“I don’t know why I came,” she admitted. The sun slanted a ray through her window and angled heat across her thigh. “My friend has a client here, but I think maybe I just wanted to look at the city one last time and show it that I wasn’t afraid anymore.”
“So, like a goodbye.”
“Maybe.”
A hawker carrying a tray of groundnuts walked across the road in front of them, and Souraya watched her walk to a bus window and lift the tray down from her head, talking to a customer whose arm dangled out. “I missed it too,” she admitted. “I never wanted to miss this place.”
“Did you miss me?” Ahmed had a small smile as he asked it, like it was a joke, but his eyes were searching hers.
“You were right,” she replied. “I shut you away. I almost forgot you were based here.”
He pulled back into his seat but kept hold of her hand. “I’m glad you remembered.”
As he turned the car back into the flow of traffic with his free hand, Souraya looked down at his fingers lacing through hers. This man had worried her when they first met in Joburg—enough that she’d accepted a dinner date with him just to face down the fear. Their chemistry had been scorching, and she’d been horrified to discover that she wanted him for himself, not as a client. It was a dangerous thing to want, but Ahmed Soyoye was a dangerous man. He had leaned across the table at their date and looked deep into her eyes, power threatening to burst out from under his skin.
“If you ever need anything,” he’d said, “let me know immediately.”
At that point in her life, Souraya had met enough dangerous men to know when they would spill real blood for her, and Ahmed looked like he couldn’t wait to get his hands wet.
The next time she’d seen him was a week after their date. Souraya had been lying on the floor of a penthouse suite in Joburg. Ahmed had been kneeling beside her, cupping her face in his hands and speaking to her in soft, soothing tones, his words blurred. Behind him, the white man who’d intruded on her nightmares since then, the man who’d locked her in the penthouse suite for five days before she’d managed to sneak a message to Ahmed, that man stood behind Ahmed, crying with anger.
“So, I’m the bad guy,” he said, in between sobs. “I try to help the girl, give her a better life, and I’m the wicked one. She’s a fucking slut, a whore! I can take her out of this gutter; I was trying to get her out, and now you come here and act as if I’m some monster, as if I kidnapped her. I just wanted to show her something better!”
Ahmed had ignored the man, slipping one arm under Souraya’s neck and the other under her knees. “Put your arms around my neck, darling,” he whispered.
Half her face had been swollen and bruised, an insistent ringing circling through her ears. The man had seen her put down the phone as he came out from the bathroom, but he hadn’t been able to figure out what she’d done on it. He’d been furious at his own carelessness, and had taken great pains to communicate that anger against her flesh, then had left her on the floor afterward and watched a cricket match on TV until Ahmed had knocked on the door. Souraya never knew what Ahmed had said, only heard snippets of the low leashed rage in his voice as he spoke to the man, the man’s voice spiking to a high pitch in response, angling into a whine until he started crying. She hadn’t opened her eyes until she felt the warmth of Ahmed’s hands against her face.
“Look at me, darling,” he’d said. “We’re leaving now.”
She’d managed to drape her arms around his neck as he lifted her up, her bare legs dangling over his forearm, the chiffon robe she was wearing falling slightly open and trailing its belt like a ghost down Ahmed’s body as he stood and walked out of the suite. The man shouted after them, but Ahmed had kept talking to Souraya, his voice a steady and sure thrum that wiped out anything else.
“It’s okay; I’ve got you. You’re safe. We’re leaving right now.”
Souraya had slipped into darkness then, tears falling into her ears. When she woke up, she was in a different hotel, a suite where Ahmed had been staying, and he was asleep in a chair next to her bed. It took a long time before she was healed enough to walk or move around, and Ahmed never left her side. Not through the nightmares, the times when she would sit in the shower and scream under the raining steam, or when she threw glasses across the room to watch them shatter against the wall because the rage was boiling too high in her chest. Ahmed wrapped her in towels, held her as she shook with fury, and slept next to her instead of in his room when she requested his company.
One night, Souraya turned to him, her hands folded under her cheek, and asked him what had happened to the man who had taken her. Ahmed’s eyes had gone flat and cold, but he had met her gaze steadily and slid his hand behind her neck.
“I killed him for you,” he said, and Souraya’s heart had pounded wildly.
“Yourself?” she asked.
Ahmed had smiled at the worry in her voice, and he touched his forehead to hers, his eyes coming alive again. “Don’t worry, darling. It was just an accident.”
She had wriggled into his arms and wrapped herself around him. “No one’s ever hurt the people who hurt me,” she’d whispered, feeling horribly young. Ahmed had held her tightly.
“Give me their names,” he’d said. She’d burst into tears then and he murmured sounds until she cried herself to sleep. Souraya never gave him the names.
They had slipped into a strange and intimate friendship, yet Ahmed never made a move on her. He’d washed her body when she was injured and he slept next to her some nights, but always with clothes over his skin and he never so much as kissed her cheek or forehead. One evening, Souraya made a decision. She walked out of the bathroom after a shower, her towel already hung neatly on a hook, her skin bare to the air of their suite. Ahmed had looked up from the couch and gone as still as ice.
“What are you doing?” he’d asked.
Souraya had been nervous, but she knew she needed to be touched and that it needed to be someone safe, someone whose hands she could trust. Ahmed was keeping his eyes firmly fixed on her face, as if she hadn’t oiled every inch of her skin, as if it didn’t gleam and call out to him. Souraya had slid into his lap, and he had made a twisted sound deep in his throat.
“Darling, please.” He sounded like he was begging, and his hands were pressed against the leather of the couch. “I just want you to be okay.”
She’d laughed. “You think I won’t be if you touch me?”
Ahmed had looked at her then, allowed her to see the corralled wildness in his eyes. “I mark the things I touch,” he’d said.
“Good thing I’m not a thing.” Souraya had kissed his cheek, slipping her arms around his neck. “Good thing I’m your friend.”
He’d hitched out a breath. “If I start touching you, darling, I’m afraid I won’t stop.”
“That’s okay,” she’d replied, unconcerned. “I need my flesh back, Ahmed. Do you understand? It’s mine, not a dead man’s.”
“I get it.” He let one hand slide up her leg and electricity sizzled along her skin. Souraya bit back a whimper and cupped his jaw in her hand.
“You’ve done so much for me already,” she whispered, her voice sultry. “But I need you to do more. Can you do more for me, Ahmed?”
She saw the moment his restraint broke, like power snapping darkly in his eyes. He’d lifted Souraya in his arms with a growl, then carried her to his bedroom, slamming her on the mattress. Pure clean relief had washed through her then. He already knew not to be too gentle, and as that night passed, Ahmed showed her many of the other things he knew. Worship, for one. In the days that followed, Souraya had been happy.
But their suite was a transient world and as the time slid by, Souraya could feel their clock begin to run out. Maybe Ahmed would have kept being who he had been, but she had lived too many lives and she didn’t want to see the real-world version of Ahmed seep into this one and inevitably disappoint her. She no longer knew who she was if she wasn’t the broken girl he had rescued—there hadn’t been enough time for him to see who she had been before, and she couldn’t keep using him to cobble her pieces back together. She needed to go home.
So Souraya had left and made him promise not to contact her. Ahmed had inhaled a sharp shattered breath when she told him, but he’d given her his promise anyway. When he took her to the airport, he’d laced his fingers in hers just like he was doing now. Souraya scraped a nail lightly across his skin.
“I’m sorry I made you make that promise,” she said.
Ahmed turned the car into a quiet street and pulled into a compound overgrown with bougainvillea. He parked the car and turned off the ignition, then lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
