I’m remembering what Chris said before, about the inevitable sadness that comes after sex – ‘the reckoning’, as he called it. Looking at him across the room, reclining on the chaise-longue, and both wanting him again and feeling like more sex is really the last thing I need – that I’ve had more sex in the last week than in the previous five years and that that might not necessarily be a good thing – I wonder if that’s why I feel so empty. Or is it purely his disengagement, the way we can seem so close during the sex and so apart afterwards?
I’ll probably stay the night again. I suspect that Chris knows that I’ll throw a complete wobbly if he sends me back to my room, having let me stay over on previous nights. But already I dread tomorrow: the time spent without him, despite being in his company. Having to put up with the way other women look at him, despite knowing that he’s mine. Or do they do it because they know we’re sleeping together, to prove to me that he’s not mine? How often does Chris engage in affairs with students? His classes are weekly, so there’s fresh blood every seven days. And then there are his ongoing students, such as the lovely Jasmine. Can I really be the only one who’s caught his eye?
I turn away from him, extinguish the lamp by my side and pull the cover up over me. Chris doesn’t look like he has any intention of coming back to bed, not for a while at least. I close my eyes, as much to stop myself crying as because I think I will get any sleep.
25
AS WE BOARD the train tonight, Sue’s words are still playing in my mind; in fact, they haven’t left me all day. Things were just starting to get interesting, she’d claimed, but what did she mean? Things between me and her? I don’t see how they might get more interesting, rather than be just more of the same, unless she was referring to the dildo she mentioned this morning too. In fact, that is my whole problem with being a lesbian: once you’ve worked through the limited repertoire, isn’t it all just repetition?
Of course, the same can be said of sex with men. Only it seems to me, with my albeit limited experience, that there is more variety with men, a greater number of possibilities to explore. And then, it isn’t all about sex. There is a progression in a relationship with a man, the question of children and creating a family together. Again, this isn’t something that couldn’t happen with a woman, by one means or another, but my future, as I see it, involves child-bearing and child-rearing, and being part of a traditional family. I know it isn’t the only path, and not necessarily the right path for everyone, but it is the path I envisage taking myself. Perhaps that’s why I can’t reconcile myself with my taste for girls.
In any case, I have the funny feeling that Sue was talking about more than the dildo. Something about the relish with which she spoke makes me think that she was talking about something much bigger, more far-reaching. And as she’d intended, although her words frightened me, in some ways they also intrigued me enough to tip the balance. I will travel on to Kerala with them and see what happens. Otherwise I’ll always be wondering. But if Sue thinks she can mess with my head, I’ll be off like a shot. I love how she makes me feel, but I don’t love her. I can cut free at any time.
I look at Dean as he bends over the lower bunk in our compartment, rooting around for something in his rucksack. Is he the reason I am still here? Do I really think I’m still in with a chance after what he saw this morning? Nothing has been said, by anybody, about the incident; nor has there been any mention of what happened, and what nearly happened, between him and me last night. There have been no recriminations, no bitterness. Dean continues to look at me kindly, in a friendly way. Perhaps if I dared to hold his gaze I might see something more there, the truth about what he thinks of me, of my ‘betrayal’. But I can’t look him in the eye longer than I strictly have to when we exchange a sentence or two, so I don’t know. Yet even if I don’t expect anything to happen, there’s the possibility I may still be here just to be with him, in however restricted a capacity. If I can’t have him, at least I can see him, look at him, hold on to what might have been.
We have dinner on the train. We ordered food in advance and, at the second stop of many, a man climbs aboard from the platform and hands us each a paper bag. To our delight, each contains little pots of curry and dhal, to be scooped up with rice pancakes, which arrive wrapped in banana leaves, or soaked up by sticky lumps of coconut-scented rice. As we eat, we talk little, content to watch the sunset over the stunning scenery beyond our window – of plains, at first, but later of forested areas too, rich green and full of wildlife and wild noises. As it begins to get dark, Sue takes out a scented candle – fig and cardamom, she says – lights it, and we all sit and observe the light die fully outside, the blackness punctured only by the odd speck of light in the distance, its source unguessable.
It’s only as we’re thinking of settling onto our bunks for the night, when Dean has gone to pee, that our conversation is anything more than small talk. Checking, or so it seems, that he is out of earshot, Sue turns to me, and in the candlelight her eyes gleam dangerously.
‘What do you think of him?’ she says.
‘Of your brother?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I can’t imagine you don’t fancy him. I can’t imagine there’s a woman alive – bar lesbians, and I know you’re not really a lesbian – who doesn’t fancy him.’
‘I … er, well, yes, I guess he’s pretty good-looking.’
‘“Pretty good-looking”?!’ she parrots, incredulous. ‘He’s a god! You won’t meet many more fuckable men in your lifetime, I guarantee it.’ She peers round her seat again, checking he’s not on his way back, and I wonder again at this curiously sexual way in which they speak of each other, this sexual appreciation they seem to have of each other. It seems to go beyond the objective recognition of beauty and perhaps even beyond sibling pride.
‘I mean,’ she says, looking me full-on in the eyes. ‘Who’d turn that down? I know I wouldn’t.’
She holds my gaze, freezes me with it, and there’s something provocative to it all, something she’s trying to tell me.
‘My God!’ I exclaim. ‘You haven’t? Sue, tell me –’
She’s nodding even before I’ve got the words out, and my heart and belly flutter. This is beyond any complication I could have imagined, beyond ‘interesting’. I shouldn’t be here. I want out.
But then Sue bursts into laughter. ‘I’ve had him,’ she said, ‘but of course he’s not my brother. Did we really have you fooled?’
I wrinkle up my face. Suddenly it all makes sense and I feel such a fool for having been taken in by their charade. Of course Sue didn’t want me to sleep with him, but not out of possessiveness over me so much as possessiveness over him, her lover, her boyfriend. Her boyfriend who, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to mind sharing her with other girls. But then isn’t that every man’s fantasy?
I don’t have time to react in any coherent way before Dean returns and his face tells me, as soon as he sees us, that he knows that I know. Undoubtedly it’s inscribed on my features. I’m probably as pale as I feel, washed out and exhausted by all of this, and my eyes probably give away the shock from which I’m still reeling. But I suspect, in any case, that this was all orchestrated, that he was instructed by Sue to disappear for a few minutes while she let me in on their little secret.
For the moment, I’m trapped, sharing this tiny compartment midway between stations, on a train otherwise full. I don’t want to move places, to sleep among strangers, in any case, and I don’t want to get off in an unknown town in the dead of night. I have no choice but to stay here, with these people who’ve been messing with my mind.
I turn away from them, start rustling through my wash bag for my toothbrush and toothpaste. As I turn back, about to head for the loo, a hand falls on my shoulder. I look round and it’s Dean, smiling at me. ‘Stay,’ he says, and I melt. It’s a word that I resisted once before, on Juhu Beach, and I regret having done so.
‘Why shou
ld I?’ I say, and the hurt in my voice can’t be mistaken.
‘Because,’ he says, bringing his other hand to my other shoulder, eyes fixed on mine, ‘Sue and I are going to take you to places you’ve never been before.’
Sue steps up to me, places one hand on the side of my head and runs her long fingers over my hair, smiling at me. ‘How can you resist?’ she says, and she’s right – already I’m crumbling inside, like an old wall whose foundations have failed. I swoon back as Dean brings his head to my neck, starts brushing his lips over the flesh of my shoulders. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep hold of this moment; it must never end.
Meanwhile, Sue has come behind me, is reaching round me, slipping one hand down the front of my combats. ‘Mmmmm,’ she says, as her fingers meet my clit, standing proud for her, for him, for them – I no longer know where this desire is directed. On my belly I feel the solid mass of Dean in the crotch of his trousers and knowing now that I will have him inside me after all unleashes a sort of fit of anticipation in me. I can hardly bear it. I’m crying, tears coursing down my face, beset by a terrible feeling that I am losing myself even as I’m finding out who I really am. Or is the first a precondition of the second?
By some unspoken accord, Dean and Sue stop what they’re doing and guide me over to my bunk. There Sue lays me down and asks if I’m warm and comfortable. I nod dumbly, too stunned by what is happening to speak. Standing up, she turns to Dean, steps up to him and gives him a long kiss while fondling his prick through his trousers. He closes his eyes, grabs one of her buttocks and pulls her towards him. I moan too, clutch my snatch, pressing my clit with my thumb. I could bring myself to orgasm in a trice, just watching them. Is that what they have in mind? Are they the kind of people you hear about, who get their kicks from shagging in front of others?
But Sue pulls herself away from Dean, gestures back at me. ‘Strip her,’ she says authoritatively, and he steps towards me, pulls down my jeans from where they were bunched around my lower hips, then reaches up and pulls my top up over my head. For a moment he stands back to look at me, perhaps even to admire me. I spread my legs to show him how ready I am for him, if that’s part of the plan. I’m feeling more brazen now I know that I am to be fully involved and not a bystander. Already I sense that if I’m not to feel used, doll-like, after this encounter, I must assert my own needs and desires too.
‘Her bra,’ says Sue, and Dean leans over me and reaches round me to unhook me. My breasts spill out; he takes one in each hand, starts licking and sucking at them alternately. Even through the noise, I can hear Sue’s breathing behind him growing heavy and irregular. It’s clear she’s enormously aroused, on the verge of losing it. I turn my head and watch as she undresses quickly, then, after a moment during which she stands fingering herself, climbs onto my bed behind Dean, encircles him with her arms and with agile fingers undoes the fly of his jeans. When she’s done that, she slides them down over his hips, along with his boxers, and his cock springs forth. I strain up with my hips, desperate to have the beautiful golden rod inside me, but Sue’s hand is on it first, shuttling it back and forth. I’m not left bereft, though: with her other hand she seeks me out between my legs, shoots bunched fingers up into my hole. I snake my hips on the bed, so horny I could pass out.
Not taking his face from my breasts, Dean now reaches down, takes my clit between two fingers and gives it a little tug, before massaging it vigorously with his fingertips. With my major erogenous zones all being pleasured at once like this, it’s impossible not to come, and I do, loudly, yelling out in surprise and awe at what these people are doing to me, at their generosity. I don’t know why Sue is prepared to share her lover like this with me, but I’m immensely grateful.
I decide to show her how grateful I am by sitting up, reaching for her, and pulling her down so that now it’s her who’s recumbent on the bed. Bringing my mouth to hers, I kiss her passionately. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper when we come apart, and she reaches between my legs to where I’m still numb from my climax. For a moment I let her tease at my clit, then I back away down the bed, plant my mouth on her cute little snatch. It’s sopping, of course – how could it not be? I lap at her juices, revelling in her fruit and honey sweetness, at the hint of musk. For a moment, I forget about Dean, but he’s still there behind me, and he reminds me of his presence by parting my bum cheeks with his hands and seeking my own hole with his mouth. After coating it with his saliva – unnecessarily, since I’m still wet – he kneels back up and with his fist guides his prick inside me. I cry out in triumph as I feel myself impaled, thrust myself back harder onto him, even as I continue working at Sue’s snatch with my mouth. Sue now places her fingers flat against my clit and lips and presses hard while moving them from side to side. I feel myself on the verge of a second orgasm. I tell myself that it’s not fair, that it’s someone else’s turn, but it’s too late, it’s bowling towards me, and I take it greedily.
Afterwards, I fall down onto Sue and we kiss avidly again. Dean withdraws from me. As our tongues are still curling around each other, I feel the pressure of Dean on my lower back and realise, from his position and from Sue’s cry, that he’s entered her where she lies beneath me. I remain sandwiched between them as he fucks her, harder and harder, and it’s my hips that he’s clutching as he comes inside her, my back he falls onto, gasping like a fish on the shore. Her orgasm comes a split second after his, and I feel her nipples harden where they touch mine.
We all fall apart, the force of our separate orgasms sending us spinning off into our separate worlds, and when I wake, at dawn’s light, at our penultimate stop, Sue and Dean are curled up together on the bottom bunk opposite mine. Brushing my hair out of my eyes, I sit up and for while watch them sleep, trying to decide if they look more like co-conspirators or, bizarrely, what they created the illusion of being – brother and sister. Yes, for a moment, in the dim light of early morning, they look young, childlike even, innocent in their dreams. But after last night I doubt their dreams are ever pure.
We arrive in Kochi, from which it’s quite a long bus ride down to Kovalam in the far south of the state, where we’ve agreed to stay. Nothing is said of last night during the journey, but I feel a sort of new complicity between us all, that I have become part of something, albeit something I don’t necessarily understand. That makes me a little uneasy too, I have to confess, but the physical exhilaration of the experience overrides any niggles. Sue’s generosity, Dean’s cock inside me at last, after the disappointment of the previous night – these things put any thoughts of fleeing out of my mind. I’m in for the ride, for the time being. I just can’t wait to have Dean to myself, for a while at least. Weirdly, I’m already reconciled to the fact that he’s Sue’s boyfriend. Perhaps I’m growing up a little.
There are three crescent-shaped beaches here, and we rent a traditional thatched hut close to the main one. There’s only one double bedroom inside, albeit one with a king-sized bed, and at first I’m surprised that Dean and Sue seem happy with this arrangement. But then I tell myself I should be flattered that they intend to share their bed with me, that we have become a bona fide threesome. Especially as it makes it more likely that I will get Dean to myself at some point, in that big comfy bed, when Sue goes off to take more of her pictures. Already she’s talking about wandering round to investigate the lighthouse perched at the end of the bay, red and white striped like a stick of Blackpool rock.
But it’s late, now – the light will be no good, she says – and we decide to walk along the seafront and perhaps take a swim in the calm sea before choosing a place for dinner from the array of seafood restaurants. Shouldering towels, we head out, and I feel as light-hearted as Dean and Sue look.
We’re too hungry, after all, and the beach is still too crowded for us to want to swim. Sitting on the terrace of one of the restaurants, watching the sun slot down behind the horizon like a giant orange coin, we chat idly, about nothing in particular. There’s a commotion at one point as a
fishing boat is hauled ashore and six men struggle up the beach with its catch – an enormous swordfish. We’re in luck – it’s to our restaurant that they heave it, and we order swordfish and lemon rice in the sure knowledge that the main ingredient couldn’t be any fresher.
As we eat, I study Dean and Sue, their body language with each other, the looks they exchange, the things they talk about. I notice that they have a habit of finishing each other’s sentences, and wonder for the first time how long they were together before coming to India. It’s curious how little I know about them as a couple, but then I have only just found out that they are a couple. Yet something stops me from asking them any questions about their relationship – perhaps I’m afraid of what I might find out – and our conversation remains relatively superficial.
I suppose my first and main question would be whether they are in love. Sitting here chatting in the waning light, they seem much as they did before I knew they weren’t brother and sister – affectionate but not overly so. Of course, they may be holding back on physical affection to spare my feelings. Also, I know enough about couples to understand that public displays of affection might serve to mask private problems, and that the converse is equally true – couples who are restrained in public may be demons with each other in the bedroom.
At last, having lingered over coffees and shots of the local spirit – toddy, fermented from coconut and palm saps – we pay our bill and step down onto the sand. The moon is a thin sliver above us, like the tip of a fingernail. The sea glints darkly, almost menacingly. I hold my breath, wondering what is about to happen, what the night has in store.
Sue strips off first, as you’d expect of the exhibitionist in the party. In the pale moon she’s barely visible. She approaches me as stealthy as a panther, pulls my top up over my head and inclines slightly to lap at my breasts with her tongue. I scoop them up, thrust them more fully into her face, little gurgling noises of pleasure bubbling up in my throat. My head is cast back; I turn it and look at Dean. He too has undressed. A sound escapes from my throat, something animal, as I watch him stride out into the water and plunge in. For a moment there’s no sign of him, and then he reappears, farther out, just a dark shape above the water, which you might mistake for a seal’s head if you didn’t know it was a man.
Chilli Heat Page 16