A Love Game

by Nicole Dere

  She would go mad. She would kill me. Hell would have no fury like Clio in her thwarted lust. She would leave me! It was as simple as that. And if Ant Van Reis didn’t refuse her ... if he wanted to take her away from me ... I stood there, in the middle of the path, with the sun beating down fiercely, and shook with terror, the tears streaming down my cheeks.

  Chapter Six

  ‘LET ME TALK TO Marty alone, sweety. Why don’t you pop down to the club? Take a dip. Cool off!’ Ant Van Reis’s chuckle rumbled as deeply as his laid-back bass voice. ‘I’ll join you in a while. After our little chat.’

  Even in my hollow-gutted anguish, I marvelled at his power over her, as Clio flushed, her lips set in a thin, grim line, turned without a word and strode quickly out of our living room. I shivered at the recall of her profane and hysterical fury on this spot the previous evening. My cheek still bore the vivid crimson imprint of that rage when I broke the news of my dismissal, and under my pressed shirt and shorts my flesh was marked by her raking nails and the livid welts from the thin belt she had wielded, before storming out to leave me bloody and bowed, stretched across our bed.

  She had stayed away all night, and had just returned, calm and implacable, with her lover, and I trembled anew, awaiting the final sentence of my banishment. I had clung in the endless night to a forlorn hope that Ant might balk at taking on permanent responsibility for Clio, especially in view of unconfirmed rumours of wife and children left behind down south. Yet here they were, side by side, still attached, to the extent that he could calmly order my wife to leave us. Even more miraculous, she did so without a note of protest. What more proof could I need of the strength of their relationship? I stared in helpless silence, my vision blurred with the tears of weakness and hopelessness, awaiting the sentence of my ultimate banishment, against which the stigma of losing my post here seemed of no account at all.

  ‘You look rough, chum. Perhaps you need a drink? I wouldn’t mind a beer. It’s been a long night!’

  His grin was like a dagger through me. I felt like an animal, one of the countless victims he had dispatched so ruthlessly with his guns. I stood there, rooted, trembling as my guts and limbs turned to water.

  ‘So! They’re giving you the boot from here, yeah? No big deal, I’d have thought.’ His contempt for my profession, and for me in particular, was rife in his tone and look. Still I remained dumb, my throat choked, the tears blinding and threatening to fall. ‘Point is, Clio doesn’t want to go. Or rather, doesn’t want to leave me. And I don’t want to lose her.’

  ‘Please!’ I croaked. I think I raised a hand in appeal. The tears spilt onto my cheeks. I shook my head, couldn’t go on.

  ‘You lost her years ago, mate. Not that you ever really had her, did you?’ He wasn’t expecting my answer. We both knew what he meant, and we both knew he was right. ‘She’s coming with me. Moving in. But I – we– don’t mind taking you along. If you want. It’s up to you.’

  ‘But ... but ... I don’t ...’

  ‘It’s simple enough, Marty. I can fix it. You don’t need a job. You don’t need work permits, or any of that shit. You’ll belong to us. Be ours. All ours. Get it?’

  He grinned. I felt pinned by those cool grey eyes. I couldn’t look away, my head was spinning, I couldn’t voice the thoughts whirling round in my brain. I was shaking.

  ‘Yeah, Marty boy! Ours! Body and soul. Our houseboy. Our slave. Day and night, for as long as we want you. Like I say, it’s entirely up to you. You want to go on with this teaching lark, go up to the capital, go back to the UK, that’s fair enough. Clio’s staying with me, that’s final. What do you say? Say yes, and you’re ours. You’ll never have to make another decision in your life. Just do as you’re told, always. Sounds just up your street, boy! What’s it to be?’

  I and the world stopped breathing. I felt faint, the room really did move about me, and I croaked through my tears, ‘I don’t want to lose – leave – her.’

  ‘And me, Marty! You’ll belong to me. You get that?’

  I nodded, and he advanced. His great hand fell heavily on my shoulder, the iron fingers dug painfully into the tenderness of my flesh about the delicate bone. ‘I’ll show you what it means, my lad.’

  He steered me through to our bedroom at the end of the long corridor. Inside, he closed the door, smiled at me. ‘Take your clothes off.’

  My eyes were wide, my heart hammered. I gaped, opened my mouth, but could form no words.

  ‘This isn’t a good start, Marty. Strip!’

  Something seemed to snap inside my brain. It was almost a physical sensation. I felt a tremor pass through my frame, then my fingers were clumsily unbuttoning my shirt, unfastening the waistband of my shorts. The only other garments I wore were a pair of leather sandals and briefs. The sandals were swiftly shuffled clear, and my thumbs were at the elastic band of my underpants. For just a fraction I hesitated, shy and embarrassed, and ashamed of baring my inadequate manhood, then I thrust convulsively at the tiny pants, pushed them down my limbs and stepped out of them. All at once I became deeply aware of a new feeling, which I swiftly recognised, and which made me blush even deeper: a tingling sexual arousal racing through every fibre of my naked body. I glanced down involuntarily, and my hand fluttered in a shielding gesture towards my genitals, which I thought must surely be stirring and growing at the sensation racing through me. Still I was deeply shamed, and my toes flexed against the thinness of the rush matting over the cool cement of the floor.

  ‘Not very well endowed, are you, Marty?’ Ant rumbled, flaying me with his smile. ‘But a very pretty boy. I’ll give you that. Don’t get any wrong ideas, but as I said, you area pretty one! As smooth as silk. Come here, and obey my first command. The first test of your obedience, my pretty slave!’

  He was unzipping his fly, which was already bulging mightily. Before I could move, he had already, with some difficulty, extracted his penis from the narrow opening, and it hung there, already almost erect, its glans huge and fully exposed, a darkly roseate hue at the head of the thick brown arching column protruding four or five inches from his clothing.

  Again I felt a strange sense of helplessness, as though some other agency was exerting its power to propel me the few steps over to him, forcing me to drop to my knees on the hard floor, at his planted feet, and to reach out with trembling fingers to touch the throbbing heat of the living flesh of that splendid column. The dome lifted like a snake before my eyes, and I saw the slit of its small mouth glistening with issue. I felt the surging, hardening strength of the shaft, its might as I closed my trembling fingers around its girth, and began my worshipful massage. It reared under my strokes, and the powerful scent of it, sweet and terrifying, encompassed me until I leant in, pressed my brow and cheek, and my lips, to the satin sponge potency of the rising dome, felt the sticky smears of his juice anointing my forehead, and my eyes, and, finally, and most terrifyingly exciting of all, my lips, with its unique, salty flavour.

  His own fingers, hard and implacable, as clear in their command as any words, locked about the hinges of my jaws, drew me onto it, and I stretched my mouth wide in captive embrace of its possession as it slid remorselessly inside. My tongue rimmed it. I felt the mighty flange at the base of its head, where it met that thick, pulsating shaft, which drove in until it took me entirely, filling the gaping cavern of my mouth. My teeth rubbed against its folds. It stretched to the back of my straining throat, and I spluttered and choked as I sucked, the blood thundering in my pounding ears as it withdrew, with a loud sucking explosion, and I used my tongue, blindly, greedily, lapping at the sticky nectar of its flow, while my fist encircled its beating dominion. I gnawed and bit and nibbled and lapped with my own desire now, lost to everything but my own need, until his great hand descended on the back of my swaying, slender neck and drew me onto his impaling prick once more. He filled me up in the great surging release of his ejaculation, and I hung blindly swallowing, choking, his discharge flowing down to my gullet, and his come
ran from the corners of my mouth, down my chin, onto my sweating throat and chest.

  I slumped, felt my upturned heels digging into my bare buttocks, my head hanging down on my chest, while I coughed and cleared my throat and tried to swallow the residue of the sticky coating in my mouth and on my tongue. His fingers wound now in my tangled hair, and lifted my scalp as he hauled me to my feet. ‘Go and get a wet facecloth and towel. I need to clean up.’

  I padded out obediently to the neighbouring bathroom. I was all at once acutely aware again of my nakedness in front of him, and my buttocks tightened as I turned my back on him.

  ‘Clio’s right. You give good head.’ He grinned, and quite unselfconsciously began to clean himself before readjusting his shorts. ‘No wonder she doesn’t want to lose you.’

  I cleared my throat, which I had swiftly rinsed out during my trip to the bathroom. ‘May I get dressed again?’ I almost whispered, blushing deeply, yet ashamedly and perversely thrilled at my subservience. I shuddered with a secret awareness of the fatal attraction of this deviant inclination which might lie ahead in this weird and unnatural relationship.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I think we ought to let Clio see how far we’ve progressed in our new relationship. There’s no need to be shy, Marty. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of you as nature made you, sweety.’ The deep chuckle rumbled once more, making me burn with shame, but at the same time touching that perverse core within me like a soft caress. ‘I’ll go down and pick her up from the club. We’ll have a swift jar or two, and be back in an hour or so. Make sure your boy prepares something for supper, then get rid of him. Youcan wait on us tonight. Better get used to it. And make sure you’re exactly as you are.’ He laughed, nodded towards my loins, and I realised suddenly that my hands were folded and clasped over my genitals. ‘Don’t hide your light under a bushel, you silly boy! Though I must say a bushel would be more than adequate, whatever that is. I’ve seen bigger match flames! Kwa heri!’

  After he had bidden me goodbye and strode out, I stood there, immobile in the centre of the bedroom, listening to the sound of his Toyota 4x4 roaring out of our compound. I stared at my bare feet, watched the prominent knuckles of my big toes flex whitely as they curled on the rush matting. A host of disconnected thoughts raced through my reeling brain. What was I doing, what hadI done, allowing myself to be humiliated and abused like that? His words echoed in the stillness of the tranquil room. Slave! Was that what I wanted, to become this pale, insubstantial creature, subservient to this great bully’s every whim? But then I caught a glimpse of my form in the long mirror of Clio’s dressing table, saw the marks of her assault of the previous day across my shoulders and back, the thin weals of the strap marks across the white cheeks of my behind, heard again the sound of that hateful chuckle when Ant had first cast his eyes on them. Wasn’t that what I was already, had been for all the time I had been with my wife, living under her domination? A slave in every true sense of the word, and terrified out of my wits at the thought of losing that degraded status.

  I shivered, realised that I was absently caressing my folded penis, thrilling to the sensations that were spreading throughout my naked frame. I felt the thick and bitter taste in my mouth, the drying residue of Ant’s sex juice on my lips and chin. I shuddered, and gagged. I raced into the adjacent bathroom, and bent over the washbasin, retching violently, my mouth filled with hot acidic liquid, which I spat into the gleaming bowl. I ran the water, gulped and swallowed and scrubbed my face and hands vigorously, until I could smell only the sweetness of the highly perfumed soap which Clio preferred.

  I stood up, dabbed myself dry on a fluffy towel, and stared at my reflection in the mirror above the basin. I gazed at my torso, still only lightly tanned, hairless, with the small, darkly red circular discs of the areolae about the nipples. Involuntarily my eyes were drawn down the slender paleness to the shallow little eye of the navel, and, below that, the dark bush of pubic curls, the modest little patch peeping over the curving white rim of the porcelain.

  I stared at myself helplessly. My buttocks clenched and I thrust myself violently against the cold, unyielding hardness of the basin, felt it crushing the satin softness of my balls. My fingers added to the pain, pressing and squeezing my short column until it began to pulse mightily and, finally, to harden in a brief spasm that sent the pale creamy fluid of my orgasm flowing down the snowy slope of the bowl.

  I was crying softly again as I hung there. My hands clung to the basin, keeping me upright despite my weakened knees. Of course I would go with Clio and Ant. Of course I would be their slave, their toy, their possession. This pale weeping, shivering image that gazed back at me was the realme. Clio had known it always, and so had I. And so now, as well as my mistress, did my new master.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘KEEP STILL, YOU SILLY boy! And try not to blink, or I might put your eye out!’

  I tried not to breathe as Clio worked with swift deftness, flicking the tiny brush with neat little upward strokes, coating my eyelashes with the black make-up to put the finishing touches to my transformed face. Her own warm, sweet breath flowed over my countenance; her glistening lips were only inches above mine, which shone with the same bold shade she was wearing. My skin felt sealed in the cosmetic mask she had spent so much time and effort applying to my features, transforming me into a creature I scarcely recognised, exotic and weirdly thrilling.

  It was oddly liberating. I felt safer behind the disguise, less shamed by my servility and the physical degradations of my lowly status in this new household. At first when they had brought me here to this much larger, older house, built in the colonial style, several miles from the township and the school where we had lived, I was crippled with shame, dumb with the ignominy of my situation. Adamu and Muriamu, Ant’s house servants, stared in utter disbelief that first day when I climbed naked out of the back of his truck, then they ran, shrieking with laughter at my pale, cringing frame before I crept into the shelter of the big old, thatched building. Even now, after almost a month, they invariably sniggered when they came in from their quarters behind the screen of bamboo bushes, and the veranda was still often crowded with youngsters and other workers from the farm or the workshops, all coming to stare at the naked mzungu.

  I hated exposing myself to their mockery, so I was relieved to find that I was hardly required to leave the house. And there was more than enough for me to deal with in the life-changing aspects of my new existence as bond slave to my new mistress and master.

  Now, as I sat there obediently on the bed, submitting myself to Clio’s intense and expert ministrations, I marvelled at the speed with which all three of us had adjusted to our contrasting roles. I had feared Ant Van Reis most. After all, he was the unfamiliar element in our intimate triangle, and there was still somewhere inside me that masculine sense, however subdued, of shame at having been usurped in my traditional role by his taking my wife from me. On the other hand, there was greater shame at my recognition of that undeniable facet of my sexuality which had cast its shadow over my relationship with Clio from the very beginning. “Less than a man” was a phrase that had recurred with increasing discomfort the longer we had remained together. That’s why we had come to this present crisis and its subsequent sea change.

  She was brutally frank now. ‘This is how it should be,’ she announced, on that first day when we were all three settled in Ant’s spacious, untidily cosy living room. ‘How youshould be.’ She nodded at my unclothed frame. ‘Go through to the bedroom. Second on the right. Bring me my hairbrush. The long-handled one with the floral back.’ She clapped her hands briskly. ‘Come on! Chop chop! Fast as you can!’

  Blushing furiously, I nevertheless turned and moved swiftly to obey, the hateful bass rumble of Van Reis’s chuckle behind me as I fled. I was shaking with nerves as I returned carrying the narrow brush and handed it to her. ‘Your first lesson, Marty. Come here.’ She moved over to the large cushions of the cane settee, and settled herself. She
was wearing one of her many light cotton flowered dresses, and pushed its short skirt high up on her thighs, exposing her brown legs to an immodest degree. She patted them. ‘Spread yourself here, there’s a good boy. Hurry up!’

  For an instant, I stared, my mouth open, and she repeated her command, still with crisp good humour. ‘Come along! Don’t make me angry, Marty.’

  She was still smiling, as I moved somewhat tardily to lower myself across her cool bare thighs. I was deeply conscious of Ant’s soft laughter, the amusement in those grey eyes. Then I felt myself crushed against her as I hung there face downward, my impotent sex so close to her own. My buttocks clenched at the sudden touch of her cool hand running over my curves. ‘Such a lovely little arse, don’t you think, Ant?’

  ‘If you’re that way inclined!’ he laughed easily.

  ‘Oh, you know what they say. Variety is the spice of life and all that, eh?’ She was caressing my bottom still, letting her nails trail lightly along the tight cleft, and I felt my excitement growing, throbbing against her now warming flesh. And from the sudden deepening chuckle she gave, I guessed she was aware of it. ‘Now now! You naughty boy! Lie still and I’ll be gentle with you – even though it’s not your first time!’

  She laughed merrily as she delivered the first blow: a vigorous enough crack, which rang like a shot and I jerked at the flash of burn across my behind. My heels jerked upward and I cried out involuntarily. The strokes fell swiftly, with loud reports, and my bottom clenched and lifted, my feet scissoring at the fusillade that sent the fire scorching through my flanks. ‘Please! Stop!’ I pleaded, only dimly aware of the indignity through the flare of pain. It was soon over, and she pushed me vigorously clear of her, so that I rolled at her feet as she smoothed down her crumpled dress. I was mortified at their grins. I stood and massaged my stinging behind.