‘And that leaves you unfulfilled and bitter?’
‘Yes...No...It’s more than that, Fires...Far more.’
‘Then tell me...’
‘I married Malik, probably out of gratitude because I saw it as my duty to repay him for the kindness of saving me and rescuing me from a life in the Bombay slums as a beggar...but I have learned over the years that this was wrong of me, silly of me...even though I eventually came to love him and to care for him...it was wrong.’
‘Why did you feel it was your duty?’
‘Because, back then, I was a silly little Hindi girl who thought that our out-dated traditions and beliefs were all important, and that it was the right thing to do, but now I know differently, see things differently, and I find it so frustrating.’
‘So, you are unhappy?’
‘Not unhappy as such...just unfulfilled, as you so succinctly put it, perhaps a little bitter too...But you’ve seen Malik. You know how he behaves around me...He dotes on me like a little puppy, but I don’t need a puppy...’
‘What do you want then?’
‘Right now...?’
‘Yes. If you could have anything right now, what would it be?’
‘It would be the secret pleasure I derived from knowing that I was vulnerable and naked when I was being watched whilst standing in the shower, and that a handsome young man’s eyes were drinking in my flesh, roving over my skin and that I could not prevent it.’
‘So, you weren’t offended?’
‘No...I was flattered by it, and to be blunt, excited by it too. Why do you think the front door was left unlocked? Why do you think the bathroom door was ajar? I loved having you staring at me...I wanted you to see me naked...Did it arouse you?’
‘Yes...’ he managed to squeeze the word out through a dry throat, ‘it aroused me very much...More than I expected.’
‘Me too, and being with you over the Christmas holiday and at the cricket ground has made me quite attracted to you, but I’m curious about the “more than I expected” part...is there something that I ought to know about you...?’
Fires opened the padlock on his inner memory chest and brought out the night of the fire, of Mohinder touching him, caressing him, arousing him and giving him oral pleasure, although he omitted the facts surrounding the deaths shortly afterwards.
Sulima listened to him intently as he carefully recounted the events and then she smiled.
‘So, you were worried that you may be a homosexual?’
He nodded,
‘It has occurred to me...’
Sulima said nothing, rose from the table, padded quickly around to him with her bare feet slapping against the polished wooden floor, then she took his hand and led him out of the dining room.
‘Come...’ she said.
She led him back up to the spare room,
‘Let us discover if Fires likes men or women.’
‘What about Malik?’
‘Malik likes women, of that I am certain...I want to know if you do too, and so do you.’
She pushed open the door and pulled him inside.
‘You know what I want,’ she whispered.
She nodded for him to enter, then closed the door and pressed her back against it, looking into his eyes.
Ever so slowly, she unfastened the bow at her waist and drew the belt apart, slipped out of the robe and was brazenly standing naked before him. Her eyes flashed defiance at him.
His arousal was immediate and demanding.
He was mesmerised by her as she approached, wrapping her long leg around him and pressing her soft warm lips to his.
The heat of her body next to him made him harder, and when she ran her hand lightly across the crotch of his trousers, he suddenly didn’t care what would happen next.
This felt far better than Mohinder, and far more natural to him.
She broke the embrace briefly to unbutton his shirt.
‘I think Fires does like women...and this woman likes the feel of his manly hardness against her,’ she giggled as she pulled the shirt from his shoulders and began to fumble with the clasp of his belt before her hands deftly undid his trousers and let them fall to the floor. She ran her nimble fingers gently over his smooth tanned chest, relishing the feeling of the strength in his youthful body.
A few light downy hairs surrounded the small Saint Christopher medallion that hung between his pectoral muscles and she fingered these lightly as his nipples became hard.
He stepped out of the trousers, slid them to one side with his foot as his hands began to explore her soft flesh, embracing her and pulling her tighter to him, cupping her pert firm breasts and feeling the hardness of the nipples rasping against his palm.
She led him to the bed where they lay together, and they embraced again, enjoying and exploring each other’s bodies with soft caresses and gentle fondling.
She urged him to lay back, to submit to her desire, and as he did so, her hands explored him fully. Down over his abdomen, feeling the puckered diagonal scar there, onwards, roaming over his thighs as she moved sinuously down the bed beside him, playing with the companion scar on his left thigh. She slid off his underwear as her mouth closed warmly around his firm young erection.
She toyed with it, savouring it, running her tongue down the shaft and then slowly back up to the tip before taking the full length of it back into her mouth. Her lips clamping firmly around its girth as her fingers stroked his scrotum, causing him to gasp with pleasure.
Her head began to move up and down rhythmically, and, briefly in his mind, he was back in Umgeni Road with Mohinder.
It was the night of the fire once more, and his passion a flame, but he banished this thought and quickly locked it back down in that memory chest.
Sulima was not Mohinder. She was much more.
As he ejaculated, she had not pulled away, but let him empty his essence into her mouth, swallowing his semen.
Then she was kissing his body, stroking him, embracing him and arousing him once more. He felt her hot skin sliding over his and he lay back and watched her, mesmerised and fascinated, as she adjusted her position so that her vagina was above him, wet and inviting, labia parted slightly. He had never seen a vagina in real life, and never up as close as this, and he was enthralled by it, so that when Sulima asked him to kiss it, he did not hesitate at all.
If he could make her feel as good as she had made him feel with her mouth, then he would do it gladly.
The taste of it surprised him a little, but Sulima encouraged and guided him, telling him where and when to lap at her and he heard her breathing starting to quicken. Frantic gasps escaped her lips as she rocked and began to grind her hips on him, her body pushing down harder for his eager mouth. Then finally she shuddered and moaned as the first spasm of sheer abandonment thrilled through her flesh and it made him smile.
She collapsed onto him, nestled down next to him and put her arm around his torso, pulling her body to his and wrapping it around him.
‘You will stay tonight and we will have sex soon...lots of it. Yes?’
‘Oh yes...and tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow is Sunday. It is the day of rest, both for us, and for the cricketers. You will go home, and on Monday morning we will go to another day of the test match together.’
‘What about us...I mean...’
She pressed her finger over his lips.
‘No. We have tonight, and that is all there will ever be. This is not love. It is not an affair and it can never become one. It is one night when I will satisfy my cravings, teach you how to give pleasure to a woman, and maybe prove to you that you are not a homosexual...’
‘But what if I want more than that?’
‘There can be no more than that, Fires. You must know that. After tonight, you and I will still be good friends, but we never speak of this, never think of this again...Is that clear...?’
‘Yes...perfectly clear,’ Fires sounded petulant.
‘Don’t sulk...Petulan
ce does not sit well with me and there will be other women for you, but tonight I will show you what women like me are willing to do for handsome young men like you...’
‘Thank you,’ he murmured lamely.
‘My pleasure...now kiss me again, Fires...you know where.’
The following morning, Henry Ibbotson was given a note by the hotel desk kaffir, who saw it poking out of the mailbox for room 15, as he hung up Henry’s key.
Henry was puzzled at first, but then he remembered Frank Emery from his old army days up in the Transvaal together and realised it must have been him. He hadn’t seen Frank since the pair returned home after the Second Boer War, and Henry’s retirement party.
If he remembered rightly, Frank had been at the do in Brighton, or was that George? No. It most definitely was Frank, because the silly young beggar had been out and bought him a huge bottle of bubbly to celebrate, not that he minded.
Henry left a reply with the desk clerk.
‘There should be a white chappie coming here to see me at some time today, or maybe tomorrow, but you just make sure that you give him this note, won’t you, young fella, eh?’
‘Yes, boss. I’ll make sure he gets it,’ was the clerk’s response.
‘There’s a good chap...’ Henry beamed and turned on his heels.
Fires peered from the veranda of the Rasool residence, looked up at the Sunday morning mists gathered over Natal, and then braved the desolation of the empty streets to drag his weary body back to his rented room.
He lay naked on top of his bed for a while, thinking of Sulima and the passionate night they had spent together.
He shook the images from his mind and slithered off the bed.
He strolled over to the bathroom, started the shower, felt at the water temperature, and then stepped under the jets. The pinpoint needles of hot water stung at his flesh and made him squint and shiver convulsively at the pressure, but it felt so good to have the rivulets of soothing liquid cascading over him.
The hotel shower was a luxury that not many other hotels boasted at that time, and he found it a novel experience.
He relaxed into the flow, letting his mind blank out everything but the images of Sulima, naked and hungry for him.
Her face flashed before him in his memory, full lips smiling, and dark hair framing that pretty face.
‘Lord,’ he thought, ‘she was damned gorgeous...’
Her breasts were so inviting and all of her curves were tormenting him with their allure...and he became aroused by the thought.
Oh, if only he could get his hands on her again, to have her here in the shower with him now and his mind would not stop tormenting him with this idea.
He began to soap himself, making his body slick with suds, closing his eyes and surrendering to the fantasy, as his hand closed around hardness and began conjuring up more visions, but because of his eagerness and excitement it ended far too abruptly as he ejaculated over himself, dripping his sticky semen onto the tiles and the floor of the cubicle, feeling slightly ashamed and deflated.
He watched as the water washed his milky clotted semen down the drain.
He envied Malik Rasool, and yet felt sad for him too.
Malik was married to her, but he could never give his wife what she really needed from a man.
Tomorrow Fires would be seeing Sulima again, and try to pretend that nothing happened between them. He would try his damnedest to concentrate on the cricket match, but knew deep inside that he would never be able to banish thoughts of her from his mind.
He would never be able to lock those experiences away.
He towelled his body dry, dressed quickly and went out for a walk in the sunshine before lunch, with Sulima still hammering around his head and an unbidden replay of their night of passion flashing before his eyes...
On Monday morning, he stayed in his bed until mid-morning and deliberately stood her up. He left her waiting impatiently at home on the porch for the carriage that would never come for her. He had made up his mind that it would be better for him never to see her again.
He could not and would not cope with the longing for her, and he would rather avoid her than have the torment of temptation.
He called into the hotel and picked up the note that Henry had left for him with the kaffir on reception, looked at it briefly, and then smiled as he thanked the desk clerk to exit onto the sunny main street, folding and tucking the small slip into his back pocket.
‘Brighton...’ he mused craftily, making his way back to the rented rooms that he called home.
Sulima waited for almost three quarters of an hour before realizing that he had decided not to accompany her. She was disappointed by him, but she understood what his motives might have been. She set off to the cricket ground on her own, twirling the parasol over her head as she strolled in the morning warmth, and occasionally thought distractedly of Fires and of their night together.
She watched the South Africans finish their second innings with White scoring a massive 118 runs, but even this failed to lift her mood, and she brooded and was listless throughout a game that ended with a final score of 171 for the loss of 4 wickets.
It irked her that he should have behaved this way, so much so that she decided that she would not tolerate it.
He had promised faithfully to Malik that he would accompany her, and he should be made to keep that promise, irrespective of how he felt about their night of lust.
Fires spent the rest of that afternoon studying and immersing his mind in his university work, snacking occasionally on biltong and beer and a few cheese sandwiches, scribbling furiously in his note pad. In the early evening there was a soft rapping at his door.
He ignored it.
The knocking was repeated and Sulima’s voice, though muffled by the heavy woodwork, was plain to recognise.
‘Fires, I know you’re in there. Open the door. We have to speak.’
‘Go away, Sulima. I’m busy.’
‘Are you really too busy to spare time for an old friend, eh?’
‘Damn her,’ he thought, ‘she’ll not go away until I see her.’
He paced to the door, slid the latch and opened it for her to enter.
‘It isn’t much, but it’s comfortable and I like to call it home...’ he said, as he gestured for her to enter.
Sulima wandered around the room, her eyes roving and appraising, her hands were constantly touching and examining things, lifting up the paperweights and some of his notebooks, checking surfaces for dust, before standing by the bed and facing him directly.
‘So...Are you going to sulk like a little boy now?’
‘I’m not sulking...I simply thought it better not to see you.’
‘Better not to fulfil your promise to Malik, eh? Better not to ensure that I go to Lord’s Cricket Ground, accompanied by a young man who was supposed to chaperone me...? And who has been given tickets by her husband to do so...?’
‘Yes...better not to be with Malik’s adulterous wife.’
‘That stung her,’ he mused, ‘let’s see how she handles that.’
She smiled affably.
‘You have a very wicked tongue, Janse Van Vuuren, but I prefer it when it is put to more pleasurable use...’
‘Don’t go there, Sulima Rasool. I do not want to discuss it.’
‘But we must.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there are still two days of the cricket match left to play, Fires, and you are going to be with me for them...How do you think it will look if you suddenly stop accompanying me? What do you think people will think?’
‘Let them think what they will...’
‘And if their wagging tongues send gossip flapping to the ears of my husband...?’
‘They won’t.’
‘How do you know? How can you be sure? I’d rather not take that chance, Fires. You will pick me up in the morning as usual for our carriage ride to watch the cricket...’
‘And if I don’t...?’
<
br /> She picked up a glass jar, held it to the light, ignoring him for the moment, watching the viscous liquid stick to the inside of the phial as she rolled it in her fingers, and then read the label.
‘Snake venom...? What do you have this for...?’
‘It’s a science project that I’m working on for university...research I’m doing...please, put it down.’
She replaced it gingerly on the table, disdain obvious in her face, and then her eyes locked with his as she answered his question.
‘You will be there...because I want you to be there.’
‘But if I don’t...?’ Fires rasped petulantly.
‘Then Malik Rasool finds out just what a cad you are and how you took advantage of me whilst he was away...’
Her eyebrows arched in defiance as she watched this morsel sink home, before she continued,
‘...and my husband is bound to believe me, because I know where the scars are located on the body of the bounder who seduced me, used me for his own vile satisfaction, and his poor distraught wife can describe in detail what the philanderer looks like naked...’
‘You wouldn’t...’
‘Oh, I would...but let’s not have this unpleasantness between us, please...I think it would be much better for us both if you just saw things from my perspective and did as you were told...who knows, Fires, you might even find that you enjoy it again...’
She made for the door, and as Fires was about to open it for her, her hand closed around his on the handle, her eyes stared straight into his as her free hand, lightly stroked over his crotch...
‘Yes...’ she purred, ‘You might find that you enjoy it again...very much.’
Then her lips brushed quickly over his as she pulled open the door and slid out onto the hallway landing, smiling and waving to him as she departed.
He watched her leave and then closed the door, strode back across the room and peered out at her on the street below through his window. He slumped down heavily on the edge of his bed.
Billy (Hunger Book 2) Page 5