Starving For Affection

"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.

Seeing that dark, sensual face again surprised him. Near midnight, Nami stepped up to the porch, caught Amal's eye and winked. "Such a lovely boy," he said. "Have I told you how delicious you look tonight?"

Excitement and disappointment mingled in Amal's breast; to conceal his fraying nerves, he assumed his best seductive pout and tried to deflect the man's attention. "But surely you say that to all the pretty boys and girls you meet?"

Nami leaned close, the warmth of his body a palpable distraction. "That does not mean it is not true."

Amal willed himself to remain calm. "What's your pleasure tonight, sir? We just got in a new girl from Rhodeen. We also have dark boys from Juva, honey sweet beauties from Tajhaan and golden—"

"Pretty boy, are you now hawking wares like a market wife?" Nami grasped Amal's hand and began lightly kissing and nibbling his fingers. "You are so delicious I want no other."

Amal found the idea that any client would want to be exclusive a foreign one. "You don't want to sample any of the others? We have the best selection in—"

"If you want to touch the workers," barked Pinjaru from the doorway, "you pay for them first." Normally Amal resented his interference, as the customers directed their annoyance at him; now he welcomed it.

To his dismay, Nami produced a coin, tossed it to Pinjaru and took Amal inside. Not to the cubicles, however, but straight through the house and out the back into a dark, silent yard where during the day the brothel servants did the laundry and beat the rugs that furnished Pinjaru's room. Behind the vast wash tub where no one could see, Nami pulled Amal down into the dust and knelt beside him.

"Now I can enjoy you without all the heat and noise." He clasped Amal to him, pushed aside his vest and began sucking on his nipples. His tongue and teeth nudged the sensitive flesh, lapping it into a peak of hard desire.

"Wouldn't you rather bend me over and fuck me?" asked Amal. "You didn't last night, and I thought—"

"Don't think."

Amal was torn between wanting to moan and arch into the man's touch and throwing him off to run for the safety of the house. No doubt Pinjaru or one of the other minders would, upon not finding him in any of the cubicles, eventually come outside looking for him.

His fingers twined in Nami's dark hair to pull his head closer, and clenched his teeth to keep from crying out. Not even Saris took the time to arouse him like this; arousal between brothel workers was more a primal urge to be sated, not desire to be savored. From the time he had first been forced to his knees and made to take another man's cock, sex became something he did for others so he could live.

As much as Amal wanted this, hungered for release, it frightened him.

He doesn't want to fuck me, he doesn't even come. What does he want, coming here and sucking me like this?

His loose filmy trousers were around his knees to accommodate the lips devouring his cock and the finger stroking his hole. "You can fuck me if you want," he panted. "My ass is tight enough--or I could suck you. Whatever you want."

Nami flicked his slit with a pointed tongue. "All in time, pretty boy," he answered. "I will enjoy you in all the ways a man can possess another."

Once again, the encounter ended with Amal spilling down his client's mouth and Nami leaving without climaxing. Exhausted, baffled by this man who sought out only one prostitute and yet never used him, Amal stumbled back toward the front on unsteady legs.

Before he got to the door, Pinjaru seized his arm, pinched his cheek and sent him to the little room where he sat in the dark facing a wall lined with slots; men came and stuck their cocks through the openings where the workers could satisfy them. Being sent to the room was the worst possible situation in the brothel, for only novices, menstruating girls and prostitutes too old or disfigured to attract regular business huddled in that cramped space. Clients paid far less for this service, which meant Amal could anticipate a lower wage for the night.

Darkness bred fantasies. While his neighbor, an older woman embittered and hopeless by long years in the brothel, stuffed a rag into her slot and snored at her station, Amal took what was offered, imagining it was Nami who had returned to claim his mouth with his seed even as he shut his ears to the grunts and profanity from the other side of the wall.

Does he fancy himself my lover?

Friends sometimes spun elaborate stories of clients sending gifts and spiriting them away to a better situation, knowing these were nothing more than fantasies. Perhaps in more affluent quarters of the city comely young men and women could expect to be taken in and kept as sensual playthings, but in Amal's world men were rarely interested in so much as his name.

There were worse possibilities than Nami, and none who cared about his pleasure.

And he

is

handsome

, Amal added. Gifts he did not expect, but if the man wanted to come around and spend his coin in sucking off a ditch digger's fourth son, Amal certainly did not mind.

Near morning, the door opened and Pinjaru called him out. "If you have your color back you can go out front and see about getting a few good customers before your shift ends."

Little business, however, was to be had in the small hours. Amal wanted to ask why he had been punished, but Pinjaru was not a man to be questioned. One stumbling drunk reeled up to the porch, pawed Amal and yielded a worn coin; because the man could not make it to the cubicles, which the servants had already begun to sweep out, Amal did his work just inside the door, rubbing the man to climax and cooing perfunctory compliments to allay his frustration at not being able to fuck him.

Saris was already upstairs scrubbing off his cosmetics when Amal stumbled in. They greeted each other, jostled for a place at the wash basin but spent little time in conversation. Soon Saris was senseless on his pallet, his snores rattling off the walls. Amal lay awake on his side, watching the blue shadows lighten and trying to banish Nami from his thoughts.

He's not my lover, he's never even asked my name. It's just a game he's playing, coming here because he wants a cock in his mouth and doesn't dare ask for it anyplace else.

And yet, the man wanted

him

, made love to him more selflessly than anyone ever had. There could be no other explanation for it save that Nami truly wanted him.

Cool morning stretched into noon. Airless heat bathed the room, rousing Saris, who glanced over at Amal and shrugged. "I daresay you haven't gotten much rest. You'll need my powder tonight."

Amal rose and let Saris apply bronze highlights to his skin. "Make sure you stand under the torchlight so you can show it off," said Saris, "and no one will care that you look like bleached linen."

Just as he descended the stairs, Pinjaru caught him by the arm. "Listen to me, boy. If that man comes you don't go with him. I don't care that he pays. I don't like the look of him."

No one with any sense argued with the brothel keeper, or asked questions. Amal nodded to show he understood and joined Saris out front.

Nami emerged from the shadows in the middle of the night wearing an enigmatic smile. Amal tensed, saw him beckon and then frown when his signal went unanswered.

"Is something wrong, my pretty boy?" he asked.

Amal stood speechless. Who was he to tell a customer to choose another or that his business was unwanted, particularly when Amal himself did not

want

him to go? "No, nothing," he rasped. "What's your pleasure tonight?"

"You please me, pretty one." Nami took his hand, cold and small within his warm one. "Here is your fee."

A coin pressed into his palm; Amal did not look at it.

Pinjaru will throw it back to him and tell him to be gone.

The moment they went inside it would be over. "Where do you want me?"

Nami gazed into his eyes as though reading the truth. "Across the street," he said. "I know a place." His smile filled Amal's eyes, his grip tense with unfulfilled passion. "Come, pretty one. Your master will still have his money and I will be a satisfied customer."

Amal looked around for Saris, but the young man had gone inside with a client and no one could help him. "We should go inside."

Fingers slid up to his wrist, tugging at him. "I find it too hot and stuffy in there. I cannot enjoy you properly in there, lovely one."

Lovely one.

Amal's breath hitched at the caressing sound those words made. Part of him scoffed at the endearment, knowing it to be the falsehood of a man intent on sex, yet Nami had never possessed him, never done anything but give him pleasure.

Perhaps he will take me away from here and make me his kept boy.

And why should he want to keep a two copper whore? Amal laughed often enough at the insipid daydreams of others; he knew his own for what it was. Pinjaru also knew.

I don't like the look of him.

He grasped Nami's hand, let the man lead him across the street to an alley between two tenements and wondered why such a dark and mean place. Garbage littered the ground: discarded kitchen scraps and human waste mingled with other things people tossed from their windows. Flies made the alley their home, distinguishing little between the refuse and the drunks and beggars who slept there.

"Are you sure?" asked Amal. His fantasies might not have included a soft bed or pillows, but he imagined Nami would at least want to couple with him in a clean place.

"Yes, pretty one." Nami's hand tightened on his wrist, pulling him through the dark. How did the man even know where he was going when he could see nothing but shadows upon shadows? "There is a place just ahead that is clean. The beggars keep it so for themselves. Ah, do not worry. They are out plying their trade."

Pinjaru warned me.

As his eyes gradually adjusted, Amal could make out the tenement walls rising on both sides and another building whose back wall closed off the alley. Behind a rotting woodpile, Nami shoved aside a beggar's ragged belongings and pulled Amal down beside him.

"This is not so bad," he said. Before Amal could answer, the man claimed his lips in a long, deep kiss. The soft heat of that mouth competed with the hard body pressing against him, and Amal wanted both. Clients rarely kissed him; those who did repelled him with their sloppy mouths and tongues. Even his upstairs lovers did not bother with kisses; sex was not about love.