by Marian Tee
Because her gender prevented her from fulfilling her dreams of leading the kingdom, Tamara had then set her sights on her only son on becoming her older brother Khalid’s successor. For her, Khalil couldn’t have been the rightful heir because of his illegitimacy. Tarif, however, was not only legitimate but was also the only full-blooded Al-Atassi among his cousins.
Because of his mother’s obsessive ambition, most of Tarif’s childhood memories were of Tamara screaming at him constantly, pushing him to be more and better than the other Al-Atassi children. In public engagements, she would pretend to laugh things off when someone remarked how beautiful he was. But as soon as they arrived home, she would throw a fit and threaten to claw his face so that people would finally realize there was more to him than his good looks.
All this the sheikh had uttered in a dispassionate tone, and it was this above all else which had squeezed her heart. She had found herself turning to him, and her heart crying out even more at the total absence of expression on his face – the beautiful face that his own mother should have cherished but had despised instead.
Had no one tried to stop her?
No one knew it was happening. I only made myself speak of it when she was dead, and only because by then I was old enough to understand that the truth would help prevent the same thing from happening.
He then told Anisah of how he had been torn between rebelling and desperately seeking for his mother’s approval. Tamara had liked to teach him about heroism, and in these so-called lessons, she would force him to do things. Lie. Cheat. Steal. He had even lost his virginity at his mother’s command; he had been thirteen then, and his mother had known heard about a powerful sheikh’s wife who liked her lovers quite…young.
Anisah was pale by the time the sheikh finished. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t---”
“It wasn’t the last time I had to fuck for the kingdom.”
And now she felt sick.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds---”
“La, alshaykh.” No, sheikh. Anisah’s voice shook. “I’m sure it’s much worse.”
“Worse, huh?” His lips twisted. “The worst part would be when I was seventeen. My mother told me I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be of help to the kingdom. All I had to do was accept an open-ended apprenticeship under a sheikh who, at that time, had been one of the most powerful in our region.”
“Did s-she want you to learn how to kill under that sheikh?” It was the worst thing she could think of.
“Nothing so messy or complicated, anisdi. That was not Tamara’s style.” And seeing the confusion in her eyes, Tarif spelled out calmly, “She wanted me to do what I do best, but this time with a man. She wanted me to become the sheikh’s lover, and thus ensure the alliance between our kingdoms.”
Her heart splintered into pieces, and a soundless gasp escaped her parted lips.
“That was the last time we spoke. She died two months later.”
She tried to recall what she had read about the death of the sheikh’s mother. It had happened in another kingdom, then ruled by a sheikh who had been deposed a decade later because of a sex scandal.
Her eyes flew up to the sheikh in stunned horror.
“Nem, anisdi. He had her killed. He didn’t like how she had reneged on her promise.”
“Did your uncle – King Khalid – know?”
“He chose to let it go for diplomatic reasons.”
“And you?”
“He is no longer the ruler of his sheikhdom, is he?”
She blinked furiously to hold her tears back. “Oh, Tarif.”
Tarif’s fists clenched. “I thought I’d never hear you call me that again---” Anisah threw herself in his arms before he had even finished speaking, and he breathed hard just before hauling her to him as closely as he could.
“The ring I gave you was from my grandmother.”
She started to cry.
“I knew I should have explained things clearly that night, but it had been years since I last let myself think of Tamara and even now…” He forced himself to pull back so he could look into her eyes. “Does it not sicken you---”
“How can you even think that?” she choked out. “It’s only made me so much prouder.”
“Proud enough to forgive me?” His voice was taut, and his hands shook as he clasped her face between his hands. “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you. I know it’s no fucking excuse, but something in me snapped when you compared me to my brothers---”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she said tremulously. “I didn’t mean a word of it. Y-You know that, right?” Reaching for the pair of strong hands that were holding her face, she brought them down to press her lips to his knuckles, saying brokenly, “If I had known I’d hurt you that way, I would never have said that. Never.”
Violet eyes lifted to his. “Forgive me.”
Haunted dark eyes stared back at her. “Forgive me.”
And then the sheikh started to pull away.
Anisah bit her lip as he left her on the couch. She knew she was being foolish, but she couldn’t help feeling terrified as she watched the sheikh walk away. What now? Oh dear heavens, what would she do if this was how it ended? What if---
A broken sob escaped her when the sheikh returned to her side, but instead of taking a seat, he bent down on one knee.
“A second chance, anisdi?” The sheikh opened the box. “But this time, I am asking you for real. Will you marry me?”
Chapter Eighteen
“This…is…not…right.”
“Of…course…it…is.”
Anisah wanted to argue, but she also knew that if she did, she might just run out of her breath with the way she was already panting. They were inside her classroom, for heaven’s sake, and with only fifteen minutes before the bell would ring and students would come rushing---
“Aaaaah!”
The sheikh’s last thrust was so much deeper and harder, forcing her back up against board, and her eyes rolled back at the sheer pleasure of it. “T-Tarif---” But the sheikh was already pulling out and slamming back into her the next moment, and she gave up all thoughts of protesting and simply clung to him.
Was it crazy that she enjoyed having him rough her up even though she was also seriously worried that he’d end up ripping her apart? He was just so massive, and so cursedly wild---
The university’s warning bell rang shrilly throughout the building, the sound breaking through the sexual haze that had filled her mind, and an anxious little cry escaped her. “Tarif, we have to stop---”
“Not until you come,” the sheikh rasped.
Her eyes flew wide open. “No! There’s no more----” Time. That was what her last word was supposed to be, but it died in her throat as the sheikh started shoving his thick manhood faster into her – so much faster, and oh, harder than ever. He pounded into her nonstop until she spiraled into a screaming, mindless orgasm, and the sheikh had to cover her mouth with his hand to keep her cries from spilling out.
Tarif knew the moment her senses returned, with color brushing her cheeks with a vivid shade of pink while her violet eyes went wide with appalled misery. He grinned, and she whimpered as he lifted his hand off her mouth.
She shook her head, whispering, “I’m so…” Angry? Appalled? Ashamed?
The sheikh raised a brow. “Late?”
Anisah’s gaze flew to the classroom’s wall clock, and she cried out in horror when she saw she only had less than fifteen minutes before her next class started. Oh curse her life, the sheikh was right!
Chuckling at the panic that crossed her lovely face, Tarif said soothingly, “Stop worrying, my sweet. I have guards outside. They won’t let anyone in until we’re ready.”
“But---”
“But nothing. Now be a good girl and stay quiet while I help you.”
She didn’t even have time to protest, with the sheikh immediately moving to suit actions to words. He put her clothes to right, tucked loose
locks of her hair back into her cap, and he did so with such efficiency that he had even time to arrange the soft layers of her headdress into place with minutes to spare.
The sheikh stepped back with a smug smirk. “Well?”
The words ‘thank you’ were stuck in her throat. She just plain hated it every time he proved his superiority, and so she glared up at him instead, saying ungratefully, “I wouldn’t be in trouble in the first place if it wasn’t for you.”
But the sheikh only chuckled. “As always, my sweet – your sheer graciousness simply takes my breath away.”
The barb successfully reached its mark, and Anisah could feel herself turning red again. “I honestly don’t know what I see in you,” she muttered under her breath. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you of bewitching me---”
“Maybe I had.” The sheikh sent her a lazy, devastating smile. “After all, did you not say you found me ‘somewhat irresistible’?”
Anisah’s mouth opened and closed. Was it just her imagination, or had the sheikh echoed those old words of hers like they were the height of disrespect?
Tarif almost smiled when Anisah suddenly planted her hands on her hips as she threw him a suspicious glare. “Correct me if I’m wrong, alshaykh, but it has suddenly occurred to me that the reason you have been so insistent in coming here was to prove---”
“I am completely irresistible to you as opposed to my brothers?” He turned his hands open in a gesture of casual admission. “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.”
“You pompous, petty man!” No wonder it had seemed to her the infernal man was hell-bent on not taking no for an answer, and Anisah cringed at the memory of how that very forcefulness of his had been more effective in arousing her than rousing her suspicions.
Seeing that Anisah was working herself up into a temper, Tarif did not hesitate to play his trump card and immediately reached for her hands, saying, “Maehdina, anisdi. There are still times when I have this crazy urge to prove to myself that I am the only man you find completely irresistible…” He looked down at her. “Am I?”
“That is not the point,” Anisah flung irritably at him.
“You have not answered my question, my sweet. Am I the only man you find completely irresistible---”
“Oh, for heaven’s---”
“Or am I merely on equal footing as my brothers, who I’m certain you find ‘somewhat’ irresistible?”
Anisah’s mouth snapped shut, her words of rage all but forgotten. Oh, curse his dastardly good skills in manipulation! The man knew that he only had to frame things in that perspective, and she was good as his slave.
It had been a month since they had gotten back together, a month in which her free time was divided into two distinctly separate compartments: half of it was spent being ravished by the sheikh, while the other half was spent cooped up in the royal library, with Anisah tirelessly combing through the classified records of the palace’s historians.
In it, she had found horrifying testimonies about Tarif’s suffering, files that would only be revealed to the public fifty years after his passing as demanded by Ramilian laws. Those harrowing words were now engraved in her mind, and her heart still hadn’t stopped crying over them. She doubted it ever would.
How could she when she might be in love with Tarif Al-Atassi?
Even now the realization made her want to shrivel up in fear, and there were still so many nights she would lie awake, body bathed in cold sweat at the thought of how much her life would change if it turned out to be true, and she had done the most unforgivable, irrevocable, and irreparable thing by falling in love with the sheikh.
And worse than that…she had a terrible feeling that the sheikh knew it, too.
“Uh oh.” Tarif attempted to make light of the situation as he let go of his fiancée the moment he caught the look in her eyes again. More often than not, it meant she wished to speak of that matter again –
“Are you free this afternoon, Your Highness?” Anisah asked casually.
“Depends on why you’re asking, my sweet,” he answered just as casually.
She frowned up at him, and he smiled down at her.
“We can’t continue this way for long, Your Highness.”
“Why not?”
“There are things we have to talk about---” Like the horrifying fact that I might need to commit myself if it turns out I’m indeed in love with you.
“And we will talk about them,” he assured her smoothly. “In time.”
“But it’s already been a month---”
“Wrong, my sweet. It’s only been a month, so there is no need to hurry.”
“You asked me to marry you, for real.”
“I did, for real.”
Anisah scowled at the sheikh’s infuriating attempt to reduce their words into a mere game. “We must talk about this, Your Highness. It does not make sense for us to continue with our engagement if we cannot even talk---”
The sheikh’s expression hardened. “Are you saying you will not be my wife if I do not do as you say?”
“Do not twist my words so!” Anisah’s fingers balled into fists in a fit of frustration. “You know what I am saying---”
“Nem, anisdi, unfortunately I do, and that is why I have no wish to speak of it.”
The finality in the sheikh’s voice told her that he remained immovable on the topic, but even so, stubborn fool that she was, Anisah still heard herself ask, “Do you truly not wish to hear the words?”
“No, I do not.” He saw her flinch, but he hardened himself against it. He had to, for both their sakes. “How can you not see what is happening here?” he asked wearily. “How can you truly not know, anisdi?” Did she think it was so easy for him to constantly say no to the plea in her lovely eyes? She offered him her body and soul, and God knew how much he wanted – needed – to take it, to own and consume her until she no longer remembered how to exist without him.
But he could not.
Every fucking day in the past month had been fucking fantastic, and that was what terrified him the most. She was still the Anisah who made his blood boil for five hundred different reasons, still the Anisah who could make him laugh, scowl, and groan with desire all at the same time. But…she had also changed. The Anisah of the past month had also been softer and gentler, tenderer – like a warrior goddess who only sheathed her sword and laid her armor down in his company because he was the only man she trusted.
That new Anisah tore him apart every single day because she made him wish for the impossible.
That new Anisah stood before him now, and ah, how he goddamn wished he could close his eyes to reality and let himself succumb to the illusions that now shone in her violet eyes.
But he could not.
He just could not…because her love might not be real, but his was.
“What are you saying, Tarif?”
And maybe just this once…he had to say it. Just this once, he would force her to see the truth, come what fucking may.
“What you think you’re feeling is not what you think it is, Tory. It is merely pity,” Tarif said heavily, “and I do not want it.” She started to shake her head, started to speak, but he lifted a hand to stall her words. “Think about it first, my sweet. Just really think about it – when did you know of your feelings for me? Was it not when you knew of my mother? Does that not tell you something?”
For one moment, Anisah could only stare at him, unable to say a single word because she was scared if she did, she would end up crying. She had wondered, of course she had wondered why he would not want to hear the words, but never she had thought that.
Maybe it made her a fool not to even consider the possibility he would think her feelings as pity, but it simply had not occurred to her. Even before, when she had merely seen him as naught but a playboy – even then, he had never been the kind of man she would pity. Only weak men were to be pitied, and Tarif Al-Atassi had never been a weak man in her eyes.
Ruthless, y
es, sinfully, oh absolutely, but never weak –
Never pitiful –
And contrary to what the sheikh thought, learning about his mother had only made Anisah see how much more there was of him to love and look up to.
“You daft man.”
Tarif stiffened at the words.
“Do you not know that your story only made you more beautiful in my eyes? Learning about your past has not made me pity you. If anything, it has made you even more irresistible than you already are, so much so that I wonder if I deserve you---”
The cursedly daft man was staring at her now like she had suddenly grown a pair of horns before his very eyes.
“Must I spell it for you?”
“I think so.” The sheikh’s voice was hoarse. Maybe he was a fool to believe Anisah was speaking the truth, but he did. Damn it to hell, but just this once, he wanted to take a fucking leap of trust and believe that he could make a woman love him for what he was and not what she thought he should be.
The sheikh’s gaze locked with hers. “Say it now then, anisdi. Say it now---” His chest tightened as he watched her lips start to part, but before any word could come out, someone knocked thrice on the door, a bodyguard of the sheikh alerting them to the presence of incoming students.
Fuck!
“Anisah---” He immediately reached for her, but the mood was completely ruined, and he cursed again when she jumped out of her reach.
“Not now,” she protested. “My students could come in any moment---”
“But didn’t you say there are things we have to talk about?” he demanded.
“And didn’t you say we could talk about them in time?” she asked helplessly.
Tarif glared at her. “Just say the words, dammit.” He closed in on her, forcing her against the chalkboard. “Say it---”
The doors flew open.
Fuck.
The sheikh and Anisah, albeit both looking a bit flushed, stood at the opposite sides of the room by the time her students came rushing in. It took them three seconds to realize that it was truly a flesh-and-blood Tarif Al-Atassi standing in front of them, and then the gasping and squealing began.
