“Madam, can I change the hotel?” Lieutenant Sammy Masika asked the morning after.“Seriously, officer? You are not even talking of changing rooms.” Captain Muthoni felt herself surprisingly bawled over by the proposition. “You know that that’s not possible, DOD has paid full board for the entire period. But why, if I may ask?”
“Because it’s not possible for me to be here. I’ve thought about it from every which way and each time I come up with… the impossibility of my stay here.”
“But what about your bills? What about the security in that hotel you are thinking of going, has it been cleared by DOD to host us? If you go, you pay for yourself. I can’t request for an LSO for a single officer, plus it’s too late, and you know that.”
“NO,” Lieutenant Sammy was final. “I’m going to change hotels. Ask the management not to charge DOD for my stay here, they refund the money and you give it to me…”
Captain Muthoni considered, “You mean I make a local arrangement for you?”
“It wouldn’t cost anything,” Sammy replied. “The hotel would ultimately be paid; they would just be compensated for the money…”
“I can’t do that,” Captain Muthoni said with finality. “You know the army has billets for officers at specific hotels, and you just can’t choose where to go. That’s why we are issued with a Local Service Order. It specifies who, when and where to stay. So, you don’t get to choose where to stay.”
And so no working arrangement was forged.
Sammy was stung by the disappointment and he had to put up with seeing Captain Muthoni around all the time. He had fallen for her like a ton of bricks the minute he saw her when she welcomed them at 15 Battalion the Kenya Rifles (15KR), Nyali Barracks.
Captain Muthoni could not agree to Lieutenant Masika’s proposition for three reasons: one, it was too late for that; two, SO2 (Staff Officer II) Personnel & Logistics from DOD owned the hotel where the officers were staying and there was no way he was going to agree to his profit margin being reduced, besides Sammy’s proposition was a service offence (according to the Defence Forces Act) and she was not to be caught dead in the malfeasance, it was her job on the line and; three, the main reason, she had fallen head over heels for the lieutenant. She wanted him to be around. She was sure by the time the officers’ one-week educational visit to the Coast was over they would have had her wildest (and weirdest) fantasy since she set eyes on him.
Lieutenant Sammy and a group of other twenty officers were from Nairobi. They were on a mechanical transport course from the army school of transport in Nairobi and, according to the syllabus, the student officers had to visit the customs and ports authority offices in Mombasa for appraisal on sea transport, customs and port procedures before visiting Kenya Pipeline Company and Refinery.
The adjutant of the local military unit was required to arrange for the officers’ accommodation at certain hotels used by the military. The officers, once they arrived, were to contact the adjutant who would ensure their admin during their stay at the Coast. Lieutenant Sammy, being the senior most of the pack, it was his responsibility to ensure such was provided. There was no way he could avoid meeting the adjutant every now and then.
Of course he could, delegate to his second-in-command, but he did not want to. Just being near the adjutant made him feel like he was going to drag her to bed the next minute, peel off her immaculate, well-pressed camouflage uniform layer by layer to lay her bare in the hotel bed and make love to her.
It was policy that the officers staying at the hotel be in uniform during the day, but they could change to civics (street clothes) in the evening. Most officers went to the nearby Club Casablanca, a walking distance from the Castle Royal Hotel they were staying, to extol the virtues of bingeing, drinking and strippers.
Casablanca, famous for its nightlife, a loud split-level bar-club pulls in plenty of Westerners and men to be mobbed mercilessly on the dance floor and VIP lounges by a lot of prostitutes and strippers amid the music. .
For any Nairobian visiting Mombasa city, the cliché Mombasa raha (the pleasurable Mombasa) applies literally. On the first day, after checking in and launching an insidious attack on the buffet at Castle Royal Hotel, the whole pack, like wolves, had flocked to Casablanca. That’s where it had officially started.
Captain Muthoni, indistinguishable from any other booty-shaker around, was on the floor doing her thing. Seeing her body moving in symphony of choreographed moves soared Sammy’s T-Juice levels to unscaled heights. He had joined her on the dance floor and she, dancing like a dervish, had done the unexpected thing. She had kissed him. And he, taken by surprise, had kissed her back. Then it was as if searing fire had swept over them. One minute they were dancing the infamous Bend Over style, the next they were touching in places they shouldn’t.
They then embraced as though they were dancing a slow waltz, Muthoni’s luscious lips brushing lightly on Sammy’s. She thrust her size 38 bust into his face, pulled back and smiled at him as she licked her lips seductively. Sammy liked it, his lifelong fantasy. Muthoni got closer to him as she talked but not quite touching, her eyes boring into his.
“I can’t,” Sammy gasped. “I can’t wait a minute longer.”
“Neither can I,” she choked back and sank into the ocean that was his arms. Every move they made felt like champagne bubbles effervescing in a goblet. The hunger for touch made every inch of their skin and all the deep pockets of sensual tissue filled and swelled and grew until each glaze was tinged with pleasure so intense it was like a razor. The pain pierced them and stilled them. Soon, this aching delight had led them out of the club, taking the fastest means, taxi, to their hotel and they practically flew past the reception to the elevators.
They started kissing the minute the elevator doors closed, their hands threatening to undress each other faster than the ache to make love commanded and demanded obeisance. Every nanosecond was the last to zero-hour to detonation of the nuclear bomb that was their lust.
The doors had opened almost too soon and they stumbled into Sammy’s room. They practically tore off each other’s clothes, embraced and their bodies savoured each other’s texture, gliding, roughly rubbing flesh on flesh. Their hands added layer upon layer of sensation upon each other, the build-up of sensation like a time-bomb.
Words tumbled out of their mouths with no meaning. Wonderful, aching, extraordinary sensation mounting until the pleasure was shot through with the arrow of crave and the next thing was to do what they had to. Then; “I can’t do it,” Muthoni said.
“What?” Sammy shot back. “It’s only sex, isn’t it?” Sammy’s voice was shaky.
“Well, yes, of course.”
“Then what? Why? I thought you wanted…”
“Sex is sex,” Captain Muthoni said. “I want more than that.”
There was a long pause, then Sammy said, “Well, yes.”
Muthoni had been ready for it, but not that. Sex, yes, she would have had it, then what? Another of her celebrated nightstands in her carefree life? No, if she went ahead she wouldn’t be able to tear herself off Sammy. She had fallen in love with him, sex would make it worse. She did not want to fail in love (again).
She kissed Sammy passionately and untangled herself from the embrace, collected her clothes and started dressing and, though she had not liked what she saw in Lieutenant Sammy’s eyes, she left. That had been the right decision then.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lieutenant Sammy said. The captain had spoken, she was not making any arrangement for him to change hotels.
*
That night, Captain Muthoni snuck into Sammy’s room. She had colluded with one of the hotel attendants to get a master key card. Earlier in the day, she had picked out the perfect lingerie that concealed nothing. Very few men, if any, would have the power to resist.
This was the tricky part. She could be forgiven (so would any woman) for running away the other night, but what about breaking and entering to take herself to the man she had run from?
Sammy was not asleep. He was lying in bed mulling things over. He shot up the minute the door cracked open at that witch hour, adrenalin pumping through his system in overdrive.
Counting slowly to ten, Muthoni entered stealthily, exhaled deeply and switched on the lights. Sammy could not tear his gaze away from her boobs. Slowly, his eyes roved all over her and he saw everything. The Secret Garden.
Sammy just sat in bed, in his briefs, wondering what next whilst berating himself for not having supernatural powers to know what the hell was going on.
Then it happened. Captain Muthoni made for the bed. His body started responding. Her running away the previous night had been unexpected. Now he was sure.
“The much I want this, is the much I don’t want,” she said when she was near the bed. “Each and every nerve of my body tells me to, but something else slams the brakes.”
Sammy was lost for words. He did not know what she was implying. She was wearing the demonic lingerie, with almost nothing underneath, then sending mixed signals?
Sammy just kept on staring at her, wondering what was really going through her mind. At last he said, “You can’t keep on doing this. It’s bad enough we lust for each other, but this is not right. I can’t…”
Then, unconsciously, she climbed into bed, slid in the covers and snuggled up to him.
“Can we just hold till morning?” she asked.
They cuddled and huddled, their bodies warming each other, pulsating in a symphony of touch and desires not satisfied.
