Chilli Heat

by Carrie Williams

  I took it, humbled by his words. I had let jealousy get the better of me. I’d not only made a fool of myself but I’d blown my chances of spending the night with him. At that moment I could see myself through his eyes and it wasn’t a pretty picture: a middle-aged woman, attractive but by no means beautiful, throwing herself at a younger man, using her pain over her daughter as an excuse. The pain, of course, was real, but sex would only make me forget it for a short time. I knew that. But I was desperate for Chris anyway. I was wrong about the hypnosis: he’d put a spell on me already.

  I stood up to go, hand at my throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He took my hand, pulled me gently back down. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘I spoke too harshly and you don’t deserve it. I just want you to understand that I have a business to run, a reputation to maintain, and discretion is key to that.’

  ‘I understand. I’m sorry. I’ll go now.’

  ‘Stay.’

  I looked at him in surprise and felt like I was falling into those blue eyes, falling into a beautiful blue sea from a great height, exhilarated even as I knew that I may fall so deep I might never come up again.

  ‘Shall we do a calming exercise?’ he said, his voice small and echoey as if it was coming from far away, from another realm. ‘I think we could both benefit from it.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, as if from a dream.

  He crossed his legs on the chaise-longue and indicated for me to do the same, and, like him, to rest my hands on my knees with my palms facing up.

  ‘Now, hold my gaze,’ he said, ‘however uncomfortable it might feel, however uneasy it might make you. Never look away. Take soft but deep breaths and try to go beyond my eyes, into my soul. When you’ve achieved that state and feel you can hold it, listen to my breathing and try to breathe at the same pace, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Don’t look away. Let’s see if we can keep that up for ten minutes.’

  I did as he bade, but we can’t have lasted more than three minutes, five at the most, before desire took hold and he leant in towards me, wrapped one hand round the back of my head and pulled me towards him for a kiss. It was a wild, almost vicious kiss: our teeth clashed, our tongues seemed almost to wrestle with each other. There was nothing calm about it. As we kissed, Chris pushed me, quite roughly, back against one end of the chaise-longue and, reaching below my skirt, pulled my knickers to one side and slipped one whole hand inside me. He began to pump it in and out, quite rapidly, and I was jerking and gasping beneath him, astonished by this sudden onset of naked, uncontainable desire. What had happened to all his talk of calm, of harmonised breathing and sacred intimacy? He was fucking the living daylights out of me and I couldn’t imagine there was a spiritual thought in his head.

  I reached around him, pulled down his trackpants and clawed at his slender arse as I felt my orgasm grow near. His spare hand, until now clutching my breast, moved down; with it he spread my pussy lips and glided his cock in. Then he pushed my legs and feet as high as they could go, which was quite high due to several years of weekly yoga and the last few days’ intensive practice – I was pleased to discover all the hard work had paid off. Then he rode me fast and furiously, plunging in and out of me, yelping with pleasure, and I thrust back against him, matching his movements.

  I wanted so much to come, knowing that when I did it would be hard – one of those almost painful orgasms that makes you clench your teeth, wondering if you are up to it, if you can withstand it. But I wanted to play him at his own game too, the game of deferral he was so keen on. Let’s see, I thought, how he likes it when the tables are turned on him and it’s his turn to wait.

  Pulling myself from underneath him, despite his protests, and turning my head, I scanned his bookshelf with my eyes, looking for inspiration. I saw a silk scarf, intense purple in colour, and reached back for it, then bound it around Chris’s head to cover his eyes. He moaned again and I knew that, much as he enjoyed control, he also, like Charles, got off on relinquishing it. Power, I thought, must be a double-edged sword, authority tainted by responsibility.

  Looking back at the shelf I saw his Ayurvedic oil, also just within my reach. Unscrewing the lid, I poured myself a good palmful, then slathered his cock and balls with it, slowly, making sure to coat each millimetre, to saturate each pore. For the first time I noticed that he pruned his pubic hair: he wasn’t wholly shaven, but it was kept neat and trimmed with scissors and maybe also clippers. This must account, at least partly, I realised, for the intensity of the sex we’d had two nights before, when he’d instructed me in various positions that were dear to him: the wheelbarrow, the bodyguard and so on. There’d been a definite feeling of unusual intimacy that I now saw was in some ways the result of how closely his denuded cock and balls fitted my spread lips, how our bodies felt almost moulded together.

  I moved my hand up and down his straining shaft with long slow movements, deliberately drawn out. From time to time I touched my pussy, anointed it too with a little of the amber oil. But I was anxious not to rush; perhaps I wasn’t such a bad pupil after all. Could I, I wondered, become one of Chris’s acolytes? A lot of what he said struck me as so much mumbo-jumbo, but I couldn’t deny that sex Chris-style was the most erotic I had ever experienced. Although we hadn’t known each other more than a couple of days, I felt a powerful intimacy with him, and not only when we had sex – this was only, after all, the second time – but even when I was just looking into his eyes, those magical, complex, faraway eyes. Did I want to take this further and achieve, like him, a new plane of consciousness, and would he agree to take me there? Did embarking on such a journey with someone make them fall in love with you, and was there a chance that Chris and I could make a go of it together? I felt a shiver run through me: perhaps I wouldn’t be going back to the UK at all, but making a new life here, in Goa, with this wonderful, enigmatic, desirable man who enflamed, it seemed, just about any woman he came into contact with.

  I lowered my head, took first one ball then the other in my mouth as I continued my hand movements, flicking at them with my tongue, sucking at each in turn. Chris writhed beneath me like a snake, his lovely slim pelvis almost gyrating, his eyes still blinded by the scarf. All at once the sex I had with him appeared to me as a kind of dance. In fact, hadn’t we tried out a pose called the dancer last time? There was an added dimension of rhythmic vehemence, which had been lacking in my lovemaking with Charles, in all of my love-making. This was a new level, another dimension.

  But there was only so far I could hold back myself and so I swung one leg over him and eased him back inside me. It felt like belonging, and I wondered for a moment if I was going to cry. I squeezed my eyes closed to hold back the tears at the same time as I squeezed my inner muscles. Chris tightened his hands on my hips in appreciation and encouragement, a gurgle escaping from the back of his throat.

  ‘Again,’ he urged, and I pumped my muscles around his cock and felt both of our climaxes swell like a mighty storm gathering. Only rather than the usual short sharp shock of it all, the sweet brevity of orgasm, these climaxes went on and on, like ripples or waves, not deliciously painful but sweet and blissful and comforting, telling me that all was well in the universe. That anything was possible.

  23

  BANGALORE, AS SUE said it would, fucks with your mind. As in Mumbai, terrible poverty remains, juxtaposed with displays of almost obscene wealth and decadence, with a consumerism that rivals that of the West. It doesn’t seem to bother Sue, though, as she flits around the city in the back of a rickshaw, shouting at the driver to pull over when she sees something or somebody photogenic or controversial enough to grace her viewfinder. I find myself wondering if it’s possible to have moral scruples, as a photographer, or if one needs to be utterly detached in order to document these kinds of things at all.

  We’re staying in the Chandra Vihar, a cheapie close to the city’s hectic wholesale fruit and vegetable market. After two days of bus rides, which all three of us mainly
slept through, we discussed going for a little luxury. Even I, the most hardcore budget traveller, was tempted. But then our consciences overcame our desires and we ended up here. And it’s fine – the reception is hung with gaudy holograms of dancing Hindu goddesses, there’s a creaky old elevator and the rooms are very clean, if basic. Mine even has a balcony overlooking the bustling bazaar below.

  Sue suggested we share a triple, but after what happened between her and me, I felt a little weird about that. Sure, we were in a communal room in Kanha, and she and I even made love in that room while her brother was sleeping, but that was an accident of sorts, a moment of blind passion. If it’s going to happen between us again, I want to have more of a say in the matter, and more privacy. There’s a seedy edge to having done it in the same room in which Dean slept that taints, at least a little, the memory of my first time.

  In my rare waking moments on the bus journey down to Bangalore, I looked over at my sleeping would-be lover and wondered about what had happened between us. She had come to me, under cover of dark, and though I had more than submitted to her embraces, had reciprocated until they became a full-on fuck, the whole thing did sort of occur under false pretences. Or rather, even if Sue wasn’t pretending to be Dean, or implying that she might be, I let her seduce me, up to a certain point, in the hope that it was her brother whose hands were on me.

  And so, beautiful as she is, as great as the shagging was, I can’t help but ask if I’d have been up for it if I’d known from the start who I was dealing with. Although I’ve finally had the fuck that I needed to get out of my system in order to start living, I’m still not clear about my sexual proclivities. Sue is wonderful, and if it were just her and me, I’m sure I wouldn’t say no if the chance arose again. But there’s Dean in the equation too. And I still want him, no holds barred. Will doing it again with her jeopardise any chances I may have with him?

  I’m musing on all this when there’s a rap at my door and I realise that the others must be waiting for me. We’ve agreed to go to a club tonight, to experience the city’s famous nightlife.

  ‘Come in,’ I call, still sitting on my bed. The door swings open and Sue appears, framed like a painting, a vision in slinky hipster jeans and a silver lamé top, which shows off her amazing boobs to full advantage. Her hands are on her hips, and the look on her face lets me know that she’s all too aware how great she looks.

  ‘Not ready yet?’ she purrs, and my cunt melts. For all I was just thinking, if she came into the room now and sat beside me on my bed, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off those gorgeous tits. I’d push her back on the cover, push her top up over them and, taking one in each hand, squeeze and kiss and lick them until she sloughed off those jeans and proffered me her pussy, all wet and glistening.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she says, still in the doorway, still smirking.

  I look down at my hands in my lap. ‘Of fucking you,’ I feel like saying. But I don’t, of course, and luckily so, for a moment later Dean appears in the doorway behind, rests his chin on his sister’s shoulder and flashes me a heart-melting smile.

  ‘Not ready yet?’ he echoes her.

  I stand up and reach for my unpacked rucksack. ‘I’ve not really got anything clubby to wear,’ I say, peering inside. I hadn’t really counted on going clubbing – not even, or perhaps especially not, in Goa – and my bag is full of practical, easily washable garments with lots of Lycra, which don’t need ironing. I pull out a nondescript black T-shirt. It will have to do. I look over at Dean and Sue. ‘Be with you in a min,’ I say.

  We’re at Spinn, a disco-lounge in an old colonial house, recommended to us by a fellow-traveller at the guest house. Part of the lounge is outside, and Dean and I are sipping cocktails under the stars. Sue is on the dance floor, head thrown back, already lost to the progressive house music that’s being spun by the DJ.

  ‘Is she on something, your sister?’ I say to Dean above the music.

  He smiles, shakes his head. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Sue’s just high on life. She loves going out, showing herself off.’ He looks at me. ‘She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? An amazing creature.’

  For a moment I can’t reply, I’m so taken aback. It seems such a weird thing for a brother to say of his sister. And then the paranoia sets in. Does Dean know about me and Sue, about what happened in the park lodge? Did he wake up and hear us going at each other in the dark? Is this his way of telling me that he knows and, if so, are my chances with him blown?

  ‘She’s … she’s very uninhibited,’ I say at last.

  He chuckles. ‘Oh yes, that’s Sue all right,’ he says. ‘Never happier than when all eyes are upon her. Ever since she was tiny she wanted to be the centre of attention.’ He looks at me. ‘Of course, it’s a sort of control, isn’t it?’

  I don’t answer, lost again for a reply. What he’s telling me could be construed both positively or negatively, but in the light of what’s happened it seems like a warning. Only there’s no way of finding out if he does indeed know what’s happened without asking him directly.

  The dance floor is busier now and the pace hots up. Though there are quite a few Westerners here, most of the young crowd is Indian. They’re all dressed up in Western-style clothes, however, with plenty of designer labels – fake or otherwise – on show, and to all intents and purposes we could be in London. As Dean and I watch, fallen silent now, an unusually tall Indian girl appears at one side of the dance floor, pauses for a moment, and then strides onto it. There’s not a head that doesn’t turn to look at her as she crosses the floor, seeking some space to stake out for herself – or only Sue’s, which is still thrown back in abandon, her eyes closed.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ I hear Dean say next to me.

  I turn my head. ‘What’s up?’ I ask.

  His eyes flash at me. ‘Just watch,’ he says.

  I turn my gaze back to the dance floor and, sure enough, the ravishing Indian girl has planted herself close to Sue, and Sue, opening her eyes, does an obvious double-take, as if she can’t believe her luck. The rest of the crowd has lost interest: the girl is beautiful, incredibly self-confident, but they are not here to ogle, after all. The place is no meat market. But Sue keeps looking and the girl looks back at her, brazenly, and little by little they move towards each other, like two planets broken free of their orbits and growing closer and closer, with the inexorability of fate.

  As they approach and start to ape, perhaps unconsciously, each other’s moves, their hips swaying ever-closer together, I can’t tear my eyes away either. Partly, I’m plain jealous. I thought I had a prior claim on Sue, that there was something between us, no matter how much I also wondered whether that was something I wanted to continue. Partly, however, I’m simply fascinated, and also more turned-on than I’d like to admit, by the spectacle of these two beautiful girls dancing together, clearly hot for each other, acting out on the dance floor the fuck they’d like to be having.

  Finally they touch, and I let out a little cry, almost as if I’ve come. Sue lays one hand over the girl’s shoulder, the girl places her hands on Sue’s hips, still gyrating her own. Their torsos come together, and a thrill jags through me. My cunt aches. I want Sue, I want the Indian girl, so hard it hurts.

  ‘Told you,’ comes Dean’s voice and, as I turn my head to him, I feel him take my hand. ‘Had Sue told you she’s gay?’ he asks, and I shake my head. So he didn’t hear anything – what a relief.

  ‘What about you?’ he says.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Which way do you swing?’

  I’m not going to spoil my chances – if I have any – by telling him that I don’t know, or that I swing both ways, so I shrug my shoulders, say, ‘I’m straight, of course.’ I can’t look at him, my heart is racing so fast.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ he says, and then I do look at him and he jerks his head towards the exit. ‘Shall we go?’ he asks, and I nod, my cunt throbbing, shooting only the briefest of glances back towards the
dance floor. Sue and the girl have their fingers in each other’s hair, look as if they’re going to kiss, but I don’t care, no longer wish I was part of it.

  Outside Dean and I jump into the first in a line of waiting rickshaws. My whole body is in a state of high alert now, adrenaline coursing through my veins like a potent drug. I’m afraid to even look at Dean, scared I will stop breathing. My desire for him is choking me. But almost immediately after telling the driver where we are heading, he turns to me, takes my chin between his fingers, and eases my head around so that we’re looking into each other’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve wanted you since the minute we met,’ he says, and I think, Why the hell did you wait so long to give me a sign? Why did you let your sister get in first? Sue might be showing all the signs of not giving a fuck about how I feel as she writhes on the dance floor with the Indian girl, but I’m not sure that sharing a lover with her brother comes into her plans. Of course, Dean doesn’t know the whole story, so why should he have hurried? Some people like to bide their time, to savour the build-up. It’s all part of the fun.

  When he brings his lips to mine, it’s as if I’m being engulfed not only by physical pleasure but by a tide of emotions, some of them contradictory. The thought that I am kissing this man for whom I feel a desire more forceful than any I have felt before is foremost. His lips and his tongue are so sweet: sweet-tasting, but also a little shy, making little advances and retreats as if testing the terrain, seeing how far I want to go. Unlike Sue, Dean doesn’t ride roughshod, assume that I want to go the way he does. He tests the waters first, then takes things further.

  Although my legs have parted automatically, almost without my even realising, he goes slow there too, pressing his fingers into the tops of my thighs, through my jeans, inching them towards my groin, but without any kind of forcefulness. It’s as if he’s saying, through his gestures and body language: We can do this, but only if you want to. Or we can do this, if you prefer.