Chapter 2: The Hunt for More
The office felt like a discarded shell, too small to contain the energy that now buzzed between them. Aidan’s skin was still humming, sensitive to the cool touch of his shirt as he clumsily re-dressed. Prae watched him, leaning against the locked door with a cat-like satisfaction, while her friends—Noi and Mai—whispered and giggled, smoothing their own clothes.
“My office hours…” Aidan started, the sentence dying as he caught Prae’s raised eyebrow.
“Are over,” she finished, pushing off from the door. She collected her small purse from his desk. “This box is too small. And it smells like university. Cheap soap and despair.” She wrinkled her nose. “My apartment is close. Bigger. And I have good whiskey.”
Noi clapped her hands together softly. “Yes. More room.”
Mai simply nodded, her eyes still heavy-lidded, fixed on Aidan with a focus that made his stomach flip.
It was less a suggestion than a decree. Aidan found himself swept along in their current, locking his office behind him, the chaotic pile of ungraded papers a forgotten relic of another life. They spilled out into the evening corridor, the institutional fluorescence a harsh contrast to the intimate darkness they’d just left. A pair of senior professors rounded the corner, deep in conversation. Aidan felt a jolt of panic, but Prae just linked her arm through his, smiling sweetly at the older men who nodded politely, their eyes sliding past the foreign professor and his retinue of beautiful young women without a flicker of surprise.
The city outside was a warm, noisy blanket. Chiang Mai’s evening scent—motorcycle exhaust, night-blooming jasmine, frying garlic—wrapped around them. They walked, a tight little group, down side streets where neon signs in looping Thai script painted their faces in pulses of green and pink. Prae’s apartment was in a modern low-rise building, not far from the pulsating nightclub where she worked. Inside, it was exactly as she’d promised: bigger, and infinitely more personal.
The main room was dominated by a large, low divan piled with silk cushions. Strings of fairy lights were draped over a large potted fiddle-leaf fig, and a sleek sound system sat silent in the corner. The air smelled of her—vanilla, skin, and a hint of sandalwood.
“Whiskey,” Prae announced, heading to a small kitchen area. She returned with a bottle of Japanese single malt and four glasses, the ice cracking as she poured. The liquor was smooth and smoky, a bracing counterpoint to the lingering taste of sweat and sex in his mouth.
Noi kicked off her shoes and curled onto the divan. Mai, more reserved, sat on the edge, taking her glass with a quiet “khob khun kha.”
Aidan stood, feeling awkward again, the mantle of the professor utterly useless here. Prae handed him a glass, her fingers brushing his. “Sit. You look like you’re waiting for a bus.”
He sat. The whiskey burned a warm trail down his throat. For a few minutes, there was just the clink of ice, the soft murmur of Thai between the women. He understood none of it, but the tone was clear: playful, conspiratorial. Noi kept grinning at him. Mai’s glances were slower, more assessing.
Then the intercom buzzed. Prae got up, pressed a button, and spoke briefly. “More friends,” she said to Aidan, a new spark in her eye. “They heard we were having a party.”
A moment later, two more women let themselves in. One was tall and willowy, a dancer named Lin. The other, Ploy, was cheeky and round-faced, a university administrator from the finance office. Introductions were a blur of smiles and wais. The apartment, which had felt spacious, suddenly felt intimate, charged. The women exchanged knowing looks. The unspoken topic hung in the air, thicker than the whiskey smoke.
Prae took charge. She put on music—something with a deep, sensual bassline that vibrated through the floorboards. She topped up everyone’s drinks. The conversation shifted to English for his benefit, light and teasing, full of questions about England, about teaching, his accent dissected and complimented. The normalcy of it was the most surreal part. It was just a gathering. Except the subtext was a live wire.
It was Ploy, the administrator, who broke the tension. She’d been sitting next to him on the divan, her thigh pressed against his. “So, Professor,” she said, her voice loud enough to quiet the others. “The campus gossip. Is it all true?”
All eyes were on him. Prae leaned against the wall, sipping her whiskey, a curator watching her exhibit.
Aidan felt a familiar flush, but beneath it, a new current. A defiance. This was his absurd reality. Why pretend? He met Ploy’s gaze. “Why don’t you come and find out?”
Her smile was instant and dazzling. She didn’t hesitate. She shifted, straddling his lap right there on the divan, her hands on his shoulders. The other women watched, rapt. Noi leaned forward, her breath catching. Lin began to sway subtly to the music, her fingers tracing her own collarbone.
It started again, but different. Slower. More deliberate. There was no frantic office secrecy. Here, there was time. Ploy took him in her mouth, her technique deliberate and shocking, while the others cheered her on with laughter and claps. Aidan’s head fell back against the cushions, the sensations blurring—the wet heat of her mouth, the weight of multiple gazes, the bass thumping in his chest.
When he was hard again, Prae guided Ploy off. “My turn on the chair,” she said, her voice husky. She led him to a sturdy upholstered chair by the window. The neon glow from the street below striped her body as she climbed onto him, sinking down with a slow, controlled sigh that was echoed by a murmur from the women watching.
This was the rhythm of the night. A rotation. A sharing. He lost track of time, of whose mouth, whose heat, whose tightness he was buried in. He moved from the chair to the divan, to a clear space on the soft rug. Lin’s long limbs wrapped around him as she arched beneath him, her moans high and musical. Noi, eager and loud, demanded he take her from behind, her hands fisted in the cushions. Mai, finally shedding her shyness, simply pulled him down on top of her, wrapping her arms around his neck and whispering urgent, pleading Thai in his ear.
Prae was the conductor. She participated, taking him greedily at times, but she also watched, directed, encouraged. She brought him water. She poured more whiskey straight into his mouth between couplings. She laughed her deep laugh when he stumbled, physically spent, only to find himself hardening again minutes later under the touch of a new pair of hands, the sight of a new body offering itself.
He discovered reserves of stamina he never knew he had. It wasn’t just physical; it was a psychic surrender. He was not Aidan the professor here. He was a function, a phenomenon, and the sheer, unabashed joy these women took in him was ego-destroying and ego-inflating all at once. He came inside Ploy, then later inside Lin, the act of filling them becoming a ritual, a signature. The wet heat of each release seemed only to fuel the next encounter.
At some point, deep in the night, the music changed to something slow and dreamy. The energy shifted from frenetic to languid. He found himself on his back on the divan, Prae curled against his side, her head on his chest. Noi was asleep on a floor mat, a sheet pulled over her hips. Lin and Ploy dozed in a tangle of limbs in the corner. Mai was in the shower, the sound of water a distant hush.
His body felt like a used engine, every muscle humming with a pleasant, distant ache. The room smelled profoundly of sex, whiskey, and perfume.
Prae traced a meaningless pattern on his chest. “You see?” she murmured, her voice sleep-rough. “This is better than grading papers.”
A choked laugh escaped him. It was an understatement of cosmic proportions. He looked at the sleeping forms around the room, at the soft light playing on skin and rumpled clothing. This was his life now. This alien, hedonistic, inexplicable life.
He had come to Thailand to teach mathematics. Instead, he had become a living experiment in applied desire. And as the first grey light of dawn began to dilute the neon at the window, he realized, with a jolt of something between terror and elation, that he had no idea how to go back. Or if he even wanted to. The thought was still forming, vast and shapeless, as he drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, anchored by the warm weight of Prae beside him.