Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

‘I’m telling you now.’

‘Adam. You don’t have to go down for the beers, you know. Or the potato chips. Or the peanuts.’

‘I know. I’m not going. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’ He led her slowly to the bed. They stood facing each other. Everything was all right again with the world. Sabir felt like a man on a plane watching a shed-load of passengers streaming expulsively out through the main exit after an inordinately long and claustrophobic delay on the tarmac. ‘I liked it when you put on that dress yesterday. And the make-up. And the high heels.’

‘Why? What’s so different about a dress, and make-up, and high heels?’ She was teasing him.

He laughed. ‘You know very well why. Because they’re feminine. Because they draw attention to parts of your body that particularly please me.’

‘Parts of my body? Like what?’

Sabir hesitated, gauging her mood. Then he turned her around, so that her back was to him. He liked the way she was letting him toy with her.

He drew in a quick breath, like a surgeon faced with a particularly delicate stitching job. ‘The nape of your neck, for instance.’ He cupped her neck, enjoying the heft of her hair on the back of his hands. ‘And your shoulders. And your upper arms.’ He touched each element in turn.

‘What other parts of my body please you?’ She had a smile in her voice.

‘Hmm. Let me think. Your elbows. Your forearms.’ He touched each named part, taking pleasure in the feel of her weight against him – keenly aware, too, of the bed just below them, but in no hurry to urge her there.

‘What else? What else makes a woman different from a man?’

Sabir gave it a moment or two’s thought. ‘A man has no hips to speak of.’ He ran his hands down Lamia’s flanks. ‘But you do. I like how your hips flare out from the narrowness of your waist. Like this.’ He touched the indentation on each side. ‘Like a violin. I like how a dress accentuates that.’ He reached around her and let his fingers travel lightly down her upper thighs, then up again in a more forceful sweep from the back of her knee to her buttocks. ‘This is an area I particularly value.’

‘Oh really?’ Lamia’s breath caught as she uttered the words.

He went down on one knee behind her. ‘And then your calves.’ He allowed his fingers to trace the outline of her leg. ‘And those shoes you wore. With the high heels. I like the way they show off your ankles.’

‘My ankles?’

‘Yes. These.’ He reached down and encircled each one in turn with his hands. ‘But there’s more.’

‘More?’

He turned her around so that her belly was parallel to his face. ‘This is your belly. When you wear a skirt, it shows the little bump you have down there – the woman’s bump, just above your pudenda. I like that. It’s suggestive.’

‘Bump? Pudenda? Adam, really. You sound like a biology professor.’ She hesitated, stopping well short of what she had meant to say – desperate not to change his mood. ‘Suggestive of what?’

‘Of other things.’ He smiled, and rested his head against her stomach. He could feel the warmth of her against his cheek. Catch the scent of her – a mixture of clean clothes, perfume, and her own special scent, which he had first recognized in the brief instant he had carried her in his arms while they were escaping from their motel in Carlisle.

Lamia’s fingers wandered idly through his hair. ‘You like women, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you are wary of them?’

He nodded.

‘Why?’

Sabir closed his eyes. He didn’t want to talk any more. Didn’t want to spoil the moment. But something forced him on. Some recognition that if he didn’t explain exactly how he felt, he would be cheating Lamia of something she had earned by right – his formal acknowledgment of a grace she had accorded him that no other woman had ever come close to providing. ‘Because of my mother. I watched her destroy herself, and take my father down with her. It hurt me every second of my life until she killed herself. Then it hurt more after that.’

‘Does it still hurt?’

‘Not when I’m holding you.’

‘Like now?’

‘Like now. I can’t think of anything but you.’

Lamia crossed her arms below her upper thighs and drew her dress slowly over her hips – over the swell of her breasts – around her shoulders. Then she uncrossed her arms as the dress rode over her head, freeing itself from the temporary prison of her hair. She let the dress float gently down onto the bed beside her.

Sabir stood up. They were still touching along the entire length of their bodies. He undid Lamia’s brassiere and let it fall onto her discarded dress.

She sat down on the bed. Then she allowed herself to fall backwards, like a rag doll. She looked up at him expectantly, laughter in her eyes.

He reached down and drew her panties over her hips – she had to wriggle a little to help him.

Then she was lying naked in front of him. Not covering herself. Confident about her beauty. Wanting him to admire her.

He consumed her with his gaze, and Lamia accepted it as nothing more than her due. Without taking his eyes off her, Sabir discarded his own clothes. Lamia’s eyes travelled quickly over his body as he undressed himself, and then up again to his face.

Sabir slid onto the bed alongside her.

They lay, facing each other, feeling the beat of the fan against their skin.

It was a long time indeed before Sabir bent forward to kiss her.

Oni de Bale slapped at the mosquito which was hovering just above his right eye. He flopped backwards against the tree and lathered some more ‘Scoot’ on himself. He wondered if the others were being eaten alive too?

They each had separate cars again now – Abi had taken advantage of Sabir and Lamia’s sex interlude that morning to send them all into Merida, to the nearest Avis drop-off point.

Now that was a strange thing. Never would he have dreamed of Lamia and Sabir getting it on together. Especially with Madame, his mother’s, virginity hangup. What was that junk from the Bible she always used to quote at them in an effort to get them – well, particularly Aldinach, let’s be honest – to behave themselves?

These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth… And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.

Of course in Aldinach’s case the target was both men and women – whichever was the opposite of whatever sex he had chosen to be that day. Convenient, that, when you came to think of it. It doubled the possible catchment area. Mind you, Aldinach wasn’t gay. Oni had to give the little nymphomaniac her due. She only worked on polar opposites. Never own sex. It was a sort of morality, when you came to think about it.

Anyway, much good Madame, his mother’s, virginity imprecations had done them. Rocha had fallen for her line, though, and look what had happened to him. But he was the only one, apart from Lamia – the rest of them rutted like rabbits whenever they could. And now here was Lamia obviously deciding that enough was enough, aged twenty-seven, and reeling old Sabir into her bed. Frankly, he couldn’t blame her. With a face like hers you needed all the luck you could get in the jiggy jiggy stakes.

Oni knew all about it. The size he was, most females ran a mile, scared that he would squash them. All right, he wasn’t a disgusting fat pig like Asson, whom he had once seen consuming four pitchers of Ben amp; Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream at a single sitting, but he was upwards of seven feet tall, and most women reached just about as far as his navel. As a result, Oni had taken to hiring professionals, who weren’t put off by the – what did Aldinach call it? – outsize aspects of his persona.