"Hello, pretty one. You look especially delicious this evening."
Amal resisted the urge to roll his eyes. So many newcomers to the painted district tried to seduce the youths and girls who worked there.
And here comes another idiot,
he thought, except that the unmistakable swagger of this man's walk was so sexual that he could not possibly be new at this.
"For the right price, you can do anything you like with me." Amal let his tongue dart out to moisten hennaed lips and lowered his eyes.
A coin appeared between the man's fingers. Slowly Amal drew away from the wall where he had been leaning with the other youths of the house and moved forward, though he was not so crass as to grab for the money. Some men liked to tease, promising more than what they gave, sometimes trying to leave without paying at all.
Fair weather meant business was good tonight. Already Amal had had plenty of customers, and would not retire without having at least a handful more. If this one wanted to play, he could go do it someplace else. "Shall we go in?" he purred.
Instead, the man indicated a dark, narrow alley between two tenements. Amal kept a sweet smile on his lips and shook his head. Clients occasionally tried such tactics.
You can fuck me as hard as you like, any way you like, but not for free.
Taking his client's hand, he led the man into the brothel, where Pinjaru collected the money and waved them into a back corridor lined with cubicles. From there it was draw the curtain, kneel on the floor, and in five or ten minutes Amal was back outside soliciting.
Stale and close, the cubicle was just large enough for a client to do his business. More often than not, they scarcely waited for the curtain to close to shove him down, push aside their clothing and fuck him. This client, however, had not made his preference known and Amal was not about to presume.
"What would be your pleasure tonight, sir?" he asked.
The man leaned in to kiss his cheek. Most clients reeked of beer, onions or rotting teeth; to have one that smelled pleasant was a novelty. "Call me Nami," he murmured.
As long as you pay me,
thought Amal,
I'll call you whatever you like.
It probably was not his real name anyway. "As you like, Nami. How do you want me tonight?"
A large, warm hand slid up his thigh, grasping the hem of his tunic. "Take this off."
Amal preferred not to undress, but refusing was out of the question. Undoing the belt, he lifted the worn garment over his head and dropped it at his feet. Underneath he wore nothing. "Will this do?"
The fingers lightly circling his nipple told him yes.
So the idiot wants to play at seducing me.
Next to the brutes, the seducers were the worst clients, because satisfying them was so much work. Amal bit his tongue against the urge to snap at this one to take out his cock, spit on his hand and fuck him.
"Lean back against the wall," said Nami. "No, face me and close your eyes."
Nami's hand slid down his torso to his groin, brushing against his cock before grasping and fondling it.
Oh, no, not one of those.
Amal groaned, which the man mistook for pleasure.
He actually expects me to get hard for him.
He could not remember the last time a client aroused him. Maybe never. Whatever he needed, he got from his roommate or one of the other brothel workers.
"What should I do for you, sir?" he asked, momentarily forgetting Nami's instructions to call him by name.
In response, the hand pulled more firmly on his shaft, stroking up and down until Amal felt the first twitches of arousal. "Just close your eyes and enjoy it," said Nami.
Amal obeyed.
It's his money and time, and if he wants to waste it rubbing my cock that's his loss.
Still, being fondled by a hand other than his own felt good, and he could not help the subtle rhythmic gyrations his hips made as they pressed into the man's touch.
Wetness slid over the tip of his cock, circling the crown before probing his slit. Amal let out a gasp. His eyes flew open, and in the shadows saw Nami on his knees before him, licking his erection with an avid tongue.
Nami paused long enough to gaze up. "Am I hurting you?"
Sometimes Amal heard from other workers about men who came seeking to indulge in curious fantasies, who wanted to be whipped, bound or even fucked. Until now he never considered that any of those stories might be true.
He shook his head. "Do you want me to--?"
"Come in my mouth, yes."
The mouth in question was devouring him, closing over his cock and sucking him in with increasing speed and pressure. Coming in a client's mouth was an utterly foreign idea, yet the entire situation was so bizarre, so beyond his experience and expectations as a prostitute that Amal's resistance began to falter. He was not a slave who could not come inside a free man, and he wanted to so very, very badly.
It's his money and pleasure.
He groaned, bit his lip hoping no one outside the cubicle would hear and arched into the hand that began to stimulate his balls. Feeling them tighten, the spasms beginning in his groin, unable to stop what was coming even if at that moment Pinjaru had flung aside the curtain and ordered him to.
As Nami withdrew, leaving him moist and limp, Amal could scarcely stand. He was breathing hard, sweating in the close air, and still unable to believe a client would take him in his mouth that way.
How much time had passed, he did not know. Pinjaru made a habit of prowling the corridors, making certain clients did not take more than what they had paid for. Amal shifted over onto his hands and knees, knowing Nami would want to have his pleasure before he was told to leave.
Instead, the man tapped his buttocks and, when Amal turned to see what he wanted, handed his tunic to him. "You were delicious," murmured Nami, licking his lips for emphasis. "I will be going now."
By the time Amal pulled on his clothes and stepped out into the corridor, Nami was gone. Right away another client took an interest in him, so within moments he was back in the cubicle, on his knees and wondering why someone would pay to give
him
pleasure without wanting anything for himself.
Before his shift ended at dawn Amal managed to service four more clients. As the last man took him from behind, he closed his eyes and imagined Nami pounding into him, fucking him hard while stimulating his cock in his tight fist. When he came, spilling over his hand and the rushes beneath him, he let his client take credit for his orgasm.
Upstairs, he washed and collapsed on his pallet. Daylight brought the heat, and by noon the room was stifling, dusty and noisy from the traffic in the thoroughfare below; the brothel district never slept. Amal lay naked atop the blanket, half-conscious and floating in a maze of disjointed dreams where every face he encountered belonged to Nami.
It was mid-afternoon when he stirred, driven in part by an erection that drew a wink from his roommate, a slender dark-skinned youth a year older than he.
"Thinking about a particular client?" purred Saris.
Although they always teased each other thus, never before had it been closer to the truth. "Oh, yes," Amal mumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "A pox-ridden drunk with one arm and a huge cock."
A quick trip to the kitchen yielded the day's ration of flat bread and beer, which Amal took back to his room. Saris, who had already eaten, scrubbed his arms and the back of his neck with a damp cloth. On the table beside the washbasin was the box containing his cosmetics. Pinjaru wanted them ready and downstairs at sundown, and Saris liked to take his time about preparing.
"I don't see why you have to use so much kohl," said Amal. "Who's going to look at your ugly face while they're fucking you?"
Saris put down the cloth and opened the box. "Ah, but I have to get them in the door first, and my charms are so old and faded next to yours," he answered. "But tonight I think maybe you need this."
Amal scoffed at the proffered jar of face powder; he had his own cosmetics. "Save it for yourself, ugly."
At sunset, with henna staining his lips and kohl darkening his eyes, Amal took his place on the porch beside Saris and two young women. Warm even after dark, he left off his tunic in favor of a spangled vest that allowed him to tease passerby with glimpses of his smooth chest and nipples underneath.
Across the street and next door, rival brothels competed for business, their prostitutes accosting visitors and shouting barbs at each other. Such insults were usually good-natured, for there was more than enough business to be had. Summer evenings in Tajhaan were too stifling to spend indoors, and men with money to spend were out looking for liquor and sex. Amal had a steady stream of customers, including one who paid double to have him and a girl pleasure him in a cubicle intended only for two.
At odd moments Nami crept into his thoughts, and try as he might Amal could not completely push the man out. Where clients flitted through his consciousness like flies, present one minute, gone the next and occasionally irritating, it unnerved him that one client had taken up residence and would not leave.
He won't come back, and in a week I'll have forgotten him.
Amal found the tactic always worked with particularly abusive clients, including a man who once cuffed him hard enough to fracture his nose.
