“Now?? But I thought we’re going to — ”
“Oh, please, Mr Koh! I want to have something like this to wear. I’m always a little shy when I’m totally naked with some guy for the first time.” She then cast a quick, playful glance down at his towel.
This made him laugh again, after which he nodded and watched as she placed the necklace against her smooth throat. She then turned, holding the ends behind and just off her neck, inviting him to latch it. Which he did, with care and some affection. She rushed over to the smeared mirror a few feet away and observed herself, making funny faces, as if she were suddenly the only person in the room. Koh himself admired her naked back, the nicely framed shoulders. “This is just so nice. So sweet.” She turned with a deeply set smile, and Kwan How suddenly felt as close to her as he had to any woman, any person, in a long time. It was good that it should all end like this.
This was becoming more and more perfect.
When they reached the bedroom, she jumped onto the bed as if she needed to try it out first. She pounded it with her fists, then started kicking her legs up and down. Koh was standing just inside the doorway, the towel still dangling over his private parts. “Suitable?” he asked, his eyes slowly surveying the arch of her back, the slopes of her buttocks, her nicely formed legs and feet.
“Very suitable,” she replied.
She then rolled over on her back, propped her head up on the three pillows and spread her legs. “Going to join me, Mr Koh? It’s nice down here.
Very nice.” As she said those last two words, she started stroking herself, at the same time slipping her tongue out and gliding it slowly over her lips.
Koh laughed again; she looked so much like Su Lon, but was so different in her behaviour. She was — what was that word he liked? — frisky. Yes , so frisky. Su Lon had been so wonderfully shy, right up until the moment he first entered her. Of course, that was expected of girls, especially Chinese girls, in those days.
But part of Su Lon’s reluctance with Kwan How stemmed from the fact that she was engaged to another man at the time. Oh, there was nothing like love there — on either side apparently — but it was a good match in most other ways. The war and the Japanese occupation had stranded that fiance in Ceylon. Meanwhile, Kwan How’s position at the docks enabled him to get his hands on extra goods: contraband rice, salted fish and cooking oil — some of which he gave to Su Lon’s family. That’s how they started to get close.
And then there was that keen natural attraction that happens between two young, good-looking people.
Had there been no war, Su Lon would have surely remained a traditional Chinese woman, going to her wedding bed a virgin, with a man she barely knew and had no great affection for. That was the deal back then: sex as duty, marriage as transaction, love as a possible bonus — but only later.
Except that she and Kwan How found themselves more and more drawn to each other. Besides, Su Lon didn’t know if she would ever see this fiance again; it was all up to fate whether any of them would survive that war and the occupation. Which is why she and Kwan How became lovers, their daily flirts with arrest and death only intensifying the passion and tonic release of their couplings. Yes, being so close to death, Kwan How had lived more intensely than he would ever again in his life.
Everything could have been different, should have been different. But the war ended, Su Lon’s betrothed returned, they married, and Kwan How saw or heard very little of her for the next year and a half. Until he got that note from her brother. Sweet, delicate Su Lon, who had survived the storm of perils thrown up by the Japanese occupation, stepped in front of a Bentley driven by some blur Dutch woman. She was dead by the time they got her to a hospital. Publicly, everyone said it was an accident, but under the soothing drone of officialese, there was a swarm of dark rumours.
“Is everything alright?” Sharlayne called from the bed.
Koh looked up at her and nodded. Yes, everything was alright; maybe that was the perfect exit Su Lon had chosen for herself. “She heard another music,” was the cryptic way a friend once described the way she died. And now Koh was there, at the edge of grasping an amazing dream for his own departure. Perhaps this was what she’d meant by another music?
Sharlayne was now stroking herself more energetically, three fingers working deeply into the gash, moving about in slow, circular turns. “Everything is wonderful,” Koh finally said, “more wonderful than I could have imagined it.”
“Well, why don’t you come over here, uncle, and we’ll see how we can make it even better.” Koh nodded in agreement and strode over, dropping the towel only as he made his way onto the bed.
He had become soft by now and only when he put his legs and side against her flesh did he again feel the stirrings in his loins and in his chest which had been so strong just minutes before. He wanted to get hard as quickly as he could, to couple with this young woman. Wanted to return, however briefly, to feeling life intensely. His look obviously conveyed this, as Sharlayne asked if he wanted some help. Suddenly feeling humiliated, Koh simply nodded. “Yeah?” she said sympathetically. Koh then leaned over and whispered in her ear.
But she said she didn’t want to go down on him, claiming she “wasn’t into” oral sex. He didn’t believe her, of course. But she was solicitous: to get him harder, she began stroking his cock, then licked her fingers lavishly, moistening his member as she stroked it a second time. She then stuck two fingers up her vagina, pulled them out and rubbed the warm juice along the high bend of his cock.
Koh could not even remember the last time he had been this hard, decades certainly. He wanted desperately to get inside her and rasp this out.
But at that moment, there was an abrupt change in her demeanour: she rose and knelt on the bed. For the first time since they had started undressing, she looked grim. “Are you sure this can really kill you?” she asked, “Really?”
“That’s what my doctor keeps saying.” She nodded, but did not look very convinced.
“You ever asked for a second opinion?”
He smiled sheepishly. “I’m about to get one.” She frowned again, concern darkening her delicate features. She cast her eyes down and started tracing some arcane pattern in the sheets with one finger. “Look, it’s what I really want, okay?” he assured her. “I have no doubts about this.” She glanced up at him, cautiously, from the corner of her eye. He was afraid he might lose this right here, so close to what he wanted. “Are you going to deny a nice old man his last request?”
“No,” she answered after a short pause. “It’s something I really want to try myself.” She then leaned over, gave him a light kiss on the forehead, and pressing her head against his neck, hugged him awkwardly. This was good enough; at this stage in his life, the “uncle” had sharply pared down what he expected from perfect.
Koh now smiled, a little sadly, at her. Sharlayne took this as a cue, lay back flat on the bed and stared straight up, as if studying something on the ceiling. Koh kept smiling; it didn’t matter, not now. She spread her legs, her thin legs, and Koh thought he would begin by putting his legs tightly against hers and then massaging the insides of her thighs — as he had done that first time with Su Lon.
But as he tried to splay his legs that far, he found that his weak knees weren’t up to the task. He fell forward, giving out a yelp of pain.
Sharlayne, who had continued peering up at the ceiling until then, swung around swiftly, asked if Koh was alright, and rubbed his shoulders in consolation. He tried to shake it off as lightly as he could. “Guess one shouldn’t try new tricks, wah,” he said with a feeble laugh. The embarrassment actually hurt more than the physical pain. She asked if he wanted her to get on top, but he mumbled that he preferred being on top of her. She nodded, then lay back on the bed, her hair draped capriciously across the pillows.