ROULETTE OF THE DAMNED 12: The Fix

Too stunned to speak, Abbey simply stared at Mofe.

Mofe was on his knees with a pair of red roses and a bottle of champagne on the floor beside him. In his hand was a ring box he hadn’t opened yet, but which was held out to her.

Abbey looked from his face to the roses and rings, and then back to him. “What do you think you are doing, Mofe?”

Still staring at Abbey’s near-naked frame, Mofe sighed. “My God, you are so beautiful.”

Feeling self conscious all of a sudden, Abbey crossed her arms over her breasts. “Come in,” she said quickly. “I don’t want the neighbours to see me this way.”

Getting up from where he knelt, Mofe picked up the rings and champagne bottle, put the ring box away in his pocket and walked into the house behind Abbey, closing the door behind him.

Abbey felt her daring impulse to shock Mofe with her nudity begin to wane, as she yearned to dash upstairs and cover up. But the thought of Mofe’s possible reasons for showing up in front of her parent’s house with a ring box kept her rooted in the living room. Logic told her that his reason was obvious, but she still couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

She stared at him in confusion, waiting for him to say something.

Sensing her bewilderment, Mofe forced his eyes from her naked torso to her face. “Abbey, there are a couple of things you need to know,” he began. “I never thought I’d find someone when I went out clubbing the night I met you. More importantly, I never thought I’d want to go home so badly with someone I met at a club. I never ask people out or go out of my way to make a first impression in such places, but something about you was different. Ever since that day, I have constantly craved to have you by my side always. You are the first person I think of in the morning and the last person I crave to talk to at night.”

Abbey tried to interrupt him but Mofe placed a finger on her lips and stopped her. He needed to finish this. She needed to know.

“I cannot explain why I feel the way I feel about you,” he continued. “I find myself waiting to hear from you on a daily basis. I run out of my damn mind counting down the days, hours, and minutes to that very moment when I’ll see you next. I pray for you more than I pray for myself. You complete me in ways I didn’t even know I needed to be completed.” Mofe sucked in a breath and continued. “Now I know you are worried that your past will somehow affect the way I feel about you. I also know that you think you will bring disaster into my life if you stay with me, but let me make something perfectly clear to you, Abbey. I don’t care about your past because your past doesn’t determine your future.”

Abbey looked doubtful.

“Now I know this sounds cliché but trust me when I say that life in itself is cliché. I need you to believe me when I say that your past will not affect you and me, because your past is in the past. I would rather have a life of ‘oh well’s’ with you than a life of ‘what ifs’ without you. I am not the easiest man to be with, but I will work my ass off to make you the happiest woman in the world. For me to do that, I need you to do something for me.”

Before Abbey’s shocked gaze, he went down on one knee, retrieved the ring box from his pocket and snapped it open. Upon its velvet inside was a ring which gleamed softly in the living room light.

“I need you to be my partner, my lover, and my best friend,” Mofe said. “I need you to let me have and hold you for better and for worse; taking you with all your flaws and loving you despite all of them. Abbey, I am asking you to do me the huge favour of forgiving yourself and letting go of all your past mistakes for my sake. Please Abbey, be my wife. Marry me.”

Tears had begun to stream down Abbey’s face. She opened her mouth and shut it, finding herself unable to express herself with words. Mofe had seen her at her absolute worst and he still wanted her more than ever. Unable to speak the words she so badly wanted to say, Abbey simply nodded her ‘yes’, knelt down beside him, and let him put the ring on her finger. She was laughing and crying at the same time as Mofe pulled her up and into his arms, to kiss her long and hard.

When she finally came up for air, Abbey said, “I still haven’t given you your birthday gift. I think it’s time I did just that. My parents won’t be back for another three hours or so. Wanna come upstairs?”

Mofe’s eyes widened even as a knowing smile crept into his face. “Yes. I would like that very much.”

Taking the stairs two at a time, Abbey led Mofe upstairs to her bedroom and propped him on the bed. Putting on some music, she shucked her panties and began shimmying slowly to the rhythm of the music, while eyeing Mofe coyly. With slow sedate steps, she closed the distance between them, swaying her hips as she moved, and stopping only when they shared the same shadow, when all she had to do to touch Mofe was to sway a little closer. Standing in front of him stark naked made her feel awkward and vulnerable, until she saw the raw need written all over his face.

They were on the bed before she knew it. Mofe sat on the edge of the bed with Abbey wrapped around him, her knees on either side of him while he devoured her mouth. With one hand in her wild tumble of hair and the other on Abbey’s firm buttocks, Mofe managed to urge her closer to his straining hardness. She gasped at the outrageous size of him she felt through his trousers, the thickness and length that went on and on.

The taste of Abbey’s mouth assaulted Mofe’s senses and her scent engulfed him completely. In that very moment, Mofe wanted her hands on him more than he wanted to breathe. Not above begging, he murmured, “Touch me…” in between more of those greedy soul-shattering kisses. “For Pete’s sake Abbey, please touch me.”

Abbey’s hands went to his crotch and Mofe groaned as the intensity of his kiss ratcheted up another notch. Breaking the kiss for a second, Abbey said breathlessly. “Just so you know, I don’t need you to be civilized and gentle. I just want you.” Her hands reached out for his shirt and she tore it open, sending buttons flying everywhere.

With some help from Mofe, Abbey managed to get rid of his clothes fairly quickly. As Abbey released the panther from his cottoned cage and Mofe sucked in a breath as she held his length in her hands. With a ragged little noise from deep in his throat, Mofe moaned a raw and needy groan of a man pushed to his limits. Built to retaliate in times like these, Mofe’s tongue began a fierce sensual invasion of Abbey’s privacy, stripping her of everything but the need to respond. Rolling her onto her back with her legs still wrapped around him tightly, he steadily rocked them both into pleasurable madness.

When Mofe left two hours later, he had a big smile on his sweaty face. He had thought he would be the one surprising Abbey with his proposal tonight, but Abbey had used her gift to surprise him in many ways. Thinking about it now, it certainly wasn’t the birthday he had planned, but somehow, it had ended better than he could have ever hoped.

***

Abbey felt like a million dollars even forty five minutes after Mofe’s departure. She knew her room looked like the mess it had been turned into by their lovemaking, but it had all been worth it. Mofe had been worth it!

She looked at her engagement ring and smiled. She reveled in the thought of being Mofe’s wife for awhile, before pulling herself up from her dream to look around the room. She decided she would clean in the morning. All she needed now was a good shower and the comfort of her bed, with Mofe’s lingering scent engulfing her between her bed-sheets.

As Abbey got up to go into the shower, she heard the front door close. Excited to finally tell her mother about Mofe and her engagement to him, Abbey quickly wrapped a towel round her naked body and walked quietly towards the stairs. She heard the tense verbal exchange as she walked quickly down the stairs. She approached the doorway that led into the sitting room to catch the sight of her mother looking terrified and her father looking aggressive and more than a little inebriated too.

She quickly ducked out of sight in the shadows and observed her parents. She was just in time to see her father strike her mother hard across the face. Tari’s head whipped to the side with the force of the blow and one of her silver earrings fell off.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Jafar roared. “What gave you the right to speak on my behalf at that party? Do you know how embarrassing it was to have you speak up for me when I was standing right there? You made me look like a fool who lets his wife fight his battles for him. You need to know your place in this marriage, Tari. I am the man of the house. You are the wife. Your job comprises five basic things: cook for me, spread your legs wide when I want to have sex, give me babies, take care of the kids, and look pretty by my side when we go out together. So far, you are failing on all counts. Your food tastes like sand, sex with you feels like a bloody chore, and your womb is so hostile you could only give me one child. You can’t even train the child well. Abbey has no manners. She speaks to me anyhow these days and it’s because of you. I’m sure Abbey sees the stunts you pull when you speak out of turn to me, so she thinks she can do the same. Well, there will be no more of that nonsense. All that is going to change from now on!”

Tari had begun to sob softly as she took in her husband’s tirade. A black eye was forming nicely and her lip was bleeding from a small cut.

“I’m travelling in the morning for a business trip and I won’t be back for a couple of days,” the man raved on. “By the time I return, new laws will take effect in this household. Abbey will learn proper manners and you, my dear wife…” A look of cruel delight suddenly lit up his eyes. “I think it’s time I reminded you of how to truly be submissive to your husband. Let’s start with the lesson of what’s between your legs, shall we?”

He grabbed hold of her, grasped her black gown, and ripped it from the middle. Tari began struggling to get away from him, but Jafar was too strong.

“Hold still, you bitch!” Jafar snarled. “It’s harder if you fight what’s coming!”

Bruised and angry, Tari lashed out at Jafar, raking her fingers across his face. Jafar gave a small shriek of pain, before slapping her. She fell to the ground. He stood above her, his chest heaving as he said, “There now, Tari, are you trying to turn me on? You know I like it when you play rough.”

Tari began to crawl away from him, but he held her down, tore away the rest of her gown, ripped off her underwear, and took her from behind while she screamed.

When he was done, Jafar got off Tari and said with a sneer, “You still disgust me, but at least you are learning now. We will continue this when I return from my business trip on Friday. I just need to pee first. Maybe if I’m up for it, we can go another round in a couple of minutes.”

Staggering to the guest toilet by the front door, Jafar went to ease himself while Tari lay on the couch, curled up in a fetal pose, sobbing softly.

Watching from the shadows, Abbey could not believe she’d just witnessed her mother getting raped by her father. She had wanted with every fiber of her being to barge in there to help her mother, but her father had looked manic. Only the thought of the harm he was capable of meting out to her as well had kept her in the shadows. Feeling her insides roil with revulsion, she crept back upstairs to her room. She locked her door behind her with the key, discarded her towel, and got into her bathroom. Turning on the shower to full blast, Abbey used her hands to cover her ears and let the hot water run all over her body and wash away the tears she cried for her mother.

Written by The Controvert