She covered her nose, a rush of empathy washing over her. Callie had first met Miad when Zoya introduced them years ago. Back then, he was a good-looking, charismatic young man, soft-spoken and caring—although he had always had far more control over Zoya’s life than Callie felt an older brother should have. She hadn’t had cause to dislike him until recently. Looking over him and seeing his descent into alcoholism touched too many cords within her, reminding her of too many people—her mother, her uncle, her grandfather.
She could only imagine how difficult it must be for Zoya to see her brother like this. Callie almost reached out a hand in concern to steady the staggering man, as Miad clutched at the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut like he was fighting nausea or a headache. Then, she thought about how many times Zoya had already tried to help him, only to be spurned. “You’re drunk,” she stated the obvious. She hardened her heart to him, but she stepped aside, knowing Miad was prone to rages while inebriated. The last thing she needed was for him to attack her. Callie would hate to have to chop his ass down to size. He was still her best friend’s sibling, after all.
Giving up trying to stop him, Callie ambled to Zoya’s bedroom door and gestured inside. “Her things are in here,” she replied. “You’ve got ten minutes. Rest assured, I’ll be calling my roommate to make sure you have her permission to be rifling through her stuff.”
He snorted in amusement as she strutted to the living room and grabbed her phone, but the call to Zoya went unanswered. Worry spread furrows across her smooth brow, and she gnawed at her chipped nails anxiously as she listened to Miad tearing through Zoya’s closet with no concern for keeping a low profile. She jumped as she heard something shatter and break. Whatever it was, he kicked it aside.
She sighed. “What have they done to you, Zoya?” she murmured. She clutched her phone in her hand. As soon as Miad left, she would call Zoya’s fiancé and let him know that something was up. She had visions of Zoya being locked away somewhere to abide by her parents’ strict rules. Rage at what she considered an overstep of boundaries flooded through her. The notion seemed archaic and uncivilized, but she knew the Raos wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever was necessary to keep Zoya under their heel.
Callie assumed the meeting to discuss the future nuptials hadn’t gone well. That was the only explanation. “Just wait, darling. I’ll send in the cavalry.” She steeled her jaw and waited. Micah would know what to do. There was no way he’d let them keep the woman he loved like Rapunzel. He’d find a way to break her free, and perhaps finally Zoya would understand. With or without her parents’ approval, she had to live. The only alternative was to be at their mercy. Judging by the bear in the bedroom, their mercy left much to be desired.
CHAPTER 24 “What do you mean they took her?” He sat forward at his desk at work, turning away from the diagram on the computer to give Callie his full attention.
He hadn’t heard from his fiancé all weekend, and he had known something was up, but the phone call from her roommate on Monday morning confirmed his worst fears. “Miad came over here on Saturday and packed up her things. He told me she was moving home. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all weekend, man! You weren’t answering your cellphone.”
“I was out of range,” he admitted. “I was out in the desert. No towers to give me a signal. So, you haven’t talked to her at all in two days?” Micah had spent Saturday out at the compound with The Hangman’s Crows, celebrating his engagement. The desert was notorious for dropped signals, and he’d actually assumed he had missed a call from Zoya for exactly that reason.
“She won’t answer my calls. Micah, I’m scared. Zoya told me she was planning to talk to her parents about your relationship. I think they may have gotten so upset with her for her decision to be with you that they’re trying to keep her in the house to keep her away from you. I don’t know what to do.”
“Calm down. I’m gonna check out the situation and see what I can do.” He hung up the phone with a weary sigh. “This shit is getting out of hand,” he muttered to himself. Swearing, he tried to put his focus back on his work, but he couldn’t. He was worried about Zoya.
She had insisted the only way her parents would hear of a relationship with him was by her own admission, but apparently that hadn’t worked out so well. The idea they were keeping her hostage—that was the only way to describe it—was incredulous. He pounded his desk in frustration and pushed away, rising to his feet to move around the spacious, attractive director of product design office. The engine piece he was working on lay idle, forgotten.
“There’s no way around it,” he thought out loud. He had to talk to them himself and convince them Zoya would be in good hands if she married him.
He tried to put himself in Musa and Taba’s shoes. Obviously, like any parents, they only wanted what was best for her. The Raos had footed the bill on her college and graduate school expenses, and Zoya had grown up in a loving and protective household. She hadn’t suffered many of the hardships Micah had had to endure as the son of a single mother, living in poverty in a trailer park. For that, he had to assume her best interest was at the heart of their problem of accepting her relationship with Micah.
Yet, he couldn’t shake the old sense of not being good enough. Their refusal to accept him transported him back to the days of wearing hand-me-down clothes and being teased by his classmates for having to take government assistance and barely scraping by, how it had felt for everyone to know he was from that wrong side of town and his mother was a drug addict. Micah had labored all his adult life to escape the judgment and disdain from his youth.
He hadn’t been born with a silver spoon. He had earned his new lifestyle. He was a prosperous, well-educated man, and his income put him in the top tier of middle income, grossing deep into the six figures. He had a nice home and a career that would only take him higher. If they were worried about money, they needn’t be.
He wasn’t a criminal, and he wasn’t a bad man. His past history of juvenile delinquency was behind him. He might be covered in tattoos beneath his business suit, and he wasn’t above slapping on a leather jacket and jeans to blaze over asphalt with a biker gang, but he was sick of being judged. He was worthy, damn it! If Zoya could see past the exterior to his inner self, then why couldn’t her parents?
He was loyal, trustworthy, and hardworking, and he had integrity. Micah didn’t know what more they could ask—although he knew her Maman and Baba had concerns over his lack of religious affiliation, or rather the fact he wasn’t Muslim, but that couldn’t be helped. Micah had toggled with the idea of converting just to appease Zoya’s parents, but he knew it wouldn’t be a sincere move.
They’d have to accept him as he was. He ground his teeth and tried to envision how a marriage to Zoya would play out without her parents’ support. She’d be miserable. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to convince Taba and Musa that he was the man Zoya needed and desired. He wasn’t afraid to take the fight straight to their door, if he had to, because Zoya’s delivery had apparently resulted in them leveraging their considerable control over her. But, they couldn’t control him. Staring out the window of his office at the scenic view beyond the glass, Micah contemplated when and how he should approach them.
He knew Zoya often spent Saturdays with them for dinner since it was the only day of the week all of them were available to sit down and enjoy one another. Her father was off work on Saturdays. Miad would probably be skulking around. Her mother, he knew, was a homemaker. She would be there. He only wished he knew more about the family, so he could better plan what to say and do to make the pop-up visit flow as smoothly as possible.
“Well,” he murmured to himself, “I’ve been in tighter jams and talked my way out.” He tried to have confidence, but the truth was that this was a delicate matter. If he said the wrong thing, he could lose Zoya forever. He couldn’t let that happen. He was bound and determined to marry her. Barring gaining her family’s acceptance and permission to pre
ss his suit, the only other option was to somehow sneak Zoya out of the house. He sighed. Either way, someone had to lose.
***
“Zoya, you have to eat,” Taba called through the door. She knocked again, but her daughter didn’t deign to respond. Sighing in frustration, the middle-aged housewife shuffled from the door.
Zoya glared out the window of her bedroom, refusing to acknowledge her mother’s attempt to pretend like nothing was out of the ordinary. She was lying in the bed she hadn’t slept in since she was in her teens, surrounded by the accoutrements of a former life. The bedroom walls were papered in cool hues of green and ivory damask with a gauzy pink valance cascading down around the picture window. She couldn’t escape through the window because the night of her “house arrest” her Baba had nailed the sill shut.
The white bookshelf next to the bed was crammed with dolls and teenage romance novels, old toys, and a piggybank. An ivory armoire placed against the wall facing her bed was still crowded with clothes from high school, and she could tell none of her things had been touched in years. It should have made her feel sentimental. Instead, it made her feel like her parents had been keeping the asylum waiting and ready for her all along. The décor screamed adolescence, and as much as she had loved her elegant, hand-carved, full-sized bed when she was growing up, the sight of the pink and mint green bedspread for the third day in a row made her want to set the room on fire.
She missed her apartment. She missed Callie. Her Maman had confiscated her cellphone and her car keys, leaving Zoya with no way to get in touch with Callie or Micah. She could only imagine how worried they must be, and her rage boiled hotter. She had never imagined things would come to this. Miad’s betrayal was a blow, but her parents had hurt her even more by accepting his explanations and thinking the worst of her.
It was true that she was in a relationship with a man her parents might not accept, but Zoya was an adult. She was sick of following orders. She wanted to make her own decisions now. Even if she made mistakes, they would be her mistakes. Instead, she was being forced to cater to Miad’s whims—when, in fact, she was sure he was only doing this to keep her parents from realizing his new lows. The drinking, the gambling, the detrimental habits would be his undoing, and while they were busy bothering with keeping tabs on Zoya, they were missing the warning signs.
“They can’t do this.” She swung her legs around to the side of her bed and pushed to her feet, marching over to her door with a determined stride. She opened it, seeing the plate on the floor she stepped over her dinner and boldly walked down the hall. She made it as far as the living room before her mother stepped out of the kitchen with a cold stare.
“You’re not going anywhere without Miad,” Taba replied.
“Miad isn’t here. He’s never here these days, or have you even noticed? He’s probably at the pool hall or a bar, someplace where they’ll keep the cheap liquor flowing, Maman. You should be worried about him, not me!”
“You will not disrespect me.”
Zoya spun away from the front door and threw up her hands in despair. “Is it disrespect that I just want to live? This is crazy, Maman. We are a progressive family! This isn’t like you and Baba. What do you think keeping me here will do? Do you think it will make me more prone to do as the three of you say? And, at what point does what I want come into play?”
Taba closed the distance between them and slapped Zoya. She pointed a sharp finger at her daughter and spat, “You should want to honor and obey and respect those who have sacrificed so much for you to live this life you think you have a right to, ungrateful little girl. Your father is out right now working to earn money to support you! Yet, you stand here and speak to me like this? Have you lost your mind?”
“Maman, I’m losing more than my mind here,” Zoya ground out, clutching her face. Tears glistened in her eyes. She was losing the respect she had for them, that they would stoop to such levels. She sniffed and dried up her tears, staring unflinchingly into Taba’s flinty eyes. “How long do you think you can keep me here like this?”
“Until Javid makes an honest woman of you. He’ll be here to visit after mosque on Friday. You will accept his proposal, and you will marry him, and that’s final. I’ll have no more of you consorting with the unclean spirits of this land. You’re above them, Zoya. You’re above that. Somehow you allowed yourself to be debased, but I intend to remind you of your place of high-standing. Whoever he is...it’s over between you for good. Do you understand me?”
Shaking, Zoya struggled for self-control because she was very close to speaking her mind. It didn’t matter what Taba or Musa or Miad had planned for her future. She wouldn’t marry Javid. They could try to keep her locked up for as long as they felt necessary, but that bit of business wasn’t happening. She lowered her eyes and pushed the anger out of herself. “Maman, I am trying to respect you. But, you should understand me, as well. I cannot do what you ask of me. You can keep me here. You can treat me like I am no kin to you, but you will never get me to marry that man.”
She gently pushed past Taba and dejectedly made her way back to her bedroom. The cold meat was congealing in its own fat on the plate on the floor. She stepped over it again and walked into the room, shutting the door behind her.
***
Her sweat soaked the cotton sheets, as she twisted in the covers, dreaming wild, passionate dreams, soft moans spilling past her lips. She was with him.
Micah pressed her back against the cool grass of paradise. His lips planted flowers of desire down her fertile body until his mouth found her womanhood and he made her blossom wider to accept the rain of his tongue. Flicks of the pink tip against her clitoris sent ripples of pleasure from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, which curled and clenched when he opened his mouth and tongue-kissed her entrance intimately. His lips feathered over her lower lips. His tongue speared in and out of her tight sheath, stroking and licking her to frenzy.
Hazel eyes flew open to stare blindly up at the Tree of Life. The blue sky was hyper-saturated cerulean blue and the blinding white clouds floated over the lush green landscape. The sun was a pearlescent disc above. It was warm as spring, but the fire between them was summer. The breeze that cooled their skin was laden with the scent of all manner of flowers and fruits, aromatic and lovely to the senses.
A dark green snake slithered past in the grass whispering, “Choose.” But, she paid it no mind. It couldn’t hurt her here. There were other animals. Giraffes peered through the large fronds of an oversized alocasia plant, and lions lounged in the sun. Gazelles skipped away from the sounds of their pleasure. Birds winged skyward, trilling eloquent love songs.
They were surrounded by rounded mountains that were covered in chartreuse grass and yellow green trees, and in the valley was a massive lake of mottled aquamarine, lime and dark, still waters. The tall, moss covered sienna tree twisted from a squat trunk and branched out in arabesque lines. Hidden in the fragrant, tri-lobed leaves were dusky, purple fruit, ripe and swollen like his erection. A fat, succulent fig dropped to the grass beside her face.
He rubbed his genitalia against her inner thigh, as he rose slowly over her. His mouth was sweet and swept over hers in a rush that left her breathless and raising her face for more of his kisses. Micah slid his hands to her waist and pulled her against his hot, naked body. He lay back upon the pillow of thick grass and settled her astride him. Zoya languidly smiled down, her dark brown hair flowing over her heavy, full breasts as she lowered herself on his rigid cock. Her head lolled back. Her hair tickled his thighs. Her sighs exhaled like gusts of summer wind. Her breasts bounced and jiggled to the rise and fall of her body rolling up and down over his, and he handled her hips expertly, guiding her movements.
The shaft penetrated her to her core, a delicious sensation that drove her to come down upon him harder, quivering with lust. Zoya clenched her thighs around his hips and placed her hands to his chest to lean forward and stare down into his face. “Are you really
here?” Her voice echoed back, her moans overlapping the question, as she gasped and whimpered in ecstasy.
His hand caressed up the length of her arm and his fingers encircled a breast. He squeezed her nipple gently, causing Zoya to bite her lower lip and groan. Micah’s hips rose to counter the downward motion of her pelvis. His shaft was nestled deep within, and she wanted to ride him until the sunset and rose again. Her lips parted, and she moaned his name. He stared up at her with open eyes filled with love and wonder, and she saw through to his soul. She recognized the fabric of his being because it was just like hers. He was hers. They were of one soul.
As they made love, surging against each other in an ebb and flow of bodies, he maintained the connection but sat up and held her closer so that they embraced each other face to face. She undulated against him. His lips skated down the side of her neck. She breathed his name into his ear. He whispered, “I love you” in every language. She understood each word. His body was screaming the confession louder than his voice. The lovemaking was sensual and intense, and they were almost to culmination.
But, far in the distance, there was a clamor at the gate. She heard voices raised, and she pulled away from him in confusion. His words echoed through her. “Don’t stop loving me,” he whispered, stroking up and into her. She moaned and wrapped her arms around his shoulders tighter as his muscular arms encircled her waist.
BIKER DADDY_The Chain Gang MC Page 36
