by Iris Astres
“Careful.” Raj was watching, staring over her back at Malcolm. He placed a knee on the mattress beside one of her hands. She tilted her face up at him, knowing he was right. They should be careful now. She was out of her mind. Unstable. They’d built the sex inside her into something thick and hot, but it still spread, still moved and teased and caught at places that were dangerously close to tipping her over. A fingertip brushing her nipple might do it. Or just the thought of being touched by one of them between her legs.
She reached for Raj’s cock, as though the taste of him would pacify her. He knelt and let her wrap her lips around him. Solange swallowed hard, gasping, sucking, drawing on him like her life depended on it.
Malcolm smoothed his pace and fucked her with a steady in and out she thought she might be able to withstand. Still, the pleasure slackened her jaw and made it hard to concentrate.
“Let me help you.” Raj threaded both of his hands through her hair. He worked his cock back and forth, making her go passive. “Suck,” he said, and she obeyed him, tightening her lips and cheeks to draw a little harder.
“What we’re doing now is cruelest for Malcolm.” Raj was still holding her head, still guiding his cock in and out of her. “Bods love every kind of sex, but we all have our secret kink. Malcolm’s is to watch a willing woman being fed a cock. His eyes are on you now, and they’ll stay riveted until my semen bubbles up and over your spread lips and dribbles down your chin.”
Whether it was true or not, the image stole the last bit of firm ground from underneath Solange’s feet. She’d reached her limit. There wasn’t any more delaying what she needed. A vivid chain of images sped through her mind—attackers rushing in on her, her husband’s wrathful vengeance, and now this.
With a sort of strangled sound, she thrashed between the two men to get free enough to take in air. Raj’s cock left her mouth. Malcolm turned into a stone behind her, both arms wrapped around her hips and arms to keep her still.
Solange started screaming then. The desperate sound tore, rasping and convulsive, from her throat.
“Amin,” she begged, frenzied and shaking. “Amin. Please. Come to me. I have to see you. Come.”
Chapter Five
Malcolm was holding Solange tight enough to bruise the skin. He’d never left a mark on any woman’s body, but present circumstances were deviating from the norm in many ways. With effort he made his muscles even out the pressure without loosening his hold. Clearly Solange couldn’t move. Her back was arched, her pale skin damp with sweat, and she was panting, frozen on the razor’s edge of orgasm.
From the foot of the bed, Amin Clay towered over them. His gaze roamed their joined bodies, showing no reaction to the scene. He looked too dazed for judgment. Like a man emerging from an alley fight. His black shirt was unbuttoned, his trousers wrinkled, and he wore no shoes. Not intoxication. For all his disorientation the man appeared lethally steady on his feet.
“Solange.” Amin’s flat gaze fell on his wife’s face and didn’t move. He whispered her name twice. The sound of it was almost reverent to Malcolm’s ear. “I’m here,” he said. He lowered his body heavily onto the bench against the wall. “I’m inches from you. Come for me. I want to see.”
Solange’s body softened. Malcolm eased his grip and felt her inner muscles flutter on his swollen prick. He glanced at Raj. The man was already in motion, stroking the tips of her breasts with his fingers and leaning down to whisper in her ear.
The orgasm tightened inside her. Malcolm set about making it good. He fucked her with long strokes, slipping a hand in front of her to catch the cum that dripped out of her pussy. Solange ground against his fingers, and her head flew back.
Her head flew back and back again.
Malcolm heard her wail, felt the wrenching spasms of her climax pulse along his cock. The pleasure seemed to hit her like a trance, and she writhed with it. Her satisfaction saturated all his cells with energy, exhilaration. The moment of a woman’s pleasure was its own perfection, better in so many ways than his own impending crisis.
Raj was transformed by a look of triumph at the sight and feel of her. He wrapped one hand around his straining cock and brushed her lips with it. Solange opened her eyes and weakly licked. Raj forced himself into her slackened mouth. His hips pivoted forward, and the cum spurted onto her tongue, her lips, her chin. Solange made another wild sound and spasmed one last time.
Malcolm squeezed her buttocks hard to mask his swift withdrawal. He came in the wet crease of her ass. His cock throbbed, and the semen splattered hot and thick between them, making him grunt—another thing he never did.
The force of it left him working to draw breath, flat on his back with no memory of collapsing sideways on the bed. Solange came to rest against his chest. He draped an arm around her. In her postclimactic stupor she was lovely to hold—soft and sweet and limp.
Through half-closed eyes he studied Amin Clay. The man’s attention never left his wife, never seemed to notice anything but her. Sorrow fed his vigilance. That was clear. There was a heaviness about him. Behind his stark demeanor lay a devastating aftermath, a dark crisis of faith.
He hadn’t much time to observe as Raj was somehow rising to his feet. Malcolm looked at him with irritation. Raj’s remarkable control was just a little bit annoying in this instance. Of course, he didn’t bother asking if the three of them might rest awhile longer. It was no use arguing tradition with a Temple Lover. They weren’t rational about it. What happened before and during sex could be instinctual, unscripted. For after sex there were the sacred ways of ancestors.
With some effort Malcolm rose to his elbows to let his partner know he was ready, if somewhat less than willing. Raj gathered Solange into his arms and lifted her, walking past her husband’s hulking form without a glance. Amin’s vacant expression followed them but offered no objection.
“Where are we going?” Solange’s eyes were closed. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rubbed one of her feet against the other.
Raj nodded toward the tiled corner of the room. “The rain shower,” he said. “It’s traditional to wash our lovers and then put them in the pool so they’ll recover. Don’t worry.” He smiled down at her. “You won’t have to stand. We’ll hold you.”
He paused at the far wall, adjusting her weight in his arms so he could tap a code into the scanpad. Malcolm watched the rain fall from the ceiling, and he rallied. Women always loved the water. They loved the way the tiny ceiling lights lit every separate stream.
Raj set Solange down on a tile bench located in the center of the shower.
“You said you’d hold me,” she complained.
“So I did.” He sat beside her, gathering her onto his lap.
“You don’t have to,” Solange said.
“I don’t have to,” Raj repeated. He ran a thoughtful thumb along her chin, rubbing gently at a patch of semen there. “Did I have to come on your face?”
She shook her head, lips drawing sleepily into a smile.
“So many things I’m not obliged to do, and yet I feel strangely compelled.”
Malcolm took a scoop of soapy foam out of the copper tin. Quickly he washed his own body, smiling at Solange, who monitored his movements with unconcealed appreciation. He brought a second scoop of bubbles to the bench. “Ready?” he said. She spread her arms and leaned back, closing her eyes and lifting her chin. He poured the sudsy water over her, returned the scoop, and came to sit with them, handing Raj a cloth.
Something tickled as they washed her. Solange giggled—a cheery sound. It tinkled like a spill of shiny beads into a metal cup. Raj slid gaily to his knees and washed her feet. He leered at her pale skin, made radiant by light and water. Malcolm washed her back and settled her against him so that she could watch as Raj took his turn soaping up his body.
From the corner of his eye, Malcolm caught sight of Amin Clay rising to his feet. The man stared at them all a moment and then began disrobing. His powerful chest emerged from his sh
irt. He dropped it on the floor, hands pulling at his belt.
What that meant for the rest of the evening wasn’t clear. Under normal circumstances Raj and he would just be getting started with a woman like Solange, but perhaps they should prepare themselves to leave.
Malcolm caught Raj’s eye. The Temple Lover didn’t seem particularly interested in what Amin Clay was doing or any attempts made by his partner at silent consultation. He was still euphoric from the feeding he’d received. And even had it not been half as good, it was unthinkable that Raj should leave the moment. He had some sort of saying—sex should weave the past and future into an inviolate now—something like that. There had to be a thousand mottoes in the Temple, and he bet Raj recited all of them a dozen times a day.
Solange was tottering a little. Raj lifted her onto his body. She leaned into his chest and wrapped her legs around his hips. They helped each other rinse off in the gentle fall of water.
When Amin moved toward the shower, everyone went still. His mountainous form walked into the simulated downpour, like an ancient shaman walking into fire. He slicked back his long hair and stared at Solange, who’d begun to struggle out of Raj’s arms.
Once on her feet, she closed the distance between herself and her husband to press her face into his chest. The difference in their heights brought her lips level with his heart. He closed his arms around her, and she murmured something Malcolm couldn’t hear.
Raj came to sit beside him in the bathing pool. Both men glanced discreetly at the man and wife six feet away.
On Backus this was equal to the one taboo: Watching mated partners in an intimate embrace. Sex play was fine. Love play was too. The line that separated them was absolute. Inviolable. What Raj and Malcolm were now doing was, by Backusian standards, the filthiest thing either of them could imagine. Still they sat tight-lipped and silent, unable to turn away from the illicit sight of love.
Muzzy with the afterglow of pleasure, Solange curled her sleepy frame around her husband, who had lifted her onto his body. She’d been in the same position with Raj moments earlier, but love made the embrace look altogether different.
“You need soap,” she said after a moment. Reluctantly her husband let her down. She took a few uneven steps back to the large wooden scoop inside the jug of suds and rose on tiptoes, pouring the foamy mixture over his body. When she’d returned the scoop, she used her hands to wash him. Her gaze followed the soapy path over the wide expanse of his back, chest, and shoulders, down over his belly. Cautiously she curled her fingers around his penis, which rose into her hand.
“Are you still angry at me?”
“Yes.” Amin’s answer was quietly sincere. He drew his wife toward him. The muscles in his arms bunched until he had her lifted back onto his body. When she was secured—arms and legs wrapped around his neck and hips—he walked with her toward the pool.
They joined Malcolm and Raj without seeming to notice either of them. Amin located a ledge for sitting that ran along both walls under the water, and sat with his wife straddling his lap.
He found her gaze and held it, black eyes boring into hers. “Solange.” He dipped his chin until she signaled that he had her full attention. “The next time I tell you to run, I want to see you fucking run.”
“I won’t.” She shook her head at him. Her eyes were round. Soft with regret but unrelenting.
Amin pressed his lips together, drawing a quick breath. “Think what you’re saying,” he warned. “Think what your answer means. To me, Solange. Not you, but me. The man you claim to love.”
The word claim didn’t please her. She paddled angrily in the water as though she meant to swim away from him. When he wouldn’t let her go, Solange splashed him. A great wave hit him full in the face. He sputtered, and she jerked against his grip, still going nowhere.
Amin wiped the water from his eyes, cleared his nose, and calmly started to rephrase. His voice held the hard clip of a man who would gladly bellow loud enough to bring the ceiling down if he thought he could risk it.
“Your life is yours,” he began. “I understand that. But if you have the opportunity to get away from danger, I’m not sure why you’d stay and make me watch you being murdered.” There was a push to what he said, as though he’d heard a thought could be implanted into someone’s head the way you force a seed into the earth. “Your rape,” he insisted, “your torture. Foul men doing God knows what to you while I’m powerless to stop them. I’d rather be dismembered by a sadist’s rusty blade than go through that. And so, I’m asking you to think a moment and decide—out of love, kindness, generosity, or abject fucking pity—please, think however long it takes and then agree to spare your loving husband his worst nightmare.”
“You did stop them,” Solange said.
“What?” Amin looked pained and already exhausted by the calmness of her tone.
“You did stop them from murdering me.”
He lifted one hand from her body, rubbing at his eyes. “I did,” he acknowledged. “But I might not have. Both of us survived it all by chance. It could so easily have gone the other way.”
“And so it would have gone the other way.” She tried dismissing this. The tactic failed.
“Solange.” Amin’s eyes opened slowly, the expression in them hard as stone. “I can’t let you put me through that again. I can’t let you. Do you understand?”
She met his gaze as though she’d stare him down until damnation.
Amin’s lips grew thinner, and his shoulders tightened. He lifted her off him and rose, pacing—not seeming to notice he was in five feet of water. “You could obey me, you know. It’s not unheard of in a marriage. Out of love. Or common decency. You could give in to me and just do as I ask. What do I ask of you?” He stopped, looking amazed by his own question. “What have I refused you? Nothing I can think of. So this is what I’m asking. One thing. When you can choose between being with me and being safe, you choose safe. In other words”—his body leaned and cast its massive shadow over her—“when I say run, you run.”
“But I can’t.” Solange slapped the water, eyebrows drawing tight together. She scrambled onto the ledge, which gave her a slight edge in height. “Don’t make it sound like I’m withholding something from you out of selfishness. That isn’t right. What you’re asking is ridiculous.” She jerked both palms toward the ceiling with a wild face to indicate how crazy what he asked for was. “How can I run away from you when you’re in danger? Men come in and try to murder you, and I’m supposed to do what, exactly? Wander off and read a book until it’s over? Of course, I can’t do that.” She yelled the last of it. Her voice echoed off the walls.
Solange sat again, clearly chastened by the thundering sound of her own voice. Amin sighed and joined her on the ledge. Both of them waited for their excess anger to evaporate like steam. After a moment Solange drew a breath and tried again.
“I want to be there with you in the end,” she told him. “I can’t bear to even think of you leaving this world alone. With no company. No love. Could you do that to me?” Amin wordlessly conceded that he couldn’t. “Of course not,” Solange said. “I could push and shout at you forever, and you’d never go. We’re both the same, in other words.”
He breathed, and it was over. The fight for dominance at any rate. The outcome of their battle was still unresolved.
Amin gathered her back onto his lap and looked into her eyes. “I will see you when I die,” he said in a low voice. “No matter where you are. No matter where I am. I’ll see your face. I’ll feel your touch. Don’t sacrifice yourself for that.”
“It’s not a sacrifice. It’s who I am. Oh, Amin!” Solange said the name with some frustration. “The time to run away from you was over years ago. I should have done it right after we met. God knows I thought about it. I knew I loved you far too much for safety’s sake. For a while, even after we were married, I planned to run away a little, or at least leave an escape route—some way back to who I was before I met you. But it w
as too much trouble. Now there’s nowhere to run. You can forget it. There’s no way back to any me that isn’t you.”
He gathered her closer; the set of his mouth, despite the growing tenderness, reserved some future right to argue.
“You’re only mad at me because I was so frightened,” Solange said. “That’s what was hard for you. I won’t be frightened next time, darling. This time I was just surprised.”
Malcolm saw it. Beside him, Raj grew tense. He clearly saw it too. Amin’s face went rigid with a sort of fury. He grunted one hot breath before he shot violently upright. When the waves of water calmed, he had Solange held out in front of him, like something he might toss over a cliff. “You think you were frightened?” he roared at her. “I was fucking terrified.”
“You didn’t look terrified.” It was the small, calm voice again. Her husband made an angry sound and dropped her. She stumbled but with dignity, managing to stand while he collapsed back on the ledge.
“I didn’t see a trace of fear on you,” she said. “Not ever. And most certainly not when you did this.” She made a violent stabbing gesture in the air. “I think I heard the bone at the back of that man’s eyeball crack. You jabbed that pen into his ugly face, and I may have heard his brain squish too, but maybe I imagined that.” She came to sit beside him, crossing her legs and leaning back as though they were only passing the time with conversation now. “Did you know you could kill a man that way?”
“I knew I could slow him down.”
“It slowed everyone down.” Solange raised her eyebrows at the memory. “It may have turned the other men to stone. They both just gaped and waited while you took the gun and shot one of them. I guess no one expects to see their leader murdered by a madman with a pen.”
Amin spread his arms along the lip of the pool and sighed. “Run when I tell you to,” he said without much hope.
His wife rocked herself consolingly against him. “My darling,” she soothed, “you could make the earth turn in the opposite direction if it suited you. But you can’t ever make me run away from you.”