He was turning her around, and because he was a head taller than her, he had to bend his legs to enter from behind. It was awkward like this, and she lost her balance and half scrambled, half fell to the red ground. She barely needed to guide him in. His first thrust was hard, almost cruel, shoving himself into her up to the hilt, and it had been so long since she had had a man, feeling the shock of being completely filled all at once. ‘Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh!’ She heard herself but not the music approaching, and then she saw knees and legs and feet fill her field of vision.

They weren’t alone, so many people standing over her, and he’s inside me.

She walked forward on all fours until he slipped out of her, rushing to her feet. My God.

There seemed to be dozens of them, perhaps a hundred. Musicians and dancers formed a circle at the back, and they wore masks and nothing else, men and women naked and capering wildly. Drums were beaten and instruments she couldn’t identify made high shrill flute sounds. But the people closest to her wore no masks, their faces smiling in greeting, as if to a friend who had arrived. She couldn’t tell what they were. If their expressions were similar in reassurance, their features weren’t, some with flat noses and some with aquiline north African features, some pale and yet others darker than her. Chloe looked back at the artist. He made a comforting nod.

Women stepped forward with clay pots, and all at once they were showering her with liquid. Not water, some kind of oil. The smell was sweet and yet had a herbal sharpness to it. It ran between her breasts and down her back. Two women stepped eagerly forward to fix her hair, plaiting it as if in a peculiar ritual, and she heard the slap of the poured oil again and saw others being drenched, laughing and squealing not far away. Her painter was in front of her again, kissing her, but then she felt momentary panic and confusion as many arms grabbed hers, more hands gripped her by the waist, and she was being lifted.

People were taking the weight from her legs, holding her three feet off the foreign ground, and her bald artist, her suitor from the apartment, was entering her again in a deliciously slow stroke. Oh God, he was inside of her before all these people, and she felt more than exposed, more than nude because they were all naked with her anyway, but she felt primitive and raw. An orgasm was building in the core of her with the sensation of these hands touching her, of being on display during the sexual act. And it didn’t stop there.

© Tamzin Hall