by Black, Jaid
Silence.
Abdul’s intense green eyes clashed with hers. “I will not force you to My side, Nica,” he murmured. His smile was sad. “There was so much pain in you when first I bought you, years of poverty and neglect I wanted to erase from your memories as though they never were—”
Her eyes filled with renewed tears as she listened to him speak. She searched his haunted gaze, drank it in.
“—There was so much I wanted for us to share together. So damned much.” He looked away as if lost in memories. “Yet all fate granted us before I became ill was a few short months.”
“Abdul…”
“I love you,” he murmured. His bloodshot eyes searched hers. “Even should you choose to walk away forever, I want you to know in your heart that there will never be another love for Me but you.”
Silence.
He held out his hand but didn’t approach her, letting Nicoletta make her own choice. Tears streamed down her face. There was so much emotion between them—there always had been, even when Abdul had wished it otherwise. And yet for all the emotion there was also much anguish…so much pain and so many years worth of loneliness and isolation.
Abdul.
Her first love. Her only love.
Nicoletta cried out as she reached for him, a guttural sound gurgling up from her throat. “I-I love You,” she gasped, wrapping her arms around his middle and hugging him tightly. “I thought—” The tears were making it difficult to say the words. “I-I thought You were dead.”
“I wanted to be when you ran from Me,” he said hoarsely, his nostrils flaring as he hugged her just as fiercely. “I wanted to be,” Abdul murmured into her hair. “Never leave Me, Nica,” he said in a soft rasp. “Please…come back to Me.”
Her mouth sought his, their lips clashing with the passion that had always existed between them. Abdul lowered her to the ground as they kissed, their tongues hungrily touching as he laid her beneath him.
He ran his callused hands all over her breasts, breaking the kiss and staring down into her beautiful face while he gently but firmly kneaded them in the way he knew she liked. She gasped when his fingers ran over her distended pink nipples, moaning when he lowered his face and took a plump one into his mouth.
“Abdul,” Nicoletta said thickly, her eyes closing and her back arching. She pressed his face in closer to her chest, sucking in her breath as his tongue flicked her nipple back and forth.
“Spread your legs,” he commanded from around her nipple in his sexy Arabic accent. He released her nipple with a popping sound and gazed down into her face. “I want to feel My pussy,” he murmured, his eyes heavy-lidded as he settled himself between her thighs. “My pussy,” he said thickly, possessively, poising his hard cock at her entrance.
Nicoletta shivered, knowing as she did how territorially Abdul had always guarded her. The fact he was the only man who’d ever been inside her had always made his territorialism all the more acute.
He sank into her cunt on a groan, his eyes tightly closing and his teeth gritting. “Mine,” he ground out. “All Mine.”
Nicoletta moaned as he began making love to her, her stiff nipples growing impossibly more aroused as they brushed against his chest with each thrust. He picked up the pace of their mating, sinking in and out of her sticky pussy with a hunger that bordered on maniacal.
“Abdul,” she gasped, throwing her hips back at him to meet each possessive stroke. “Harder.”
His nostrils flaring, he threw one of her legs over his shoulder without missing a beat. He gave her what she craved, riding her body hard, pumping in and out of her as she moaned. His jaw hotly clenched as he pounded her mercilessly, fucking her faster. Perspiration soaked skin slapped against perspiration soaked skin, her tits jiggling beneath him as she begged and screamed for more.
“My pussy,” he growled. “Mine.”
Nicoletta cried out her orgasm as Abdul rode her, sinking into her tight flesh over and over, again and again. He fucked her harder and faster and deeper and—
His teeth gritted as he tried with all that he had in him to keep from coming. He wanted the moment to go on and on, to keep sinking in and out of her forever. He fucked her harder, animalistically, moans echoing throughout the jungle cavern that were as tortured as they were filled with pleasure.
Always there had been this between them. Always.
“I’m coming,” he rasped, unable to hold himself back another second. His nostrils flared and his muscles tensed as he repeatedly slammed into her pussy. “Nica.”
He came on a territorial roar, his body convulsing, his cock jerking and spurting inside her. Nicoletta threw her hips at him, frenziedly milking him of seed, while he groaned and came.
It was a long while before they moved, a long while before their breathing became normal. They clung to each other the entire time, two haunted souls whose ghosts could only be put to rest by the other.
“I love you, Nicoletta Isabella Carlotta Kan,” Abdul murmured. His gaze found hers and held it. “I will always love you.”
Chapter 7
He had known almost from the beginning that he was changing, knew too that Sinead was as well. He had no notion how Malifé’s hired thugs had gotten to his first wife, yet clearly they had. He could see the changes within her happening as surely as he could see them within himself. Thankfully, Nica had been spared. So too had his daughter, Nellie, and his son, Asad, whom Nica had bore him.
When Abdul had first realized what was happening to him and Sinead, he had hired the best scientists he could muster within the Hierarchy to find a cure. Day and night they toiled in their labs, a ten million yen reward the prize they raced to claim. The scientists thought they had found a cure…
They had been wrong.
Sinead grew worse, her bouts with madness nearly overwhelming her on several occasions. Abdul himself had injected her with what he’d prayed to Cyrus was the cure, only to find that the alleged remedy made her grow worse. And Nellie…
There was something in the way she would look at him, a haunted expression in his daughter’s young eyes as she stared at him. It was as if she knew her mother was sick and she blamed him for it. The fear he saw in her innocent gaze when she beheld him was enough to break his heart.
Abdul wondered, not for the first time, if his daughter’s memories had been tampered with. He realized his own memories had been erased, for try as he might, he could not recall what had led to his and Sinead’s infections. And so if his memory had been altered, perhaps Nellie’s had been too…
And Sinead’s as well.
Sinead, Abdul thought, sighing as he raised a chalice of spirits to his lips and sipped from it. Poor Sinead. She had never wanted to become his wife as she had always preferred the company of women to the company of men. She loved Abdul—as a friend—but she could never be in love with him.
And yet, in a world where women could make no rules, Sinead knew she would never be free to love another female. Creagh O’Malley had wanted his sister to be owned by a Master who would respect her, respect also the limits of her love.
And so Abdul had married her. Sinead had given him his Nellie and been a good mother, so he’d never regretted the union. And then Sinead had found Nicoletta for him.
Ah, Nica, as long as I have breath to breathe, there will never be another love for me but you…
* * * * *
Two days later
“I know You are nervous to see Nellie again,” Nicoletta announced as they left the cave hand-in-hand. She frowned at the scratchy makeshift clothing they’d fashioned for him out of animal skin, brushing a patch of dirt off the tunic sleeve. “Yet rest assured she will be happy to see You.” Her smile was warm, gentle, just as it had been in the old days when she’d given her love to him freely.
It was time to begin the journey through the jungle and into the heart of the rebel Underground catacombs. Within days Abdul would be reunited with his firstborn child and her husband. A new destiny was unfoldi
ng for all of them, a future he could not control or foretell. It was at once exciting and frightening. But whatever was to come, his beloved wife would be at his side. For that, Abdul would be forever grateful.
Things between Nellie and himself wouldn’t be so easy as Nicoletta imagined and Abdul knew it, though he conceded now was not the time to upset his wife with what was to come. But, no, it would not be so easy…
Nicoletta had not been the only one he’d turned away from in an effort to keep the madness from claiming him. He had hurt Nellie too. She had wanted his love despite it all, despite what he deeply suspected were faulty beliefs that he had a hand in her birth mother Sinead’s infection and eventual death.
While different, the wounds inflicted on Nellie were cut just as deep as the wounds that he had inflicted on Nicoletta. Back then, when infection had been a new disease and nobody had any guesses as to how it might be cured, Abdul had done the only thing he could think to do to keep from succumbing to it.
He had refused to feel. He had refused to show love or accept it.
In his heart, he still knew it had been the only way. He had told himself over and over again that one day—someway, somehow—he would find that cure and all would be as it should again.
But then one year turned into two, two into a decade, and a decade into twenty-five years…
No. Nellie’s forgiveness would not come easily or quickly. But he was determined to earn it. He wanted his life back, a life that had been on hold in lieu of a quarter century long nightmare.
A nightmare that was still not over. Until he was cured and his family again stood as one, it would never be over.
“Cease Your worrying, Abdul,” Nicoletta chided him. “I can read You true, You realize.” She smiled. “Nellie still loves You.”
Abdul raised Nicoletta’s hand to his lips and kissed it. His cherished Nica was more beautiful than even he had remembered. Naked, clad only in her matrimonial nipple rings and chain, his brand on her right buttock for the world to see, everything—at least between the two of them—was once again as it should be.
“I hope you are correct,” he murmured.
She inclined her head. “I am. I know You doubt me, but I am. And what’s more, I think she might be able to cure You. I distinctly recall her stating that the serum the Underground scientists had obtained worked on those who have not yet fully turned.” Her eyes were filled with excitement, with hope. “You have not yet fully turned,” she breathed out.
Abdul nodded. Had he fully turned there would be no man to speak of left within him. “No. I have not.” He sighed, admitting, “The only good thing to have come of the past twenty-five years.”
She returned his sigh, knowing nothing could be said to that for it was the truth. They walked in silence for a while, clutching the other’s hand as they made their way deeper into the jungle—and soon into the catacombs that would reunite him with his eldest child.
“I have much to explain to you,” Abdul said, squeezing her hand.
Nicoletta shook her head. “No, You are wrong.” She came to a halt and swung around to face him. “You’ve told me plenty and the rest I have figured out for myself.”
His gaze searched hers. “Do you forgive Me?” he murmured.
“I do,” she whispered, her heart in her eyes.
They had a long road to haul but they would travel it together. She stilled, a thought occurring to her. Her gaze narrowed on a frown.
“I have but one question to put to You and by Cyrus I swear You had best have the right answer.”
His forehead wrinkled. “You have successfully gained My attention,” he slowly drawled. “Go on.”
She grunted. “Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest, and Hopelessly Moronic,” Nicoletta hissed, making him grin at the names she used to refer to his other wives. “Will You keep them?”
He scratched his chin, pretending to give the matter some thought. He chuckled when she swung around and began stomping off, his arm snaking around her and drawing her back into his side.
“No,” he said simply.
Nicoletta’s chin notched up, her expression smug. “Good,” she sniffed.
Before Abdul knew what came over him, he was laughing, the first laugh he’d entertained in more years than he cared to remember. Throwing his yelping wife over his shoulder, he made his way through the jungle, both excited and tense over the prospect of being reunited with his daughter.
Abdul Kan was a man with many regrets. Confiding his secret in his wife that they might battle it together would never be one of them. Giving his other wives their freedom so that the only woman his heart had ever cherished could know happiness was no sacrifice at all.
Always there was Nicoletta.
There could never be another.
Epilogue
Later that night
“What does ana wahib mean?” Nicoletta whispered, her head on Abdul’s chest.
She couldn’t get the question out of her mind for he’d called her and only her by that name for as long as they’d been married. Her face came up. “What does it mean?”
His smile was gentle, his eyes filled with tenderness. “It means my one,” Abdul murmured. He lowered his face and softly kissed her lips. “My only one.”
She searched his gaze. “As You are mine.”
Abdul made love to Nicoletta in the cave they took shelter in that eve. He was the same husband she’d cherished with her whole being in the early days, the same husband she had always prayed would one day return to her. She was not afraid of the beast that dwelled within him, nor would she leave him to wage the battle against it alone.
As Abdul sank into her, possessively impaling her flesh again and again as he moaned and made love to her, she vowed to herself that come what may, she would be with him always.
She had left Abdul that she might find her destiny. Ironically—joyously—it was in Abdul that she had found it.
There was nothing quite like the love between a man and a woman. Love for all others can be fierce, even border on the maniacal, but the love between a man and a woman carries a hunger, a longing—an intensity—unlike any other.
“I love You,” Nicoletta whispered again and again as her husband made love to her. Twenty-five years, good memories and horrid ones. Children and soon a grandchild. There was more between them than mere words could say.
And yet she tried. She smiled, cried, and told him over and over again just what was in her heart. “Oh how I love You…”