The Wedded Whore (Completed)

Chapter Thirteen

The throng of security guards and paparazzi who were there to maintain law and order was great, and the celebrity women and men, even more so. There was great chatter and excitement, and it was at that moment that Adamma saw Della, the woman she'd easily bested at the Hilton club. The noxious woman was dressed in a blue gown that hugged her carefully-preserved figure like a second skin, revealing an unholy amount of cleavage at one end and a great deal of long legs at the other end; expensive diamond earrings hung on her lobes, and even more dripped from her throat, encircling it like a ribbon of white fire. Her long hair extension was swept back from her face, and Adamma felt her stomach roil with distaste; she turned away so that the horrible woman would not see her. But it was already too late.

'Well, if it isn't the glamorous woman who has been the main dish on TV,' Della drawled, and Adamma had to stop and wait for the woman to catch up with her.

Adamma forced a frosty smile at the woman who emitted sensuality and radiated elegance from every pore. 'Hi, Della,' she managed to say as she flashed a smile at a man she'd known briefly when she was still new in the industry. 'You came here.'

Della smiled with smug arrogance. 'Yes, I came. But that's not why I called you. I'm so glad that you're now estranged with your rich, handsome husband. I know that must be bad news for you. But it's good news for me because now, I have a chance to win him for myself. Isn't it great; how one person's bad news will turn out to be the good news of another?'

Adamma looked at her contemptuously, revulsion coursing through her. 'You'll never belong to Obi,' she said, and she meant it. 'He despises women like you and he can never feel comfortable having you fawning all over him.' And it was true; her husband would never really be comfortable with this woman, with her cloud of expensive perfumes, her acrylic nails which were so long, Adamma wondered if she could do anything for herself; her long, false eyelashes; her exaggerated femininity. Then she turned away from the reprehensible creature.

That night, she won the Best Female Dancer award for her exotic belle dancing in her music video, Be Me If You Can, but she wasn't really in the right frame of mind to celebrate, so that when she got home, she dived straight into her bed after she'd relieved the sitter she'd hired to take care of the kids.

Early the next morning, when it was still dark, she got up from her bed, dressed up in white running pants and a tank top, with white tennis shoes. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail, and, as the red disk of the sun was still trying to rise above the horizon, she ran. She lived on Victoria Island and so had access to the beach. She ran faster and faster along the coastline, staying on the wet sand as the cold water of the ocean washed over her feet. She had to clear her head. She could not allow Della and her husband to beat her at the game they were playing. She had worked too hard and too long. And he would destroy her if she was not careful. But now he was still toying with her, using everything he could find about her to torment her senses and make her feel less than human. And then he might possibly destroy her if she allowed him to do so; he could make her go crazy with his relentless torture of her mind and her psyche.

She thought of Obi: she had the feeling that the man was crazy, and there was nothing that crazy people would not do, no length they would not go to in order to achieve their aims. Her eyes filled with tears but she pressed on with grim determination along the beach, the cold water from the sea slapping against her body. She managed to swallow past the lump that rose in her throat, and then she forced a smile to her lips, a crooked, wry smile as she remembered how she'd thought that everything was possible . . . love was possible. She was loved and admired by so many people, so adored, but so what? She felt more empty now than she'd ever felt when she was still a whore, struggling for survival. Sometimes, when she passed an ordinary woman and her husband and kids who loved her very much, she felt such longing in her heart; she wished that her life with Obi would be the same.