Their children.
9
The Sheikh watched her as she ate. He hadn’t said a word after that final moment on the plane, when they’d both spontaneously broken into tears, crashing against each other in that cage.
We are both in a cage, are we not, he thought as he watched her polish off the last of the savory dishes sent by his chefs and lick her fingers as her eyes went wide with satisfaction. Eyes that had barely left him even though she was wholly focused on her food. Eyes that reminded him of something long forgotten, secrets buried, memories that a part of him knew were perhaps better left untouched.
But those parts of ourselves can no longer remained untouched and buried, the Sheikh knew as he watched his stepsister drink her third glass of cool lemon water and then slump back against the high-backed teakwood chair and rub her belly like a child at a birthday party.
“Do you remember this room?” he said quietly, glancing up at the towering domed ceiling of the dining room of the Eastern Wing of Wahaad’s Royal Palace. “This was where you and your mother lived. These rooms. Your bedroom was over there. Your mother slept in the master bedroom down the hall. Neither of those beds have been slept in for over twenty years.”
Maddy blinked as she glanced at him, one hand still on her full belly. She looked beautiful, the Sheikh thought. Long brown hair, full breasts, thick thighs whose outline was prominent against the white flowing dress he’d chosen for her from his mother’s old wardrobe. Then Sheikh started in his seat, swallowing hard and freezing when he realized that the memories of Maddy and her mother were suddenly there like they’d never been buried! Some of the memories, at least.
Ya Allah, he thought as he looked absentmindedly at her. What just happened? Something has opened up in me, beginning from the moment this woman came back into my life! How? Why? What?
Imraan rubbed his eyes and swallowed hard. There was still that deep-seated sense of humiliation, that indescribably deep feeling that this woman and her father were at the root of it. But now there was a clearer memory of Maddy’s mother, Begum Gaurina, the old Sheikh’s second wife. Imraan could see her in his mind’s eye, young and beautiful, with flowing brown hair like Maddy’s. She’d always hated wearing her hijab, and would only cover her face and hair for the most solemn of public ceremonies—and even then only after long arguments with the old Sheikh.
Imraan almost choked when he realized he was aroused as those memories came rushing back. Then the guilt washed over him . . . the guilt of a young boy lusting after his stepmother, a woman who walked the halls in a see-through robe, her hair open and wild, her eyes looking into his, beckoning to him, calling him . . .
Ya Allah, no! he thought, unconsciously bending forward on his chair to hide the shame growing in his pants. It cannot be. I could not have! She could not have!
But when he glanced over at Maddy again the memories of her mother came roaring back so fast his head spun, his gut seized, his eyes glazed over. Yes, she’d called him into her chambers one evening, after the sun was gone, her brown hair hanging down over her breasts, her big brown nipples pert and erect beneath her white silk gown, her scent rising up to him from between her legs as the young Sheikh-to-be, a pubescent boy just discovering the pleasures of his own body, gave in to the older woman’s invitation.
He remembered sucking on her nipples like a hungry pig, shuddering as she undressed him, convulsing as she took him into her mouth and made him come. He remembered the guilt mixed with pleasure when she showed him where to put himself, showed him where to touch her to get her wet, to make her moan. He remembered that filthy, choking sensation he’d felt when she turned around, bent over, raised her smooth brown buttocks, instructed him to spank her until she was red and raw, to push himself into her rear, to go as hard as he could, to pull her hair as he shot his hot seed into her anus.
Ya Allah, he thought as those memories clouded out his vision, bringing back that overwhelming sense of filth, guilt, self-loathing. What sort of twisted beast am I?
The answer came in a final memory that almost made the Sheikh pass out. A memory of one of those evenings with Begum Gaurina. An evening when she was turned face-down, bottom-up, moaning and clawing at the silk sheets. An evening where young Imraan, in the death throes of his orgasm, had caught movement out the side of his eye. As the Sheikha screamed at the force of his hard young cock ramming into her and exploding in her depths, Imraan turned towards the moving curtains and looked into a pair of big brown eyes, young and innocent, open and wide.
Little Maddy tore into the room through the curtains, screaming her head off as she battered at Imraan with her little fists, howling at him to leave her mother alone. And the Sheikha, naked and wet, simply tilted her head back and laughed at the scene. Ashamed and horrified, Imraan had pushed the little girl off him and run from the room, covering his shame as he left. Behind him he could hear Begum Gaurina’s laugh, twisted and shrill, mixing with his stepsister’s cries, all of it combining in a moment of such dark depth that it was all he could do to get to his private chambers before throwing up.
The young Sheikh-in-waiting did not leave his room for two days, and when he answered the knock of the outside world, it was only because of the news:
Both Sheikhas had committed suicide together. They had walked together into the Great Oasis of Wahaad, and had never walked out. They had left the old Sheikh a note explaining their reasons—a note that the Sheikh never shared with anyone. A note he claimed to have destroyed immediately after reading it twice and then having the messenger who delivered it executed.
Why are these memories coming back to me so clearly only now, the Sheikh wondered as he watched the girl at the far end of the long teakwood table where they’d once sat as a family—a family broken and twisted but still a family. I was old enough to do those things—do them willingly—and so it seems to defy reason that I could have buried those memories so deep for so long. What caused me to forget events of such magnitude for so long? Is that even medically and psychologically possible? Am I imagining things that never happened? Or am I just insane? Unhinged?
Ya Allah, I do not know. All I know is that this girl in front of me is the key. Being close to her has triggered something in me, opened up what was closed. Does she remember that night? Can I even ask her that? And if she does remember . . . ya Allah, what will she think about how my body reacts when I am with her?
That choking feeling came back to him as the Sheikh fought it, tried to push away those thoughts that he was a damaged, broken, twisted man, a man who as a boy had fucked this woman’s mother and now could think of nothing else but possessing the daughter! Did he deserve to even take another breath? Were Allah’s angels sighing in despair at the world that had produced a creature as sick as Sheikh Imraan?
“I don’t remember,” came her voice through his dark daydream.
“What?” he said, staring at her, his face burning as if with the fires of guilt.
“This room. You asked me if I remember this room,” she said, raising an eyebrow and smiling at him. “Hello? Anyone in there? You know, you’re more scary now, sitting at the dinner table with that look on your face than when you had me tied down and naked.”
Her smile broke the Sheikh out of his trance, and he smiled back. “You were not scared then, and you are not scared now. Why is that, by the way?”
Maddy shook her head. “Who kidnapped me?” she asked almost nonchalantly as she picked something out of her teeth and wiped her fingers on the tablecloth like a child who’d never learned table-manners. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
The Sheikh grinned. “Well, I had you in a cage, so clearly it was I who kidnapped you.”
“Very funny. I mean the first set of kidnappers, my idiot brother,” she said, raising her leg and resting it on the armrest of the empty chair beside hers. She wiggled her bare toes at him and raised an eyebrow, and the Sheikh felt his
cock move as he glanced at the smooth curve of her naked calf. He wanted to push that white dress up over her sturdy thighs, spread her wide on that heavy teakwood chair, one leg over each armrest as he pushed his face down there and took control of her.
Careful, he told himself as he watched her dark brown eyes. She is as twisted as you are, as damaged as you are, as smart as you are, perhaps even as strong as you are. She is playing you because she sees the effect her body has on your body. She is no different from her damned mother, Imraan. Be careful. Be very careful.
Now he hated her again, hated her like he hated her mother, for what she’d done to him. And even though he knew that part of the hatred was the loathing he felt for himself, for that horny teenage boy who’d happily succumbed to the advances of his unhinged stepmother, Imraan hated her. She’d made him remember what should have stayed forgotten. She was a symbol of what was rotten in him, twisted in him, broken in him. Those eyes of hers had witnessed what should never have been witnessed, and whether she remembered it or not, those eyes were accusing him, blaming him . . . beckoning him?
Stop, he told himself, closing his eyes as he felt a dull pounding at the back of his head, like those old memories were gleefully chipping away at what was left of his sanity. He could feel the fever rise, and for a moment he was worried what he might do. But he took another deep breath, swallowed hard, and told himself he was overreacting. Perhaps things were not as twisted as they appeared. Perhaps this woman could help him find what little of him was still undamaged. Yes, perhaps, thought the Sheikh as he opened his eyes and smiled.
She’d put her foot back down on the floor, and she was sitting with her arms folded across her chest, hands hidden from view in her armpits. Those brown eyes of hers were still focused on his—indeed, she’d barely broken the powerful eye contact the entire time they’d been together—but the Sheikh sensed something different in her look. He cocked his head and frowned, his body tingling as that sense of something being off escalated to where he could feel the adrenaline start to pour into his bloodstream.
Then he saw what was different. Amongst the remains of the food was a dish of hard cheese made from camel-milk. There had been a cheese-knife stuck into the dull yellow block . . . a knife that was now missing.
The Sheikh frowned again, cocking his head as he slowly glanced back into his stepsister’s eyes, then allowing his gaze to move over her body, towards her hands that were still hidden from view.
“You cannot seriously be—”
She was on him before he could finish the sentence, and the Sheikh gasped when he felt the knife drive deep into his pectoral, just below his shoulder blade, missing his jugular by inches but still sending a spray of blood along his white tunic as Maddy pulled the knife back out and with a scream drove toward him again.
But he was ready for her this time, and he grabbed her wrist with one hand, her throat with the other, turning her and grunting as she snapped her teeth in fury, kicked out with her legs and getting him hard on the shins and below the knee. Imraan roared in pain, lifting her full off the floor before slamming her down on the heavy wooden table, knocking the silver cups and porcelain plates off as he pulled her body along the length of the table by her hair.
She screamed and he shouted, and two attendants came bursting into the room. But the Sheikh waved them away without even turning, just shouting “Abaq beyda 'aw matt!” to the bewildered men with such authority that they hightailed it out of there almost in relief that they did not have to deal with whatever the hell was happening in here.
“You made me bleed!” the Sheikh gasped as he pulled the knife from her hand and tossed it against the far wall of the room. “You murderous bitch! I am your own family!”
She spat up into his face and laughed, and he slapped her hard on the cheek, grinning when he saw that she spat blood the next time around. Then he pulled her up off the table by her hair, and for one long moment the two of them stared at each other, stepbrother and stepsister, joined not by blood but by something else, something twisted, something old, something neither of them fully understood.
“My family?” she whispered, glancing defiantly at him, her cut lip twisted in a smile, her brown eyes wild with something that almost broke the Sheikh when he recognized it for what it was, what it meant. “Well, that figures. So go ahead, great King. Join the family. Join your father. Take what he took.”
Imraan stared at her, a chill running through him as he wondered if she was playing him or if that look in her eye was real. He blinked as he tried to think back to what had happened in that once-happy Royal Palace of theirs, and as the blood flowed from his wound, he could feel tears roll down his cheeks even as she began to sob in his arms.
But neither of their tears were born of sadness, the Sheikh somehow knew. They were tears of hope. Hope that there was a chance . . . a chance to find some answers, answers to questions they’d perhaps never had the courage to truly ask.
“Maddy,” he said, touching her broken lip, his fingers trembling as he watched the blood stain his nails. “Ya Allah, Maddy. I am . . . oh, God, I . . . we . . .”
“Please, Imraan,” she whispered, glancing at his wound and then into his eyes. “Please.”
He could feel her body move beneath his, and he knew his body was reacting to the motion, to the closeness, to the heat. He frowned as he glanced back into her eyes, not sure what she was asking, not sure if he could believe her, believe himself, believe any of it.
“Please, Imraan,” she said again. “I know it’s sick, I know it’s twisted, I know it’s wrong. But I need it. I need it right now more than anything, and I know you need it too. It’s a part of who I am. It’s a part of who you are. Maybe they turned us into the people we are, but that’s who we are now. You’re the only one who can understand that. Please.”
Imraan stared down at her, his head spinning from the loss of blood, the shock of the action, that sensation of guilt he’d felt when he’d seen the truth in her big brown eyes. She was just like him, wasn’t she? The product of a family that had done what could never be forgiven. Ya Allah, if only all of them were alive! By God, they would pay! They would pay for what they did to her!
Because she is mine. Mine to protect. Mine to own. Mine to . . . heal.
And so as the sun began to set over the distant sand dunes, casting the land of Wahaad in the shadow of dusk, the Sheikh wiped the blood from his little sister’s lips.
Then he leaned in, and he kissed her.
10
The pain of his lips pressing against hers made her moan. She’d always found the pain to be clarifying, the only thing real in a world of fairy-tales and nightmares rolled into one. She remembered focusing on the pain that first time, when her stepfather the supreme Sheikh had entered her chambers, told her what he was going to do, told her it was going to hurt, that it was supposed to hurt. She remembered everything, because suddenly it was like she’d never forgotten.
And just like a switch had been flipped, it all came back as if it had never been buried, never been forgotten: How her mother had held her down that first time, telling her it was her duty. How her stepmother, the first wife and Sheikha of Wahaad had watched from the shadows cast by black velvet curtains. How her own father, her own flesh and blood, hadn’t been there to protect her, to save her.
Maddy screamed as she pushed away her own memories, clawing at his hair and wrapping her legs around him as she kissed him furiously. “Please!” she sobbed as she tore at his blood-stained tunic, pulling it off over his head and touching the place she’d stabbed him. He roared in pain, ripping the cloth away from him and stretching his body above hers. She gasped at the sight of his naked torso, his massive chest, broad and glistening, streaked with beautiful red blood, tight dark nipples adorning his pectorals like jewels. His stomach was a mesh of tight muscle, with veins running down along the sides past his hips and disappearing into the wais
tband of his trousers.
She clawed at his crotch as she unbuttoned him with the other hand, and he grunted and shook his head, grabbing her by the wrists and pulling her arms straight over her head, slamming them against the hard table. She knew she’d have bruises on her knuckles in the morning, and it made her smile.
“I do not trust those hands of yours,” he whispered through a half-grin, and she felt her tongue slither out and lick her upper lip as he pressed his swollen crotch against her mound. “They stay where I can see them. Where I can control them.”
“We’ll see,” she whispered, spreading her legs beneath him. Already her gown was up past her hips, and Maddy could feel her wetness drip onto the table as the Sheikh moved on top of her. The tears had dried on her face, and suddenly she was smiling wide. Those memories were still there, but for a moment they felt distant and hollow . . . for a moment: the moment she looked into his green eyes.
Oh, God, is he going to break me completely or put me back together, came the thought as she blinked at what she saw in those green eyes. She almost couldn’t bear to let that thought go any further. She could sense the hope at the bottom of it. She could feel the desperation, the yearning, the burning need to find someone who could understand, someone who had been there, someone who could . . . forgive.
Imraan kissed her, and the tears broke again as she turned her face away and shook her head. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. He didn’t know the twisted details of everything that had happened, and even he would walk away if he did. She couldn’t let him in. It was Maddy alone in this cage. Alone. Always and forever.
Ransomed for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 13) Page 5
