June 27, 2007
Fiction
Duet for Violin and Dancer
When I bellydance, my body tells stories. The way I move blends with the music to weave tales of playful innocence, pride, disdain, sorrow, flirtation, even spirituality. I’ve danced to celebrate weddings, to honor newborns and ninety-year-olds, once in a hospital room to cheer a seriously ill friend.
Tonight, though, the story was going to be about desire. My desire.
The new violin player at the Casbah Restaurant had gotten under my skin as soon as I saw him. He was dark and strong-featured, with brown eyes—which describes most of the house band. But Tony looked like a fantasy sheik off the cover of a romance novel. tall, broad-shouldered; high cheekbones; a mobile mouth that seemed equally suited to a warm smile and a sneer; glorious chocolate-colored eyes shaded by enviable lashes.
I’d seen those dark eyes on me as soon as I’d walked in, watching my curves and the slink in my walk, and I’d seen the smile blossom when he realized I was coming to talk with the band.
The band and I always discuss my music before I go on. Tonight, I was feeling snaky. I wanted my set to include a long taqsim—an improvised solo, riffing off a melody, but not locked to rhythm. I almost changed my mind, seeing a new violinist. Dancing to a live taqsim is intense, intimate, needing dancer and musician to read each other’s cues as in the act of love.
Then Tony smiled at me again, a lion’s dangerous smile that went straight to my groin, and I decided to take a chance.
The first two sets went well. During the first taqsim, Tony and I had flirted discreetly. The second time around, we’d been bolder, making eye contact, turning away from the audience part of the time to play with each other. The audience seemed to enjoy being let in on a private joke, laughing and rewarding us with applause and tips.
The restaurant had started to clear out by the third set, as it often does on week nights. And that was when I decided to pull out all the stops in my effort to seduce Tony.
I entered to “Aziza,” a lively Egyptian standard, zilling along to the music of the band. With each pass around the room, I gave Tony a smoldering sidelong look and a private hip drop or shoulder shrug. The look that he gave me in return made my clit shimmy.
My glittering green and gold costume was hidden by a carefully wrapped silk veil. Normally, I spin as I unveil. This time, I turned my back to the audience and locked eyes with Tony as I undulated and unwrapped, making a teasing burlesque out of it, glancing over my shoulder at the audience and winking to bring them in on the fun. Following my lead, the band cheesed up the music, making it sound like something out of a corny Arabian Nights movie without losing the melody.
The audience loved it, clapping along and hooting.
I came out of it doing a shoulder shimmy—and violated everything I’d learned about good taste by shaking my cleavage and about ten pounds of beaded fringe directly at Tony before I spun back to the audience. Although the highly structured bra top held my breasts firmly in place, my heated nipples brushed slightly against the soft flannel lining, galvanizing my attention. The stab of desire emboldened me to shoulder shimmy—a tad more tastefully—toward the audience as well. The late-night crowd was eating up the camp, so I played it up, making everything sillier and sexier than usual.
At the end of the number, instead of selecting a patron to grace with my veil, I slinked over to Tony, hips rolling, and draped it around his shoulders. He mouthed a kiss at me and I had to fight the temptation to take him up on it.
The next section was a short chiftetelli, an earthy 9/8 Turkish rhythm. I did that part in gypsy style, all attitude, swishing skirts, and challenging, “can’t touch this” sensuality. Each glance my way, whether from Tony or from the audience, passed over my skin like fire. My blood pooled in my pelvis, grounding me more, giving each movement more weight, making me keenly aware of how closely these Turkish gypsy movements mimicked sex. Now it was time for the taqsim, and I found myself praying for some of the erotic confidence I’d been projecting.
To my delight, Tony stepped down from the stage to join me, a change from the earlier sets. Undulating, I sidled closer to him, then posed, my body inclined toward his, my hands reaching for him imploringly.
Turning toward me, he began to play.
A few shivering notes at first, delicate and teasing as foreplay, provoking the slightest of shimmies. Then a snaky swoop which I echoed with a rising and falling undulation.
Call and response. He called with the violin and I responded with my body, moving together in perfect synergy. Sometimes I anticipated where he might want to go, took the lead, drew frissons or cries from his instrument. Sometimes he led, guiding me to spin, shimmy or snake at his command. And sometimes it wasn’t clear who was leading. The magic just happened. After a few measures we forgot the audience. Each note caressed me, pulling me further from the club. I imagined scenes: a nomad caravan stopped for the night, a fire and music, and I, the beautiful Bedouin girl, lowering my veil and dancing for the man of my dreams; a harem scene with a slave dancing to seduce her master. Stereotypical fantasies from Orientalist painting and romantic movies, but some things become stereotypes because they work. And he saw the fantasies, the lust translated through my movements, and kicked the taqsim into a finale worthy of a Middle Eastern Bartok.
We had a prearranged signal for ending, a frantic spin on my part to cue him I needed a change. In the earlier iterations I’d ended in a graceful pose, facing the audience, smiling demurely.
This time I ended on my knees at Tony’s feet.
An expectant hush filled the club.
The silence didn’t register at first because it was all about Tony, Tony smiling down at me, Tony extending a hand to help me rise, this first-ever touch make me quake inside.
I only remembered the audience when the stunned applause began.
Normally there’s another fast number and then exit music. But this time, everyone seemed to realize that more would be an anticlimax. I bowed, weak in the knees, trembling, then exited to the sound of Tony’s solo violin. I reached the closet-sized dressing room and sat down abruptly. A pulse pounded between my legs. My hand yearned to stray there, to take the edge off my lust, but I made myself hold back.
He would come. I had faith in his music and my dancing.
I had just taken off my stiff bra, freeing sensitive breasts that ached to be touched, when someone knocked. “Come in,” I said, not bothering to cover myself, confident that it was Tony.
It was, and thank goodness, he didn’t say a word, just closed the door behind him, threw the bolt and closed his arms around me.
His mouth was like a drink of cool water. My body melded against his, my bare breasts rubbing against a T-shirt soaked from the exertion of playing, my pelvis thrusting against him, his denimed thigh between my legs. I drank from his mouth, yearning for more, but not wanting to break contract.
His dark hands traveled over my skin, playing my nerves as skillfully as he had his violin. He gathered my breasts together at last, stooping to suckle the nipples in turn, sending fire licking through me. Then he opened his mouth wider, sucking in both at once, teasing both with his tongue until I was moaning against his hair, my body moving in waves as if I were dancing. But I was only desperate, desperate for him, desperate to consummate what we had begun during the first strains of music and continued through a long and luxurious musical foreplay.
“Now,” I begged.
“Of course.” The lion’s smile again. He tugged on my hand. “My place isn’t far.”
“Now,” I reiterated, rolling my hips for emphasis against his groin, and this time he seemed to understand. To make my point even clearer, I unzipped his fly and took out his instrument—not as long as your average flute, but much thicker and ready for me to play.
My skirt, full and slit to the hips on both sides, was no obstacle. I slithered out of my panties and leaned against the counter, baring my ass and moving it in slow circles for his delectation. “I love to watch you move,” he whispered. Then I felt the thick head of his cock nudging my pussy lips, tapping out a secret rhythm for the two of us to dance to. I sighed and pushed back, hoping to feel myself filled, but he teased at me, rubbing up and down against the slick opening, teasing at my clit, then going back to toy with the hole that longed to receive him.
He waited until I sputtered, “Please … fuck me.” Then there was no hesitation. I was wet enough he could sink in me to the hilt. Deliciously stretched, I pushed back against him, hoping to get even more of him inside me. I saw my face in the mirror, distorted with lust, beautiful and terrifying as an ancient goddess, and over my shoulder Tony shining in triumph.
As we began to move together, someone turned on the canned music in the restaurant. An Egyptian pop singer came through the sound system, sending infectious beledi-rock even to where we were.
Taqsims are great for seduction, but something with a lively, steady, danceable beat is better for fucking.
Tony was guiding me as he had with his music, taking me where we both needed to go until my cunt started to beat a rhythm in opposition to the music and my hips began to pop back at him, pushing him to go faster, to fuck me harder, to get us where we both wanted to go.
There are times for subtlety and patience in lovemaking. This was not one of them. My body was alight, belly quivering in ways that even my control couldn’t pull off on purpose, and when he reached around and began to stroke my clit, I went up like a musical crescendo, biting at my own shoulder to stifle cries. He stiffened, bucked and followed where I led.
Once again, as in the dance, I ended up kneeling at his feet, trembling. This time I took his still-pulsing cock in my mouth and caught the last drops.
“May I play for you again some time?” he asked, giving a smug smile that he’d thoroughly earned.
“How about tomorrow night?” I responded.
And to my delight, he agreed.
• • •
Besides being a writer of things erotic, is a Middle Eastern dancer. (She regrets to report her gigs have never been quite this interesting.) Her work has appeared in Chocolate Flava 2, Best Women’s Erotica 2004, 2005 and 2007; Fishnet; Garden of the Perverse: Twisted Fairy Tales for Adults, and many other publications. She also writes erotica and erotic romance with a co-author as Sophie Mouette. Sophie’s first novel-length erotica, Cat Scratch Fever, was published by Black Lace Books in 2006.
