Chapter 75: Love Confessions

There was a knock on the door and he heard Ya Gumsu speaking with the guards before she walked inside with the food basket she had sometimes sent a maid to deliver or deliver it herself on days like this. She looked restless, and even for the distress he made his mother feel, Sadeeq had it in mind that he would make sure Na'im regretted all the things he did to him.
She sat by the bedside and took his hand in hers, smiling warily. "How are you doing, Yarima?" She asked with a soft smile that made his heart twitched in pain and he squeezed her hand.
"I want to get out of here, Umma. I want my freedom back."
She looked at him and he saw the flash of the pain she was feeling, "I know, that's why I'm working so hard to make sure you can have it back, Sadeeq, okay? You know so well that I'm not going to leave you here." And she meant it, whatever it would take, even if she was going to loose herself, she would make sure her son had retained back his freedom.
?
"We're finally going back home! I'm so happy, Na'im!" She kissed him roughly on the cheek while she got their clothes ready and Na'im just stared at how she seemed genuinely happy. "Have you called the driver? Is Bilkisu at home already? I've missed her so much and I can't wait to see her."
He chuckled and pulled her to him, making the veil she was folding flew to the ground, "Why are you so excited? Because we aren't going to share a bed anymore if we went back to the palace?" He asked with a look that showed how pained he would be if that happened and she shot a grin at him before she genuinely nodded her head.
"I'm glad because I'll go back and see Bilkisu. We'll keep on living in that apartment while I got to see you everyday, not on this hospital bed, but standing on your feet, going to the barrack and wearing your uniform. Just you, the man I fell in love with." Her smile accompanied her words of confession for the first time and Na'im just sat there starring at her, not being able to believe what his ears had just heard for him.
"Did you just say you love me, Hoor?" He couldn't believe what he had just heard. She was smiling at him under the thickness of her lashes but he could see the love that was swarming through her eyes and how she had meant every word she had uttered.
"This isn't the first time I've said it, stop acting like it matters more than it should." She said and blushed before she tried to stand up but he held back her wrist and moved her closer to his body that she could feel the heat radiating from his body and she could sense the solid maleness of him, which had often made her swoon internally. "You saying you love me isn't something that's feasible, Hoor, come on." The smile she had given him was enough to lull Na'im to sleep and he instantly fell in love with her all over again.
"Say it again, will you?" He pleaded with her with his eyes and Maryam was able to stare at him longer than a minute. Even though she was feeling unnerved by how dreamy his eyes stared back into hers. She loved this man, there was nothing to hide anymore. She loved him and was willing to do anything for him.
"I love you, Na'im. I love you so much that I don't even know how much that means. I love you with all the might in me, with all that I've got, with each breath I take, every beat this frail heart of mine drums. I don't know how, when or what I was feeling for you meant until recently, but now I've got to know the name of this sensual yet amazing feeling, I'll to tell you that I love you, each and every day of my life."
He was just staring at her, feeling as her words moved directly to the deepest core of his heart and he wished, if when he opened his mouth to speak, he would be able to tell her exactly what he felt about her. But it was too hard, he knew. He would never be able to paint exactly the feelings he had for Maryam, it would even be a waste of time if he tried to. He just smiled and there was a gleam of tears in his eyes.
He couldn't believe it, that this girl that had once being a liability in his life. Someone he would have regretted if he had ever made the mistake of divorcing her, was now his life. He knew he had once thought about what she would mean to him when he got to realize, the day he had told her that he was her home. And even though it had been a few weeks since he knew what Maryam meant to him, he was more than certain about that today. She was his life. Plain and simple, life.
She meant to him what life meant to a dying person. And Na'im was certain, if she were to ask him how he felt about her, the depth of his love for her and what she made of him, he'd take her hand and place it to his chest and let her feel the rhythm of his heart, how every beat, every ba-dum ba-dum called her name. He'd stare at her so intensely that he would be able to weave through the universes her eyes behold, a constellation of galaxies. So different from the ones in the sky, so she would know, she was more to him than life itself. A Milky Way that contained thousands or even millions of galaxies wouldn't have been to nature, how her love was to him.
"It occurred to me that I've never given you a gift for what you did," he said instead, ignoring the thousand of words he had meant to say to her but he knew if he began to speak about how much he loved her and what she meant to him, he wouldn't be able to stop and Hafiz might walk in on them that way. And right now, he wanted to kiss his response to her, as fast as he could before Hafiz arrived to take them back home.
"A gift? And what did I do?" She asked innocently, fluttering her eye lashes in a way that had always made the butterflies in his stomach took flight and he brought her slightly closer to his body. Someone shouldn't even ask him what he felt about this girl, because he had over a million reasons to feel this way for her, but whenever he thought of a reason, he'd see that it meant less of what he felt for her. And so he had resorted to just loving her without a reason. He just loved her and would keep on doing that for the rest of his life.
"Hafiz told me it was your blood that saved me, I wouldn't have been alive if it weren't for you. And I'm thankful, to the wife in you, the lover in you and one day, the mother of my kids that you'd be." She was grinning at him and he wondered which among his words had pleased her this much.
"I can give birth to your kids?" She asked innocently, but the grin on her face was enough to tell him that she wasn't even wary of what she had just said.
"Yes, you can. Why not? Don't you want to do that?" He asked as he placed his hand tenderly on the right side of her face. Maryam melted softly under that single touch while she slightly shook her head.
"I'd want that, I mean, I love babies that I can call my own. Intisar will be so surprised if she sees me with a baby. And if the baby will look just like you? I'd kill to have him." Na'im threw his head back and laughed, he loved how straightforward she had become. She didn't filter her words, her feelings and what she wanted. And it was baffling to think that once upon a time, this girl hated him with all she had in her. And a touch from him felt like a death sentence yet now, she was looking forward to that, she even asked for that and today, she told him she was willing to carry his child. How sweet did that sound?
"I guess, in that case, we have to hurry and make sure we create these babies. Don't you think?" She blushed and hid her face in his chest before she nodded her head at him. Na'im smiled and hugged her as tenderly as he felt her in his soul and when he lifted her face and had his lips took possession of hers and he began kissing her passionately, abruptly, the door was opened and walking in was Hafiz with Saima right behind his steps.
Hafiz quickly turned his back to them, making Saima's body got banged into his and she was about to look up at them when he quickly pinned her face right onto his chest before he leaned towards her ear and whispered, "Give them some time, Princess." He didn't know what had gotten over him to do what he had just done and how in the world Saima had her head laying comfortably on his broad chest and she didn't look so tense. Rather, she looked as though that was what she wanted, too.
"What are they doing? I want to watch." She said innocently and even though her voice was muffled by his chest, Hafiz smiled at that. And once upon a time, he thought that this princess was innocent. Turned out she wasn't and he was loving how her body felt together with his with her heart that laid on his chest.
"He's kissing her and that isn't good for an underage like yourself." She slightly looked up at his face with an annoyed look in her eyes, forgetting the position they were in as she wrapped her arms lightly around his waist to be able to steady herself.
"Who said I'm underage? And even if I am, she shouldn't be kissing him too then. We're the same age." She rolled her eyes at him without knowing she did and Hafiz slowly had their eyes locked and slightly, without intending to, he pulled them away from the room and closed the door behind them.
He knew he should've let go of her after he did that, but no. He was enjoying the position they were in and he loved the feel of her lushness against his body and the eyes that so innocently stared back into his. The first mistake he did was when his eyes slightly glanced at her lips and his entire body twitched with the urge to kiss her.
"Are you telling me that since it's okay for her to kiss, it should be okay for you to watch since you both are age mates?" He asked and she nodded her head.
"Not just okay for me to watch," she began stubbornly, "I, too, can kiss whoever I like and it wouldn't be counted as an offense or child abuse or whatever you wish to tag it as."
"I'd shoot you if you try doing that. Don't you ever play roughly with guys, Princess." His brain reminded him that he was one of those guys too, that he should let go of her before it got to the stage that he wouldn't be able to do that. But he just couldn't find himself to do that.
"I'd do it and if you shoot me, Yarima will always be there to protect me, all it takes is for me to call out his name." She was eyeing him with challenge in her eyes and Hafiz wondered what she was thinking in that tiny brain of hers. They were still holding onto each other as tenderly as he wouldn't have wished them to.