“Well, that tells me enough, Mister Zaal Al-Kirwaan,” she said firmly. “Have a great day, and good luck with everything. And thank you again.”
Zaal seemed unaffected by her brush-off, starting to speak before she had finished. He reached in past the window and gently touched the ring finger on her left hand. “And this tells me enough as well, Mrs. Francine Fullerton,” he said in that playfully serious voice. “Or is it still Miss Fullerton? No ring, no tan line, not even the hint that there has ever been a ring on this finger.”
Fran yanked her hand away and instinctively slipped it down against her bare thigh as she blinked and tightened her jaw. “Well, we’re not actually married yet. But—”
“So you are engaged. What kind of a man does not give his woman an engagement ring?”
“Um, none of your business, actually, and—”
“Everything is my business,” Zaal said without missing a beat, half-smile breaking into full grin, green eyes sparkling and alive. “And when your husband-to-be comes over tonight, I will be happy to discuss the importance of tradition and symbolism when it comes to something like marriage. Today there are many options for responsibly-sourced diamonds of the highest quality, and if it is a matter of money, I will be happy to finance the purchase for—”
“You will be happy to do what?” she snapped, snorting with incredulous laughter at the gall of this man, the strangeness of the shit he was spouting, like he actually thought it was perfectly reasonable and not weirdo-level nonsense! “So let me get this straight. You want to invite me and my fiancé over for dinner, where you’re going to interrogate him about why he hasn’t gotten me an engagement ring. Then you’re going to offer to . . . to . . . what . . . buy a diamond ring for him to give to me?!” She laughed, shaking her head and placing her hands back on the wheel. “OK, listen, maybe you do have a couple of things to learn about America.”
“I would prefer to learn more about you, Francine Fullerton,” he said, both hands on the door now as Fran blinked because she couldn’t look at this man who was being so damned forward in a way that . . . that . . . that what? Was she freaked out or excited, scared or happy, alarmed or aroused?! This guy was weird, no doubt. But God, he was handsome!
Now there was that feeling again, a soaring feeling that was offsetting that sense of sinking, the blunt, animalistic wisdom of her body rising up and beating back the cold calculation of her brain, instinct pushing back logic, that battle raging once more as she thought for a moment that hell, just go out with the guy once! Maybe not at his house and not at night, but someplace else during the day?! That’s what single women in America do, yeah? It was all right!
Single women. Was she single now? God, Jason had been blowing up her phone all night and into the morning. She hadn’t answered his texts and couldn’t take his calls. She had asked Macy to tell him he could visit after three days, but of course Fran had been hoping Jason just said to hell with her and went back to Phoenix and that was the end of it. It was awful, disgusting, goddamn cruel, she knew. But what could she do? He hadn’t gotten the hint when she talked for months about moving up north, moving to what was pretty much as far as you could get from Phoenix and still be in the United States. Then Jason had said yeah, he could move to Vermont. He even had some college buddies in Boston. Sure! Why not!
In a way that presumptuousness had made Fran shut down, tune out, write off Jason in that cold way that was somehow so comfortable. But hello, did I ask you to come with me, she had thought when Jason started getting more and more excited about their “new lives” in Vermont. Is it a given that we’re bound to each other physically forever? Are you really going to just drop everything and move across the country for me? Do you know that I don’t want that kind of responsibility? That I don’t want to feel owned? That I don’t want a man presuming anything about what I am or aren’t, what I want or don’t want, what I’m ready to give, what I’m ready to take, whether I’m ready to even be . . . touched?!
Now the guilt rolled back in, the guilt of all those times Fran had stopped Jason from going any further, telling him she wasn’t ready, that she wanted to wait, that she liked him and she trusted him but she was just an old-fashioned girl and she wanted to wait. God, was that why he had bought that ring she saw a few months ago in his apartment, when she had gone into his room and opened his closet looking for a sweatshirt because they were sitting on the back porch? Did he think she was saying she wanted to wait for marriage? Was she saying that? No, of course not. She wasn’t that old-fashioned!
God, I’m a horrible person, came the thought as she blinked and looked away from Zaal and fumbled for her keys so she could get out of there and get back to her empty apartment and her newly solitary life where things would be back under control and it didn’t matter if she was a horrible person because she was the only one who had to deal with her horribleness.
“I want to learn more about you, Francine Fullerton,” Zaal was saying in that smooth Arabian accent, the words coming over on the warm summer air, carrying with it the scent of eucalyptus and green-leaf tobacco, a mixture of magic, an essence of enchantment.
“No, you don’t,” she said, looking at him straight on and shaking her head, a half-smile showing as she started the car. “Trust me, you don’t.”
6
The Sheikh pushed open the heavy wooden front door of his new house, stepping into the sprawling foyer with its blackstone finish and sandbrushed granite flooring. The rest of the house had light-stained oakwood floors, but he had done the foyer in granite and stone as an offset. The house was a single-level work of wood-constructed art, the Sheikh had thought when he closed the deal with a handshake and a check for just under four million dollars, taking the house and fourteen acres of surrounding country with it. Beautifully American. Free and wild. Over five-thousand square feet of floor-space in the open-layout house, no private rooms except for the bathrooms at the front and back, an unfinished basement that connected to a garage, and a small lofted area that Zaal was considering having torn out to make the house entirely open living.
The Sheikh walked through his new palace nestled in the hills outside Burlington, breathing deep and smiling as the clean outside air filled his lungs. The house had large windows lining every side, and the open floorplan really made it seem like he was part of the countryside in here. Zaal loved it. It felt right. A home should be a reflection of the person, he thought, and Zaal had always prided himself on being a completely open man, able to adapt to his environment, enrich his environment while also bending it to his will when necessary. Openness went both ways, after all.
And the openness extended to how Zaal wanted to live his inner life as well. No barriers within the mind. Certainly no barriers between body and mind. Like how the bedroom was simply part of the primary living space in his Vermont palace. In fact the king-sized bed centered against the far wall was the first thing one saw when they rounded the foyer and entered the main house!
That beautiful old bed! The sturdy headboard grounded by four massive wooden posts the size of pillars. The frame hand-made from heavy Burmese teakwood. The wood was old, priceless, all of it from a single tree, the bed frame itself constructed in Spain, sold to French nobility, stolen during World War I and shipped to the United States, sold to a wealthy New York family, possessed by a creditor after the family went bankrupt, stored in a warehouse in Brooklyn, forgotten for decades, discovered and restored by a Jewish collector, given as a wedding gift to the man’s daughter and her husband, sold once more when the husband was killed in Vietnam, bought by an eccentric Arab immigrant who lovingly carved out Arabic words and Islamic designs that reminded him of his forsaken home, words of hope and optimism, of freedom and prosperity, of adapting to a new land and making it your own.
Making it my own, Zaal thought as he paced his empty mansion made of American wood, thoughts of this curvy American woman invading him with a desperation that made him think that by Allah, this bed needed to have that wo
man in it soon, yes?! Hah! That woman! Married or not, he was going to take her. Why not? She had felt attraction just like he had, yes? And technically she was not even married. Engaged, she said. But no ring? An engagement without a ring? Unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable!
I am not so old-fashioned when it comes to tradition, the Sheikh thought, and neither am I overly sentimental when it comes to symbols. But to speak of marriage without a physical token of that most intimate of physical bonds is an offence that transcends religion or custom. Even creatures like ravens and wolves bring a physical token of their commitment to their chosen mate. After all, we are beings of the flesh, creatures of the physical world, and our physical symbols are important, are they not?
But then what drew me to this woman, Zaal wondered now, for the first time thinking back to how he had impulsively walked out of that gun shop and approached this woman before he even knew what she looked like. After all, the sun was coming through from behind her, and all he could see was a silhouette of her sitting in the driver’s seat, brown hair letting the sun through in splinters of deep gold, just the outline of her round face visible before he began to walk towards her, already deciding that he would take her!
And she did turn out to be pretty, yes? Those big brown eyes, thick, lush hair, full lips with the deep red of a desert rose, and those curves . . . bloody hell, those curves! Her thick, contoured legs in that skirt, thighs that he would love to see spread wide against the soft Egyptian cotton of his bed right now! And ya Allah, how she had gasped when she caught him glancing shamelessly at her breasts beneath that thin shirt, the red cloth almost driving him to madness for a moment, his need riding so fast he wondered if his arousal would be grotesquely obvious under the bright sun of the parking lot!
Was that why she had reacted that way, he wondered now, almost laughing as he shook his thick black mane and paced like one of those animals in cages. Did she see a tall, broad, dark-skinned man with thick black stubble and a hard-on walking out of a damned gun-shop, his eyes focused right on her like a madman?! By God, no wonder she slammed the car into reverse and tried to run for her life! Zaal, you madman! This is the first time you have been without a woman for more than a month, and perhaps as your need rises you have lost some perspective about what it takes to seduce a woman who does not know you are a Sheikh and perhaps would not even care if she did know.
And now Zaal’s heart jumped as he felt a wave of excitement whip through him, that feeling of openness, of a new life spread out before him, the magic of having new challenges to rise up to, a new empire to build, new realms to conquer . . . new women to conquer?
And was that not the root of Zaal’s obsession with married women? Conquest? Ah, no, Zaal thought now as he shook his head and stepped to the window that faced the backyard that was overgrown with the spread of the woods that began about a quarter mile back, a thick, dark forest of birch and pine, evergreens and underbrush, shades of color so varied it was unbelievable, reds darker than black, yellows brighter than gold.
No, he decided as he thought back to the women in his life over the past few years, long-married women, women who had forgotten how to enjoy sex, some who had perhaps never known that sex could be enjoyable. Yes, that was what drew Zaal to those women, he knew. It was almost an instinct now, to be able to see that in a woman’s eyes, to be able to simply sense it in that inarticulable way that draws on the supreme wisdom of the entire body and mind, not just the narrow slice called intelligence.
He had sensed it in this woman, this pretty American woman with the oversized red t-shirt that could not hide her curves, this skittish American rabbit whom he had scared off but who had not been able to get away. Indeed, it was like providence had placed that other car right there—in fact Zaal had not noticed it driving up at all. It was suddenly there, was it not? Out of the blue. Out of the green. Out of the sun. Out of the moon.
Now Zaal laughed out loud and shook his head. Perhaps the tension of the past few months was coming to a head now. Subaru wagons being placed by Allah’s angels? Yes, perhaps the tension was indeed getting to him.
But his thoughts could not be detached from that American woman, and Zaal could feel the tension still coiling in his hard, muscular body. It was not the tension of stress—he knew that well enough. No, it was the tension that generates electricity, the tension that creates magnetism, the tension at the root of gravity, the tension that brings molecules together, smashes stars into oblivion, creates black holes and supernovas . . . the same tension that brings man and woman together in a bond that rivals that of the tightest chemical combination, the strongest draw of a black hole’s gravity.
But this woman was not so old and she was not even married yet, Zaal thought as he frowned and walked over to the forty-inch computer monitor that was almost invisible up on a slim wooden table against a side wall. So why did I see in her what I see in so many older married women, that sense of having lost something, lost the innocence of youth, forsaken the joy of sex, resigned herself to never being able to regain the freshness of first love, the magic of new sex, the fear and excitement that comes with the first time, the first time a woman allows herself to be touched, asks to be touched, begs to be touched . . .
Of course, that was why Zaal loved to be with these women who were in sexless marriages, for whom sex with him felt like the first time again, perhaps the first time ever! Hah! Perhaps John Benson and his researchers are wrong after all, he thought. Perhaps it is indeed the virgin maiden who drives the great Sheikh Zaal Al-Kirwaan to the frontiers of desire, the edges of ecstasy.
Now the computer monitor flickered to life just as the thought of Benson and the CIA rudely brought the Sheikh back to the real world, the part of his life he did in fact need to handle with intelligence and calculation, with reason and logic. Zaal leaned over the keyboard and quickly searched the Internet alerts for his own name. Still nothing new. Just the old passing mentions of his name in conjunction with the Royal House of Kirwaan. A lot more detail on some of the Arabic-language websites, but still nothing more than some bland history about the family and background about the wealthy little kingdom of Kirwaan, a little bit of narrative about its long-standing principles of staunch independence and self-sufficiency.
“The key to long-term peace is to not need anything from another,” Zaal’s father would say to Zaal and his half-brothers and sisters in those days when they were all one happy family. “And not to have too much of something that another needs.”
“That sounds very lonely, great Sheikh,” Zaal’s mother, the First Wife, would say whenever she was present during those conversations. “Life is about bonds that are forged by giving and receiving, offering and accepting, compromise and compassion. Ties grow stronger when one truly needs something from another.”
“I am not saying that give and take is not to be done. I believe in open trade with our neighbors as well as the countries in the far West and near East. But the moment someone else possesses what you cannot do without, then your life is no longer your own to live. You are a possession too. You are owned. Conquered. Vanquished. Someone’s else’s property,” the Sheikh had replied on one of those occasions, when he was feeling particularly inclined to engage with the First Wife in front of the princes and princesses of Kirwaan.
“There is something to be said about that too, my king,” the queen had whispered before bowing her head and backing out of the conversation and then the sprawling room in the southern wing of the Royal Palace of Kirwaan. “Being owned. Because with that comes the challenge of being forced to trust another, to trust that another with the power to hurt will never use that power, will never be able to use that power. And that gives the possessed a power over the possessor, in a way, in an upside-down way, a back-and-forth way, the way of the universe, the way of Allah, just like it is the back-and-forth bonds that give a diamond its unbreakable shine. Possessor and the possessed . . . when that bond is formed, no one can truly say which is which, who is the posses
sor and who is the possessed. Good day, my Sheikh. Allah hu Akbar.”
Zaal grinned as he remembered the slight smirk on his mother’s dark red lips as she respectfully looked down at the carpet and then peeked up and winked at her son as if she had perhaps said those words as a message to him, her first born, the heir-apparent, the king-to-be, the next great Sheikh of Kirwaan.
Of course, that great Sheikh was now just another American billionaire, Zaal reminded himself as he turned away from the computer for a moment before quickly turning back and leaning over the keyboard again even as the image of that full-figured, full-lipped, brown-eyed American woman pushed its way back to the forefront of his thoughts. He took a quick breath, and then he typed her name and glanced at the search results.
Francine Fullerton, Veterinarian in Phoenix.
Francine Fullerton, University of Arizona.
Francine Fullerton, Wilson Park High School, Phoenix.
Francine Fullerton, Age 16 . . . article from The Phoenix Sun Times . . .
7
Fran glanced at that old, yellowed newspaper that she had carried with her for over a decade now. The Phoenix Sun Times from that week, the only paper that had managed to piece together a story about the incident based on what they got from unnamed police sources. After all, the boys had all been under eighteen, and back then they had been tried as juveniles and so all court records had been sealed. Certainly everyone in the school and the neighborhood and the surrounding areas were aware of what had happened, and certainly the four boys were pulled out of school and sent to a juvenile facility for a year, after which their families moved to different parts of the city, perhaps even the country. Fran never bothered to find out, although her dad certainly did obsess over it for years, tracking the whereabouts of those “animals” as if he was going to hunt them down!
God, Fran thought now, smiling even as little pearls of those cold, involuntary, emotionless tears gathered at the corners of her soft brown eyes. Dad was such a calm, easy-going man before all that, wasn’t he? In a way what happened changed him more than it changed me, didn’t it?
Untouched for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 6) Page 5
