Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  Already I was starting to be in more of an up mood, because I like the country round there. I always get a feel of the desert beginning far to the south and the pine forests running out. Agaves start appearing at the road edge and the grass grows scrubby. There’s a smell of alcachofa in the air, and the ocean – that great big sapphire ocean. It was a desert-hot day anyways, even for those parts, and my windows were full down. The breeze was coming in like a grain dryer.

  She smiled a broad easy smile that made her look even younger as I pulled my old Mustang over. I went a little beyond just to tease her. I could see her in the mirror giving me a “Huh, smart ass” kind of look. Boy, she looked great in that thin strawberry cotton, blowing all around her thighs. I was already opening the door as she walked forward, bending down to see in.

  “Hi, you going anywhere near Santa Barbara?” She looked me straight in the eye in a very deliberate way and fixed me over her sunglasses.

  I could see without really trying that she had nothing under the jacket. Just one button done up to stop it all going on display. Her perky little breasts were beautiful, hanging in shadow. Her reddish-fair hair was tousled, quite curly; she’d been standing in the wind for a while and I just thought right there and then she was the most natural-looking girl I’d seen in a long time. No make-up, no fancy lacy stuff, just a raw beauty. She had great hips, I could tell from the way the breeze tightened the cloth across them.

  “Barbara’s where I’m heading,” I lied. Route 101 beckoned. The job could go to hell. I didn’t know what I was going to follow through with, but the pure instinct of the words just nailed the moment. We were going to Santa Barbara. “Climb in!” She was already swinging her butt onto the passenger seat. I liked the way it spread out under all those flowers.

  “I was wonderin’ if I’d ever get a ride.” Her lively eyes laughed at me, keeping my gaze, way more confident than her age should be.

  She settled herself into the seat, throwing her bag past me onto the back bench. A canvas snatch bag with lots of button badges on it, like a groupie would carry. It didn’t look like she had so much to be travelling that far; Santa Barbara was a good two hundred farther south.

  “You local?” I knew she wasn’t.

  “Na! Been here a couple of days.”

  She got comfy very quick as I got up speed again. The wind blew her hair nice. She sat with her legs apart and was tracing the inside of her knee with her fingers, not saying much. I noticed how delicate her hands were. She had French nails – that’s what my last girl used to call them. Only fancy thing about her. She was no farm girl, I knew that much, though some of the olive pickers had great skin. Her skin was so lightly tanned, not at all weathered but fresh.

  “You a student?”

  “Was.”

  I left her for a while and just followed the vanishing point of the road as it shifted across the windshield. I could hear the rumble of the tyres getting louder on new surface.

  “You got somewhere you’re going?”

  “Kind of...”

  I didn’t mind one bit that the whole thing was going so slow. If it took the next hundred miles to get her name, I’d be happy. She smelt of pineapples and cigarettes, and right then that was about as good a narcotic as I wanted. I hadn’t got laid in about eight days and the way about her just made me feel my luck was changing.

  “You eaten this morning?”

  “Had a couple of flaps at the truck stop back there.”

  I wondered if she’d been dropped by one of the long-haul guys. I’d been getting kind of hungry myself but I’d wanted to make progress so had missed breakfast, reckoning I’d grab some on the longshore boat.

  “I was going to catch a bite, up ahead aways. D’you fancy anything?”

  “Maybe...”

  She was playing with me, a slight curl around her lips. Her gaze flitted along the horizon but her eyes weren’t looking there. With her chin held up so confident, she hadn’t anything particular to hide, nor was she avoiding me. I glanced ahead to hold the road, but took my time to look her over. This was a game, and I was tuning in just fine.

  Her lips were a ripe shape, like she had some African blood, but she had blue eyes, bluer than the Pacific in the distance, and a lightly freckled face. The apricot colour of her lips stood out from it, warm and lush, and she knew it. She moistened them a little with her tongue, rolled them in prim like, and then out a full pout. I figured she realised how easily bated I was going to be. God, she was comfortable for a little lady of nineteen.

  The road was quiet that morning. Somehow that made the whole thing seem more concentrated; the sensation of being alone with her, more intense.

  “I’ve got a bruise my friend gave me. D’you wanta see it?” She was gazing ahead with that slight smile.

  She didn’t wait for my response before she slid her skirt up to her waistband. There, just below the curve of her mound, on her right thigh, was a double crescent of purple. Pretty freshly made, I’d say.

  “My friend, Mandy, bit me.”

  I scooped up this vision with my eyes and was suddenly aware I was swerving off line.

  “That wasn’t too nice of her...”

  I was beginning to swim in this newly found bath of pleasure; I wanted the playfulness to go on. That bite mark, though, that was where I wanted to be right now. It looked so tender there, set against the lighter skin of her inner leg. The flesh was as smooth as driftwood, and the blue of her veins showed a kind of tracery under it. She’d drawn open so wide, the dusty pink cotton of her pants was taut across the rise of her bush. What a great big sweet pussy under there.

  “It was nice at the time. Hurts a bit now though.”

  I focused on the dark beauty of that bruise.

  “I guess you were havin’ a fight.” My wit was ebbing.

  “No, not really. I was eating her out, end on end, and she came so hard she almost bit a whole chunk out me.”

  She was a cool customer. The game was going too fast. We sat for a while in a warm kind of silence, just hazing in the noise of the road and the bright sun.

  “Listen; d’you mind if I pull off the road?” I could see a derelict roadman’s hut back in the trees not too far up ahead.

  “D’you need to go?” She looked across to me, then at my pants.

  I hesitated: “Well... I sure need to relieve myself.” I smiled back.

  “Good, so do I.” She was grinning now.

  “Do you have a name?” I swung the red prow of the car across the shallow ditch and up across the verge, heading for some shade. We made a wake of dust leaving the road and came to a halt under the spread of a twisted pine.

  “They call me Tanii... it means ‘little caribou’. My mom gave it to me. She’s Tcholovoni. Bay people. She says I got pure instinct like them.”

  She looked nothing like First Nation half breed but I wasn’t caring. It added to the mystery. Her instincts I didn’t doubt...

  We sat for a brief moment. The shady clearing seemed far away from the brightness back on the highway. We both unlatched our doors at the same time and I paused, watching, as she went around to the front of the car and rested back on the hood. The way she moved was slow and musical. She unbuttoned her denim and let it slide back onto the hot paintwork above the engine. She lay back on the jacket and her breasts quivered as she adjusted her position. The nipples were a hard pecan brown, standing proud in the cooler air. Her snowy white shoulders were stark on the red expanse.

  “Come on, Jack.”

  She surprised me. It took me a moment to realise she must have seen my name on the licence, stuck in the broken glove-box door.

  “It’s great out here.”

  She rolled her nipples between her fingers, licking the fingertips to wet them. I let her fill my vision and felt the blood rising harder.

  As I walked to her, I unbuttoned my jeans and awkwardly wrestled out my cock, which was already well down one leg. I eased my balls into the air and felt the cool lick of the
breeze, and it was good. Spread-eagled on the hood, she looked an impossible sight, pure fantasy. I stood between her legs and let the air run over us. I could hear a peregrine making its strange nervous sound up on the hillside behind.

  She let me close her legs, and I drew down her skirt and pants together, sliding them free of a wide bush of auburn hair. Her triangle was almost halfway up her belly. The way it was pressed flat by her pants gave it a kind of dark-and-light root pattern. She was already swelled and wet; the lips of her little mouth made a sweet island of candy pink in all that hair.

  “I need to go first but I can’t. I’m too buzzy.”

  She ran her fingers through the slick on her labia and lifted it to her mouth. She tasted, then went to her nipples, circling real slow with her eyes shut. I was pounding; my end was fit to burst but I stood just taking her in. Somewhere, then, she found the switch she was looking for and she let herself go. The sparkling flood hit me right across the pants, and the heat of her insides rose into a heady smell like the sea down at the Cannery and the resin in pine cones.

  I dived to her mound to catch the last of it, wanting to taste. She quivered at the release. Her head rocked side to side and she seemed to tense, then she groaned as I closed my lips over as much of her bush as I could, and my tongue slid up inside the deepest part I could find. Her breathing was hard and hungry. She held my head in her hands and nudged me into her. The sweetness and the feel of her soft wiry hair in my mouth were intense. I closed my eyes and buried my tongue in the rough way of her opening, and pressed my teeth to my upper lip, putting pressure on her hood. She rose quick and she came, rocking her hips around the pivot of her ass, squirting me. The thick salt of her almost choked me; I wasn’t ready and I laughed and coughed. She grinned broadly.

  “You like that.”

  She gathered the wetness with her hand and dragged it up across her belly.

  “Let’s go over there.”

  Like me, she’d noticed a rope swing hanging from a wide old buttonwood. There was a truck radial tied to the swinging end, the rubber so ancient it was chalk grey. She took my hand and, naked, but for those boots, led me over. She stuck her ass through the swing and spun round to present it to me, a huge California peach, and her split opened right up. Her neat, furrowed little butthole was twitching. What a great sight she really was.

  There was a polish of sweat, bright and fresh across her. It all looked so new and ripe, I almost didn’t want to pick it. I licked at the base of her spine where a trickle was forming. It felt real good on my tongue. The earthy smell of her ass led me down and I twisted my tongue hard in her hole, just getting through the muscle holding it tight, getting a taste of the thing.

  “Oh, God that feels good. Oh, God, come on, Jack, get it inside me.”

  I licked up her back as far as I could and rose. My cock was weeping crystal clear pleasure by now. I slid very slowly into her ass from behind to the base of my shaft. The angle was just great and she yelped a little as she took the whole length of me. The heat inside her and the easy river of her guts was just a holy place to be that moment. Even though my legs were kind of splayed and the muscles in my thighs were quick to ache, I just swayed with the rhythm.

  She’d closed her eyes and was moaning and breathing real hard. My hands spread across the flange of her hips and I was driving firm but slow in her. She grabbed at the stony rubber of the tyre, her fingers clawing as she came. I held her firmly, my hands pulling her down upon me. My tip seemed to be hitting her heart, it felt so deep, and the throb of her insides gripped me. We swung away like two jack rabbits, and I damn near blacked out as I shot off. I was shuddering at the knees. I fell back on my butt on the earth and just laughed. Her ass looked real cute sitting in that truck tyre, all hot and wet and raw.

  She joined me and we sat together, letting the dapple of the sun through the trees flick over us, our butts on the earth. I guess we lay down then, with me holding her, in the dust. We must have fallen asleep, bound together in that dirt pan.

  When I finally wakened it was maybe an hour later. Tanii was gone, the car standing cold. When I checked I could see my knapsack was gone too, and the last fifty bucks I had on me gone with it.

  I had to smile. I didn’t mind, not then, not now, as I get to thinking of her. It’s like some far-off highway. I see the sun shining on the blacktop up ahead... and her... waiting by the roadside.

  HOUSE KEEPING

  Nnenna Marcia

  Nnenna Marcia is a pseudonym for a Nigerian writer living in London. By day she tells other people’s stories for major news organisations, and by night she scribbles her own. She is an incessant reader and prefers make-believe to real life because it is so much easier and – ‘she gets to play God’. She writes stories about strong African women, sex, sexuality and relationships, her inspiration drawn from her life in West Africa. She brings an exciting new voice to the stream of talent emerging from that continent. Africa Hot is her first anthology of short stories, some of which have appeared in the Erotic Review. Currently, she is working on a sequel to the novella contained within Africa Hot.

  My madam is travelling again and I know there will be no sleep for me this night. Turning away my Oga’s roving hands takes all night but even that is not the worst thing that will happen. The worst thing is that I will enjoy the chase; his breath in my ear, his masculine smell, his deep voice and the way he can say something innocent and make it seem very dirty. Luckily, I will feel bad about enjoying it, so I have not lost my conscience.

  *

  I have been in this household barely a year and already my madam has been out of the country eight times. Each time Oga has got a little bolder. The first weekend my madam left the country, I had just been their house help for three weeks. My Oga’s friends came over and they played Wot all night, laughing and sharing stories over the juvenile game, drinking bottles of Remy Martin and Star beer and eating suya. The smell of the roasted-spiced suya meat hung in the air and made my mouth water. After they left, my Oga asked me to serve him the palm wine which had come over from Ibadan that morning and which he had hidden from his friends.

  “Come here, Sylvia. Take a sip.”

  “Sah?” I asked.

  “Come and take a sip, don’t be a bush girl.”

  I looked at the cold glass in my Oga’s hand and stood where I was. I didn’t want to offend my master but how could I sip from his glass? My mother had trained me well and I knew that drinking palm wine from any man’s cup was forbidden, unless the man in question had paid your bride price or was your father. I had neither of those in my life.

  “Tans sah,” I shook my lowered head.

  “Come and take a drink, osiso! The yeast is good for your eyes. And besides, your mother entrusted you to us. I would rather have you drink palm wine in my house than have your head turned by all those useless agbero boys and their ogogoro – that local gin is deadly.”

  I took a couple of steps towards him, took the cold glass from his outstretched hand and I took a sip. The cold sweet liquid went down my throat like it was made from coconut oil. I tried to give it back.

  “Drink a little more,” Oga insisted. “You’ll need to get used to the way it tastes. No man should turn your head...” His voice faded away as I took another cool sip. And a bigger gulp...

  “Easy, easy! Ngwa, give me the glass. I didn’t say you should finish it!” His eyes laughed at me. I handed back the glass shyly and thanked him again. My head swam as the alcohol pumped through my virgin system and I stumbled.

  I didn’t even see Oga leave the sofa but his hand was on my back, steadying me. I froze at the unfamiliar touch of a relative stranger.

  “Sylvia, are you alright?” I opened my eyes and looked into his deep, brown ones. The skin under my nose started to itch and I knew I was beginning to sweat. Oga was a beautiful man. No sooner had the thought formed than I noticed he was lightly rubbing my back. I looked at him in alarm. He smiled.

  “Go to bed, Sylvia. I
shouldn’t have let you drink this much.” His thumb stroked the skin on my neck as if I was a child and yet, not a child.

  “Goo’nait sah.” My hips swayed as I walked away. I could feel my Oga’s eyes on them.

  After that day I felt ashamed whenever my madam was kind to me and as she was kind all the time, it meant that I lived under a heavy cloud of remorse. I was already a hard worker but I doubled my efforts; I scrubbed and cleaned and scoured pots and pans with twice the effort that I normally put in. I learned how to keep house like Madam liked and soon she put me in charge of the gardener and the water tanker accounts, for the times when she wasn’t around. I learned to read better, speak with a lighter accent and eat the tasty foreign foods which Madam cooked. I anticipated my madam’s every wish.

  It was the least I could do for the woman who saved me from hawking sachets of water on the dusty streets of Lagos. I still don’t know what had possessed her to wind down the windows of her car in Oshodi, where the market stalls spilled out onto the expressway, leaving it little more than a snail’s trail, where thieves targeted people in expensive cars, snatching costly jewellery, watches and handbags that were not stowed away under car seats. Even drivers that didn’t have ACs preferred to bake gradually in the infamous stalled traffic than wind down their windows for a respite from the heat.

  And yet she had, my madam. She had wound down her window and beckoned to me and immediately thirty odd hawkers and as many thieves rushed to her window, shouting their wares at her. “Gala sausage, gala, gala!”, “Aunty you wan’ pure water?”, “Fine madam, this toothbrush go wash ya mouth well, well”, “Buy banana, buy groundnut!” My madam kept her eyes on me and ignored everyone else. I pushed my way to the front and relished the blast of cool air coming from the powerful air conditioner in the plush interior.

  “Give me pure water.” She barely moved her lips and her voice was as cool as the inside of her car. She kept her eyes on mine as I fumbled through the layers and layers of insulating jute in my container to find the coldest sachet. Then I saw the untouched bottle of ice-cold water in a holder in front of her on the passenger’s seat and frowned.