Girl Trade - full length erotic adventure novel (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels) by Chloe Thurlow
Authors: Chloe Thurlow
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spoons and, copying the men, I made little balls with the rice and vegetables and popped the food in my mouth. Not only my body, my taste buds seemed to have burst into life and nothing I had ever eaten before had tasted quite so marvellous. I ate quickly, hot oil dribbled from my fingers on to my breasts and the momentary sting on my bare flesh was a reminder of what it is to be fully alive.
When I had finished, the man in blue indicated the shed with his thumb, pointing behind him, and I went hurrying inside like Oliver Twist hungry for more.
When I returned, the two men were still eating their modest rations. They appeared to chew each grain of rice, savouring the food, and I realised I had a lot to learn, that in my cappuccino life I always left two thirds of the almond croissant, the pizza crusts, the glass of white wine I didn’t want even when I ordered it. My friends and I and everyone talked about the melting ice caps and vanishing forests without doing anything more than talk. We consumed and chattered and contacted the BBC and the cable channels to promise that this author and that author was a witty raconteur, hilarious but at the same time deep and interesting, really great television. Even in the book business you are selling dreams.
My belly was swollen by the time I had finished and I stretched out on the sand staring up at the sky. When the men lit up, I fancied a cigarette and lay there breathing in their smoke. I ran my palms over my tummy and felt like a turkey that was being fattened for Christmas.
Why, when the men ate so little, had I been given a heaped plate of food and then, like a fat girl at boarding school, gone scurrying off for seconds? Why had I been given the one china plate? They were mocking me, having fun, I decided. As the white European, would I not normally expect special treatment? Didn’t we as a people always take the best and leave the scraps for the natives?
Now I was the native. With the stripping away of my clothes, I had been stripped of identity, a past, of preconceptions. I was stuffing my belly because I didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. I possessed nothing. I wore nothing. I was nothing. I was grateful for the plate of food, for the feel of the warm sun on my skin, for any small kindness.
Three
Escape
T HE BOAT WAS RUST-COLOURED , probably an old fishing vessel, although it looked as if it had been patched together from the cannibalised parts of many boats. At the stern, the flag moving idly on the breeze was from a country I couldn’t identify, the pale configuration on a dark background suggesting the Skull and Crossbones and making me wonder if on my long swim I had slipped through a time warp into NeverLand.
The tide had gone out another hundred yards or so and the boat dropped anchor almost as far again beyond the low-water mark. A spiral of fumes rose up in a pale corkscrew, the motor booming like a heartbeat that echoed over the sea, the sound intrusive after the long hours of silence; there was no electricity on the island, no wailing radios or fizzing neon, no car horns or rowdy crowds.
When the motor died, the fumes dispersed and there was a momentary calm before the lap of the waves and the night birds continued their song. The sun was going down, staining the sky orange, but the light lingered and from where I stood between the two men I could see people emerging on deck, the numbers swelling until the side of the boat was a wall of bodies like passengers waiting for a delayed train on the Underground. A white dinghy was lowered over the side and, while some of the men loaded it with sacks and containers of water, others climbed one at a time down a rope ladder into the sea.
They waded towards us through waist deep water like survivors from a shipwreck. They were carrying sports bags, rucksacks, baskets, parcels tied with twine; I saw one man in a shiny suit and tie balancing a well-travelled suitcase on his head. As they left the
When I had finished, the man in blue indicated the shed with his thumb, pointing behind him, and I went hurrying inside like Oliver Twist hungry for more.
When I returned, the two men were still eating their modest rations. They appeared to chew each grain of rice, savouring the food, and I realised I had a lot to learn, that in my cappuccino life I always left two thirds of the almond croissant, the pizza crusts, the glass of white wine I didn’t want even when I ordered it. My friends and I and everyone talked about the melting ice caps and vanishing forests without doing anything more than talk. We consumed and chattered and contacted the BBC and the cable channels to promise that this author and that author was a witty raconteur, hilarious but at the same time deep and interesting, really great television. Even in the book business you are selling dreams.
My belly was swollen by the time I had finished and I stretched out on the sand staring up at the sky. When the men lit up, I fancied a cigarette and lay there breathing in their smoke. I ran my palms over my tummy and felt like a turkey that was being fattened for Christmas.
Why, when the men ate so little, had I been given a heaped plate of food and then, like a fat girl at boarding school, gone scurrying off for seconds? Why had I been given the one china plate? They were mocking me, having fun, I decided. As the white European, would I not normally expect special treatment? Didn’t we as a people always take the best and leave the scraps for the natives?
Now I was the native. With the stripping away of my clothes, I had been stripped of identity, a past, of preconceptions. I was stuffing my belly because I didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. I possessed nothing. I wore nothing. I was nothing. I was grateful for the plate of food, for the feel of the warm sun on my skin, for any small kindness.
Three
Escape
T HE BOAT WAS RUST-COLOURED , probably an old fishing vessel, although it looked as if it had been patched together from the cannibalised parts of many boats. At the stern, the flag moving idly on the breeze was from a country I couldn’t identify, the pale configuration on a dark background suggesting the Skull and Crossbones and making me wonder if on my long swim I had slipped through a time warp into NeverLand.
The tide had gone out another hundred yards or so and the boat dropped anchor almost as far again beyond the low-water mark. A spiral of fumes rose up in a pale corkscrew, the motor booming like a heartbeat that echoed over the sea, the sound intrusive after the long hours of silence; there was no electricity on the island, no wailing radios or fizzing neon, no car horns or rowdy crowds.
When the motor died, the fumes dispersed and there was a momentary calm before the lap of the waves and the night birds continued their song. The sun was going down, staining the sky orange, but the light lingered and from where I stood between the two men I could see people emerging on deck, the numbers swelling until the side of the boat was a wall of bodies like passengers waiting for a delayed train on the Underground. A white dinghy was lowered over the side and, while some of the men loaded it with sacks and containers of water, others climbed one at a time down a rope ladder into the sea.
They waded towards us through waist deep water like survivors from a shipwreck. They were carrying sports bags, rucksacks, baskets, parcels tied with twine; I saw one man in a shiny suit and tie balancing a well-travelled suitcase on his head. As they left the
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