“Wait!” I said loudly, my voice crackling from the dryness in my throat that I had long forgotten about.
“Tomorrow,” she said, disappearing through the door.
I watched as the door closed behind her, touching my hand to my cheek and falling back onto the ground to relive the last few moments in my head. My cheek felt rough underneath my dirty palm. Bringing both hands up to my face to inspect them, I realized how dirty I had become since the last time Nasima had bathed me. I wondered what I must look like to her, and tried to remember the last time I saw myself in the mirror.
In another place and time, my rugged good looks would have made light work of this woman’s sensibilities. But now, as I sat there disheveled and unkempt, I felt a slight tinge of insecurity.
Why am I even thinking about this nonsense? I need to figure out a way to get the fuck out of here.
But what could I possibly say to Amadi? I needed something believable to feed him. As I pondered the situation, my lids began to get heavy, and as I tried to fight back the urge to fall asleep, the throbbing between my legs subsided. Slowly, I rolled over onto my stomach to let the lacerations on my back breathe as I slowly drifted back to sleep, murmuring Nasima’s name to myself.
WATERBOARDING
The next morning, the footsteps and the keys came like clockwork, just as reliable as the sunrise. Except there was something different today; perhaps it had been the hope that Nasima had given me during her short evening visit. But today unlike all the others before it, I felt the creeping desire to live once again. The keys jangled at the lock as the guard seemed to be having a hard time unlocking it. Finally I heard a click and the metal door flung open. It was Amadi with a huge smile on his face. I knew it wasn’t going to be a good day if he was happy to see me.
“Come, my friend. I have something extra special for you today,” Amadi said.
I rolled over onto my back. I just didn’t have the strength for another day. So I finally said, “Just kill me, muthafucker. I’m never going to say anything. Just kill me.”
“Oh no, my friend. I am under strict orders to keep you alive,” Amadi said.
“Strict orders from whom?”
“Does it matter? You get to live,” Amadi said smugly. “Come on, let’s go. I have a schedule to keep.”
“No!” I yelled.
Amadi spun around and echoed my words in the form of a question, “No?”
“That’s right, son of a bitch. No. You wanna beat me, then fuckin’ carry me your goddam self,” I growled.
“Get your ass up!” Amadi yelled in my face, as saliva sprayed into my eyes. He was ravenous at this point, almost foaming at the mouth.
“Fuck, your breath stinks. Why don’t you gargle with gasoline? It’d be a definite improvement,” I taunted.
Amadi tried to pick me up by my shirt, but was unable to hold the full weight of all my muscle, so he dropped me back onto the ground. “Fuck, come pick him up,” he ordered the other guards.
I laughed. “You weak muthafucker.”
The guards picked me up by my arms and stood me up as Amadi ran up to me and punched me in the face, knocking me back to the ground.
I pushed myself up off of the ground and slowly stood. Wiping the blood streaming from my mouth, I asked, “It’s easy to sucker punch someone, but how about when they’re ready for you?”
“Grab him,” Amadi yelled to the guards, who quickly kicked me in the back of the knees, causing me to lose my balance and fall back to the ground. “Pick that bitch up and let’s go.”
The guards picked me up and dragged me toward the door, kicking me in the shins until I started to move under my own strength. My energy dwindled with each step as I made my usual trek down the hall to the interrogation room. As I looked from the floor to Amadi’s back, I caught a glimpse of Nasima walking with another guard, rounding the corner and disappearing. I wondered if she was headed to another prisoner’s room to tend to their wounds, but she wasn’t holding her usual bucket and cloth rags.
Upon entering the interrogation room, I saw buckets full of water and a table where the wooden chair usually sat. I knew what this was. Hell, I had done this to a number of men before.
Ain’t karma a bitch?
“So, it’s come to this?” I asked sarcastically. “I thought we were friends.”
Taking a deep breath, I said a little prayer to myself, and with the urging of the gun held to my back, I made my way to the table. The guards strapped my arms and legs down, and laid a towel over my face so I wouldn’t know when the water was coming.
“Waterboarding?” I asked “I thought you had a better imagination than that.”
“Do you feel like chatting with me today, Mr. Black?”
I could hear the smile in his voice and smell the cheap cigar smoke filling the room.
“Do you wanna talk about how shitty your cigar smells?” I asked through the mildewed towel.
A stream of water poured down into my nose and mouth, and although I tried to hold my breath and close my mouth, some of the water had already made it in, lodging in my lungs. I felt like I was drowning, but I was reminded of the training I received during BUD/s, where my class had spent countless hours lying on the shore of the cold Pacific Ocean, the incoming surf relentlessly washing over our bodies. Those training exercises had prepared me for this moment. I tried to zone out, but there was already too much water in my lungs, and I couldn’t breathe.
The barrage of water suddenly stopped flowing over my face. “Again…do you feel like chatting with me today?” Amadi asked.
I coughed, sputtering water out of my throat and asked, “So is that a no on the cigar topic?”
“You must love being tortured,” Amadi said. “Maybe you should have kept to your stupid American code of conduct. I am not too sure I like this side of you.”
“That’s not what your mom said last night,” I replied smugly.
Amadi angrily stepped onto the table to stomp on my hand. The sharp pain of his heavy military boot smashing down on every small bone that made up the skeleton of my hand was excruciatingly painful. I ground my teeth together to keep from letting out a moan, which I knew would satisfy the evil in him.
“I can do this forever…fuckin’ American!” Amadi said in between puffs of his cigar.
“Funny, so can I,” I retorted as I coughed the water from my lungs.
“Do it again,” Amadi ordered. The guards poured more water onto my face as I gurgled and wrenched my neck from side to side, trying to move away from the deluge of water that was essentially drowning me. The guard just continually moved the stream to accommodate the position of my face.
“Okay, stop,” Amadi ordered.
I caught my breath and said, “No, don’t stop…it feels so good.”
He laughed. “Finish up here but don’t have too much fun without me,” Amadi said to the guard as he headed for the door. “I’ll be back later.”
“You’re not staying, dear?” I asked. The guard continued to pour bucket after bucket of water over the towel that covered my face. This lasted for a few more hours until I eventually passed out from sheer exhaustion of coughing and drowning, coughing and drowning. I woke up a few hours later to find myself back in my cell.
Well, at least I got a full shower out of the deal.
Coughing the excess water out of my lungs, I pushed myself off of the floor. As the weeks leading up to this point had gone on; the guards had, for some reason, felt the need to chain me to the wall less and less. Being unchained gave me the freedom to move around the cell and gave the skin on my wrists a slight reprieve.
Feeling somewhat invigorated from the waterboarding, I decided to stay up and anxiously await Nasima’s arrival. The fact that I didn’t smell like shit today gave me a tad bit more confidence, as I reminisced about her body from the night before. I had not been with a woman in what seemed like years, and just the thought of her body made mine throb in anticipation of her visit.
The minutes slowly ticked by as I paced the cell back and forth, looking at my worn feet covered with dust and bruises, wondering where Nasima could be. The minutes eventually turned into an hour, then two, as I began to grow weary from pacing.
It wasn’t like her to miss my daily triage session.
Maybe they told her I wasn’t that hurt, so she skipped me today.
Then I heard the jangling of the keys and the footsteps I knew so well. A sound that first wrought terror, now brought a smile to my face, because I knew it was Nasima visiting. The keys jiggled in the door lock, and then click, the lock gave way, allowing the door knob to turn.
UNLEASHED
Nasima
I poked my head through the opening and peered through, panning the floor of the small cell, looking for Elijah. In the corner of the cell I saw a pair of feet, which I traced up six foot five of pure sex embodied in a hard shell of muscle. Through his overgrown beard I could see his square jaw, which looked to have been made of pure steel beneath his pale skin. The tattered clothes he wore couldn’t hide the way his muscles tensed and released beneath the fabric as he moved toward me. His black hair seemed to carry its own breeze within it as he walked. It was as though I was looking at a new man.
This is not what I’m here for.
Fully emerging from behind the door; I closed it behind me.
“You look like a new man, Elijah,” I said with a smile that was hidden underneath my head covering.
“The upside to waterboarding,” he replied as he inched toward to me.
“Let me see your wounds.”
“I don’t think I have any new ones.”
“Well, let me take a look at the old ones,” I said as I sat on the ground, holding the bucket of water and small bag which held all my crucial medical equipment.
Elijah sat down next to me and removed his shirt. I ran my gaze along his chest and over his broad shoulders to the tattered flesh on his back, surveying the already healing wounds that I had previously sewn or bandaged.
“Everything looks good,” I said.
“Yes, everything does,” he said, gazing straight into my eyes.
I smiled and turned to grab the rag that floated in the bucket, wrung it out, and slowly turned back to him. Rubbing the rag up the length of his arm and down his back, I wiped the dirt from his face, body, hands, and feet.
“Would you ever leave this place?” he asked softly as though we were sitting in a quiet café somewhere, nonchalantly chatting about the future.
“And go where?” I asked in response.
“Anywhere. You’re so much better than this place, Nasima. There is so much out there for a woman like you,” he said.
“And what kind of woman am I?”
“The most precious kind,” he said as he brought his hand up to my face, caressing my cheek with his thumb.
I grasped onto his hand and closed my eyes to immerse myself in the tenderness of his touch. The sound of a few guards passing by thrust me out of the moment, and I quickly pushed his hand to his lap and stood up.
“Here is the rest of the water. I will turn around―please, just finish washing yourself so that I may leave,” I said, feeling upset with myself that I continued to let him in, my feelings growing more real every time I did. I could hear the water splashing onto the ground as he doused the bucket of water over his head. “Are you done?”
“Yes, I am done,” he whispered in my ear.
Quickly, I turned around to see he was standing right behind me, and now I was face to face with the man I so desperately longed for, but could not have. Soaked from his improvised shower, the water still dripped from his rugged jawline and down over his chiseled body. The whole scene was just too much for me to take in. “Elijah, I…”
He inched toward me. “I’m done with your sensibilities.”
“We shouldn’t,” I said as I looked down and backed away from him.
His power, mixed with his masculinity and the sexual tension, washed toward me like an aura he projected ahead of him. My body responded to his touch as my skin hummed with his sensual energy, my heartbeat rising within my chest. Impulsively, I began to unwrap the impeding cover about my face and head, wanting to be fully present in the moment.
“Yes…we should,” he said as he grabbed the back of my neck, pulling my trembling flesh toward him as he pressed his lips onto mine; the bristles on his face tickling my smooth skin.
He has already seen me anyway.
I unveiled myself; my thick hair fell from its loose bun and cascaded down my shoulders, resting at my hips. He stepped back, reaching out to run his fingers through the ends of its silkiness, then ran his hand up the length of my arm underneath the thin material that made up the sleeve of my dress. I smiled at him seductively, my skin coming alive beneath his confident touch.
***
Elijah
Grabbing her waist, I forced my knee between her thighs as I ran my fingertips underneath her long dress, my hand finding the smooth skin of her vulnerable inner thigh. I felt a stirring below when I realized she wasn’t wearing anything under the dress except for a pair of thin panties. Hard. Aching. Longing to be inside of her, I worked fiercely to restrain myself. It had been months since I had touched a woman, and my self-control was next to nil. My fingers trailed up the length of her stomach, cupping her breasts in my rough palm.
“Are you ready for me?” I exhaled, my lips grazing the edges of her ear.
***
Nasima
The sensuality in his deliverance of the five words tantalized my desires. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him, raking my nails across his back―but then reality set in.
“This is not right,” I said, my chest pressed against his.
“Who says it’s not right?” he asked, pressing in closer.
“Everything I’ve been taught says it is not right,” I replied in a slight whisper, my eyes still closed, taking in the moment, hoping he would convince me to keep going.
I knew what his body wanted…my body wanted it too; but my sensibilities fought hard against the lasciviousness that yearned to rip from my traditional bondage. He placed a hand on my backside, pulling me toward him as he ran his fingertips down over my naked folds. His breath flowed against my cheek like the sweet caress of the summer wind as his fingers entered me. I bit down on the moan of pleasure that his words and actions aroused from deep within. The flick of his thumb against my velvety sheath enticed me to push my hips toward his hand, begging for more of the same.
I traced the tip of my tongue over his bottom lip.
“Let me take it,” he exhaled, a whisper in my ear.
Elijah tilted his head and moved in to kiss me when I suddenly backed my face away. “You must think so little of me,” I said as I pulled my hips away from his pilfering hand; dismissing him. “You must perceive me as a tramp, easily won over by little more than a word or two.”
He groaned at the loss of my touch. “Stop playing coy!” he said sternly. “Why are you so afraid to let me have you?”
“Let you have me? I belong to no one and with no one! I am my own person,” I asserted firmly as I lowered my dress and swatted his hand away from me.
“If you belong to no one…” he said as he pushed me up against the cold metal door and pressed his body back onto mine, “…then let me have you.”
His push combined with my pull created a lust that billowed around us as we kissed passionately. Elijah broke the kiss, pulling away slightly to look me in the eyes. “Although I want nothing more than to dive completely into you, the gentleman in me has to ask why would you come here like this and not expect me to want you?” he asked softly.
“It’s not that I have issue with you wanting me,” I explained. “I want you too.”
“Then what is it?” he asked as he ran his fingers through my hair and down the back of my neck.
“I am afraid of what happens to me after I let you have me,” I replied, totally engrossed in my cu
rrent situation, forgetting my tradition and the guards that waited beyond the metal door.
“And what is that?” he asked.
“I have never been with a man, and the heart of a woman who is still pure will always fall in love with the one who plucks that purity from her flesh,” I said quietly as I looked toward the bare wall across the room.
He cupped his left palm to the back of my neck and rested the right on my cheek, tenderly sweeping his fingertips past my lips, and down my neck. He mapped out every feature, before his hand came to rest over my heart, which beat just as quickly as his.
“Why are you so afraid to fall in love?” he asked in a soft breath.
Shifting my gaze back to him, I said softly, “It’s not that I fear falling in love. What a wonderful thing love is…and isn’t that why God put us on this earth? To love? I love many things in this world, the sunset…the ocean. What I do fear, however, is falling so deeply in love with someone who does not return that love. To me, that is how one dies while still breathing. I do not think I could ever recover from that sort of pain.”
“Your words are profound, but have you thought about the scariest part?” he asked.
“And what is that?”
“The scariest part is that you’re never going to know if you’re letting the right person slip through your fingers because you’re too afraid to give them the chance to hurt you,” he said, caressing my face.
I smiled coyly, beguiled by his words. “Are you trying to make a case for yourself, Mr. Black?”
“I don’t need to make a case. I will have you. You will be mine. It’s really not my problem whether or not you fall in love with me after,” he said confidently, as he leaned in and slipped his tongue in between my lips.
I pulled my mouth away slightly. “Fall in love with you? Might you also be at risk of falling in love? Or am I alone, perched precariously at the edge of this cliff?”
Unleashed (Mr. Black Series Book 1) Page 5
