The Desert Lord’s Bride

by Olivia Gates

  A long time later, still hard and throbbing inside her, he rose on his arms. “I trust you’re satisfied with my obedience?”

  “Any more satisfied and I’d revert to the liquid state.”

  He moved inside her, drew deep groans from both their throats. “Any more satisfied and I’d burn to ashes. What do you command of me next?”

  She was savagely pleasured, boneless yet feeling ambitious. “A swim. Then the barbecue. Then you let me take you.”

  He heard the beep. It made no sense for a whole minute. Lying there, wrapped in Farah, still hard inside her, he could feel or think of nothing that originated outside them and their union.

  The beep came again. The third time he realized what it was. A message. On the cell phone only three men had access to. His king and his brothers.

  “What’s beeping?” Farah stirred over him, her internal muscles rippling around his erection.

  He thrust deeper into her, unable to contemplate having to leave her. The beep came again. He knew it would keep on doing that until he read the message. Knew they wouldn’t send one unless there was something worth disturbing him for.

  And he was disturbed. He hated the intrusion into the bliss he was sharing with Farah. Dreaded it even.

  “A message. From either my uncle or one of my brothers.”

  She raised her head off his chest. He groaned as he saw the dreaminess seep from her eyes as alarm inched in. “You think it’s something urgent?”

  “It must be. Or they wouldn’t contact me.”

  This made her spill off him, and they both lurched, groaned at the pain of separation. “Answer it, then.”

  With a growl, he succumbed, reached for the infernal phone.

  The message was from Farooq. Video conference. Now.

  His heart clenched inside his chest. What now?

  “Take a shower until I come back. Or sleep a bit. The night is just starting, and I intend to keep you up for most of it.”

  “Oh, yes, please.” She spread herself, inviting, delighting. “And take your time. You’ll find me right here, waiting.” He took one more kiss from those succulent lips that promised heaven. And they only promised more. “Remember, it’s your turn to lie there and let me explore you and pleasure you to my heart’s content.”

  “I’m all yours to do with what you please, ya hayati.” He plunged for another clinging kiss, then withdrew.

  She lay back, watched him with an adoring smile as he stood up, put on drawstring pants and an abaya, his eyes devouring her back. Then he gritted his teeth and went to see what the world that existed outside them chose to blight him with.

  In his study, he turned on his computer and its three connected widescreen monitors, activated the video conferencing. Farooq and Kamal appeared on two of them.

  So, the king still wasn’t up to making an appearance. He wondered if his uncle ever would be again. If his own days as crown prince were numbered and his days as king of Judar were hurtling nearer.

  Farooq’s golden eyes still had that apologetic heaviness they’d been full of since he’d thrown the succession into Shehab’s lap. He wanted to tell him to stop feeling uneasy, that instead of saddling him with a burden, he’d done him the favor of his life, allowing him to find Farah, share all this with her, live in anticipation of a lifetime with her. It now turned his stomach to think Farooq might have agreed to marry her. He was certain he would come to feel the same way about her no matter what, and it would have been hell seeing her in his brother’s arms, duty wife or not. He couldn’t even bear thinking about it.

  Before he said any of that, Kamal spoke.

  “It’s been six weeks, Shehab.”

  His eyes swung to his brooding brother, met the gaze that seethed with genius and mercilessness. “Aih, I miss you, too.”

  Kamal raised one winged eyebrow, the movement eloquent with abrasive mockery. “You’re going soft on us, aren’t you?”

  Shehab gave his younger brother a considering look even as his comment scraped his tightening nerves. Kamal had always been the one to provoke friction, the one with the harshest opinions, the least compassion. He not only didn’t suffer fools, he made them suffer. He had followers, but no friends, and but for the presence of Shehab and Farooq in his life, was a total lone wolf. As for enemies, while he had many, no one dared declare the enmity or act on it.

  He’d become this rough and ruthless only in the past years, since his stint in the States. He hadn’t talked about what had happened there, but he’d come back ready to maul anyone who stepped out of line, like a lion with a festering wound. And he’d remained so, as if all the humanity in him had been extracted.

  Shehab finally demanded, “And your definition of soft?”

  Kamal leaned forward, as if he’d reach through the screen and take up his challenge physically. “Taking six weeks to do what you could have done in six days. B’haggej’Jaheem, in six hours. You had her on your jet and on the way to your island within that time frame, ready and willing. Why didn’t you just-”

  Shehab banged his fist on the desk. “Shut up, Kamal. If you want to keep those perfect teeth of yours.”

  Kamal narrowed his wolf’s eyes at him, whistled. “You’re not going soft, you’re already there.”

  “I’ll help you knock his teeth out later, Shehab. But we do need to know what’s going on.”

  He turned his eyes to Farooq, heard a squeal in the background. Suddenly all his tension drained. Mennah. Farooq’s one-year-old daughter. The smile that surged to his lips came straight from his heart. The little tyke had conquered him on sight. His life had suddenly become so much richer for having the privilege of being her uncle. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how he’d feel about a daughter of his own. With Farah…

  His eyes searched behind Farooq, hoping to catch a glimpse of the toddler. Farooq understood at once, got up, was back in seconds, his arms filled with the incredible fresh life that, along with her mother, had changed his brother’s forever.

  “Ya Ullah, she gets more beautiful every day.” Shehab waved at Mennah, who tried to reach him by pawing the screen, before starting to bang on it in chagrin when she couldn’t. He laughed as Farooq pulled her back, telling her in both Arabic and English why she couldn’t reach her uncle. Farooq insisted he’d never talk down to her, that she was brilliant and would learn as much as they let her and it was never too soon to start. Shehab happened to agree with his methods. He sighed as Farooq distracted Mennah. “Where’s Carmen? And how is she?”

  At the mention of his wife, Farooq’s eyes kindled with the heat of love and lust, the warmth of pride and trust. “She’s taking a shower. And she’s magnificent.”

  “She’s out of the shower. And look who’s talking.”

  Kamal gave a rough exhalation of impatience as Carmen appeared behind Farooq, taking both him and her daughter in an exuberant hug before looking at Shehab. She did look well. She was a lovely woman, but now she truly glowed with the overpowering beauty only absolute love and happiness could generate. He was happy that Farooq, who’d always carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, had found the one woman who’d love him as endlessly and unconditionally as Carmen loved him. No wonder Farooq had so easily given up the throne for her.

  He watched Farooq and Carmen share a kiss that for all its lightness and brevity told volumes about the depth of their relationship, in and out of bed. He knew the signs now. What a fleeting look, even the least gesture or nongesture could convey. For he shared it all with Farah.

  Carmen took Mennah from Farooq, smiled at him and Kamal. “It’s great to see you again even if on a screen. Now, say bye, Mennah. Your father and uncles have important stuff to discuss.”

  Mennah let out a loud, protesting “aab.”

  “She’s trying to say my name!” Shehab exclaimed.

  “Of course.” Farooq grinned his elation, before turning to Carmen to share their special smile. “She’s a prodigy.”

  Shehab laughed at Men
nah’s continuing efforts to throw herself at the screen. “I promise I will soon come to you and we can play catch-you all day long.”

  As soon as Carmen and Mennah disappeared, Kamal grated, “It’s so heartwarming to see you both enjoying your family life when our whole region is on the brink of widespread civil war.”

  Farooq glared at Kamal’s screen, then exhaled and turned to Shehab. “It’s true, regretfully. The Aal Shalaans are getting restless again. They’re demanding proof that King Atef’s daughter will marry you, that we aren’t only pacifying them until we find a way to cheat them out of having their lineage introduced into our royal family. They gave us two more weeks, threatening extreme action afterward. I don’t know what’s been going on on your end, and I don’t want to know. But you now need to give us an answer. Will she marry you, or won’t she?”

  Shehab closed his eyes. So the time had come. He had to ask her. And she was indeed ripe to say yes to anything he asked.

  She’d been that for weeks now. But he’d felt that, as soon as he asked her, he’d be counting down to the moment she’d find out the truth. He hadn’t been able to face the possibilities.

  So he’d shut out the world, had taken all he could with her while he could.

  Now the world had come crashing back on him and he had to brace himself for its weight, its reality. Its inescapability.

  Feeling bile fill him to his eyes, he ground out, “She will marry me.”

  Nine

  He reentered his quarters, theirs now, covering the long distance to their bed slowly, to savor the image she made, naked and tangled in the sheets, one breast jutting out, nipple still erect, just because he was there, existed, her thighs pressed together on the ache of satiation and the renewed need he knew must be gathering in her body as it was in his.

  He stood over her and she opened her eyes, the look of total desire and delight there skewering through him as she held up her arms, spreading herself for his ownership.

  He surrendered, filled her arms with a pained groan. She rained kisses over his face, his neck, his shoulders and he shuddered, drew back. The hungry, playful look in her eyes gradually turned uncertain, then anxious.

  “What is it, darling?” She came up on one elbow, a quiver that thrummed in his heart permeating her voice. “Is something wrong with your family?”

  He squeezed her shoulders, forgetting anything but what had churned inside him like slow poison since he’d laid eyes on her, the one thing he had no answer for. The one thing he needed answered. Now. “Only one thing is wrong. One thing I need to know. When you leave here, will you go back to your lover?”

  She fell back on the bed as if he’d backhanded her.

  “H-how did…?” She gulped, squeezed her eyes shut, her color rising until she almost glowed in the dimness. At last she opened her stricken eyes. “W-was that what this phone call was about? You’ve investigated me?”

  “Did I need to investigate you, Farah? After all the things we shared, you couldn’t have told me yourself?”

  She scrambled up to her knees, her eyes filling, with tears and beseeching. “I should have, but I couldn’t. I was so thankful you hadn’t heard the rumors…”

  “Rumors? Are you telling me Bill Hanson isn’t your lover?”

  “Oh, God, no. He’s the only one of Dad’s acquaintances who stood beside us when Dad died and all our assets were lost. He offered to give us whatever we needed to regain them. But my mother admitted her lack of business acumen was what led to our losing Dad’s fortune in the first place, and that she’d only lose whatever Bill gave us again. I was too young to take over and soon realized that I wasn’t cut out to be the CEO of a multinational corporation. So I asked him for a job instead. He offered me one at a huge salary, and I worked my tail off to earn every cent. He soon promoted me to his personal advisor and analyst. When I accused him of being charitable again, he insisted I was the best person for the job, having been taught by Dad, who was the best, not to mention that he trusted me implicitly, something he couldn’t buy with all his money.

  “The rumors started the day he promoted me almost two and a half years ago, and Bill asked me to let people think they were true, said it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I wanted to keep suitors away, and he wanted revenge on his wife, who’d left him for a man their youngest son’s age. I was content with the arrangement until I met you, and I was so happy you hadn’t heard about it as I just wasn’t up to explaining, was even afraid you might not believe me.”

  She fell silent, out of breath, her eyes seeking his reaction anxiously. He doubted he had any outward reaction. He felt as if he’d turned to stone.

  After he’d become certain she hadn’t been sexually active, his mind had taken off on ugly tangents to explain how a woman could manipulate a man like Hanson without using her body.

  But he’d dismissed each explanation as impossible. Not her. Not Farah. And now this. This demolished every doubt. Made her a total innocent. Made his deception infinitely worse.

  For he believed her. Without question. She was only telling him what his every instinct had been telling him from the first moment. She didn’t have one exploitative cell in her body.

  But there was one thing. He grabbed at it to yank him out of the mire of realizations and guilt. “Why didn’t you want suitors, a woman of your youth and beauty?”

  “Suitors was the term Bill used. Mine is predators. I’ve had them circling since Dad died, first for my inheritance and then since I became Bill’s right hand, because of my position.”

  “That’s why you…?” He choked on his question, memories bombarding him.

  “Why I accused you of having some sort of agenda the night we met? Yeah, my insecurity reared its ugly head. I was so stupid, it even crossed my mind that you might have something in common with those petty men who wanted a piece of Bill.”

  “But surely you realize that you, alone, without any other incentive, are enough to drive men wild?”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “Yeah, right.”

  “How can you even doubt it? Don’t you see what you do to me? What you did to me since that first look?”

  “I think it’s a miracle, that you want me as much as I want you. But before you, I didn’t care if there were men who might want me for myself. I never wanted a lover again, after my one experience left me convinced I was incapable of enjoying sex.”

  One experience. So she’d been as inexperienced as he’d felt. Her first real intimacies, her first pleasures, her first abandon had been in his arms.

  But the elation of this confirmation was dampened by everything else. The expanding knowledge of how much his initial preconceptions-no matter that they’d been backed up by photographic evidence-had caused him to misjudge her. They’d polluted his thoughts and feelings, kept him resisting logic and the evidence of his own senses and intruded upon the precious moments with her, moments he hadn’t fully appreciated, believing what he had about her. And now this. And he had to know the rest, everything. Struggling with a dozen reactions, he said, “Tell me about this experience that led you to believe such a ludicrous thing about yourself.”

  She looked as if she’d rather dig a hole and hide.

  Just as he was about to tell her she shouldn’t recount it if it upset her at all, she squared her shoulders, gave him such an adorable look of embarrassment and determination.

  “I was nineteen and I was still trying to cope with losing Dad, with being the strong one for my mother’s sake. Dan was one of Dad’s executives and he kept working on convincing me that I needed someone, that that someone was him. His research of me was so thorough he knew what to do, what to say, to project the image of a soulmate for the embarrassingly green girl I was. But then, as a shrewd businessman, he would have sunk that much time and effort into far less than the half-billion-dollar deal I still was at the time. He was ready to do anything to land me. Then he did, and it was-” she winced, the perfection of her lightly tanned skin turning
coppery with embarrassment “-horrible. It wasn’t even painful, for he was-uh…” She put two fingers about four inches apart, turning positively red. “Anyway, it was just awkward and gross. And he told me it was OK, that some women aren’t capable of enjoying sex, but he would keep trying to-to…”

  “Cure you?” he spat.

  She winced at his sharpness, nodded. “Something like that. Seemed he counted on me being so ashamed of my shortcomings, I would let him steer me whichever way he wanted. But you know me. I’m incapable of hiding what I feel. So I said, if I couldn’t enjoy it, didn’t want it, why bother? He tried to humor me for a long time, but his act started to crack. Seemed that when all the work he’d done wasn’t paying off, his endurance started to give. Then one day I blurted out, why not just be friends? And he erupted. Just like a volcano. Kept spewing for an hour, honest. Who would want to be my friend? He’d only endured my inexperience and my odious character for the money, which he thought he deserved, not a brainless idiot like me. I was amazed. I’d aggravated him to the point where he threw away half a billion dollars rather than put up with me. Then, when said money was lost, he even called me, gloating over his lucky escape and over the fact that I was now not only a cold bitch but a penniless one, too.”

  Shehab glowered at his hands, feeling his every nerve charging up with murderous intent.

  But was he any better than this man? Hadn’t he done the same to her? Manipulated her to an end unconnected with her? As she’d felt from day one?

  No. His cause was just. And he’d started his own manipulation under false impressions about her, the worst. And he’d pleasured her, would die before he hurt her in any way. While that man, who’d deceived her, scarred her for life…

  He rose, stood on the bed, looked down on her. “I’ll find that scum. Then I’ll send him on a one-way trip to hell.”

  She blinked in alarm, then gave a nervous giggle. “Oh, Shehab, he’s not worth one drop of this magnificent machismo. Save it all for me.”

  “You’re not buying him mercy like you did the paparazzi,” he bellowed. “The man who made you think being hounded by them was preferable to being exposed to his species, the man who convinced you you had something lacking, when you only have extra endowments, the least of which was the sense to feel repulsed by his dirty soul’s touch, when there’s no woman who has more sensitivity, or is more capable of being ignited and pleasured than you. He robbed you of your innocence when he didn’t even want it, when he reviled that incomparable gift. And he’ll pay, slowly, for all his crimes.”