Undone by the Sultan's Touch

by Caitlin Crews

  He backed away from her, and Cleo was trembling openly now, but Khaled only pressed his lips together in a firm line.

  And when he spoke again, his voice was a harsh rasp. A stranger’s. Final. “So have I. And I still have to go. I always will.”

  * * *

  The heat was a living thing that slammed into Cleo when she stepped off the plane and onto the metal stairs that led down to the private airfield some thirty kilometers outside the old city. And the palace it had been built to contain.

  She had to stop and catch her breath, it was so relentless, and then she made her way down to that sun-baked Jhuratan soil, amazed that she felt a solid thump of something like homecoming when her feet hit the ground.

  But that was getting ahead of herself, and she knew it.

  “My lady, it is a great pleasure indeed to welcome you,” said Khaled’s head of security from his place some three strides away, while an armored car and driver waited even farther behind him. Nasser inclined his head when she met his gaze.

  This was it, Cleo told herself firmly. She was really doing this.

  “Are you sure?” Jessie had asked, not making any attempt to hide the dubious note in her voice as she’d watched Cleo pack.

  It had been three days after Khaled had left New Orleans. Three days while Cleo beat herself up in that perfectly manicured Garden District house that wasn’t in any way her home. Three days while Cleo had faced the unvarnished facts.

  She hadn’t told a single person besides Jessie that she’d left Khaled in the six weeks she’d spent in New Orleans. Not her family. Not anyone. If she was honest with herself—finally—she knew it was because she’d been waiting for him to come after her.

  Which meant that no matter how much she’d prefer to deny it, she was as manipulative as it sounded like his mother had been in her day. Staging dramatic scenes to force him to choose. Never taking responsibility for her own choices in return. The truth was, as he’d pointed out, she could have gone home to Ohio, but she hadn’t. When Cleo had left Brian, she’d never regretted it for an instant. She’d wondered how she’d been so blind, but she’d never wanted him back. She’d traveled for months, which was more or less the precise opposite of waiting.

  When she’d left Khaled, she’d cried all the way to New Orleans and every night thereafter. She’d tortured herself with dreams of him. His perfect, scalding kiss. His smile. And the moment she decided to return to Jhurat and work on her marriage instead of running from it, she felt nothing but intense relief. She told herself that had to mean something.

  “He never pretended to be anything but what and who he is,” she’d told Jessie while she zipped up her small suitcase. “I’m the one who wanted him to be some fantasy version of himself.”

  The one who had been such a child, if she was honest. She’d wanted happy ever after above all things, no matter what. She hadn’t thought much about what it might take to get there, or even what that really meant. Such as, that it didn’t end at the great big fairy-tale wedding—that was where it started.

  But in order to get there, she had to stop thinking about what she deserved and think a whole lot more about what she was willing to give instead.

  Khaled loved her, she knew he did, yet he was willing to give her up because he thought that would make her happier in the long run. That was what she’d sat with after he’d gone, shaking there in that fussy house all by herself. He’d made her feel beautiful and capable. He’d been trying to protect her in his own terrible way. And what had she done in return?

  He’d laid it all out before her on Saint Ann Street and she knew he’d been right, as unpleasant as all those truths were for her to swallow. She’d left him without a word. And then she’d thrown her birth control pills in his face—because on some level, she’d known exactly what that would inspire him to do: come after her. And when he did, she’d made him give more than he’d wanted to give because it was what she had wanted. Then, at the end, she’d delivered an ultimatum to cap it all off.

  Cleo had come to the lowering conclusion that she was a spoiled brat.

  “You know I’ll support you no matter what,” Jessie had said carefully. “But I feel I wouldn’t be any kind of friend to you if I didn’t remind you that you were in a panic when you left him. You were convinced that if you stayed with him, you would disappear completely into his life.”

  “I’m not an innocent in this,” Cleo had told her, and there was so much she couldn’t—wouldn’t—share. She’d shoved a hand through her hair and held it there at the crown of her head. “I think the feeling of disappearing has to do with real compromise, and I’m as bad at is as he is. No wonder I panicked.”

  Jessie hadn’t looked convinced, but she’d nodded. “But do you think that if you go back he’ll see that as capitulation?”

  “I don’t know,” Cleo had whispered. “But I love him.”

  And for the first time, she understood how deep that ran, how true it was, how it had sneaked inside and taken root without her being entirely aware of it. How it filled her from the inside out, and of course that felt like too much. Of course she’d run from it. It felt like his desert sky, enormous and unfathomable, endless and bright.

  She’d looked at Jessie helplessly. “I have to go and find out. I have to try.”

  And it wasn’t until Cleo was hours into the long flight back to Jhurat that she’d realized that she’d never tried particularly hard with Brian. She’d certainly never considered trying after she’d found him cheating. Maybe that was why she wasn’t worried about capitulating now. Because as Khaled had shown her that night he’d let her tie him to her bed, surrender was only a negative thing if it represented a loss. Otherwise, what was it but a little bit of bending?

  And love wasn’t worth much if it couldn’t stand to bend.

  The car moved swiftly through the clusters of small sun-beaten villages outside the city walls, and then through the towering gates into the old city itself. Cleo saw the ancient buildings, the spires high above and the bright, colorful stalls cluttering the streets and alleys of the marketplace. She saw the slick new hotels and skyscrapers sparkling next to literal hole-in-the-wall restaurants that looked to date back a thousand years. A hodgepodge of vision and determination next to the inexorable march of history.

  Just like Khaled, in his way.

  It made a lump grow in her throat.

  When the car entered the labyrinthine tangle that marked the area around the palace, she found she was holding her breath. Expecting Khaled to appear, somehow, and stop the car the way he had once before. As if he could bookend this whole thing and make it right by taking charge of it. By taking all the responsibility for everything that happened between them once again.

  But he didn’t appear and Cleo was forced to face the fact that if she wanted him, she would have to do this herself.

  He’d accused her of pride and arrogance, and it was only now, driving back through the gates of his palace and back into the life she’d run away from, that she understood how true that was.

  Remember that I warned you, he’d told her long ago, and she’d ignored him, because it hadn’t fit in with her fairy-tale fantasies.

  But this time, Cleo didn’t want the fairy tale. She didn’t want any fantasy.

  She wanted her husband.

  * * *

  Khaled didn’t turn around when the door to his office opened and then shut, assuming it was one of his secretaries or guards who wandered in and out freely. He ran his hand through his hair, scowling out the window at the city spread out before him and the waiting, watching desert in the distance while he listened with growing irritation as one of his ministers complained. And complained.

  “Surely,” he interrupted when he could take no more, and he wasn’t particularly polite about it, “it is time to count this as a victory.” The
old man sputtered. “My cousin is in custody and will be enjoying the hospitality of the palace guard until such a time as it is politically useful to release him. Talaat’s resistance movement has disappeared without their leader to rouse them into action. It would be difficult for us to be more decisive or more successful, would it not?”

  He didn’t wait for the inevitable spate of further grievances; he simply did himself a favor and ended the call. And didn’t move for a long moment.

  Jhurat lay before him. His choice. His future. His doom.

  And if he felt the loneliness of the desert more keenly than he had before, well, he hoped that time would wear that away the way it did the shifting sands, year after year. Until there was only emptiness and the hint of memories, the wind and the sky. Jhurat would endure. So would he, one way or another.

  “Is this what brooding looks like? I’ve always wondered.”

  Khaled stiffened. Then wondered if he was adding auditory hallucinations to his collection of issues, marking him as unstable as his father, precisely as Talaat had warned—

  But no. He turned slowly, very slowly, and his wife—his beautiful Cleo—was sitting in one of the cumbersome chairs that were pulled up before his desk, looking for all the world as if she’d never left.

  And, oh, the things he wanted. The things he needed.

  He allowed himself none of it. He only studied her, looking for some clue as to why she’d come here. Drinking in the elegant lines of her face, her body, the sleek riot of her multicolored hair. Ignoring that reckless, leaping thing inside his chest.

  “Nothing has changed,” he said, breaking the silence when it drew on too long. “In fact, it is worse. I am now wildly popular. It’s bad enough to be a mediocre sultan who can’t govern efficiently, or so my childhood taught me. But I am a hero now. The demands on my time will be excruciating and never-ending.”

  “I’m not your mother,” she said, and he rocked back on his heels at that. He moved closer to the desk that separated them, then shoved his hands deep in his pockets because he feared they would do his speaking for him.

  The truth was, even this quiet, painful little conversation felt like a burst of sweet, refreshing winter cold in the middle of the desert summer. As though she’d brought all the air back into the palace, and he could finally breathe.

  But Khaled knew that this time, he had to let her go. Because he wanted so very badly to tie her up, lock her down and make certain she never left his side again. And that very impulse, he knew too well, would kill them both, sooner or later. He’d already tried it.

  “Why are you here, Cleo?” he asked quietly. “I thought New Orleans was enough. Have you come to make it harder?”

  “I’m not your mother,” she said again, and she rose then, that lithe grace of hers calling to him as surely as if she’d shouted at him.

  She circled the desk, never taking her eyes off him, and she didn’t stop until she was close. Too close. Then she leaned forward and slid her palms along his chest, and it was the sweetest torture Khaled could imagine. He frowned down at her, keeping his own hands firmly planted in his pockets, and pretending he couldn’t feel the arching flames of that wildfire that only she called out in him.

  Only she could call it. Only she could quench it. And he couldn’t permit either. He wasn’t sure he’d survive it intact this time. He couldn’t take the risk.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, those eyes of hers so wide and serious. “You have no reason to believe me, but I’m not going to do what she did. I’m not going to make you choose—I married you. I know who you are, despite what I might have shown you over these past months. But I think I know who I am a little bit better now.”

  He broke then. He pulled her hands away from his chest and held them in his, unable to stop himself from kissing one, then the other.

  “I want to believe you,” he managed to say, though his voice was hollow. “But I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to believe me right now,” she said, and he could see that sheen of intense emotion that made her gaze that much more brilliant. He could feel her trembling, slightly, and it nearly undid him. “I want to try again, Khaled.”

  He shook his head, and it actually, physically hurt him to do it.

  “This won’t last, Cleo.” She started to speak but he kept going, cutting her off. “I’ve watched this happen. I can’t do it again. And especially not if it’s you.”

  “Khaled—”

  “I am a profoundly selfish man,” he gritted out. “Don’t you understand that by now? I don’t want to resist you. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” His gaze searched hers, but that didn’t help. And he was hoarse from the battle inside him when he spoke again. “Let me do the right thing.”

  “This is the right thing,” she said. She moved then, taking her hands from his and using them to reach up and cup his face. “We are right, Khaled. That’s why it hurts so much.”

  “I think that rather proves the opposite.”

  “All we’ve shown each other so far is how inflexible we are,” she said, and he felt as if all those dark things in him were filling up with her voice, with all that light she spilled all around her so effortlessly. Warmth. Peace. The sweetest honey. He was only a man. He could only take so much. “So now we know the worst. But what if we’re not your parents? What if we figure out how to bend instead of break?”

  Bend, he thought. That was what was happening inside him now, what had been happening whether he liked it or not since the day they’d met. All of that blackness he’d carried inside him turning over into grays and blues. All of her light chasing out the shadows.

  As though forever started right now, if they dared.

  “I am the Sultan of Jhurat,” he told her, but he found he was smiling, and she was, too. “I do not bend.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “You are the great and terrible sultan. The world bends around you.”

  “I don’t care about the world,” he told her gruffly, lifting her up against him and vowing then and there that he would never lose her again. Not ever. No matter what happened. No matter what it took, what beds he would be forced to let her tie him to, what bending would be required. “It’s you I want. I always have.”

  “I’ll do my best to make sure you always will,” she told him fiercely.

  “Be sure about this,” he told her, every inch of him the autocrat. “I won’t let you go this time. I really will detain you. Permanently.”

  “I promise you, Khaled,” she whispered, a dark current of need, and that bright light besides, wrapped around him like joy, “I will never give you cause to doubt I love you again.”

  And right then and there, on the great desk his grandfather had won in a war no one remembered, with Jhurat spread out before them like a stark and beautiful portrait, they started making good on all their promises.

  * * *

  Five years later Cleo lounged lazily in the cool tent at the side of the oasis’s crystal-blue waters, and thought they’d kept those promises well.

  Khaled walked in from the bright afternoon, the sun seeming to cling to his perfect form an extra moment before her eyes adjusted. And then it was only his brilliance she saw, which he generated all on his own.

  “Did it work?” she asked as he dropped down beside her and gathered her to him, kissing his way from her temple to the corner of her mouth.

  It still made her shiver.

  “It did,” he said. “It turns out, I am hypnotic, as I always believed. She dropped off to sleep by the second verse.”

  He had been gone much longer than that, Cleo knew, tucking their two-year-old in for her afternoon nap.

  “And then you watched to make certain she was breathing.”

  “Of course,” he said, and smiled. “And to protect her against
any nightmares that might arise. It is no more than my duty.”

  They’d worked out their own compromises across the years. For every three months in the palace, Cleo insisted they spend a solid week alone in the oasis. She’d learned how not to run or hide. He’d learned how to delegate. They’d both learned how to bend. He had dismissed Margery and others like her and Cleo had made a point to spend more time with Amira who, as she’d once predicted, had left her attitude behind when she’d stopped being a teenage girl.

  They tried. Every day, they tried.

  And then, when they were both ready, had come their perfect daughter. Gorgeous Amala Faith with dark, flashing eyes like her father, who had wrapped the both of them firmly around her chubby little fists.

  But that didn’t mean Cleo didn’t exult in her nap times, when it was only the two of them again.

  “Did you wish to sleep the afternoon away, my love?” Khaled asked, with false sincerity, working his way down her neck until Cleo sighed happily and stretched against him, pressing herself into him in that way that never failed to make her breath catch, even all these years later. “Like our daughter will, God willing?”

  “I may have already fallen asleep,” she teased him. “From boredom, you understand. Is that what you mean, Your Excellency?”

  “Close your eyes, then,” Khaled replied, and he looked up at her with that smile he wore so often now. It made him indisputably beautiful, and never quite as remote as he’d been. Never quite as cruel. “I’ll try not to disturb you with my tedious attentions.”

  “What if I don’t want to close my eyes?”

  “Cleo,” he ordered her, that smile of his gone wicked, as surely as she’d gone molten. “Obey.”

  And Cleo did.

  Because forever with this man was so much better than any fairy-tale fantasy she could have concocted on her own.

  And because every now and again, obedience felt good.