Masquerade (10 page)

I smile tightly. Right. Two can play at this game.

I drop my fork and instead of simply reaching down to retrieve it I stand and bend from the waist so my butt is pushed out toward him and between the crack of my thighs swollen swirls of tantalizingly pink flesh are peeping out at him. I twist and look at him. He is staring quite hungrily at my glistening sex.

‘Sorry,’ I say sweetly.

He swallows the food in his mouth.

I go to sit down and somehow manage to trip and land in his lap. His cock is so hard it sticks into me.

‘Oops,’ I say and bounce slightly. His eyes fly to my naked breasts. These fake breasts are great. They bounce very well. I get up, making sure my nipples just graze the side of his mouth before I slide into the chair. Picking up a piece of mango I put it into my mouth, then lick and suck my fingers slowly. I swivel my eyes in his direction. He is properly riveted.

‘Would you like some mango?’ I ask, knowing he can’t very well say no. That would be tantamount to admitting defeat.

He nods.

I take a mango chunk in my fingers and standing up bend forward so my breasts are hanging like low-lying, ripe fruit. I put the slice into his unresisting mouth. He chews slowly and thoughtfully, his eyes flicking from my eyes to my thighs and back to my breasts. I straighten, rest my hip on the table and open my legs slightly. I am like an animal on heat, which come to think about it, I am. I want to lick his toenails.

‘Do you know the sea air is having a strange effect on me? I… I…feel wild. I’m actually in a mood to take something really big and hard in my mouth and…suck it. What a shame we have to wait. The thing is,’ I add languidly, ‘I might not feel like this later.’ I lean back slightly on the table so that I am almost stretched out on it.

His eyes leave mine and flick to the raw invitation between my legs. I see that he is badly affected, but I also see his fists sitting on the table. Determined as fuck not to let me win.

Well, I’m not giving in either.

Slowly I slither—and when I say slither, I really mean slither: a snake couldn’t have done better—upwards. His eyes are like popsicles on sticks. I sigh elaborately as my nipples trail over the tabletop. Eventually coming upright, I walk to the chair. But this is not the walk of any ordinary mortal. This is the ‘I see you shaking that ass’ walk à la Billie. I’m giving it all I got.

When I get to the chair I swivel it onto one leg. His head tilts. I’ve got him. I know I’ve got him. I put the chair back between my legs and slide my slit along it. I sneak a sly look, filled with lust, at him.

He is staring at me. His mouth is parted.

Now for the pièce de résistance. The chair has two little balls at either end of its back. Slowly, slowly I lower myself on one ball. It is hard and smooth and terribly, terribly taboo.

‘Oh,’ I gasp and turn to look at him with the ball of the chair inside me.

With a deep growl he stands, sweeps away all the food to the ground, because he is
that
dominant, falls on me, and fucking
devours
me. I stare at the leaves of the Causarina tree as I scream, ‘Oh yeahhhhhh.’ Did I ever tell you that this guy sucks pussy better than any lesbian? I did? Well, it’s worth repeating. He’s that good. My muscles start clenching.

‘Don’t stop,’ I command, and fuck him, he instantly does the opposite. He takes his mouth off me. I open my mouth to swear at him, and it becomes a shocked gasp as I am bodily picked up as if I am some life-sized doll and spread on the table, face down, legs splayed open. Before I know it, a big, hard, sun-kissed cock slams into me. The force shoots me forward.

The man’s a fucking animal.

He grabs me by the hips and pulling me back, keeps a firm grip on me while he fucks the living hell out of me. Suddenly he stops. Picks me up again, his man-toy, lays me on my ass, spins me around and pushes me back on the table with my head hanging over the side.

‘Did I hear you say you were in the mood to suck something very big and very hard?’ he asks very close to my ear.

Before I can answer, his cock, covered in my juices, has been pushed into my mouth and right down into my throat. I don’t hesitate. I suck for England. It’s only fair. But after a while I lie back, close my eyes and allow him to fuck my mouth. He starts thrusting strongly. All I can do is smell the man smell of his pubic hair and taste the saltiness of his skin.

He comes in hot, jerking spurts. Without taking his semi-hard cock out of my mouth, he casually leans over my body and clamps his mouth on my clit and works it until I break apart. It’s a good climax. It smells of the sea. He pulls out of my mouth, helps me sit up, and stands between my legs. He runs his fingers playfully in my wet folds and looks regretfully at the chicken pieces strewn on the ground.

‘See what you made me do.’

‘You started it.’

‘Yes, but I’m very, very hungry now,’ he says plaintively.

‘I make a mean cheese sandwich.’

‘I really wanted Gwen’s chicken,’ he says sadly, and inserts a long finger inside me.

The finger is distracting but I keep my head. ‘You’ve got a cheese sandwich. Take it or leave it.’

‘You’re a hard woman, Billie.’

We break apart at the sound of the men coming back with the fish they have caught. It is funny to watch him hopping into his trousers. I sit on the table, reeking of sex and as naked as the day I was born, and laugh.

By the time he comes back into the house with the fish, I am wearing one of his T-shirts and have already cobbled together his sandwich. He puts the fish—the men have gutted and cleaned them—in the sink and goes to sit at the table.

I slap the plate with the sandwich in front of him.

He opens the richly buttered bread and looks at the filling: thick slices of cheese and tomato in layers. He raises his eyes up to me and grins. ‘Dude food?’

I grin back. ‘Exactly.’

He picks it up and takes a big bite. ‘The milled pepper is a nice touch.’

‘Thank you,’ I say graciously.

I sit next to him and watch him wolf it down and feel almost protective of him. Woe betide anybody who tries to hurt him. It’s an odd thought.

T
hat afternoon we take it easy. Jaron shows me around the little villa. There is a room with a mirrored wall and exercise equipment, a spare bedroom, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a storeroom, a dining room, a porch and our room, the master bedroom. It is dominated by a huge cream bed. A mosquito net hangs over it like a cloud.

‘Very romantic,’ I say.

‘Mossies will eat you alive without the net. They are terrible, the only drawback to this place. Make sure you spray on a lot of bug repellent before the sun sets.

‘OK.’

We swim and go snorkeling. The water is super clear because it has been a calm day and he points out all kinds of fantastically colored fish and marine life.

When evening comes we stand on the beach and watch the sun setting. The sky is almost purple. It is unforgettably beautiful. Jaron twines his hands into mine.

‘What happens after sundown?’ I ask.

‘Nudity,’ he says with a smile.

I laugh. ‘How much nudity?’

‘Lots.’

Jaron barbecues the fish that the men caught and we eat them. They are succulent and wonderful the way food never is when you are not truly hungry. After the meal I have a shower. The water is brackish. Then we sit on the beach covered in bug repellent drinking rum and talking.

‘Listen,’ I say, suddenly catching what seems to me to be the sound of music.

‘It’s a party on the mainland,’ he replies.

‘Wow, the sound travels that far?’

‘Sometimes when the air is very still you can even hear a dog bark.’

‘Really?’

‘You want to go?’ he asks.

‘To the party?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Of course I want to go to a Bahamian party,’ I say enthusiastically.

‘OK,’ he agrees.

‘We’re going to crash their party?’

He smiles. ‘See you need to get into island mentality. This is not England where you need to let people know that you are going to come around. Here people just drop in. More or less everyone on the mainland knows me. I’m usually invited.’

‘Great. I
love
parties.’

‘Come on then. Let’s go.’

I change into an apple green top with spaghetti straps, tight red pants and the only pair of shoes I have left, now that my other pair is lying at the bottom of the ocean. But the gold sandals actually look glitzy and partyish. I layer on the mascara and slap on the gloss and I am ready.

‘Looking good, Billie,’ I tell my reflection.

‘You look amazing,’ Jaron says from our bedroom doorway.

I turn around and look at him. He is wearing all black again. In the dim light, he looks mysterious and positively unreachable. I walk up to him and touch him. A thrill of something potent but secret runs up my arm. The desire for him doesn’t abate but just becomes stronger and stronger.

‘I don’t know why I did that.’

He grins. ‘I don’t know either, but I like it.’ He runs his index finger down my cheek reflectively.

Suddenly I feel nervous. I smile weakly. ‘You’re staring.’

‘So are you.’

I pretend to grin. ‘I can’t stop. What’s your excuse?’

‘Same,’ he says very quietly, with no trace of humor in his voice.

He bends his head and claims my mouth and the kiss—I don’t even know if I can describe it as a kiss—is a mess of all things: it’s soft and yet hard, caring and yet fierce, liberating and yet possessive.

For a while I resist the conflicting demands of the kiss and then I give in, and I find myself in a slow dance. But it is not us who are dancing. It is our souls, entwined, swirling, merging like liquid. It is so beautiful and profound it hurts. When he breaks away, I touch my mouth and stare at him in awe. I feel almost drunk. My pulse is racing like mad.

‘What the hell was that?’ I whisper. My voice sounds tiny and scared.

‘I was carving my name into your heart.’

I look at him, the hottest man in every room. The man who already has a girlfriend. ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’

‘Because you’re the most beautiful fucking thing I have ever seen. And I was claiming you.’

I look at him. I’m being stitched up. I’m walking into a massive elephant trap. ‘How can you claim me when you’ve already got a girlfriend?’ I hate the whiny sound of my voice.

‘Sometimes things are not as they seem.’

Something small and fragile blooms in my heart. I want to be coolly sarcastic. Laugh and say something richly comic. But I can’t. I have to be true to the moment when our souls mingled.

‘What do you mean?’ I whisper.

‘One day, Billie. One day soon I’ll tell you. Now: are we going to this party or not?’

I take a deep breath and smile, intoxicated the way no drug or amount of alcohol has ever made me feel. ‘We are.’

We take the small, shallow boat. It has a huge headlight on it that lights the way through a long, deep water channel that belonged to an old salt company. It shows the way into the bay. I have never been on a boat at night and it is a-fucking-mazing. The water gleams dark and mysterious. The cool wind blows in my hair and face and the occasional sea spray that showers us is exhilarating. I love the sensation of my hand trailing in the water, which is still warm from the day’s sun. I urge Jaron to go fast and faster. The speed is addictive and the feeling of flying headlong into the darkness is crazy.

When we get to the mainland Jaron secures the boat and helps me out. My hair is a mess. He runs his fingers through it and smoothes it down. ‘I love the feel of your hair when you don’t use half a can of hairspray on it,’ he says.

‘Well, make the most of it. I love my hairspray. Just forgot to bring it.’

We walk along the beach. He holds my hand. It feels right. On our right, dark vegetation rises up like an impenetrable shadow. The sand is so soft it gets into my sandals so I take them off and carry them in my hands. The sand is cool on my feet. There is no moon. The only light is from the torch Jaron carries. Little transparent crabs scurry along the sand in front of us. There is the ever present sound of the insects in the trees and the faint sound of music.

In the distance we see the lights of the party. It is being held on the beach outside a wooden house. There are lanterns lit around it and a bonfire is going. Lana Del Ray’s
Summertime Sadness
starts playing on the loudspeakers and I feel a thrill of excitement run up my spine.

‘Come on,’ I urge excitedly, tugging Jaron’s hand. ‘I love this song. We have to dance to it.’

He looks down at me amused, but he nods, and like a pair of kids we run toward the party. There are many people there and most of them either call out to Jaron or wave at him. I drag Jaron to the middle of the throng of people dancing. This is one of my favorite songs. If I close my eyes I can actually see it like waves in the air. I find a gap in the crush and gyrate to the beat.

Jaron stands a foot away from my body and watches me. There is passion and possession in his eyes. Then I swagger closer to him and sinuously sliding my hands onto his shoulders rub my body all over his. I want him all over me and I am saying it in no uncertain terms. He grins, his eyes at half-mast, and moves his hips to match mine. It’s casual. And it’s damn sexy.

I pull his body so close I feel his erection. We gaze into each other’s eyes. The music changes and I don’t really notice. He ushers me around a corner and pushes me up against the wall of the house with his lips. The music is so loud it is rattling the wall of the house that I am pressed against. 

‘Right now all I want to do is suck your wet cunt loudly and hungrily,’ he says. The thought is so fucking erotic I soak my knickers through there and then.

‘I didn’t know men loved eating pussy that much.’

‘I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t fucking get enough of yours. I dream of eating your pussy,’ he says, and claims my mouth in a hard kiss that takes my breath away. 

‘Hey, lover,’ someone calls from behind us.

Jaron takes his time about releasing my lips. ‘Later,’ he promises, his hot breath mingling with mine. Jaron turns around and I see a man, his startling white teeth flashing in the darkness.

‘Look at you,’ the man says in a really cool accent. ‘You brought a sweetheart.’

‘This is Noel,’ Jaron introduces and then turning to Noel with a wry smile says, ‘And the sweetheart is Billie.’

‘You finally went and fished yourself a girl, huh?’

Jaron rubs his chin thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, but she’s a bit of a handful.’

I punch Jaron on the arm, hard.

Jaron pretends to wince and rub his arm and Noel laughs. ‘It’s island love.’

A woman comes to join us and Noel introduces her as his wife. She has the most amazingly beautiful brown skin, the exact color I would have chosen to have if I had been given a choice in the matter, and she is wearing big hoop earrings with beads in them, which I covet. She has an Afro hairstyle. She grins at me and Jaron.

‘I love your hair,’ I tell her. ‘I used to have an Afro when I was in school.’

‘Was it the fashion then?’

‘Nope. I just liked it. I still do. I might yet have one,’ I say and feel Jaron’s eyes on me.

‘A green Afro might be pushing it even for you,’ he says with a chuckle.

‘It’s teal, not green. And I’ll do as I like with my hair,’ I say haughtily.

‘Did you enjoy the chicken?’ asks Gwen quickly.

‘Very much. It was delicious,’ Jaron replies smoothly. ‘But there wasn’t enough for me. Billie ate most of it.’

Noel laughs hard, his eyes twinkling, and I wonder if he knows what really happened to the chicken.

‘I will cook some more for you tomorrow,’ says Gwen.

‘Would you?’ asks Jaron beseechingly. He sounds so different with Gwen that I turn to stare at him. There is no mask, no barriers. Just boyish enthusiasm.

‘Noel will bring it,’ she says, nodding firmly.

‘Thank you,’ both Jaron and I speak in unison. It’s a strange thing to speak in unison with someone. It has never happened to me before. We smile at each other.

‘You two are already drunk on love, but come and have some rum anyway,’ invites Noel with a chuckle. The statement is casual but explosive to me. I dare not look at Jaron to see his expression. I turn toward Noel eagerly.

Rum, I must say, is a drink I enjoy very much and it flows very freely that night. I make friends with everybody. The mainlanders must be the friendliest people on earth. They laugh uproariously at my jokes and teach me all kinds of really cool phrases. Bust up means badly drunk; you can intensify anything by adding the word dead in front: dead cold, dead ugly. To sip, sip is to gossip, Jack means friend, leg short means you have arrived too late for something, to be without money is to be break. I consume more and more rum and it is all great fun. Everything is funny as hell and I am the life of the party.

A man in an open blue shirt carrying a guitar comes and sits opposite us. Jaron introduces him as Terrance. Someone switches off the music. The air fills with the sound of the waves and human voices. Terrance smiles broadly and starts strumming his guitar. Soon the place becomes silent but for his guitar, the crackling of the fire and the incessant waves. It is very peaceful. I turn to look at Jaron. His blond hair shines in the firelight. Terrance starts singing. It is a strange song. I must be very drunk because I am unable to catch all the words but some stick in my head as if they have been nailed in.

Understand the truth of the flowers.

Become the lord of the flowers…people…cattle.

Become the lord of the flowers…people…cattle.

Understand this truth.

Fire is the in-dweller of the water.

Understand the truth.

Understand your in-dweller.

I am too drunk to make any sense of it. I frown up at Jaron. ‘What’s the song about?’

‘It is about us, people. We who live our lives like cattle.’

For a moment I stare at him. Is he serious? ‘What do you mean?’

‘It is a cry of the soul, the fire inside the water, to wake up.’

‘Wake up?’

‘Most of us are sleepwalking through life. He is daring you to explore your inner world.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, looking at Jaron with new eyes. There could be something more to this man than meets the eye. Something deep and profound. Terrance has finished his song and starts singing Bob Marley’s,
No Woman No Cry
. Now this I can understand. A few songs later, Terrance packs up his guitar and music from the loudspeaker fills the air again.

Time to dance again. I get up and go for it.

When
Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot
comes up on the loudspeaker, the crowd actually parts for my solo. Fueled on alcohol and Jaron’s hungry eyes I give it all I’ve got.

I am still dancing when Jaron picks me up bodily and says, ‘Time to go home, Dancing Queen.’

‘Awww… Don’t be so dead boring,’ I slur drunkenly and bring my glass of delicious drink—Noel’s famous gin and coconut water cocktail—to my lips. He takes the glass out of my hand so fast I am left staring at the empty space where the glass had been.