“Sixteen-year-old Margot and your five-year-old grandma were smuggled into Switzerland by an Italian ambulance driver,” Elle’s mother had told her that day. “The man was barely nineteen, and he was infatuated with Margot.”
“Well, she was pretty hot. I remember Grandma showing me a black-and-white picture once!” Elle had said with a giggle as she snuggled up to her mother. “So they fell in love? Love at a time of war? Soooo romantic!”
Elle’s mom had shifted uncomfortably and forced a smile. “Well, not exactly. Love during the war wasn’t always as romantic as it sounds now.”
“What do you mean?” Elle had asked, even though the meaning had dawned on her the moment she asked the question. “So he . . . he what? He raped her?”
“Elle!” her mom had shouted, her body jerking at the mention of the r-word.
“What? That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”
“No. No,” Elle’s mom had said, taking a breath and stalling as if she was rehearsing how to phrase what came next. “He asked her to . . . to do something for him.” Elle’s mom swallowed and blinked hard. “To carry something for him. Carry something to America, to the new world, the free world.”
Elle had frowned again, this time seriously not getting what her mom meant.
“A child, Elle. His child. This nineteen-year-old kid had lost his entire family in the war, and he was convinced he was going to die in Europe as well. He wanted to make sure that his line didn’t end with him.”
“Oh, God,” Elle had whispered as a wave of emotions so complex washed through her that she wasn’t sure if she was horrified, fascinated, or thrilled, wasn’t sure if the feeling was of happiness or sadness, optimism or pessimism, darkness or light. “Oh, God, Mom. That’s so . . . so . . . I don’t know. So tragic, but also so beautiful.”
Elle’s mom had nodded, pulling her daughter close. “Just goes to show you how deep the urge to have a child runs. Even for a man. Perhaps especially for a man, because the power to create new life belongs to the woman.”
Elle had nodded, instinctively looking down at her round belly and then over at her mom. “So what happened?”
Elle’s mom sighed. “Well, they were only together three days, and they . . . they tried their best.”
“So they made love for three days. Had sex. You can say it, Mom.”
But Elle’s mom didn’t say it. She just went on shaking her head. “And when they parted, he gave her this cross, saying that she should give it to their child. But . . .”
“But Margot didn’t get pregnant,” Elle said, finishing the story as she looked at that cross again, thought about all the emotions concentrated on that piece of silver, the urgency of that time, the desperation to have a child, the joy of young love, the magic of virgin sex . . . tragedy and hope, love and loss, darkness and light, all mixed together. “And she never married, did she? Never had a child.”
Elle’s mom had shaken her head again, sighing as she smiled. “Never did. She worked with children her entire life—refugee camps and orphanages, the mentally disabled and the juvenile delinquents who needed guidance. But she never tried to have a child of her own again. I never understood it. Still don’t understand it.”
And sixteen-year-old Elle had nodded absentmindedly as she looked at the cross again, wondering why on Earth her mother would give it to her right then, when she was reeling from being dumped for a girl with a flatter belly and longer legs.
But then she had gotten it, understood without asking, understood the conflict in her mother, that mix of darkness and light that perhaps was so hard to reconcile, so hard to accept. Perhaps it was her mother’s way of communicating to Elle that darkness and light need to exist side by side in a woman, that tragedy and hope go together, that love and loss are two sides of the same coin, that charity and sin are somehow related. Darkness and light, all rolled up in one. Darkness and light.
And as Elle blinked herself back to the present and stepped close to the Sheikh to dress his wound, she got the strangest feeling like that cross was heating up against her chest, and now suddenly she was back in the past again, a past that wasn’t hers, and she was in that 1940s nurse’s uniform, those virgin white stockings, wounded men in military cots all around her, and she was dressing his wound, this same man’s wound as he looked up at her with those green eyes, and—
“Sawf tajid alllah fi alzzalam wa'aydaan daw',” he said as she absentmindedly touched his clean wound with her bare fingers before his voice made her realize that she’d have to clean the wound again now, not to mention her hands. “Sawf tajid alllah fi alzzalam wa'aydaan daw'.”
“What?” Elle said, looking into his green eyes even as her fingertips lingered on the bumpy stitches of his wound, that feeling of being with this man at a time of great turmoil still strong inside her, so strong that it didn’t seem real, couldn’t be real. That cross was still warm against her beating heart, her eyes locked onto his, her fingertips touching this man at his most vulnerable, his smile telling her that he trusted her touch. It all felt so strange but natural, weird but normal, melancholy but joyful, and now Elle could feel what she had felt at sixteen, that weird mix of opposites, of night and day, good and bad, darkness and light, like all of it belonged together, belonged together inside her.
“The tattoo,” said the Sheikh, and now he brought his left hand across his stomach and reached for his wound, his fingers touching hers as he spoke.
“Oh,” she said, blinking as she looked down at their intertwined fingers, his fresh blood slowly flowing now, staining their fingertips like this was a dark combining, a secret marriage sealed in blood. “What does that mean?”
“Sawf tajid alllah fi alzzalam wa'aydaan daw',” the Sheikh said again, his fingers closing around hers for just a moment before he let go. “It means Allah exists in the darkness as well as the light.” He looked at her now, his jaw set tight, a faraway look in his green eyes, like maybe he was losing consciousness from the pain and blood loss. “You can find God in the darkness and also the light. The darkness and the light.”
The darkness and the light.
7
“It’s too dark, Clarissa. Hell, this is our big Christmas release! We need something light and happy! Something that people can actually play without wanting to kill themselves! And why is country music getting so dark these days, anyway? I don’t like it, and I don't get it.”
Clarissa Rollins smiled at her cousin Grady, the co-owner of Rattlesnake Records and the self-appointed executive-producer. Not that he knew jack about actually producing a record, but then again, neither did Clarissa. She and Grady had inherited the company from their fathers almost seven years earlier, and it was clear to her that neither of them were particularly suited nor inclined to run a business, let alone a record label in a world where independent music was on the rise and if the top artists wanted to get signed at all, they’d just go to Sony or Warner, not a midsize label like Rattlesnake.
Still, Clarissa loved the world in which she got to play as Rattlesnake’s chief: release parties, award shows, red carpets, and the sex. Oh God yes, the sex! Whether Grady liked it or not, country music was indeed going darker, and so were its rising stars, who weren’t writing songs about fishing or pick-up trucks and instead were belting out heartfelt lyrics about poverty, war, and love gone bad.
Clarissa had done the rounds of some of those buff twenty-somethings in their leather cowboy hats and worn-out boots, but she quickly found that many of them were still mama’s boys at heart, soft on the inside, no matter how hard they got when she took her clothes off and said, “Make me your bitch, country-boy.”
They fucked her all right, even the ones with wives and girlfriends—after all, these were starry-eyed rednecks who wanted to brag about being signed to a label. Yeah, they fucked her all right, Clarissa thought as she eyed her cousin Grady who had fucked her all right too once upon a time, back when he had some of that Rollins fire still in him, before marriage and children and tha
t beer belly put it out.
But none of it mattered now, now that she had found the one who truly understood her, accepted her, fucking UNLEASHED her! And he turns out to be a goddamn Muslim Sheikh from some God-forsaken country in the freakin’ desert!
Ya Allah, she thought as she shook her head and smiled at how Akbar would call to his God when she’d finally had enough and was given the reward of his divine cock wherever she begged for it—assuming she had behaved herself and conceded to his authority.
She licked her lips at the thought of Akbar’s semen flowing down her throat, shooting up her pussy, blasting into her asshole, and she shifted in her seat as she felt her wetness flow into the bottom of her tight blue jeans. Of course, the thought was a fantasy—Akbar had always used a condom with her, even when he was just making her suck him. She had begged him to take it off, to come inside her, to come on her, to let her feel his heat on her tits, her face, her stomach . . . in her mouth, her cunt, her ass. But no. The guy was an animal with her, yeah. But he stayed in control. In control of her, and in control of himself. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she felt him come, somehow Clarissa knew she hadn’t really gotten to him, hadn’t gotten him to lose control, to truly give himself to her, to unleash his own darkness and let it join with hers, perhaps leading them both to a higher place.
And that’s what got to me, Clarissa thought as she uncrossed her legs and then crossed them again, shifting her slim bottom on the leather chair as she listened to Grady drift off topic and start talking about his kids and how he was looking forward to retiring after selling Rattlesnake.
Yes, that’s what got to me, Clarissa thought again as she felt an uncharacteristic nervousness rise up in her when she thought of why she had sent that diamondback rattler to Akbar. Would he understand that it was a proposal and an ultimatum all in one? A bribe and a threat in one package? The beauty and the danger inseparable, just like they were inseparable?
Goddamn right he would, she told herself as she forced the paranoia to recede, forced back the memory of that rare moment when Akbar had actually talked to her at a level other than business or sexual fantasy, when he had mentioned how conservative his upbringing had been, of how he had rebelled, of how his father the king had tolerated all of Akbar’s violations while warning him that there was a final line that could never be crossed by Akbar: The line of marriage. Marriage to an outsider. A non-Muslim. A woman who is not Arab.
That final line, Clarissa thought as Grady finally got done, eventually talking himself into going with Clarissa’s choice for the big record that Rattlesnake would push over the run-up to Christmas and New Year. Soon he was gone, and Clarissa was alone.
Yes, she thought as now that paranoia slipped away, a feeling of unadulterated longing taking its place. That’s the only way I’ll know he’s fully mine, that he’s given himself to me, that I have some power over that frustratingly powerful man, that I own him just like he already owns me.
Come to me, Sheikh Akbar, Clarissa thought as she checked her phone for messages and then locked the door to the conference room at Rattlesnake’s headquarters.
“Come to me,” she hissed as she climbed up onto the smooth wooden conference table, lying down in the middle, unzipping and spreading, her bony white fingers feverishly sliding down the front of her thong as her plumped-out lips shuddered, her painted eyelids fluttered, her dark red tongue flicked out and up as she brought herself to orgasm hard and fast.
And as she moaned up at the black ceiling of Rattlesnake’s offices, left hand still down her panties, Clarissa checked her phone again as that paranoia surged once more, adding something to the orgasm that was still slithering its way through her lithe body.
“God,” she whispered as she dialed his number again and slammed the phone down when it went straight to voicemail. “I hope that moron I hired didn’t hit his kidney or some shit. He said he was ex-military and knew how to do it just right. Pain but no real damage. I just wanted to make sure Akbar knew that we’re playing this game for high stakes, that I can take it but I can give it too, that maybe I’m capable of going all the way, that I’m as twisted as I think he is, that we can both take each other higher if we play this game together. Together forever.”
8
Ya, Allah, Clarissa is a madwoman! And not in the good way, Akbar thought as Elle’s careful touch finally gave him some relief from the burning pain of the wound and the stitches that he had done himself without anesthetic.
He was alone now, the clean hospital room giving him the sense of calm that he needed right now so he could figure out what the bloody hell he had gotten himself into. He had been stabbed in the back lobby bathroom of his hotel, the one place that Clarissa knew he went into without his bodyguards simply because there wasn’t enough space for three large men. Akbar always stayed at an elegant boutique hotel in downtown Nashville, mostly because it had a restaurant that was Kosher, which was as good as Halaal in Akbar’s opinion.
“Clarissa says she loves you and she’s waiting for your answer,” the short, wiry-tough man had said after the lightning-quick strike—a strike that was done with military precision, Akbar had to admit. Pain but no damage.
And the message . . . ya, Allah, saying it was from Clarissa made sure that Akbar wouldn’t call for his bodyguards or even fight back. It was part of the game—a game that Akbar had started when he first whipped Clarissa black-and-blue while she screamed for Daddy to have mercy, swore she’d be a good girl for him, beating at him with her fists as she howled from the force of the fantasy, yelped at each lash from that nine-tailed whip.
Yes, he had started it, just like he had started games with those women in Munich and Paris and San Francisco and Tokyo . . . games that often got close to the line, often enough and close enough that he had seen it prudent to have influence over private hospitals in the area just in case something went wrong, in case SOMEONE went wrong!
But I know the line and I have never taken a woman so close to it that it puts her in danger, takes her to a place that my instincts say she cannot go, Akbar thought as he exhaled hard and focused on the gentle hum of the air coming through the ventilation shafts. Yes, I know the line, and I thought Clarissa knew it too. But either she has no idea what a reasonable line is, or I had no idea that the darkness in this woman twists this deep.
Of course, part of Akbar’s pleasure was seeing a woman come into her own under his guidance, under his touch, his careful control. But what he had clearly unleashed in Clarissa only made him sick now—sick with himself more than anything! Could it be that he himself was so twisted now that he DESERVED a woman like Clarissa? Had the childish rebellion against his strict upbringing led him so far astray that he was close to marrying a woman who would hire someone to STAB him as some twisted act of love?! Of commitment?! A show of how deep her darkness went? How far she was willing to take their game?
Did she think this would make her seem more attractive to me, Akbar thought as his wound began to throb as the blood started to pump faster through his veins. Is that the man she sees? A man as dark as her? As twisted as her?
And is that the man I have become, Akbar thought as the fever burned in him and the room suddenly felt warm, too warm, hot, hot like hell. Ya Allah, is there no hope for me? Have I truly lost my way?
The Sheikh turned onto his good side now, groaning as he felt his stitches pull at the skin. But Elle’s dressing held up, and he sighed as the pain subsided and the fever seemed to fall, a sense of calm flowing through him again, the feeling accompanied by the strangely comforting memory of that nurse’s pretty round face, her innocent brown eyes, the way her full breasts moved beneath that pink top, how her womanly hips swung with natural rhythm as she walked, the way she unbuttoned his shirt, how she cleaned him without even commenting on how it was clearly a knife-wound . . .
And then that devastatingly deep moment when she touched him without her gloves, how she did it unconsciously, like she was in a trance just like the one
he had fallen into—a trance that Akbar had assumed was because of shock and blood-loss but perhaps was something else, something deeper, something . . . darker?
“Stop it,” he mumbled out aloud, grinning into the pillow as he realized what he was thinking, that even with the fever burning in him he was getting aroused, getting hard, crazed like a demon. “If there is any woman who is all light and no dark, then it is this nurse Eleanor Easton. Do not project your own needs onto her. It is a sign of weakness, a sign of fear, a way of reaching out to something bright and beautiful to stop you from falling into a darkness that scares you. Eleanor Easton is not going to save you from Clarissa, and she is certainly not going to save you from yourself!”
“Who’s saving what now?” came her voice through the rattle and hum of the radiator. “And why is it so hot in here?”
Before he could turn to check whether she was real or not, Eleanor was at his bedside, her soft, cool hand touching his forehead even as she gently helped him turn onto his back.
“You’re burning up,” she muttered, her voice calm but with an undertone of authority that made the Sheikh want to relax and simply give in to her, like he trusted her completely, had somehow trusted her forever, like he had trusted her in the past somewhere, would trust her in the future sometime, perhaps for all of time. “We need to bring your temperature down. Hold on, I just need to—”
“No!” the Sheikh rasped now as he felt that fever surge through him, a fever that burned through more than his body somehow, a heat that was rising along with that undeniable feeling of familiarity, that he knew this woman in a way that transcended this trivial dimension of space and time, that he had always known this woman, that she was his just like he was hers, that she had always been his just like he had always been hers. The two of them as one. Two sides of the same coin. Darkness and light.
Stockings for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 5) Page 4
