CHAPTER ONE.
July nights are usually cold in Abuja, and the wind usually has a biting touch to it. But it seems twice colder when you’re a bodyguard to a military General and his wife is trying to seduce you.
Multiply that number, if she looks like the girl of your dreams.
As Olai crossed the distance between the Range Rover Sport and the front door of the house, his legs felt heavy on the gravels.
He still felt dizzy from the kiss in the car. He still perceived that minty scent, but even as the icy wind swept her smell away from
him, Olai hated the ache in his stomach.
him, Olai hated the ache in his stomach.
A part of him wished his nostrils could have somehow stored it. He already missed her touch.
And he had touched her too.
She had started a fire deep inside of his stomach. And she had done it in only two seconds. Or was it five? Or thirty? A minute?
Everything had moved too fast, and yet too slow. Olai couldn’t even remember how long they had kissed for. And he had kissed her back. Shit.
Good thing he stopped himself in time.
Or did he?
Halfway to the door now, Olai noticed the lights had not come on in the windows. She probably ran upstairs straight from the car.
But things cannot hang this way. We need to deal with this.
Apart from the grating sound of his boots plodding against the gravel as tired feet carried him to the house, the compound was silent.
He remembered the pain that plastered her gorgeous face as she ran away from him, embarrassed after he pulled away from the kiss.
She hadn’t even stopped to listen to his apologies.
And then there had been that spicy scent. Her scent. He was surprised at the hurt tugging at his heart. He didn’t know he even felt this much care about her.
But she’s the wife of my friend. My mentor.
It didn’t help matters that she had problems with the retired general, whatever the issue was.
But try as he did, Olai knew he had felt it. The chemistry back there in the darkness of the car had been fire and lightning.
He got to the door now, placed his hand on the door knob, and hesitated. He waited for two seconds, but they seemed like seven days.
The unmistakable sound of cool breeze wafting through the leaves of the trees in the compound came to him. The smell of rain.
Bracing himself, he turned the knob on the door and felt in his grip the click of the latch.
He swung the door open – is that how loud door hinges usually sounded? – and stumbled into the silence.
Olai’s first step into the darkness of the house was a gunshot. He raised his right hand – how heavy his arms felt – to the light switch on the wall to the right. His fingers searched the wall for the switch. Found it.
“Don’t.”
Olai, in a double reflex, moved his right hand to grab the pistol hanging from his belt, did not move his right hand from the switch as he recognized the voice.
Forgetting about lights and switches, his military-trained senses picked out her location in the room. There. She stood a few feet away from him.
And then there was that scent again.
He could barely see her silhouette in the dim room. The atmosphere had suddenly become thick as syrup.
“We shouldn’t do this.” He said to her.
“But you kissed me back.” She spoke barely above a whisper.
A flash of cold rushed over his bare arms. Spread through his chest. He so wanted to close the distance between them and tear that gown off of her.
“The General is my friend.”
In reply, she took one step towards him, and the sound echoed throughout the hall. Her smell thickened around him like a bubble.
An image passed through Olai’s mind of an air bubble inside a jar of honey. If her scent was the honey, he imagined himself inside that bubble. And how he wanted that bubble to close in even more.
But he knew how these things usually ended.
She was sweet trouble. Forbidden territory. Delilah’s wine.
Eve’s apple.
No wonder Samson fell.
“You are married.” Even as he said that, he knew he sounded pathetic. He was pleading now. And she seemed to know his resolved was leaving him.
“To hell with him.” She said, her voice strained. “He doesn’t love me anymore, and you know it.”
“I cannot do this.”
Silence.
Only his beating heart pounded in his ears.
“I understand.” Her voice was music when it finally cut the silence, and he winced, hating the sliver of relief sliding through his belly. “But I want you.”
“Aisha.” He moaned her name. Wait. Are you considering her logic?
“No one has to know.” Her voice was pleading now.
“We can’t.”
In another place and time, in another context, Olai probably would have screamed at himself for being this stupid.
What are you still doing here? Get out of here at once.
But his legs won’t carry him away. Aisha took another step towards him. The sound almost deafened him. Immediately, everything became a slow-motion movie. Each second became a minute. Each minute would be forever.
He watched her approach as if she were a creature in a sweet dream.
She was this close now. But Olai could not bring himself to move away.
A hundred cold needles pricked the insides of his stomach. He was a mass of knotted nerves. All six-foot-three-inches of him. Aisha was fire. And she was under his skin.
In his blood.
She made him want her in ways he had never wanted another human being.
I can’t betray my friend and mentor.
“He screws everything in skirts except his own wife.” The crack in her voice drove a fast dagger through Olai’s heart. “Please, I need this. And I know you’ve wanted me as well.”
She reached out with her hand, touched his left forearm. He couldn’t stop himself from moving forward. She got on the tip of her toes.
When their lips met – for the second time this evening – Olai knew he was in trouble. Sweet trouble. She bit his lower lip. He tasted blood. He didn’t mind. Her arms closed behind his neck. His hands connected at her back. Olai let out the air backed up in his lungs…
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