But where was Rahaan? Hilda squinted as she tried to remember. Yes, he’d fought like a madman, trying to protect her while also doing his best to save his loyal followers. He’d been struck in the thigh by an archer, and when he fell from his steed he’d been subdued and bound. Was he alive? Probably. Diamante had said something about being just the three of them now, yes?
Hilda looked around as she took deep breaths, allowing herself to get accustomed to the woman she was in this world. The practice she’d gotten from the last two dream-worlds had paid off, and she knew she was fully within this woman here, fully in control. In control of her senses at least—not so much the situation, it seemed.
She was indoors, that much she knew. The walls were stone, with long, narrow windows cut in the shapes of what Hilda swore were the outlines of coffins. Am I in a cemetery church? Is the dark princess going to sacrifice me to her guardian demon?
Hilda looked at Diamante, almost with curiosity. The woman was beautiful, with sharp features and sand-colored eyes that seemed as wise as wicked. Diamante met her gaze with confidence, and the two women shared a long moment of silence.
“You said it’s the three of us,” Hilda said finally, breaking the silence but not averting her eyes. She’d be damned if she was going to back down from a staring contest with this witch. “Where is he?”
“Rahaan? He’s alive, but nowhere close. I don't want him popping in and interrupting, you know?” said Diamante, smiling and nonchalantly looking past Hilda to break the eye-contact deadlock.
A shiver passed through Hilda when it occurred to her that wait, did she just say “Rahaan?” Did she just say his name?
“Di?” Hilda said cautiously, squinting again as if trying to look within Diamante. “Are you . . .”
“Am I in here?” said the princess, smiling and shrugging. “Honey, I am her. I’ve learned a few things too, while you and your Sheikh were off gallivanting in nineteenth century England. Nice job working things out in that world, by the way. Making him kill his brother was a nice ending. Definitely king-worthy. The crowd loved it, so that’s something.” She paused. “And you know what? You loved it too, my innocent, cherubic fortune-teller. We’re not always the person we like to think we are, yeah?”
“I didn’t like it, and I didn’t make him do anything. You pulled that into our timeline, Di. It was your darkness that pulled us down that path. I wasn’t ready to counter it there. But it’s not going to happen here.”
Di laughed. “My darkness? Hilda, I only got a fleeting glimpse at that world. I didn’t have a role to play in that world—I never did. I was there for a flash, almost by accident. But it was long enough to see that you knew exactly what was happening there. Both of you did!”
“Yes, but only after it had already happened! I didn’t—”
“You did. You wanted it so bad you didn’t care how you got it. You can’t admit it to Rahaan, and maybe you won’t even admit it to yourself. But you can’t hide it from me.” Di shrugged as she gathered her purple skirts and began to pace the cold, barren room. “Nothing to be ashamed about. Every woman wants her happy ending, and most women will take it no matter who gets hurt along the way. Men don’t understand that we’re actually the more ruthless of the genders.”
“Speak for yourself,” Hilda muttered, telling herself not to get pulled into Di’s nonsense. Maybe some of what she said was true, but it didn’t matter. Hilda was good enough. She was pure enough. She was . . . dark enough? Willing to do whatever it took? Maybe. “Now, where’s Rahaan. I want to see him.”
“I told you he’s alive, but far from here. It’s just the three of us here.”
“Three?” Hilda said before the realization hit her and she instinctively clutched her belly. But how would Diamante even know she was pregnant? No one in this world knew!
Oh God, the Diamante of this world wouldn’t know. But the Di of the modern world would have guessed that I was pregnant in this world—indeed, that a child is part of each of those conflicted worlds.
“What do you want?” Hilda whispered as she closed her eyes and tried to will herself to a new parallel world where a raven flew in through that coffin-shaped window and gobbled up Di’s eyeballs. She opened her eyes and looked around, suddenly feeling powerless and foolish when she saw that nothing had changed. Who was she kidding?
Help, she thought now. Rahaan, I need you. I need more. I need something. Help!
Hilda tried to focus, to reach out to her man across time, to harness the power generated by their intertwined bodies on that secluded balcony overlooking the dark Arabian Sea. But she couldn’t get there, and now she began to panic. Oh, God, what if there is no “real” world left! What if the explosion or the assassination or whatever has already happened?! What if this is it, this world is the only world left?! Does that even make sense? Am I alone here?
“What do you want?” Hilda asked again, pushing away the panic before it took her spiraling downwards to the point of no return. “You’re already in line to be queen. Your children will be princes and princesses. What more do you want? You want to watch me suffer? You want to kill Rahaan for some imagined rejection when he didn’t even know you? You want to—”
“I want you to see,” Di said quietly, stopping in the middle of the room and putting her hands on her slim hips. “I want you to see that you’re no different from me when you have to make the hard choices. I want you to see yourself. Yourself in me.”
“I don't understand,” Hilda said, frowning.
Di began to pace again, her boots clicking against the cold stone floor. “Hilda, in our modern world I suggested that there was something about your child in each of these dream-worlds that was causing a conflict.”
“What conflict?” Hilda said in a low voice, a sinking feeling entering her as she clutched her belly again. No. Please, no! “Not even you can kill a child, Di.”
Di laughed and shrugged. “Well, your child would be the first of the next generation, and he or she would always have a rightful claim to the throne, regardless of whether the father dies in exile. And if I were to never bear an heir, then . . .”
She trailed off, and Hilda saw something in her expression that made her realize that God, Di is living through her own unresolved conflicts, isn’t she . . . conflicts she perhaps doesn't completely understand herself. I don’t know what her situation with children was in the real world, but she didn’t have any and maybe she . . . couldn’t? Is that one of the things holding her here? Yes, the ambition was always there. But also the yearning to have what she can’t? Is that part of what’s bringing her back? Joining her to me, the woman who has a different sort of conflict with pregnancy and children?
“Oh, God,” Hilda blurted out as it hit her. “You’re barren. You can’t bear the king’s brother an heir, and so you . . . you want . . .” Hilda swallowed hard as she met Di’s gaze. “You don’t want to kill my child. You want my child! You want to raise my child as your own, pretend it came from you, all the while knowing it carries the blood of the king. You sick bitch!”
Di stayed silent as a chilly breeze wafted in through those coffin-shaped windows and across the barren floor. Now everything looked cold and sterile, like all of it was a reflection of Di, of Diamante, of her world, her emptiness. It terrified Hilda, and she felt lost, defeated, alone. What could she do? She could feel the power draining from her as she looked away from Di and down at herself. She felt heavy, unable to move.
Now’s the time, she managed to think as the world began to spin and that sickening dread got heavier. Now’s the time, honey. She’s winning. She’s pulling me into her world, her cold, sterile, barren world which feels like death to me. I need your warmth, Rahaan. I need your heat, my Sheikh. I need your strength, my King. I don’t know how you can come here, since Diamante has made sure you are not in the room with us, but I need your help. Help me save our child, my king. Help me
fight for our happy ending.
62
She needs me but I do not know how to get back there, thought the Sheikh as he watched her eyelids flutter and her lips mouth silent words he could not hear but somehow understood. What am I missing? How do I take myself there again? How did I get there the last time, in the last world?
The fight, thought the Sheikh as he looked down at his woman. Hilda was pressed up against him, the two of them naked as babes, the dark sky and the silent waters the only witnesses. He’d been careful with her, controlling his arousal yet again even as he controlled hers. He’d been tempted to take it to the level his need demanded, but he’d held back, telling himself she had entrusted herself to him and he could not take advantage, could not push it too far.
But by Allah, it has been hours without release, hours in this suspended state. And now she needs her man, he thought as a darkness fell upon him as if a cloud was passing over the two of them. She needs him to find his own source of power, a source which she does not have access to. A source that he has kept hidden so far. A source that is deeply masculine, primal, animalistic and beastly. Is that what she needs? Does she need her man to be a man right now? An animal who takes what he wants?
The fight . . . the arena . . . came the thought again as the Sheikh felt a strange energy rise in him. Adrenaline, blood, violence . . . is that not the arena where the men of history exercise their power? Perhaps there was a lesson in that previous world, the world where I cut my brother’s throat to get the ending I wanted, to take the ending I wanted! Was it right? Of course not—not according to the man I am in the here and now. But it felt like nothing to the man I was in that world. And although Hilda was distraught when we returned to this world, the woman whose eyes I looked into in that world was unmoved to a degree, yes? She stood there strong, holding our son’s head up high as his father did what the time and place dictated. Is that the lesson? That we are all composites, all of us with dark and light within us, all of it fighting for primacy as the universe continues its merry dance of push and pull?
After all, the Sheikh thought as he looked down at his woman, this astrologer from Albuquerque . . . yes, after all, the two of us have not led perfectly honorable lives in this world, have we? I have manipulated people for both profit and entertainment, and she has done the same. Does that make us “bad” human beings? Or does it just make us . . . human?
Adrenaline, violence, sex, came the thoughts again as he looked down at his sweet, soft, light-as-a-feather, magical woman made of stardust and starlight. “Hilda,” he whispered. “Hilda!”
But she was deep in a trance, a restless but somehow lumbering trance, like she was freezing to death somewhere out there. She needed his heat, it occurred to him. She needed his fire.
Now the circle of the sun showed itself on the horizon, and Rahaan swore he smelled the pungent aroma of gasoline cut through the salty ocean air. They were minutes away from all of it being over, he thought. All of it.
“No,” he said resolutely as he shook Hilda to her senses and looked her in the eye. “What do you need, Hilda? What do you need!”
Her eyes flickered open but he could see the mist and haze in them, the cool glimmer of defeat. She smiled weakly at him, and he shook her again, finally grabbing her hair and pulling it as his temper flared. “You are not going to back down now, my queen,” he said to her. “Tell me what you need to fight and I will—”
“You know what I need!” she suddenly screamed, her eyes opening wide, her voice almost shocking him. It was deeper, stronger, yet more feminine, more vulnerable. He didn’t know what she was going through in this third world with Diamante, but the Sheikh sensed that perhaps she was coming to the same realization as he, that part of all this was a manifestation of the sliver of darkness that lived within the two of them. It was not as simple as them versus Diamante, good versus evil, the pure versus the filthy, the dark versus the light. In a sense Diamante was the darkness in the two of them, and perhaps it was not so much eliminating the darkness as simply consuming it, taking it in, granting it a place within them without allowing it to corrupt them. Perhaps at the end of it all, after time travel and magic and dream-worlds, the point remained that it was the flesh and bone that was real, the physical that was the truth, the gritty truth that humans will always have one foot in the dirt, one hand in the grime. Perhaps that was the sublime secret of the universe, the cosmic joke of life. Indeed, perhaps that was life!
“You know what I need,” she gurgled as she grinned up at him from wherever she was. “Take me, Rahaan. Take me hard, the way you want, the way the beast inside you wants. The way the animal inside me wants. Take me like a man takes a woman. Make me feel your flesh. Make me burn from your heat. Make me scream from your strength. That's what I need to finish this, Rahaan. The physical. The flesh. The violence. Now take me, my King. Take me there.”
63
The burst of adrenaline woke her so fast she almost fell off the chair. It was clarity, heat, and raw, visceral energy all rolled into one. She could feel the Sheikh pounding into her in that world, grunting and roaring as he let himself go, pulling her hair, turning her and pushing her against the railing as he took what he wanted, how he wanted, hard and desperate, hot and wild, hands around her throat, fingers groping and pinching, slapping and slamming, pushing hard, driving deep, violence merging with lust, dark merging with light.
Now the heat was palpable, real, burning within her breast even as she felt a wetness between her legs in this world. It was sick, but she feel the power it gave her. Pure physical power.
She took deep breaths as she watched Diamante pace that barren stone-walled room in her purple skirts and black leather boots. She smiled as she felt herself float up like a feather, a cloud of stardust, weightless magic. She gasped when she saw in her mind’s eye that view of the heavens, which was nothing more than all of time, every event, every birth, every death, every man, every woman. She could feel her man taking her in the most physical, filthy, beautiful way on a platform above the Arabian Sea, dolphins calling out, gulls screaming in unison, the sun rising over all of it.
That’s the answer, isn’t it, she thought as she slowly rose to her feet, only now realizing that those chains were gone, her hands were free, that she and Rahaan had managed to pull her into a slightly different parallel world where she was not bound. God, that’s the answer, isn’t it?! And I had to go all the way there and back again to figure it out—that there’s no escaping the flesh, that all of these connections between worlds and timelines mean nothing without the physical to hold it all together, that the physical is the spiritual, that life is flesh and bone and blood and lust as much as it is stardust and magic and heavenly light!
Hilda could feel her climax approaching in the distance, hear herself scream in raw ecstasy as the Sheikh took her to that place only a man can take a woman, that place that can only be reached in the flesh. She smiled and looked down as she felt cold metal on her hand, and lo and behold it was the ring, that platinum banded ring with the diamond the size of Jupiter. Had she always had it on? Was it always this big? Were the edges always this sharp? More importantly, did I always lead with my left?
And as she walked as if in a dream, fist clenching, ring shining with deadly starlight, the voice of all the women inside her whispered that sometimes you just need to stand your ass up and take the ending you want! Take it in the physical! Take it with your flesh-and-blood hands! With your goddamn fists!
Diamante turned just in time to catch the full impact of Hilda’s swing, and the blow cracked the dark princess’s jawbone clean as she went flying across the room in a whirlwind of yellow hair and purple skirts, blood-spatter lining her path as she landed on the cold stone floor in a choking heap.
And as Hilda felt that climax roll in from worlds away, volcanic and violent, her man exploding in her depths and giving her the last of his strength, she took a deep brea
th and walked over to the fallen princess, raising her bloody left hand once more to finish the job, to finish the story, to protect her happy ending, her child, her dream, her perfect world.
“You were right, Diamante,” she whispered as she brought her fist down, wedding ring leading the way. “I am willing to do what it takes to get my ending.”
64
THREE YEARS LATER
Hilda smiled at her two-year-old son as he looked up at her with a quizzical expression, as if to say, “Is this OK, Mama?”
“Yes, all right, go ahead,” she said, shaking her head as she watched her boy, freshly bathed not ten minutes ago, step into the muddy mess that had been a sand-castle earlier that morning, before the tide started to come in.
She watched as her son got himself covered in golden sand and saltwater grime once again, his face gleaming with delight as he sat plumb in the middle of his destroyed castle and started to rebuild it with his little fingers.
The Sheikh strolled up as she watched him, and he knelt by her side and kissed her on the head.
“Is it done?” Hilda asked, looking up to see if Rahaan looked sad or nostalgic. But he seemed fine. Happy even.
“Signed and sealed. As of now, I have suspended all drilling in the waters controlled by the Kingdom of Kolah, and I have designated the zone as an international sanctuary for . . . dolphins.” He frowned and raised an amused eyebrow at his wife and queen.
“What?” she said, giggling already. “You think that’s lame?”
He laughed and shook his head. “No, it is fine. I simply think that perhaps someone should inform the dolphins that they have a sanctuary.”
“I’m sure they know,” Hilda said with a shrug. “They get it. Trust me.”
Stars for the Sheikh_A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel Page 23
