“In the sense that I revere and adore you? Yes. You’re my sanctuary from the things that make life heavy for me.”
“Your parents?”
He nodded as he lifted a gloved hand to my cheek.
Sam’s parents held high expectations of him. They were immigrants, Ethiopian scholars who owned businesses and expected an insane level of greatness from their only child. The weight of the pressure on him could hobble an elephant.
“Sampson—sun.”
He lifted his head, surprise in his eyes as they met mine.
Smiling, I teased, “You’re not the only one who knows how to look up name meanings.”
With a smile in his eyes, he leaned in and kissed me.
5
Temple
Now…
Being in this suite was inducing a tidal wave of déjà vu, that and ... him. Being in his presence again, hearing his voice which had dropped a couple of octaves and exuded masculinity, and his scent, so familiar, all of that in combination with our very natural chemistry had me feeling more than a little woozy.
“Have a seat, Temple,” he offered, nodding toward the settee in the sitting area.
I sat down, butterflies swarming my stomach, fluttering so furiously I was sure he could feel them too. This was insane. It was like no time had passed. I felt seventeen and madly in love again, and the crazy thing was, I saw the same thing in his eyes, his countenance. If I wasn’t a full-grown woman who was cognizant of the fact that a young lifetime had passed since we loved, I’d think his heart was still mine. Even though, over the years, I’d wondered if he’d ever really loved me, at this moment, I was inexplicably sure he had. As a matter of fact, I could’ve sworn that at that very second I heard him say he’d always loved me, that he’d never stopped, but that couldn’t be so, because his mouth wasn’t moving.
“You broke my heart,” spilled from my lips through no will of my own. “You-you broke me. I’ve tried to forget, but I can’t, and I don’t understand it. No matter who I’m with, I still miss your touch.”
He dropped to his haunches before me, his brow furrowed, his eyes full of regret. “I know. I…” His eyes roamed my face for a moment before he continued, “Give me your hands. There’s something I need to show you.”
My eyes lowered to my lap, where his hands lay palms-up on my thighs. I’m not sure why, because I didn’t know what he could show me in that room other than something I’d honestly been craving from him for years, but I obliged him, placing my smaller hands on top of his. When our palms met, I felt a jolt of something course through my body, something akin to but not quite as intense as the energy swell of an orgasm. Whatever it was, it made me shut my eyes. Behind my lids, I found a sunburst of colors and lights; and then, I was in a lush green forest or rather a garden in the midst of a forest. There were so many flowers, red flowers, bright and aromatic. I’d never seen anything so beautiful or vivid before. I was awestruck.
And I was petrified because this wasn’t a vision or a dream. I was there. I could feel the breeze on my skin, hear the leaves in the trees rustling, smell the flowers, hear animals moving about, calling to each other.
And then, “Temple.”
Sampson was there with me, and somehow, that made this, all of this, all right. He was standing next to me in a long black robe with ornate gold trim. My eyes inched up to his face, same chocolate skin, round eyes, sharp cheekbones, lush beard, thick lips, and what was becoming a permanently wrinkled brow. His deep brown eyes held concern.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Before he could answer, my eyes fell to my own body covered in a similar robe or gown to his, black with gold trim. On my feet were the softest gold slippers. “How-what…” Shit, I didn’t know what to ask at that point. Evidently, being around this man had fried my damn brain and had me hallucinating and shit.
He smiled, and then I felt his warm hand grasp mine, “We are in my homeland.”
“Ethiopia?” I questioned. “Physically? How?”
His free hand swept to a bench I hadn’t noticed. “Let’s sit, and I’ll tell you everything.”
*****
“Believe it or not, we are in the middle of the oldest desert in the world.” When my eyes widened as I took in the lushness around us, he added, “I guess you could say this small nation is an oasis of sorts.”
I frowned and nodded, managing to reply with, “Oh…”
“We are not in Ethiopia, love, to answer your previous question. We are in the nation of Bilowga, which is within the Namib desert, the oldest desert in the world. The blessed Namib desert is located on the southwestern coast of Africa. You will not find Bilowga on any maps. As a matter of fact, only a chosen few know it exists, but it is where the first man was born and lived. It is a land of gods and goddesses.”
“I thought…didn’t the first man come from the Kenyan Rift Valley?”
“No, he came from here, but my people don’t mind the misinformation. It’s better that people don’t know the real location or that it and we still exist.”
“Your people?”
He nodded, and I could see the concern in his eyes had been replaced with excitement. “The Asili. The first. One tribe that eventually became many. Every African has blood ties to the Asili. Some ties are weak, and some are strong.”
“And Sampson’s blood ties are among the strongest.”
My head snapped up to find a ridiculously tall man who looked vaguely familiar to me. He literally appeared out of no damn where.
“Temple, this is Porter,” Sam said.
“Uh…hi?” I said, growing more confused by the millisecond.
Porter smiled, opening up his handsome butterscotch-toned face, and bowed at the waist. Then he turned his attention to Sam. “Baba, I did not know you’d be here today. Is there anything I need to prepare for you and your beautiful guest?”
Sam glanced at me before returning his attention to Porter. “No. Thank you.”
Porter gave another bow before leaving us, and I watched his retreating back in a black robe as he strode down a path I hadn’t noticed. Or maybe it wasn’t there before. I could almost feel our surroundings changing and shifting. Not in an alarming or unsettling way, but in a natural way. It was as if this place had its own rules and rhythm.
“Temple, I did not want to leave you. I did not mean to hurt you. The truth is, it was something I had to do.”
I didn’t respond. Hell, I didn’t know what to say.
“Ever since I was very young, my parents told me tales of our homeland and our people, our majesty. They told me mostly of Ethiopia, where they were born and raised. But like all Africans, whether here on the continent or in the diaspora, they descended from the people of this land. They didn’t know that or anything about this place at all until I was born, and what the ancestors shared with them then, they shared with me. I thought they were fables until I learned they weren’t.”
My eyes were glued to him as he spoke until he hesitated to acknowledge a lion. Yes, a whole-ass, big as shit, motherfucking lion had approached us, or really, it approached him, but shit! I was sitting right next to him! As if he could sense that I was about to climb over that bench and take off running into the forest because I wasn’t about to let the thing eat me, he laid a heavy hand on my knee as he used his other hand to rub the lion’s mane. Speaking in a language I did not understand, he said something to Mufasa that made his big ass roar loudly, which made me shout, “Motherfucker!”