Ochieng had his arms around me, holding me loosely but with warm affection, murmuring reassurances. “La, Ivariel. Shh. Don’t weep. I’m sorry.”
I caught my breath and moved my hands to my face, furiously wiping away the traitorous tears that had sprung up out of nowhere.
“I’m sorry, my love,” he repeated. “I only meant to make a point. Which I think has been made. You’re not ready for that. You can’t even think about it.”
“I don’t have to think about it if you’ll just do it,” I insisted.
“Don’t even suggest I would.”
“It would be worth it.” I leaned back to look at him. “To make a child, wouldn’t it be worth it? You could put my face in a blanket in case I screamed, take me from behind and it would be over—”
“No!” He thrust me away from him as if burned. “Don’t ever ask that of me again.”
“Ochieng, I would—”
“Absolutely not.” He glared at me, furiously offended. “I’d rather take a knife to myself than do that to you. Nothing is worth hurting you like that.”
I put my hands on my hips. I’d gone from a husband who’d treated my body as a toy to break to one who wouldn’t help me make a child for fear of upsetting me. “I thought you wanted children with me.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “I do. With you. Someday, when they can be conceived in joy. What you’re suggesting is me forcing you through a threshold you need to find a way across on your own.”
“All right.” I held up my hands in a calming gesture as he seemed anything but. “What about if you insert your seed in me another way.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Bent his head to study the floor a moment, then looked at me again. “Insert another way?” He still sounded dangerous, but I forged on.
“My late husband did that. With various… implements.” And it had hurt. Sliced me and made me bleed. But I’d lived through it before without the reward of a child.
Ochieng’s face had gone curiously blank, but that muscle in his jaw twitched. “Tell me.”
I didn’t think he really wanted to know. “It’s not important if it’s not something you want to try.”
“Oh, it’s important.” He said it so quietly that I might’ve missed the fury beneath, if I hadn’t begun to know his body so well.
“Why are you so angry at me?” I whispered.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, then came to me and took my hands, leading me to the pallet bed to sit, easing himself beside me. Still holding my hands—albeit tightly—but otherwise not touching me, he said, “I’m not angry at you. Not about that part, anyway. But it’s difficult to hear what that monster did to you. I wish I could dismember him for you, and I … can’t.”
I swallowed, impossibly moved. “We won’t speak of it then.”
“Not speaking of it won’t mean it isn’t in your mind. Tell me about this. I want to know. At least let me share some part of this burden with you, even if you won’t share anything else.”
That seemed unfair, but I had brought it up. To me it hadn’t seemed the worst of what my late husband had done to me. Still, my mouth went dry when I went to speak the words. Which meant Ochieng likely had a point about me holding still for the actual act. And I didn’t think I could suffer having him tie me down, not even for this. The demon inside stirred in affirmation, and I knew she’d go for her knives.
“He would use carved implements, and put his seed inside them, or coat them with it, then thrust them inside me.”
Ochieng nodded, face carefully neutral, so I continued. “They had spines on them, sharp things. I couldn’t always see… but they hurt. He said… He said the blood helped with fertility. Like cats, you know, and—” I couldn’t quite catch my breath. “And—”
Ochieng held my hands so tightly his grip nearly bruised, and his dark eyes burned like Danu’s fire. “Is there more?” He’d steeled himself to ask that, I thought.
“Not about that part,” I told him, glad not to have to explain further—and curiously lighter for having spoken that bit aloud. “Is it true, though—about the blood?”
He closed his eyes briefly, then shook his head. “No. It isn’t. We are not cats.”
“I kind of thought as much. None of the other women or my teachers had mentioned that part, but I had no one to ask.”
“You didn’t talk to your mother or your sisters about what was happening to you?”
I laughed a little, without humor. “My mother knew all the ways to cover the cuts and bruises so I could go back again the next night. My sisters…no, I didn’t talk to them about it.”
“Why not?” Ochieng had a tight leash on himself, but his voice grated.
“I didn’t want them to be frightened.” I lifted my shoulder in a shrug. “I was the eldest, the first to marry, and I didn’t want them to know…” My voice broke, and I sobbed, a gut-wrenching, convulsive dry sobbing that tore out of me without my permission. “To know… how awful…”
Ochieng pulled me into his arms, holding me fiercely, no longer gentle or careful. “La, all right. Enough for now.” His voice came out ragged and I didn’t mind. That he felt for me helped me wrestle down my own jaggedness.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “But thank you.”
He laughed a little. “I don’t know what you’re thanking me for, but you have no reason to be sorry. It’s hard, yes, to hear these things. Still I want to hear them, to share them.”
“That’s why I say thank you.” I leaned into him. “And, you should know, because of… all that—I think I’m scarred.”
“Oh, my love. I know. It’s all right. I don’t mind.”
“I mean down there, in my woman parts. I bled a lot and my poor brother had to put stitches in me.” I laughed, remembering. “The poor boy was only fourteen and had never seen a woman’s intimates. I think he may be scarred for life.”
“He is a good man,” Ochieng said fervently. “I hope one day to meet him. And I don’t care about any scarring, only that you suffered it.”
“I think I could maybe still have a baby, though,” I said hopefully. “I have my woman’s courses. That’s why I thought, if we could make a baby now, and I’m unable to return, then…” I trailed off because Ochieng had pulled back, that look on his face again.
“Yes, let’s talk about that part. This ‘in case you’re unable to return.’ What are you thinking there?”
I hesitated. He seemed more on edge than ever, despite the apparent calmness of his question. “I don’t know where Danu will guide my feet,” I offered tentatively. “I’ve been captured before. Gone away to lands I didn’t even know the names of. It could happen again.”
“Like a piece of storm wreckage, washed downriver,” he suggested.
Tentatively, I nodded.
He exploded. Rocketed up and away from me. Pacing. “You are not passive wreckage, Ivariel!” he nearly shouted. I hoped no one could hear us, though I didn’t know how they couldn’t. “You determine the course of your life. Not a goddess. Not the forces of nature. You.”
I held my tongue, refraining from pointing out that my experience thus far in life indicated otherwise. He stormed on, not needing my reply anyway.
“And, thinking this, you want to bring a baby into such a life? Raise them without a home or plan. What role do I play in this scenario of yours, other than ‘planting my seed’ in you? Then you’d maybe be out there in the world somewhere, alone with our child, raising them without me. Don’t you know me well enough to understand how that would slowly eat me alive?”
I stared at him, never having seen him so distraught. Eyes wild, hands waving, face contorted in such a rictus of emotions I couldn’t put a name to them all. Such hidden depths to my sunny laughing storyteller. And he was right—about my failings and my short-sightedness.
“I
apologize,” I said quietly. “I didn’t think this through.”
He laughed, a bitter sound with a crazed edge. “No. No, you really didn’t.”
With a heavy sigh, I stood and went to my things, first rolling up the knives again.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding exasperated but less wild.
I glanced at him, assessing, and he seemed calmer. “I’m packing up my things.”
“You plan to leave in the dead of night, without supplies, or saying farewell to your family?” He pretended to be neutral, but the lethal edge to his question arrested me.
“Actually, no,” I replied. “Because you promised to let me go alone, I hoped to gather supplies and say goodbye to everyone in the morning.” My family. “But I thought you’d want me to sleep elsewhere tonight. After all of this.” I gestured at the room, as if all of our angry and hurtful words lay scattered on the floor where we’d flung them.
“Ivariel.” He said my name on a long-suffering sigh. Then came to me, drawing me to my feet. “Leave that. You asked me how people who love each other fight. They don’t do it by walking away. They say what they need to, work out the path going forward, and then they make up to each other.”
“Oh.” I assimilated that. “I think we’ve said what we need to. And worked out the path going forward, more or less.”
“More or less,” he agreed with a slight smile. “As best we can, anyway.”
“What’s involved in making up to each other?” I purred the question, because I suspected I knew.
His smile widened. “Would you come to bed with me, sleep by my side?”
“Yes.” I leaned in and kissed him, mostly a test of his feelings toward me, gratified when he returned the kiss with fervor. With the heat and flavor I’d come to think of as the taste and feel of love. “And I will pleasure you, to make it up to you.”
He cupped my face in his hands, expression going serious. “I’d like to try to pleasure you.”
I stilled, despite my earlier bravado, a chill of concern going through me. “I don’t know…”
“We can take it slowly, but I’d like to try.” He smiled now, sadness in it. “If only to give you something to take with you. Incentive to come back to me.”
“I already have ten thousand reasons to come back to you.”
“Then let me give you a few more.”
Taking me by the hand, he led me to his bed.
~ 23 ~
He pulled off his gray shirt and pants, standing there entirely naked, since he’d long-since doffed the head covering. Moving closer, I reached behind his neck to untie the lace holding his hair in the queue. He held still for me, eyes full of deep emotion as I combed the hair free with my fingers, then lightly kissed him.
“May I undress you, my Ivariel?” he asked, the question sounding almost like a formal request.
I shifted my weight from foot to foot, then stilled myself, as the movement reminded me of Efe’s anxious dancing. “I have scars,” I reminded him.
“I don’t mind the scars,” he reminded me, in turn.
“All right,” I said, steeling myself.
“Relax,” he murmured. “Only pleasure. Only love.” He kissed me, with that tenderness that clouded my mind as sweetly as the opos smoke had done, but instead of dragging me into numbness, his caresses brought me to singing awareness. His clever fingers drifted over my bare arms, as if savoring the feel of my skin. Raising them to my hair, he unpinned the mourning veil I’d forgotten I wore, letting it drift to the floor. I drifted, too, letting my head fall back so his mouth could cruise along my throat, awakening delicious feelings in me, such as I’d never experienced.
I sighed, partly in relief, largely in delight. He murmured some reply, happy to have pleased me. His hands ran over my body in long, slow strokes that dissolved the last of my tension. Precious to me. That’s how he made me feel. I didn’t even flinch—indeed, barely noticed—when he found the ties at my shoulders and undid them. The gray gauzy gown whispered to my feet, and I stood there naked in a pool of it.
His hands continued to glide over me in the same way as before, but the exquisite feel of his skin against mine created a new chorus of song in my body. To my surprise, my sex warmed and grew wet for him. Amazing that such simple touching could do such a thing. He followed his hands with his mouth, pressing kisses to my shoulder, the hollow of my breastbone, the inside of my wrist and elbow. I’d done this for him and yet hadn’t understood how it unraveled one from the deepest core outward.
He paused, hands sliding up and down my back as he studied my face. “All good?”
“All wonderful,” I breathed.
Smiling, radiant with it, sharing that relief with me, he slid his hands around my waist, nearly able to span it with his long fingers. Then slowly brought them up, watching my face all the while, until he cupped my breasts. I took in a breath at the startling sensation, and he drew his brows together. “No?”
“Yes.” I really didn’t want him to stop. “I had no idea it could feel so… good. I wish I knew more words.”
He chuckled, mouth going a little wicked, eyes sparkling. “Words only say so much.”
“This from you?” I gasped as he brushed his thumbs over my taut nipples, grabbing ahold of his strong shoulders, as I felt suddenly dizzy. “Ochieng!”
He laughed again, caressing my breasts, then gently rolling my nipples between thumb and forefinger. “You like this?”
I could only moan in response, the keen pleasure obliterating my mind.
“I have no special tutoring,” he teased, speaking against my skin as his mouth flowed down my throat, tongue hot on my breasts. “I cannot brag of how you can tell the world you’ve been pleasured by Ochieng D’tiembo.” And then he took my nipple in his mouth, sucking on it, and I cried out, my knees collapsing. He caught my weight easily, and grinned at me. “But I think I’m doing well enough.”
“Yes,” I managed to say. “That was more than wonderful.”
“Oh, I’m not done yet. Not after how you tormented me this morning.”
Had it only been that morning? The day had lasted forever. So many changes. I let him guide me to the bed, lying down as he urged me, facing him as he laid himself beside me.
“Is this good?” he asked running a hand down my flank, over the round of my hip and along my thigh, his eyes following the caress before rising to look into mine, assessing.
“So far, yes.”
“Good,” he murmured, easing me onto my back and rising onto his elbow. He ran his free hand from my throat to my breasts, smoothing and teasing them, then down my belly, his expression intent as he did. Then he looked into my face. “Still good?”
I nodded, and he stilled. “Something wrong?”
“No. Yes.” I pressed my lips together, afraid he’d stop. “It’s just… I used to be beautiful.”
“Oh, my Ivariel.” Deliberately he let his gaze wander over my body. “You are so breathtakingly beautiful that you shatter me. I cannot get enough of seeing, touching and tasting you.” He followed with his mouth, demonstrating with reverent sensuality, and I let the susurrus of sensation take me under.
On some dim level, I recognized he’d turned around some of my same tricks on me, leveraging the long, slow and deliberate teasing to make me lose all reserve. Fair enough, I figured, as I registered in the back of my mind those things I’d like to try on him.
By the time he made his way to the nest of ivory curls at my mons, I was panting and ready to give him anything he asked to end the delightful torment, not resisting in the slightest when he parted my knees, kissing his way with painstaking thoroughness up the tender insides of my thighs.
I stopped him though, when he parted my folds, skimming his fingers through the moisture there. He lifted his head when I put my hands on his shoulders. His eyes shone with dark arou
sal and sweet concern. “All right?” he asked, his voice hoarse with the same desire that thrummed through me.
“Yes.” In truth, I’d never imagined I could feel this way, that a woman could experience this kind of transporting pleasure. “But… tell me the truth. Is it bad? I haven’t been able to see myself there, so … I want to know.”
He turned his head, kissing my thigh, pressing the kiss there. “You are perfect, my love, in every way.” Then he turned his gaze to my open sex, stroking the hair and the tender petals of it with a smile on his generous mouth, one that widened as I undulated with the caress, a whimper escaping me. “And you are beautiful here, too. A delicate pink, like an exotic flower. A few scars, fine white lines, but nothing to worry about. You look healthy and lovely here as everywhere.”
I sighed with relief, letting my head drop back. “Thank you.”
“Hold that thought,” he said, voice full of smug male pride, “as you’ll be wanting to truly sing my praises in a few more moments.”
Did he think to bring me to the same kind of completion that men experienced? Because I didn’t think it worked the same way. “Ochieng, you don’t have—” I lost my words in a most unladylike guh of mind-shattering sensation as his mouth closed on my sex.
He might’ve chuckled, but he continued, kissing and licking me there, finding that pearl of intense pleasure and sucking on it with all the finesse of the most finely trained rekjabrel. I thrashed, bucking my hips, and he followed along, chasing me and not trying to pin me in place. I dug my nails into his shoulders, pleading wordlessly, feeling the unbearable tension rise, and rise, and rise…
Until I came apart. The world spun as if I danced at manic speeds, the light and sound and scent and sensation spiraling in a mix brighter than the stars, more profound than the blackest depths of the ocean. Fiery sparks rained through my mind, my voice keening the intensity of the pleasure he brought to me.
* * * *
He eased me down, showering my skin with kisses as he made his way up my body, murmuring words of love and admiration. I felt languid, suffused with happiness, my mind drifting with perfect ease. It was as if all those girlish dreams of the handsome prince and some vaguely glorious happy ever after had condensed themselves into this single moment.
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