by Fiona Zedde
Next to her, Duni breathed softly in the quiet. Her chest rising and falling with her gentle breaths, head tilted to one side as she watched Ny. The candlelight caressed her face, made unknowable pools of her eyes, a glistening welcome of her faintly swollen mouth.
“Nyandoro?”
The question seemed to only have one answer, but Ny wanted to be sure.
“Duni, let me care for you.” She licked the nervousness from her lips. “I’m young, true, maybe even a little bit foolish, but I’ve only ever wanted you. No one else.”
“Your convenient short-term memory is lovely.” Duni touched her face with that now familiar sad smile. “You want more than just me. But that’s one of the best and worst things about being young: right now is all that matters.”
“Then allow me to create a beautiful now for both of us. Tomorrow will take care of itself.”
“You talk real pretty for such a child,” Duni said softly. But she was joking, a light struggling to flicker on in her eyes. She was sadness itself, but trying to wear a mask of acceptance.
Ny touched her knee, squeezed it, and leaned close. “Let me do this for you.”
Duni laughed, a puff of breath against Ny’s mouth. “So selfless.”
“Fine.” Ny smiled, rueful at her own eagerness. “For us.”
Their mouths touched. Lips parted. Tongues gently explored.
Ny kissed Duni like she wished she’d done before. With deliberate intention, her mouth moving slick and heavy against Duni’s. Her body arched into the slowly building pleasure, but she couldn’t quite leave her head yet.
Even with Duni warm and trembling against her, knowledge of her own inexperience held her captive in her head. She wanted to please. Didn’t want to do anything wrong. Her brothers often talked about the women they made love with, the stretch and burn the women described, the first few moments of pain, then, if they did it right, or if the girl allowed herself to relax, the pleasure would come, hot and slow. She wanted that for Duni, a hot and slow unfurling of lust that left her trembling and breathless, her legs sprawled across the sleeping mat in exhausted abandon. And she wanted that for herself too.
It would be different between two women, she knew that. No over-eager man in a mad rush toward an immediate gratification that left the woman behind. Between two men, it was different too, it—
The stroke of her nipple brought Ny back to herself.
“Stay here with me,” Duni whispered into her mouth.
Ny shivered, the thoughts that had nothing to do with what was going on in the moment scattering in the wake of the sharp bliss darting between her nipples and her lap. Duni tugged at her nipple again, and Ny realized Duni had wet her fingers with the slick from between her thighs and touched Ny with those wet fingers, painting her breasts with desire. Her belly clenched tight, and she whimpered.
She clutched Duni’s hand and jerked to her feet. The sleeping mat. Their bodies together. She needed that. Now.
“Yes.” Duni stood up, mouth curving, a calmer incarnation of desire.
She leaned in and Ny eagerly met her mouth as they stumbled backward toward the mat. Duni’s tongue a snaking wetness that plumped Ny’s sex and made her want to grab Duni’s hand and push it there for her to grind down on, twist and shake until she came apart. But she squeezed her thighs together and forced herself to go slow.
“I want you so much…”
Once on the sleeping mat, their kisses became sloppy and wet, a rush toward what was a certainty. Their bodies finally pressed close through the two layers of cloth, Duni’s thigh falling between hers and pressing against her. The heat of expectation rushed through Ny, her heart beat faster, and the breath hitched in her throat.
Thudding hearts. Long and deep kisses. Hands pulling at the cloths that covered their bodies.
Duni pulled back. “Sit up.”
The bedclothes shifted and whispered beneath them as they moved to face each other, the smell of eucalyptus rising in the room, the dried leaves in the mattress crackling.
Ny licked her lips, faced with the challenge of Duni sitting close to her, her body offered. “What do you want me to do?”
“Undress me.”
Ny’s fingers fumbled with the folds of the cloth. How could they not? Finally, finally, she had arrived at the moment where she could touch Duni the way she had always imagined in dreams. Was her skin as soft as she thought it would be? Would she arch up into her with her wonderful laugh? Would the reality of their touches come anywhere close to what she often imagined?
With her clumsy fingers, she finally pulled loose the yellow cloth that covered Duni’s breasts. The cloth fell into her hands, soft again her palms, down Duni’s belly, and slithering down to the mat. Her hips revealed. The dark thatch of her pubic hair, her soft thighs. The smell of her, musky and salty, drifted up to Ny’s face. Her mouth watered. Her fingertips tingled.
“I want to touch you,” Ny breathed.
Duni closed her eyes, bare body swaying in the candlelight to her own inner music. “Please…”
Duni’s breasts were plump and tender under her exploring fingers, the nipples hard and scraping Ny’s palm. From throat to wrist, bellybutton to toes, every touch was a revelation. Even after so many hours enclosed in the darkness of the hut, enclosed in the rawness of her own pain, Duni smelled like the sun.
Ny had never experienced anything so beautiful. Her body was tense with need, the desire in her pulled tight at her nipples, sucked pain into the little bud of her sex, made her groan with each pleasured sigh that Duni gave. It was a pleasure and it was a lesson. She wanted to make Duni forget about her shattered life. She wanted her only to focus on the beautiful things they were sharing together. Ny dipped her mouth to her nipples, tasting one after the other, licking and sucking and moaning her own bliss while Duni twisted against the pallet, her fingers clenched in Ny’s hair, her legs falling open and begging Ny to touch her there.
She smelled like a remembered dream of the sea. She wanted to dive in and coat her face with the heated wetness, cover herself in Duni’s musk. So she did. She tasted like every wonderful thing Ny had ever wanted in her mouth, she moaned as if she were dying. She trusted Ny. She lay under her clumsy hands, gasping when the touch was good, guiding Ny’s hands when it was not, writhing in pleasure and praising Ny with every moan that rose from her lips, every arch of her back, every drip of moisture between her legs.
Duni’s hips bucked in her tight grip. She cried out Ny’s name and shuddered deeply in her bliss. She opened her eyes and her lashes fluttered wildly as she stared up at Ny. Her gaze was blank, everything obliterated by pleasure, what her body reveled in. But in moments, the blankness cleared and awareness claimed her again. Her brown eyes glittered with tears. The water of her sorrow leaked down the sides of her face and into the mat. Her mouth wavered into a silent cry.
Ny gripped Duni’s shoulders and turned her over in the mat, lifted her hips to bare the drenched bush and swollen wet pink of her. She tasted of salt. When Duni cried out again, it was with pleasure, a gushing rain pouring from between her legs and over Ny’s face, the wet sound of it rushing so fiercely, so cleanly, that Ny felt it on her shoulders, heard it pounding on the roof of the small house. This time, she cried too.
Nyandoro knew she was dreaming.
Clear blue water rippled under her feet. Bluer than the river. Clearer than the skies. Crystalline. The vessel she was on, a boat, floated in the middle of a vast sea, land nowhere in sight. She’d never been this far out before, but—and she looked down again into the water between her knees—she wasn’t afraid. The small, shallow boat rocked as she shifted to plunge both feet into the water. She sighed at its coolness over her ankles, her legs. Its soothing tongue lapped her calves.
She was naked.
“Wanting is only a pleasure if we know the want will soon be satisfied.”
Nyandoro looked up from the rippling water, unsurprised to see the woman from before. This time, she wore a
tunic of peacock feathers, a rippling of bright color over one shoulder, over her breasts, belly, and down to her knees. A bright blue cloth wrapped, high and regal, around her head.
“Was there ever any doubt I would get what I wanted?” Nyandoro asked.
The expression on the woman’s face shifted, one moment a neutral but curious look, the next, like another mask sliding into place, a smile of amusement.
“And how was the taste?”
“Like rain,” Nyandoro said, imagining the thing that the village and everyone in it had longed many seasons for but could not get. “She tasted like rain.”
The woman’s mask shifted again. This time, it was sadness that touched those unnaturally beautiful features. It didn’t seem any more real than her laughter from before.
“Not quite, my little warrior,” she said. “But soon you’ll know true rain, and it won’t be as sweet.”
Chapter Six
Early morning leaked through the slats in the window, warming Ny’s face. She turned away from it with a groan, rolling into the soft heat of Duni’s naked body. A long and luxurious moan rumbled from her throat, and she wrapped her arms around her new lover.
All mine, she thought with a smile.
Duni snuffled in her sleep, rubbed her eyes, and opened them to smile tentatively at Ny. She looked so beautiful, so delicious, that Ny did the only thing she could. She kissed her.
She luxuriated in the feel of Duni’s lips under hers, the warm decadence of her body. As an adult, or close enough to one, she’d never woken up next to another person in her bed. It was luxury indeed, luscious bare skin on display for her to touch and kiss and suck until they fell once again under lust’s heated spell. Duni moaned into her mouth, and Ny moved her hand low, squeezing the wondrous flesh of her bottom, stroking the wet cleft between her thighs.
“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Duni flinched against Ny at the sound of Kizo’s voice ringing out from the sitting room. Her lashes flickered against Ny’s throat and she pulled back with a soft gasp, sitting up in the pallet.
Damn him. Ny silently cursed her not-so-favorite brother.
She touched Duni’s hip. “It’s okay. He’s just joking.”
But she slid from the bed and quickly tied her cloth over one shoulder and around her waist. In the sitting room, Kizo was waiting for her, a wide grin firmly in place.
“Did it go well?” he asked.
Two covered dishes sat on the low table next to three spoons, and the smell of porridge, rich and sweet, perfumed the room. Kizo looked freshly bathed, but like he’d been up for hours.
“Stop it!” Ny said with her voice low. “She’s not ready to be teased yet.”
“She better be ready for more than that.” He uncovered one of the bowls, told Ny that their mother had made her favorite porridge. Green bananas mixed with plum juice and sprinkled with crushed macadamia nuts. Kizo picked up a spoon. “Everyone is speculating where she ran off to. A bunch of gossiping fools, our brother included.”
He didn’t have to tell Ny which brother. She often wondered if Nitu had been born in the wrong body and at the wrong age. Everything about him said he was a gossiping old woman.
“Do our parents know?”
“Papa might suspect something. He didn’t ask too many questions when I showed up for dinner without you.” Kizo blew cooling air over a spoonful of porridge before putting it in his mouth. “Mama was worried, but I told her you needed time by yourself to study for that ambassador’s test. She sent the porridge as a reward for you being such a good girl.” He smirked. “I should ruin a marriage or two every once in a while. Maybe then she’d make my favorite food.”
The door to the bedroom creaked open, and Duni walked shyly through it, darting a shy glance at Kizo then at Ny before sinking into a small chair opposite the couch. Ny couldn’t look away from her. Duni was beautiful. Too beautiful to have been the same woman in her bed just a few short hours before.
Kizo stared at Duni as if he’d never seen her before. His considering eyes on the gorgeousness of her face. Her full mouth, eyes still lazy from sleep. Although her yellow cloth was tied high at the throat and fell nearly to the floor to reveal only her arms and her bare feet, she was breathtaking.
From the plumpness of her lips to the drowsiness of her eyes, the lazy grace of her movements screamed that she’s just been properly made love to. Ny wanted to pull her down into her lap and kiss the sleep from her face, slide up her kanga cloth and bury her face between her thighs. And she wanted to punch her brother in the face if he didn’t stop staring.
He caught her frowning at him and shrugged. “What? It’s only natural.” He took another spoonful of porridge and only reluctantly pulled his eyes from Duni.
The bastard.
“What are you two going to do?” he asked.
Ny slumped on the couch. “What can we do? I think the best thing we can do is wait it out,” she said. “No one knows who her lover is. And there are no parents to look for her and demand that Ibada do the right thing.”
“What is the right thing, Ny? In the eyes of this man and probably most of the village, she was unfaithful and deserves nothing more than contempt.”
“But they’re wrong.”
Kizo shrugged again. He turned to Duni. “You can stay here as long as you like. I’ll make sure you have enough food then keep checking on the village decision about your marriage.”
“You don’t have to do this.” Duni shook her head, looking both distressed and determined. “I can handle things myself.”
Ny stood up. “With what?” Duni had no resources. No money. No family. Ny was uncomfortably aware of all these things. She looked at her brother.
He made a dismissive motion in Ny’s direction, looking more than ever like their father. “It’s done.” He grinned. “Besides, if I know my sister, you’ll be part of the family very soon.”
Ny’s face warmed. Marriage. Days of making love to Duni without anyone saying she couldn’t. She barely kept her eyes from skittering away when she turned to Duni. “Please stay here. Between the three of us, we can think of a plan to keep you safe and out of the poor house.”
“I’ll do what needs to be done.” Duni gripped the edge of the resting couch, her knuckles turning gray. “What will you do in the meantime?” Her anxiety was obvious, and it made Ny want to stay, want to protect her woman.
“I’ll go find my iya,” Ny said reluctantly. She couldn’t stay away for much longer while the divorce scandal was going on. The rest of her family would start suspecting something. “I think today is her market day.”
Kizo lifted his head and sniffed the air with a jackal’s smile. “I’d suggest you take a bath first. One whiff and Iya will definitely know where your mouth was last night.”
Ny blushed and wished again her brother wasn’t such an ass.
*
It was her mother’s market day.
Ny left Duni at her brother’s but took Kizo with her. He laughingly went along with her, saying he hadn’t quite realized what a fine piece of distraction she’d found in Duni.
“Has she always been that pretty or did you do something to her last night?” Kizo chuckled, dancing out of the way when Ny tried to hit him.
At their parents’ house, her mother looked over her with a sharp eye, hugging her with a greeting that seemed extreme for Ny spending just one night away, but didn’t ask why she didn’t come home. “Did your brother give you the porridge I sent?” Her mother bustled through the cook room, getting her money and basket ready for the market.
“No. He ate all of it.” She felt no shame about lying. He had eaten most of the first bowl and she had left the second one for Duni.
Her mother lightly slapped his arm as she passed, tucking cowrie shells into her waist pouch. “Kizo!”
“It’s not my fault your cooking is so delicious, Iya,” he said, frowning at Ny behind their mother’s back.
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��But you should take care of your sister,” their mother said. “You know she needs to eat too.”
Ny instantly felt guilty. “He does make sure I eat, Iya.”
“I sure do.” Kizo gave her a meaningful stare, then made an obscene gesture with his tongue and two fingers in case she missed what she was saying.
Ny itched to punch him for real this time. Ny rubbed a hand over her still-wet hair. Her bath had been quick and rushed, but got the job done. The memory of the night she spent with Duni was seared into her mind forever, but at least it wasn’t smeared all over her skin for anybody to smell. “Are you ready for the market, Iya?”
“Almost, darling. Just let me put away these oranges Iya Angaza gave me this morning.” She grabbed an overflowing grass bag of oranges from the windowsill and dumped them into a basket on the table. “Her tree is bearing out of control. She can’t give away the fruit fast enough.”
“It’s always good to have more than you need.” Ny backed out of her mother’s way, tucking her hands behind her back.
“And to share so willingly.” Kizo gave her a teasing look. “Good things like that are always meant to be shared.” He skipped out of the reach of Ny’s fist and made his way to the door. “I will see you for the evening meal, Iya. Sister.” Then he was gone.
“What is he up to?” Her mother stared at the doorway Kizo disappeared through.
“The usual, Mama. No good.”
Her mother smiled and wrapped a hand around Ny’s waist. “Unlike my baby, yes?”
Ny mumbled something she hoped sounded convincing. Despite the wrinkle of worry between her brows, her mother didn’t press her.
“Are you ready, love?”
Ny nodded, and they left for the market. Her mother carried the empty basket on her head, the wide, open weave container barely moving with each of her steps.