The Prey

by Tony Park

  ‘Phew.’

  ‘You’re a natural.’

  She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Liar.’

  As the song ended he went for broke and dipped her. Kylie’s body initially stiffened, but then she trusted him and arched her back in his arms. The other dancers applauded and they went back to the table.

  ‘Gosh, that was fun.’

  ‘We could do it again …’ He refilled their glasses.

  ‘It’s a slow song this time.’

  ‘Less risk of injury in the workplace.’

  They each took a big sip and he led her back out onto the terrace. The other couples were moving slowly, dancing closer. He drew her to him again and this time she didn’t fight it. He and Tania hadn’t danced like this for years. He thought he should feel guilty, but he didn’t. That morning, as she’d tried to take him in her mouth, on her knees in the hallway, he had almost succumbed. He had moved her hands from him and walked past her, into the shower, and locked the bathroom door. He hadn’t told Kylie and he hadn’t told Jess, but it was over between them. He had been a fool to think that Jess would be better off with two parents locked in a loveless relationship than with just one who really loved her.

  Kylie looked up at him. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That I like this song.’

  She rested her head on his chest. ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’m sorry, for being so stubborn,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  The band stopped and the singer said they were taking a break. Terrible timing, Cameron thought, as they went back to their table.

  ‘It’s late,’ Kylie said, looking at her watch.

  He called the waiter over as they finished the last of their wine. They sky was clear, and the moon laid a silvery trail on the Zambezi. ‘I was thinking I’d walk back to my room, rather than take the golf buggy.’

  ‘I had the same thought,’ she said.

  ‘I can drop you on the way,’ Cameron said.

  They started to walk along the grass and Kylie stopped to take off her high heels. ‘Damn impractical footwear.’

  ‘Nice, though.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  They walked side by side, in silence for a while, on the lawns in front of the accommodation units, which each housed four suites. ‘Ouch,’ she said.

  Cameron stopped. Kylie lifted a foot and rocked on one leg. He put out a hand to steady her and she grabbed it. ‘It’s a thorn.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better put your shoes back on. We can walk on the pathway.’

  Kylie slipped one shoe on and then, still holding his hand, put on the other. She was still a little unsteady, as her heels slid into the irrigated lawn and the wine started to take effect. He held on to her hand and when they reached the pathway he didn’t let go. She looked down at their entwined hands, then up into his eyes. He raised his eyebrows in a question. She said nothing, but just started walking, so they continued like that, holding hands.

  When they got to her block she led the way upstairs and let go of his hand to fetch the key card out of her handbag. Cameron’s heart was beating fast. He couldn’t remember feeling this nervous, this out of control, this excited in a long time. She produced the key and turned to him. She said nothing.

  His phone rang in his pocket and he took it out.

  *

  Kylie sat on the end of her bed and slipped off her shoes and ran both hands through her hair. ‘Jeez, girl, what were you thinking?’

  She had been a hair’s breadth from asking him in for coffee. The dancing had done it. She had felt the heat building in the pit of her belly and wondered if he could sense it as she had. Her face felt flushed. The phone had saved them.

  ‘No, no, no!’ She slapped the bed. This was not what she needed. She was not falling for a big South African mining oaf. She was just feeling sorry for him, but then his bloody wife had called on his phone and he had turned tail and scurried off to his room. She was stupid for almost inviting him in, and he was still in love with Tania, despite what she had done to him. Stupid prick. They had probably had sex that morning when he’d gone home to her, and now he thought he could get his end away with her on a business trip. She had lived and worked around miners long enough to know how men acted. ‘Bastard.’

  Kylie stood and grabbed the hem of her dress and lifted it over her head and tossed it on the bed. ‘Dickhead.’

  She walked to the bathroom and opened the taps on the spa bath. Next, she pulled down her pants and hopped on one leg as she took them off, then opened a small bottle of bubble bath and tipped it in. ‘Arsehole.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Shit.’ She went back into the room and leaned over and grabbed her dress from the bed and pulled it back on again. It was probably the bloody butler, who came with each room, coming to ask if she wanted her bed turned down and a bloody chocolate on her pillow. She flung open the door.

  Cameron stood there.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stepped into her room and took her in his arms and kissed her.

  It was like when they were dancing. He picked her up off her feet and turned her, so her back was against the wall of the hotel room. She registered him kicking the door closed behind him. He was bloody sure of himself, but she preferred that to him moping.

  Their tongues met. She was hungry for him, and as much as she’d told herself that she didn’t want this, she knew that she really did, so she put her arms around the back of his neck and held him tight. She hooked a leg around him, wanting the feeling of weightlessness to continue. To hell with work and to hell with his wife, she thought. She remembered the whoosh as he’d dipped her in his arms on the dance floor. That’s what she wanted, for the rug to be pulled out from under her; to fall and know she would be caught.

  She loved the feel of his big hands, the weight of him pinning her to the wall like a butterfly under glass, the bulge below his waist, pressing into her. She lowered a hand from his neck, down between them, and felt him.

  He set her down and she leaned against the wall, catching her breath. He lowered his face as he freed one of her breasts from her bra and dress. She ran her fingers through his thick hair as he took her nipple into his mouth and drew on it.

  Kylie brought his face to hers again and kissed him. He picked her up, this time cradling her in his big arms, and carried her to the bed, where he dropped her. She bounced and giggled.

  He stood over her and started unbuttoning his shirt as he smiled down at her. Suddenly he stopped. She saw the look of consternation wipe the moment from his face.

  ‘What is it?’ Not his bloody wife, she hoped.

  ‘I didn’t think … it’s been so long since I was single. I don’t have …’

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ She rolled over on the bed and reached for her handbag on the side table. She had to rummage all the way to the bottom but, mercifully, the little foil three-pack was still there. She had waited a hell of a long time for this rainy day. She was about to toss the condoms to him, then had a better idea. She beckoned to him with a crooked finger. ‘Come here.’

  ‘Yebo, boss.’

  He walked to her. She swung her legs over the bed and reached for his zipper, sliding it down. Kylie looked up at him and licked her lips lasciviously. She put a hand in his pants and felt the glorious weight and length of him. She freed him and could see he was more than ready for her. She massaged the head of him, then up and down the shaft a couple of times, revelling in the way his eyes were locked on hers. She had never had the opportunity to try something that she and some girlfriends had laughed about over a glass of wine years earlier. She ripped open the foil packet with her teeth and placed the condom flat, between her upper and lower lips and teeth. Kylie lowered her face to his erect penis, positioned the folded rubber over him, then used her teeth to roll the latex onto him. It must have worked, because she heard him groan.

  Grinning, she looked back up at him and rolled
the condom the rest of the way down. ‘Can’t have you going to work without the correct personal protective equipment.’

  ‘I want you, now.’

  ‘Shit!’ She got up, suddenly remembering something, and ducked around him and ran to the bathroom.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The bloody bathtub!’

  He followed her in and grabbed the towel rail to stop from falling as his feet slipped on the floor, which was awash with hot soapy water. He had to laugh as he watched her get down on her knees and fish for the plug. She found it, and the water gurgled.

  Still on her knees she looked over her shoulder. ‘What’s so funny?’

  He shook his head, slowly. ‘Nothing.’ Her dress was wet from where she had leaned into the tub, and the hem had ridden up her thighs. She was bare underneath. He undid his belt. ‘Put the plug back in.’

  She did as he asked and stood and pulled off her sopping dress and unclipped her bra. He was naked by the time she was, tossing his clothes about the wet floor. She climbed into the spa bath and slid so her back was against the wall, her breasts bobbing on the waterline, shrouded with bubbles. He climbed in after her and pulled her to him. Kylie sat astride him. They kissed again, steam rising around them. He brushed a plastered strand of hair from her face so he could look at her. His gaze sent a shiver down her back. The arms that held her were hard and muscled, the skin above the tan line pale.

  Kylie rose up on her knees and pressed her soapy breasts against his chest, the wiry hair teasing her nipples. She reached between them and rubbed the head of his penis against herself. She lowered herself down on him, slowly. God, she thought, as the momentary discomfort gave way to pleasure, it had been too long. She lay her cheek on his shoulder, savouring the fullness.

  ‘No,’ he whispered. She felt his hands on her cheeks, rocking her back. ‘I want to see your face.’

  She nodded, her lower lip between her teeth as she started to move on him. Greedy for her, he raised his pelvis to meet her rocking. He reached out an arm on the side of the tub to steady himself and felt the button. He pushed it. Her eyes widened at the first shock of the bubbles then the smile played across her face as she adjusted their position to take full advantage of the new sensation.

  Kylie gave herself over to the sheer unadulterated lust of the moment and rode him harder and faster. More water slopped over the rim of the tub, but she didn’t care. He had his hands on her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers, slick with the suds, alternately pinching and slipping from her nipples.

  He stared into her eyes as she came. She threw back her head and cried out with the sheer bloody joy of release.

  Her vision blurred and she felt light-headed from the steam coming off the water and the after-effects of her orgasm. He was still moving inside her. ‘What do you want, Cameron? Anything …’ she breathed.

  She would do it, she told herself, anything he wanted, to please him. She had an overwhelming urge to tell him to take the condom off and fuck her bare. She didn’t know if he had told the truth about never cheating on his wife, but you could never trust a miner.

  ‘Just you.’ She felt her second orgasm coming as he began to shake beneath her.

  *

  The next morning after breakfast on the same terrace where they had first danced, they took one of the hotel’s courtesy cars to the airport. They sat side by side in the back of the limousine, holding hands.

  Kylie tried to find interest in the Livingstone streetscape as they skirted the town, but couldn’t. ‘Is it just me, or is this, like, totally weird?’

  ‘Totally.’

  She laughed. ‘We sound like a couple of teenagers.’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘I feel like one. It’s not all bad.’

  ‘You don’t …’

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘You know, regret it, or anything? I mean, these things happen on work trips, right?’

  He leaned back from her and gave a disapproving look. ‘They do? Maybe to you, but not to me.’

  Kylie punched him in the arm. ‘You know what I mean.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It feels right to me. Is it right for you?’

  She leaned over and kissed him as the driver stopped to take a ticket from the car park security guard. He drove through to the general aviation area, separate from the main terminal. There were no customs or immigration formalities as they weren’t leaving Zambia. A pilot wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, mirror sunglasses and, somewhat incongruously, khaki cargo shorts and sandals, strode through the heat haze shimmering up from the runway in front of a parked twin-engine Cessna.

  ‘Dougal Geddes. Welcome,’ he said, and shook both their hands.

  They boarded and it was baking inside the aircraft. The blue vinyl of the seat was hot on the backs of Kylie’s thighs beneath the hem of the cotton dress she was glad she had packed. She didn’t feel like wearing jeans today; she remembered the feel of his fingers on her.

  Dougal pointed out the emergency exits, did his checks, and they were airborne within a few minutes. As they climbed Cameron leaned over and put his cheek close to hers, perhaps on the pretext of looking out the window. She loved the feel of him so close. She knew she was blushing, but didn’t care. It had been too long since she had allowed herself to fall for someone. It was crazy.

  Ten minutes into the flight Dougal asked them, via the headsets they wore, if anyone would mind if he took a detour over Kafue National Park. It was, he said, a massive area, bigger even than the Kruger National Park in South Africa, which itself was the size of Israel.

  Cameron looked at her and shrugged, as if to say, ‘What do you think?’ Kylie thought that if she had been her old self, the one to whom work mattered more than anything else, she would have judged the pilot’s suggestion that they delay arrival at the copper belt mine to go joyriding as a frivolous waste of company money.

  ‘Sounds great to me,’ she said into the headset’s boom microphone. Cameron smiled and she saw again how handsome he was when he was happy.

  Dougal peeled off their flight path and dropped down so that they were just a few hundred feet above the ground. The countryside below changed from a disorderly patchwork of small maize farms and wonky roads cut into the blood-red dirt of Zambia to wide open floodplains carpeted with swaying golden grass.

  ‘Look, Lichtenstein’s hartebeest,’ Dougal said as he turned to follow the course of a wide vlei.

  ‘Where?’ she asked. Cameron pointed them out for her and she spotted the tan-coloured antelope. There were about twenty of them in the herd, including babies.

  Kylie slid across the seat a little so that her thigh was touching Cameron’s. Sunlight was streaming into the fuselage. He put his arm around her and kissed her, first on the cheek and then on the mouth.

  He kept her in his embrace as they both looked out the window again. Dougal continued over the countryside as it opened into a series of wide plains, delineated here and there by glittering streams. Cameron spotted a couple of elephant and it was almost as exciting seeing them from the air, raising their faces and trunks to inspect them, as it had been from the safari vehicle at Lion Plains.

  ‘This place is wild,’ Cameron said into her headphone.

  ‘Wild, and beautiful,’ she said. She wanted to kiss him again; all day, in fact, and all night.

  Then the aircraft exploded.

  PART FOUR

  27

  The wind shook the sycamore fig and rippled the normally smooth waters of the Sabie River. The fisherman puffed up his feathers at the chill and huddled next to his chick and his partner in the hollow of the tree.

  At their feet was the almost picked-clean bones of what had been a fat barbel. The fisherman and his family were temporarily sated by the fat oily flesh of the catfish. The fluffy down that had covered the chick since birth had now given way to feathers, and in recent days the fisherman’s surviving offspring had clearly been itching to leave the nest. The little bird had begun flapping hi
s wings and jumping higher and higher in the nest and onto the branch of the fig.

  The chick had survived the deadly attack by Inkwazi, the fish eagle, which had taken its weaker sibling, and had narrowly avoided being gulped down as an appetiser by Ingwe, the leopard, thanks to the fisherman’s faking of an injury.

  Now, as the gusting wind heralded the closing of winter and the storms which would soon follow from Mozambique, it seemed the chick might be blown from the tree if it decided to venture out onto the branch, as it was doing more frequently these days. The youngster was keen to take its next and most momentous step of its life.

  A lion called in the night, as if reminding them all of the dangers that lurked in and along the river of fear, but in those same churning waters a tigerfish jumped, its silvery flank and stripes visible for a split second in the glint of the moonlight, reminding them of the riches that awaited the chick as he learned to hunt.

  The fisherman perched on the branch and rotated his head to scan for danger. All was quiet, save for the rustle of the leaves. Even the lion had finished his talking. His partner turned to look at their chick. It was time.

  The little one flapped his wings and screeched; his parents watched him closely. Unsteadily at first he hopped from the nest, lost then regained his balance, and in a blur of madly beating feathers he was gone. The fisherman left his perch and followed his youngster’s erratic first flight to the ground. But the chick landed safely and within a few seconds, after seeming to gather his wits, he was off.

  A booming call from his mate made the fisherman turn back. At that moment a powerful gust of wind tore through the sycamore tree. The bough in which they had made their home snapped with an almighty crack.

  The branch tumbled into the swirling waters of the Sabie below and the pair and their chick watched as it drifted away. Now they would need to find a new home.

  28

  Jessica and Mandy were listening to Elvis Blue on Mandy’s iPod with one ear bud each as they sat on Mandy’s bed. Her father had SMSed her from Zambia in the morning, saying he was on a charter aircraft to Kitwe, but she hadn’t heard from him since. Perhaps, she thought, the phone signal wasn’t good where he had been heading.