He led her on a longer and more scenic return route from the restaurant, walking off the food, their path leading to a barefoot walk on the beach. She had blushed as he took off her shoes, finding it romantic as he knelt in front of her to remove each one. He held them for her with his own as they stepped onto the sand.
A live band was playing in the distance, the faintly familiar music somehow mixing harmoniously with the sound of the surf.
She found herself unable to stop stealing glances at him as he talked to her about everything and nothing, holding her hand. Soon she was simply looking at him, no longer bothering to hide it.
She learned that, like most boys, he had wanted to be an astronaut, but he had gone as far as joining an astronomy club. Which is why he could identify and point out constellations to her in the night sky.
She saw none of the shapes he said were there, but she had loved how animated he had become, and she had delighted in interrupting his outpouring of information with especially torrid tongue heavy kisses.
"Ah ..," he said, stopping as he saw something on the sand.
Marq picked up the palm frond and stripped out a stem. She watched him, confused at first, as he strung the stem through his sandals and her heels before he knotting it all through one of his belt loops. His hands were now free.
It was such a nerdy thing to do that she had laughed.
He shrugged. "I'm an engineer at heart. I solve problems."
She gestured at the shoes hanging off his waist. "And what problem does this solve?"
He had taken her into his arms and kissed her then, his hands free to roam, his hardness from her kisses pressing against her, forcing her to admit that his solution was a stroke of genius.
He soon learned something new about her too.
Stalls and carts still lined the beach's edge despite the lateness of the hour, lights on but low, selling everything from kebab skewers to ice cream. Marq got them smoothies served in small cored pineapples, and Honor had promptly identified the variant of the fruit.
"Maipure."
"What?"
"This is a Maipure pineapple."
Marq looked at her. "You can tell a pineapple's ... 'species' by just looking at it?"
"Only about twenty ..." she admitted.
"What about apples?" he asked. "I heard there are at least two thousand ...?"
"Seven thousand, five hundred variants ..." Honor corrected. "And counting."
His eyebrows went up. "Oh ..."
"And I know about ... thirty?"
"By sight, by taste?"
"And texture." She smiled. "Yes."
He stopped to look at her, genuinely brought up short. "That's ridiculously impressive, Miss Banet."
Honor blushed. "Different types of the same fruit cook and bake differently."
"So ... pineapples, apples and ...?"
"Strawberries, citrus, mangoes ..." Honor continued, grinning, showing off, enjoying his admiration. "We all had to take a class literally just called 'Fruit' in Bordeaux." She pronounced 'fruit' in French.
Marq stopped again. And she turned to look at him, curious.
"Tell me how much you need to open your patisserie."
She stared at him, her breathing suddenly deeper. Then she said, "No."
"Why?" he demanded.
"I don't want your money, Marq."
"This has nothing to do with ..."
"It has everything to do with it!" Honor snapped, angry. "Whether you like it or not!" She stepped close to him. "The moment I take any money from you, for myself, that's the moment I become a whore, not 'your' whore, just a whore. And I'm not a whore, Marq. Don't make me one."
"That word has nothing to do with you, Honor," he said. "Stop using it."
"Then don't offer me money after fucking me."
"I'm not just 'offering' you money. And it's not for having sex with you. This is an opportunity ..."
"Opportunity?" she snarled.
"For me, Honor," he said, his calm fraying. For the first time in front of her. "This is an opportunity for me. To invest in something, someone, I have absolute faith in. You."
"That doesn't change anything ..."
"Yes, it does," Marq insisted. "We, my partners and I, started Ascent to help people. We still do. People like Jao. Like you. We did not start with big accounts and blue chips."
He took her hand. "Do you know what Somsak said to me about you? That you are going to be better than even Phillipe Dufour. And I can see it. I can see this amazing wonderful passion in you, and ..."
She shook her head. "I'm not trying to start some multi-billion dollar company ..."
"I don't care what size you want to be, Honor," he said. "You're going to succeed at whatever scale. You're going to have people lining up outside your doors because you are that good. I just want you to let me be a part of it. I am asking you to let me help."
She turned away, and she was grateful for his silence, allowing her to think.
She looked back to him at last and then she stepped forward, putting her hands on his shoulders. She kissed him. Softly. "No, Marq," she whispered. She silenced him with another kiss when he tried to say something.
She loved kissing him.
"Thank you for your faith in me," she said when she broke the kiss. "But I don't want to get any more confused than I am now. I need to do this on my own."
For a moment, he looked like he was going to keep pushing, to persist on it, to demand her submission. And she was even more afraid that she would surrender.
Because accepting his 'help' meant having him in her life, her real life, not the otherworldly sex filled fantasy she was in now with him. And it terrified her; how much she wanted it, how much she wanted him.
Sensible, disciplined Honor Banet rose to the fore; it was unsustainable. Any further entanglement with him would be far too dangerous.
Especially since their arrangement was ending in less than three days. In less than seventy two hours, she would not be his odalisque anymore.
"Please," she said, "don't push. Don't say anything. Just accept my decision."
He looked unhappy, but he took a deep breath and leaned forward, lifting her chin up. "Okay, Miss Banet," he said, before kissing her.
She smiled at him when his lips left hers, and he smiled back, and after another pregnant moment, she pulled on his hand, continuing their stroll down the beach, toward the music.
As they got closer to the live band, Honor realized why it sounded so familiar.
"I've heard this before," Marq said, getting it too, the predatory glint back in his eyes. Over the next rise, the band was covering Fernando Marqelo's most popular hits.
He stopped; close enough to clearly hear the music but well away from the crowd surrounding the band. "Would the lady honor me with a dance?" He sighed at her amused look. "No pun intended."
She giggled, letting herself be pulled, closing the distance between them, remembering her first - and last - tango 'lesson' with him, Marqelo providing the music. She also distinctly remembered being naked and where it had inevitably ended up.
"Yes, she would." She kissed him. "Always."
"If I remember correctly," he said, as she melded her body against him, "we never did finish my tango lesson."
She gave him a look of mock outrage. "And whose fault was that, Mr. Haydn?"
He smiled. "I can't recall."
"Liar," she sniffed. "You just had to fuck me, didn't you?"
He looked into her eyes, all predator. "Always."
She smiled at that, and kissed him again.
"Well?" he asked.
"Well, what?"
"Are we continuing my lesson?"
She sighed dramatically. "Yes." She held up a finger. "But only if you promise you're going to let me finish ..."
He raised an eyebrow. "Is that all?"
She kissed him. "Yes."
He smiled. "Okay. I promise."
"Good." She kissed him again, putting her arms around his neck.
He kissed her back, and then he pulled down her top to her waist, exposing her breasts, her nipples swiftly hardening and pointing at him.
"You promised!" she gasped, making no attempt to cover herself. What was the point?
Besides, he liked seeing her breasts.
He gave her a quizzical look. "I promised to let you finish the lesson. I promised nothing about clothes."
Technically, he had not broken his word. She furled her lip. "I hate you."
The 'lesson' lasted about two songs before she ended it. "That's it! Oh my @#&%! I'm done!" She gasped, as Marq laved his tongue down her throat, one breast cupped in one hand, the other gripping her waist.
If Marq Haydn were ever to become a milonguero, she decided, it would be because another woman taught him, not her. Jealousy raged through her at the thought, but she had more pressing concerns.
Once again, the high slit and easy adjustability of the skirt proved highly convenient as she lay back on the sand, spreading herself open as she pulled him on top of her.
"Lesson over," she growled, when their lips parted. "Fuck me, Marq. Start fucking me now."
She was still wet, his cum still coating her insides from the restaurant, so his entry into her body was an easy affair, her pussy parting readily for him as he sank all the way inside her with a groan of absolute enjoyment.
At first, she had pumped her hips, made near frantic by his relentlessly exploring and plundering hands, his hardness pressing against her during their 'lesson'. But he pressed down, grinding on her, subduing her until she lay still, gazing up at him, surrendering with a quiet moan as he possessively took her lips.
He rode her slowly on the sand, kissing her, caressing her body, taking her nipples into his mouth, his soft grunts in her ear answering her quiet gasps in his.
Toward the end, her gasps stopped being quiet, as he deliberately slammed hard into her at the end of every slow stroke, their bodies slapping loudly together as she squealed and clutched at him, lifting her knees up, drawing him in deeper into her body.
She came with a choked cry as his lips covered her own, seconds before he stiffened, driving himself hard inside her one last time, holding her as he released again in her vagina, her walls fluttering around him as she gasped out his name.
Honor came to as he was sitting up, cradling her in his arms, somehow still inside her. She put her arms around his neck, their foreheads meeting, her naked breasts resting against his shirted chest, breathing together, wordless for a long time, listening to the waves crashing on the beach.
The intimacy of it sent a familiar surge of alarm, of danger, through her. But she simply didn't want to move. He stroked her naked back and she whimpered, helpless, what was left of her walls crumbling as she stopped fighting and sought his lips.
They had less than three days ...
There were tears in her eyes when their lips parted, and they were falling freely down her cheeks when they finally stood up from the sand, after several more searching kisses.
He held her as she buried her face in his neck until her sobs subsided, and then he led her off the beach, kneeling again to slip her sandals unto her feet.
She did not cover her breasts or reposition her skirt as she walked with him back to their villa, leaving herself open so he could see and touch her, stopping every so often to demand his lips again or just to be held in his arms, her emotions a confused and jumbled mess.
She felt exhausted and drained as he kissed her in front of Villa 6 before he led her inside, close to midnight. Silent, she had let him remove the top from where it was bunched around her waist, and then her skirt, letting it fall to her feet, before taking her into the bathroom.
She let him unhook the pussy plug but refused to let him take off the bodychain, silent, not explaining herself, not needing to.
He bathed her, lathering and showering off the sand from her hair and skin, kissing her all over her body while firmly stopping her from returning the favor; the experience somehow more intimate than sexual even as he finally held and masturbated her to another shaking silent climax before letting her go.
She was waiting for him on the bed, teeth brushed and hair mostly dried when he came out of the shower himself, leaning back on her hands, legs spread wide, displaying herself - his odalisque, ready for him.
She frowned confusedly when she saw that he wasn't also naked, but she went to him nonetheless when he got on the bed and reached for her.
He held her, wrapping her in his arms, his hands cupping her breasts and belly as she squirmed against him, containing her, and, despite herself, she had relaxed into his embrace and quickly fallen asleep.
He had always been a calm and rational man even in the most trying of times. But Marq Haydn lay awake for a long time, feeling something akin to panic settling inside him as he breathed her in, wondering what he was going to do after she boarded her flight in Bangkok to go home in a little over two days.
________________________
She had been pragmatic when she had chosen what to wear for the flight back to Bangkok. Her wardrobe on the island contained more than one sarong large enough to be made into a dress. So she had elected for the smallest, knotting it into a familiar twisting halter that stopped above mid-thigh, noting the thinness and near sheerness of it, the way the fabric clung to her body, the way her nipples poked hard through it.