Three Rivers (43 page)

“Brilliant, old girl, only we play for money, right?”

“Oh, surely not! You know what a rotten gambler I am. No money.”

“Oh, I had forgotten. Well then,
I
will play for money and what will
you
play for?”

“Well, what can I play for?” Isabel asked.

“I will play for fifty pence a point, and, let’s see … you play for … Ah, I know! If you lose, because it’s your wedding day, I will be generous. I will let you get off easily. But remember, in the future, if we gamble together and you can’t bear to play for money, you will have to pay some forfeit as the loser. Agreed?”

“Agreed, as long as it is not anything that is harmful or repugnant. Do
you
agree, Alexander?”

He laughed at her. “You do not know me very well, my dear. I told you that I love you, and so I would
never
ask you to do anything that is repulsive or repugnant. But, to
ease your mind and doubts, I agree. You will learn about me in time.”

Isabel felt uneasy.

Her mind slipped off, and she wondered if as a forfeit one day Alexander would ask her to do something sexual. Expose herself to him, perhaps?

He rose from the chaise, and she started to get up to go to the round table under the umbrella to play, but before she could, Alexander picked her up in his arms, took her to the pool side, and said, “You are a very naughty girl, Isabel. You are thinking dirty things about me, were you not?”

“Alexander, put me down!” she scolded. “Yes, I was thinking dirty things! I was only wondering!” She could not help but smile as he had caught her.

“Isabel, you do not believe me when I tell you that I love you and that we are going to be friends. You silly woman, you have two men in love with you, and what happens is all up to you. I will tell you only once more that I will never press you. Now, for thinking the wrong things —” and he dropped her in the pool and walked away, calling to a servant to bring the cards.

How extraordinary, Isabel thought, and an old friend of hers came to mind. He used to say that a man is always in love “when the woman is on top of the relationship.”

By the time Isabel had climbed out of the pool, and had returned from the bath house, where she’d changed her wet clothes, Alexander was waiting for her at the table. The cards were already dealt out when she sat down and said that she was going to beat him into a pulp.

By the time the gin rummy players broke for lunch she was far behind in the game. He teased her continually about the delicious forfeit he was thinking up for her.

Gamal came to announce lunch at the table set on the other side of the pool. Alexander put his arm around Isabel as they walked along and asked her if she was having a happy day. She told Alexander that she was. Very.

The luncheon was a delight. Alexander was at his most amusing, with many anecdotes about the Arab world and his experiences in it. He was a true Arabist, an Englishman who loved the Arab world and knew how to deal with it and enjoy it.

He laughed and told Isabel that she now had the best of both worlds. He told her how he was sexually oriented as
an Englishman, but orientalized in sexuality like an Arab. They spoke about sex in the East. He was sure that she was learning quickly that the most important thing about sex that was never learned in the West was how amusing, entertaining, and pleasurable it was.

In the West we agonize too much and do not enjoy sex enough. Did she not agree? Yes, Isabel did.

The food they ate while talking about all this was sublime. First, they had heaped plates of ice-cold black Beluga caviar with lemon squeezed over it. Paper-thin brown bread that had been toasted to a crisp and spread with sweet butter. None of the other trimmings usually fussed about with the best Beluga. They used fine antique wooden Russian spoons, made for eating caviar. There was ice-cold Roderer Cristal — the champagne in which Alexander always indulged himself, pouring only a tiny amount for Isabel. Enough for his utterly charming and sensitive toast to her on her wedding day. He told her that she could have as much caviar as she wanted but no more alcohol and no dope before the wedding. He was to deliver her to Alexis calm, collected, sober and relaxed. Alexis wanted her to enjoy every minute of her wedding day not under alcohol or drugs but under the sheer excitement of each other.

After the caviar there was a cold lobster bisque which was absolutely delicious, and after that, cracked Alaskan crab, ice-cold and served with perfect mayonnaise. There were cold, fat, white asparagus with lemon squeezed over them and then a salad of Belgian endive. For dessert there were fresh, peeled figs covered with fresh cream, and afterwards, hot, sweet coffee.

Alexander looked at his watch and asked Isabel to stroll with him through the gardens to the house. It was time for him to deliver her to the hammam, and her attendants, Doreya, Maryka and Juju, who would bathe her. A man would be there to do her hair. There was to be a special treat: a divine masseur.

Alexander told Isabel she must give her body to this man. He was Alexander’s own masseur, and he was especially good for ladies about to be married. “If you have any nerves or knots, Isabel, he will iron them out.”

She said that she had no nerves, that she was feeling fine. He stopped her in the path, where they were surrounded by an abundance of huge red hibiscus, all in
bloom on their great bushes. He held her very tight to him, his palm spread against the center of her back, and moved it around slowly. Then he moved it up over her shoulder blades to the back of her neck and then made his way down to her waist, to the very crack of her ass.

“No, my dear,” he said as he felt her tremble. “You only think you are calm and completely relaxed. I can feel that you have a slight anxiety, are a wee bit tense. You can tell when a person is insecure or frightened — for that matter you can tell when a person is feeling strong and powerful — simply by the way that they move. The very being, the soul of oneself, is hidden but expressed through the body in the most far-reaching ways. The body speaks, Isabel, although you do not know it.”

Alexander felt her tense up ever so slightly, and he said, “You see, do not be ridiculous,” and gave her a gentle slap on her ass. “Do not be foolish. I want to deliver you to Alexis completely relaxed, and if you are tense, you are going to be sexually tense.”

“Alexander, if I was not nervous before, you certainly are making me nervous now!” Isabel muttered.

He laughed at her and said, “Stop acting so Western. For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together. Everyone there is ready and waiting to prepare you for your husband. They are Eastern ladies, you know, who will practically make you a virgin for your wedding night.”

“Well, that will take some doing, Alexander.” She laughed.

“Well, it may be not as difficult as you think. All I say is that I would love to be there to watch. I understand that you have been sent an amazing old woman who knows about such things. She is supposed to have the most incredibly tiny, soft hands, and is instructed to do something divine to you for tonight. I do not want to give anything away, but only to prepare you for what is to come. No anxieties and nerves are necessary; you are to enjoy every minute of it. There is not one in a million women who is lucky enough to be prepared for a wedding as you will be today.”

Isabel knew that he was only half teasing her and was grateful that he was happy enough about it all. He looked at his watch again and said, “There are only two and a half hours before you are to be bathed, dressed, and ready to step into that car. Since you do not have to do a
single thing except lie back and enjoy it, I would say you are going to have a very nice afternoon!”

He then changed the subject as they walked through the courtyards towards the hammam. When he pushed the silver doors open, the soft pink marble and diaphanous white silk curtains came alive.

Juju came forward, all smiles. She had not yet seen Isabel that day. From the small basket that she carried, she threw fresh jasmine blossoms. In Arabic and French she welcomed the bride. Isabel and Alexander laughed as they picked jasmine blossoms from their hair.

Juju led them to one of the marble chaises near the huge sunken bath. Maryka brought them tall crystal goblets of lemonade with crushed mint. Alexander sat sipping the refreshing drink, saying to Isabel that he would stay only a few minutes.

It was all so civilized, Isabel marveled. That was one of the things that was so fantastic, how civilized everyone around her seemed to be. The hysteria and twisted emotions that she had learned to accept and live with were missing. Was the world sweeter and more loving, or was it just her?

She saw at the other side of the sunken bath a high marble table and standing next to it, Sahid, the only other man in the hammam. Alexander spoke to him in Arabic, then introduced him to Isabel. She actually had met him the night before. He was one of the men that had been sent to her by Alexis. Neither one of them acknowledged that they had ever seen the other before.

After Alexander had dismissed Sahid, who said that he would wait for her at the high table, Isabel asked Alexander what he had told him.

“I told him that I wanted you absolutely relaxed. That he was to work on you until he was sure there was not a drop of tension left in you, or I would cut his balls off. They would be enormous, don’t you think?”

She gave him a friendly slap and said that she would not know. To herself she thought,
Alexander, I wonder if you know that they
are
enormous, and big and black, and that his cock is the longest, broadest and with the most amazing knob on it I have ever seen
.

When Sahid had entered her room the night before, with four other men, and they assembled themselves naked before her, only saying that they had been sent by
Sir Alexis, it was Sahid who understood what was called for and how to behave. It did not, however, deter him from going erect to such proportions that she thought about him long after the men had left.

It was Maryka who went over to Alexander and very sweetly said, “Mr. Alexander, we know you. There is nothing for you to watch here today.” Giggling, she pulled him up and led him from the hammam.

He was no sooner out the door than the ladies took over. There was much to do. They removed Isabel’s galabia and led her to Sahid, who helped her up onto the table. Someone tied her hair up in a rose-colored chiffon scarf. He started working on her body. She was lying on her stomach as he started on the back of her ears, then moved his magnificent hands to the two low lobes at the bottom of her head and the top of her neck.

Although she had been sure that she was relaxed, Sahid was working anxieties out of her that she had not even known were there. He worked under her armpits and the inside of her breasts, then both sides of her body to her waist and the center of her back. He was, as Alexander had said, remarkable.

He rubbed scented oils into the mound of her ass. He worked first one cheek and then the other. He moved the muscles around in a circular motion, and then he spread the cheeks apart and worked around her anus, rubbing the oils in.

Isabel was as relaxed and as high as if she had smoked four joints of the best hash. She felt his finger entering and massaging the very inside of her once-tight anus. She could only moan softly from the pleasure of it and the release of yet another tension she had not known she had had. She was not sure, but she thought that she felt herself come. Sahid moved to the top of her thighs, the back of her knees and then down to her toes.

When he was ready, he never even asked her to turn over but lifted her up as if she were a matchstick to place her on her back. She opened her eyes to see this huge, strong, black man standing over her and closed them again as she felt his hands working the under part of her chin, and her neck.

When he came to Isabel’s breasts, he had a way with his fingers that, of course, aroused her. Somehow he made her nipples longer, much more protruding than they had
ever been. When he was done working on one breast, he summoned Maryka and Juju, who had been standing at either side of the table all through the massage. Maryka bent her head down and sucked in a certain way on the nipple, stretching it a little bit longer each time. When Sahid was ready, he called Juju, and together the two women played with Isabel’s breasts.

Sahid moved down to Isabel’s stomach, to knead it, while she lay there completely relaxed. The three people worked away on her. She was now having continual small orgasms and just lay there and let herself come.

Sahid worked away on the inside of her thighs and down her legs, between her toes. He spoke to the girls, who left off sucking at his instruction. Going to her breasts, he put the flats of his hands over each of her nipples and stayed that way for nearly a minute. He was now able to lengthen the nipples and took some salve and rubbed it into them and over the dark area around them.

Isabel’s body glistened from the oils and herbs that he had rubbed into her. She smelled wonderful. He walked behind her head and, taking her chin in his hands, he moved her head round and round, manipulating her neck until she felt still more tension leave her body. He moved his hands from her neck, down over her shoulders and then slowly over her arms, then stood away from the table and said, “Madam, you should sleep now for a few minutes, I think.”

Isabel thanked him and he left. She lay there dozing until some time later when she heard whispers. She opened her eyes and saw Juju and Maryka with a very tiny old woman standing over her. She felt the two girls spread her legs apart. She was so relaxed that for a minute she almost felt as if she had been drugged. Maybe she had been, by something in the ointments that had been rubbed into her body? No, she decided. She was simply drugged by the lack of tension within her.

Doreya went to her and touched her cheek. She told Isabel that the woman was there to wash her and prepare her for her wedding night. Juju and Maryka raised Isabel’s legs, holding them comfortably high and away from her. Doreya put cushions underneath her and each of the girls, with their free hands, held Isabel’s cunt lips wide open.