“I don’t know. I think so, yes.”
“You need to tell me everything.”
Anna swung her legs off the bed and walked around the room, avoiding getting too close to Zahir. “OK. Abduallah, he—” she looked at him once and then sighed heavily, as if unsure, “he knew it couldn’t have been him. There was no possibility. He never asked me who the father was and I never told him but I think he knew. And I also think he believed, from your attitude to me, that you had no further interest in me.”
“And so you didn’t consider I’d be interested to know I’d fathered a son.” His voice was quiet.
“It wasn’t that.”
“What was it?”
“I didn’t want you to know.”
Zahir’s turned away from her, stiff with anger. “And so because on a whim—”
“No whim. I knew you’d take him away from me, away from us—”
“Of course I would.”
“Then you can hardly blame me for not telling you.”
“I blame you. I blame you for having me believe you to be two months pregnant with Matta when we met that night in Paris. You had me believing that Matta was a full-term baby, whose father was Abduallah.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to understand but from the moment I felt Matta move in my stomach I knew that I would do anything for that child, but most of all I would love him and keep him close. I couldn’t let you take him.”
“I did anyway.”
They fell into a deep silence then, one that nothing could fill. He felt Anna’s tentative touch on his shoulder.
“Zahir.” Her voice was soft to his ears and he closed his eyes, wanting to reach out to her but knowing that nothing could be said or felt or done to take away the lies of the past.
He stepped back, his hand in the air, making a barrier between them. “No. I have to go.”
“It’s up to you now. You know the facts. You have to either come to terms with this—or not.”
Or not. Her words stayed in his mind as he closed the door behind him and returned to his empty room.
“No!” Matta said irritably, frowning at his mother who wasn’t concentrating as well as he expected her to.
“I’m sorry, honey. Right, show me again.”
Anna was trying to concentrate on the song and actions that Matta was showing her, but failing spectacularly. Three days had passed since she’d seen Zahir. No sign. Not a word.
She was living in some surreal state of limbo from which she couldn’t seem to surface to function normally.
“Hmm,” Matta said, his mouth twisting and his brow lowering in a characteristic movement she recognized from Zahir. “Mom, that’s no good.” He smiled with sympathy at her. “Perhaps you’d better leave it to me.”
Anna laughed at his adult words. He was like a sponge, absorbing something from everyone around him: the language from the adults and the fun from his cousins and friends. She ruffled his hair and he shrugged from her reach.
“Perhaps I better had.” At least the three days had allowed her to spend her undivided attention on Matta, admiring the new talents he was learning, taking extra pleasure from his love, a love that hadn’t seemed to diminish, despite her fears, but seemed to grow. She needed that now more than ever. “Come here and give me a hug.”
A resigned Matta shuffled forward and bent his head to be kissed and hugged. He patted her on the back in a gesture she knew to be dismissal. She couldn’t help but laugh. She hugged him tight and, teasingly, wouldn’t let him go.
“Mom, I have to go now. Ab Zahir is going to take me out with the falcons.”
Her heart thudded at the mention of Zahir and she let Matta slip from her arms.
“I don’t like you playing with the falcons.”
“Mom, it’s not playing. It’s part of our culture, that’s what Ab Zahir says. Besides he will be there.”
Quite, Anna thought. For the first time since their return she knew where he would be.
“And so will I.”
Anna paused for a few moments, struck by the image of loneliness that Zahir made, as he stood with his back to them, his white robes, rippling in the breeze, outlined vividly against the blue sky and the wide empty expanse.
He turned suddenly at the sound of Matta’s running feet and lifted him into the air before pulling him into a bear hug that brought a lump to Anna’s throat. She knew that Matta had been spending time with Zahir but hadn’t witnessed first hand their increasing closeness.
On some level, Zahir was coming to terms with being a father. And Matta certainly saw Zahir as his second father. From what Matta called him—Ab, or Father, Zahir—she knew that he saw him as such.
“Zahir?”
She tried to keep her face and voice from trembling and assumed she must have succeeded as Zahir looked not in the least disturbed.
“Anna.” He nodded in distant greeting.
“I would like to come along, if I may.”
“As you like.”
Anna could feel a knot like a sob inching its way up her chest at the icy chill of his tone.
Matta looked from one to the other and his brows were knitted but he made no comment.
Anna fell into step with Matta between them, listening to Matta’s chatter and Zahir’s indulgent comments. As they reached the falconry, Matta ran forward and turned, his face turning from excitement to concern at the sight of both of them, close yet miles apart.
“Mom, what’s the matter with Ab Zahir and you? Have you told him off?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that Ab Zahir looks how I feel when you tell me off. You shouldn’t tell him off. He’s the sheikh.”
Anna felt her jaw drop with the injustice of his accusation but she was unable to form any words except look at Zahir whose eyes were full of laughter.
When she turned back to Matta, he had disappeared into the depth of the falconry leaving them alone.
“What is your western expression? Out of the mouth’s of babes?”
“Comes absolute, uninformed rubbish! I should tell you off because you’re behaving badly. Yes, I probably should have told you that Matta was your child but you know what? If I had my time again I’d do exactly the same thing. He was my child, his birth father wanted nothing to do with me and his adopted father was dying and I—”
“Yes, I know—”
“I had to do…” she paused mid-sentence, dumb-founded. “You know? What are you saying?”
“Matta has talked about your life together in New York. I know a little of what you went through. He’s talked about Abduallah and he’s talked about you. He’s a bright boy.”
“Of course he is. He has my genes.”
He smiled at her. “And mine.”
“And that must be what makes him so stroppy.”
“No it’s what makes him unable to trust unless that trust is earned.”
“He trusts me.”
His eyes flickered around her face, as if searching for something.
“And I want to, too.”
“Then try to understand.”
Anna turned and walked away abruptly before the tears she could feel welling behind her eyes began to fall. The walk quickened as soon as she was out of his sight and she ran blindly back into the palace, not stopping until she reached her office. She ran in and slammed the door closed on the world behind her, leant back against the door and sobbed for the man she wanted but who would make no effort to understand her.
She lay in bed that night, her hot eyes closed, the cool breeze upon her heated skin, her mind full of the light of the stars and the white flowers that lit the desert after rain. She only seemed to see the light when her eyes were closed. One day she hoped she’d open them and see such beauty. But for now, she dare not think of anything else but held on to that image while the emotions ebbed and flowed within.
It had been like this since she’d left him at the oasis. The hours passed in this ageless place movin
g like the sand, always shifting and changing, but always looking the same. She’d never been more acutely aware of the sensation of waiting. Waiting for understanding to come to him—or desire. Waiting for a miracle. But none came.
Was it all over so quickly? Had his passion been so slight that one night together had been sufficient to extinguish it?
Some time after midnight she fell into a restless doze, her dreams full of the light of desert blooms, her heart full of hope. Suddenly she awoke, her senses alert. She lay quite still, dazed, wondering for a moment where she was, wondering what had awoken her. There was no sound, no shape in the dark room. But she knew it was him. Silently he slipped into bed beside her.
“Anna.” She closed her eyes briefly, melting at his voice, and his touch as he sat on the bed beside her, his hands reaching out for her, pulling her to him. All her anger and hurt at his coldness was forgotten by the reality of his presence.
He pushed his hands through her hair and cradled her face for one long moment, before he brought his lips to hers, holding her still so he could take all that he wanted. She felt as if she’d been lost in the desert until that moment, dying inch by inch under the sweltering, lifeless sun.
She could not do other than to give him as much as he wanted—and more. As their mouths and tongues continued to search for satisfaction, in a restless, anguished passion of twisting, turning, pressure of lips against lips, of body against sliding body, she felt his heart beat against hers, pressing against her whole being. Her body felt alight with power, raised by electricity, shimmering with awareness, shot through with need.
He rose suddenly and walked away from the bed. Anna could barely hear the tear of packet above the panting of her breath. He was back with her in seconds and she wrapped her legs around him, hooking him and bringing him close to her. He pulled away from her kiss then. And for one long moment they looked at each other in the shallow darkness where emotions were more tangible than the vague outline of the physical. But she could see his eyes, black and white, intense and demanding. His eyes didn’t just hold promise but delivered it. They made love to her as surely as his body was about to. She felt the connection, intimate, strong and erotic as surely as if he’d penetrated her. She gasped and felt her legs tremble around him.
His gaze didn’t shift from hers as his hands smoothed down her trembling legs, lending them strength as he shifted and lifted them both around her and entered her. She climaxed with his first thrust, which he held there, deep inside her, as she opened her mouth to cry out but his mouth robbed her of sound, muting her ecstasy as her whole body trembled around his. Only when the trembling ceased did he move: rhythmic, unrelenting, moving in and out of her, each movement as intense as the last. It was a claiming. And she wanted to be claimed.
Still he watched her but now she had a sense of his own passion over-riding his need to enjoy her need. She could see it in his eyes, concentrated, his focus shifting from hers into a place of unknown feeling, shifting inside himself as he surrendered to his passion; as he passed his control over to his body and to her body, united in their passion.
She climaxed again, with loud moans of pleasure and Zahir’s finger tracing her lips as they cried out. Only then did Zahir release his own pleasure, quietly, as if a reflection of the inner nature of his climax. As his eyes re-focussed on her she could see that a wall had come down. There was a different quality to his expression. Open, connecting with her on a different level.
He rolled away and as they lay quietly side by side, their bodies slick with sweat, the rapid beat of their hearts beginning to subside, her hand reached for his body, feeling the scar that lay above his heart.
“I’m sorry.” His words came to her so quietly that she felt they must have been her own.
She shifted onto her side, looking at him as he gazed up at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “For everything. For losing control that night four years ago; for being so bitter when I discovered who you were; for being so angry with you. I’m also sorry that you couldn’t tell me about Matta but I understand.”
The simplicity of his apology shocked her. But, more than that, she desperately wanted to know how Zahir now felt about Matta, whether her deception had changed his affection for him. But she dared not ask.
“I’ve hated not being able to tell you. It’s a relief for you to know. I feel I’ve been carrying around this huge secret for so long.”
“Tell me, how did Abduallah feel about looking after someone else’s baby?”
“He loved him. Our, situation, was complicated but he understood. And he loved him. He’d never thought he would have a child so Matta seemed like a gift from heaven.”
“Me also. I have wanted a child all my life but felt I could never be a proper father to children, a proper husband to a wife.”
“How could you think that?”
He looked at her then with a thousand years of tiredness in his eyes. “Because,” his hand clasped hers that still lay over his scar, “if I have a heart at all, it is cold; it is dead.”
She shook her head in vehement denial. “No. That’s not true.”
“Anna,” he stroked her hair with a look of tenderness lightening the weariness in his eyes. “It is true. I have killed and been nearly killed. I have taken those lessons to the financial markets and been ruthless in my pursuit of my country’s wealth. These are not the things I would wish a child of mine to do.”
“You said yourself that you did what you had to do.”
He nodded. “And I believed it was my fate not to have children. But now, you have given me a gift more precious than you could know or I could have imagined.”
“And Matta? Tell me, how do you feel about him now?”
“I have no change in my feelings towards him.”
Anna’s heart dropped.
“I couldn’t feel more for him than I do already.”
Anna couldn’t speak. He didn’t use the word “love” but she didn’t care because in his own way he was telling her that he did love Matta. And that meant the world to her. Because she’d been terrified that he would resent this innocent child whose paternity had been kept secret from him.
They lay in silence for a long moment—a silence broken only by the sounds of a night owl laying claim to its prey; the soft murmur of the water in the courtyard and the rustle of leaves in the bushes outside their window. She felt his hand reach out for hers and caress hers before holding it tightly as if he never wanted to let go.
“Kiss me Anna.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “Say you forgive me.”
Her mouth found his in the darkness and accepted his apology in an expression that was far more eloquent than words.
Their days slipped into a pattern of passionate love-making at night and also, now, during the day wherever they happened to meet or wherever they arranged to meet—the cave of the spring, lonely, forgotten corners of the ancient palace or a bed of soft, blooming flowers. Wherever was handy and private that they could vent the lust that their night-time love-making seemed only to arouse further.
It was all as he had predicted. He was getting what he’d wanted all along—her in his bed. And he was riding out his obsession for her all right. Just the thought of him, only hours before, impatient hands pushing up her dress, free of the underwear she’d taken to not wearing, and lifting her up so he could enter her, his hands gripping her bottom as he thrust into her, pushing into the very soul of her, pinning her against the wall of a forgotten part of the palace—dust-filled, lofty and majestic—unable to wait for the night ahead.
She groaned with renewed arousal and tried to concentrate on her books that were strewn across the desk before her. Despite the passionate sex, there was the dull clanging of an alarm bell ringing in her mind. He was riding out his passion that meant that it would have to end. And when it did? What would she have?
She flipped through the pages of a textbook irritably. She’d have nothing, only whatever she cou
ld create for herself from the wreckage of their passion. And at the moment she was concentrating on Matta—her pride and joy—and her studies.
Matta was continuing to blossom under the care and guidance of his extended family. But he still came to her first for love. Her fears of him moving away from her were unfounded, she now realized. He had a big heart with plenty of room for everyone in it, but with a special place that would always be hers.
She smiled at the gap-toothed photo of Matta she kept on her desk, nudging it closer with her pen. He was going to become the image of Zahir, with his build and coloring. But his nature was different. He had the ability to charm people with a happy-go-lucky quality that Zahir certainly didn’t possess and that she had faint memories of growing up. Given a different upbringing perhaps she also would have had this talent for happiness.
And her studies were going well. She received daily deliveries from Riyadh of textbooks, notes, monographs, and research. It was, after all, the key to her freedom and her future when Zahir grew tired of her. Despite the emotional upheaval, or because of it, her studies proved the one constant that kept her going. She was looking forward to the Paris trip she’d arranged to attend a week of intensive tutorials at the Sorbonne’s law school.
She dropped her pencil and gazed out to the garden, now sweltering under the summer sun. Matta would enjoy Paris. As well as her studies, she’d arranged time for just the two of them to hang out together. His nurse would come of course, for when she attended the university but, without Zahir, there would be no need for the usual entourage of security. She hadn’t had a chance to mention it to Zahir but assumed he wouldn’t care one way or the other. When he wasn’t making love to her he was totally consumed with politics and business. He had no time in his life for anything else.
Suddenly the door to her study was flung open and Zahir strode in, a look of thunder on his face.
“What is this about you taking Matta to Paris without my permission?”
“I need your permission now? You led me to think you would have no objections and so I didn’t think to bother you. After all we don’t do anything that involves conversation at night or day. When, exactly, do you think I should have raised this?”
The Sheikh's Bargain Bride (Desert Kings) Page 9
