by Zack
“No.”
“Right. Lunch now. Then up to Break Out.”
“Which is …?”
“A trendy men’s store to get you some swimming trunks—”
“I’m not a trendy man—”
“No, the clothes are trendy, and they have spacious change cubicles, and I’ve always wanted to have a real knee-jerker with someone up against the wall of a menswear change cubicle.”
Gil’s chuckles rather spoiled the romantic effect of Mike’s words. “You’re serious—we’re really going to Morocco tomorrow?” Gil surrendered to being gathered in Mike’s arms and his lover closed in so their eyes were inches apart, gray and hazel, reflected in each.
“Yeah, Gil. A nice break. And they say the Moroccan boys are real cute, so in between swimming, lounging about, screwing in the bedroom, and all that kind of touristy shit, perhaps—who knows—we might get lucky.”
“Marrakesh Sex-express, huh?”
“I’ve been saving all my money just to take you there. I smell the garden in your hair. Take the train from Casablanca going South. Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my mouth …”
Winter sun never looked so far away. The British Caledonian BAC One-Eleven more fell than flew into the turbulent cloud. The onset of night made the great cumulo-nimbus castles appear even more frightening. Gil and Mike gripped each other in no immoderate panic.
“Jeez, Mike, I thought we had extreme weather in America.”
We never forget you have a choice, ran BCal’s slogan, but it looked like they’d run out of options to avoid this dreadful weather. Even the cabin crew had disappeared to fasten themselves down earlier than usual before landing. A series of bucking sideslips left even seasoned flyers white about the gills. Seated next to the window, Gil caught the briefest glimpse of the ground below through a ragged hole in the dense cloud, only it wasn’t really land. It looked more like sea, and it looked very close. He said nothing to Mike.
An elevator-dive stomach lurch and a roller-coaster pull-up and the aircraft broke out of the streaming gray cloud only to deliver a jaw blow as it thumped against cross-winds. “It looks alike an aquarium out there,” Gil squeaked. He saw a shoreline with buildings seemingly clinging to it, a greasy smear of landscape in the preternatural gloom through the gap between the flaps and the wing. He realized he could see a lot ahead because there didn’t seem to be much of the wing left with all the bits of it opened up or dropped down. The trees, buildings, and roads seen through the stream of water running over the window looked very close. And then with a colossal multiple thump, the One-Eleven banged down onto the runway, elevated sickeningly and then slammed down again on one wing wheel first, skewed sideways, first left then right, and then—thank God—straightened up.
The flight purser managed an air of calm as the aircraft slowly turned around and began to trundle back down the runway. “Sorry about the weather. I’d like to remind all passengers to please remain seated with seat belts fastened until Captain Kangaroo has bounced us to the terminal.”
He managed to raise faint applause.
“Those staying here in Agadir will be pleased to hear that this storm will blow itself out overnight, and we’re assured of fine weather for your vacation. Unfortunately, the weather has taken down the city’s electricity grid, so transfers may be affected. British Caledonian’s representatives are on hand to offer any help you may need. Transfers to Marrakesh will also be delayed, but we have laid on light refreshments in a local hotel for you until your bus is ready to depart.”
It wasn’t until after dark that the twenty-odd vacationers bound for Marrakesh boarded a cranky old bus to take them the hundred and fifty miles over the Maritime Atlas. As the vehicle wheezed up the steep incline away from the costal plain, the storm eased and soon left the night sky above swathed by a river of stars. The driver and rep made a brief rest-break high up in the Atlas mountains.
“F-f-f-fuck, I thought you said African sun.” With only anticipatory thin clothing, Gil shivered so much he thought he might come apart at the seams.
“I said w-w-winter sun. Bugger but you’re right. It is cold.”
S-s-so far it’s been wet, very wet, and freezing.”
By the time the bus clanked into the suburbs of Marrakesh—after grinding to a fifteen-minute halt a mile from the first buildings while the driver and vacation rep struggled underneath to fix something on the drive shaft—the outside temperature had lifted to a comfortable sixty-plus (or seventeen as Mike thought of it). The Hotel N’Fis seemed pleasant enough, but in the dark Gil couldn’t make out much. A neatly dressed boy from the concierge’s desk took their luggage on a trolley to the block across the garden from the lobby area and up the two floors to their room on the third floor. And Gil then adjusted for the British mania for calling the first floor the ground floor—so they were on the second floor.
“Love the bathroom,” Mike said, once they were alone.
Gil walked up the long hallway and peered in. “Oh, it’s big!” He drew out the vowel so it turned into a long e. “Luxury. Let’s shower. There’s easily room for two.”
In moments they were naked and slippery wet under the warm downpour, and the chills of the mountains slipped away down the generous drain with the soap lather and soon after the combined outpouring of their love making.
Mike was first to wake. He was in the bed nearest the window. Gil’s familiar form was not lying next to him. Confusion filled his first thoughts, until short-term memory filled the gaps a deep sleep had fogged and the recollection of yesterday burst on him.
Agadir. Rains storm, freezing cold on the Atlas, hotel … Marrakesh!
He swung his legs out of the queen sized bed in the twin bedroom and shivered a little in a cool breeze from the air conditioning vent. Gil lay fast asleep in the other bed, the one up against the bathroom wall. They had decided not to share, somewhat concerned about what the maids or whatever might think on seeing only one bed used when two men occupied the room. He crossed the two steps to the window and flung aside the curtains.
“Ow!” Gil jerked half upright at the sudden shock.
Mike twisted from his hips and smiled. “Good morning, lover. Look at this …”
He turned his back on Gil, overawed by the extraordinary sight of hot desert topped by snow-capped mountains in the distance. Mike slid the balcony doors aside. It felt strange. The landscape beyond the few buildings in view radiated a hot look—sandy colors, palm trees, parched grass—yet the air tingled fresh and even a bit chilly. He looked down three floors to where the hotel’s swimming pool lay wreathed in a localized mist of its own making. “That’s amazing,” he said to Gil without looking around. “The air’s cooler than the water of the pool.”
“I thought it was supposed to be hot,” Gil grumbled.
Mike spun around, life bursting from every muscle. The sparkle forced him to bounce up and down on his toes. “You have to see this, Gil!”
Rubbing sleep from his eyelids, Gil got up and came across to the window. Mike watched as his lover’s eyes took in the scene and a slow smile creased his lips. Mike leaned in to kiss softly the dimple formed by Gil’s sudden pleasure. “That is beautiful. Desert and snow.”
They barely dressed for breakfast—sweet bread, croissants, orange preserve, and sharp coffee—and then tumbled down to the still steaming swimming pool. Already the air temperature was warmer, but the pool water warmer still. Lunch consisted of a cool beer in the lobby bar, accompanied by freshly picked green olives sitting in a dish of olive oil topped by fiery flaked chilli pepper skin, and roasted almonds straight from the trees outside.
“Let’s go back to the room,” Gil said when they were finished. Mike shrugged, happy to have a rest and intrigued by the strange look in Gil’s guarded eyes and the small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Gil almost ran up the flights of echoing stairs ahead of Mike. As Gil went to sit on his bed, Mike went to the window and consulted the small local map on the writing desk.
“That must be Avenue Prince Moulay Rachid, over there.”
Gil didn’t seem interested. “Come and lie down,” he commanded.
Mike raised an eyebrow, but did as ordered and threw himself flat on his back, hands folded on the pillow behind his head. Gil immediately sat beside him, smiling all the while … a naughty smile. Idly, he played his hands over Mike and then pulled apart the hastily thrown on shirt. Mike squirmed happily as Gil loosed the shorts and eased the legs down to reveal Mike’s bathing slip, already beginning to push out of shape. When he tried to help, Gil slapped him down, still with that sly smile.
“Just lie there. I want to play with you.”
“Oh …”
And he did, after pushing the slip down out of the way. He laid his head on Mike’s stomach, the fine hair like an artist’s sable brush tickling his skin until Mike thought he couldn’t stand it. But again, Gil slapped his hands away and then started to stroke his cock. After minutes of gentle and very deliberate manipulation, Gil lifted his head so he could look up at Mike and Mike could see his cock shaft in Gil’s hand, that slow, firm rubbing which sent vibrations from head to toe and back again. When he wasn’t glancing from the corner of his twinkling eyes at Mike’s reactions to this gradual escalation, Mike was riveted by the intensity of Gil’s gaze at what he was doing. Parted lips hovered only two inches above the tip of Mike’s glistening cock head. As he watched in fascination he felt, as well as saw, a pearl of fluid bubble up from the slit and his diaphragm hitched in time with Gil’s slow dip of the head, the extension of his tongue and the oh so glorious sensation of tongue tip licking at him.
Gil pulled back, smiling in concentration. His hand work sped up. Mike strained up off the bed from his shoulders and his abdominal muscles began to convulse. None of this missed Gil’s attention, he could see. White upper teeth slowly rubbed over Gil’s lower lip in anticipation. He licked his lips, parted them and hovered, shaking with desire. Mike’s first spurt flicked up from his cock head and his balls quaked, and then he was coming for all he was worth. Gil let the first squirt splash against his lips before he slowly lowered his head to take the orgasm full in the mouth, with a deep sigh of satisfaction at a job well done. Spent, Mike sighed too and buried his fingers in the fine strands of Gil’s thick mop of hair—a feeling like no other.
“Was that good touristy shit?”
“Mmmm …” Mike rumbled.
* * *
“The Berber people have inhabited the region of Marrakesh since Neolithic times, more than twelve thousand years ago. But this city was first built by Abu Bakr ibn Umar, a chief of the dynasty called Almoravid …”
The guide droned on, barely audible above the ambient noise of hawkers, traders, shoppers, and—“Literally,” Mike joked—street Arabs in the Djemma el-Fna, the great square at the heart of the Medina. After the guide’s assurances that the food stalls on the edge of the market were safe, they tried a slice of kalinti —a chickpea confection made with flour and egg—and some chicken kebab. They absorbed the aromas of cumin and saffron, rich honey and roasting nuts, steaming sheep’s heads and camel spleen sausages, thick coffee and nose-tingling sweet mint tea, and everywhere from every crevice came the scent of baking flat bread.
And then it was time for the carpet factory.
“I’m not interested, Mike”
“It’ll be rude not to go.” Mike climbed the coach steps and took the nearest free seat.
“You’re not to be bullied into buying something.”
“Don’t worry. Just a look. It’ll be interesting to see how they’re made.”
It took both of them to manhandle the fat, long roll of snow-white Moroccan carpet with its tucked in tassles up the stairs to their room.
“How’s this going on the plane back?”
“It can go in the hold as luggage,” Mike said for the fifth time.
“Don’t worry, you said.”
“I know, but you weren’t much help, were you? ‘Oh, Mikey, look! How beautiful!’ And right in front of the salesman too.”
“He was eyeing you up, and betting with himself whether he’d see your wallet or your dick first.”
“That’s not fair—come on, push, it’s only one more landing—Anyway, his black-hearted eyes were all over you, buddy. I could see he wanted to take the blond, blue-eyed bombshell around the back somewhere and ravish him in a thousand and one nights kind of way.”
In fact, Mike felt pretty guilty about the mad purchase. True, he liked the rug; its fluffiness spoke of warm fires and naked writhing, and it was a kind of bargain at the price. The real problem, of course, had been when the young and dreadfully enthusiastic salesman had said they accepted all “major credit cards.” And his dark brown and really rather nice cow-eyes had been kind of come-on-ish.
They got it through the door and it just managed to fit upright in the corner beside the room door, like a weave-textured column supporting the ceiling. Gil shook his head in slow disbelief. “Wow. We sure know how to live life in the fast lane, huh? Carpets …”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Anyone for Tennis Boys?
A late afternoon sun lay long across the prickly grass of the bank Gil and Mike lounged on. Behind the tree line at the edge of the hotel property, tea vendors stood chatting and smoking. In the other direction the two tennis courts were in full swing with a singles and a doubles match. Farther off the afternoon muezzin call started from a nearby mosque, to be echoed seconds later from another somewhere nearer, beyond the hedge. Gil was feeling horny, but it was a comfortably low-key kind of arousal under the Moroccan sun, which felt like a very different kind of heat from California. Perhaps it was the smell of spice on the air, the scent of mint tea from the vendors on the other side of the hotel’s boundary hedge. Spread out on his side, head propped on one hand, he had almost dropped off to the drowsy sounds of tennis when a shadow fell over him. He opened an eye.
“Inglish?”
Mike had his arms wrapped around his raised knees. He smiled at the boy who stood over them, dressed in off-white sports shorts and a grubby t-shirt.
“Me,” Mike said. He indicated Gil. “American.”
“Merican! Ho, Ronald Regan!”
The boy gave them both a gap-toothed grin of undiluted pleasure at his own cleverness.
“Yeah, we elect actors to govern us,” Gil said with a smile. His horniness tweaked up a notch. The kid was cute—dark brown but bright eyes, shock of almost black unruly curly hair, round cheeks, and full lips under a squat nose. He adjusted the lay of his genitals unselfconsciously as he looked over his shoulder.
“Ah, my friend, he come. Game near finish.” He waved a hand toward the tennis courts. From the low sun glare another lad materialized. As he drew near, his quite fair hair and blue eyes under much darker eyebrows startled Gil, who thought all Moroccans were of Arab complexion and coloring. In spite of these unusual attributes, the boy had the facial features of his friend, and the combination made him very attractive.
The first boy sat beside Gil and his friend plonked himself down at Mike’s feet and peered curiously at them both. “You name?” he demanded with a bright smile. Mike told him.
“And you?”
“Hassan,” the boy beside Gil said.
“Je m’appelle Illias,” the blond boy said and patted his chest. He waved at the tennis courts. “Nous sommes—”
“Inglish!” Hassan shouted.
“Ah. Je suis … sorry, ball boys, yes?”
“Shouldn’t you be down there?” Gil asked. He spoke slowly and the frank examination Illias gave him tickled that horn gene again. And he just knew Mike was thinking much the same.
Illias inclined his head comically and raised his mobile eyebrows until they almost disappeared under the forward fringe of straw-colored hair. “Non! Eet is …” he reached out and grabbed Mike’s wrist, pulled it to him so he could look at his wristwatch. “Cinque. Five. Finish.”
Hassan’s shorts were very s
hort and fairly loose, and of so light a material, the shape of his cock and balls showed clearly when he stood, which he suddenly did for no apparent reason. In doing so, it became abundantly clear that he wore nothing under the shorts, and something in the way he did a little pirouette before subsiding to the grass again suggested to Gil that he had intended showing off.
A distant call alerted both boys. Illias said something in Arabic that sounded like a curse, and without another word they both bounded off down the slope to the gate in the high fence surrounding the tennis courts.
“What do you make of that?” Mike asked in a studiedly uninterested way.
Gil smiled. “Same as you, your Randiness.”
Mike sniffed. “Don’t mind the blond one, Illias?”
“You would. He’s cute, but Hassan is definitely the naughtier of the two. And you know they know, don’t you?”
It was Mike’s turn to smile. “It must be some sort of sixth sense. I read somewhere about the boys in Tangiers. They reckon they can spot a gay man a mile off. Must be the same here.”
“Illias being fair-haired and so pale-skinned, he almost looks European.”
“Maybe he is in part. If I remember right, the Germanic Vandals occupied these lands for a long while centuries ago. Perhaps he’s a throw-back.”
“Well, they’re a-coming back.”
Hassan resumed his place next to Gil, and Illias knelt down at Mike’s updrawn feet. Hassan looked at Mike carefully and then at Gil. He repeated this with a crafty expression, as though he knew a secret. But his direct words took Gil aback.
“You are pederast, no?”
“Er …” Gil’s stutter and Mike’s instinctive shake of the head felt unconvincing. Hassan didn’t say anything immediately, but he smiled broadly at the confirmation. He stretched a hand to rub the fabric of Gil’s t-shirt between thumb and forefinger.
“Nice shirt. You have one for Hassan?”
This stumped Gil again and he glanced at Mike for help. Mike shrugged.
Hassan’s hand slid down Gil’s recumbent form until he could lean on the upturned hip. It felt curiously intimate and sensual, although he acted companionably, waving his other hand at Mike. “Also nice.”