Pital hung precariously from the trunk of a banana tree, the machete in his hand forgotten as he stared at the woman on the bed.
He'd seen some interesting things since his family had come to live behind the little community house that was rented to visitors. But none as exciting as this white woman who lay on the narrow cot and stroked herself as boldly as a prostitute.
She was no prostitute, though. Pital was sure of that. She was someone important. He could tell that from the deference the men paid her. The old fat man who had just been in her room had submitted to her will — Pital could tell from the movement of their bodies and the look of their eyes. Whatever the discussion had been, the fat man had conceded.
And as for the Long-haired one. The way he'd left the house — stomping across the verandah and down the stairs in a fury — Pital felt sure he must be a cuckolded husband.
Was this attractive woman leaving a handsome and virile husband to bed with such a fat old man? It defied understanding. Until Pital remembered that the older man had many attendants. And he travelled in a helicopter. He obviously had much money.
Pital knew what people would do for money. Only the year before — his eighteenth year — he had sold himself to an Australian woman for money. It had happened in Port Moresby, where he'd gone to buy a gift for his girl-friend, only to discover his humble savings weren't enough for the American jeans she'd wanted — the jeans he'd imagined himself peeling off her to get at the pulsing love-fruit she was coyly denying him.
Dejected, Pital had been lurking through back streets where he'd heard there were women who would exchange his small amount of money for favours. But before he could find such a one, an expensive looking sports car had pulled up beside him, a white woman at the wheel. Pital had been overcome with embarrassment — to have been caught in such an area!
But he'd quickly recovered himself. She wouldn't have known where they were. He'd stepped closer to the car, thinking to direct her away from where she'd strayed. But when he'd looked down at her, he'd seen she was holding a fistful of notes. 'Till dawn,' she'd said, and leant across to open the passenger door. The front of her shirt had gaped, revealing two mounds of flesh that glowed like the moon.
Fool, Pital had stood on the street with his mouth hanging open while the woman waited. But while she'd waited, she'd looked at him — at his shoulders in their thin singlet, at his forearms, his hands. Then at the front of his baggy shorts.
She'd looked back up at him then and Pital had seen fear in her eyes. That had decided him.
It had not been a bad experience. The bungalow she'd taken him to had been comfortable beyond the standards of any he'd ever entered — the huge white-stone bathroom where he'd bathed, the soft four-poster bed where they lay.
She had been gentle, at first, admiring his body with a lot of words he hadn't understood. Then it had been his turn to admire hers. Her skin had been smooth and white, her body very beautiful without the harsh business clothes she'd worn.
He had wondered to himself why she would bother to buy what she could so obviously have for free. But as the touching became increasingly rough and painful he had understood.
She bruised, bit and scratched, demanding the same treated from him only harder, and he'd complied — managing to used up four of her foil-wrapped condoms in the process. Overall, he'd been satisfied with his performance. And certainly the money had been good. Enough to buy his girlfriend the jeans she'd coveted.
The following night he'd given them to her and been well rewarded for his trouble. After telling her his injuries had been sustained in a fight to protect her gift, he'd asked her to kiss each of his hurts, to 'ease his pain'. And she'd complied.
Encouraged by her enthusiasm, he'd boldly pointed to the part of him that had worked the hardest for her jeans and she'd even kissed that. Then, miraculously, at his request, she'd sucked it.
Pital's loins tingled now to think of that sucking and he wondered how he might coax her into sucking it again. He wanted that feeling, over and over. But it didn't come for free. Just as the white woman had paid him to satisfy her needs, Pital knew his girlfriend wanted something for what she did.
She wanted to be married. But if Pital's newly married cousin was right, that would be the end of the sucking. A depressing thought, and one Pital was keen not to linger on.
Besides, there were more interesting things to think about. Like the mystery of the woman on the bed.
While he watched, her stroking fingers slid through the pink folds of her love fruit, revealed by her brazenly parted legs. There was a rhythm there.
He frowned in concentration. Is that what women want? he thought, slow little circles? But just when he was sure she was about to shudder with release, her hand stopped moving. She'd fallen asleep.
Pital shook his head, realised his own limbs were numbing and so, reluctantly, he completed his task — severing the bunch of bananas for his mother who by this time was calling his brothers and sisters to the evening meal.
Pital barely touched his food, his mind full of the woman on the bed. Would someone come to her in that room? The fat man or the long-haired one? Pital knew it would be wrong, but he wanted to watch.
Excusing himself on the pretence of visiting his girlfriend — which he still might do — he slipped quietly back through the jungle of banana trees to his vantage point opposite her window.
Her room was in darkness now, but the long-haired one was pacing the verandah, and after a few minutes the fat one came out of the house and spoke to him.
Pital couldn't hear his words, but he could see their effect. The long-haired one shook his head and stepped backwards, as though to remove himself from whatever the fat man had told him. But he couldn't escape. It seemed to Pital that those words closed in on him, turned him into a defeated man. He stumbled down the steps and disappearing into the darkness.
Had the fat man claimed victory, Pital wondered? He watched, but instead of going back inside to take his reward, the fat man merely sat on the steps and lit a cigarette.
Pital was disappointed. The thought of her with this ugly man had repulsed him, but he'd expected something to happen. Now he didn't know whether he should wait or -
A flash of white caught his eyes.
At the side of the house facing Pital, the woman's white shirt showed at the window. He watched her long legs come over the sill. She paused for a minute, as though listening, then dropped silently onto the grass.
Pital glanced at the fat man, but he appeared to have heard nothing. The woman remained crouched for a moment longer, as though considering her options. Then, to Pital's horror, she rose and edged towards the front of the house. Pital wanted to call out to her, not there. The fat man is ther e, but he only watched with wide eyes as she reached the corner of the house and peered around it.
Pital held his breath. But the fat man continued smoking, staring up the street the way the long haired one had gone. The woman's head moved as though she too were looking up the street, then she pulled back to face Pital, her back pressed against the wall.
Her eyes closed for a moment as though summoning some inner reserves, then they opened and he saw them narrow suspiciously. Pital felt his stomach tighten. He had the sudden horrible sensation that she was staring straight at him.
Could she see him here? He'd thought himself concealed in the tangle of banana trees. But what if he wasn't?
Would she be angry with him for watching her? What might she do? Walk over to him and… She would have to be silent, Pital thought, remembering the fat man. She might strike him for his impudence, or she might -
She might suck him.
Improbable though the thought was, it raced through his body like a flash-fire and he felt himself grow ready. Almost too ready.
His mind buzzed with encouraging thoughts. He was young and healthy. Clean. And not ugly. She would enjoy it more with him than with the fat man.
There was no reason why not…
Pital felt his leg muscles twitch. Then, with a spurt of shock, he realised he was moving forward, out of the cover of the trees. She was watching him, and the look in her eyes made him shiver inside. It was like a scary, exciting dream. A wet dream, he hoped.
Pital knew that if the fat man saw him he would be in all sorts of trouble, but he couldn't stop. He had to see if she would do this thing. Memory of his girlfriend's warm mouth told him it would be worth the risk.
Dee watched the youth approaching her — felt a certain amount of inevitability. There was a beacon inside her that drew men like moths, but it wasn't beauty or truth. The light that shone so blatantly in her eyes was nothing more than simple sexual availability.
He stopped two paces from her and stared. Dee allowed him to. The longer he did, the more power built inside her. He didn't realise he was giving her this power, but he was. And she fed on it.
Then, when she'd had enough, she moved in.
He offered no resistance as she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it back over his shoulders, trapping his arms. Then she leant in, her predator's breath against his bobbing Adam's apple as she tied the shirt around his wrists.
His head fell back, his breathing erratic as she stripped off his shorts, releasing his jack-in-the-box erection. Hello, aren't you pretty, her mind said as she explored it with her tongue, pink against black.
He groaned softly as she pulled the tip into her mouth, but it was to be the last sound he made.
She grasped his testicles threateningly. "Complete silence," she hissed, then pushed him awkwardly down onto his back and used his shorts for a crude blindfold.
"Don't make a sound," she reminded him, and he nodded, vigorously. Dee had to smile. She liked obedience. She also liked the feeling of 'rightness' in what she did.
Vegetarians might quibble about whether people should eat meat, but they didn't argue that hunger must be appeased. And so it was with her. She could spend a life-time rationalising her hungers, or she could simply eat.
Tonight, she was ravenous.
Cruelly, she teased him with pleasures she knew would make him want to howl, yet he remained deathly silent, in fear of losing her attentions — and rightly so — if he uttered the slightest sound.
His skin tasted sweet and had a pleasing musky odour about it that excited her to recklessness. Not content with the two oral orgasms she'd given him, she mounted him and drove him on to a third.
It was madness with Sark a bare twenty paces away, but it felt good and she continued with it until she was sure her moth was exhausted. Then she leant over him, her own breathing ragged as she whispered, "Don't move a muscle until I come back. Understood?"
He licked his lips, nodded.
Dee had no intention of coming back, but it amused her to leave him there as a signal to Sark that he couldn't control her.
This young man would be her calling card — and like a creature marking it's territory, she paused, crouching over him to smear the juices of her sex on his face, only to shudder in surprise at the feel his tongue on her tenderised flesh. She had thought him spent, but the slow circles he inscribed convinced her she could afford another few minutes in his company.
The brutality of her last orgasm made this one slow coming, but he was patient and consistent, never varying from his agonisingly slow circumferencing until she felt the sensations crest and her shuddering hips brought his tongue hard against her clitoris.
As though sensing that he'd hit the mark, he lapped there, and she fell forward onto her hands, arching her back to keep that tongue working her, stretching out the pleasure until she was having trouble obeying her own decree of silence.
She pulled away then, but his head rose to follow her. She pushed it back down.
"Stay," she hissed as she stumbled to her feet. But the part of her that was smiling inside with creamy satisfaction was thinking he wasn't bad for a blindfolded beginner.
This one would be wasted on a young girl, she thought staring down at him, at the way his legs trembled in anticipation. What he needed was a woman with a lusty appetite.
She almost told him as much, then hesitated. No, he must discover this for himself. As they all must. She was merely the catalyst.
Still, she hoped a woman who knew what to do with him would come across his strong young body tonight and make use of it. Fondly, she reached down to toy with his beautiful black penis, stroking it until it was again erect.
Then she straightened and walked towards the beach — away from where Sark sat worrying about his agent. Dee wasn't going to waste her energy worrying. Long Shadow's problems were of his own making. It would be better for him to solve them himself. And if he didn't. Well, they all had to die someday.
A gust of salt-laden air billowed her shirt.
Ocean, she thought, sucking in great lungfuls of the briny scent as she picked her way through the thick native grasses that led onto the sand.
She would live near an ocean.
What country, with whom, or how, wasn't important. She just knew she would have that salt-laden air, and the sound of the ocean — that giant restless creature. She loved the way it threw itself up the sand towards her like a lover that would not be content until she was back in its grasp — back where it could suck and stroke her body with the rhythm of insatiability.
Insatiability. What a lovely word.
Dee turned away from the water and her shirt billowed at the front. Tendrils of wind tickled her breasts and her belly, and the sweetly aching place between her thighs.
Insatiability. There's no cure, she told herself as she skirted the houses where Sark and his men were posted, started along the road out of town.
Sexual obsession was a terminal disease. She knew that. But the thought gave her no grief. It wasn't a debilitating illness, nor was it obvious. And the length-of-life allotted to her was entirely within her control.
She could be a reckless wastrel or a thrifty whore. It was her life's energy to squander as she saw fit. And what a life she would have. Free from societies conventions. No expectations to fulfil. No fears to inhibit her. Even death was her friend now — a lover waiting in the wings for his chance to embrace her.
Smiling dreamily to herself, she lifted her attention from the loose road surface where she'd been picking a path for her bare feet by the moonlight. Something caught her eye.
Headlights, coming towards her.
Not moving from the centre of the road, she waited as the car drew closer, slowed, then stopped directly in front of her. The driver cut the engine, leaving the headlights on. As Wendee stood illuminated in their glare, a shiver ran over her skin. The night-time noises that had come from the thick vegetation on either side of the road had ceased. It was unnaturally quiet.
The passenger door opened, but no interior light came on. Still blinded by the headlights, she couldn't see who was emerging — whose shoes were crunching on the uneven road surface.
She waited, straining her eyes.
Finally, the figure spoke. "Will you come with me, Wendee?" he asked.
Dee felt her skin crawl.
"I need you," he said. "Come with me."
Still unable to see, she nodded, took a step towards the car.
"Yes," she said. "I will come."