A Love Game

by Nicole Dere

  ‘I can’t! Please – Dave!’ I hated the pleading, whining tone. ‘Let me go! I can’t stay. Patrick – things – it’s got to stop!’ I was still twisting, my hand waggling ineffectually in his imprisoning hold.

  With a sudden jerk he pulled me close, then flung me down on the creaking bed, his weight crushingly on top of me. ‘One for the road, then, eh? Be fair. You and my missus have been lollypopping for ages. Long before I knew a fucking thing about it. You owe me quite a few, I’d say.’

  I was breathless, crying quietly, squirming under his weight. His reddened face was inches from mine, then he was gnawing at my neck, sucking and biting, and my struggles died. ‘Please, Dave. Don’t mark me.’ My voice was a whisper. I felt his loins thrusting at my belly, one hand pushing up my light dress, his fingers clutching at my briefs. ‘I don’t want to. Please let me go!’

  ‘You don’t fool me, little miss prick teaser! Mags says you like things played a bit rough now and then. Turns you on, doesn’t it? Well – I may not be a butch lez, darling, but I can sure raise a few blisters on your little arse.’

  I didn’t really scream, only gave a few squealing pleas and gently weeping protests. He knelt up, reached under my disordered dress. His thick fingers dug brutally into the thin cotton of my white knickers and hauled them down, off my hips, my thighs, and then my kicking feet. My thong sandals had already gone. He pulled me over his knee. I was naked from the waist down, still begging him to let me go when his open palm descended with a ringing detonation on one clenching cheek of my bottom. The fierce pain burned through my flesh. Instinctively, I bit off my scream, smothering my face in the coverlet as he slapped me again. My heels sawed the air, my struggles only token, as the hot pain flared and my behind crimsoned, and my yelps became a little more desperate as I begged him to stop. ‘Stop! Stop! Ow! You’re – please! Whatever you want–’

  He stopped, threw me roughly back onto the bed. I lay sobbing softly, watched him claw off his shorts and underpants, stared at his rampant bobbing prick, and parted my legs, bent and curled them accommodatingly around his driving hips. When he drove hammer-like into me, I was oily with the secretions that betokened my treacherous body’s surrender.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I SPUN ROUND WITH a frantic little squeak of startled guilt. I grabbed the towel and held it in front of my wet, naked body, terrified that Patrick must have seen the dark evidence of Dave Evans’s spanking on my tender bum. I stood there, all eyes and teeth, my heart thudding as I waited for the axe of just fury to fall upon me. But all my husband saw in me these days, on those rare occasions when he might catch a glimpse of me nude or semi-nude, was the essence of all that disgusted him in my miserable being, and I hastily slid the towel around my wet flesh and gaped at him.

  He had not been at the house when I arrived back, later than I had anticipated, from Kengui. Coward that I am, I was relieved at his absence, even though my guts were soon freshly churning with fear of what might befall when he did return. I had no idea where he was. We didn’t communicate on any level these days. Any attempts I made to do so fell like withered leaves against the implacable contempt. His face was like a glass-smooth cliff face, which allowed not the chinkiest of finger holds or toe holds. It left me utterly sick and bereft, beaten by his implacable hostility. And why?

  I had tried in my feeble way to question him when the rift first started. I was convinced he must somehow have known of the affair which I had begun with Mags Evans. Of course he would be appalled, would hardly be able to believe my depravity. Betraying him with another man would be a wicked evil. But for my lover to be a woman would be almost beyond his comprehension. But it dawned on me, though it took a while for the truth to sink in, that it was nothing so extreme. What had shocked him, what rocked him to his core, and created a gulf which could never be recrossed, was my accepting Mags’s first offer to join her drama group, and the pathetically feeble glow of limelight it gave me. It shook me to realise that such a simple, trivial act of defiance was the one factor which brought our whole relationship tumbling down to ruin. But it was true. Such was the totality of his sense of dominion over me that such an innocent expression of some small independence had destroyed for him the foundations of all that held me to him.

  He actually stated it, at last, as I stood there, in my cooling bath water, towel around me, mouth open, tears streaming down my pink cheeks. ‘You’re not the girl I thought you were. You let me down. You think more of flaunting yourself in front of everyone, having guys lapping you up, drooling over you. You’re not mine any longer. I don’t want you.’

  He turned and left me standing there, numbed and dumb, as usual, my insides hollow as though they’d been sucked out of me. I heard the car start, heard it drive away before I found the energy required to move, pad down to the bedroom at the far end of the corridor where for weeks I had slept alone. I left a trail of wet footprints on the cement floor before I flung myself down on the bed, the damp towel loosely clinging, and sobbed – my heart out, I was about to write, but perhaps only a part of it, the most innocent part. Yet, if I can bear to face the unavoidable truth of it, Patrick was merely the first to discover and latch on to the truth behind the doe-eyed, ankle-socked schoolgirl and her perverse need to belong to someone, master or mistress, who would possess her completely. And the real rebellion here had been against myself, that ingrained deviation of nature which had made me seek out and embrace my servility.

  He didn’t come home at all that night. Despite my overstrung nerves, I drifted into an exhausted sleep, from which I woke shivering and whimpering about 3 a.m. Wrapping my kikoi– the thin brightly patterned square of cotton the local girls wore as a sarong – around my nakedness, tucking it in at my breast, I crept through to the living room, enduring the cold of the polished, hard floor on my bare soles. The lights were still on in the living room, the door of the master bedroom yawning wide and showing the neatly made, unoccupied bed.

  Oh God! He must have had an accident. Gone out to one of the local bars, or driven into Kengui Club, got smashed and crashed the car on the way back. No! I shied away from the pain and guilt of that thought. No! More likely he’d decided if-you-can’t-beat-’em- join-’em, and found himself a nice accommodating bibi, a local whore, or just a talented amateur, who was willing to let herself be shagged. And why not? His slut of a wife had been doing just that for months, with her own sex, as well as a rampant stud. Helplessly my mind drifted back to the start of my depravity. It was a popular belief that the unaccustomed tropical heat of the sun affected European women’s brains – and less elevated parts of their anatomy – and made them promiscuous at the drop of a hat, or more revealing garment. It startled me to find how innocent that far-off morning now seemed when the other Patrick, Odhiambo, had lowered his shorts and shown me his resplendent dusky cock. The muscles in my throat tightened, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, as I recalled the next time I had seen it, and tasted its musk, and tried to swallow its giant magnificence. What a fall was there, as the great Bard said. And we never even fucked.

  I crawled back to bed at dawn and, in spite of my fevered state of mind, fell into another deep, exhausted sleep. When I woke, the sunlight was strong, even filtered through the drawn curtains. I gasped at the looming black silhouette of the figure standing over me. It took me a dazed second or two to recognise Patrick, and to realise that I was naked, the kikoitwisted in a narrow band beneath me, the sheet pushed down about my feet. I felt ludicrously embarrassed, and even crossed my arms over my breasts and pressed my thighs tightly together. Even more weird, I had the sudden idea that he might fuck me, and felt the eager, spontaneous throb of my vaginal muscles at the thought.

  Time was still for an instant. He stared down at my nude form. I stared back, fixed in that pathetic pose of modesty, silent, gazing up at him, hoping now that he would fling himself on me and take me, fierce and virile in his repossessing, while I accepted with penitent eagerness his reclaim. I was lost in the
powerful grip of my emotion and excitement. My eyes closed, my whole body tensed and ready to be assaulted. He had actually begun speaking before I could tune in to the sense of his clipped and utterly merciless words.

  ‘I’m travelling up to the Ministry today. I’ve arranged a transfer to the capital. I’ll be up there for three or four days – then I’ll be back to pack up my things. I don’t want you here when I get back. You won’t be on my visa as of next week. Your flight home will be paid for. The head can arrange a staff car to take you to Tendo. You can start divorce proceedings when you get back to the UK. You can try to take me for as much as you can. I don’t give a toss. I’ll fight it if it’s ridiculous. Or maybe Mwangi will let you stay on here, if he can fix it. Take you on on local terms. Perhaps one of your friends can take you in. Fat Mags, for instance! Thick as thieves still, I hear!’

  I stared at him wild-eyed for an instant, my heart fluttering. He knew! He’d heard something. Had he? But surely if he had, he would beat me black and blue. I had a crazy notion of leaping up, throwing myself at him, begging him to thrash me. Then I thought of my bottom, the rich variety of the bruises covering it from Dave Evans’s hard hand, and I sank back, too sick to cry, and pulled the thin sheet up over my lower half. ‘You want ...? You’re leaving me,’ I whispered, my head spinning.

  He nodded. ‘But you left memonths ago.’ He gave a cruel bark of laughter. ‘You could go after your little soul mate, Marty Dixon! You’re even more two of a kind now! I hear his missus has fucked off and left him too. Surprise, surprise!’

  I couldn’t speak, I felt eviscerated, incapable of moving. I realised the tears were trickling down, I could taste their salt. I lay back, his shape shimmering through the drops as he moved to the door, turned his head back towards me. ‘You can write, or get your lawyer to write, when you get back home. If that’s where you’re going.’

  He was gone. I heard him moving about, heard him go into the bathroom, heard the water running, the lavatory flush. Heard him go back into our bedroom, drawers and doors opening and shutting. Heard him calling the servants in from their quarters out back. Paying them off? Issuing instructions about the final packing? And still I lay there, unmoving, except for the shivering which had seized my limbs, and the very soft moaning which was trapped in my throat. Get up! Run out there. Naked, yes, naked, in front of everyone. Follow him out into the hard earth of the driveway. Drop on your knees in the dust. Throw yourself at his feet. Beg him – for mercy. Plead with him to take you back, his slave, his servant, humble, obedient. For ever and ever.

  I heard the car start up, the engine’s changing pace through the gears, then its fading, the soughing stillness of the bright morning returning. Still I lay there, felt the tears drying on my face, at the corners of my eyes. To my horror, I found I was lying on my back, my knees drawn up, slackly apart, while my hands rested between my thighs, the fingers gently caressing the puckered outer lips of my labia, which were moistening, opening to my strokes. My fingers were already sticky with the secretions my touches were creating, and they became bolder, more urgent, peeling the greasy outer surface open, revealing the gleaming pink smoothness of the inner layer, which led to the narrow fissure, and the centre of my now fiercely beating desire.

  Who loves ya, baby?Nobody, that’s who! Not Patrick, who first took your ugly schoolgirl knickers off, and took your virginity. Not your other Patrick, Odhiambo and his splendid cock, which you can taste even now, every time you remember. Not even your precious Mags, with her wonderful consuming mouth and tongue and lips and sharp, nipping teeth – “everybody likes a bit of rough”, a favourite saying of hers, and she was right, as long as there was the tenderness to go with it. And certainly not her rampant dick of a husband. Dave of that mighty dong! Whose hand marks stand out now in Technicolor hues on your behind. (No need to worry now about Patrick seeing those telltale marks of the adulterer. He won’t be seeing your arse or any other bit of you; he’s just walked – driven – out of your life.) Only two men who’ve ever fucked you, despite your decadent existence. And only one woman. Mags, falsely denigrated as “Fat Mags”, your butch bully, and don’t you just love it!

  All the rest are in your dreams, dreams stirred up by the very actions stirring you now: your own good and true hands, and feeling fingers, probing, hard – one, two, even three and a spread thumb peeling you back, on the fringes, as your belly begins to lift, responding to your accelerating, more vigorous drives into your now soaking, throbbing pussy, the tortuously slow crisis at last starting its inevitable swirl, the vortex of climax, until you’re shaking, the bed bouncing, your belly flinging itself upward against your plunging strokes. Your thighs are rapidly whipping, closing, opening, the bruised bum lifting, falling, against the creaking mattress, all taken up in the rhythm, the final ecstatic climb, the whorl up to the orgasm, that ultimate bursting, thrilling explosion. You scream aloud, muffling it in your throat to a long groan; you’re nothing but sensation, physical thrills firing, wiring through and through, dipping, rising, to the crescendo, the summit, the fireworks, the swirls and colours and cries and tears and slowly, slowly, the drifting down, the shuddering aftershocks of the coming, lost to the splendour of it all, the glide of the parachute – back to earth, back to shame, back to life and its reality. Masturbation, self abuse, onanism, tossing off, wanking – a rose by any other name ...

  I stood there, in the dusty, beaten earth of the busy compound, hardly aware of the curious glances and dazzling grins of the Africans passing back and forth. Most of them were black-skinned northerners, clad in ragged, multi-patched khaki shorts, and white singlets with gaping holes. Their bare arms, muscled, not with the bulging biceps and sloping shoulders of those macho types who “pumped iron” but the long stretched swellings of those who had spent their working life in hard toil. In contrast their legs looked slim, their feet, bare or sporting the rough thronged sandals made of the rubber from worn-out car tyres, those huge feet, and the area leading up to just below the prominent knee bone, were covered in grey dust, in a uniformity that looked almost like stockings.

  I glanced about helplessly, with the strangest feeling that I was invisible. I had a vague awareness of how dishevelled I must look. My hair hung in tangled, sweat-limp rats’ tails, stray wisps clung across my red, perspiring face. I had not bothered with make-up, had not even washed myself. My eyes were puffed, scarcely more than slits in the swollen flesh about them. The skin of my cheeks felt tight to the point of splitting, from the gallons of tears I had shed. The few clothes I was wearing clung to me, wet as though I had jumped into a river. I guessed the cotton bra and briefs must be visible through the thin stuff of my dress. It was a wonder I had not been raped, during the long journey which had brought me here: my stumbling walk through the crowded market, my wild ride out here in one of the local taxis, crammed in with ten or so Africans, men, women and children, in a proximity that in any other circumstance would have been indecent. But I scarcely noticed any of it.

  Unreality cloaked me still. I had no idea how long I stood, in that beating sun, until a touch, and a curious voice, jolted me into dim awareness. ‘Jambo, memsa’ab. Habari gani?’How are you? What do you want?

  I stared at the dazzling grin, those white protruding upper teeth, so prevalent among the lakeside dwellers. My mind refused to focus. I stared at the smiling features, at a loss, struggling to find words. ‘Bwana Van Reis? Memsa’ab Dixon?’

  ‘Ay-ah!’ The youth gave a kind of whoop, a little jig of amusement and slapped his hand against his bare thigh, before pointing back towards the low, ramshackle wooden building with a tin roof, across the open space. I was still gawping at him, unmoving, and his grin faltered, his eyes swept over me, from my tangled hair, down to my dusty, dirty toes, with their chipped red paint, in the open sandals. He stretched out a long arm, pointing once more across the yard. ‘Bwana mkubwa.’The big man. The boss man. He nodded.

  I blinked up at him, read his thoughts: what was wrong with this crazy
mzunguchick? I felt as if I was emerging from a deep, drugged sleep, my brain refusing to work properly, failing to summon speech or movement from my tired limbs. He was right to think me mad. How had I got here? Had I really walked from the school compound, down the hill to the bush market, and the crowded taxi park, caught one of the matatu, the local taxis which carried three times the legal maximum number of passengers, sat crushed in their midst, rubbing shoulders, limbs, hips, with the fellow travellers, who stared, and talked about me, and cackled and guffawed at the remarks I mercifully could not comprehend?

  Here I was, what seemed like hours later, faint and sick, and wondering again what I was doing here, what on earth I could say. Stumbling, my legs feeling as awkward as a newborn animal, I headed for the building, the dark mouth of its open doorway. Then in, out of the merciless glare of the high sun, to a gloom in which the dim images swam before me. I stood still once more, just inside the doorway, afraid that I was going to faint, or throw up on the dirty concrete floor. There were exclamations of surprise, shadowy figures parted in front of me, and he was there, towering, massive, blond curls darkened with sweat, big red face shining, smiling even in his amazement. The bwana mkubwa. Ant Van Reis.

  ‘Janet Thoroughgood! What the hell are you doing out here? Come in. Sit down. What is it? What’s wrong? You had an accident? Your car – here, come in.’

  I swayed, the tears started pouring down my face again, I made an unintelligible groan as my arms reached out to him, and the room and all those curious black faces spun round and round. My knees buckled, and before I folded onto the floor he leapt forward, an arm went round my waist, and his other swept my legs up. He carried me in his arms, hurrying from the crowded outer room through into a small inner office, with a buzzing electric fan on a battered desk. Behind the desk was a rickety upright chair, and in front of it was what I thought was an even more worn low-level couch of scuffed leather, which I later realised was an old bench seat out of a vehicle, on whose yielding spongy surface he deposited me, lifting my bare, dirty feet – my sandals had already fallen clear – so that I sprawled there, my dress round my upper thighs, probably giving him a glimpse of the “V” of my bikini briefs, and I didn’t give a damn. I don’t suppose he did either.