Chapter 5: Farewell Feast
The grouper, blackened and flaky, was gone. The bottle of rum, passed hand to hand, was half-empty. The fire, built by Kai’s practiced hands, was a roaring pyramid of driftwood and crackling palm fronds that sent spirals of embers up into the black velvet sky.
Sarah sat on a folded blanket, the sand still warm beneath it. The sea was a rhythmic, breathing darkness to her left. To her right, the three of them were silhouettes against the inferno: Kai poking the fire with a long stick, Malik sprawled on his back staring at the stars, Anya sitting cross-legged, cleaning her fingernails with a fish bone.
Her flight was at noon tomorrow. The knowledge was a cold stone in her belly, untouched by the rum’s fire. The past days had been a parenthesis in time, a sentence outside the grammar of her real life. Tomorrow, the paragraph would resume, bland and predictable. The thought was a physical nausea.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Anya said, not looking up from her task.
“It’s my last night to think,” Sarah replied, her voice swallowed by the crash of a wave.
Kai tossed his stick into the fire. It flared, illuminating the hard planes of his face. “Thinking is overrated. Feeling is the only currency that spends here.” He stood, brushing sand from his shorts. He looked at her, his eyes reflecting the flames. “What do you feel, right now?”
She wanted to say scared. Lost. Greedy. The words stuck. She took a swig from the bottle, the liquor burning a path down her throat. “I feel like I’m going to forget how this feels.”
Malik sat up. “Then we need to make it unforgettable.”
There was a charge in his words, a shift in the night’s atmosphere. The bonfire’s heat seemed to intensify, pressing against her skin. Anya tossed the fish bone into the flames.
“Stand up,” Kai said, his tone not a request.
A shiver that had nothing to do with the cool night air traced her spine. She stood, the world tilting slightly from the rum. He stepped close, into her space. The firelight danced over his shoulders.
“This last night,” he said, his voice low, for her alone, though the others listened. “It’s not for sadness. It’s a sacrifice. You sacrifice the woman you were when you arrived to the fire. We burn her. What’s left in the ashes is what you take home.”
He reached for the simple knot at the side of her sarong. He didn’t fumble. The fabric loosened. With a gentle pull, it slithered down her legs to pool around her ankles. She stood in only her thin cotton bikini top and bottoms, exposed to the waist.
Malik was behind her then, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth near her ear. “The judge is back, isn’t he? Whispering that this is ending, so it doesn’t matter.” His fingers slid under the straps of her top, easing them down her arms. The triangle of fabric fell forward. He didn’t remove it, just let it hang, caught on the swell of her breasts. “Fuck him. This matters more because it ends.”
His hands covered her breasts, kneading, his thumbs circling her nipples until they were hard, sensitive peaks. She let her head fall back against his chest, a soft moan escaping her as he pinched and rolled the tight buds.
Anya appeared in front of her, the rum bottle in one hand. Her free hand hooked into the waistband of Sarah’s bikini bottoms. “Lift,” she commanded.
Sarah lifted one foot, then the other. Anya pulled the scrap of cotton down and off, tossing it dismissively toward the blanket. Sarah was naked now, the firelight painting her skin in gold and umber, the dark triangle between her legs a secret the light couldn’t fully chase away.
Anya lifted the bottle. “Open.”
Sarah parted her lips. Anya tipped the bottle, not gently. The rum flooded her mouth, bitter and strong. Some dribbled down her chin, over her neck, onto her chest. It traced a cold, sticky path between her breasts.
“Messy,” Anya whispered, a ghost of their afternoon on the rock. Then she leaned in and licked the trail of rum from Sarah’s sternum, her tongue rough and hot. She followed the path downwards, over the curve of a breast, taking the nipple into her mouth, sucking hard, the rum and saliva mixing on her skin.
Sarah gasped, her hands reaching for something to hold onto, finding Malik’s solid hips behind her. Kai watched, his eyes dark, his hand stroking the obvious bulge in his shorts. He stepped forward, cupping Sarah’s face.
“Look at me,” he said. She did, her vision blurred by rum and sensation. “You are not a tourist tonight. You are ours. Our feast. Our farewell.”
He kissed her, deep and consuming. As he did, Malik’s hands left her breasts and traveled down her belly, through the coarse hair below, his fingers parting her folds. She was already wet, the hum of anticipation having built all evening. He slid two fingers inside her in one smooth motion, and she cried out against Kai’s mouth.
“Fuck, she’s dripping,” Malik growled, his fingers curling, pumping slowly. “All this for us. This perfect, greedy cunt.”
Anya released her breast with a pop. “On your knees,” she said to Sarah, her voice leaving no argument.
Kai broke the kiss. Malik withdrew his fingers. Sarah, her limbs liquid with desire, sank to the sand. It was cool and granular under her knees. The fire silhouetted the three of them above her, giants against the stars.
Kai undid his shorts, pushing them down. His cock sprang free, thick and erect, the firelight glinting off the bead of moisture at the tip. He stepped forward. “Taste the island,” he said.
She leaned forward, taking him into her mouth. He was salt and skin and musk. She relaxed her jaw, letting him slide deep, her tongue pressing against the hot, veined underside. She heard his sharp intake of breath above her.
Malik crouched beside her. “Your turn,” he said to Anya, his voice rough. He guided Anya to stand before Sarah’s face. Anya hooked her thumbs into her own underwear, pushing them down her thighs. She revealed herself, the dark thatch of hair glistening. “Taste her,” Malik commanded. “Taste your sister in this.”
Obedient, Sarah turned her head, her mouth still working on Kai’s length. She pressed her tongue against Anya’s center, finding the hard knot of her clit. Anya’s hands gripped her hair, pulling tight, holding her in place as Sarah licked and sucked, the taste of her sharp and clean, so different from the rum.
It was a chaotic, overwhelming symphony of sensation. The stretch of her jaw around Kai. The coiling pleasure of bringing a moan from Anya’s throat. The feel of Malik’s hands, now stroking her back, now gripping her hip. The crash of the waves seeming to sync with the pounding in her blood.
Kai finally pulled away, breathing hard. “I need to be inside you. Now.”
He lay back on the blanket, pulling Sarah with him, guiding her to straddle his hips. She lowered herself onto him, a slow, searing invasion that made her see stars. He filled her completely, a breathtaking fullness that anchored her to the earth. She began to move, rocking her hips, setting a desperate rhythm.
Malik knelt behind her. She felt the cool slap of something wet—rum, maybe coconut oil—on her backside. Then his thumb was pressing against her other hole, circling, insistent. The sensation was shocking, taboo. She froze above Kai.
“Relax,” Malik murmured, his other hand digging into the flesh of her hip. “This too is part of the feast. This too is yours to feel.”
Kai gripped her breasts, thrusting upwards from below. “Take it, Sarah. Take all of it. Everything we have for you.”
The pressure intensified, a burning, impossible stretch as Malik’s thumb pressed inward, breaching the tight ring of muscle. She cried out, a sound of protest and wild wanting. And then it was past the worst of it, and he was inside her there, a deep, forbidden fullness that multiplied the sensations from where Kai was buried in her cunt. She was split, claimed, utterly occupied.
“Fuck, yes,” Kai grunted, his eyes rolling back. “So fucking tight. Both ways.”
Malik began to move his thumb in a slow, corkscrew motion. The dual penetration ignited a fire in her core, a frantic, clawing need for release. She rode Kai with abandon, slamming down onto him, her breasts bouncing, her cries becoming raw, wordless pleas.
Anya watched, her own hand between her legs, fingers working in time with their rhythm. “Come for them,” she urged Sarah, her voice a husky command. “Let them feel you come. Let it be the thing they remember.”
It was too much. The fire, the stars, the hands on her body, the two men filling her, the woman’s voice ordering her surrender. The orgasm ripped through her like a structural failure, a total collapse of the self. She screamed, her internal muscles clamping in violent, rhythmic spasms around Kai’s cock, around Malik’s invading digit. The contractions seemed endless, wracking her body, milking Kai until he shouted her name, his own release jetting hot inside her.
She collapsed forward onto Kai’s chest, spent, trembling. Malik slowly withdrew. The absence was its own profound sensation. He leaned over, kissing the sweat-damp skin between her shoulder blades.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the fire and their ragged breathing. Kai’s arms came around her, holding her close as his body softened inside hers. She could feel his heart hammering against her own.
Anya lay down beside them on the blanket, curling against Sarah’s back, her arm draped over her waist. Malik stretched out on Kai’s other side, staring back up at the stars.
The stone of sadness was still in Sarah’s belly, but it was warm now, fused with the exhaustion and the profound, bodily knowledge of the last hour. She was marked. She would carry the ghost of this feeling in her muscles, in the faint bruise on her hip from Malik’s hand, in the memory of the salt air mingling with the scent of sex and woodsmoke.
Kai’s voice was a soft rumble beneath her ear. “The woman who came here is ashes now. You feel her burning?”
She nodded, her face against his skin.
“Good,” he said. His hand stroked her hair. “What’s left is real. That’s what you take on the plane.”
Sarah closed her eyes. The fire cracked. A wave withdrew, pulling a thousand grains of sand with it, an endless, hushed sigh. She didn’t sleep. She burned, and listened to the ocean take its share of the night.