A Fiery-necked nightjar invisible in the timid darkness that lingered over the now chattering village cried out; its distinctive whistling accompanying low trilling sounds. Underneath the lowly sweeping branches of the Graviola tree, Onochie let time rush through widely parted fingers as he loitered in the little ditch.

He'd waited for quite a while, hiding from the queen mother's guards. And his patience had finally paid off. He thought it to be to his advantage that the men were still as stupid as they ever were. Quickly, he had to forcefully swallow a lumpy ball of laughter as the concession turned down the path leading to the farmlands he had to his name as the king of Zoro.

When he was sure they were far enough to be of no threat to him, he tumbled out of his hiding place. And after searching around for any lost pair of eyes trying to zero in on an unsuspecting victim, he bolted for the path that led to the garden, praying for the moon to keep her stolen gleams abreast the thinning clouds.

Thinking of her hurried his legs quicker and quicker. It was almost like his feet had grown the wings of a sparrow and were flying off to the one place they knew even more than the mud floor of his room in the palace.

Truthfully, it would be more of a shock if he didn't know the haven as much as he did. For what man could afford to be unfamiliar with the very place where his miseries and burdens were eased off his shoulders? No sane man, was the answer.

Through the tall day, Onochie's heart had flirted severally with his emotions, forcing him to deal with severe palpitations each time he thought of her. The images of her body that floated in his head were inordinately concupiscent for him to deal with when he wasn't alone, especially when they were of the rituals they had together.

Thus, he'd dismissed the servants loitering around his chambers–like fruit flies chasing the slowly rotting fruits on Orie market day–so he could do his shameful business once or twice.

It had been too long. The days had been too long. And the nights even longer. He felt deadly sore without her sensual touches in all of the proper as well as improper flexures of his body. The ache to be by her was exhausting and enervating to the point of almost incapacitating him.

Such were the woes that plagued him when they were apart for far too tedious the passage of time, as she had been away counting up to and just scarcely brimming a total of seven days. He detested and hated with all his absolute being whenever she ran off all in the name of fulfilling her duties as the surviving descendant of a former chief who was still required to serve the remnant of those under his administration.

He never quite understood what she claimed she was obligated to do, but he did know that she never seldom demanded hefty sums of money in bags of cowries before she finally disappeared for five days or at times such as now, a withering, lingering week. How he loathed those interminable, lonely days.

Now he had the chance to see her and hold her in his arms. He had anticipated the moments to come over and over again, and there was nothing that would stop him from revelling in and enjoying her presence by him.

In the dark, the Lovers' Lair appeared formidable and indeed a gloomy fortress as the trees clumped in grooves, towered like gargantuan mountains. Outstretched branches scratched at the moon-lit sky, holding on to lovely fruits and flowering leaves. The burliness of the immobile creatures marked their territory with an austere fierceness and defensive armour of wood.

Onochie however had seen the beauty of the lair firsthand and even more importantly, he knew she would be waiting for him exactly where she always did. After all, they had set plans for their meeting before her fairly mysterious but usual vanishing. There would be no turning or drawing back now.

If Onochie were blessed with a honeyed voice, he would have sang as there was a merry tune that ricocheted in his head. Unfortunately, he wasn't. Having the croaky voice of a frog whenever he tried to render musical sounds with a set tune was one of the many flaws the king had come to accept as a part of his life.

Ozioma on the other hand, he thought pleasantly, had a delightful voice. Now, she did not sing like sirens or mammywaters, as her voice neither enchanted nor charmed her lover. It instead had a unique effect on him as Onochie's love of her singing was not for the seductiveness or sultriness as he would most women, but for the motherliness he thought it to have.

Deep and sonorous were appropriate yet deprecatingly inadequate words to delineate the richness of one of the many gifts the gods had bestowed on the woman who held a special portion of Onochie's heart. To be quite candid, she did not hold just one portion as she possessed all of the muscular organ with nil space to accommodate anyone else.

A grin dressed his face in the dark with a warm glow as he turned over even more details of his woman underneath eyelids that latched close for a few, precious seconds. Her beauty rolled like a clear, vivid clip in those short ticks of time so that it almost felt like she was already with him as he stamped forward on the grainy, brown sands on the village path.

It would be the news on every lip if the king were to be caught scurrying away from the direction of his home like a thief that was being pursued after by nemesis. But Onochie could not care less. His eyes were on the price and so, despite the weird looks he was receiving–having wrapped his head in a huge shawl–he paid mind to nothing but his race and the dimming moonbeams.

She stood at the tail of the garden with a blazing torch in her hand. At the sighting of the bright signal, Onochie slowed into a leisurely stroll. In the moment, it eventually wouldn't be so hard for him to reach her exact locus with the burning flame calling out to him.

All he needed more to do was saunter up majestically to the one waiting for him. And that he did. Over the thicket he regally jumped, under the wooden fence he loftily went, in between the tangled trees he nobly bypassed and after a few more obstacles, he finally could hold her. But he didn't.

He was close enough to touch her. But he didn't. He instead gave a kingly nod as she knelt to greet him, then another as she hushed the torch then placed the dryly waxed stick in between the two gibbers sitting off to the right of their secret entrance.

They walked together without a feigned source of light to their carefully, hidden dugout underneath an extravagant mound of dirt. She knelt again, only differently with both her hands locked over her head, giving him all the access that he needed.

Onochie gulped in the comfort of the growing darkness as he prayed to the gods for the self-control a man needed for tasks such as this. He forced his shaky hands to stay calm and firm as he analysed each detail of her round, beautiful face underneath the blue streaks of the gloriously full ball. It, her face, was rightly clear; smooth and unblemished.

Next, he trained his eyes and fingers down both of her arms. They were spotless as well to his relief. He bid her rise and she immediately did so, waiting for the next familiar action. Onochie in turn, shifted around her so her posterior end was to him while she gazed out into the pitch blackness deep in the hideout.

Her back was pale, and smooth to the feel as Onochie fished for foreign details. He stepped over the grey wrapper on the floor as he pushed the pad of his hands downwards, toward the crack of her soft and well-rounded buttocks, where they halted and dawdled in circles.

It was evident that there was not a single faulting to be found where he lingered on as he had viewed each and every angle of her rear side before thinking of reaching for it. But that did not stop him from pressing his palms against the plump cheeks, moderately outspreading them just to evoke that delicious shudder he loved seeing ram through her like a violent tornado. He smirked at the expected reaction before bending to check her good-looking calves.

All clear. He thought as he ambled forward a good foot so he had her ventral view in all of his periphery. It was a magnificent sight indeed. Onochie felt his breath whoosh out of his lungs even though this was far from the first or second time he'd seen her completely in her natural state.

She was a perfect figure eight with imperfect, yet titillating breasts that seemed to be hurrying away from each other to the ends of her chest, and Onochie was reminded of just how much he loved her. With his hungry hands, he cupped her bosom, pretending that his only purpose was to make sure of her purity.

When the king was finally satisfied, he turned his eyes on the dark bush growing between chunky thighs. But he quickly whipped his head away as he knew this was where self-control needed to take precedence over desire no matter how strong it proved to be.

Drawing in an intensely profound breath, he managed to command in a faint tone. "You can dress now Ozioma."

As she tied the wrapper back on, Onochie heaved a paunchy sigh at the dissipation of the vilest temptation he'd ever known. Her body was too much of a weapon. He mused as he watched her fix her dark hair. When he looked away, he let himself wonder: when did they first begin this? Weirdly enough, he could not remember. It was too long ago. He however did remember why it started.

He could never forget that night when he had accused her of the grievous sins only adulteresses committed, as he had received information from one of his trusted guards who claimed to have seen her in the arms of another man. The emotions of that night were still the most vivid he had ever witnessed.

Ozioma had wreaked havoc before his very eyes after the allegations. Her angry words had easily seared through Onochie's flesh with a rage and ferocity he had yet to see in any woman before. It still haunted him while he dreamt on some unfortunate days.

"Search me my Lord! Find my erring!" had been her pronouncement afterwards. Then she had dropped down the sheathings that at all times shielded her body, as she demanded he point out details that insinuated another man had defiled her by grazing any member of himself on her delicate and tender skin.

She was truly tender. As fair as the fairest pawpaw was her skin. A single, harsh touch could leave angry marks on her body, and anything more than a light fondle left her skin bruised. With this, Onochie knew it was impossible for her to fool him. And so the ritual began.

Whenever she was away from him for more than two days past, then it was compulsory for him to conduct their ritual to confirm whether or not she had been faithful in his absence.

It was therefore to Onochie's sweet repose that Ozioma was unique; she bore a frail skin on which imprints could easily be made and detected. Unlike other maidens whose complexions hid truths, hers could not keep a single secret.

This fact set Onochie at ease. Before each search, he had to stay calm, exercising great patience and then first determine that his woman was uncontaminated before he could make any moves that vouchsafed his emotions for her.

For it would be a total disgrace if he fell all over her and ultimately discovered that she had not been true to him. If and after he had rummaged for signs and symptoms of infidelity and successfully or rather unsuccessfully found none as he did now, then he could be his true self to her.

"Obi'm I have missed you." Onochie grinned as she leaped into his open arms.

"I have missed you even more my Lord. So much more. And I have been faithful to you in every way, including all that I do my king."

"Of course! I know you Oma." he affirmed, using the sobriquet he had given her in the past.

They both held hands in the dark, and Ozioma leaned her head on Onochie's shoulder after receiving his permission. "My Lord?"

"Yes ezigbo'm?"

"Why do you love me? Why do you not treat me like other women?"

"That is because you are different ngala'm. You are not a slattern as you do not frivol with other men the way many other maidens do. You are distinct from your compeers who frolic around and make foolery of themselves. Ozioma, usom, you are pure and chaste, and I love you for being so."

"Is that all you love me for my king?"

"No of course not. I do love you for so much more. For saying sake, I deeply love the very beauty of your skin and the roundness of your curves. You are shaped in the figure of a true woman and I more than anything, cherish your ethereal features. They are indeed in plain words, snares that could entrap any creature. Man and even animals." He chuckled at his little quip.

"Is there no more my king?"

Onochie frowned at this. He did not appreciate the undertone of doubt he heard in her voice while she queried him. She had asked him her questions and he had answered them without any falsehoods in his mouth or in his heart. He did love those features of her best and he had let her know honestly. What then was the purpose of her incessant questionings? "Why do you speak like you do not believe me Oma?"

"I never said so, my king. But it is a truth that I am sometimes unsure whether you sincerely deem me worthy enough of being the woman you love."

"You know that I do." he tilted her head so that her gaze was on his, but she pulled away and stood shortly before heading to the exit of the dugout where light piled in, chasing away darkness.

Onochie followed after her, retrieving her short, chubby hands from their folded position over her chest. "You know that I love you no matter what Oma. It does not matter that your family only has a ceremonial title. I care not about that and this is one of the reasons I restored and made sure your lands remained as a part of your family's possessions despite the sins of your grandfather. I love you obi'm."

"Do you really mean your words so my Lord?"

"There is no doubt about that uso'm. You should know already."

"Then marry me."
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Glossary
Obi'm: My heart
Ezigbo'm: My dear
Ngala'm: My pride
Uso'm: My sweetie
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A/N: Thank you for reading, loves!