Girl Trade - full length erotic adventure novel (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels) (6 page)

The sheikh spoke for several minutes to the beachcomber. The older man then scurried rodent-like among the Africans, fluttering his hands like the wings of a bird as he urged them down the beach to the boats. The woman who had given me the sarong lifted her little boy into her arms and, as she hurried behind the others, the child raised his small hand to wave.

Just the sheikh and I were left in the flickering pool of light made by the oil lamps ranged along the entrance to the shed. As he approached, I squeezed my fists tightly together, took a deep breath to slow my pulse and turned to face him. I drew my hair from my eyes, batted my eye-lashes and smiled.

‘I swam here from La Gomera,’ I said. I spoke slowly and pointed. ‘La Gomera,’ I said again, trying emphasise that I belonged somewhere.

He didn’t appear to understand what I had said and said something back to me in the short, hard syllables of what I thought must be Arabic. He stood feet planted a foot apart, hands on hips in a faintly feminine way. The puzzled look he had worn earlier had gone from his features and he studied me as you might a photograph of someone met on holiday whose name you can no longer recall, or a book jacket that doesn’t quite work. You know the design’s wrong, and you know the book’s not going to sell, but you don’t know why.

He moved his head fractionally, taking in the shape of my nose, my lips, my well-defined shoulders. I was tanned, slender, bright-eyed. I was more at ease dressed in the sarong, and the butterflies in my tummy I tried to ignore. I held my spine straight, shoulders back. I was the same height as the man and looked into his eyes. I spoke slowly.

‘Please help me.
Por favor. S’il vous plaît
.’

His eyes grew more intense. He stared at me, at my lips, as if trying to fathom these strange words.

‘
S’il vous plaît
,’ I tried again. ‘I just want to go home.’

It was hopeless. He had no idea what I was saying. And I had no idea what the beachcomber had told him, what version of the truth he had spun for the sheikh.

Now the man in white did something strange and touching. He reached forward and stroked my cheekbone. He ran the tips of his fingers over my full lips, pulling softly at my bottom lip and allowing it to spring back. He stroked my hair, then the soft pad of his finger traced the circumference of my ear. He gently squeezed my ear lobe. That same finger ran across the arc of my eyebrow and back again over my cheek.

He said something and smiled. I smiled back and remembered for some reason that man I met once at a party who had slowly unzipped the back of my dress. He had paused, waiting for me to say something, and what I said was “no” with a giggle that defined me as a girl not a woman.

That day on that unknown island I had grown up. I was a woman with one weapon.

‘Yes,’ I said.

He smiled again.

The moment passed. He snapped his fingers and, with a movement of his head, commanded me to follow. We made our way across the hard sand and watched the people climbing into the boats. The Zodiacs were built for eight, ten at a pinch, and 27 people squeezed into those patched vessels with their baskets and bags, the pregnant women, the man with the suit and tie, the man with his teenage son, the woman with nothing who had given me the sarong.

As the boats got heavier the Arabs, gripping the handles, moved forward to allow the sea to take the weight. The man in the black turban glanced at me with what I thought was a look of complicity as he lifted the two cords containing the keys over his head. He turned over the first motor. It fired immediately, and he showed the men on board how to lower the propeller and work the accelerator.

He moved to the other boat, inserted the key and connected the link on the flexible cord to the hasp on the side of the motor. He paused, to say a prayer, I assumed, and the engine he had been working on earlier in the day fired briefly, spluttered, then stopped. The people grew tense as he turned it over again. It didn’t sound as if the motor was going to catch, but then it started to run smoothly and the people on the second boat let out a sigh of relief. There was no common language among those people and again, like the masons on Babel, using gestures and signs he explained how to work the craft, the men on board watching with concentrated expressions.

A half moon had appeared over the horizon and its silvery light made a path on the sea. The Arabs eased the Zodiacs further from shore, the man designated as helmsman on each boat lowered the propellers, and the people looked back as they set off across the black waves to Europe.

We stood there, six men in turbans and me in my St Christopher necklace and blue sarong. No one spoke. We watched as the rubber boats got smaller, the sound of the motors faded and the two small vessels vanished into the night.

The calm that descended was total. The sheikh finally spoke and, with a slight wave of his fingers, the other men made their way back up the beach to the fishing shed where the last of the food remained in the iron pots.

He turned to me, his dark eyes flashing, difficult to read. He looked as if he was coming to a decision and it seemed at that moment as if my very life depended on that decision. The sheikh would have seen the ten red welts on my backside and must have known who placed them there. The beachcomber would have told him that he found me washed up on the shore like a conch shell that belonged to whoever found it first; although, I was certain if that were the case among these men in turbans, I now belonged to the sheikh. He looked into my eyes as if he were trying to look inside me, at my soul.

When he smiled, I followed automatically as he made his way around the ribbon of sand, back the way I had come from the lighthouse. We wove a path through the dry sandbanks. He paused a couple of times, but continued until he found what he was looking for. He stepped down into the deep hollow of a dune. He stretched out his arm and I climbed down to join him.

The sheikh held my shoulders. He stared once more into my eyes, a look that was long and intense, and, whatever it was he was looking for, if my eyes were the mirrors of my soul, I prayed that in me he saw no ill will, that I was worth the risk I might represent from having seen his smuggling operation first hand.

There were no words I could say. No words he would understand. Like the sheikh, I remained quiet and studied him as he studied me. His eyes were black, shiny as opals, the moon reflected on the surface in two semi-circles, the stars above casting a ghostly glow over the landscape. He drew the fold of material from where it was tucked in the sarong and the garment fell to our feet. He had already seen me naked, everyone on the beach that night had seen me naked, but still there was something sensual, even poignant in the way that he did this. My breath caught in my throat. My heart beat faster.

Like a sculptor putting the final touch of polish on a marble figure, he stroked the side of my neck, my arms, my hips. He ran the tips of his fingers in the fine grooves defining my ribs before tracing a circle under my breasts. My nipples sprang out, hard and responsive, demanding attention. I wanted him to take me in his arms and bite those two flaming buds until they hurt.

But he didn’t. Everything he did he did with great tenderness. Unlike the beachcomber who must have thought it terribly amusing to piss over me, and the other man who could think of nothing but thrashing me with a cane then taking me violently over the side of the dinghy, the man in white behaved as if he had come across a delicacy to enjoy and savour, something rare and precious; a unicorn, I thought, a fairy queen, Wendy for Peter Pan in this timeless NeverLand.

He moved me to one side of the dune, and stretched the sarong over the sand. I watched as he unwound his turban and was surprised how long it was, how intricately coiled. He folded the material and placed it at one end of the sarong. He removed his shirt, then his leggings, which he placed on top of the turban, making a pillow. As he turned to me, the pendant around his neck caught my attention. I studied the gold spider on its golden web and in his expression was the desire for me to understand its significance.

Just as he had read the contours of my body, I did the same, not because he demanded that I do so, but because I wanted to. I ran my palms over his unblemished skin. He was beautiful like a carving with a broad chest, narrow hips, a small round bottom and a perfectly straight penis that bobbed between us. I imagined the sheikh was used to being admired as well as being obeyed, that unlike his companions, he would never have to take a woman against her will.

I held his penis in my hand, drawing the loose flesh gently up and down, up and down. As I looked back into his eyes I could feel rather than hear his sharp intake of breath. The pale light sketched shadows over his prominent cheek bones, his strong, faintly hooked nose, his sensuous lips that I kissed and, as I did so, he seemed startled as if the kiss burned like fire, as if kissing was a mystery to him. He moved back momentarily, then pressed forward, his kiss raw and unformed, a boy’s first kiss. I didn’t pull away. I slid my palm between our lips, then cupped his cheeks, holding his head still. Now I kissed him, slowly, patiently, sucking his bottom lip, running my tongue over his teeth, pressing into his cheek.

‘Slowly. Softly,’ I whispered.

Did he understand?

Not my words. Our bodies were finding a common language. As I kissed the sheikh he kissed me back, finding new positions, new rhythms, new pleasures. The kiss is the greatest of gifts, uniquely human. A kiss before midnight. A kiss before dying. The Judas kiss. The kiss of the devil. A big wet smacker beneath the mistletoe. More can be said with a kiss than a book full of words. We kiss to say I love you. We kiss the rings of the self-important. The feet of conquerors. The rich dark earth when we reach the promised land. We kiss babies’ cheeks to soak up their innocence. We kiss the foreheads of loved ones as they begin a journey. We kiss beautiful strangers in far away places because on hot July nights with the music of the sea and the stars above your head your lips are incomplete until they are joined in a kiss.

As we kissed, his penis swelled against my tummy, urgent, throbbing, a little animal with a will of its own. Breathless, our lips parted. I ran my tongue over his chin, down his chest and, dropping to my knees, I kissed the head of his penis. I slid the creature into my mouth. He sighed. He pushed into me, deep and hard, much too fast, and again I stopped. I pulled at his legs and he lay back on the sarong like a reclining god in an Oriental temple.

He propped up his head with his hands and watched as I knelt between his legs, made myself comfortable, and sucked the fine soft head of his penis. I ran my tongue down the shaft and up again, wetting that smooth column. I sucked the head and rimmed the groove, teasing all the nerve endings. I wetted the fragile parchment of his testicles and took his balls one at a time in my mouth, sucking away as if those buried Easter eggs were the home-made toffee one of the girls from Cornwall used to bring back to school in a big yellow tin after the holidays.

Every boy I had ever been out with had managed to get his cock down my throat, but I had always considered it one-sided, a mixed sense of joy and conquest for the boy and a bit boring and jaw-aching for me. Never before had I appreciated the sheer delight of having a man’s cock massaging my mouth, the inside of my cheeks, my jostling tonsils, this love game, this oral exchange, the male phallus not invading but completing me, filling my throat like the key piece in a Chinese puzzle. His pulsing cock was vibrating over the membranes and tissues of my throat, touching my taste buds with its sultry perfume, the slap and slurp of flesh against flesh like an echo of the tide drifting back into the bay. We were protected in the oval-shaped dune like seeds in a cocoon, the moon on its journey, the sheikh’s bottom rising from the ground as he pushed and pierced deeper into the heart of my being. Two men had fucked me that day, but this was different. The sheikh wanted me, but I wanted him, too, with a feeling of want I’d never had before.

As I felt him tense in pre-climax, I let his cock slip from its hiding place and stitched a row of kisses over his belly, his chest, his lips. I straddled his neck, then lowered my drenched pussy over his mouth. He kissed and sucked, he nudged my clitoris and wormed his tongue deep, deep into the silky cavern of my pulsating vagina. Girlie liquids seeped from me, a slow continual stream, warm and piquant, rich and spicy, the scent of sex, the fragrance of some wondrous fruit being milked. And the thing about being a girl is that the juice just keeps coming, oozing down the walls of my pussy, over the spread pink labia like honey from a comb, anointing the sheikh as the sweet stuff spread in a fine coating over his face.

I felt contractions. My heart was pounding. My breath was trapped in my throat. I rolled to one side and slid across the sheikh’s body to take his penis back into my mouth, completing the circle, his tongue pushing back into my vagina, my tongue wrapped about his silken shaft. We rocked to and fro like two children on a seesaw in the park, up and down, deeper and deeper while the stars glimmered and the moon climbed higher into the heavens. Sex al fresco. There’s nothing like it.

Our bodies were slippery with perspiration. My pussy continued to leak sweet nectar into his mouth. I could have remained in that position for the rest of the night, the rest of my life, but the tempo changed, his body grew tense and my mouth filled with his sperm, a long pumping gush of creamy liquid that tasted like fresh yoghurt, like ripe mango, like coconut milk, an exotic salad of unknown fruits that I gobbled down, slurping and swallowing, greedy for more. He kept pushing into me, I kept drawing at his cock and, as the last drips drained into my mouth, I went rigid, released his cock and gasped for air as his meaty tongue ignited an orgasm that made the sand move beneath the blue sarong. I cried out as if in pain but the pain was an intense, all-consuming pleasure.

My body was trembling as if in fever. I rolled to one side, arms wrapped around the sheikh’s legs, our bodies dripping, throbbing, electric. I was dizzy. My head was spinning. Something had happened to me since I crossed the point of no return on that swim from La Gomera, some truth had turned to a lie, some unbreakable link had broken, some barrier had been torn down. Freed like a prisoner from all restraints, like the boys in
Lord of the Flies
, I had instantly gone native.