Yarima Abubakar | Forty
BEAUTY AND THE SHEETS
—
"Clear! Clear!" the royal guards shouted, waving their hands at secretaries, scholars, lawmakers, and bureaucratic staffers routinely going about their day in the hallways of the palace as we raced to the lifts. We were on the fifth floor, seventy-nine floors away from Nimah's bed chamber.
Nimah weighed the same as a feather in my arms, yet each stride was a struggle to survive. His sudden sickness had made him delirious in seconds, he wriggled in my arms and mumbled words I could not understand, however, the difficulty was with his hands.
They went everywhere he could reach, sliding under my blouse, across my chest, into my hair, my neck, my cheek, my lips. His touch was like venom, spreading through my blood with a striking heat, strong enough to put in me a constant state of uneasiness. It mattered little how many times I moved my face away, his hands always found their way back to my skin in need, or search of something.
Three royal guards stood with us on the lift as we ascended, his moans and cries of plea filling the silence as my eyes trained forward, away from his. I had caught a glimpse of how sultry his lashes became as sweat soaked them, and willed myself into keeping my eyes straight ahead. The rush that traveled through me the first time felt like a heat wave and I was determined to make sure it never happened again.
"Where is the royal healer!" I barked at Effiong who stood waiting as we departed the lift.
"On his way, Your Highness," Effiong replied, breaking into hurried steps to Nimah's bed chambers.
Effiong hurried to lift the blankets once we made our way through, servants zapping here and there to pull the curtains apart and fill his bath.
"No no no," Nimah cried, holding onto me when I tried to move away, "don't leave me," he pleaded.
"The healer will be here any moment," I said, moving his sweat-soaked hair away from his forehead. "Just hold on, I will hurry your bath."
"No, stay, please." His hands pulled mine to his cheek. "You feel so nice." He smiled a little and I swallowed, turning away from his eyes.
He was too out of it, too sunken into unknown depths and I knew this to be true, I could not hold him accountable for the words he spoke, and yet my cheeks flushed at his words. Words that were not truly his. His hands slid under my blouse, softly brushing against my waist, and I shivered backward. "Yarima..." he muttered between soft breaths.
Without thinking, my eyes drifted back to his. Nimah barely ever look at me, let alone say my name, and in such a dangerously mellow voice, with sweet sultriness, as if to soothe the heat wave his touches triggered. His fingers crawled to my chest as quiet whimpers escaped him, squeezing and pressing where he could, as he bit down on his red wet lips. They continued until they were once again at my lips, softly caressing.
"Your name is as soothing, do you know that, gorgeous?" He smirked. He spoke weakly, but his voice was vibrant and firm, resonating deeply inside me. "And your hair..." He twirled a single loc of my hair around his finger. "I think about touching it, a lot. Braiding your locs together."
My breath hitched, "Nimah..."
"I think about your hands on me... Like that night, at the ball. You touched me... here." He was guiding my hand to his waist
"What?" asked quietly, blinking.
"Touch me that way again. Touch me like that all over." He rubbed my hand all over his waist. "So warm... and nice..." He whimpered, pulling me closer.
"Effiong!" I jerked backward. "How is that bath coming along!" Nimah's hands clawed at my blouse on a mission to undress me and I struggled to free myself from his hold. "Effiong!"
"Almost ready, Your Highness!"
"It burns... it burns, Yari!" Nimah cried.
A servant hurried out with a calabash of water and a washcloth. "This should keep him cool," she said, soaking the cloth and squeezing.
"Ok ok ok ok! Just–" I tried to still him, but his protests grew with every second I didn't give in to touching. For both my sanity and his.
"Yarima, please!"
"We have to undress him, Your Highness," the servant girl suggested, placing the cool rag on his forehead.
The smell of sea salt filled Nimah's bed chambers, the smell of Hareti's magic. Rarely did Reti use magic to portal between spaces, her return to the palace was the last time she had. There was no use for it at Oshun's temple and, neither was there use for it in the palace, where a good number of enchanted lifts traveled through the floors. But the matter was that of great urgency. We were on the eighty-fourth floor and Reti was on the sixth.
The very thin fabric of air split open and a ring of crystal clear water formed at the center of the room, bringing with it a gentle breeze. Slowly, the water parted ways, forming a perfect circle that connected the council room to Nimah's bed chambers. Eyes wide, Hareti stormed through the portal and it snapped shut behind her.
"Goodness! What happened?" Reti rushed to Nimah's side, and I sighed with relief. Stuttering out words, even I could not make sense of. "Yarima!"
"I have no clue, one minute he was standing there, perfectly fine, the next, he is screaming," I replied, still trying to keep his prying hands at bay. Her hands traveled all over his shaking body in a quick examination.
"The bath is prepared, Your Highness," Effiong stated, hurting back into the room. "Your Majesty..."
Ignoring him, Hareti continued her search across Nimah's body, lifting his shirt, checking his wrist, then ankles before turning back to his face and cupping it. "Open your eyes, Nimah, let me see." He had squeezed his eyes shut as he moaned and wriggled. "Nimah... it's me, Hareti. Open your eyes."
Slowly his eyes opened and Reti tilted his head towards the setting sun, pulling his bottom eyelids down for a deeper look. His wriggling slowed as though he found a sense of calm in her gaze. His breaths came easier as if to match hers, his moans were now soft purrs. His grip on my blouse loosened, setting me free. He sucked his bottom lip and smiled at her, his eyes glimmering from the sunlight. Not the dying one, taking its sunrays as it descended on the horizon. But the one that stood above him, her forehead creased in worry as she examined his eyes. Hareti could light up the darkest night.
"Ma... Mama..." he murmured with soft breaths, his hand traveling to her face. "You're so pretty."
"Umm..." Hareti threw me a glance.
"There is also... that."
"What does, 'that' mean?"
"He's been spewing a whole bunch of... I don't know."
Turning back to him, Reti took another look hard look and said, "He is overdosing."
"Overdosing? What?"
Her gaze traveled across the room hauntingly, searching every nook and cranny of his bed chambers with just one glance, the gift her third eye provided. She hopped off the bed, bent over, and reached for something. A few seconds later, she sprang back up with a vial, quickly popping it open and taking a whiff, her face hardening as her jaw twitched.
"Can someone explain why there is a vial of Sweet Pompori under the prince's bed?" Her voice was low, but it carried with it a damning vibration, silencing every voice, every movement in the Nimah's bed chamber. All that was left were the cries and whimpers of Nimah. "Effiong!"
He jerked. "Your Majesty."
"Speak this second!"
"Mama..." Nimah called out to her. Reti turned back to him, abandoning her query to pat his hair.
"Nimah, shhh, I'm here. Why would you do this? Hmm? Why would you take this?"
"I wanted to help."
"With what, Nimah? Tell me?"
His gaze trailed back to me and I passed him an encouraging nod. "Your manhood doesn't work... I, I wanted to help."
"What are you talking about?"
"I know you are barren and can't plant any seed in a womb. I just... I wanted to help, Yari, I just wanted to help."
My jaw dropped. Across the room silent whisperings filled the air, servants reaching out to one another with words and glances, all of which I could feel and hear. "B... Barren? Nimah, I'm not barren, my... my man–I am not barren." Pointing at myself as though he couldn't see, I emphasized barren.
"It is okay, Yari, I want to help," he consoled, reaching for my hand.
"Yari?" Reti quirked a brow at me in question.
"Nimah, listen to me, I am not barren. I am a very very capable man," I continued in bewilderment.
The elderly royal healer dashed into the bed chamber, carrying a wooden medicine box in both hands. "Your Majesty. Your Highnesses." He bowed.
"Where have you been!" Hareti barked.
"There was troub–"
"Get out! All of you! Out! Now!"
"My apologies, Your Majesty, if I could just..."
"Out!"
It took seconds for the room to clear, and Hareti began to free him of his clothes."Get his trousers," she commanded.
"Why would he think I'm barren?"
"Well... there has been this rumor. Get his trousers."
"What rumor?"
"Abubakar." She glared at me.
I began loosening the ropes holding his trousers around his waist, "What rumors, Reti?"
"Servants gossip, I hear things. You know how these things are."
"What things? What things, Reti?" I pulled down his trousers and almost gasped at the sight.
"What did he do... goodness!" We both gaped at Nimah's crotch. He had taken a piece of white clothing and wrapped it tight around his crotch, a brutal and stupid attempt to tame his erection. Reti snapped her finger at me and I shuddered back to life. "Untie him."
Quickly my fingers got to work. "What do the servants say?" Her question did not come as she freed Nimah of his blouse. "What do they say, Reti?" I repeated.
With an exhale, she stopped moving, "They think you are barren because you can't get me pregnant after all these years," she said in one breath. "Everyone thinks it."
The air became quiet and still between us, our gaze locked on one another. Her eyes studied me intently, trying to decipher the things my lips were not saying. Rarely did our inability to have children of our own rear it's head in our conversations. We didn't avoid it, we just never filled our hours with it. For years we had done that: poisoning our minds with speculations of what could be and what was. It almost destroyed us. It almost destroyed me, the reality that I did not carry the seed her body constantly searched for.
I was the man Reti chose, not the man she was destined for. It strained the early years of our relationship as I anticipated his arrival. The one carrying the seed of life. The one who would one day make her a mother of deities, goddesses, and gods that towered above all creations. All mortals would bow before them, prayers will be said in their name, offerings burnt at their temple. I was not him, and because of this, I would never be the father of her children. I would never be a father.
The only children I longed for were the ones that were formed in her womb, made from her blood and flesh. Eyes blue like the oceans of the Caribbean, skin darker than the night sky, twinkling with a million stars. Their laughter would carry a beautiful rhythm I only ever heard in her happiest hour, and when they played in the sand and bruised their knee, a soft cry would come from them, a living testimony that I was loved by her and she loved me.
Nimah's writhing tore through the heavy silence and Hareti returned her gaze to him. "Nimah, listen to me, you're overdosing, and it would only get worse, you have to relief yourself, mmh."
I loosened the final layer of the meticulously tied cloth and began to pull it down, revealing a fine gathering of golden pubic hair on his groin and then his now red hard cock, leaking a nice string of pre-cum all over his pubic hair and upper thigh.
It was like seeing him for the first time. The scars that wrapped around his thigh curved beautifully like henna art on the wrists of a beaming bachelor. As he wriggled, his muscles flexed in stunning lines under his pale skin. The hourglass shape of him was–as he would say–sinful.
"No no no no... please don't go." Nimah pulled Reti back when she began rising from the bed, suggesting we give him some privacy.
"You will be fine once you..." She passed me a glance, hanging on me to complete the sentence. Coyly, I smirked. "Relieve yourself," she finished.
"How do I do it?"
"Like you always do," Reti replied, her hands steadily patting his curls down.
"I don't understand," he whimpered.
Another glance passed between Reti and me before I asked, "Nimah, have you never relieved yourself?" He shook his head. "Nimah... you've never played with your..." I pointed at his cock and his eyes trailed to the hardness.
"I wash it in the river."
Defeated, Hareti dropped her shoulder and chose clearer words to ask her question. "Have you ever masturbated, Nimah?"
He blinked, biting his lips hard before answering, "I tried. Once. It didn't go so well."
"What happened?"
"My sisters saw me."
Pressing my lips together, I held in a laugh that otherwise would have ripped through me like an explosion. Hareti shot me one of her death stares and I looked away.
"Listen, Little One, you have to relieve yourself. Else you could go barren. Do you understand what I'm saying?" Reti crooned, but the calmness of her voice was not enough to stop Nimah from panicking.
"I could go barren?"
"Yes."
"No, I can't go barren. I want to give you heirs. Lots of heirs. I want you to have children that look like you." He smiled, running a finger over her nose.
Reti blinked and I saw the pain flash through her eyes, the thoughts bouncing around her head. The blame she was now taking on. It was impossible, and till that moment Reti had not thought it through, what her inability to have children will mean for Nimah, and his words, though meaning no harm, stirred up the blame she once carried on her shoulders, but had been buried deep.
"Reti–" I reached for her hand and she recoiled into herself, not wanting to face me.
"If you want children with me, then you have to relieve yourself."
"What am I supposed to do?"
Bringing his head closer to her chest, Hareti guided his hand to hardness between his legs. "All you have to do is rub," she whispered.
"Hmph..." Nimah whimpered as she helped him wrap his fingers around his throbbing cock.
"That's it, slowly." She let go, leaving him to stroke his cock in straight sloppy lines, his chest rising and falling evenly from deep breaths.
"Mama..." he softly gasped, shocked at the things he was beginning to feel. "Mama... mama..." he was quickly breathless.
"Shhh, it's okay." Hareti cradled him close.
"It feels... argh..."
"You will feel better soon."
"It's sweet... it feels too sweet, Mama." His fingers ran up and down his cock, the sweat and pre-cum glistening under the last rays of the setting sun.
"It will only get better."
I swallowed, hard, my cock stiffening at the sight. Rising from the bed, I took a few steps back and in slow strides walked the corners of the bed, looking away only to look back, the heat wave descending from my face to places I preferred it not to reach.
Nimah's body danced in smooth curves against Reti's bosom while she cradled him, her lips on his forehead kissing it and the blowing soft breeze all over it. Her composure contributed greatly to my demise. How could she remain so calm at the sight? It was clear she was aroused, her nipples hardened underneath the form-fitting gown wrapped around her curves, and there were moments when I caught her eyes appear sunken with lust. Yet she held him in her arms with gentle touches, as though we weren't beholding the same sight. I felt weak, I could not deter the arousal creeping up my spine any longer.
"Too sweet... too sweet," Nimah whimpered into Hareti's chest. His body rumpling the sheets underneath him as he stroked.
"That's okay, you are doing so well, Little One."
His moans were sickening, sweet tender moans that made my heart and cock swell. Rubbing the back of my neck, I chewed my lip hard, my hard on my waist because the urge to feel my cock was heightened by the absence of something to touch. Glistening sweat trickled down his chest, over his pink firm nipples, inviting, or commanding me to suckle them. Hareti's hands stayed on his face and I wished they weren't so careful, imagining what it would feel like to discover which of his nipples were sensitive when sucked, rubbed, played with.
"A little faster," Hareti said, kissing his forehead.
"Argh... It will be too much," he cried.
"Yes, then you will feel really good."
In obedience, he quickened his pace, panting as his pretty waist swayed left and right, twisting the sheets around his thigh. Hareti's slithered down to his waist to free the tangled-up sheets and when it proved difficult, placed her hand on his waist and turned him inwards towards her, giving me the full view of his perfect reddish ass. In seconds I was hard.
"Can you get the sheets?" She nudged me over.
"Aren't you going to touch me more, Mama?"
A little smile stayed on her lips as I untangled the sheets, giving him more room to wriggle as he pleased.
"Hmmph..." he whimpered, and moaned, writhing in Hareti's arms. "I'm I doing good? Does Mama like it?" He licked his lips at the words and so did I.
A low sweet giggle rested in Reti's throat as she whispered, "You are going good, Princess, Mama likes it."
Amidst all the pleasure thrashing through him, he managed a smile, holding her gaze for a few minutes before his eyes rolled back. "Mama..." he cried.
"What's wrong? Tell me how you feel," she replied.
"It's getting sweeter," his head dropped back into the pillow, his eyes squeezed shut, "I can't take it anymore..." His strokes grew faster with his confession. The rubbing sound drove me insane as I turned away for a second.
"You can, baby, you can take a little more." Reti stroked his cheeks.
"I can?" He shuddered.
"You will."
Grunting, he squeezed the sheets, then let out more heavy breaths, shuffling his legs faster, "Mama... Mama... it's..."
"That's okay... let it out... you are doing so well."
A loud breezy moan erupted from him as the first ribbon of cum spurted out of his cock, then a lot more, fine creaminess dripping down his hands, splashing all over his stomach. He was too deep in it to slow down, too deep in it to care. His orgasm came with goosebumps, fierce jerks, and deep moans. I throbbed pitifully at the sight, feeling trapped in my body, in desperation for more when there was no more cum pouring out of him. Slowly I descended into a nearby cushion, partly to hide my growing erection, partly because all strength had drained from my legs.
"You did so good, Little One. Do you know that? You did a great job." Reti kissed his forehead and pulled him closer, his body still shivering and pulsing from his orgasm.
"Did you like it?" he asked, lifting his face to hold Reti's softened gaze.
"Yes."
"Will you do something with me now? Will you touch me?"
"No, Princess. You need rest."
"You really won't? Please..." He reached for her clothes, smearing his cum over it.
"I would love nothing more than to touch you. But ask me again when you are sane."
"I am."
She laughed, "You're high, Princess."
"No, I'm fine, please, touch me, please... your hands are so warm." He began clawing at Hareti's clothes, attempting to strip her the way he tried with me.
Placing two fingers on his forehead, Hareti whispered an incantation and he fell back into his pillow, falling fast asleep.
"He will be fine in the morning." She giggled, carefully arranging his head on the pillow. "Are you okay?" Reti asked, turning to me.
"Hmm? Me?" I cleared my throat. "Of course."
"That scared you, didn't it?"
"No." I sat up.
She nodded, a little smile on her lip when she pointed to the washcloth and bowl in the corner. "Clean him up will you? I will go finish up with this council meeting. We have a shortage of brown rice and apparently, farmers are not happy with the new levies. This is cause for a three-hour long meeting." Passing Nimah one last smile, Reti rose from the bed. "They complain and bicker about everything," she said, crossing the door and shutting it behind her.
I rose from my seat with a sigh, walking over to the bowl and washcloth. Each step heavy with the memory of things I had witnessed. I wrung the washcloth and began wiping the cum and sweat off him with tenderness, afraid I might wake him. Every muscle in his body had relaxed. Nimah had never appeared more vulnerable and defenseless. I was looking at him and through him. My heart aching with something so pure and profound.
Once he was clean enough, I moved him around, making sure his spine was safe before pulling his sleek blanket up to his chest, and then I sat beside him, watching him, all of him, his breathing soft and weak, his skin still pinkish, his hair all tousled and disheveled.
I ran a finger over his long ethereal lashes and without thinking whispered, "You're. So. Beautiful."
***
Was the soup good?