The sun was stronger than I realized. By nightfall I had a nasty burn. I used it as an excuse to have dinner alone in my quarters.
I sunburn easily. But experience has taught me that the best way to overcome it is to go right back in the sun again. A second dose usually turns the burn into a tan and after that the sun doesn’t bother me. So the next day I hauled my blistered carcass right back onto the patio.
That’s where I was lying, only a brief Sheban loincloth covering me, when Balkis came along. “You’ve been hiding from me,” she chided.
“I just don’t want to lose my kopf over you.”
“And I had always heard the Hebrews had such great courage,” she teased.
“When it comes to being chopped up for strudel by your bully-boy, my courage turns to drek,” I admitted truthfully.
“You mean Tabari? He won’t give you any tsouris today. He’s tied up with affairs of state. It seems one of Jeroboam’s spies has been discovered. Tabari will deal with him strongly to prove our good faith to your master.”
Jeroboam was the leader of the North Israelis who were currently in rebellion against the rule of Solomon. An alliance between Solomon and the Shebans would leave him free to quell the revolt without worrying about his southern borders. Dealing “strongly” with one of Jeroboam’s spies would indeed convince Solomon of Balkis’ good intentions. I thought of Tabari and shuddered for the spy. Then I thought of Tabori again, this time of his being occupied elsewhere, and looked at Balkis more boldly.
She was wearing another of her loose, flowing, silken robes. This one was pale yellow and the material was quite thin. I couldn’t exactly see her magnificent body moving beneath its folds, but there were intriguing shadows which fell into place to paint an erotic picture in my mind.
“So Tabari is busy,” I mused.
“Yes.” She knelt beside me and studied my lobster-pink skin. “Why do you white people always toast yourselves in the sun so?” Balkis wondered aloud. “It will not make you dark like us. And even if it did, it could not change a slave to a master.”
“I’m not a slave,” I reminded her.
“I’m sorry. No offense. It’s just that I’m so accustomed to thinking of whites as slaves. Up until you came along, the only white people I met were slaves. Still, it is meshuginah to fry your skin this way.”
“Don’t you get sunburned?”
“I would if I lay out in the sun the way you do. My color is no protection against the rays of the sun. But I have too much sense to do that. Or perhaps it is because I have no need to try to deepen my color to be more like us Shebans.”
“What are you hoching me?” I laughed. “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun. So what if I’m neither. It doesn’t stop me.”
“And you don’t mind that you shed your skin?”
“I’m just peeling.” I pulled off a piece of sunburned skin from my arm.
“Oh!” She clapped her hands. “That looks like fun. May I-—?”
“Help yourself.”
Her fingers trailed over my shoulders, searching for a likely spot to begin. They were long and delicate, her touch light. A small, odd sort of thrill went through me as she peeled away some skin. The sense memory of her touch remained as the hot sun washed over the stripped spot like some sort of aphrodisiac lotion.
Balkis’ perfume was even more aphrodisiac. I don’t know what it was -- some kind of rose attar, I think, light, not musky, but as teasing as an unrealized sneeze, provocative as the tickle of breath in one’s ear. It actually made my nostrils quiver.
Her long nails were flaking the skin on my chest now. I squirmed more from the heat of her gaze than from the sensation itself, which was strangely pleasant. She was lost in the sensual enjoyment of what she was doing. A sexual explorer, she’d discovered the territory of a new fetish. And her pleasure in it stirred me as the act of peeling my skin was stirring her.
She pulled a piece of skin down my rib cage past my waist to my hip. The movement caused her silk-covered breasts to graze my chest as she bent over me. I cupped my hand under one of them and squeezed gently.
It was hot and firm despite the relaxed way in which it was suspended. Soft as a marshmallow, except for the tip which was hard, distended and trembling. It expanded even more at my touch as if trying to nestle in my questing palm.
“I put my other hand around her neck and pulled her face down so that I could kiss her. Her lips were warm, eager and knowledgeable, her long, pink tongue exploratory. When she moved away after the kiss, I saw that the color of her lips had deepened. Before they had been rust colored m contrast to the shining blackness of her complexion. Now they were the deep, red color of mahogany. Traces of the same hue trailed a blush across her cheek like a patina of pink passion laid over ebony.
Her hand was on the outside of my thigh now, still peeling the skin. I pushed aside the loose material at her shoulder and the gown slid down her arm. After a bit more maneuvering, one of her breasts was free of the folds of the garment.
It was impressive against the pale yellow of the material. It aroused me. It was high, firm and full, its perfectly sculpted roundness coming to a sharp point. Its blackness seemed to shimmer before my eyes and shade into the brownish maroon of wide, pulsating roseates and deep maroon nipples. I covered the breast with kisses and my tongue wandered over its tip until Balkis moaned.
Her hands were busy at the insides of my thighs now, trying vainly to peel the skin there. But it wasn’t sun-burned and it wouldn’t come loose. Her efforts were thrilling despite the pain. I nipped her nipple by way of respionse and she pulled away and gave me an outraged look.
”You forget yourself. I am a queen,” she told me.
Right now you’re a woman!” I pulled her across me and gave her a few whacks on the derrière to establish the relationship.
She squirmed to escape the blows and I could see the outline of her round bottom under the yellow silk. But there was submission in the way she tried to avoid the spanking. “Nobody ever dared before,” she panted. “You are indeed a mensch!” But the submission wasn’t complete. She saved a little face by tearing some of the sun-burned skin from my leg.
Really excited now, I pulled up her yellow garment in back and bared her posterior. It was as well molded in its own way as her breasts. Small, ebony, round, and flushed from my slaps as her face had been from my kisses When she pulled away another piece of skin, I couldn’t resist it. I leaned over and sank my teeth into it.
She rolled over to escape the biting. Her long, shapely legs flailed about for a moment. When they settled, I found myself staring at the naked triangle of her womanhood. Tight black curls damp and glowing with passion. Pinkish, quivering nether lips at the apex of the triangle silently speaking her desire. I pulled off her garment altogether, and then shucked my own. I stood back to look at her a moment, enjoying the anticipation.
Balkis wriggled impatiently under my gaze. Her long, well-curved torso moved like an ebony flame. Her eyes devoured me, pleaded with me, commanded me. She stretched her arms out to me and her breasts filled and arched to the sky as I came into them.
I plunged straight to the pulsating target. Her legs locked around my waist with the impact. Her nails raked my back as we started to move, tearing away bits of sun-burned skin. We moved faster, plunging, spinning, teasing, pounding. I switched back and forth from a driving to a rotary motion and she stayed with me all the way. No matter how I altered the rhythm, she grasped the tempo and followed -- no, anticipated me is more like it. Finally there was no planning, no conscious guiding, only the flood of passion carrying us to the most ecstatic heights. Her body was shaken by a series of explosions culminating in one long-lasting tremor detonated by the explosion of my own passion.