BN Prose – Book Excerpt: The Officer’s Bride By Lara Daniels

Rubukka Barracks. June 7, 1998

Eddy believed he had died and gone to heaven, but he also knew it was the honeyed scent of the child-woman who lay beside him that caused his deluded thought.
“Nafisah.”
“Hmmm?”
“What fragrance are you wearing?”
Nafisah’s lips curved into a half smile, and her shoulders moved with a slight shrug. “I can’t tell you,” she said in her native Fula. She’d lowered her gaze as she spoke, and her voice was soft. Shy. Eddy heard his own breathing turn somewhat uneven.
A woman never shares her secrets. He managed a smile as he remembered the saying. “You can’t, or you won’t?”
She ignored his question and turned away from him so she could recline on her other side. As she did so, the bedcovers shifted, exposing one curved, naked hip. His desire flared.
God! He needed her.
Shoving off the covers on his hair-dusted legs, he proceeded to hold her supple frame in his arms, but she leaped off the bed. He did the same, one strong arm reaching out to pull her into him. She eluded him again by taking a step back. One pair of playful brown eyes locked with his own intense gaze and before he could think of reaching for her again, she’d run into the adjoining bathroom.
“Come back here,” he growled, marching after her. Somehow, her swiftness reminded him of the Sultan of Sokoto’s well-bred horses, and in spite of the continued discomfort to his male member, he smiled again.
If she heard him, she didn’t show it. Quickly, she closed the bathroom door, the sound of a locking bolt pretty much telling him that she had shut herself in there. Her giggles floated through the door to where he stood. God! How he ached for her; his smile vanished, and a flat, crooked line replaced it.
“Come out,” he ordered. He raised his upper arms, so that they now braced both sides of the door. He could feel his eyes narrowing as he lowered his head, ever so briefly, to assess just how bad he really was. Da Allah, but Nafisah’s throaty laugh was doing strange things to him. Tender and feminine, her giggles made him long for the brackish air of Lagos beaches, with the wind blowing over his smooth, hairless scalp. He imagined laying her on the sandy shore and possessing her for himself until day break.
“Nafisah!”
Just when the idea of pummeling down the door began to take shape in his mind, she opened it. Taking a step back, his body trembled with a combination of his lust and love as she sashayed towards him. He found himself dropping to his knees in adoration. Money couldn’t buy everything, and one of them was the bewitching beauty of this child-woman polished in both her walk and her talk. Her brown eyes…her lovely form…God was definitely wide awake when he was creating this one.
He was still on his knees when she bent down to plant a chaste kiss on his forehead.
“We don’t have much time,” she whispered, her minty breath fanning his scalp.
Eddy glanced at the clock hanging on the wall and found himself agreeing with her. He knew, as well as she, that the bloodthirsty soldiers serving him were waiting…waiting to remind him that a higher calling, much stronger than the love for a woman called.
Without a word, he rose and lifted her in his sturdy arms. Gently, he placed her on the opulent bed, but his next action was anything but as he made love to her on the matrimonial bed that had been theirs for a day. His possession of her was volatile, a lovemaking that understood the urgency of time. Yet, she met him thrust for thrust, moaning out his name with his drive into her. He realized then that he was determined to sow his seed just in case he had no more nights like this to spend with her. The thought went through his mind, and he imagined his heart breaking, but he held off the dark emotions, determined to enjoy the woman with him. Right here, right now, all that mattered was his Nafisah – sweet, beautiful Nafisah who, five years ago, had also experienced the General’s reign of terror.
She came, pulsing hard around him, and he emptied himself – his heart, his soul, his whole being into her, her name on his lips as he found his release. A heavy sleep descended on him, but just before he surrendered himself to its serene arms, he admired the long eyelashes of his wife, now shuttered close. From her slow breathing, he could tell she was fast asleep. A satisfied smile curled his usually grim lips, and it was only then that he finally allowed himself to nap.
Minutes later, the antique grandfather clock gifted to him by the Sultan chimed, and he reluctantly got off the bed to put on his uniform. Once again, dark thoughts of the task before him clouded his mind.
Goodbye Nafisah.
“No,” he whispered hoarsely into the night; his gaze rested on the sleeping form of his wife and a dark frown marred his determined face. No. No goodbye. Never goodbye. And he kissed her, ever so gently, on her soft lips.
Giving his bride one last glance, he turned to stride out of their bedroom. He went down the stairs with a heavy heart, his melancholy growing when he stepped into the chilled air of mountainous Jos.
Suddenly, he swore under his breath. In the name of the most merciful, he would come back for her tomorrow and he would love her forever…until the cold hands of death seized him.
For now, duty to country called. And Abacha’s head would be rolling down by morning.
Insha Allah
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Lara Daniels is Registered Nurse by day and an avid writer by nights. Born and raised in Nigeria, she created a niche for herself by authoring African based romance-suspense novels. Lara lives with her family – a husband and three precious children in Texas where she remains true to her passion of all time: Writing. For more about Lara’s books, visit her at www.laradaniels.org