Irene flings herself into his arms, gasping, sobbing.
He puts her aside. "You do not need to play the damsel in distress with me. You are safe. That is all."
The room has peeling paint, a cracked tiled floor, rattan rugs. There is a smell of animals. But it is quiet and cosy here, and the citrus oils burning in the lamps keep the worst of the moths out of their faces.
There is a bed. Just one bed, a metal frame and hand stuffed mattress – hay perhaps or more likely, horse and goat hair – and he does not feel chivalrous enough to even offer to sleep on the floor, so they will be sharing it.
"My sister," he told the man who owns this house. Their matching dark hair and pale skin were apparently convincing enough, or else the man cares little for propriety among Westerners.
Two beds would have been better.
But beggars, and fugitives, cannot be choosers, or at least, not until they reach some less remote part of this land of remoteness.
"We should rest," he says shortly. "There is a voyage tomorrow and we will need to be alert."
"All right. Which side do you want, left or right? Or on top? I bet it's on top." Her smile to signify enticing wickedness.
He ignores her and takes off his jacket. His shoes.
She says, "Don't you want to undress me?"
"No." He saved her, rescued her, is about to co-operate in hiding her. He has done enough.
She pouts.
"You are more than capable, I assume, of removing your own clothes. It would appear to be a job requirement."
She laughs.
After a moment he sighs and smiles too. "We need to rest," he says. "But if you are going to keep insisting on this meaningless attempt at flirtation, that will delay sleep."
"I'm not flirting. I'm seducing." She unwraps herself from the modest black robes in which she has travelled. Beneath them she wears pale blue, a salwar kameez, edged with gold.
"Please, don't explain the difference. I don't care." He turns away as she begins to unbutton her collar.
"Flirting is done with no intentions. Seduction, of course, has an end goal." She has her hand on his arm. Her eyes are bright.
He says, "I'm not hungry." His standard reply.
She smiles wolfishly. "Even better."
"No, it isn't."
She eyes him. "I think... I think you're always hungry. Like a monk who lives from his begging bowl, walking from town to town asking for scraps, you move between cases, trying to feed your mind but you are always, underneath it all, starving, desperate, ravenous."
He stares at her.
She steps close to him, her fingers on his left bicep, her eyes huge. "Your hunger is always with you," she whispers. "It gnaws at you like the rat inside the toga of the Roman boy. You cannot reveal it because it is your strength as well as your weakness. The rat is insatiable and you cannot allow the rat to eat, but eat it does. It must be fed or it will eat you. The rat is your hunger for knowledge, it eats at you and you hate it for never letting you stop, but still you love it because it makes you who you are."
She pulls aside the left lapel of his jacket and places her hand flat on his ribs. "The hunger is here, pulling at you and you can never satisfy it, only quiet it for a while."
She slips his jacket off his shoulders and lets it drop to the floor. Her hands are now matched on his arms. Her grip is firm. "You cannot escape the pain, you can only ignore it, and work."
She brings her body against his. He smells perfume, incredible after all this journey. Her breasts press against him. "I can help you ignore it," she says. "I know you seek ways to forget. -Your eyes tell me," she says when he looks sharply at this. "You always know when someone has sought oblivion, it stays in their eyes forever, that view of the black hole. But I can be a different sort of oblivion. If you'll let me."
She presses her fingers onto his shoulder blades and breathes onto his neck. Deliberate warmth, deliberate enticement. Her hair smells of woodsmoke, of desert nights.
He considers it.
She is dangerous. There is not even any hint that she will give up blackmail. It is her default mode. And if they do this thing, then forever she will know something of him that he prefers to keep private.
"I can be discreet," she says, apparently reading his thoughts. "You know I can."
"It is not about your discretion. It is about your ..." He cannot think of the word, with her standing so close to him. "Knowing," he says.
He feels her interest pick up as she wriggles against him, her hips pressing into his. She thinks he has just revealed something. He has not. He meant knowledge in the sense of experience, of him. He does not want to share himself with her. He does not want to know.
The trouble with that statement is that he does want to know. This is an opportunity to fill gaps in his experience - gaps he has been content to maintain, but which would be better filled. Some things he can never know - what is it like to have a baby, what is it like to have lived a thousand years ago - but this one can be ticked off the list with relative ease. It could have been done at any time, but lacking inclination, he has never got round to it.
It helps that she is intelligent, and moderately attractive. She is potent, this close, purposefully sweet and dark and alluring, and he can in fact imagine removing her clothes and his, and carrying her to the bed and –
What? He cannot picture any configuration of sexual activity which does not end with her laughing, mocking, triumphant. However she presents herself as filled with gratitude and longing, any appearance of mere passivity is only an act.
Then it strikes him. Of course. He need share nothing. He can simply do as she does, and act. And if one's sexual reputation is to be whispered about on the network of those who practise what she does, then what should the whispers say? Power, strength, and of course, fabulous technique. Although if it is true that her preference is not for men anyway, success in that department hardly matters. She proposes pleasure for him, a Thank you, and he can take it any way he chooses. Although... perhaps what he chooses, is to surprise her.
He bends his head to her hair, breathes in. His hands move onto her back, slide down her spine to her waist. She has a narrow waist, generous hips, the curves now under layers of rough blue silk, the fabric rustling and shifting under his fingers.
She sighs appreciatively. "Now that's more like it. So, how do you want me? It's any way you want, you know. I am ... open... to anything."
"Bondage does not interest me," he says. And bondage does not require a woman. There is only one thing, really, which specifically requires a woman.
"I don't have to tie you up. You could tie me up. Control. I think you'd enjoy that." Teasingly.
"A game of control is just a game, it is not real control."
"That's the point. It's a fantasy." She speaks against his neck, her lips brushing the skin beneath his ear.
"It is not my fantasy." He cannot see her face. She is a warm, soft body and in a shape he has never tried. Decision made.
"What is your fantasy?"
He looks at her. "I do not wish to become one of those people of whom you claim, I know what he likes."
"But there is a fantasy. Let me guess-"
"No."
His hand on her arm stops her speech.
His private wishes are just that. They are not for her. Oddly she seems not to have guessed, or perhaps the interests of her partners are not considered relevant. Punishment after all, does not aim to please. Or does it? A conundrum for another night, another partner.
"I can be whatever you want," she purrs.
He has to stop himself laughing. She really can't. "Be what you are," he says. "There is no need for pretense."
"But to act our our fantasies -"
"Not everything needs to be a fantasy," he says. "Some things can simply exist." His act, beginning.
He puts one finger under her chin, tilts her face up to his. "Some things," he says, "some things can simply be real."
And then he kisses her.
Her mouth under his is soft, surprised, permissive. He takes the lead and wraps his arms firmly around her, projecting strength and masculinity. Her kiss is little different to anyone else's, except for the lipstick. Why does lipstick need a fragrance? Surely the manufacturers would be better to focus on the taste (chemical, fatty, floral. Needs work.)
Her body is different, but this is the point. He wonders if there will be any genuine surprises. He suspects not.
He is wrong.
It is hard to catalogue, because he has to concentrate, to put himself into the moment, in order to maintain the appearance of interest. Small points of difference will need to be recalled later, separately. A major difference is how soft she feels under his hands. So much yielding flesh. Many curves, many places to lift and part, many points of enticement and readiness. On a purely physical level, a woman's body is evolved to receive sex as the male is evolved to give it. The species.
He can see the practical appeal, even if he does not share in it.
The most interesting aspect of the whole experience is her utter delight in having him. She loses the plot, early on and completely. If it is an act he cannot detect the edges. She admires his body, touches every pore, worships him (pleasant) and freely tells him that she loves him, that she has been in love with him for a long time, long before they met. (He deduced this ages ago.) She employs intimate technique on him (enjoyable) and cries out his name (annoying, in her voice) and insists on missionary position at least once (worth noting if nothing else).
She invites reciprocation, which in the interests of experimentation he supplies. He assumes his technique is acceptable, from the reaction. She says again and again that she knew it would be like this.
Intriguing. Did she really fantasize about sex with a man whose agenda is basically to lose his supposed virginity? Someone who cares little for her? Has his own act truly fooled her?
There is so much bluff within bluff that he cannot be bothered keeping track. After a reasonable number of orgasms each, he calls a halt by insisting upon sleep.
The last part is the most disturbing, and the hardest, now, to cast aside. As they lie back at last in the bed, Irene arranges herself on top of him with her face in his neck, her lips parted against his sweat-soaked skin, and whispers adoration into his throat until she slackens and falls silent, and he is left alone, to think, I did it, and, it makes no difference, and, what am I going to say to John?