Richard Lord: Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 2

Her skirt lifted just a bit…

Then she commanded him. ‘Step away right now.’ She spoke with such strength in her voice. Domination. He instinctively followed as she instructed. He moved back to his corner. Ninth floor. She turned to face him, brushing her skirt back to its previous meticulous, flawless state. Her voice softened, but there was no mistaking the vigor still within. ‘Are you stupid?

There’s a camera right there, up above where you’re standing.’

So there was. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that; of course he knew. He just couldn’t resist. He couldn’t resist being told off, being called stupid, the sort of verbal abuse he could only find from her, or in Parliament.

‘For someone who makes such a big deal about discretion…’ she trailed off, as if uninterested in continuing in that thread. The politician looked up at the ceiling, a smooth surface refashioned as a mirror. He saw the top of her head, the push of her bounteous breasts. It was like topography to him. A silence held. Thirteenth floor. He didn’t want to succumb to apologizing. He knew he would be doing a lot of that later, in the room.

Seventeenth floor. When the elevator doors opened, he stepped out with confident strides left, towards his suite. He shuffled through his coat pockets to find the keycard. Room 1726, there. A cleaning lady, Malay again, another deferential Malay with incessant bowing, stepped away as he passed, muttering, ‘Good evening, Datuk Haji.’ The last honorific was particularly ironic. They called him a Haji as if he were truly the religious man he appeared, even as he used their facilities for illicit pleasures.

He reached his door and craned his neck to see the corridor as he grasped the handle and slid the keycard in. His whore had not followed him yet. She was professional like that. His room, when he entered, was spotless. The large bed had been done, probably less than ten minutes ago, and he stepped to the bathroom. Both the suite and bathroom doors were left slightly ajar, to invite his guest in to join him.

In the bathroom, he felt another sudden pang of worry: it was because he saw his reflection. But with the light off there, he first saw a different figure. He saw his father, the real Datuk Haji, a political heavyweight who was as much the Malay warrior before Independence as afterwards. He saw his father frown at him, liquid disapproval causing him a near panic attack.

When his clammy hands reached for the light switch and the room bathed him in light and warmth, the reflection melted into the somewhat more comforting sight of his own face.

He heard the door swing gently open as he washed his hands, staring at himself. He looked like a true Captain of Industry. At nearly fifty, he was still in perfect health, with a body that was more accurately described as

‘sturdy’. His features were solid, and in their own way, handsome. His beard was trimmed just enough, a calculated move to make him appear vaguely religious while unquestionably professional. He had a lot of hair still, in contrast to most of his party’s leaders.

He wiped his face with wet hands. He looked a lot like his father, except for missing the warrior’s icy eyes, the permanent disapproving frown. Again he dispelled the thought as he loosened his tie, hung his coat on the rack, and kicked his shoes off. He stepped towards the bed. Dahlia was already there, waiting for him.

The whore wore a grey skirt from some famous Italian brand that ended sharply at her knees, and her blouse was white and immaculate. She had glossy black high heels that highlighted her beautifully shaped feet, and black stockings like a fabric version of his yellow brick road. To top it off, she wore glasses that magnified the fortitude in her eyes. He sat down beside her.

She looked at him wordlessly, and rotated ever so slightly, one hand placed down between them and balancing her and she placed her right leg on his lap. Her foot fidgeted, and he removed her shoe. ‘No,’ she said, in English, always English, even though English was his much weaker language, ‘Put it back on, and do it again.’

There was a strict precision to this process, and she didn’t let him deviate from it in any way. He rubbed his thumb against her ankle as he slipped her black heel off. He must have done it correctly, as he was rewarded with her kissing down on his clothed shoulder, feeling her hot breath over his shirt.

She withdrew her right leg and proffered her left, one hand tracing over the politician’s back. Her fingernails pressed against the fabric of his shirt. She continued kissing. He continued removing her shoe.

Every act she chose to do was a carefully calculated step in her flawless seduction. Were the politician a more worldly man, he would have compared her grace to a geisha’s. He kissed her toe and received a sharp knock to the back of his neck from her wrist in return. He looked at her, bewildered. ‘Not yet,’ she said, glaring. The good whore giveth and the good whore taketh away: she slid both legs away from him, and no longer kissed his shoulder.

‘ Maaf ,’ he apologized quickly. In public he was a man of very few apologies. A scandal in Parliament two terms ago as a result of a remark deemed racist had effectively cost him a minister’s post. It wasn’t racist, it was a fact of life, he reasoned. A man must speak with conviction, and never back down. That last saying was his father’s… again. God, why did he have to come down from Heaven to advise me now? he thought, returning his attention to Dahlia.

She had taken to the far end of the bed, propping pillows to support her back. She spread her covered legs but pushed down on the middle edge of her skirt, limiting what he could see. ‘For a whore, you are really…’ But that was the best his English could say. His words faded away. She paid those words no mind.

Still pressing down the hem of her skirt as she spread, a twinkle in her eye, a rare approving one, invited him to come get her. ‘Unbutton my blouse,’

she commanded again. He positioned himself between her legs and leaned forward. It was timid, careful. He started with the top; she only ever let him start with the top. The politician’s fingers no longer had the dexterity of his sketching days, and they groped for the button. He released each button with the sort of precision he knew she wanted, and then with each, she sighed a little. These micro-moans were so soft it seemed as if it were only for her own ears. He was three buttons down when he felt Dahlia’s hands wrapping his neck. She felt his neck, and with thumbs she began to choke him.

He finished unbuttoning, having tugged out the tucked-in portion of her blouse, and now her blouse was no longer tight and precise, but dangling out, releasing those breasts. He thought in Malay, and then in English, that there was no truly accurate word for them in both languages. They were not just breasts, they were more than that. Bosom was too formal. Tits was the closest that he could think of, but that word was too dirty and American, and not a word he would ever think of using.

‘What are you thinking?’

He looked up at her, wrenched away from that distraction. ‘Nothing,’ he assured her.

‘You never think.’ It was the end of the conversation already. She had incredible power in her words; no party leader had that sort of authority. The Prime Minister, all the Prime Ministers in the past, none of them could match up to her sovereign vocal will. The word he thought of, for some reason, was supremasi . Supremacy?

Next she placed both feet on his chest, blocking him. He rubbed the back of her thighs with his hands, feeling light sweat on her skin. He leaned closer but she pushed him back, still. She made a minor striptease as she removed her stockings. Each move was elegant as she writhed to free herself. Her feet dropped, toes catching onto the band on his pants, and with adroitness he had never seen before, even from her, she was able to unzip his pants, her feet doing all the work for him. Her hands moved behind her and slipped under her blouse. She undid her bra, an elegant French piece with laces and frills she wouldn’t let him see or touch, and it slipped right off, falling forward.