by Olivia Gates
“Haidar, I don’t—”
Suddenly he let her go, turned around to gaze into the star-blazing sky. “Your point-blank refusal reinforced once again that I’ve never been compatible with human relationships, a classic case of someone ‘only a mother can love.’ But it was trying to let you go that made me realize what I am guilty of.”
“Haidar, you don’t need—”
He swung back to her. “I do need to say this. In the past I compounded being jealous and suspicious with my uncompromising need to be in total control of myself, and to have every last heartbeat of you. I made it worse by being unable to share anything about myself, yet wanting you to know and accommodate my emotional needs the same way you did my physical ones. When you didn’t, dared give appreciation and ease and laughter to Jalal, I got so mad, felt so hurt, that the part of me that is like my mother took over. I demanded more from you physically and withdrew further emotionally, trying to make you come closer to compensate. I made you believe that my feelings where you were concerned were at best not healthy. Believing they were nonexistent was a simple step from that.”
She stepped closer, her mind churning. “You’re saying you think you deserved my distrust after all?”
“I never said I didn’t. I said I didn’t deserve all the blame. You were to blame, too, claiming to love me for what I was, when you didn’t know what that was. You didn’t recognize that I was reaching out to you in the only way I knew how, showing you with all the effort and trouble I took to be with you how vital you were to me. I did reach out to you outright that day, begged you to reassure me.”
He turned away, shoulders slumping as if all fight had gone out of him. “But you probably did yourself a favor by leaving. Last week, I didn’t walk away only because I was feeling sorry for myself, but because I did think you’d be better off without me. I hurt you just by being who I am, even before you found out about that stupid bet, before I exposed you to my mother’s abuse.”
He turned back to her, his eyes fevered. “But you were right to reject me again. I said I would accept anything you were willing to give, but I won’t. I can’t. I was all or none in the past, and I haven’t changed. When I came back to Azmahar I was in control of my tendencies because I was telling myself I now only wanted you. Then we had our confrontation, then last night happened—and that control is gone. I can’t and won’t be satisfied with less than all of you, forever. It might have sounded exciting to you in the heat of passion, when you thought I was talking about sex. But after you realized I meant everything for real…I don’t blame you if that put you off.”
“It doesn’t,” she whispered, the enormity of what he was revealing choking her. “Not if it’s a two-way street…?”
His eyes narrowed, his body going still. “It is. You have all of me. If you’ll only take it.”
Havoc filled her eyes, quivered on her lips with the poignancy of letting go of doubts, seeing her way clear and sure, and permanent back to him. “The bad before the good, huh?”
The hope flaring in his eyes dimmed again. “That scares you?”
And she surged into him, hugged him with all her strength. “Not anymore. I trust you, Haidar. And if it took me a while to get there, it’s because you’re so full of contradictions, you made it almost impossible to know what you’re all about. You also overwhelm me. Which kinda counteracts any attempts at being rational where you’re concerned.” She looked up at him, her heart in her eyes for him to see. “You were so unreadable I thought there was nothing to read beyond the obvious. You were so confident I thought you had no doubts, no weaknesses. The rest of your assets painted an inhuman paragon with no human failings or emotions. But mainly, you’re so devastatingly…potent, I thought you’d never be satisfied with one woman. Hell, I thought you probably couldn’t and shouldn’t be.”
He stiffened in her arms. “Unfaithfulness, let alone promiscuity, is one thing I don’t suffer from.”
Her smile trembled with all the joy settling in her heart. “I know that, now that I see you for who you really are. I thought you were domineering and controlling, but you’re only dominant and in control. You’re uncompromising, but you can be flexible where it matters. You seemed cruel, willing to get your way over anyone’s dead body, but either you grew out of it, or you never actually walked over anyone who didn’t deserve it. You’re scarily serious about work, but it turns out you have this supreme ability to be fun and funny, too. And you have insecurities like the rest of us mortals, behind that impenetrable front. To top it all off, the harsh pragmatist in you shares your body with an incredible romantic.”
His eyes were widening as she spoke. Now he swallowed. “You see good sides to me?”
“I see fantastic sides to you. But most important, they are fantastic to me. I would have loved you—I have loved you—for far, far less. I love you now for everything you are and aren’t.”
“But…you told me to shut up!”
She dived into his arms again, groaning. “I don’t even remember saying it, but I probably meant the one thing I needed most in the world right then. For you to shut up and let me sleep.”
He held her away, flabbergasted. “You mean I spent a day in a worse hell than any I have ever imagined because you were sleep-talking? Ya Ullah…when I said marriage or nothing, demanded a yes or no, you looked me straight in the eye, said an emphatic no, then turned your back and went to sleep.”
“I probably would have said no if you’d asked me if I needed to breathe. You devastated me with your vengeance of ecstasy.” She laughed, threw her arms around his neck and clung. “I think we can now say we have one of the most unique proposal tales on record.”
His arms convulsed around her, his expression still jittery. “You can laugh. I was considering leaving civilization for good.”
She cupped his cheek, reveling in the freedom, in the wonder of being able to show him everything in her heart at last. “Jumping to conclusions where the other is concerned seems to be what we do best.”
“Aih.” His frown was all dejected regret. Then determination blazed. “But never again. From now on, we never do that. Promise me you will always tell me anything at all.”
She dragged him into a fierce kiss, laughing, tears flowing, murmured against his lips, “I promise.”
He put her away again. “You are saying you want to marry me?”
“If it entails being with you for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death parts us and probably not even then, I do.”
* * *
Haidar shook with the enormity of the averted catastrophe, of witnessing Roxanne’s bliss and certainty. He needed to solidify their pact, their claim on each other. Right now.
He swept her up in his arms, didn’t feel the ground beneath his feet on his way to their bedroom. His heart thundered as he put her down on the bed, tore at their clothes, unable to bear anything between them. Then he looked down at her, his sorceress, his goddess, in all her naked glory.
Her breasts were a feast, her waist nipped, making the flare of her hips fuller. Her limbs were firm and smooth, her shoulders square and strong. Every curve and line and swell of her was the translation of his every fantasy.
He skimmed her from shoulder to breast, blood roaring in his ears, his loins, as its heavy heat and resilience overflowed in his hand. She thrust her breast into his hold, inviting a harder kneading. He pinched her nipple, bent for a compulsive suckle as he came over her, groaning as her firmness cushioned his hardness.
“Elaahati al nareyah, you’re beyond glorious.”
Her face flushed with pleasure. “I’ve graduated from sorceress to goddess?”
“If there was more than goddess, you’d be that to me.”
She dragged him down to her, drinking deep of his admiration and desire. Delight expanded through him as he melded their nakedness
, fusing their mouths, his hands seeking all her secrets, taking every license, owning every inch. He brought her to orgasm around his fingers, before traveling down her body, draping her legs over his shoulders. She wantonly pressed her back to the mattress, arched her hips at him, opening herself wide for his devouring as he drank her overflowing pleasure.
When he finally slid up her body, she stopped him before he could join them. He rose from suckling her breasts, alarm hammering in his chest.
It dissipated at seeing her eyes, misty with emotion. “Will you stop punishing me and let me have you? Will you surrender to me?”
His own eyes stung with the poignancy of her need for his reciprocation, his need to cede all to her. “Tulabatek awamer, your demands are my commands, ya naari.”
He turned on his back, taking her with him, letting her own every inch of him as he had her.
He threw back his head at the first touch of her lips on his erection. He’d never enjoyed this intimacy except with her. He’d never felt such a purity of desire as she delighted in pleasuring him. The look of blissful voracity that adorned her face as her lips wrapped around his girth, as she pumped and sucked him in abandon, murmuring and moaning her pleasure, soon had him stripped down to his savage male component. Blind with lust, with the need to dominate his female completely.
He still tried to pull away when she took him to the edge. She keened around his flesh, dug her fingers into his buttocks. He climaxed in scalding torrents, the pleasure agonizing as she greedily drank him.
Finally, reluctantly letting him slide out of her mouth, she pressed her flushed, moist face to his thigh. “We are even now. You’ve become an addiction, too.”
“I won’t concede this. I claim the deeper addiction, and more frequent need of your taste and pleasure as my fix.”
She began to protest, but he dragged her beneath him, bore down on her, came between her eagerly splaying thighs and plunged into her flowing depths, the vise of heat and ecstasy she surrendered to him, captured him in. He knew the aggression of his passion sent her insane with lust, that the edge of pain from being barely able to accommodate him made her pleasure more explosive.
With every thrust, his every word detailing his pleasure at being inside her, she writhed beneath him, her hair rippling waves of titian gloss, her breathing fevered, her whole body straining around him.
Her answering confessions came thicker, became more fevered, deeper. “Haidar—I missed you…never felt alive without you, without this…your flesh in mine…do it all to me, give me all of you…”
He obeyed, strengthened his thrusts until she rippled around him and convulsions squeezed soft shrieks out of her, spasmed her inner flesh around his erection.
The force of her release smashed the last of his restraint. He roared, let go, his body all but exploding in ecstasy. He felt his essence flowing into her as he fed her pleasure to the last tremor, until her arms and legs fell off him in satiation.
Shuddering from the aftershocks of the most violent and profound orgasm he’d ever attained, even with her, he collapsed on top of her, knowing she loved his weight anchoring her after the storm of pleasure had wreaked havoc on them. He felt her lips trembling on his forehead, heard his name in a litany of longing.
Tenderness swamped him. “Ahebbek, ya naari, kamm ahebbek.”
She went still, her lips freezing on his face.
He rose on both arms, this unreasoning anxiety still so easy to trigger. It spiked to a heart-pummeling level. She was crying.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said you love me,” she whispered.
Blood roared through his head in a riptide of regret. “I more than love you. Ana aashagek, I worship you and more, ya hayat galbi. And I’ll never forgive myself for not telling you sooner.”
She tugged him down for a searingly sweet kiss, letting him taste her tears of happiness. “If I forgive you, life of my heart, who are you not to? I hereby abolish all self-recriminations.”
He could argue that she shouldn’t. But her peace of mind depended on turning this page of their past. No one said he couldn’t seek redemption in secret for, say, the rest of his life.
He wiped away her tears as he swept her on top of him. “As long as it’s a two-way street.”
She buried her face in his neck on a sob, nodded.
Soon, her breathing settled into the contented rhythm of deep sleep. He lay beneath her, still joined to her, feeling her blanket him in serenity and joy.
It was merciful that he had forgotten just how sublime making love to her was. Or maybe it was different now, with their maturity, their honesty about their emotions.
He encompassed her velvet firmness with caresses, letting awe and thankfulness and then sweet oblivion overtake him.
* * *
“What’s that?”
From his kneeling position, Haidar grinned up at a stupefied Roxanne. “That is a piece from the Pride of Zohayd.”
“What?” She snatched the jewelry box from his hands, gaped down at it. “It can’t be. It’s not possible to get a part of the treasure out of Zohayd without the national guard on its tail.”
Now that she had taken the box, his stint at her feet was concluded. He rose, grinning in self-satisfaction. “You’re talking to the Prince of Two Kingdoms here.”
“You could be the Prince of Two Planets and those jewels wouldn’t be allowed out of Zohayd for any reason. Certainly not to be my…shabkah…”
Gulping as if the word stuck in her throat, she ran trembling fingers over the piece he’d picked as her “tying” present, a sublimely worked, twenty-four-carat-gold web ring/bracelet encrusted with priceless diamonds and a one-of-a-kind emerald centerpiece.
Belief hit her like a bolt, had her stunned eyes jerking up to him. “God, it is the real thing, isn’t it?”
He smiled at her, enjoying her flustered sequence of denial and realization to no end. “That is the whole point.”
“B-but how is it possible that you have it?”
Something in her eyes wiped his smile away. “Are you thinking I…took it?” When she only continued to gape at him, bitterness seeped into him. “Or that as an accomplice to my mother’s conspiracy, I got to keep some pieces…?”
She pounced on him, one hand covering his mouth. “Stop right there! I am not doubting you. I’m never gonna do that again, remember? I’m just…boggling.”
He saw it. Her disbelief had nothing to do with him. Her belief in him was total.
Hurt evaporated like a dewdrop in a furnace, teasing taking over again. “Want to boggle some more? This is the piece.”
Her mouth dropped open, remained like that for a whole minute.
Then she cried out, “No way. The first piece that Ezzat Aal Shalaan built the whole Pride of Zohayd treasure around? The piece that started the myth-turned-law of the Aal Shalaan’s claim to the throne?”
“Nothing less would do what I feel for you justice.”
She looked down at the magical beauty and intricacy of the piece. Suddenly she winced. “God, Haidar, no! It’s too much of a responsibility. I would be scared to wear it. What if I damage it? What if I lose it? What if people realize it’s the real deal?”
“The best way to ensure its and your safety is for you to remain no more than two inches away from me at all times.”
She whacked the arm reaching for her. “Haidar!”
“Just kidding. If not by much.” He picked up the hand that had inflicted such delicious pain, kissed its trembling palm. “You can say it’s an uncanny imitation, never say it’s your shabkah. Only we need know the truth and what it signifies as the centerpiece of a legend that has stood the test of time and inspired millions.”
Her hand cupped his face, her smile trembling in incipient delight. “You think we have one in the making
?”
He took the ring/bracelet out of the box, fitted it on her left hand. “I know we do.”
He claimed her in a long kiss until she surfaced with another exclamation. “But how? I mean getting this—” she raised her hand to gape at the masterpiece of craftsmanship again “—is up there with flying under your own power. And when? Your proposal wasn’t premeditated. And after I blubbered out my acceptance, there wasn’t enough time.”
“You underestimate how fast I can get things done.” At her warning look he raised his hands. “But your analytical powers are spot on, as usual. I arranged to get it as soon as I received your text informing me of our meeting here. That’s why I was so late.”
“It wasn’t to make me wait an hour for each year I cost us apart?”
He smirked. “That did cross my mind, too.”
“But you were waiting for the…shabkah…” She fluttered as she examined it again.
He pinched her delightful bottom. “I could have arrived at your specified time and had it delivered here.”
“So you were messing with me.” She pushed herself harder into his hand, giving him a better grip. “As you had a right to.”
“A right I wouldn’t have exercised if I thought I had it. I wanted to run here the second I got your message. But I also wanted to get my hands on your shabkah, to be the only one to touch it after Amjad.”
“King Amjad? He brought it to you? As in, himself?”
Surprising her was such a joy. He had to keep doing it. “Who else would have such access to the Pride of Zohayd? And who else is mad enough to give me its cornerstone piece, for any reason?”
She nodded. “Yeah. It’s said he has evolved from Mad Prince to Crazy King status.” A tide of peach spread up her face as she rushed to add, “Which in my opinion is great. His methods are shocking, but their results are amazing. I think he’s the most effective king in the region’s history since King Kamal Aal Masood of Judar.”
He chuckled, soothing her embarrassment. “Never worry about offending my sibling sensibilities. My oldest brother always had a method to his madness, but now it also has a name—Maram. His better ninety-nine percent, as he says.”
