At its zenith, the midday sun presses on my skin with its searing touch; it burns with pulsing flashes of intention. The sands of the Lake Tanganyika shore are a dazzling reflective white, painful to the eye. My mind rests in a sheltering and protective stupor, my thoughts are slow but rich in images. Images that elicit taste to my mouth, sound to my ears, touch to my senses. Images so rich and succulent that they nourish my deepest and strongest appetites. In the midday heat’s womb, my mind holds my body captive in remembrances of touch, in longings for release, in yearnings for spilling out.

Through the fog of the sun’s blinding rays, my eyes settle on the cool darkness of his moving body. The depth of his melanin-rich skin seems to devour the dense mass of heat and light weighing upon the Lake’s waters, sands drooping palm trees and thin shrubbery. Only his sinking feet in the sand betray the weight of the heat that descends upon this secluded and lost strip of beach.

His movements are unhurried and precise as he walks out of the depths of the Lake Tanganyika’s cool embrace. His wide nostrils flare with effort; the air is a dry liquid, hot and heavy with the Lake’s ascending moisture. I dazedly expect to see traces of white salt residue on his drying skin, but the Lake’s waters are as sweet as the rich layers of sheabutter moisturiser resting intimately on his skin. As he moves closer, the perfume of his moisturiser reaches me and takes me along to memories of love rubbed in every inch of my body, by thorough oily hands. This faint perfume elicits a lazy imperceptible chuckle from me; Burundian men always smell like the boys they used to be.

As he reaches me, he lays his naked body next to mine. He places his face next to mine, mirroring my sleeping position. I am on my right side; he is on his left side. My mind’s eye hovers above us and takes note of the oppositions that mark the distances between us. His onyx-black skin radiates an untouchable coolness, while my copper-brown skin entraps the gold of the sun’s heat. I am tall, he is short. I am fat, he is thin and wiry with criss-crossing bundles of veins. My bald head shines feverishly, his locks twine lusciously beyond his shoulders to his solid waist. My eyes are deeply set, drunk with waking dreams. His eyes are big, quick and bright with the Lake’s blessing. My penis coiled in submission to the heat’s gravity, his vagina protected and sheltered by the rich bush of his pubic hair. His full butt defies the logic of his thin body, my ass poorly serves as a narrow seat for the bulk of my upper body. His chest is held firmly by coils of muscles, my chest is fleshy, soft and inviting. His nipples are twice the size of mine, my breasts are two cups larger than his.

He places the bones of his small, refreshed feet on the bone plates of my knees. A slight discomfort rises from the interior of my knee plates, where he touches me and bears weight on them. I ignore the pain; I embrace the pain; the price of intimacy must always be paid in pain. I decipher his facial expression with expert speed. His full lips, quick to laugh and kiss, hold a bright fleshy pink at their center. Drowning in the haze of the sun’s fire, his lips shine brighter than usual.

An image from the past or the future, real or imagined, halts my breath, arrests my heart in its beat. His lips are wet and sticky, swelling in the effort of slurping on the tip of my penis gland.

A slight murmur of tension, a lazy and ineffective muscle spasms in the depths of my loins.

He has moved his face nearer to mine, his hungry lips closer to mine, his eyes searching deep in mine. He says, with urgency and the edge of pain: “Please forgive me, mistress. I am losing my mind. Please end this punishment, please touch me!” I watch him with feigned and practiced indifference. His pain, his despair, his need is real and close to swallowing him whole. I am deeply amused at the sight of his choking desire for my generous mercy, but I can’t seem flippant and uncaring.

I can’t remember what led to his punishment. What made me forbid and withhold touch, pleasure, pain, intimacy, from him. It does not matter, he is an undisciplined man, he needs this.

But have I gone too far? Has it been too long? Are two months too long? Should I relent and give him his reward?

I move my hand below his chest, with two fingers I trace a slow and deep triangle from his protruding Adam’s apple to his left nipple, from his right nipple, from his right nipple to his Adam’s apple. I know it hurts, cause I see the edge of a tear moist in the corner of his eye. I can almost taste his breathing as it lands in a practiced rhythm, a breathing technique that will take any concentrated and localized pain and diffuse it throughout all of his body’s nervous system. He leans into the pain, into my crude marking of his chest. His nipples fill and harden almost immediately. The tensing muscle of his chest carry his small breasts higher towards me, an involuntary invitation, an undignified plea, a sliver of hope that more will come.

I know that his labia are filling and swelling with blood, cause I can smell the spice of his vulva blanket our laying bodies. My tongue swells in an involuntarily response, my mouth drowns in saliva, tension accumulates exponentially in my jaw. The smell of him triggers fury and wild tempests inundating my mind with bolts of lightning. Blood rushes to my nipples, my penis, the tips of my fingers, the soles of my feet. My skin becomes unbearably raw and brittle; my skin holds onto me, desperate to keep me together and whole. This is how I hunger for your pleasure: wildly, violently, dangerously.

At the very edge of my unmaking, I discipline my mouth to calmly and fluidly say: “Get your new dick out of the bag and put on your strap. I am going to ride you. Let’s give Gustav the Crocodile a show he will remember.”