’m trying not to curse with frustration. Stop now? Can’t we talk later? “Yes, anything you want. Anything you say. Let’s talk about it later. After.” I try to kiss him again. But he stops me.
“No. I can’t do this until we get this straight.” He leans back into the sofa and looks up at me. “This. You. Me. Us. This isn’t a holiday thing. Or a casual thing. Or whatever other words you used to describe it. I want more Scarlet. This doesn’t end here in Samoa. I have to go home but I want to see you again.”
“You do?” I ask stupidly. Really? Why?
Jackson smiles. It’s all for me and it’s beautiful. “Yes. And I’m not going to keep pretending in front of your family that we aren’t lovers. I know we have to be careful here and follow certain protocols according to Samoan culture, but I’m going to tell everyone that we’re dating.”
“We are?” I say, even more stupidly than before.
His face darkens and there’s a hint of questioning in his eyes. “Unless I have it all wrong and you don’t want us to take this further? Because there’s nothing I want more right now than to take you into that bedroom and make love to you, but I can’t do casual with you. I don’t want to do casual with you.”
“You don’t?” I am a broken record with this man and his declarations right now. “No casual?”
“No casual.” Again the grin and the Jason Momoa eyebrow action has my insides – and outsides- incinerating with so much I WANT YOU fire. “I want your family to know about us. Your friends. Your aunties back in Vegas. Everyone who’s important to you. I’d like to meet them.”
Oh shit.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I say. “Let’s agree we’re dating but we can keep it between us.” Problem solved, right? I move against him, just a little, hoping to get him back to the truly important things in life. Like us getting our freak on. Now. Now. Now. I want him to touch me so bad that I am faint with the longing. I have never contemplated tying anyone up but I might be tempted if this man doesn’t hurry up and take us to third base.
Again he stops me. This time wrapping his arms around me so I am encircled in his embrace, velvet bands of steel. The coconut rough grate of his voice whispering against my ear, sends tugging’s of wired heat through me.
“Scarlet, you will tell your family about us. You will give us a real chance.”
My frizz of wild hair has burst free of it’s bun, exuberantly joining the party that is Scar’s rainforest of sin. I pull away and peek out at him from behind a tangle of hair. “And if I say no?”
He is trying to gauge how serious I am. Then his eyes narrow. “Then we don’t do this.” He releases me and folds his arms in front his chest. There is a lazy drawl to his voice as he says, “Are you ashamed of me?”
“Of course not! I adore every delicious divine inch of you.” I pounce, capturing his mouth with mine. An eager searching kiss. He responds with a fierceness that equals my own and I am triumphant. Yes! I win. Enough with this needless talking-talking-talking! I move against him, grinding because I just can’t help it.
He groans. Jackson actually groans. A rough ragged sound that tells me he wants this as much as I do. That’s when he says, “We aren’t doing this here.”
We aren’t?
He tucks his arms around me and stands, lifting me like I’m cotton candy and not the sack of taro that I am. I yelp as I instinctively wrap my legs around him and hang on tight. “Put me down! I’m too heavy. You’re going to break your back.”
He ignores me and doesn’t pause as he carries me to the bedroom. The bed is huge. Crisp white sheets in the afternoon sunlight that streams in through the glass panelled doors. He lays me down and then pulls his shirt up and over his head. There it is, the broad expanse of contoured muscle and ridged abs, the obliques that play a starring role in my fantasies. I smile. Then a frown as I think of the bitchy receptionist. The awful image flashes across my mind, of her standing outside, giving me the grand middle finger of disapproval as she calls for Security to come escort my skanky ho ass out of their fancy hotel.
“What is it?” asks Jackson.
“The curtains. Can you shut them?”
A wolfish grin as he complies. “Okay, but you are not hiding anything from me.” He pushes a button on the remote and dim lights chase away the dark shadows. “I want to see all of you while we’re making love.”
“I kinda don’t want you to. Do you have to?”
“Yes.” He advances towards the bed and I sit up on my elbows, watching him.
He unbuckles his belt and drops his shorts, kicking them to the side. He’s not wearing any briefs and I’m staring at the size of him. There is no denying that he is very happy to see me.
There’s a wild gleam in his eyes as he moves through the shadows towards the bed. I look up at him and it seems even the very air in the room is delicious with anticipation. I reach for him but he stills me with a taut command. “Lie back.”
I obey. Because when a naked Jackson tells you to lie back, you do it. At this point I think I would lie on a bed of millipedes if he told me to.
He kneels, trails a delicate frolic of kisses along my thighs, casting a web of electric sinnet that has me caught, poised in anticipation but also reluctance. The other times had been urgent, risky, time-sensitive driven encounters and here now, everything is deliberate. Planned. Suddenly, I’m shy. He gently parts my legs that now, are unsure about giving him access. Because now there’s time and space for him to really see how fat I am. My scars. My everything.
But then in the dim light, I hear him murmur, “So beautiful Scarlet. So perfect. I’ve been wanting so bad to taste you again.”
He hooks his broad arms around my upright legs. The first lick of his tongue is scorching fire, burning away any shyness. The second banishes any remnant of unsureness. Then he settles into a rhythm, slow, sensual and decadent. Light hot licks of delight. Like we have all the time in the world and he never wants to stop.
I’m not worrying any more about bitchy receptionists reporting me to security. Or what my aunties will say if a faikala taxi driver tells them he saw me visiting a man’s hotel room. My hands are on his head now, fingers threaded thru his hair, caressing him, urging him on.
I’m making awfully loud whimpering sounds now, but I don’t care. Because there’s liquid chocolate running in my veins and a building crescendo of joyful sound, rushing, pulsing and building – with each expert lick and thrust.
And then he stops. What? Why?
I half sit up and he looks up at me with a wicked grin. “This is on. We are dating. We tell your family.”
For a moment I am confused, because good licking can have that effect on a person. “Wait, what? You’re not serious?!”
He nods. Then moves to hold himself above me, with his legs on either side of me. “No more hiding. No more sneaking around. Repeat after me Scarlet.”
He is doing delicious things with his mouth again. A trail of deliciousness from my neck to my breasts where he settles in with a murmur of appreciation.
“That’s not fair Jackson,” I gasp. “You’re torturing me into saying yes!” I thread my fingers through his hair, clutching at silken handfuls, savouring the magic he wreaks everywhere.
Again he stops. This time to ask, “And is it working?”
This is nuts. He’s nuts. Of course we can’t tell my family that we’re ‘dating’. Samoans don’t date for fuck’s sake. And no amount of the most heavenly licking of the most sensitive parts of me is going to change that.
But then I’m not thinking any more because my whisper thin control snaps and I’m a blazing shuddering mess. And he’s holding me in his arms, murmu
ring sweet delicious things in my ear as I shatter.
Some time later, it could be minutes, it could be an hour, I am looking up at him as he lies next to me propped up on one elbow.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Round one,” he says with that wicked grin. “Are you ready for round two? I am. But!” He turns serious. “I want to hear you say it. We go public. And you will let me take you out when we’re back stateside.”
This beautiful man doesn’t get it. No woman with half a brain, ‘goes public’ with a man in Samoa, unless they’re a certain level of serious. Take Naomi for example. She narrowly escaped being tagged a paumuku with her assorted ‘public dates’ because she had actually gotten engaged to two of them. Before Troy. So what if that meant everyone talked behind her back about having two broken hearted fiances? Besides, she was married now so that wiped her sins clean. How could Jackson and I ever be anything more than this? This wild, amazing, great sex connection we had going on? I still wasn’t sure why he was wasting his time on me, but I fully expected him to wake up to his foolishness the minute he landed back in the US. I was preparing myself for that but in the meantime, did I really want all my cousins and aunties and sisters and nephews and nieces to know about him? To bear eventual witness to my heartbreak and shame when Jackson ended it with me?
But then he slides deep inside and it feels so good, so right, so perfect that all my Very Good Reasons for keeping us secret, suddenly seem like fluff in the wind. He thrusts again and I groan, a ragged gasping sound in the whirling storm of delight, the Category Five called Jackson Emory. I am arching my back, urging him on, desperately trying to hold on to that cliffside edge he is rushing me towards – when he stops. Poised above me, a hand fisted in my thick tangle of hair. His eyes sear me with their intensity.
“Say it Scarlet. Say yes to me. To us.”
And all the reasons why I should say no are swept away before the storm.
I spend the next two days with Jackson and they are glorious. My mother calls asking where I am and I lie and tell her I’m staying at Tamarina’s to help with the children. Beyonce messages WHERE ARE YOU and I tell her that I’m home sick with the flu. Tamarina texts me MOTHER IS LOOKING FOR YOU. I text back, IM WITH BEYONCE. DON’T WORRY.
Lies. And I don’t even feel bad. I don’t worry about my eternal damnation because I’m too busy savouring Jackson.
We make love. Again and again. And then again. We order room service. He feeds me cheesecake and slices of mango, and does things with whipped cream that were surely never included in any recipe books anywhere. Delicious, sweet, sticky and messy things. Then he carries me to the shower where he proceeds to remove all the evidence. Slowly. I used to read about shower sex and be doubtful, because how could it possibly work in such a slippery wet and steamy small space? Jackson shows me how wrong I was. Oh so very wrong. I also learn important things about in-the-Jacuzzi sex. On the sofa sex. And take-turns-to-tie-each-other-up sex.
We talk and laugh and talk some more, late into the night. I am famished because lots of good sex will do that to a person. Make you incredibly, happily hungry. We order more food. Over pizza he tells me about life growing up with his foster brothers, the parents who eventually adopted them all. He has me laughing uproariously with stories of how he met Troy at college and all their adventures since. He knows enough about my family so I tell him about Nina and our shared life in Vegas. My writing, how excited I was to sign with a literary agent and to now have two of my books optioned for film.
“They may not come to anything,” I explain, “an option is no guarantee they will ever make a movie, but it’s exciting anyway.” I frown. “Part of me hopes they don’t make a movie though, because then my parents will really find out what kind of books I’m writing. Ouch.”
He doesn’t dismiss my worries with platitudes about ‘Oh just don’t worry about them…you’re a grown woman and don’t need your parent’s approval anymore…’
No, he knows too much about me and our Samoan culture for him to give me advice like any random palagi would. Instead his eyes are soft as he reaches out to caress my cheek. A soft, lingering touch as he cradles my face in his hands. “You’ve come so far with your writing and you’ll know when the time is right for your family to know more. I’m so in awe of you no matter what. A book deal and film options? My girlfriend is kickass amazing!”
I grin. I can’t help it. “Girlfriend huh?” I fake a look around. “Where?”
His answer is to gently push me back against the sheets so he can kneel above me, holding me captive. A hot kiss at the base of my throat. The rasp of his tongue along the skin of my neck and shoulder as he murmurs, “Right here. She’s my prisoner.”
“Oh really? What are you going to do with your prisoner?”
“Anything and everything that I want,” he growls as he pins my arms above my head.
The promise sends a thrill of heat through me and I throw my head back and lose myself to the joy that is Jackson Emory. And when we are content, I fall asleep in his arms. Replete. Safe. Happy.
I never want to go home. But I have to eventually. Back to reality. I can’t lie forever that I’m at Tamarina’s and looking after the children, even though I want to!
It’s 6am when I get home. Cousin Siaosi and his little brother are already half-done with making the saka, fanning the smoke away from their sweaty faces. Cousin gives me a knowing look.
“I hope it was worth it girl!” he whispers with a cheeky grin.
I can’t stop the big smile in my face, so I give him the finger before I go inside. The boys laugh quietly in the dawn.
So this is what ‘walking on air’ feels like. I’m floating as I unlatch the back door and tip toe inside the kitchen. I should go upstairs immediately and fake sleep before anyone else catches me, but I’m hit with a sudden stab of hunger so fierce that I almost stumble in my tracks. If I don’t eat NOW, I’m going to die dammit!
I guess having four orgasms in one night will do that to a girl.
Praise Jesus for Aunty Filomena, there’s a pot of chop-suey leftovers in the fridge and umu breadfruit in the sefe. The chop-suey is cold and the breadfruit is dry, but I don’t care. I had wild sex all night and everything tastes like cake and ice-cream to me now.
I’m grinning to myself as I shovel chop-suey in my mouth, when Mother’s voice from the doorway, has me freeze mid-swallow.
“Where have you been?”
I turn. “What do you mean?” I stall.
For a moment I am five years old all over again and dreading Mother’s temper, the hot sting of the salu on my legs. I flashback over a lifetime of scriptures and #goodGirl preaching. Shame and guilt tattooed on my soul. I think of all the wickedly delicious things I just did with Jackson and I burn with shame and guilt.
Mother advances. “You’ve been gone for two days. But I looked for you at your sister’s house and you weren’t there. Where were you? Who with? Where is your respect? Where is your love for your aiga?” Her lip curls as she looks me up and down with disgust.
I should deny. Lie. Cry. Apologise. Then deny, lie, cry and apologise some more.
But I don’t. I can’t.
I raise my head up high and speak truth. “I was with my boyfriend.” Okay, so I stumble over the word B O Y F R I E N D, but hey, I say it. Give me a medal for bravery.
Mother flinches. Then she launches herself at me, flailing, slapping and hitting. Screaming (but quietly so the neighbors don’t hear), “Paumuku! Whore.”
At first I let the blows rain on me. A lifetime of conditioning requires it. But then I break and grab her hands. “No. Stop it.”
It’s shock more than anything else that stops her. Shock that I have dared to answer back. I push her away and walk to the other side of the kitchen, putting the table between us.
“I won’t let you hit me. Yes I’m your daughter, but I’m thirty years old and you don’t get to make me small anymore.”
The shock on her f
ace almost makes me laugh. Almost.
“What’s happened to you?” she demands. “I didn’t teach you to be like this. Where is your respect? You have no gratitude. No alofa. No love for your family, your parents.” The look of condemnation on her face would have made the old Scarlet, cringe and break into a thousand pieces. But not now. Not this time.
My voice is calm and sure. “Of course I love my family and I will always be grateful to you my parents for everything you have done for me. But I’m not a child anymore and I won’t let you treat me like one.”
Her lip curls in a sneer. “You will always be a child! A spoilt, foolish, ungrateful child. You bring nothing but shame to this family. Why can’t you be like your sisters?”
Not that again. I stop myself from a weary eye-roll. “I love each of my sisters. We are all quite different. I wish you wouldn’t try to compare and make us compete against each other all the time.” I’m trying to hold fast to reason and calmness. No matter how psycho my mother gets, I will not be swept into her particular waterfall of crazy.
Well that’s what I tell myself anyway, until she advances on me and comes around the table, determined. I know that look on her face. She may not be brandishing a salu, but she’s got fasi on her mind.
“Stop this,” I say firmly. “This is stupid. Why can’t we sit down and talk, have a proper conversation, like adults?”
She gives me another look of disgust. She is shaking with rage. “Don’t bring those palagi ways here. But then, you were always like that. A bad girl. I tried. We all tried, but you never listened. And it’s us your family who pay the price for your selfish actions. Even from a young age you were a bad girl. Getting pregnant.”
Now I’m losing it. “If we’re going to talk about bad behaviour, let’s talk about yours. What kind of mother are you anyway? I got pregnant because I was raped. What kind of mother punishes her child for something that wasn’t her fault? How many times do I have to tell you? How was that my being a bad girl?”
This is new ground. Never have my mother and I spoken to each other like this. Never have we laid bare so many broken pieces of things long left buried. I hardly know myself. And my Mother also. I have only ever seen her this distraught once before. That afternoon many years ago when Father confronted us in his study.
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