misery.' He reached out and touched her arm. His palm and the inside of his fingers were a pale rose colour, contrasting vividly with the back of his hand and his dark muscular forearm, and his skin felt cool.
She wondered if it were really so, or if her own skin was hot.
She felt hot, she felt a furnace glow deep within her. She looked down at his hand on her smooth pale arm. She had never been touched by a black man before, not deliberately, not lingeringly like this.
She let the strap of the sling bag slide off her shoulder and it fell to the tiled floor with a thud. She had been holding her own hands clasped in front of her hips in an instinctively defensive gesture but now she let them fall to her sides, and almost without conscious volition arched her back and pushed her lower body towards him.
At the same time she raised her head and looked squarely into his eyes. Her lips parted and her breathing quickened. She saw it reflected in his own eyes and she said, 'Yes.' He stroked her arm, up from the elbow to the shoulder, and she shuddered and closed her eyes. He touched her left breast and she did not pull away. His hand closed around her, she felt it fill his grip, and her flesh hardened, her nipple swelled and thrust out into his palm and he squeezed her. The feeling was so intense it was almost painful and she gasped as it rippled down her spine spreading like wavelets when a stone is thrown into a quiet pool.
Her arousal was so abrupt that she was unprepared. She had never considered herself a sensual person. Shasa was the only man she had ever known and it took all his skill and patience to quicken her body, but now at a touch her bones well soft with desire and her loins melted like wax in the flame and she could not breathe, so strong was her need of this man.
'The door,' she blurted. 'Lock the door.' Then she saw that he had already barred the door, and she was grateful for it, for she felt that she could not have brooked the delay.
He picked her up quickly and carried her to the bed. The sheet that covered it was spotless and so crisply starched that it crackled softly under her weight.
He was so huge that he terrified her, and though she had borne four children, she felt as though she was being split asunder as his blackness filled her, and then the terror passed to be replaced by a strange sense of sanctity. She was the sacrificial lamb, with this act she was redeeming all the sins of her own race, all the trespasses that they had committed against his ]people down the centuries; she was wiping away the guilt that had been her stigmata since as far back as she could remember.
When at the end he lay heavy upon her with his breathing roaring in her ears and the last wild convulsions racking hisgreat black muscles, she clung to him with a joyous gratitude. For he had, at one and the same time, set her free from guilt and made her his slave for ever.
Subdued by the sadness of after love, and by the certain knowledge that her world was for ever altered, Tara was silent on the drive back to Molly's home. She parked a block before she reached it, and keeping the engine running she turned to examine his face in the reflection of the street lights.
'When will I see you again?' she asked the question that countless women in her position had asked before her. Do you wish to see me again?' 'More than anything else in my life.' She did not at that moment even ttiink of her children. He was the only thing in her existence.
'It will be dangerous.' 'I know.' 'The penalties if we are discovered - disgrace, ostracism, imprisonment. Your life would be destroyed.' 'My life was a sham,' she said softly. 'Its destruction would be no great loss.' He studied her features carefully, searching for insincerity. At last he was satisfied.
'I will send for you, when it is safe.' 'I will come immediately, whenever you call.' 'I must leave you now. Take me back.' She parked at the side of Molly's house, in the shadow where they could not be observed from the road.
'Now the subterfuge and dissembling begins,' she thought calmly.
'I was right. It will never be the same again.' He made no attempt to embrace her, it was not the African way.
He stared at her, the whites of his eyes gleaming like ivory in the half dark.
'You realize that when you choose me you choose the struggle?' he asked.
'Yes, I know that.' 'You have become a warrior and you and your wants, even your life, are of no consequence. If you have to die for the struggle, I will not lift my hand to save you.' She nodded. 'Yes, I know that.' The nobility of the concept filled her chest and made it difficult for her to breathe so her voice was laboured as she whispered, 'Greater love hath no man - I will make any sacrifice you ask of me.' Moses went to the guest bedroom which Molly had allocated to him, and as he washed his face in the basin Marcus Archer slipped into the room without knocking, closed the door and leaned against it, watching Moses in the mirror.
'Well?' he asked at last, as though he was reluctant to hear the answer.
'Just as we planned it.' Moses dried his face on a clean towel.
'I hate the silly little bitch,' Marcus said softly.
'We agreed it was necessary.' Moses selected a fresh shirt from the valise on his bed.
'I know we agreed,' Marcus said. 'It was my suggestion, if you remember, but-I do not have to like her for it.' 'She is an instrument.
It is folly to let your personal feelings intrude.' Marcus Archer nodded. In the end he hoped he could act like a true revolutionary, one of the steely hard men which the struggle needed, but his feelings for this man, Moses Gama, were stronger than all his political convictions.
He knew that it was completely one-sided. Over the years Moses Gama had used him as cynically and as calculatingly as he now planned to use the Courtney woman. His vast sexual appeal was to Moses Gama merely another weapon in his arsenal, another means of manipulating people. He could use it on men or women, young or old, no matter how attractive or unappealing, and Marcus admired him for the ability, and at the same time was devastated by it.
'We leave for the Witwatersrand tomorrow,' he said, as he pushed himself away from the door, for the moment controlling his jealousy.
'I have made the arrangements.' 'So soon?' Moses asked.
'I have made the arrangements. We will travel by car.' It was one of the problems which dogged their work. It
