Cleopatra's Perfume. Jina Bacarr

beating pulse. Smiling in a pleasant manner, he circled my clitoris in a steady rhythm, but not fast enough to bring me to the edge. I sank my teeth again into the black velvet filling my mouth, knowing I wouldn’t find release. That wasn’t his job.

      Leaving me wanting, he withdrew his fingers. “She is ready.”

      “Bon. Untie her, Mahmoud, and bring her to me.”

      I fell into the Nubian’s arms after he set me free, my soft nude whiteness blending with his black skin under the spotlight, making me wonder what amorous pleasures awaited me. I feared not this man of color, nor did I fear the smooth voice with the French accent coming out of the darkness, the swirl of smoke adding to his allure. A sense of the forbidden pricked at my mind, fueling my obvious need for his cock and making me take a deep breath as I pondered various fervid possibilities. Sexual organs swelling at the expectation of erotic activity, nude bodies swaying, secretions as lubricant, the white heat culminating in a frenzy, every muscle rippling and quivering, ecstatic cries, hips thrusting in a cadenced delirium…

      I was not disappointed when I heard the voice ask: “Have you ever been pleasured by two men at once, my English lady?”

      “No,” I whispered, closing my eyes to shield the lie behind those words, instead allowing him to imagine I was already experiencing an inner ecstasy from the mere thought of it.

      “Bon, relax and allow Mahmoud and I to take you to paradise.”

      Alas, dear reader, I feel certain your temperature is rising, your pulse beating faster, though you may shun such an admission out of modesty, but I pray you don’t stop reading for I have yet to reveal to you the secret of the perfume. Yet I realize I’ve brought you too far into the story without telling you what happened next when I found myself nude and willing to be stimulated by these two men when I entered the Bar Supplice. So eager am I to relive that night of temptation beyond what I’d ever experienced, I can’t deny my body a delicious quiver of anticipation before continuing with my story. But first, you must understand the effect Ramzi had on me. Half-Egyptian, half-French, he moved in a circle of people who prided themselves on possessing the typical high-class European attitude of shunning public notice. Stealthlike, as if he created his style to tease my poor feminine soul—his hand brushing against my breasts when I passed by him, or his eyes from under long veiled black lashes following me when I left the room. I found him charming in a way that appealed to my naughty side, one which Lord Marlowe knew only too well and had nurtured with a fine hand.

      Now I was alone without that hand, and that raw hunger for a man’s touch made me fierce with longing. I’d do anything to assuage that need so I could again experience the delicious sensations that made me breathless.

      I beg your indulgence, dear reader, for allowing my female id to overwhelm my thoughts when I should capture them and put them into a cage with bars, a cage forged with words, for such is their power to hold the mind prisoner and that is what I must do, hold you prisoner while I tell you my tale, for I dare not lose you. My obsession with Ramzi is too incredible to believe: The attraction, the seduction, the promise. Yet the hour is late and I must finish my travel preparations. I leave London tomorrow on the first part of my journey to Berlin. En route, I will set the scene so that you, too, will understand why I didn’t resist, why I couldn’t. You must allow your subconscious to let go and come with me on my journey, for without you, no one will never know about the power of the perfume.

      Cleopatra’s perfume.

      3

       Aboard a courier flight from Leuchars, Scotland, to Stockholm

       April 7, 1941

      I tremble, the ink staining my fingers as I hasten to finish describing the scene in the Bar Supplice invoking such pleasure in me.

      Ramzi, Mahmoud and me.

      A half-caste Egyptian, a Nubian and a white woman entwined in sexual exploration. Not a dream or a fantasy, but an integration of lips, hands and fingers, legs and thighs, touching, exploring, teasing, tasting, smelling each other until that supreme moment when black hands cupped my breasts, twisting my nipples until I cried out with exquisite joy, while the mysterious Egyptian touched me, held me, watched me, delighting in the sound when I groaned deep in my throat at the intense sensations overcoming me. Not one of us paid attention to a taboo forged with prejudices so strong not even the sharpest tongue could cut through its fibers.

      Yet when I entered this exotic world hidden away on a backstreet in Port Said, I chose to rip apart that taboo with refined gestures that went beyond defiance because I ached with a hunger, a challenge I could no longer ignore, no longer deny.

      Seducing a man like Ramzi.

      I believed then as I do now that seeking divine pleasure is not a sin. I would have no regrets afterward, for was I not fulfilling my female impulses to mate? And in doing so, were not two men better than one?

      These thoughts spun through my mind, trapping me in a web of intrigue. I am a woman of the world, having tasted variety in my choice of men based more on their ability to arise within me a deep response to please them and receive pleasure, rather than on their skin color, so I was in tune to the scene in the club that followed.

      I let out a plaintive sigh and concentrated on the roiling emotions tantalizing my pubic area when Mahmoud parted my thighs and inserted two fingers inside me. With nary a glance in my direction, he began to rub my clit back and forth to increase the flow of my natural lubrication. Lolling my head from side to side, I imagined my cream coating his shiny black fingers as a sweet aroma hit my nostrils. I wasn’t alone in my reverie. Mahmoud also inhaled my scent, then grunted. Noting his deep breathing, I wondered what carnal thoughts filled the Nubian’s mind. Was he savoring the fragrance of my pussy? Or was he merely following orders?

      He must have sensed what I was thinking because he swooped down on my breast with his hungry lips and bit at my nipple with his teeth hard enough to make me cry out, as if to assert his power to arouse me. I threw my head back, writhing as he did it again. Would Ramzi allow him to partake in the lovemaking? I wondered.

      Indulging in bilateral sex acts was common in this part of the world since women were required to undergo female circumcision and were often addicted to masturbation with bananas, candles and other large objects that stretched their organs into wide orifices. When I first arrived in Egypt with my tap shoes slung over my shoulder, I’d seen ghāzīyeh, dancing girls, performing nude in Cairo clubs, pulling red or yellow or blue veils between their thighs and buttocks to achieve orgasm because they had no clit and must rub their pussies with ecstatic vigor to produce an orgasm.

      I watched them dance, my adventurous soul falling in love with the erotic world of modern Cairo, my naughty side falling in love with its carnival-like atmosphere. Ah, but I was young and wanted only to laugh and drink and forget where I came from and be free. Wild, impetuous days when I possessed nothing but the shadows of the night to cloak my sins after I, too, shed my clothes to find my fortune.

      Thinking back, I remember the first time I had two men pleasuring me, one man accommodating his entrance into me to the convenience of another. Once before I dug my fingernails into the back of a man while standing and two cocks filled me up, one penetrating me in front, the other from behind. The first man, a muscular Englishman, lifted up both my thighs as high as possible for deep thrusting while the other, a Hollander, took me from behind, his strong hands gripping me around the waist. Crushed between the two men, I cared not that I’d been duped into taking on both men by my youthful enthusiasm to dine with two titled gentlemen. I was barely twenty then, unmarried, dancing in a club in Berlin when I met Lord Marlowe and his Dutch friend.

      The British lord climaxed first and afterward insisted he’d won the bet and I was his alone. I balked at the idea, fleeing into the arms of other admirers, but I soon came to realize the seductive power he possessed to satisfy a woman. His dominance over me was never threatening but loving. And I, the wandering girl I’d become in my search for artistic freedom, embraced his erotic amusements as my own. The way he looked at me—straight in the eye—and touched