Charity Sunday: For the after-thoughts - #AmnestyInternational #COVID-19 #CharitySunday

 

Welcome to Charity Sunday for April 2020.

I faced a dilemma, deciding what cause to support this month. The fact is, everyone is hurting – losing their jobs, their homes, their savings and their confidence in the future. Cut off from family members, friends and neighbors, and spiritual support, people are experiencing a level of uncertainty that few of us in developed countries have previously known.

Who needs help the most? Medical workers on the front lines, stretched to the limit, forced to make do with inadequate supplies? The elderly, the disabled and the chronically ill, for whom Covid-19 is likely a death sentence? Impoverished communities and people of color, living with environmental pollution that raises their risk a hundred-fold? Parents stuck at home, trying to make ends meet while keeping their children occupied and educated? The kids themselves, bored, depressed, possibly hungry, definitely scared?

Finally, I decided to focus on people nobody seems to care much about: immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, especially those crammed into detention centers with little access to sanitation, health care, or hope. Amnesty International has an urgent action campaign to advocate for these individuals, whose situation makes them much more vulnerable than most groups. A single Covid-19 case in a crowded prison or refugee camp could wipe out thousands of people in a matter of days.

Nobody should be treated as an after-thought. And the fight for human rights never stops.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/

So this Charity Sunday, I will donate $2 to Amnesty International for each comment I receive. I usually keep my Charity Sunday offer open for a full month, but due to the urgency, this one will close on Thursday April 30^th. So please comment – and tell your friend to come do the same!

Meanwhile – as usual, I have an excerpt for you. This is a bit from “Wired”, one of the light-hearted D/s stories in my collection Hearts &Handcuffs: Romantic Kink.

I’ll give away a copy of the book to one person who leaves a comment.

The building was mostly dark when I drove into the parking lot. A motion sensor switched on an overhead light as I approached the door. I punched in my security code. A buzz, a click, and I was in the lobby. The guard's desk was unoccupied. My footsteps echoed through the dim, empty corridors.

I slipped through the fire doors that led to my group's space. The glassed-in server room was lit, plus the ceiling fluorescents above Krishna's office. The floor was carpeted in this area. I moved without a sound.

Krishna sat with back to me, focused on his screen. From where I stood, outside his cubicle, I couldn't see what he was gazing at so intently. But I could guess.

“Krishna,” I murmured.

He swiveled around, simultaneously flicking the off switch on his monitor. I could tell that the move was well-practiced.

“Liz! What are you doing here?” As I entered the cubicle, he backed the chair towards the desk, apparently trying to put more distance between us.

“I came to visit you. I thought you might be lonely.” I took another step forward. He had nowhere to go. An embarrassed grin stretched his lush lips.

His shirt was open to the middle button. A gold chain nestled in the black curls on his breast. He was breathing hard; the rise and fall of his chest made the necklace glitter. I dropped my gaze to his lap. As I expected, I found a significant bulge.

“Um―no―I'm fine―just making sure the backups are all right. I was going to leave in a few minutes...”

I brushed a fingertip across the lump in his groin. He shivered. His nervous smile evaporated.

“Don't go yet,” I crooned. “I just got here.”

I had changed out of my work clothes. I now wore a tight purple jersey with a V neck that flattered my modest breasts and a short denim skirt. I trailed a finger down my throat to my cleavage. Krishna's eyes followed in fascination. I retraced my path to my throat, the feathery touch making my nipples pebble, and removed the scarf I'd draped around my neck.

He gripped the curved arms of his desk chair, as though he were afraid he was going to faint. I slipped the scarf under the chair arm and wrapped it twice around his wrist, then tied a firm knot. He didn't move. The lavender silk was lovely against his brown skin.

“Is that too tight?” My voice was barely louder than a whisper. Krishna shook his head. His eyes were black pools of lust. I pulled a second scarf from my back pocket, this one turquoise, and secured his other arm. He trembled when I touched him.

I seated myself on his lap. His erection poked deliciously at my bottom, even through the heavy denim of my skirt. He must be huge, I thought. I'd know before long.

His beautiful face hovered inches from mine. He dropped his eyes, focusing on his bound wrist.

 

“No,” I protested, lifting his chin so that he could not look away. “Look at me, for once. I've been trying to get your attention for months. You're not getting away from me this time.”

Krishna's lips parted, as though he was about to speak. I stopped him with a fierce kiss. At first he resisted, struggling against the scarves, his lips pressed tightly together to keep me out. I braced my palms against his chest and bore down on him, prying those lips apart with my tongue.

All at once he let go. His mouth was as lush and hot as it looked, tasting of coffee and anise. I fed on him, nibbling and sucking, pouring out my long-denied lust. He opened to me, not exactly passive, but giving me control.

My bare thighs grew damp with the heat of that kiss. My nipples peaked into aching knots. His smell surrounded me, soap and sweat and the coconut oil he used on his hair. His rod prodded the crack between my legs. I burrowed deeper into his mouth, kissing him harder.

Krishna arched up, grinding himself against my ass. I broke the kiss and hopped off his lap. “Oh no you don't! Your orgasm belongs to me.”

“Please, Liz!” Krishna looked miserable and needy.

“Oh, now you're begging!” I strutted back and forth in front of him on my high-heeled boots, giving him an eyeful of my slutty outfit. “Maybe I should just leave you here, tied up and frustrated. After all, you've frustrated me for an awfully long time.”

“No, please...”

“What will Steve and Rob think when they come in tomorrow and find you tied to your chair? And when they turn on your monitor?”

I reached over his shoulder to click the switch. As I'd expected, the screen was full of kinky images, men hogtied and suspended, secured in a hundred uncomfortable positions, all with huge, hungry erections.

Krishna looked terrified. “Don't tell anyone―please don't tell! They'll deport me if they find out...”

“Your secret is safe with me.” I tangled my fingers in his opulent hair. “Provided that you cooperate, of course.”

Don’t forget to leave a comment! Every one means $2 to help immigrants and asylum seekers. And one person who comments will get a free book!

Plus - I hope you'll visit the other authors participating in today's Charity Sunday blog hop. Find out about the causes they're supporting - and leave your comment to help! 

Charity Sunday: Helping you to imagine... #NewRelease #CharitySunday #AmnestyInternational

Greetings!

This is the weekend I would normally do a Charity Sunday post, where I post about some worthwhile cause, then invite you to comment. Then I donate to the charity according to the number of comments I receive.

Today, I’m doing something a bit different.

I don’t know if you saw my post “Imagine” a few days ago, on World Refugee Day. In that post (which I’d love you to go over and read), I invite you to imagine what it would be like to be one of the 70 million individuals in the world today who have been forced to leave their homes because of conflict, violence and disasters natural and man-made. Despite their suffering, refugees are in many places treated as unwanted, even inhuman. Can you imagine what it would be like, to be homeless, destitute and despised?

Today, I thought I’d help you imagine, by sharing my own attempts to make real the plight of one group of refugees. According to UNHCR, there are currently more than 95,000 refugees in Thailand, living in nine camps. Most are from minority groups along the border with Myanmar, who have been displaced by decades of ethnic conflict.

My new release Refuge brings one of these camps to life, seen through the eyes of a young private in the Thai military. Here’s the blurb:

I never wanted to be a soldier, especially a guard at the remote, dusty Mae La refugee camp, a thousand kilometers from my home. But these days there were no jobs in our village. My mother depended on the money I sent her each month. Still, she cried whenever I phoned her.

Until I met the lovely hill tribe girl Preean, though—until she asked for help I knew I shouldn’t give her—I never really understood what I was doing to my fellow human beings. How could she go on, one day after another in that desolate place, without any hope for change? Mae La was limbo—once you arrived here you were stuck. There was nowhere else you could go.

To love her was dangerous, a risk to my own life and freedom. But when she offered her body and her heart, how could I refuse? 

~ ~ ~ ~ 

Refuge is a multicultural erotic romance with a happy ending, but it portrays, as vividly as I know how, the miserable life of these refugees.

I want you to read this story. You can download it free from Smashwords by going here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/945432

and then using this coupon:

VZ77M

So here’s the deal this Charity Sunday. Instead of making donations based on how many comments I get, I’ll donate two dollars to Amnesty International (one of the most important organizations working for refugee rights and welfare, around the world) for every download of the book (free or paid).

Furthermore, I plan to donate all proceeds from sales on either Smashwords or Amazon (which I hope will have the book up within the next 24 hours) to Amnesty.

I’ll donate two dollars for every review on Amazon as well.

The coupon and donation offer expires on July 4^th. The altruistic allocation of proceeds will go on indefinitely.

Feel free to share the coupon, and the book, with your friends and family. The more people who imagine the life of a refugee, the more likely it is that the world will work to reduce their suffering and give them a home.

Finally, here’s a bit from the book, so you’ll have some idea what you’re getting:

~ ~ ~ ~ 

“Excuse me, do you have a pencil?”

I jumped. I had been daydreaming about home, eating somtum and gai yang with Mum and my brother Daeng under the tamarind tree in the backyard. The light tap on my shoulder dragged me back to the smelly, dusty camp where I was supposed to be on guard.

“What?”

“A pencil? Or a pen?” The young woman gestured back towards a knot of kids gathered in the shade of the water tower. She held up a sheet of corrugated cardboard scavenged from some trash heap. “I’m teaching them their alphabet. I’ve got this but nothing to write with.”

She wore a faded teeshirt, baggy shorts and flip flops. Her hair hung down her back in a messy ponytail tied with an old shoelace. Still I could see that she was pretty, slightly built, with sharper features and paler skin then the girls back home. Her smile appeared genuine, though her eyes appraised me nervously. I guessed that it took some courage for her to approach me, a uniformed soldier with a loaded rifle—never mind that I was only a year or two older than she was, and wanting nothing more than to go back to my family in Yasathon.

I leaned my gun against my thigh. “I’ve got a pencil back at the barracks, but I can’t leave my post until my shift is over. Maybe you could postpone your lessons until after three? I’ll bring it to you then.”

Her face lit up. She grabbed and squeezed my hands. Hers were tiny, but strong. “Oh, thank you, sir! Thank you.”

I blushed at her enthusiasm. “Never mind. Now you’d better go.” I’d noticed Sergeant Chokchai headed my way. He didn’t approve of what he called “fraternization” between us and the camp’s inhabitants.

“Everything secure, Private Nu?” He loomed over me. I swallowed hard. He came from Bangkok. He had made it clear in his view, I was just a stupid hick from the Northeast.

“Yes, sir. Everything is normal, sir.”

“What were you doing, talking to that filthy Burmese cunt?”

I winced at his foulness. “Nothing. She wanted to know the time, that’s all.”

“Why should she care? She’s not going anywhere!” Chokchai gave a nasty chuckle “You should know better, though. Don’t talk to them. Don’t get involved in their affairs. Oh, they’ll act all polite and respectful, but they’re snakes. They’ll stab you as soon as your back’s turned. You remember what happened to Sakon, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Sakon had been another sergeant. They had found him behind the mess hall with his throat slit. Everyone assumed that he was murdered by one of the refugees, even though he’d been a brutal man who had many enemies.

“Just remember, they’re animals. Ignorant, superstitious animals.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction that the girl had disappeared, shaking his head in obvious disgust, before returning his unwelcome attention to me.

~ ~ ~ ~ 

Thank you for your time, and your compassion.

Quick update: the book is now available on Amazon (but not free):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TDYD7DB
 

Keeping the Memory Alive (#giveaway #Cambodia #killingfields)

By Carol DeMent (Guest Blogger)

When she signed up to host my blog tour, Lisabet asked me about my experiences with Cambodia—the unforgettable experiences that led to my writing Saving Nary.

I met my first Cambodian family when I was in my mid-twenties. I was in a funky spot—life was turning out to be harder than I had imagined it would be: I had not met Mr. Wonderful yet, nor made my first million. So I decided to volunteer to teach English to refugees to take my mind off myself for a change.

Boy, did it ever. I was shy, and faced my first class of ten with shaking hands and knocking knees. And then I looked into their faces, into their eyes, and saw ….hope. Hope for a better life and a chance to raise their children in peace. Hope for a full pantry and a secure place to lay their heads at night. Hope for a future free of bombs dropping, machine gun fire, and terror at the hands of a torturer.

All of a sudden, my life looked pretty rosy.

My students invited me to their home for a meal. We sat on mats and ate from a “table” made of newspapers spread out on the living room floor. I will never forget the young woman who held a baby in her arms, telling me in broken English as tears ran down her face how the Khmer Rouge had killed her family. Her vocabulary was limited, but she knew the words she needed to tell her story: gun, machete, dead, torture, starve, blood.

As I continued to work with refugees from Cambodia, I heard again and again how much they had suffered under the Khmer Rouge. In 1984, a major motion picture, “The Killing Fields”, focused attention on Cambodia’s tragic history, but it soon faded into obscurity.

Writing Saving Nary is my attempt to bear witness to that young woman’s story, told to me so many years ago. In researching the novel, I visited the refugee camps in Thailand and the killing fields in Cambodia, trips that only heightened my desire to keep this history alive. What happened in Cambodia and the consequences of the tragedy there hold lessons that we would do well to learn, lessons about the abuse of power, about resiliency and reconciliation, about the human spirit and the will to strive for a better life.

Thank you for inviting me to guest blog on your site. I hope you enjoy reading Saving Nary!

Blurb

A Finalist in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Saving Nary explores the losses, loyalties and secrets held within families broken by war and genocide. This compelling novel presents a palette of unique characters who struggle to make sense of the events that led them to America, even as they ponder the bewildering culture and lifestyle of their new homeland.

Refugee Khath Sophal lost everything when the Khmer Rouge swept into power in Cambodia: his livelihood gone, his family dead or missing; his sanity barely intact from the brutality he has been forced to witness.

Now resettled in the Pacific Northwest, Khath treads a narrow path between the horrors of his past and the uncertainties of the present. His nights are filled with twisted dreams of torture and death. By day he must guard constantly against the flashbacks triggered by the simple acts of daily living, made strange in a culture he does not understand.

Then Khath meets Nary, a mysterious and troubled Cambodian girl whose presence is both an aching reminder of the daughters he has lost, and living proof that his girls, too, could still be alive. Nary’s mother Phally, however, is another matter. A terrible suspicion grows in Khath’s mind that Phally is not who or what she claims to be. A split develops in the community between those who believe Phally and those who believe Khath. And those, it seems, who don’t really care who is right but just want to stir up trouble for their own personal gain.

Khath’s search for the truth leads him to the brink of the brutality he so despises in the Khmer Rouge. His struggle to wrest a confession from Phally ultimately forces him to face his own past and unravel the mystery of his missing daughters.

Excerpt

“Go back to Cambodia?” Pra Chhay stared at Khath with puzzled eyes.

Khath nodded. “What choice do we have, brother?” he said. “Our people are being forced back across the border into the arms of the Khmer Rouge. My daughters will have no chance now to get into Khao I Dang. We must go back to continue our search for them.”

Pra Chhay, dressed in saffron monk’s robes and cracked rubber sandals, stood framed by the setting sun outside the open doorway of the bamboo and thatch shelter he shared with Khath and five other families. The odor of too many human bodies crowded into a small living space hung heavy in the air spilling across the threshold.

The rectangular shelter was partitioned by side walls into six open-faced cubicles, three to a side, facing a center corridor running the length of the shelter. There was no privacy other than what could be attained by turning one’s back to the open side of one’s cubicle or crawling inside a mosquito net hung over the thin kapok sleeping mattresses on the floor. The shelter’s only doors were located at each end of the central corridor, opening directly to the outside.

With no way to secure themselves or their meagre belongings, the refugees lived in helpless fear of night visits by bored Thai soldiers, whose transgressions ranged from theft to rape. Pra Chhay and Khath occupied an end cubicle by the door, making them even more vulnerable to unwanted attention from the soldiers, but because of Pra Chhay’s position as a monk, they were usually left alone.

As Pra Chhay slipped his calloused feet out of his sandals, stepping barefoot into the corridor, a gentle breeze puffed out the hem of his robes and blew camp dust into the shelter.

Khath motioned to Pra Chhay to shut the door. Careful not to waste a drop of the day’s ration of precious water, he barely moistened the corner of a rag and ran it over random surfaces in their cubicle that might attract and harbor dust: the wooden altar in the corner, the cracks and edges of the bamboo slats that formed the walls of the hut, the straw mats that covered the floor. A squat wooden bench, left behind by the prior resident, completed the amenities of the living space.

Pra Chhay took off his outer layer of robes and hung them on a sliver of bamboo pulled out from the wall to serve as a peg for clothing. Turning, he watched Khath rub his cloth over the wooden bench, back and forth, back and forth, harder and harder, the knuckles gripping the cloth turning white with effort.

“Khath, stop it. You will polish our only seat away to nothing,” Pra Chhay said. “Tell me exactly what you heard today that makes you say we must return to Cambodia.” The monk settled himself comfortably on the floor.

With an effort, Khath slowed his rubbing and carefully folded the rag and laid it on his lap. His eyes followed the tiny particles now dancing in the single ray of golden sun that slipped through the crack between the outer door and its frame. He laced his fingers tightly together to stop their reaching for the rag as, mesmerized, he watched the motes settle onto the areas he had just cleaned. The sight of dust on surfaces where it ought not to be was still intolerable to Khath, though nearly six years had passed since his obsession was born on the day the Khmer Rouge killed his wife and son.

“Silence that boy,” the soldier had said to his wife on that awful day. Khieu gathered their son Bunchan into her arms, but how is one to soothe a toddler who cries from hunger when there is no food? Khath, Khieu and their three children had been walking for three days in the heat and humidity, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other refugees inching their way out of Phnom Penh by order of the Khmer Rouge. Already hunger, thirst and exhaustion had thinned their ranks: the elderly and the ill simply dropped along the sides of the road, patiently awaiting the mercy of death.

Given only minutes to prepare for their exodus, the food Khath and his family carried was gone in a day. After that, they bought, scavenged and bartered for whatever nourishment they could find along the way. Now, they stood next in line before a table of grim-faced cadres in the simple uniform of the Khmer Rouge: black cotton shirts and pants with kramas, red-checkered scarves, wound around their heads or necks. The cadres were checking identity papers and quizzing the refugees about their prior occupations.

Bunchan’s incessant crying enraged the soldier. “Silence him or I will,” he warned Khieu.

About the Author

Carol DeMent worked in the field of South East Asian refugee resettlement for seven years, and completed master's level research into international refugee resettlement policy. She lived for two years in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer and has traveled extensively in South East Asia. Her first novel, Saving Nary, was a Finalist in the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Nary-Carol-DeMent/dp/1522982906  
https://www.amazon.com/Carol-DeMent/e/B01CRJ1EVA

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15089080.Carol_DeMent

Carol DeMent will be awarding $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sunday Snog (#193) for Refugees

My Sunday Snog today comes from my short story “Refuge”, published in the altruistic anthology Coming Together: At Last. That anthology celebrates cross-race and cross-cultural desire, with proceeds supporting Amnesty International. The story is set in a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border. The heroine Prean is a young woman from the Karen tribe, one of the many ethnic minorities who have been subject to brutal treatment in the past by the Myanmar government. The hero Nu is a Thai soldier, a guard at the camp. Nu is from a poor and marginalized region in the northeastern part of the country, subject to discrimination and abuse by his superiors. He’s drawn to help Prean despite the danger to his own safety.

“Refuge” is a story of hope, of love and humanity in dark times and places. It seems particularly relevant now, as the world struggles to deal with the millions of refugees streaming out of Syria and neighboring regions. It’s enough to make one feel hopeless. What can one person do in the face of the suffering millions?

Whatever we can. So I will donate $1 to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF) for each comment I receive on this post. MSF is actively working to help refugees in a variety of locations: in Greece, in Serbia, in France, and elsewhere as needs shift during this global emergency.

Please help. Read my snog and leave a comment. Share this post with your friends and family. Put it on Facebook. Tweet it. Make a donation of your own to MSF or another charity working with refugees.

People are not numbers. Every refugee has a story.

(Once you’re done with my snog, by the way, head back to Victoria’splace for more sexy Sunday kisses.)

I watched her body sway in front of me. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness. I could see her slender back, with its cloak of gleaming hair. I swallowed hard at the sight of her hips, their swell distorting the patterned fabric of her sarong. I was sweaty and nervous as she led me through the forests near the camp boundaries and up to higher ground. The aching lump in my groin made it difficult to walk.

The path opened into a grassy clearing. Moonlight poured in. To my left rose a steep wall of limestone. The plash of falling water reached my ears. Rivulets emerged from the cliff at several spots and tumbled into a mossy pool at its base, before spilling over and flowing down hill toward the camp. The cool breeze was rich with the scent of growing things, free of the fetid aromas of the caged humanity.

I took a deep breath. Prean stopped by the pool. She turned to me, her arms wide in invitation. I stood rooted in that magical spot, snared by her beauty.

“Nu?” Her voice released me. I gathered her in my arms, burying my face in her fragrant locks. The soft flesh of her breasts pressed against my chest, sending a thrill through my limbs that settled in my groin. Amazed at my daring, I ran my palms over her cloth-wrapped hips, around to her buttocks, and pulled her body tight against mine.

She ground her pelvis against my swollen cock. I moaned, finding her lewdness shocking but irresistible. “Mmm,” she murmured. “I guess that you do like me, after all.” Before I could stop her (and only part of me wanted to), she had slipped her hand between us and unfastened my fly.

My rigid penis sprang into her hand, an arrow to its target. She stroked it delicately, like some fluttering bird that might escape. It swelled at her touch. As it hardened further, she started to squeeze, pumping rhythmically from base to tip as though she was milking a goat. She smeared the sensitive bulb with moisture leaking from the eye, and I nearly lost control. Meanwhile, with her other hand, she grabbed my head and pulled my lips to hers.

Her mouth was open from the first. Her kiss was bold, all tongue and teeth, honest in its need—the hot, hungry kiss of a woman starved for loving. I returned the kiss, as best I could, lost, dizzy with lust. My senses reeled. It was too much. The fever of her mouth, the cool silk of her fingers on my cock. Her scent, grass and smoke, salt and musk. Her taste, lemon and mint. I felt my balls contract and groaned, sure that I was about to embarrass myself by spurting all over her hand.

Prean knew. At the last moment, she released both my cock and my mouth. Her smile was full of mischief and understanding. Stepping away from me, she pulled her tunic over her head. Jet locks tumbled over her bare shoulders. I stared at her breasts, white and plump as little chicks with tips dark as tamarind pods. My palms ached to cup them, to feel them yield under my touch. She loosed the tucks holding the sarong around her hips. The fabric dropped to the ground, revealing her flat belly and winking navel, her pale thighs and shapely calves, and at the center of the universe, the tangled patch of black fur that hid her sex.

My cock twitched, eager for a taste. I was too shy to move.

Her scent was sharper now. She knelt and spread the sarong upon the grass, then lay on her side, watching me. “Please. Take off your clothes, Nu. I want you.”

Remember – every comment means a donation to MSF!

Idyll

By Teresa Lamai

In my non-Teresa Lamai life, I work in a refugee agency and write mainstream fiction. People I meet sometimes ask me why I don’t write novels based on the fascinating stories I must hear every day from clients. I still haven’t figured out how to respond. There’s not really a polite way of saying, “Because that would be exploitative and creepy?”

And yet I can’t afford to be too much of a prig about it. In one of my first stories I did just that—sort of.

“Idyll” is the first real story I wrote, based on a house I shared whilst working in Zagreb in the ‘90s. On a tiny budget, I rented a room in a shared house on the edge of town, near the cemetery, with a broken gate, impossibly thick rosebushes, and an overturned rowboat in the lawn. The drunken landlord appeared from time to time but lived, mysteriously, elsewhere. The occupants were drifters like me, some anarchist students, and some Bosnian refugees in transit to other places.

On my first morning, jet-lagged, I made my way into the kitchen and explained I hadn’t had a chance to go shopping—could I have just a piece of bread? One of the students—who wasn’t named Goran—said, “This is Balkans, and I am anarchist. Please never ask for bread, just take it.”

The room I occupied had traces of bird-seed on the windowsill, and an amaryllis blossom only half-faded, and no other traces of who might have lived there before me.

There were shared meals in the evening, and morning cups of tea out in the sunlight, around the peeling rowboat. As the summer went on, the occupants of the house moved away till there was only a handful of us left.

I don’t remember when we all started lying in the grass of a morning, but once we started we couldn’t stop. I would come home from work to find everyone still lying in the unmown lawn, staring up into the dappled heat as if drugged, and I would lie down to join them. For hours I would listen to their breathing and watch the sunlight through my lashes, feeling time slow and pool around us. I knew that I would always be there.

No, I wasn’t involved with anyone in the house, and I wasn’t in love with any of them. If there were lovers among the residents there, they kept it to themselves.

My only purpose in inventing Fatima and writing her story was to get back to that hot grass, where you felt you could live forever.

I’m glad that “Idyll” is included in Coming Together Presents Teresa Lamai. As you’ve seen, all of the proceeds will go to Amnesty International. As a gift to the first commenter, I have an anthology called Just Watch Me, edited by Violet Blue, in which I have a story called “In Snow.”
Idyll

In Coming Together Presents Teresa Lamai

“Fatima, just take it. You don't have to ask.”

There was fresh sweet bread on the table and for the first time in months I felt hunger sharply. My new housemate Goran got angry when I asked for some. I was still learning that Goran prides himself on not owning anything, not wanting anything. I didn’t notice Amel smirking in the corner until he was suddenly standing next to me. He twisted off one end of the bread and said, “Come see the garden.”

Goran and Amel are the only Croatians living in this tiny house by the cemetery in Zagreb. They came to the city for the University, but their families can’t afford the new tuition. So instead they load trucks and work in Peace and Anarchy, a youth center built in an abandoned gasworks. The rest of us are from Bosnia. I should say we’re refugees from Bosnia, here in Zagreb in a strictly provisional sense, on our way to Pakistan or Germany or the US.

As the only girl, I have my own room. Slavica, an older woman my mother had known, was living in the front room with her father and her baby son when I arrived. They’ve since been relocated to Austria. There will most likely be more refugees to take their place but for now it’s just the three of us. Amel and Goran live in the larger upstairs bedroom, and I in the smaller bedroom.

Just seven months ago, it became clear I had to leave Bosnia. My parents were gone soon after the sniping started, and my brothers got German visas for their families. Sarajevo is like a dream now. I can’t always separate the reality of what happened from the rumors that consumed us like a collective psychosis.

I may eventually join my brothers in Germany. I may get a visa for the US. I may stay forever here with Amel and Goran.

The sun here is stronger, more Mediterranean. Even in the early morning it’s like an ancient power in a limpid, fragrant sky. The first mass is ending at the cathedral across the street and the shaded cemetery is already flickering with plastic memorial candles. The courtyards of the blue painted Romani tenements next door are filling with children. I’m washing the sheets in our yard. The garden is a late summer mess of palm trees, kiwi vines, and wild roses. There’s no sense in grooming anything since no one stays here long.

Goran comes out, fat pastry in one hand, guitar in the other. His long curls are wet, snaking down his bare back. He puts the guitar on the ground and sits next to me to help. Amel has been out here all morning, simply because, like a sly shadow, he is never far from me. Goran laughs at himself as he wrings one corner of a sheet. His fuzzy thigh presses into my skirt. Warmth on my shoulders and soft pulls at my skull tell me Amel is behind me now.

He’s braiding grass into my hair, as he likes to do when we’re outside.

We sit quietly for a long, long time. Every time the breeze stops, I can almost hear our hearts beating.

I’m in love with Goran because he’s generosity and sweetness without limits. He carries his large, masculine frame with a sense of wonder and discomfort, as if he just grew into it. His wide shoulders make the house seem small. He towers over me. I think he is intent on keeping his round blue eyes clear of unkind thoughts, as if he believes innocence will protect him like enchanted armor. He fed me constantly when I first arrived here, cutting me slices of bread and cheese and asking if I preferred coffee or chocolate milk or maybe green tea until I burst into exasperated laughter and started smacking him. Our first kiss was a week later, when he came home with a bag of birdseed for me to feed the sparrows outside my bedroom window. As if he expected me to be here forever. I couldn’t stand it. I grasped round cheeks between my palms, drinking in his unsettled gaze for a few moments before touching my lips to his. His startled moans made me wet.

His innocence feels less contrived when I’m pressing into him. I’m teaching him that love is selfish. I grab his ass strongly enough to hurt, digging crescents into the flesh, sometimes leaving tiny scabs. I have never told him I love him but he knows from the way I kiss him, the way I run my tongue over his neck and the warm sweet mounds of his chest. The first time I gripped the base of his hardening cock and nipped at his scrotum, he gasped, “That’s good, that’s so good,” with genuine surprise in his voice. I know it’s unbearable for him to lie still when I’m teasing the silky head of his cock from its foreskin, using just my tongue. I tell him to lie still anyway because I want us both to be free from what he thinks he should do. I just want to torture him until he’s angry enough to fuck me without thinking, his hands tight on my pelvis, cock scorching through my cunt, both of us transported and beyond hurting.

I love Amel for his black silent eyes that seem to absorb everything he looks at. He is slight and dark, speaking rarely, disappearing into the night when it falls. Goran says Amel seems to always be ashamed. Amel follows me stealthily like a cat as I move through the house, settling in the kitchen when I cook or unexpectedly lying on the carpet beside me when I read. We’re not sure where he goes in the evenings.

Nearly every night, I wake up after midnight. The moon has shifted. The air is still. I never hear Amel come home, or open my door, or undress, or pull the covers off the bed. I’ve never seen him naked in the daylight. His voice is what wakes me first, followed by the smooth glide of his belly on mine. The smoky, sweet smell of his hair as it falls on my forehead. His hands are so painfully delicate on the back of my neck that I forget not to moan.

His skin starts to gleam, slippery with our sweat. He moves slowly as if he were underwater, and the breath is sucked out of me as he writhes, his full weight on mine. I’m fascinated by the slick heat of his body. I press one damp breast, then the other, into him, stretching my back to let the arcs of our stomachs kiss. He keeps his hips away from me until this moment. He knows I’ll be wet when he lowers his cock to slide against my aching lips, just splitting them to let the scent fill the room. This is when he finally kisses me. He lets me try to devour him with my mouth and my pussy, and he knows that he can do whatever he wants with me.

I move to lock my ankles behind him but he pulls me to the edge of the bed. Kneeling on the floor, he leans into my shaking thighs and laps with astonishing patience, from time to time sucking on the inner and outer labia until they burn under his breath. The heat in my chest suffocates me. When he starts to massage my clit with two fingers, I buck and he stops suddenly, moving up my body to kiss me with swollen lips that taste like seaweed and old red wine.

Amel plays this game over and over until just before dawn. When the first birds start singing, he slides himself into me slowly, as if he’s afraid he’ll be burnt. I’m not sure if I can take it when I first start to come, impaling myself desperately. I don’t care anymore about the obscene sounds I’m making; I feel this racing sweetness will kill me if I don’t let it out somehow. My cunt clenches tight, pulling on him until he stops, his spine twisting sideways as the come moves through him. He breaks into the exhausted, final thrusts as the sky becomes light.

I let him sleep. I get up because Goran and I always have our breakfast early in the garden. Goran is usually up already, wearing just his shorts, slouching in the moss-covered bench. He puts aside the guitar and holds out his arms to me. His chest is sun warmed.

Lately there has been no work for them, so they stay home with me all day. We read in the morning, sometimes go to the market to buy flowers or vegetables, and lie in the shady grass all afternoon. The lemon tree is starting to bear fruit. We are not sure how much longer we can go without paying rent.

The third notice came for me today. If I fail once again to report in a timely manner, I’m told, the offer of a US visa will be retracted. I can’t finish reading this right now; it’s time to make lunch. I drop the letter behind my bed and walk out to the patio.

****

Bio: Teresa Lamai was born in a car crash on Sandy Boulevard, Portland, Oregon, in 2003.

The woman in the passenger seat had been a dancer and a refugee activist, but a back injury from the crash left her laid up with far too much time on her hands. The world was turning just a little grey. Though she'd never written fiction before, somehow she found herself writing inappropriate stories, ones she couldn't possibly put her real name to. And so Teresa Lamai came to life.

Teresa Lamai’s erotic stories have appeared in anthologies ranging from Best Women’s Erotica to Zane’s Caramel Flava to Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Online, her stories have won awards at Clean Sheets. Reviewers have called her work "breathless," "searing," "miraculous," and "odd." She finds her inspiration in other art forms such as painting and dance. This anthology presents the best of her stories over the years--and some new ones besides.

Nowadays Teresa's real-life self still works in a refugee agency, and has begun writing novels and radio plays which have brought her a tiny bit of recognition and a huge amount of happiness. When she's not writing she reads novels, studies human rights law, takes on great quixotic projects in her garden, and bakes fantastic quantities of cinnamon rolls. Occasional dancing still occurs, especially when she learns that someone has enjoyed reading what she wrote.

She's chosen the charity Amnesty International, of which she's been a member since 1984, for its uncompromising defense of human rights around the world. We all of us have the right to live free of exploitation and oppression, so that we can get on with doing the marvelous things we were born to do.