Ukumbi wa Siri | NEON LIT

My father takes a second wife on my twenty-third birthday.

The irony is not lost on me.

Her name is Safiya. She's twenty-eight—five years older than me, thirty-two years younger than my father. A beauty from a good family who needed the security an old man could provide.

She's also thick beyond reason.

I see her for the first time at the wedding—covered in gold, wrapped in the finest fabrics, her face veiled but her eyes meeting mine across the room. Those eyes hold something that isn't proper. Something that says she knows exactly what she's doing.

And her body...

Even in wedding clothes, her body is impossible to ignore. Breasts that strain against silk. Hips that sway like ocean waves. An ass that makes the modest fabrics look obscene.

My father has purchased himself a trophy.

But trophies have needs he can't meet.

The Swahili tradition gives the second wife her own quarters.

Safiya is installed in the far wing of our compound—a set of rooms that my grandmother once occupied, connected to the main house by a long corridor. Private. Secluded. My father visits when his schedule permits.

Which is almost never.

He's sixty-three. He runs three businesses. He's in Dar es Salaam or Nairobi more than he's home. And when he is home, his attention is on my mother—his first wife, the one who gave him children, the one who runs his household.

Safiya sits alone in the far wing.

And I find myself walking that corridor more often than I should.

"You watch me."

She says it one afternoon, a month after the wedding. I've brought her tea—a kindness, I tell myself. Being welcoming to my father's new wife.

"I don't—"

"Don't lie to me." She's reclining on a divan, wearing a house dress that hides nothing. Her hijab is gone—she doesn't bother with it in private. "Your father never visits. The staff treats me like a decoration. Only you come to see me."

"Someone should."

"Why?" She sits up, and her breasts shift under the thin fabric. "What do you want from me, stepson?"

The word sounds wrong in her mouth. She's barely older than me. She's thicker than any woman I've touched. And her eyes...

Her eyes are hungry.

"I want to help," I say.

"Help." She laughs. "You want to help your father's lonely second wife? That's what you're telling yourself?"

"What else would I want?"

She stands. Walks toward me. Stops close enough that I can smell her—jasmine and something muskier.

"You want what your father can't give me." Her hand finds my chest. "You've wanted it since the wedding. Since you saw me across the room and imagined what I looked like under all that gold."

"Safiya—"

"Your father touched me once." She says it flatly. "Wedding night. He couldn't finish. He blamed the alcohol. He hasn't tried since."

"I'm sorry—"

"Don't be sorry." Her hand slides lower. "Be useful."

She pulls me into her bedroom.

The far wing of the house. The most isolated room. The place where my father's second wife is supposed to wait for attention he'll never give her.

"We can't—"

"We can." She's pulling at my shirt. "Your father is in Nairobi. Your mother pretends I don't exist. The servants think I'm praying." The shirt comes off. Her hands explore my chest. "We have hours. Days. As long as we want."

"If anyone finds out—"

"Then we're both ruined." She shrugs off her house dress. Underneath, nothing. Just brown skin and curves and need. "But I'm already ruined. Your father married me for decoration. He doesn't touch me. Doesn't see me. I'm a trophy he forgot he bought."

She's magnificent.

Thicker than I imagined. Breasts heavy and swaying, nipples dark and hard. Belly round and soft, cascading to thick thighs. Ass like two moons behind her. She turns so I can see all of her.

"Is this what you've been imagining?"

"Yes."

"Then take it." She lies back on her bed. "Take what your father paid for and never claimed."

I fall onto her.

My mouth finds her breast first—sucking, biting, making her gasp. My hands explore everywhere—her soft belly, her thick thighs, the wet heat between them.

"Yes—finally—someone who wants me—"

I kiss down her body. Trace my tongue along her belly. Lower. Lower.

She cries out when my mouth finds her pussy.

"Allah—your father never—no one has—"

I lick.

She's sweet and musky and dripping for me. Her thick thighs clamp around my head. Her hands grab my hair, pulling me closer.

"Don't stop—please—I've waited so long—"

I eat her like she's my last meal. Like I'm the only one who will ever satisfy her. She comes in minutes—flooding my face, screaming into her pillows—but I don't stop. I push her through that orgasm into the next one. And the next.

"Enough—I need—please—"

I climb up her body.

Position myself at her entrance.

"This is haram," I say.

"Everything in this house is haram." She pulls me forward. "Now give me what I was promised."

I thrust inside.

She screams—a real scream, loud and shameless, echoing off the walls of the far wing. She's tight, wet, gripping me like she'll never let go.

"Ya Allah—you're so—your father could never—"

I start to move.

Slow at first. Savoring. Her eyes are locked on mine, her mouth open, her whole body responding to every thrust.

"Faster—"

I give her faster.

The bed shakes. Her body shakes. Her breasts bounce wildly, and I grab them, squeeze them, watch her eyes roll back.

"More—please—I've needed this—"

I fuck her harder. The headboard slams the wall. The sounds of our bodies fill the room—wet, obscene, everything her marriage should have been.

"I'm coming again—don't stop—"

She clenches around me, screaming, her whole body arching off the bed. I don't stop. Can't stop. I pound into my father's second wife while she shatters beneath me.

"Inside me—" She wraps her legs around my waist. "Give me what he couldn't—"

I explode.

Fill her with everything while she screams, while she shakes, while we defile my father's marriage bed.

We lie there afterward.

Her soft body pressed against mine. The sounds of the distant household filtering through the walls.

"He'll never know," she whispers.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because he never comes here." She traces a finger down my chest. "He married me for appearances. For family honor. For whatever old men marry young women for. But he's never once looked at me the way you do."

"How do I look at you?"

"Like I'm worth wanting." She kisses me softly. "Like this body—this fat, thick, un-modern body—is exactly what you desire."

"It is."

"Then come back." She shifts, and I feel myself stirring against her thigh already. "Tomorrow. The next day. Every day your father is away. This wing is mine. And now it's ours."

The ukumbi wa siri—the secret room—becomes my second home.

I visit Safiya three, four times a week. We fuck in her bed, on her floor, against her walls. I take her in ways my father never imagined, give her pleasures his old body could never provide.

"You're my real husband," she tells me one night, lying in my arms. "The marriage certificate has his name. But this body—" She presses against me. "—this body belongs to you."

"And when he's home?"

"Then I'm his dutiful second wife. I pray. I cook. I wait in my wing like a proper decoration." She smiles. "And I count the hours until he leaves again."

My father lives three more years.

Heart attack. Sudden. Peaceful.

At the funeral, my mother weeps. The family mourns. Safiya stands in black, appropriately grief-stricken.

Our eyes meet once across the grave.

She doesn't smile.

But I see her hand touch her belly.

And I know.

Seven months later, Safiya gives birth to a son.

Everyone assumes it's my father's final gift—a child conceived just before his death. The family celebrates. My mother welcomes the baby as her husband's heir.

I know the truth.

Safiya knows the truth.

And when I visit her quarters now—no longer the far wing, but a proper suite in the main house—I hold my son while she looks at me with those same hungry eyes.

"He has your face," she whispers.

"He has my name too." I kiss her forehead. "Even if no one knows it."

"The secret room," she says. "Our secret room. Is this what it created?"

"This is what we created." I hand her the baby. "And someday, when he's grown, I'll tell him the truth."

"About his father?"

"About love." I pull her close—son between us, her soft body against mine. "About how it finds you in unexpected places. In forbidden rooms. In the far wings where no one bothers to look."

She leans into me.

The secret keeper.

The second wife.

The only woman I've ever truly loved.