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“Al Rafi, I choose freedom.” The words spray across the room, as does the blood from my mouth. My lips and the left side of my face scorch with the fire of his hit. I hold my ground, shoulders lifted.
“Bed maid?” he replies through clenched teeth.
“N—”
“You choose the role of a whore? You were Tudor’s whore.I—in my attempts to cleanse you from such a sinful life—decided to marry you!” he shouts, claws digging into my neck.
This motherfucker has lost his mind. Marry me?I’m sure he has “married” a throng of women. I clamp down on my tongue in pain. A coppery taste engulfs my mouth. I bite harder to stifle a scream and gulp more blood. With my head bowed, he walks me from the living room and into my bedroom. Fingernails cleave into the back of my neck like I’m a bitch.
A dog.
An animal.
Finally, the assault ends when my body’s thrown onto the bed. I start to push off my hands and knees. Al Rafi’s fleshy fingers claw into my calf muscle.
I scurry toward the headboard.
A trillion scrapes of nerve endings set off like wild electricity when he dominates the edge of the bed, sausage fingers touching the tip of his robe.
Blood slams my eardrums at the same rate as the urgent knocking at the door.
At first, I wonder if the knocking is my imagination. I’ve crawled into the fetal position, curly hair shielding my sight.
The door pounding intensifies, and there’s a grunt and another heavy breath as Al Rafi hoists himself up.
They speak in a different language, tone rapid, insistent.
There’s trouble brewing, yet I’m too afraid to hope.
Too afraid to recall the rainbow Vic and I saw in Central Park not long ago.
Too afraid to reminisce on his lips boldly touching my foreheadafterI warned of the intimacy poured into such an act.
Too afraid to even beg for the dysfunction Victor wrought the second I opened a chapter in his life that he greedily hoarded for only himself.
Reality bulldozes my thoughts as Al Rafi strolls into the room. “I’ve pertinent business that cannot wait.”
Leaving?
I shovel out a relieved gasp.
“Don’t appear so pleased.”
I can’t help feeling relieved. I’ll be spared for another moment, an hour, a day. Al Rafi sits me up in bed and turns on the television.
“Business calls, but before I go,lookat what you’ve left behind.”
An image of Victor’s duchy pans across the screen as a news segment highlights two vomit-worthy words:
Pending nuptials . . .
The blood in my veins crystallizes, causing my heart to slam to a halt.
“See how he discards you, Luxury?” Eerie sincerity drops from Al Rafi’s tone. “I hadnodesire for you to assume the role as one of my many wives. Although I will say, even a bed maid would have still been an honorable title for a young,Blackgirl like you. But I look in your eyes, and I see pain. You miss Victor Tudor.”
I blink in response, which doesn't sit well with the sheikh. His hand rises swiftly and moves so agile toward my face that air alone hits me. “That was a question!”
“Yes!” In a fit of sobs, I scream with his hand fashioned inches away from my cheekbone. “Yes. I miss him. I love him.”
