Rumors weren’t proof. Knowing smiles and resentful scowls greeted him wherever he went. He smiled and scowled back. However, once this robbery came to light, all suspicion would fall on Sekou. No other thief in the village would dare target Morlu.
Sekou moved quickly toward his destination. The clouds played hide and seek with the moon and provided cover for his approach.
He hurried to the rear of Morlu’s mansion and moved to the library doors that faced the back garden. They opened. Sekou chuckled. A law-abiding person would assume if one door to a room was locked, all its doors would be locked. Sekou abided by no laws but his own.
He slipped inside and acclimated himself to the room’s darkness. The scent of money and secrets swirled around him. He lifted cushions, rolled up the carpet, opened drawers and cabinets.
Nothing.
He frowned at the tapestries, the hand-carved furniture, the ceiling-to-floor shelves of leather-bound books. He thumbed his lower lip. Something Morlu often proclaimed came to mind.
Our wealth is in the waters of the Mafa, in our fertile Liberian soil. Fish, my people. Farm. The knowledge offered by these colonizers only robs us of our minds and our spirits and our sense of identity. Resist, my brothers. Resist them with all your might.
Sekou couldn’t fault him there. He’d skipped to the last pages of enough of the colonizers’ books to know all they encouraged was submission. However, Morlu didn’t fish or farm. He abused spiritual power to amass his fortune. Stealing from him would bring pure joy.
Sekou stepped closer to the shelves and perused the richly bound tomes. If wealth wasn’t to be had from books, why did Morlu have so many?
Because somewhere within those pages lay Morlu’s wealth.
Sekou studied the titles, trying to discern which work might contain what he sought. A treasure map? A key to an as yet undiscovered locked room where gold and gems were stored?
A multiple volume encyclopedia stood on shelves at chest level in a far corner. Morlu would want his wealth within easy reach. Sekou pulled down the first volume and riffled through the pages. Paper currency of all types fluttered to his feet like leaves whirling from the branches of bombax trees in winter.
Clever, Dibia. But not clever enough.
Sekou chuckled and riffled through volume after volume. By the time he reached Z, a pile of money lay on the floor. He scooped the cash into his swag sack, laughing quietly at his haul.
When he thrust the last volume back into place, he knocked a slender manuscript off the shelf.
The Story of Aziza.
He recognized the title of the book with which Morlu had taunted him. He picked it up and fanned the pages with his thumb. A sigh drifted past him.
Startled, he crouched and looked left then right. Only the night breeze disturbed the silence. He fanned through the pages again. This time a scent—light like rain, sweet like honey—graced the air.
He stared at the face of a withered old hag on the book’s cover. The image had repulsed and fascinated him. The gaze in her eyes shone with intelligence and defiance, so unlike the villagers lionizing the dibia at this moment.
Sekou opened to the flyleaf. There the image of a black beauty stared back at him. Her skin was as smooth as the hag’s was wrinkled, but the same intelligent defiance shone in her eyes. He traced the outline of her chin, jutting forth with pride.
“So, ladies…” He feathered his fingers along her full lips then examined the woman on the cover again. “To which one of you does this story belong?”
Aziza’s chest heaved. Warmth from the intruder’s fingers suffused the book’s cover, intoxicating her mind and her spirit with hope. The rapid flutter of her prison’s pages kindled arousal along her labia. She shivered as delight saturated her deadened limbs.
Once again, the rapid riffling of the pages sent tremors of pleasure through her. She knew not whose hand cradled her prison, but the respectful caress told her this couldn’t be her captor. Dared she hope this might be a person she could trust to set her free?
Suddenly, pain blazed up her spine, quicker and hotter than a brush fire. She screamed as another flare of pain seared her consciousness.
Sekou hurried home, his heart racing, his swag sack bouncing against his back. Around him, the noises of the jungle applauded his audacity. Joy spewed from him like water from the nose of a hippo. His grin stretched his face muscles until his temples hurt.
His thoughts flew as fast as his feet. How soon could he get away to England? Where else could he go? He snorted. With all this loot? Anywhere in the world. Definitely, far away from the evil wielded by the likes of Morlu or from anyone who’d make him feel less than any man’s equal.
He entered his shack, opened his sack of money, and placed the only possessions he prized inside. First, his mother’s clay cooking pot and mingling stick. She stirred love into every meal. Next, his father’s saa saa. He inspired pride with every sound the beaded gourd produced. Neither approved of his chosen profession, but both accepted their son had a good heart. Sekou hid these treasures well when the villagers came looking for valuables to pay Morlu for the healings he should have bestowed for free.
The cowrie shells of his father’s saa saa rattled against something hard. Sekou reached inside the sack and withdrew the little volume that had piqued his curiosity. He’d forgotten he’d taken it. Why had Morlu dared him to read it then laughed when Sekou declined?
The moon shone through the shack’s open window, offering him plenty of light to read by. He shrugged. Why not? Even after the sun rose, no one in the village would stir for hours. He doubted Morlu would go straight to his library after such a celebration. More likely, some poor female would be suffering his attentions in the bedroom. However, nothing would appease his fury once he learned he’d been robbed. By then, Sekou would be on his way to Monrovia.
He sat on the floor, propped himself beneath the window, and read.
Aziza strode through the village, always carrying a book that she brandished like a sword or clutched like a shield when offended. Her black beauty gleamed in the sunlight. Pride shone in her gaze. She’d come from across the sea, not to offer the salvation of a foreign god but the knowledge of divinity within.
She flouted the village elders’ strictures against educating girls and disputed the societal roles assigned to the natives by her fellow émigrés. Her arrogance even extended to spurning the dibia’s favors.
Nothing and no one frightened her. So, disregarding everyone’s admonitions not to go about alone, she made her way daily to read on the banks of the nearby river and swim in its waters.
Sekou admired Aziza’s independent nature. How he wished she were real. What wouldn’t he give to have the respect—let alone the love—of a woman like this? He licked his thumb and continued reading.
She swam unafraid of the water animals and fowls, who recognized a kindred spirit amongst them. Like Eve in a new Eden, she walked among them and lay naked and unashamed in their midst. She emerged from her swims radiant, dripping from head to foot, unaware her movements were tracked, her body desired.
She lay relaxed on the grass, legs spread wide to the warmth of the sun and the whispering breezes. Sometimes she read, sometimes she napped. But always after reading or napping, she pleasured herself in ways only a man should.
Sekou closed his eyes, imagining her labia wet from the river, wet from her ministrations, wet from desire. The aromas of honey, grass, and river water tickled his imagination. He inhaled hard, exhaled harder.
“How do you smell, Aziza?” His breath caught in his throat. “Fresh and nature-scented?” He gnawed his lip. “How do you feel? Slick and warm?”
Memories of his mother and father laughing together, touching one another seized his heart. Had all his thievery been an attempt to have what they had? An old yearning revived.
“Is that what you want, Aziza?” He slid his index finger slowly, lovingly into the gutter of the book. “Is your defiance a quest for love, too?
”
Delicious friction slid along Aziza’s labia. She closed her mind to the hope battering her spirit. Could it be that whoever now perused her story wasn’t Dulee Morlu? Neither desperation nor demand permeated this touch. Morlu never pulled her from his shelf without teasing or threatening her with his odious ultimatum.
Say I’m yours.
This reader couldn’t be him. Longing as well as arousal filtered to her senses. She became aware of the reader’s attention on the next part of her story.
She lay by the river, the sun sparkling off her nakedness, the water shimmering in droplets on her springy pubic hair. Her fingers played through their softness, shyly moving toward her labia.
So caught up was she in her own bliss that she hadn’t heard Dulee Morlu approach. A shift in the breeze alerted her to his presence. She leapt to her feet, but too late.
He grabbed her wrist and spun her around. His intent gleamed in his eyes. Fear more than planning helped her escape. She pulled his wrist to her mouth and bit him hard. He yelped and released her. She kicked him in the stomach.
He doubled over with a satisfying oomph.
Her gaze fell where her personal journal lay open. A breeze off the river set its pages fluttering. If only it were the textbook she had carried the day before, she’d have had something more substantial with which to hit him.
Morlu breathed though his mouth, sucking in deep and hard. He pinned her with his glare. Still wheezing, he extended a hand in her direction, his finger pointed like a sword.
A spike of evil stabbed against her throat. She gasped and fell onto her back.
“Think you can keep yourself from me forever?”
“To take me,” she answered, “you’ll have to kill me.”
He snarled like a wounded animal. “That won’t be necessary.” He picked up her journal then stood over her. His shadow blotted out the warmth of the sun.
She shivered.
“You need a place where you can contemplate what refusing me means. Someplace where no one will come looking for you.” He held her journal in one hand, its pages splayed open. “Someplace you’ve always gone to hide when you wanted to escape,” he whispered. “Only, from this hiding place, there will be no escape.”
He clenched his hand into a fist. The sun slipped behind a cloud. The sky darkened. The noises of the animals stilled. The air thinned.
Aziza panted, unable to breathe.
Morlu knelt over her. “Escape is still possible.” His hot breath wafted beneath her nose. “Accept you can only be free in bondage to me.”
She kept her eyes closed, shuddering against his smell, musty and rank.
“Say it,” he hissed. “Say ‘I’m yours.’”
Aziza’s fingers convulsed against the grass. Her head lolled to one side.
“Say it.”
She opened her eyes, staring at him through tears hot with contempt and refusal.
“Defiant to the last.” He chuckled. “I should have expected nothing less.” He held the book mere inches from her face. Its pages loomed over her like white sheets flapping on a clothesline. “I condemn you to the pages of your own story.”
She closed her eyes. Her temple throbbed in time to the rhythm of those words repeated over, and over, and over.
He stood and glared down on her. “This tome will be your prison, its cover your skin, its pages your limbs. The words I dictate will be your fate. Until you submit with the words ‘I’m yours,’ you will be stranded there for the rest of time.”
As it had when Morlu read it, the reading of her imprisonment forced Aziza to relive her abduction and re-experience the darkness that had blanketed her mind. But the fingers now riffling her pages, sliding wet and eager down their edges, incited emotions, sensations, and thoughts she could no longer fight.
Pain clogged her throat as each stroke stoked a hunger she’d kept at bay since her captivity. Her stomach muscles strained. Her thighs trembled. Bright white sparks pin-wheeled through her darkness. Her chest heaved a pain-filled gasp. Resistance melted from her limbs like butter in a hot pan.
She succumbed and screamed the hated words. “I’m yours.”
Sekou gripped the book with the determination of one holding a lion by the tail. The depictions of Aziza’s delight as she’d pleasured herself, of her resolution as she’d fought off Morlu set his blood stirring. Delicious tremors coursed from the book, up his arms, and down his torso to his groin. A wondrous tightness swelled his cock. He stumbled to his feet. One word pulsed through his mind, through his spirit. He threw back his head, dropped the book, and shouted her wonder-filled name.
In a flash, Aziza lay at his feet, slender and sleek like a panther asleep in the moonlight.
Sekou fell to his hands and knees, dumbfounded, dizzy, and delighted by the sight. He’d always loved black but had never realized how heady an effect the color could have. Neither oil nor ink nor the richest ebony contained the beauty of her black, flawless skin.
For she was flawless, and the very image drawn on the flyleaf…only more exquisite.
He gazed from the arch of her foot up a muscled calf, along a firm thigh, to a curvy hip attached to an equally plump buttock. His fingers itched to palm its softness, enjoy its warmth. He moaned, exhaling on ecstasy.
She sighed and turned slightly so her lap came into full view. Hair curled at the juncture of two shapely thighs. Her thighs parted, tensed then relaxed. The scent from the pages of the book returned. He inhaled the pleasing aroma of erotic honey as she rolled fully onto her back. Her wet nether lips glistened like sunlight on fast moving water. Would her stomach quiver if he dared apply his invasive yet adoring touch?
He clenched his hands to resist touching her nut-brown nipples. To touch her without permission would be a theft even he wouldn’t attempt. Another sigh drew his attention to her mouth. Slowly, she parted her lips and drew her tongue across them.
Sekou’s mouth went as dry as the sands of a Monrovian beach. His tongue mimicked the motion.
Suddenly, she shivered. Gooseflesh pimpled her beautiful black skin.
Sekou rushed to his bed, grabbed the sheet, then hurried back. He wrapped the covering around her as if handling a newborn.
Her eyelids fluttered open with her next moan. Her gaze met his. Her lips parted in a smile that caught him by the throat. “Who—who are you?”
He huffed out a breath, overcome by the gratitude gleaming in her gaze. “Se—Sekou,” he stuttered. “Sekou Caine.”
With cat-like grace, she sat forward, stretched, then faced him. Her arms, lithe and limber, extended toward him as her legs contracted, knees pressing her breasts upward, almost in offering. She stroked his face. “Thank you for setting me free, Sekou Caine.”
His lungs froze. His room had never felt so confining before. Where was the air? The night was too cool to feel so sultry. Why was he sweating?
She settled back on her elbows and surveyed him at her leisure. “However can I thank you?”
Her voice caressed his ear, held him mesmerized.
She slinked toward him on her hands and knees, admiration and mischief gleaming in her pupils—round, black, and wide.
He gaped and pointed to the book. “You—you’re Aziza, aren’t you?”
She shook her head, her gaze touching every inch of his face. Tears glistened in her eyes. “No. Not anymore. I’m yours.”
He enjoyed the embrace of her arms around his neck, reveled in the warmth of her breasts against his chest.
She leaned up, her breath warming his mouth. “I’m yours,” she repeated. She closed her eyes and parted her lips, coaxing him into a kiss. Her sigh invaded his mouth.
He welcomed the swipes of her tongue, angled his head and drowned in the taste and feel of her. Reluctance weighed on his spirit as the kiss ended.
With her arms still locked around his neck, she pulled back a bit. “I couldn’t have conjured a more appealing rescuer if I’d tried.”
“How—how is this possibl
e?”
“I don’t know how. I only know why.” She sheathed herself in the sheet and moved unsteadily toward the bed, her hand against her forehead.
Sekou hurried to her side and helped her sit.
“The dibia, Dulee Morlu, had been watching me swim,” she said. “The day I finally sensed him, he tried to force me to submit to him.”
Sekou stared at the book. “The encounter at the river… It’s all in there. He’s not a dibia; he’s a charlatan.” He looked back at her. “A sorcerer as evil as he is powerful.”
“He can’t be but all that powerful,” Aziza countered. “He needs consent to have what he wants. I was at his mercy by the river, but he couldn’t take me unless I said yes.”
“Then how could he imprison you against your will?”
Aziza frowned. “Perhaps I had a longing that manifested itself as a desire to be captured.” She grimaced. “I’ve always wanted to belong heart and soul to someone. But not him. Never him.”
Sekou considered her words. Didn’t the villagers’ obeisance and tributes rest on fears and desires—aware and unaware—of what Morlu might give or take from them? “Well, you’re free now.”
She looked toward the window. “Not for long.” Sadness glittered in the tears pooling in her eyes. “Many times with great delight he stated that only by giving myself to him, or having someone take my place, will I be free. If neither happens, I’ll be forced back into the book at sunrise.”
Sekou frowned, anxiety rolling in his gut.
“It’s how my story ends,” she continued. “He read it to me so often I have it memorized.” She closed her eyes and recited…
“Only two paths lead to freedom. Two paths she will never traverse: becoming the dibia’s slave or allowing another to make love to her and then replace her in the story, so now the story becomes his. So, in this story she will remain, too proud to yield and too principled to ask another to pay so high a price.”
Stranded (Boys Behaving Badly Book 4) Page 12
