Pleasure Island [The Chronicles of Lidir] (27 page)

'Tika! No ...' she said and stretching both hands out, fingers spread, backed away. Shanam smiled disarmingly and Anya became afraid that the word she had shouted might have been wrong or incorrectly applied in this context.

'Lak -' he began.

'Keep away! No!' she snapped, trusting her grasp of native words no more. The younger one folded his arms. Shanam took another step towards her and she backed through the doorway of the partition and stood shaking in the half-darkness. She could hear voices outside the hut now, laughter - women's laughter, not screams of terror or pain - and that only added to her consternation. Why were they laughing, when the men had attacked the camp and when Ikahiti had run away in such a state of fear? When Anya glared at Shanam, he shrugged again and turned, tapped his companion on the shoulder and both men went away, murmuring to each other.

And now she felt quite terrible. The spear had been so sharp - she could have killed him. Yet she felt certain they would return; it seemed to be a game to them. Again she wondered how he had known her name. It could only have been gleaned from the other women, she decided; they had probably told him all about her. But why were the women laughing when Ikahiti had been so afraid? Anya wished she had paid more attention to what Miriri had been trying to explain that morning - had she known the men would come? Anyway, game or no, Anya would not acquiesce in what Shanam and his friend wanted. She marched to the curtain in the main doorway, flinging it aside, expecting to see the camp fires and people dancing round. But all she saw was a heavy wooden batter blocking the way. It would not move. She was a prisoner after all. She retreated into the smaller room, sat on the pile of leaves, then got up again, retrieved the spear and hid it behind the doorway. Why the spear should reassure her, she did not know, because she could never use it now that she had seen what it could do. She felt exhausted; her eyes smarted; she needed sleep, but she could not risk letting her eyelids close.

It was much later when they did return and Anya already felt very hungry. As soon as she heard the obstacle being moved aside, she was standing by the inner doorway with one hand round the shaft of the spear, waiting. Shanam glanced in her direction, but neither man approached her; they now had another guest who had commandeered their attention.

The village girl looked small beside Ranil; her wide eyes stared around the hut as if she found its meagre contents totally absorbing. Her eyes met Anya's for a second, then slid away as if she found her less interesting than the patterns of the reeds matted into the wall. Shanam placed sticks upon the fire and the smoke billowed up through the narrow vent in the middle of the roof, she seemed to find that simple action quite intriguing too, commenting to him, presumably about it, raising her head as she stood above him and drawing her shoulders back until her small round breasts pushed out between the crosswise necklaces of shells. And from behind, Ranil also watched her. She looked over her shoulder, addressing him now, then raised herself on tiptoes, so her bottom pushed out roundly and the bronze skin on one side reflected the firelight, then she overbalanced and Ranil caught her - or she fell into his arms. They laughed and began to kiss.

Anya looked towards Shanam, who continued to tend the fire. She gripped the spear tightly, for he was looking at her, she was sure: though his head was down, she could see his eyes glinting, as if he were waiting to make a move. Then he sat up on his haunches, looking at the couple above him and there was something about his posture, his bearing and his looks - he was attractive; Anya found him so; she admitted this to herself: There was a confidence in his slimly muscled body, a calmness in his gaze and a memory in her mind - of the way he had looked at her when that accident had happened, of the way he had touched her hair. He had not forced himself upon her. He looked at her now; she saw again the cut on his chest. Again she began to tremble; she wanted to heal this cut; she wanted him to hold her. She knew that she would not refuse him again. And that thought - that she would give herself willingly, that she would hold this person in her arms and take his flesh inside her body - made her shudder. Her hand released the spear. He was coming over to her, closer and closer, while she could not blink now, could not lift her arms. But he took them - each of her hands - so tenderly and held them while he stared into her eyes. She moved her head back slightly, parted her trembling lips and closed her eyes. Her breasts and belly tingled with delicious anticipation. 'Aniya ...' he whispered. In reply, she pressed her cheek against his breast. He had not kissed her. She kissed the place that she had wounded. Then she opened her eyes. 'Shirin - sitika, tika-sin,' he murmured and again he touched her hair.

Lifting her, he carried her and placed her on the bed of leaves. Languorously, she stretched. He turned her on her side, to face the wall; she felt the backs of his fingers brushing against her lower back. She curled her head down and wrapped her arms about her breast. Her heart was thumping slowly, holding itself in reserve, waiting to quicken when he took her. He whispered to her, 'Tika,' over and over; her heart slowed; she was soothed. The tickling became gentler; she could hear the sounds of lovemaking next door; they stirred her in her belly. Encouraging him now, her upper leg crooked and lifted up the bed and across the soft leaves. The fingertips stroked down her newly exposed inner thigh, crept beneath and touched the ring with a lightness that was delicious, then moved back to brush more faintly still, upwards on her back. She heard another murmur - her own, though she did not know it - then everything dissolved in blackness and the fingertips were gone.

When she opened her eyes again, all was silent; when nothing happened, she turned over to find the room empty. She must have dozed. Then the sounds came again from beyond the partition. Slowly, Anya lay down again and waited, and thought about it - had he wanted her to sleep? - and listened to the soft low musical sounds of pleasure, but listened now with an analytical ear, dissecting every composite note for the number of musicians. Eventually, she could bear it no more and crept to the doorway, then stood like a statue watching the figures bathed in the continuous glow of the remaining fire and illuminated by occasional flickers as the half-burnt logs flared anew.

The movements were smooth and slow, almost dreamlike, for the bodies were heavy with pleasure - the men kneeling, their slimness counterweighted by the curving thickness of their stems; the girl, beneath them and between them, on her side, her breasts looking fuller now, the nipples looking thicker, the belly pushed out harder. Ranil, at her head, was lifting her breasts, cradling them and gently playing with her nipples. They were wet, as was his stem, which her fingers continued to touch; a band of shiny slickness coated its underside and had spread across his ballocks. Shanam touched the hard white bone projection between her open legs, which at one point moved involuntarily as he petted. He turned to stroking the insides of her thighs. When they had steadied, he lifted her upper ankle to make her turn on to her back then, placing both of her feet down flat, he pushed her ankles back until her knees were bent so tightly that her belly formed an arch above the bed. Again he massaged the bone; it now pushed out rather further from beneath its fleshy hood, which, like her nipples and the paint-pricked naked flesh lips flaring out and down to either side, shone with a wetness as of oil. But Anya knew the wetness was not oil. Shanam rolled the bone very slowly between thumb and finger, then waited, holding it still, and watched the pushed-out belly swell as if the girl were with child then wane again as she regained control and her breathing steadied and slowed.

Her heavy necklaces lay by Anya's feet; they had been dropped on the floor where Shanam had joined Ranil and the men had finally stripped her before lifting her in their arms and carrying her to the bed of leaves where she lay now, bare-sex naked apart from that small piece of polished bone secured by a thread of wire through her nubbin. And Shanam, a look of concentration on his face, touched this bone again; the finger, rubbed it as if it were a cock and the girl responded as if the rubbing of that cock would make her come. So Shanam now desisted and cupped his palm upon the surface of the belly that had pushed again until it looked as if it were pregnant and, slipping his other hand beneath her bottom, turned her on to her other side. Ranil moved round and her small hand closed around his stem again near its base. Shanam turned his attentions to her back. His fingertips moved in a circle on the smoothness near the base of her spine - the small flat place where Anya loved to be tickled - so Anya could almost feel that tickling too, and she could feel the wanting very much more surely. Still they had not seen her; she dared not move lest she should interrupt them, but she could smell their body scents - the girl's and much more strongly, the men's - she had smelled the milt when first she had stepped into the room and now that the girl had been turned, she could see its slickness on her belly. For how long had this been going on while Anya was asleep? She looked again at the large full bag between Shanam's legs as he climbed behind the girl. The girl's free hand reached back, searched down his belly, slipped under his cock and took this full bag lovingly, weighed it in her small cupped palm and squeezed it, making Anya shudder. She stayed very still and watched.

Shanam's hand came up between the girl's legs from behind and her upper leg was lifted. His fingertips opened out the small decorated lips to form a deeply cupped flower, then took each lip and squeezed it, nipping step by step along the patterned edge towards the hood, then taking the small white cock again and rolling it very slowly. When she began to murmur, she was again turned on to her back, where she lay as she had been put, with her legs uplifted, balanced above her, crooked in the air. Her bottom was raised on to Shanam's knees and his upper thighs formed a ramp below her, pressed against her lower back. The back of her head lay flat to the leaves. Ranil knelt open legged above her, then bent forwards, so his thick curved stem and heavy ballocks hovered above her nose. Shanam took hold of her upraised feet and pressed them outwards, so her bottom lifted and rocked. Her mound pushed out; the lips were open and the tiny white cock stood hard. The younger man rubbed his palm over her uplifted belly while Shanam held her feet, edging them wider. The rubbing movement transmitted to her sex and the bone projection moved as Ranil's hand moved, slowly pushing out from beneath the hood when the hand moved up the belly, then drawing back again. The girl's neck began to arch and her head moved back and the cock tip touched then pushed between her pouted lips. And now it was Ranil who gasped: he was forced to release her belly and arch his back while the cap of his cock was held captive in those moistly sucking lips and Shanam played with the girl, placing one hand under her back and lifting while the fingers of the other were wetted and slowly rubbed the hood up and down about the projecting stem. When the girl shuddered once, the tiny cock was plucked, then rolled, then held very still, so the only movements were the hand beneath her - which was kept pressed against her lower back and, in its lifting, moved her body by minute fractions against that single pinned and stimulated fleshy point to which the bone was fixed - and her lips which sucked upon the living cock as if it were the very air and she were drowning.

Anya listened to her guttural groans of pleasure, watched her belly shake, watched the ballocks between Ranil's legs lifting and the thick stem pumping milt into her mouth while Shanam gently held her balanced on his hand and carefully twisted the tiny bone projection between his forefinger and thumb. And the calmness of his gaze upon the girl - his control - made Anya's legs, already very weak, turn to jelly. She drew breath deeply - deliberately so - and he turned and saw her. But though Ranil, pumping still, was yet able to make some exclamation on the matter, Shanam showed no surprise. Getting up slowly, he left the other two lovers on the leaves, came over and stood before Anya with his cock still standing hard, she was aware, though now she would not look at it, despite the fact that she had up to this point looked upon it willingly, longingly in fact, from afar. His hand reached out and touched her breasts - he took each one and weighed its fullness, touched the nipple, then the hand moved down and the backs of his fingers rubbed up and down her belly. She felt the ring between her legs moving and her nubbin came erect; the weight of the small ring readjusting was a feeling quite delicious. His fingers rubbed until the soft hairs on her belly bristled. A sweet sickly tightness filled her throat; she could not swallow properly; her mouth was filling with oily spittle. There was a thumping in her heart and neck and head and she felt queasy. But these were feelings that she loved. She loved the awakening, the wanting, the sinking, suffocating need giving way so slowly to the inevitability of a pleasure that could drown.

He went into the small room behind her, gathered up an armful of leaves and, bringing them through, deposited them by the fire. In three such journeys he had brought the bed. 'Lakita ...' Anya whispered when he pointed to it, and this time she obeyed. She lay down upon it, stretched herself and smiled. She felt him snuggle up behind her, turn her on her belly, touch the freckles on her shoulders and tickle her skin. When his hand edged down, she moved her legs apart. The tips of his fingers smoothed into the crease of her buttocks. She could feel his thick stem resting silky warm against her leg, the soft naked skin of his bag moulding to the back of her thigh as the heavy round weights inside it rolled. She wanted to feel them between her legs; she wanted him inside her, from behind, and her sex distended by his smooth brown plum. She turned to kiss him, but he turned her back again and continued touching. He seemed fascinated by her skin - the freckles, her underarm curls and the soft fine hair at the base of her spine, the palest hair sweeping softly down into the deep dark crease between her buttocks. While Anya turned her head to the side, lay on her cheek and watched the lovers, the round tip of a finger repeatedly followed the smoothness into the groove; as she crooked her knee, the round tip found the small warm thin-skinned mouth; her body tensed but her knee moved higher up the bed. The fingertip smoothly tested; the sensitivity increased until she wanted to pull away. However, she did not pull away, but pushed her belly down into the leaves, distending it in the way she had seen the girl do, which caused her spine to arch down like the bent branch of a willow and the cheeks of her bottom to lift and separate and the small mouth to form a definite pouting cup. Then she closed her eyes, waiting for the fingertip to enter her against this tender plea. But her action, in emphasising her perfectly curving shapes, only caused the fingertip to lift and both hands, enticed by the vision of these separated globes, to try to fit precisely to each and to taste its smoothness while the thumbs rubbed the velvet inner faces of the cheeks and the dark eyes watched the small mouth gently pouting.