by Lia Lee
She hurriedly started taking off her clothes, but her fingers were clumsy, fumbling with her buttons as the guard waited impatiently. She kept her mind consciously blank, trying to avoid thinking about what was going to come next.
A cold feeling of hopelessness overcame her. She was utterly helpless. She couldn’t do anything. She hesitated when she got down to her underwear, but at an impatient look from the woman with the cane, she drew them off as well. Now she was naked inside a drafty cell, and she knew that whatever came next, she had to endure it. She couldn’t let herself be broken. She had to protect her brother. She had no other choice.
“Step to the wall.”
She stood shaking as the woman shackled her to the wall, pulling a switch that dragged her taut. The wall was ice cold against her breasts and belly. She tried to go somewhere else in her mind.
Behind her, the woman swished the cane through the air two or three times, making her flinch with each sound and movement.
“All right. Six to begin with, and then we will see how stubborn you are after that, eh?”
Irene had tears in her eyes. She shut her eyes tight and clenched her fists where they were lifted over her head.
Please, I cannot break…
The cane swished through the air, or at least it started to. Suddenly, there was a crash as the door rocked on its hinges, flying open. There was barely enough free chain for Irene to twist around, but when she did, she was startled to see a familiar man outlined in the doorway.
It was Raheem, the handsome stranger from the airport who had turned out to be none other than the sheikh of Khanour. Now he was dressed in the traditional robes of his people, the dark folds of fabric making him look even more imposing. It was as if he sucked all of the air from the room; every eye was on him, from her and the guard to the men behind him.
For a moment, he glared around him, taking in the scene. His gaze flickered as it roved down her bare form, and then he was all business again.
“Cut her down,” he said, his voice deep and imposing.
The guard hurried to do as the sheikh said, and when she had done so, she stepped back. She looked, Irene thought, grateful to be out of the way of the grim-faced sheikh. For Irene’s own part, all she could do was hide her nudity as best she could with her hands, shaking as he advanced upon her.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked, his eyes dark and his face stern.
Irene had no idea what was happening now, but she knew that she couldn’t defy this man.
She nodded jerkily, as if her head was a ball on a string. He reached out, jerking her head up with his hand at her chin. When she looked up at him, he was even more terrifying. This was a man who held the power of life and death over his people. She had been caught stealing from him.
“Say my name.” His voice was pure command, something that she could not defy.
“Raheem,” she whispered. “Raheem ben Ali, sheikh of Khanour.”
To her surprise, he broke into a smile that was bright and cruel.
“It has been heard, and it has been witnessed,” he said, his voice pitched to carry to the people at the door. Irene looked up in surprise.
“She has recognized me for who I am, and thus in the old way, I declare this woman my wife.”
The people behind him broke into an excited murmur, and the guard watched them with stunned eyes, but Irene felt as if she had been hit with the cane after all. The world was swimming, and things were happening much too fast for her to figure out what was going on.
The guard spoke up.
“Your Highness… what does this mean?”
“It means, warden, that this prisoner is no longer your responsibility. I am choosing to marry her in the old way, and thus her crimes are mine to punish and my responsibility to bring to rights. Her crime was against the country of Khanour, and as I am Khanour, I will take over her custody.”
With a careless hand, he tossed Irene a cloth bag.
“Cover yourself up,” he said, his voice brisk. “We are leaving as soon as you do.”
For a moment, Irene wondered if she wasn’t leaping straight from the frying pan into the fire. In prison, she knew exactly what to expect, but with Raheem… who knew what kind of tortures he had planned. And married? It shouldn’t be legal, but from her studies, she knew that it was. The marriage he had declared was one from Khanour’s ancient history, a law that was in place only for the sheikh, who might take a woman as wife for just a week. Under that law, she was his property, and he could do with her what he liked.
When he made an impatient sound, she hastened to open the bag. Inside, she found a loose robe and skirtlike trousers that buttoned at her waist. The clothes were similar to what the more traditional women wore in the Khanour countryside. The other items were more puzzling.
There was a pair of delicate gold bangles studded with tiny red gems that she suspected were rubies and a pair of intricately worked knotted gold earrings, but the prize was obviously the necklace. No, not the necklace; it was more of a collar. It was a piece that recalled some ancient distant past, a heavy piece of metal that fitted closely around her neck with a gleaming moonstone at the center.
Raheem looked her over with a critical eye before nodding briskly.
“Good,” he said, his voice crisp and commanding. “Now you will follow me. You will not attempt to escape, or I will show you that I can be just as savage as any prison. Nod if you understand.”
She nodded, feeling as shaky as if she stood in an earthquake. Things were happening so fast that she had no idea what was going to come or what she could do about it. Instead, she followed the sheikh in a daze. He walked her out of the building, past the guards and the gates and the bars, and then she was handed into one of the dark cars that were waiting outside.
I don’t have my passport, she thought suddenly. There was no procedure to show that I had left the prison, nothing that will tell people that I was here at all…
She realized, sitting alone in the car where she was separated from the driver by a pane of safety glass, that she was truly on her own. No one knew where she was or where she was going. Instead, her life was utterly in the hands of a man who had no cause to love her, who saw her as a traitor to his people and as a filthy thief.
As the car drove through the dimming afternoon, Irene wondered what was going to happen to her.
CHAPTER THREE
The trip was conducted in silence. The driver never turned to speak to her, and if he had the radio turned on, it was so soft that she couldn’t hear through the glass. She sat in the plush backseat, and even as she wondered what in the world was going to become of her, she noted how luxurious it was. She had spent weeks in the prison of metal and cement. She might as well have been in another world.
Somehow, Irene fell asleep. In her dreams, she was back in her cell. All around her were the noises of the prison, but over all of them, she could hear a swift, sure step. She knew that it was Raheem before he appeared at her cell door, and when he opened it, she could see that he had a cane in his hand.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked in her dream, her voice tinny and far away.
He laughed, a singularly cruel thing.
“I’m going to give you what you deserve,” he said.
She awoke with a jerk, startled to feel tears on her face. For moment, she had no idea where she was. She was convinced that she was still in the cell in Khanour. Instead, the car was coming to a stop, and the driver came around to open the door for her.
“Are you all right, miss?” he asked solicitously, and there was a brief moment before she realized she was the one he was speaking to so kindly.
“I am,” she said, her voice little more than a rusty croak. It felt like the first time in years since she had been able to speak so clearly.
Irene looked around in confusion.
They had taken her to an airfield in the middle of the desert. The sun was beginning to set, dyeing the sky a vivid orange. The
only plane on the runway was a small thing, looking like a toy against the enormous sky. There was something very private about the airfield. It was obviously a space that belonged to one man, not to the world.
At that moment another car arrived, and Raheem himself appeared. He continued to give instructions to the woman in a crisp business suit who walked by his side, and then he when he approached Irene, he shook his head.
“It’s not enough, but it will do for now,” he said finally. “If you need anything, you can give me a call, but I would frankly rather you avoid calling me.”
The woman nodded, glancing curiously at Irene before continuing.
“No, I think it will be fine,” she said. “You’ve given me a lot to work with, and after that, I can guess. Will you need anything yourself?”
Raheem shook his head.
“No. But if I think of anything, I will be in touch.”
“As you say, Your Highness.”
When she got back into the car to leave, Raheem turned to Irene. Without thinking, she took a step back. There was something tempestuous in his expression, but something terrifyingly possessive as well. He looked like a man who had won a prize, or one that was ready to claim one. Instead, he only nodded toward the plane.
“That is where we are going,” he said. “Come on.”
He guided her up the gangplank and into the plane. For a moment, Irene’s frightened brain conjured up plane rides that ended with a frightened person being pushed out the door. As she entered the small but luxuriously appointed cabin, however, she realized that most executions likely did not use such glamorous planes.
Everything felt too vivid and too strange. She didn’t know where to go or what to do. Raheem, who had taken his place at one of the seats around the small table, glanced at her.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said, his voice gentler than it had been before. “Come sit down.”
Obediently, she came to sit at the table, facing him. She was startled when a lovely young flight attendant came out with warm towels for them to wash their hands. For some reason, that small courtesy, offered without hesitation or coercion, told Irene more than anything else had that she was not in prison anymore, at least for the moment. She blinked back tears, hoping that Raheem couldn’t see.
She held her breath as the plane climbed into the air. The flight attendant had retreated back to her own compartment, and she was alone with Raheem. Outside, the setting sun gave the clouds an orange glow. She was almost tempted to sleep again, but she couldn’t relax. Finally, she turned to Raheem, who was idly scanning something on his tablet.
“What have you done?” she asked, her voice gravelly. They were more words than she had spoken in sequence for a very long time. They were almost painful, and she wondered if he would mock her for them.
Instead, he gazed at her with a calmness that soothed her. No matter what, this man was one who knew his place in the world.
“So you can speak after all,” he said casually. It was as if he took plane rides with women accused of felonies every day.
“You should know,” Irene found herself saying. “We talked before…”
Her voice trailed off, and when she looked up, she found him watching her with that intent predatory ferocity.
“Before I realized that you were a thief,” he said, and she flinched. Irene started to speak, to deny it, but at the last moment, she caught herself. She was horrified by how quickly she had allowed herself to be lulled by a sudden shift in scenery. Things had been moving so fast for her that she had somehow forgotten that it was Peter’s life on the line. If she slipped up, there was every chance he would meet his end. She couldn’t allow that to happen.
While she was internally reprimanding herself, Raheem watched her with a curious gaze.
“You were about to say something just then,” he said softly. “Don’t bother denying it, I can sense it quite well…”
She smiled a little ruefully.
“I suppose I was.” Irene knew that the smart thing would have been to retreat back into silence. There was nothing that he could do with her if she refused to speak. There was nothing that she could give him if she didn’t say a word. However, she had been silent for so long that it felt as if a cork had been popped, then lost. She wanted to talk with someone; she craved the human contact that she had been denied for the past few days.
He shrugged, a slightly cruel smile on his face.
“No matter, you will,” he said. “I mean to get to the bottom of this, Irene Bellingham, and sooner or later, you will find out that I always get what I want.”
“And what do you want right now?” she asked, aware that her voice was faintly challenging. It was a poor idea to challenge her captor, but a part of her couldn’t stop herself.
“I want to know who you were smuggling that statue for,” he said. “I could simply order you to prison for the next twenty years and think nothing of it, but the truth of the matter is that if I do that, sooner or later, there will simply be another pretty girl who will lose her head and attempt something so foolish. No, I want to know who sent you, and then I want to crush them. I will make sure that they are never able to harm my country and its history again.”
There was something so serious about Raheem’s statement that Irene found herself stunned. This was a man who believed in what he was saying with every bit of his being.
“I’m sorry,” she found herself saying with a soft regret in her voice. “I cannot help you.”
He looked at her, and instead of being furious, as she was half-afraid he would be, he only smiled.
“Of course you will,” Raheem said with absolute certainty. “You are my wife now, and you will follow my commands.”
“What do you mean?” Irene asked, her voice uncertain. “I know that we… we married in the prison. But surely that is not real? Surely you don’t truly see me as your wife?”
He laughed.
“As a matter of fact, that is exactly what I mean. That was how I got you out of prison, pretty thief. Even I am not above the law, and it took me a while to figure out how I could extract you after your arrest. Finally, I hit upon this ancient law. You are mine now, and I can do with you what I wish. That means that you will be telling me who hired you and what you are doing for them.”
“I can’t…” she whispered. “Please. Please do not ask me.”
He was silent for a long moment as she looked down at the floor. Finally, he tapped the table with two hard fingers.
“Stand up. Come here.”
For a moment, she wanted to make the truly disastrous choice to disobey. Irene wanted to force herself into a ball, ignoring everything he had to say. She wanted to retreat into herself, but when he looked at her with those burning eyes, she found that she could not.
Swallowing hard, she stood up and walked around the table to him. He sat and watched her with a kind of menace that made her heart beat faster. When she was close, he struck like lightning. His hand flashed out, wrapping itself around her wrist. She had just enough with about her to be terrified at how quickly he moved when he jerked her against his body.
With a careless strength that she never would have guessed at, he pulled her up into his lap, cradling the back of her head with his hand as he held her still for a rough kiss.
The sheer sensuality of the kiss overwhelmed her senses. Suddenly, it felt like all of the noise and the stress that she had been dealing with for the last few weeks simply faded away to nothing. All that her mind had time and space for was his kiss, the way his body felt underneath hers, the muscles of his frame, the way his tongue danced teasingly along her lower lip with utter assurance. His touch was certain and sure, holding her still without hurting her.
When he finally let her go, she lurched back away from him, staring at him with wide eyes.
“Why did you…”
“Because you are my wife,” Raheem said, his eyes glittering. “Unless things are very different in America, I believe tha
t husbands and wives do this there as well…”
“You are teasing me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse with the emotions that were crashing through her. She should have been outraged and frightened, but instead, there was something else going on in her mind. Instead of being terrified, all she could think of was how much she wanted this man, and how deeply she wished she had not pulled away.
“Perhaps I am a little,” Raheem admitted, “but let me tell you something else.”
His eyes hardened a little. Irene felt herself shiver. Despite the comfortable temperature of the cabin and the long robes that she wore, she was suddenly cold.
“In Khanour, we have always treasured our women, and that means that we treasure their choices as well. While a sheikh can marry a woman no matter what her situation, it is the woman’s choice whether she stays married at all.
“If you wish to divorce me, simply say ‘I divorce you’ three times. After that, it is done.”
She looked so skeptical that he smiled a little.
“Of course, if you are no longer my wife, you are a thief who belongs in the prison system. I will no longer be able to protect you from those who are baying for your blood. If you choose to sever our bond, I will have no choice but to put you back in prison, where so many believe that you belong.”
“But if I am your wife…”
“Then of course your punishment and your disposition belong to me,” he said with a shrug. “I become your judge and your jury in all matters.”
She could feel the gossamer wings of his trap fold around her, binding her as surely as shackles or a straitjacket.
“As long as I am your wife, I stay out of jail,” she said softly. “When I am no longer your wife, I will take my chances where I may find them.”
“It is all a matter of whose authority you choose to submit to, yes,” he said. “As I have said, the choice is yours.”
Irene bit her lip. She knew what the right choice was, the brave one. She would have demanded that he turn the plane around and bring her back to the prison. Even if the prison was brutal, she was known to be there as an American student who had run afoul of the local police. People knew who she was and what her crime was.
