White Moon Black Sea (6 page)

He climbed into bed and made love to her like a man satisfying a long hunger. It was easy to control his more erotic and violent sexual desires, because he knew there would be time for those acts later. Revolting as he found the auctioning off of a woman for sex, he knew that he would outbid Rashid to win her. He had been corrupted by desire to take her as Rashid had taken her, even if only for a week.

Pierre raised his head from between her legs to kiss her passionately on the lips and then left her to pull on his
trousers. After wrapping her in a blanket, he walked her down the stairs.

Rashid was asleep in front of the embers. First Pierre built up the fire and then he poured them each a Calvados. They huddled before the newly blazing fire, and then he woke Rashid.

There was an odd moment when Rashid fixed his eyes on Humayun. Pierre was made aware that it was not just Rashid’s game, as he had thought. From the way they looked at each other he knew it was
their
game and realized that he was probably the first of many who would play a role in their erotic games. He poured a tumbler of Calvados for Rashid and handed it to him, saying, “Drink up your Calvados, Rashid, you have an auction to conduct.”

Rashid looked at his friend and then set his eyes back on his sexual slave. He smiled.

The scene of all those years ago began to fade for Humayun as she stood before the mirror winding a more simple version of her white turban around her head. But the memory lingered of how she had been made to stand on a table in front of the fire, naked except for a black leather dog collar and a long, metal-link leash. Rashid had paced around the table naked, whip in hand, carrying off the entire auction in a manner worthy of the old Jamaican slave sellers.

Humayun had been sold to Pierre, not inappropriately, for a first edition of the complete works of the Marquis de Sade, with the check for lunch at the Kavouria on New Year’s Day for all the foreign colony thrown in. The conditions of sale had been that after the luncheon, Pierre take his purchase on the night plane to Athens, and that they leave Greece within five days of the sale. The week up, she was to be escorted back to Istanbul to an address forwarded to Pierre in Paris.

Humayun adjusted her earrings and took a last long look at herself in the mirror. It was difficult for her to equate the woman she saw with the memory of the girl who had stood on a table and allowed herself to be auctioned off to a stranger. Only in very few circles was it known that she was Rashid Lala Mustapha’s sexual slave. Or that she was
the overseer of Oda-Lala’s, that house of erotica kept by Rashid and a few friends for their sexual pleasure, where they were safe to dabble in their fantasies on the wilder shores of ecstasy. To some she was known as an exotic lady of the night who sometimes accompanied Rashid. And to all she was known as a mysterious creature who wielded great power over men with her beauty, sensuality, and intelligence.

She touched the fine lines appearing at the side of her eyes. Not yet, no, not yet were they a threat to her. What happened to aging sexual slaves? Even those such as she, with power and servants, with money and jewels and houses, had to feel the force of this question. In these last few months meeting and falling in love with Moses had made her confront it.

As with so much in her life, Rashid had been instrumental in bringing about her fateful meeting with Moses. She had seen him several times before they were to meet.

It had all begun when she traveled in secret with Rashid to Oceanside, the sumptuous turn-of-the-century hotel on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Massachusetts. Rashid had taken it over for the wedding reception he was giving for Mirella Wingfield, his former mistress, and Adam Corey, his sometime friend and constant rival in love for Mirella. Rival claimant, too, for the attention of all who sought out the wealthy, the handsome, the intriguing among the world’s males.

Humayun had been placed in a large, secluded suite of rooms in the hotel, protected at all times from intrusion by two of Rashid’s Turkish bodyguards. She was there at his command, for his pleasure. She knew the form well. Discreet, invisible, silent, never to be detected by his high-society friends until Rashid desired it. And, clever lady that Humayun was, she knew exactly how to fulfill the role yet not become a mere prisoner in the hotel.

She sensed that Rashid, Adam, and Mirella were entering a new phase of their relationship, a
ménage à trois
, even though it had never been alluded to by Rashid. On several occasions she had been a party to the lovemaking of Mirella and Rashid. Instinctively she had understood Mirella
could never give up Rashid — no more than she could herself.

The first time she had seen Moses she had been playing ball on the deserted beach in front of the hotel with one of her maids. Dusk was gathering about them. The ball rolled into the waves and was about to be sucked out to sea in the undertow. One minute there was no one there, and she was about to lose the ball. The next, he scooped it up and handed it to her. Their eyes met for a second and their hands touched. A warmth and feeling of well-being coursed through her. There were no words. Then he was gone.

That night, she found exquisite ecstasy in Rashid’s arms. Yet the tall, handsome black man teased her reveries between the plunging orgasms Rashid drew from her. In the days that followed, she saw him through the windows of her rooms. It took her little time to find out that he was the man who ran Mirella Wingfield’s house. As a boy he had been a family retainer to her uncle. But that was all she did find out about him, except that he was indispensable to Rashid in helping with the wedding reception.

On the wedding night, there had been a ball. Rashid had arranged with Humayun for a selected few to enjoy a refined orgy in her rooms. She sought in vain the beautiful, silent black, the memory of whose half-naked form tormented her dreams. She must erase him from her mind.

From Oceanside Rashid took Humayun and the rest of his entourage to New York. She had been put up in a suite of rooms above his at the Carlyle. He had her squired around New York by an old friend. At night when he desired her, he took her. The last thing she expected to be told, a mere two weeks after she had dulled her fantasy of sex with Moses, was that she would be traveling back to Istanbul with Moses. Or that Rashid wanted her to seduce him. To make love to him and care for him. And perhaps show him Istanbul and Turkey for two weeks. Rashid tended to spike his thank-yous with such gifts. Moses had exercised his brand of magic at the Wingfield-Corey wedding. Humayun was to be the spell Rashid cast on him in return.

So they had met; so they had fallen in love. The sexual byways she beckoned the relatively inexperienced Moses into captivated them. They began to influence each other’s lives and thoughts.

His goodness, his kindness, the code he lived by and wanted her to live by nearly convinced her that she was, as he believed, a victim of circumstances and environment. He desperately wanted her to change her life, and for them to marry. Before the two weeks were up, Rashid noticed that Moses had been smitten badly. For perhaps the first time in their sexual games with people, Rashid and Humayun were aware that they had made a mistake in bursting in on Moses’ life. They cared for the man, and Rashid ordered, “Take as long as it takes, but let him down gently.” He was not to be hurt. Perhaps Rashid really didn’t want that to happen, but certainly Mirella and Adam Corey were devoted to Moses: They would not forgive the hurt.

So Rashid was distracted and failed to observe that Humayun was considering making her break for freedom. Tempted by real love, a relationship with real caring, she began to feel the allure of a home and a husband, even children.

Considering … but could it be more than that? Because Humayun had been playing her role as a sexual slave all of her adult life. People could think as they liked about sexual slavery. Her heart had its reasons for feeling as she did about it. These fifteen hours with Rashid had confirmed them. Being Rashid Lala Mustapha’s sexual slave was something always strangely gratifying to her from the first time she obeyed him, her first being auctioned to his friend Pierre, and ever since. The pleasures she derived from her role as sexual slave to Rashid had taken hold of her psyche.

This she had never questioned until Moses presence in her life had posed a question to it. Now, looking at herself in the mirror, at ease and flushed with happiness, she knew that Moses would have to face the truth about her and Rashid. She was his sexual slave, true, but together they were mischievous sexual playmates. But could she be sure
how that would strike an American black who was born free, and who believed every man should exercise his freedom whether he liked to or not?

Moses. He was waiting for her in Istanbul. Her heart warmed at the thought of Moses waiting for her. She had never known such a good man, such an honest man. But sexual slaves who love their masters share similar erotic appetites and have the courage to feast and satisfy them. Those sexual slaves find in their bondage a freedom that puts their spirits beyond the tut-tutting of fashionable opinion, and they do not marry and settle down to be a majordomo’s wife. Moses would have to be made to understand that his beliefs were a danger to the love they shared, that they were creating a conflict for Humayun hitherto unknown to her that she neither understood nor accepted. Something would have to give. But what?

Nothing for the moment. There was still love and passion for her in Rashid’s eyes and heart, and a day in the mountains of this miraculous island, she told herself as she swung away from the mirror and walked for the last time from Rashid’s house in Xania.

Humayun half expected to be relegated to another car and kept in waiting while Christos and Rashid enjoyed themselves. But no. She had been right about Rashid. He was not ready yet to give up their special intimacy and so he kept her by his side.

The three of them and two members of Christos’s household piled into a Range Rover and drove through the old port. At the baker’s, they loaded loaves of bread and pans of sticky cakes and pastries into the rich man’s jeep. At the butcher’s, they bought three freshly killed nanny goats and two dozen chickens. Then they went to the icehouse, where they got ice to keep the meat fresh. They had barely had enough room for themselves.

At last they were ready and sped out of Xania, heading for the mountains and some of the hill villages where Christos was being feted for his generosity: an oven for one village, a church for a neighboring one, and a school for the district. And where he had arranged for Rashid’s
helicopter to pick up Humayun and Rashid and whisk them away from the mountain and Crete. They were traveling in convoy: The old Buick and two of Rashid’s bodyguards loaded down with Humayun’s luggage followed, and behind that were a pair of Harley-Davidsons and two more of his men.

The Range Rover had been loaded with provisions, because Christos knew the hospitality he and his guests would be shown on arrival at any of the villages where he was to be honored would be overwhelmingly generous. And the villagers could ill afford it. They would cook every morsel of food, drink every drop of wine, and strip the village and every household bare from their genuine desire to make them welcome. Christos could not allow that. He knew this was the only way to prevent it.

The countryside looked glorious under a sun blazing as if for the gods. A buzz of excitement and well-being settled on the three of them sitting together in the back of the Range Rover, Humayun between the men. She had never seen Christos in such an amusing mood. Nor had he ever treated her, as he did now, without that fearsome undercurrent of hostility she sensed he had for her. Although she was still dressed all in white, she had put her jewelry in her handbag and the men teased her about trying to appear ordinary. Then Christos surprised them both when he asked her to put her diamonds back on and to stay by his side through the luncheon. Normally she would have been sent off with the women to some village house while the men dined alone without them. At first she didn’t understand this odd request, but then she realized that, of course, he wanted her by his side. His preference for boys, if guessed at all in the mountains by these villagers, would shock them. Humayun would serve him well for a few hours as the woman in his life.

His request relaxed the three even more into good humor. They left the main roads an hour out of Xania and bumped along on curving gravel tracks up one mountain and down another for the next hour and a half. They were now taking breathtaking hairpin turns on hard dirt tracks, with an occasional boulder pounded in to keep them from
sliding down the mountain when it rained. Those were eventually left behind and the Range Rover bounced in and out of holes, on earth tracks barely wide enough for its wheels. It was dangerous. Much shouting went on between the driver and one of Christos’s men who was walking in front of the Range Rover, from where he would throw a rock that had fallen onto their path over the side of the mountain, directing the driver how to maneuver to keep all four wheels on the narrow road. It all gave more of an edge of thrill to what the three of them were feeling for one another. It made Rashid more sexy. Humayun sensed this and felt lusty herself. Christos even touched her. It excited them all, this randiness that was taking over the fun and the fear.

Suddenly the jeep burst into a small village. Then they passed through two more, waving to the people but not stopping. The convoy pushed on to its destination. Hot dust from the dry roads got everywhere. Another hairpin curve and suddenly, from nowhere, appeared two huge Cretans blocking the road. They swaggered toward the jeep, slung their rifles off their shoulders, and fired them up into the air, shouting in broken English, “Welcome, Kirios Mavrodakis! Welcome!”

“That’s some welcome, Christos,” Rashid said as the driver slammed on the brakes and they all fell over one another.

The two young men were from the village they were bound for. They barely had room to edge themselves over to the car door where they shook hands with Christos and Rashid. Then they sat on the fenders of the Range Rover, hanging on with more bravado than sense. There were three miles more of hairpin bends and sharp curves around the mountain. At times the Range Rover had to stop and the men had to walk in front, supervising every inch forward because the narrow road had simply fallen away down the mountain. And then suddenly they were right in the middle of the village square.