A dream of lions

The Jeep is pulled up under the shade of a monkey-puzzle, fifty yards from the watering hole. You and the other tourists wait, breath held, as the crickets sing in the dusk. The lioness and her cub, who was drinking from the water for the last few minutes, looks up towards you. You freeze, caught for a second in the power of her stare, hypnotized by the green flash of her eyes. Then she stretches and is gone into the darkening savannah.

The horizon is a band of red gold, giving way to peach and oceanic blue and a spatter of stars.

‘Ok,’ says the guide, ‘let’s go.’

There is a cab in the Jeep where the other tourists ride, but you stay out on the tail. You close your eyes, bathe in the warm air and the fragrance of the land. You are overcome by a sense of peace, of silence.

Then the wheel hits a rut and you are thrown into the night. You fall quickly, awkwardly. There is a pain like thunder in your leg. You pass out.

Brightness, brilliant, blurry. The sound of beeps, of voices. Darkness again, deep and empty and silent. Warmth, confusion; a different room. A lion sits by the side of your bed. It watches you. You reach out and sink your hand into its mane, as soft as clouds. Sleep without dreams. Dreams without sleep.

You wake to birdsong. You are in a white bed in a white room. The ceiling has a slight dome to it, ribs from corners curve up to meet in the centre. A fan turns lazily. A side table on one side, a drip stand on the other with a tube that curls down to your arm. A monitor is clipped to the end of your finger. Your heart rate ebbs and flows across a small screen.

There is a door and two windows where you are facing, all covered with thin white curtains. You wait. You move your leg. It is numb.

The door opens. He comes in. Doctor’s white coat, but he looks more like a soldier than a medic. Hair and beard cropped close. An athlete’s shoulders and chest under his shirt. He is wearing khaki shorts and loafers. It makes sense given the heat, but something about it makes you giggle.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘Welcome back to the world.’ English is not his mother tongue. He speaks it well but there is a hint of something else, perhaps French or Portuguese.

‘Do you remember what happened?’ He stands beside you, tall. You sense his strength.

Memories slot into place. ‘The car,’ you say.

‘Mm.’ He nods. ‘You leg was cut badly. Lucky it wasn’t worse. You needed a couple of operations. Healing nicely now but don’t expect to be winning any races in the next few weeks.’ He shrugs, apologetically. ‘Doctor jokes. There’s a whole semester on them at medical school.’

You smile. He smiles, walks to the door ‘A little more light?’ You nod. He pulls the curtain aside. There is a garden, a green lawn, palm trees, bright borders all under a flat blue sky. ‘Thank your insurance for this view,’ he says. ‘There is a bell in the drawer. Ring it if you need anything.’ He looks at you for a few long seconds. You feel pushed against the pillows by his gaze. You feel embarrassed, you feel too weak to hide your blushes.

‘Do you think you could eat something?’

‘Y-yes.’ You stutter, feel foolish.

‘Good. Well then, I’ll see you later.’ He leaves. Soon a nurse comes in with fruit and water. You eat but find the effort of sitting exhausting. You sleep.

Evening. The sun has set. Your sheets feel clingy, your skin sticky. You ring the bell. Footsteps in the corridor. Then he returns.

‘I am sorry,’ he says. ‘It is the weekend. The nurses have gone home. You will have to put up with me. How can I help.’

You wanted a nurse to help you wash. But he is here instead. He walks round to your arm with the drip. ‘They tell me you ate and drank well. I think we can take this out.’ He unclips the monitor and, with a pad of gauze removes the cannula. ‘A bath, I expect,’ he says. You nod. ‘One step at a time, here.’

He helps you swing your legs out of the bed. There is a bandage around the left one. He holds out his arm and you try to stand, but you cannot. Still too tired, too weak. Gently, he scoops you up, one arm behind your knees, the other behind your shoulders. In surprise you hold his neck. You feel yourself against his chest, you feel small. You cross the room into the corridor and into a bathroom on the other side. There is an enamel tub with claw feet in the middle under a skylight.

‘You have been given Morphine for the pain,’ he says. ‘You can’t bathe alone.’ It is stated as a fact. He puts you gently in an armchair while he runs the water, adds soap. He turns on a light, a dim glow in the corner. The electricity waxes and wanes. He helps you upright and out of the surgical gown. Another lift, this time you feel one of his hands against the side of your breast, large and strong and warm. The water half covers you. He sits beside. ‘Shall I help?’ You nod.

‘My grandmother was a doctor,’ he says, dreamily, as he dips a sponge into the water. ‘Or that’s what they called her. My family comes from a village in the mountains.’ He starts at your shoulder and washes your arm, carefully parting your fingers to make each of them clean.

‘She knew something of modern medicine, but not much. Mostly she knew about the plants and the traditions.’ After your other arm he moves down he bath. He dips the sponge, wrings it out, three times. He cleans your feet. ‘She believed a lot of things, my grandmother. That marriages were best made after a new moon. That you shouldn’t eat rabbit on a Sunday.’ He cleans your legs, further up. You part them for him, your modesty barely preserved by an island of bubbles in the semi dark.

‘She believed,’ he says, ‘that a doctor had to share their strength with a patient for them to get strong.’ He moves to your belly, your chest, the sponge catching on your hard nipples. ‘That the strength, when correctly applied, passed between bodies.’

He takes up a jug and fills it. Hand on your head he says ‘forwards’, you stretch your neck and feel the hot water cascade over your hair. A chair scrapes as he moves it behind you. A comb touches your scalp. ‘You hair is knotted,’ he says. He starts to work it out with slow strokes, pulling down, holding the hair near the root to remove the tangles. He pulls on a knot without holding the hair and you feel the tension, the pain. ‘Strength can be shared in all sorts of ways,’ he says. His hand runs forward, over your shoulder, over your clavicle, rests on your neck. You feel your heart beat faster and then the hand is away, working on the knots again. You finish and he helps you out. Dries you gently, gives you a white cotton dress to wear. Carries you back to bed.

‘You are still weak,’ he says. ‘Get your legs back. Walk in the garden. Then perhaps…’ He stands by the door. Outside the cicadas are playing their dissonant music. He leaves.

Your head spins like you’re drunk. You sleep. You sleep. You wake. You walk, first with a stick and then days later without. You ask the nurses about the doctor. ‘Oh him,’ they say, laughing. ‘He’s the weekend doctor. Most of the patients go home at the weekend so he makes easy money.’ The sky blazes down. You think of his touch, how compelling his strangeness was. You understand why people climb into enclosures at the zoo with dangerous animals; why people chase tornadoes. There is no death wish, no idiocy, just a desire to be close to that unpredictable power, to test yourself against it and see what, if any, of you remains afterwards.

The lion in your dreams sleeps on the end of your bed, lifting its head at any sound, ready to protect you. Its claws knead the blanket and you wake with pins and needles all down your scar.

The weekend comes again. You roam the empty clinic, Waiting. You nap. He is there when you open your eyes, sitting in the chair. It is late afternoon. You are in the dress he gave you, plain white, above the knee. You asked one of the nurses to get you some underwear. They came back with small, white, briefs that ride high on your hips, a matching bra with a hint of lace on the top. You stand, just to show you can.

‘Very good,’ he says. ‘Shall we walk?’ You go into the garden, trailed by long shadows. You take his arm instinctively. ‘I think you will be ready to leave us soon,’ he says. You nod, you know its true. You feel the same sensation that has come every time you thought of him through the week. A heat, a light, an energy. ‘But…’ he pauses, stops speaking, stands still. He looks at you. He half smiles.

‘There is another part of the garden for staff,’ he says. ‘Much nicer than this part.’ You walk around the side of the building and he opens a low wooden door in a red adobe wall. You pass through and he closes it behind you.

The walls are higher, the trees are thicker, more gnarled. It is older this place, much older, a postage stamp of rainforest transported here. Vines hang between the branches. Hummingbirds flicker. A neat path curves ahead. He takes off his shoes and you do as well, feeling the grass on your soles. There is a bridge over a stream and then the path opens into a clearing where there is a summer house.

The front opens japanese-style, sliding away. Inside, yoga mats, cushions, a futon.

‘There,’ he says, pointing to the middle of the room. You go where you are directed. He circles you. ‘Good, no leaning,’ he says. ‘Much pain?’

‘An ache.’

‘Hm.’ He grunts approval. ‘When the patient is getting strong she is ready to take strength from her doctor,’ he says. He looks at the ceiling. ‘That’s what she used to say. Do you beleive that?’

You shrug. ‘Did it work?’

He waits, that half smile again. He thinks. ‘I think so.’ A longer wait. A dog barks at the sunset. ‘Do you want to try?’

You nod. You swallow.

‘Lift your dress,’ he says. You freeze. ‘Do it,’ he says. Your hands go to the hem, lift the material. He tells you to stop when your panties are exposed. You feel embarrassed, excited, the sharpness of arousal. He watches you. ‘Repeat after me,’ he says.

‘I will get strong.’

‘I w-will get strong,’ you say not much more than a whisper.

‘I give myself over to your strength.’ He stands closer, older, taller.

‘I…give myself over to your strength,’ you reply.

‘I give my body over to your strength.’

‘I give my body,’ you say, your voice catching. You can feel his eyes on your panties, on the wetness that you are sure is starting to show.

‘Now, the dress,’ he says. ‘Off.’

‘Yes,’ you mumble, as you lift it off, over your head. ‘The bra too.’ You unclasp it, perhaps too quickly, too eagerly. You put your shoulders back. He comes to you, cups your breast with his left hand, takes its weight and softness. His thumb touches the nipple. He looks down at you, making you feel so small, so skinny. He squeezes your breast harder, pinches you lightly. Then he lowers his head, stoops, and takes your other nipple in his mouth. His lips, his tongue tease you. He sucks, softly, then harder, a beautiful ache. You moan, gladly his. He takes more of your breast into his mouth, and you shiver and goosebumps run up your arm and you feel your pussy throb.

He senses your emotion. His free hand goes flat to your belly, down and over the thin material that covers your womanhood. He rubs over you, feeling you through it while his tongue runs circles round your nipple, while his lips kiss your flesh. Gone is any pretence of modesty or reservation. You push your hips at his hand, desperate for touch. He responds, pulling the material to the side and stroking your folds. The contact makes you shudder and he sucks your breast harder and slips a finger into you. He moves his hand slowly, sinking into your wetness. The twin sensation: his mouth, his hand; you feel like you might collapse. He speeds up, faster in response to your breathing.

Then suddenly it stops and he has grabbed you by he waist. He kneels and throws you over his leg. His hand flies down and strikes your ass, hard, lingers as his fingers play with your exposed pussy. He rubs forward to your clit, gently strokes back and forth. He takes your breast and squeezes it as he spanks you again, on one cheek, then the other then the backs of your legs. You cry out as he returns to your opening and your clit, speeding up, taking you to the edge before another blossom as his big palm comes down once more.

‘Please,’ you say. ‘Please, I need more.’

‘Stand,’ he says. You get off his knee, stand, breathing hard. ‘Take your panties off.’ You stumble as you drop them, step out of them. He begins to undress in front of you. The buttons on his shirt, slowly, then his pants. He is naked in front of you, his body toned, hard for you. He takes a step towards you. You move back until your shoulders touch the wall. He stands close, reaches down and lifts you, one hand on each cheek of your ass, holding you to his chest. He is strong and makes it seem effortless. You feel the tip of his cock against your opening and he lowers you down onto it.

He slides into your wetness, naked, stretching you, filling you. He moves you up and then back down, lifting you like a doll, using you, using your pussy. You hold his neck and moan into his ear, begging him to fuck you deep, fuck you hard. You hear the sound of your sex, the smell of your arousal. All you want is more, more, more. You push yourself against him, trying to fill yourself with his lust.

He turns and lets you fall back onto the pile of cushions in the middle of the room. You cry out as his cock leaves you but he is back again, pushing your legs back, his face sinking between them. His tongue, his lips, straight onto your clit. He keeps a rhythm up, on it, above it around it. Your back arches, your toes curl.

‘Fuh, fuh, fuck…’ You hear the sounds. Realise its you. He keeps going. Your hands grab his short hair as you come, grinding your pussy into his mouth, the world dissolving to snowblindness, you do a backwards loop in the infinite. His lips on your breast bring you back. He takes your hands and puts them over your head. He puts himself back in you. How could you have forgotten how big he was? He starts to thrust. His free hand moves over to your neck again, like before in the bath. He applies a little pressure as he slides deeply into you and releases again.

‘Harder,’ you say, ‘please, give it to me harder.’ He moves a little faster, angles your knee up with his to get deeper, squeezes again. You feel the pressure around your face, in your chest. You try to move your hands but he has you firmly, strongly. A second more and he releases you and slows down. You roll your head to the side at the pleasure, the sensation.

‘Wider,’ he says, the first instruction in minutes. ‘Spread your legs wider.’ He takes your throat and speeds up. Your knees are pressed against your chest as he pushes deeper. You feel him get harder, a brief lapse in his grip on your hands as he comes, filling you, making you shout out something worldess.

You tangle. You breathe. You listen to the silence and the city. There are oil lamps and fireflies buzz around them. Your bodies glint in the shine of the flame, resting quietly. We are all broken. We can all be fixed.

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/5ff2ed/a_dream_of_lions