Marid's Game

Ansa watched the flickering candlelight dance across the tan of Marid’s bare skin, held rapt by the hypnotic light show. She could have sworn he glowed with his own dark fire, one that pushed back against the solid shadows that encompassed them. Lit only by a few candles, they existed in a private haven of light amid the encroaching late hour. She suspected he went shirtless in an effort to distract her from the game that rested on the square table between them. It was frustratingly effective and she had to work to tear her eyes away from the smooth tightness of his strong arms. Checkers was an ancient and simple game, yet one that still required her concentration if she wanted to demonstrate her intelligence by winning. To that end, she tried desperately, not to compare the feel of the ridged disc under her finger, to the fantasy of tracing down the muscles that rippled across his wide chest.

Ansa slid her black game piece onto a safe square on the board, sitting back with a relieved sigh and relaxing her bunched toes into the cool sand underfoot. It was not a winning move, but it kept her in the game for another turn.

“You will never conquer me that way” Marid said. His deep voice reverberating through Ansa’s chest. Every single time he spoke, the vibrations overwhelmed her senses.

“Perhaps I have a strategy you have not yet seen?” She said, lifting a corner of her mouth and tilting her head in a teasing smile.

“Oh, I understand your tactics all too well, my dear,” Marid said, returning her grin, “You sit there, as beautiful and tormenting as the summer sky, distracting me from my game so that you might sneak to victory. But rest assured, I win either way. For I have both the joy of a game well played, and no matter how it ends, I will still have you.”

Ansa dropped her eyes and shifted her feet, bashful as ever under the intense scrutiny of her suitor. How a man so devastatingly handsome could ever see such things in her, she could not understand. She was just another girl. She didn’t feel special in any way. In fact, she could think only of all her flaws when she pictured herself. She was captive to her ageing parents, helping to maintain their humble farmhouse in the dry hills of northern Kuwait. Her father bred goats and horses, while she helped support her mother around the house and attempted to somehow, amongst it all, further her studies at the university. It was maddeningly difficult to juggle keeping her parents afloat while pursuing her own future. But her passion for history and archaeology could not be quenched. Not by something as mundane as family obligations. She had managed to gain some distance for a short time, on a two-week assignment at a field dig. The desert granted a little precious freedom to concentrate on her own goals, if only for a while. Then Marid had come, and as if from nowhere, he had stolen all her desires and draped them upon himself.

“I would accuse you of the same underhanded ploy,” she said, finally able to find her voice from under the weight of his compliments, “Or do you no longer own any shirts?”

“I assure you, light of my sky, that I am simply overheating and cannot bear the added layer. I would never dream of using your wandering eyes against you.”

She almost believed him. Having brushed her hand against his during one of his quick plays, mostly by accident and just the once, she had been surprised at the heat that radiated from his iron grip. No one could be so blatantly seductive without intent. Yet her limited experience with the advances of men made her constantly doubt what she thought she knew.

Marid leaned forward over the game board and after the barest moment of study, took one of his red pieces and clacked it over three of Ansa’s. He swept the dead ones away and added them to his pile of captured discs. Ansa stared at her one remaining black piece, slack-jawed. She had already lost.

“How did I not see…” She began to say, but clipped her words when her opponent leaned back in his chair in satisfaction. He placed his hands on the back of his head, which caused the muscles in his arms to tense, revealing a display of strength that hitched her next breath. The veins in his forearms stood out from his dark skin and the candlelight endlessly bounced across his rugged face. He disturbed his long dark hair so that one trail of it fell across his chiselled jaw and traced down his chest, all the way to his waistline where it tickled the edge of his tight pants that rode enticingly low, “oh, that’s how” she muttered, swallowing hard.

“Take your move so that I might win.” He ordered, his eyes turning stern with the hunger for domination over the board.

“And if I don’t?” Ansa whispered, “If I take my time? Keep you waiting for satisfaction, until I am ready to allow it?”

She knew she walked a fine line between teasing him and risking his frustration turning to anger. Her mischievous smile faltered for a fraction of a second, as she considered whether she was pushing him too far, and his grin widened at the sight of her insecurity.

“Then I would be within your power. You would have me hostage and pleading for you to grant me release. Would that stimulate you, my bright horizon?”

Ansa knew then, that he would enjoy the anticipation of the delay. Her worries evaporated, and she decided to keep him on the edge of satiation, until he demanded she release him. Until he forced her to end it. A mastery she discovered she would thoroughly relish falling under.

“Did you know checkers is one of the oldest games in the world?” She said, ignoring his comments and pretending as though the games end was of little consequence. Pushing him, prodding him to lose his cool and force her hand. “It originates from Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation. A place that birthed the modern world, a place that was once, right here, underneath where we sit.”

Marid’s eyes darted strangely to the side at Ansa’s last words, his smile fading ever so slightly before beaming through strongly once more. It was an odd reaction, but one that Ansa quickly forgot when he lowered his arms, grasped the edges of the small table and leaned forward, his long hair sweeping tentatively across the squares of the game board.

“You are well educated in such things,” he said, staring deeply into Ansa’s eyes, “It is why I chose this game for us. I though it would interest you. For something to survive thousands of years, it must be the best at what it does, and I intend the same for you. Only the best of what can be achieved with ones hands. Checkers encourages us to interact, to reach across this table and bring something back from the other side. An exchange that I insist we share, Ansa. But talk of history is a poor substitute for your more easily accessible distractions,” his eyes darted down to her chest, his desire palpable in the short space between his lips and her body, “and so your gambit is ineffective. Take. Your. Move.”

“If you will not be waylaid,” Ansa said, turning her chin up in resistance, “then I would expect you to make some offer of your own, to convince me to act.”

With his face so close, Ansa could not miss the wave of fury that spread behind Marid’s eyes. Rather than exciting her and suggesting what he might do to bribe or persuade her, it frightened her. It was not the frustration of a man that wanted what she had. It was the anger of a creature that would not be defied. It was in that moment that she suddenly realised. She did not know where they were, or how she had come to know Marid so closely. She had assumed they were in the desert, at the dig site, but where was the rest of the camp? The lights? He released the table and relaxed into his chair, the charming smile returning and despite herself, Ansa flushed at the unwavering attention.

“Take your move…and I shall gift you pleasures that you can barely imagine. I will press into your body sensations so intense that you will beg me to stop and when I do not, you will be grateful for my persistence. You will have your bodies deepest needs met by the power of mine. You will have your hearts desires granted. Anything you wish shall be yours, and plenty besides that you cannot even fathom. You will be satiated to weakness. You need only take your move. Slide your piece, end the game, grant me my win and I will take you, my clear sky, and make you mine.”

A single tear fled Ansa’s eye as she blinked. It was a strange reaction to the heat that she felt rising through the core of her body. The desperate need to give in, to take her move and let him own her in return, was all encompassing. The desire to receive all that he promised and that she was convinced he could deliver, raged against her will. Every part of her screamed to let him in, to release him from the game and let him dominate her in repayment. Yet there was the smaller part of her, the wiser part. The one that suddenly knew what he was, and wept.

She did not remember arriving at the table. She did not know where they were. She did not know Marid. She held nothing in her memories beyond the insatiable need for him. The gasping want for his touch was everything she could claw from her mind about his identity and even knowing there should be more detail, somehow it still felt like enough. It felt impossible to fight her body. She wanted nothing other than to reach out and push her red disc into a compromising position, but she knew if she did, her life would be as forfeit as the game piece. Marid was a Djinn. He was trapped in the darkness of his prison and had enticed her in to join him, with the promise of her greatest desires. But he had made two mistakes. The first was the word he had used. Wish. It had thrown her out of his rapture and back into her right mind. It had told her everything she needed to know about the deceptive monster that was before her. The second was his insistence in focusing on the needs of her young body. He was smart to do so, her secret desperation to have a man take her as she so needed to be taken was powerful. Her fantasies of having the perfect Adonis use her for his own needs was rampant in her dreams. The hidden desire, squashed by her duties and left unfulfilled had been growing in strength within her, for the longest time. But he had dismissed the strength of her devotion to herself. He had underestimated her calling to study lost worlds and he had overlooked her love of her homeland’s long and expansive history. Marid had only managed to seduce half of her, and the remaining part, was defiant.

She looked dead into the Djinn's eyes, the silence having grown long since his proclamation of desire. She saw so clearly now the rage and contempt in his stare. He needed her only so long as the game lasted. As soon as he won and paid his debt to her, he would have his freedom. He would have the sky that he so needed. His own desperate yearning was written all over him. Marid would destroy her with her own wants and leave her broken in his stampede toward the waking world. A part of her still wanted him to do it, to use her up until she was spent, to give her what her body ached to feel. But the wiser part of her was stronger than any primal need.

She stood. She glanced once at the checkers board and then, leaving the game unfinished, turned and walked away across the cool sand and into the darkness. Confident she would find her way home by herself, she ignored his savage screams of fury that rent the air. He was bound to his unfinished game and his raging words, that had once been so sweet, could no longer harm her over the distance. Ansa gracefully strode across the desert, until she saw familiar starlight and an open sky.