A Love Game

by Nicole Dere

  For the first time in months, Marty found himself blushing, and his hands fluttered over his sexual organs as he relayed Clio’s wishes. The simultaneous stares and grins of the couple added to his shame. ‘Ndio, bwana.’ Yes, sir. The added insult of the courtesy title Adamu used was evident in the broad contemptuous smile which accompanied it, as well as the rising snigger from the maid.

  The bedroom was a cosy lamp-lit cocoon as the long hours of the evening then the night advanced. All three ate together, drank coffee, then ice-cold glasses of lager, picnicking on the wide bed. They remained naked, though with a strange new self-consciousness that was not unpleasant. ‘I don’t think I could bear anything touching my poor backside.’ Clio’s confessional smile had a touch of shyness about it. It was part of this altogether new sense of intimacy bringing them close together. When the hour grew late, she said bravely, with just the slightest tremor, ‘Will you two stay with me, please? Ant won’t come back tonight, I know he won’t. He’s probably already sleeping it off somewhere. We can manage here, can’t we?’ She gestured at the tumbled bed they were all sprawling on. ‘I can tell you, Iwon’t be tossing about. My poor arse hurts if I blink!’ She gave a trembly little laugh. She paused fractionally. ‘Unless you two would rather ... you know ... be on your own. I mean in your ... be with each other. It’s OK if you want to.’

  Their denial was spontaneously identical. Clio was lying on her right side, still in loose embrace with Jan, and now, with a wincing groan, she very carefully eased herself onto her back, drawing up her knees to try to ensure that her buttocks made as little contact as possible with the cover beneath. Jan raised herself on one elbow, leaning her bald head close to her mistress’s shoulder, and very gently began to play with Clio’s left nipple, teasing it to erection with her fingers.

  Clio gave a little shiver of appreciation, pulled the pale skull down, encouraging Jan’s mouth and flickering tongue to add their excitation to the plucking fingers, and gave a shaky sigh. In spite of her discomfort, her frame stirred in responsive pleasure. ‘Do you remember Observatory Hill, Marty?’ she murmured. Her hand was stroking Jan’s bent, bare, nuzzling head. ‘That was the first time we slept out, all night. Under the stars. God! It was great, wasn’t it?’

  Marty could only nod. His eyes filled with tears, and he had to swallow hard. His wife’s dreamy tone continued. ‘It was the first time we fucked properly too, wasn’t it? It was so good!’ Her words were directed at Jan now. ‘He was right inside me, I could feel him, hard in me! God! I came and came and came!’ She pulled Jan’s captive head close, pressing the face into the softness of her breast, her hand cupping the high forehead, her lips bestowing a tender kiss on the bare skull.

  Marty sighed, dipped his own head and took her right nipple in his suckling mouth, pushed his face against the yielding swell of the breast, and let his tears flow onto the lifting flesh. Now her arms encircled both her acolytes’ shoulders, hugged them like twin infants to her bosom, in that peaceful seminal moment of unity. There were no more words, but all three felt that sense of change, the end of the enclosed world they had shared. However unconventional or even decadent it had been, they all shared in mourning its passing.

  Ant did not come back. After a long night of fitful slumber, another endless day passed. The bedroom seemed both sanctuary and cell, from which they were reluctant to move, even to use the lavatory or bathe. Once again, Marty served as the reluctant contact with the servants in the distant kitchen, from which he ferried makeshift snacks along the corridor. Both the girls’ behinds were now covered in dark bruises and hard raised ridges marking the fall of the belt, and were still wincingly tender, even to the lightest touch. Eventually, sometime in the early afternoon, Clio, said, ‘Listen. We’d better put some clothes on. You two as well.’ The significance of her words was emphasised as she added, ‘Not those damned kanzus! I mean proper clothes.’

  They stared at her in consternation. She failed to disguise the anxiety she could see reflected in the looks the other two fixed on her. ‘Just in case anyone calls ... I mean, Ant will turn up tonight. He must! But in case ...’ She even tried a smile. ‘There’s that white mini of mine that looks quite a respectable length on you, Jan. You can take your pick from the undies’ drawer. Mind you, I don’t think I could bear to put a pair of knickers on, could you? Marty! There’s still some old stuff of yours kicking about, unless Adamu’s snaffled it all! Come on, kids, let’s cover our arses with something!’

  Nobody called, and Ant did not show up for a second night which seemed even longer as they all three clung together under the single sheet. None of them could keep up even the pretence of a brave front. ‘Where is he? What’s happened to him?’ Clio groaned, and Marty and Jan strove to distract her with their loving embraces and hopeless attempts at optimism.

  They were still lying wearily abed in the bright morning sunshine of a new day when they heard the roar of a vehicle and the skid and spurt of gravel at its violent halt in the drive. There were cries of alarm from the direction of the quarters, then the sound of booted feet on the veranda, and barked commands. The booming voice of Commandant Onama grew menacingly louder as he made straight for the bedroom. ‘Aha! Not all the birds have flown, I see!’ His big shining face broke into a beaming grin. His eyes darted about in his desire to miss nothing as he observed the three nude figures trying to hide beneath the sheets and at the same time to scramble into their various items of clothing.

  The full horror of his opening remark hit them a few minutes later when they sat side by side on the settee in the living room, dishevelled and barefoot, but at least decently covered, stunned at Onama’s explanation. The piggy gaze fixed first on Clio. ‘Your lover, my dear–’ his eyes flickered to the two figures either side of her – ‘and yourmaster, has fled and will not be returning. He has cleaned out all his bank accounts, and transferred all the money from his transport business abroad. He has apparently informed the Agricultural Ministry of his quitting of the stock farm. Whether he has embezzled any of its funds is not clear at this moment. We presume he has headed down south.’

  He smiled cruelly at the consternation written plainly on the three distraught faces. ‘You knew of course that he deserted his wife and family in South Africa four or five years ago, so you are not the first to be dumped, my dear.’ He took a sadistic pleasure in watching the shock and hurt spread over Clio’s lovely features. ‘But I’m afraid you have other immediate concerns to worry about. Allof you,’ he added, glancing again at the other two equally frightened figures. ‘You’ll have to come with me, I’m afraid. I have to arrest you for investigation into serious charges of gross immorality and illegal sexual activity. Come with me, immediately.’

  Their weeping protests were ignored, and they were hustled out into the dusty compound and the waiting Jeep without time to collect any belongings or even to cover their tender feet.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ‘GOD! THIS STINKING BOG!’ Clio groaned, when she finally rose from the hard cold rim of the seatless porcelain pedestal and savagely pressed the large metal button that operated the flushing mechanism. She felt the pain in her knees and the stabbing ache of her leg and back muscles, the soreness of her inner thighs, her belly and the hidden tenderness of her vulva. But then there was no part of her, from crown to toe, that did nothurt, after this eternity of being kept in this filthy prison cell. Except that the cell, bare and cold as it was, with its cement floor and tiled walls, was not really dirty. After all, they came and hosed it down every morning, and them too, as the two naked girls crouched and held each other and yelped at the stinging power of that icy stream. She was sure the guards must fight for the sadistic pleasure of wielding the canvas pipe with its gleaming pointed nozzle. At least Onama had stopped coming in with a select little audience to observe the daily ritual degradation. Not that either Clio or Jan suffered agonies of shame at the compulsory ablutions any more; not when they had far more extreme humiliations to endure, under the
hands of the insatiable police chief, and several of his select cronies.

  According to Jan, this torment had lasted no more than 12 days. And Clio had no cause to doubt her. As she shook down the skirt of the ugly coarse dress, the only garment they were allowed to wear, until commanded to remove it for the nightly revels in which they featured, Clio acknowledged that without her beloved Jan she would never have survived two let alone 12 days – and nights. She climbed stiffly up onto the high concrete shelf affixed to the wall. It served as their bed, with only a rough, stained mattress an inch thick and a dark grey smelly blanket to cover them, and she sank gratefully into the open embrace of her lover, the enfolding arms and legs and sweet kiss which made the cruel hardness of the “bed’s” assault on her aching bones so much less brutal. Their mouths open, their tongues penetrating, entwining, they gnawed at each other, felt their pulses racing, their bodies under the rough linen material of the dresses longing for further ecstatic contact. ‘I love you, my darling!’ Clio whispered, when they finally released their sealed lips. ‘Please, please forgive me for bringing all this on you – for everything!’

  Jan strained closer, their bare legs clasping, every inch of their bodies striving to press closer still. ‘There’s nothing to forgive, don’t ever think it. I came to you, looking for you. I gave myself up to you. I’ll always belong to you.’

  Jan clung to those words when, much earlier than usual, soon after they had received their evening meal of dark meat stew and rice, which they ate from a single shared dish with crude wooden spoons, the cell door opened, and a police constable beckoned Jan to accompany him. Clio sprang up, her voice taut with fear. ‘What about me? We always go together.’

  He shook his head, his teeth flashing in a dazzling grin. ‘Hapana, memsa’ab. No, madam. Only this one. Little one, no hair. Do not worry. I come back. Keep you company, yeah?’

  Jan reached out quickly, clasped the hand that stretched towards her. ‘I’ll be all right.’ Even though the normal routine had been changed by this summons for her alone, she was not afraid as she followed her guard along the already familiar bleak corridor. Far worse was the treacherous knowledge that she was not truly filled with repugnance after their sexual sessions with the police chief. Occasionally, one of his VIP associates, such as the short, bespectacled chief magistrate, would be there to share in the “fun”, in a four-way romp in which the girls were expected to do all the hard work, and did not disappoint, though Jan constantly worried that Clio would fail to hide her feeling of revulsion and anger.

  But the secret that really troubled Jan, which she could never confess to Clio, was that far from being revolted by the rampant Onama, her own body was shamefully excited and eager to receive his pounding assault. It had been so ever since that first coupling, in the prosaic locale of his office on the building’s first floor. The great barrel of his frame, that rotund belly, so unexpectedly hard as a drum, the feel of it thrusting against her, her own slender softness meeting its eager thrust, the parting of her thighs to encompass such a girth, thrilled her so much and accelerated her own excitement to such a swift climax, that she was tormented by her own perversity. How could such a gross figure, such an uncouth individual, who treated her simply as an attractive means of ensuring a satisfying orgasm, white trash worth nothing except as a good fuck, arouse her so spectacularly? It appalled her – but there was nothing she could do about it. Already, as she padded silently behind the constable, she could feel the muscles of her vagina tightening, twitching in anticipation, the delicate skin of her upper inner thighs tingling in anticipation of that smothering belly frotting against her. But there was another surprise awaiting her, for she was not taken through the heavily protected iron door with its tiny barred window, that led up to the first floor and Onama’s den, but instead through a door on the right, which opened onto a room similar in size and layout to their own bleak cell.

  ‘Wait!’ the constable growled. Jan’s heart began to beat quicker, a new fear gripped her as she stood there alone in the middle of the floor. There was a sheet and blanket folded back neatly on the thin mattress of the shelf-bed. Oh God! Were she and Clio to be separated? Was this to be her new home? A solitary incarceration? Please, no! Then even this fear was displaced by her jaw-hanging amazement, as she gaped at the tall figure of Patrick Odhiambo, who clanged the door to behind him and advanced on her with eagerly reaching arms.

  Later, she had time to reflect that she should not have been so astonished at his reappearance, when it had been chiefly through his interference in her life that the insulated tiny world at Van Reis’s had been disastrously shattered. But in those first dizzy moments of their reunion, logical thought failed her in the violence with which Odhiambo seized her, crushed her in his arms then bore her to that hard but waiting bed. His lips sealed her mouth, preventing all but a breathless gasp, then a squeak at his great hands already climbing up her legs, ripping apart the buttons of her ugly striped dress then greedily fastening on the naked delights he found waiting beneath the rough material.

  ‘Please!’ she managed, but whether it was a word of protest or an urgent bid for him to get on with the business of fucking her, she scarcely knew herself. In another instant, whatever clothing had covered his lower body had gone, her prison uniform was a twisted strip of cloth under her arching back, and he was there, on her, pressing between her spread thighs, his face rooting, his lips gnawing at her crushed breasts and, most potent of all, the proud head and that long shaft were ploughing, pushing aside the lips of her cleft, driving into the narrow tunnel which welcomed the invader with moist, fierce joy. Odhiambo’s cock! The phrase rang like a triumphant battle cry once again in her brain. She wondered if she had screamed it aloud in her madness, then she gripped his pumping hips in her thin milk-white thighs, envisioned their paleness parted yieldingly about the slim, brown clenching cheeks of his bottom, exquisitely paler than the darker, shining skin of his back and shoulders, and the long limbs as he hammered down and deep into her core.

  She had learnt over the past months, since coming to Van Reis and Clio, to live for and in the moment, which stood her in good stead now, as she lay crushed and exhausted under his dead weight. She could feel the combined wetness of their loins, could feel the impressive length of his penis, soft but still fully occupying her cunt’s clinging walls. A thrilling post-orgasmic spasm passed through her as she wondered if he would stay there, inside her, and his mighty cock rejuvenate itself, harden and begin that deadly thrusting again, and if she would survive such a cataclysmic onslaught. She acknowledged to herself that her excitement matched her fear.

  Though their loins did part during the long and sleepless night, they came together again, twice, in equally tumultuous consummation. Between these bouts of splendidly savage passion, they lay in sweating, gentler conjunction, and talked, though it was mainly Odhiambo who spoke, while Jan thought furiously of how to deal with this latest tempestuous lover. ‘Onama finally agreed to let me come and spend the night with you. We have to be careful, my love. But I swear I will get you out of here, out of the fat pig’s bed. I know he forces you to fuck with him – and the other white woman – Van Reis’s whore.’

  Jan almost cried out in angry protest, but swiftly realised that even with Odhiambo she must be careful, must not antagonise him. Her hand rested gently on his damp, hairless chest, her leg rubbed softly against his. ‘I told you, when you came to the bungalow, they have been kind to me. And to Marty. They–’

  ‘They keep you naked – and him too! To play sex with. Do not worry, my darling. Onama cannot keep you locked up here. I will find a way to get you out. I’ll get you back home, to my village. I’ll look after you. But we must wait – as long as he will let me see you, let us jig-a-jigtogether. I will talk to someone, in Kendu, in the ministry. I–’

  She stirred, ignored the tender soreness of her sex, lifted her leg seductively over his, and reached down between their bellies, to search out his long, limp prick to distract h
im from his worrisome scheming, and the frightening prospect of her exchanging this unhappy captivity for another in some remote bush village. As a stratagem, it was spectacularly successful.

  The end when it came only three days later was sudden, swift, and totally unexpected. A suitcase was brought to their cell, which contained an assortment of Clio’s clothing and cosmetics, all crammed in higgledy-piggledy, clearly packed in haste and with little forethought. But when they were ordered to get dressed, they did so, hurriedly pulling on garments, one of which was the white mini-dress which Jan had worn for that first assignment with the police chief. They were shaking with both fear and hope as they waited to discover their fate. They learnt it, not from Onama, but from the chief magistrate and another distinguished officer in army uniform.

  ‘You are very lucky, ladies. It has been decided that you will not receive the punishment you deserve. Instead, you will be deported back to your own country. We do not need foreign harlots to corrupt our young men – and women. You will sign this declaration of guilt, then you will be taken to the airport. You will be on tonight’s plane. I advise you to accept, and never return to our country.’

  ‘What about Marty – my husband?’ Clio’s voice trembled, her fear evident, but Jan was deeply moved by her bravery in mentioning him.

  ‘That is not your concern!’ the army officer snapped. ‘His case has already been decided. Now sign! The car is waiting to take you to the airport.’

  Their courage could only sustain them so far. With trembling fingers, they scrawled their signatures at the bottom of the sheets of paper and stumbled out into the blessed beat of the still fierce tropical sun. They did not mention Marty again, until their clenched muscles had relaxed, and they lay back in their fully reclined seats in the last row of the economy section of the 747 speeding them at 35,000 feet back to London. Clio raised the cushioned arm of the slim barrier between them, and they nestled in even closer contact, covered by a shared cellular blanket. ‘He’ll be all right, I’m sure,’ Jan whispered. Her lips brushed Clio’s ear, were tickled by wisps of her hair. ‘I’m sure we’ll find him already back in London. He’ll be waiting for us. They said his case had already been decided. I bet he went out on last night’s plane. Or maybe even before.’