A Regrettable Evening in the Maldives #2
Home . But I did not say that, for the only home I could claim at that time was the Marawati . I had not looked upon my mother’s face in years, not since the day my father died. How could I? When last we parted, I was
a beloved child. Now I was a thief and a murderer, and despite the money I sent home and the pleading letters she relayed
back, the prospect of facing her filled me with shame, no matter how much I ached to feel her arms around me once again.
Those were not dreams I’d share with a stranger, no matter how gilded his tongue.
“China,” I said softly, echoing the ridiculous promise Majed and I had made to each other. “I would go to China.”
Raksh’s mesmerizing gaze hadn’t left mine. “Why China?”
“I have been no farther east than Lanka.” Why had I confessed that? “But I have always wanted to,” I gushed, feeling unsteady
as I said it, as though the admission had been pulled from me with force.
He leaned closer. “You... radiate ambition, do you know that?” A strange hunger surged through his voice. “A veritable feast of yearning.”
Then—before I could scoff, before I could stop myself from stumbling deeper—Raksh touched my face.
Everything that was not him fell instantly away. The midnight beach, the cold stars, the laughter of my friends in the distance...
all gone in a moment. Raksh’s fingers were featherlight on my jaw, and yet I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think . His eyes were blazing, so bright it hurt to look upon them, but I couldn’t drop my gaze. A crimson line blossomed in their ebony depths, illuminating pupils of scorching fire.
“Tell me what you want, Amina al-Sirafi,” he purred. “Tell me it all.”
“I want to go everywhere. I want to be great.” Words poured from my lips, desires and confessions spilling so fast I nearly
choked. “I want to look upon my mother again and see pride in her eyes. I want to explore lands I’ve heard about only in tales
and listen to the stories of those who dwell in them. I want... I want so much .”
If I thought I’d spoken too freely before, it was nothing compared to what was happening now. The press of his hand and the
burn of his eyes pulled me into a dreamlike haze from which I could not escape. With each desire spoken aloud, I found it
harder to stop, until I was scarcely aware of what I was saying at all. At one point, I recall the surf tickling my feet;
we must have been sitting on the beach so long that the tide had come in. We were sitting there long enough for me to finish
the cask of wine anyway, for when I did, Raksh finally released me and the world cleared, just slightly.
“Do not fear.” He tapped my nose and picked up the cask. “I will get more of this. We’re just getting started and I find a
bit of liquor loosens the tongue.”
Indeed, when he returned, it was with two bottles for each of us and a slightly dazzled expression on his face.
“This is excellent ,” he gushed, taking a long drink. “What a marvelous concoction!”
Introducing Raksh to the mysterious Maldivian palm wine was, in retrospect, another mistake.
He drank with a gusto that exceeded mine, and if he did not literally bewitch me again, he hardly needed to—we were genuinely enjoying each other’s company now.
We drank and we laughed, we swam and we walked along the undulating ribbon of star-splashed beach and dancing surf, tripping and giggling as we held the other one up.
At some point we crashed into a grove of swaying palms, splaying onto soft beds of fallen leaves.
“You are fascinating ,” Raksh slurred as we lay with our heads next to each other. “Do you know how long I have been stuck here listening to the
stupid, boring dreams of fishermen and petty merchants?”
“Sounds dreadful,” I agreed fervently, having no idea what he was talking about.
“Worse than that, it is dull .” He rolled onto his elbows, face hovering over mine. “Save me, nakhudha, and I will make you a legend. People will sing
songs of you for centuries.”
“People singing songs of me will hardly pay my crew.”
“Then I will guide you to treasure. I will scrub the decks, rub your feet... anything .” His hot breath whispered down my neck. “Just take me off this island.”
The nearness of Raksh was overwhelming, my body aflame with need. It would be nothing to arch against him, to wrap my legs
around his hips and taste the salt drying at the base of his throat.
I played with the hairs at the back of his neck instead, resisting the urge to pull him on top of me. “Do you not have money?”
I asked. “Pay me and come as a passenger.”
“Regrettably I cannot.” Raksh nuzzled my jaw. “But I promise to make myself very, very useful.”
I was drunk and charmed enough to finally agree. Even if he wasn’t a particularly good sailor, I could always find room for
someone this captivating and stupidly attractive in the smuggling and swindling part of our operations.
“Fine,” I relented. “I will take you off this island.”
“Truly?” He pulled back, hope and relief warring in his expression. “You will contract with me?”
“No.” I chuckled. “What do you take me for? I am a pirate. I do not sign employment papers for my fellow criminals. We work together on our word and because I pay them well.”
My response seem to deflate him.
“That will not be enough.” Raksh moved over me again, pressing his hips against mine and stroking my cheek. “Are you sure
we cannot lay together? I would make such an experience very worth your time.”
My mind was swimming with palm wine, but of the veracity of his offer, I had little doubt. Raksh moved with liquid grace,
his long fingers trailing down my arms, my sides. They were hot through the thin material of my garments. The perfume of him,
musk and sweetness and earthy wool, filled my nostrils like a drug.
Then he kissed me.
Now, I have kissed many men. More men than I have married (though less in recent years due to the return to the path of righteousness
and the realization that very few are worth it). None of those men were like Raksh. There was nothing sweet or romantic about
his kiss. It was urgent in a way I did not understand until it was too late. His tongue surged into mine, one of his hands carding roughly through
my hair with his sharp nails. His teeth grazed my lower lip, and when I gasped, his weight shifted more heavily upon my body,
one thigh sliding between mine and his interest becoming very apparent.
I groaned, pressing harder against him. I would have stabbed another man for such forwardness, but oh ... I wanted this. I wanted him . I did not feel threatened. Did not feel forced. It was hot as hell, honestly, and I have rarely desired a man more than
I did at that moment. Enough that when his fingers pulled open the strings of my trousers, I contemplated letting him continue.
But the alcohol had made me both soft and stubborn. I had broken so many other vows, saddling the angels writing my account
with a long, sorry list. I would keep this one.
I removed his hand (most reluctantly for it was headed in promising directions) and pushed him away. Doing so felt like resurfacing from a dream, the kind that lingers, making one doubt what is real and what is not.
“I cannot do this,” I breathed.
Raksh moaned. “Why not? Is there another? Bring them along. I am not greedy.”
“No, there is not. I mean... there was, but he is gone now.”
His elegant face wrinkled in confusion. “Then what is the problem?”
Swiftly retying my trouser strings, I tried to sit up. Stars danced before my eyes. My head was beginning to pound as well,
promising retribution in the morning. “We are not married. And I-I cannot lay with a man who is not my husband.”
“Why not?” He sounded genuinely confused.
Why not? Where was this fellow from that he was not familiar with one of the basic rules of every faith I knew? “It is forbidden.”
I flushed. “I mean... many things are forbidden, I suppose.” Hypocrisy was another sin frowned upon, and yet here we were.
“But I do not—it is my rule,” I stammered. “I take but one husband at a time and he is the only man I allow in my bed.”
“What a strange custom.” Raksh frowned. “But you said your husband was gone. So why not have me in his place?”
I blinked. Surely I was not so drunk to have heard that correctly. “Are you proposing to me?”
“Is that what it is called?” he asked, looking intrigued. “Sure! I propose to you. With the marrying. Now we can lay together?”
“Yes. No. Well...” I was flustered. “It is more complicated than that. We would need a cleric to conduct a short ceremony
and draft our nikah, our marriage contract,” I explained when he appeared even more perplexed. “There are also other stipu...
stipula... laws. Things.”
His eyes went wide, crimson flickering in their depths again.
“It is a contract... a conjugal contract. I have not tried something like that in a very long time. It could be quite powerful.” Raksh sounded hungry, so hungry.
Slightly cautious, but in retrospect, not enough.
He drummed his fingers on his knee and then tossed back the rest of his palm wine. “Let us do it!”
I would like to say I hesitated. That I took a moment to think the situation through rather than letting my baser urges and
the alcohol running through my blood drive my decision. I can see you wincing already, probably muttering in your head about
the importance of a tradition so sacred as marriage in our faith.
I did not hesitate. I drank back the rest of my wine in turn and roared, “To marriage!”
The ready availability of clerics in most port towns willing to find a way to marry two drunken fools at midnight speaks to
the ready supply of lovelorn sailors eager to whet their urges while staying narrowly within the boundaries of religion. By
the time we stumbled through a few taverns in search of such a person, everything was beginning to take on a blurred happy
color, like fragments of stained glass. I remember signing something, saying something, Raksh and I grinning at each other
like idiots. He was so very eager; giddy and extremely, almost offensively erotic. I might have signed my name to anything
at that point, so focused I was on my desire to lick him.
But then the deed was done. One of them anyway. Raksh found a guesthouse, exchanging money and a whispered word with the proprietor.
I remember being confused, vaguely recalling the battered copper coin he had also given me as mahr during our brief ceremony
at the urging of the cleric. If Raksh had money, why had he not agreed to my earlier suggestion to book passage on the Marawati ? But it didn’t matter, because then we were going into a room, laughing and tripping over our clothes as we shucked them
off.
I pulled at the knot of his hair, and it fell to his knees in shining ebony waves, striping his body and mine. Ripping away his shawl, I discovered a plain leather cord around his neck. From it hung an uncommonly large pendant of rough coral.
“What is this?” I remember asking, running my fingers over the coarse blue surface.
Raksh grinned. “The heart of my enemy.” He pulled the pendant from my hands and tugged off his waist wrap in the same motion,
leaving his marvelous body bare. “ Now can we lay together?”
The coral pendant fled my mind at the sight of him. “Now we can lay together,” I breathed and promptly wound my fists in his
hair.
Now, they recommend that what is intimate between a wife and a husband should stay between them, a concession to modesty and
discretion. And though I may be lacking in those attributes, to salvage what little dignity I have, let us simply say the
marriage was well consummated. In every way. In ways indeed not even I—who had heard every sort of foul-mouthed boast from
sailors and pirates—had known was possible. Raksh had promised laying with him would be enjoyable and he had not lied.
Not about that anyway.
I slept through the adhan for fajr—though to be fair, I had fallen asleep only shortly before it, Raksh and I finally exhausted
by the comprehensive exploration of our new contract. By the time my throbbing head woke me up, the sun was fully risen, penetrating
the tattered curtain covering the guesthouse’s narrow window in dusty rays of light. I groaned into a lumpy cushion and pressed
my palms against my aching temples. God forgive me, what had possessed me to drink so much? I was supposed to be tempering
myself; I had promised Majed the last time he found me in a hungover haze that I was going to try and stay sober.
Searching for water, I rolled onto my back and struck another warm body.
“Sorry, Salih,” I croaked, rubbing away a crust of salt from my eyes. “I didn’t mean—”
My mouth snapped shut. The man lying naked beside me was not Salih.
Nor was it the raven-haired beauty with large black eyes and a full mouth I had met on the beach last night.
No, instead it was a creature who shared that man’s lean body and long, capable fingers.
But where Raksh’s skin had been a sun-scorched brown a few hues lighter than mine, this man—this beast —was the green-tinged blue of a murky tropical sky.
The lengthy hair I had admired last night now lay as tiger-black stripes
of flesh, wild patches of leopard spots falling amongst them as though two great cats had clashed together and been imprinted
on his limbs. His fingernails ended in ivory claws, and ruddy silver tusks protruded past wine-stained lips where his beard
had been.
And the pendant... God have mercy... it was a heart: pocked like coral, covered in barnacles, and still actively pulsing , a long length of gut piercing through one part to hang from Raksh’s neck.
“God save me,” I choked out.
At my cry, Raksh blinked awake and then squinted in pain as though equally hungover. The ebony eyes I had fallen into last
night were gone, replaced by pupil-less pools of scorching fire. He looked briefly confused by the shocked horror in my face.
Then he glanced down.
“ Oh .” Raksh winced at the sight of his body. “I had hoped you would not see this.”