by Olivia Gates
There, at the farthest end of the hall…
Gemma.
Five
Shaheen’s mind had snapped. It must have.
He was seeing things.
He swallowed the lump of shock that had lodged into his throat, shuddered as it landed like a brick in his stomach.
He was seeing Gemma.
But he couldn’t be. His mind must be projecting the one thing it wanted most, the woman whose memory and taste and touch had been driving him insane and whom he’d despaired of seeing again.
He closed his eyes.
He opened them. She was still there.
“Shaheen, why did you stop?”
He heard his father’s concern as if it were coming from a mile away. Gemma, who was at the far end of the two-hundred-foot space, felt mere inches away.
Her gaze snared his across the distance, just like that first time, was roiling with the same intensity, the same awareness. One thing was missing. Shock.
Of course. She was expecting to see him. There was no element of surprise for her this time. But there was more in her expression. Apprehension. Aversion even.
She was that loath to see him? Then why was she here?
The relevant question hit him harder than the shock of her being here.
How was she here? In Zohayd, in the palace, at this function?
He felt himself moving again, his body activated and steered by his father’s hand on his forearm as he led him deeper into the throngs of people gathered to watch his sacrifice.
Moving forced him to relinquish his eye lock with Gemma. He rushed ahead to gain another direct path to her. But she evaded his eyes now, hid from him.
Frustration seethed through him, questions. The urge to cleave through the crowd, push everyone out of the way till he got to her overwhelmed him. He imagined hauling her over his shoulder and storming through the palace to his quarters, pressing her to the nearest upright surface and devouring her.
It wasn’t consideration for his father’s guests, the most influential people in Zohayd and the region, that stopped him. It was her avoidance. The knowledge that she didn’t want him as he wanted her. That whatever had brought her here wasn’t him.
For an interminable time, he believed he responded when addressed, monosyllables that he vaguely thought were appropriate, shook hands and grimaced at eager female faces and fawning family members, all the time trying to catch glimpses of her, desperately trying to get her to look at him again.
At one point, his older brother Harres appeared at his side.
“You look out of it, bro. Got stoned to get through this?”
Shaheen felt the urge to deck him. “And what if I did, Mr. Immune-From-This-Abominable-Fate Minister of Interior?”
Harres grimaced. “I did offer to do it myself again. I told them that, unlike you, I don’t care one way or another, and I’d certainly remain neutral in my post since I would never get attached to whatever wife they saddled me with. They still refused.”
Shaheen’s aggression drained. Harres had tried to take his place time and again. He would spare him if he could.
He exhaled. “They know you’d get attached to your children.”
Harres shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I really can’t imagine being a husband let alone a father.” He put an arm around Shaheen’s shoulder, gave him a hard squeeze of consolation, the golden eyes that could have been their father’s flaring with empathy. “I would have done anything to spare you this.”
Which Shaheen had just thought. “Aih, I know.”
He again caught sight of Gemma among the shifting crowd, took an involuntary step nearer as if to force her acknowledgment, resurrect her hunger with his eagerness.
“And I know who you’re looking at. Who would have thought our little Johara would turn out to be such a stunner?”
Harres’s words made no sense. Had Shaheen’s mind started to deteriorate from the stress?
Shaheen looked at Harres, seeing him for the first time since they’d started talking, the juggernaut knight the kingdom had entrusted with its security, and who’d done the best job in its history. An expression softened his hewn, desert-weathered features, one Shaheen had never seen there except around their female family members. A rare gentleness, a proud indulgence.
And he’d thought Harres had said… No. He couldn’t have said that name. Where would it come from, anyway?
He shook his head, desperate to clear it. “What are you talking about?”
“The vision in gold over there. Our Johara…or I should say your Johara all grown-up.” Harres gave a nod in Gemma’s direction. “You’ve been looking nowhere else since you walked in. And I can’t blame you. I gaped at her for a solid ten seconds when Nazaryan greeted me with her on his arm. Who would have thought, eh?”
Shaheen stared at Harres as if he’d started talking in a language he’d never heard before. “Nazaryan?”
Harres snapped his fingers in front of his eyes. “Snap out of it. You’re scaring me.”
Shaheen shook his head again. “What do you mean Nazaryan?”
“I mean Berj Nazaryan, our royal jeweler, her father.”
Shaheen’s eyes slid from Harres’s, as sluggish and impeded as his thoughts, followed the direction of his earlier nod.
Gemma was the only one in that direction dressed in gold. Harres was talking about her. And he was calling her…calling her…
Johara.
The bubble of incomprehension trembled inside Shaheen. Then it burst.
Gemma was Johara.
Shock mushroomed through him like a nuclear detonation.
His mysterious Gemma was Johara. Berj Nazaryan’s daughter. Aram’s sister. The girl he’d known since she was six. Who’d become his shadow since the day he’d plucked her out of the air from a thirty-foot fall.
No wonder he’d felt he’d known her forever. He had. He had recognized her with that first look, even if not consciously.
And no wonder. She looked nothing like the fourteen-year-old she’d been when he’d last seen her. Skinny with glasses and braces, with no ability to wield her femininity the way girls in Zohayd learned to from a very early age. She hadn’t only realized her potential, she’d become the total opposite of her former self.
He’d thought he’d seen every brand of beauty this world had to offer. But she was something he’d never thought would be gathered in one woman, all his tastes and fantasies come to life. And that was just on the surface. Deeper, where it counted most, little Johara, as Harres had called her, had become the woman who’d seduced Shaheen on sight, had possessed him in a single night.
He rocked on his feet with the mushrooming realization. Only Harres’s hand on his arm steadied him.
Among the storm tossing him about, he managed to answer Harres’s worried question. “No, I don’t need air. I’m fine.”
But he was so far from fine he could be on another planet. He might never be fine again.
He’d taken Johara to his bed.
He’d taken her, in every way, repeatedly.
Just as he thought shock couldn’t engulf him any further, his eyes captured her incredible dark ones again. And the final piece of the puzzle crashed down in place. It should have been the first thing he understood the moment he realized who she really was.
He might not have recognized her, but she had known who he was from the first moment. She’d given him enough clues. Her first word to him had been a gasp of his name. She’d later told him all about herself, which had amounted to what he did know of her family history, without the names, dates and places.
And when he hadn’t clued in, so bowled over by her he hadn’t even connected the sun-size dots, she’d chosen to leave him in the dark. The apprehension he felt from her must be her anxiety about his reaction now that she knew he’d finally wised up.
“Now that you’ve met your potential brides, how is your stomach holding up?”
“Can we give you tips who
not to choose?”
Shaheen dazedly turned toward the two warm, musical female voices. Aliyah and Laylah flowed to him, hugging him on both sides, reaching up to kiss a cheek each, their exquisite faces brimming with vitality and joie de vivre.
He automatically hugged and kissed them back as the ramifications of what had happened between him and Gemma…Johara expanded inside him, squeezing all his vitals.
“The beauty in emerald over there, the one with the incredible black hair down to her feet?” Laylah pinched his cheek playfully as she turned his head in the direction of the woman she was describing, before turning his face back to her quickly. “Don’t even look at her again. Her unbelievable locks will turn to serpents at the first opportune moment.”
“And the redhead over there.” Aliyah directed his gaze toward the woman she was mentioning with more discreet taps on his cheek. “Run if you ever see her again. She grows scales and blowtorches anyone within a mile radius.”
Harres laughed. “If you’re trying to make Shaheen feel better about this, you’re going about it in bizarro fashion.”
Laylah poked a teasing elbow into Harres’s abdomen. “Hey, we’re saving him from settling on the prettiest flower and being devoured alive.”
“So now that you’ve eliminated the most beautiful flowers, do I surmise you think he should go for the ugliest one?”
Aliyah gave a horrified shudder. “Oh, no, that one is just as monstrous, without the advantage of being nice to look at. What’s inside is on the outside in her case. In fact, we’ve narrowed down his choices to two.”
Harres huffed a sound of pure sarcasm. “Don’t tell me. The candidates with the least monstrous qualities.”
“Actually they’re both pretty decent. One is not as accomplished or worldly as Shaheen would prefer, but we believe she would become so as his wife. The other one is really nice, but doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. Again, with Shaheen for a husband, she’ll definitely develop one.”
Shaheen felt as if he’d fallen into the twilight zone, expected to hear a laughter track burst into the background any moment now.
He cleared his throat. “Shaheen is right here.” The two women squeezed him again, sheepishness coating their expressions. “Thank you, my dears, for vetting my bridal nightmares as only you two discerning ladies could. Write down your choices and hand them to Father. But if he decides one of the monsters is more beneficial to the negotiations, that is who I’ll end up with. Anyway, my life as I know and want it is over. So, as I told Father earlier, one catastrophe with which to meet my end is as good as another.”
A pall fell on the duo in the wake of his words.
Horror dawned in Aliyah’s and Laylah’s eyes, contrition twisting their features. They really hadn’t realized how much Shaheen hated this, were now mortified that they’d been oblivious to his own distress and teased him about it.
“Oh, Shaheen, I didn’t know you were…”
“Oh, Shaheen, I didn’t realize…”
Aliyah’s and Laylah’s apologies stumbled over each other. They fell silent, Aliyah biting her lip, Laylah’s eyes filling with tears.
His focus flowed back to its captor, to Gem—to Johara. Her eyes darted away the moment his fell on her. She’d been watching him.
A bubble of agitation and elation expanded inside him.
She might be avoiding him, but she wanted to look at him and did so the moment she could.
Harres’s phone rang.
He answered. After a few terse sentences, he turned his eyes to Shaheen. “I’m sorry to leave you. But something’s brewing at our borders. It may take hours or even days to defuse.”
Shaheen nodded, accepted Harres’s bolstering hug, watched him hug the women and stride away.
Shaheen looked back at the fidgeting Aliyah and Laylah, a calculating smile spreading his lips even as his heart twisted inside his chest. “How about you atone for your sins by granting this doomed man a last request?”
They both jumped, voices intertwining with promises of anything at all if it would make him feel better.
He looked back at Johara, who again turned her eyes away and bestowed a brittle smile on the group surrounding her.
“Remember Johara Nazaryan?”
Both women looked to Johara.
“Oh, yes,” Laylah said. “My mother used to drag me away every time I tried to talk to her. Now look at her, flitting around Johara as if she were an A-list movie star.”
Aliyah smirked. “It’s not only your mother. All our female relatives and acquaintances who never deemed to speak to her or her mother before are falling over themselves to be reintroduced.”
Laylah giggled. “Bless their superficial souls. They never acknowledged what a classy, talented woman Jacqueline Nazaryan was, or what a sweet girl Johara was. But now that Johara has become the new designer on the cusp of international stardom, they all want to secure a chance to be the first to wear her latest exclusive designs.”
“It’s amazing to see that they consider their next outfit more important than their husbands.” Aliyah’s lips twisted. “Their men are about to flood the ceremony hall in drool, and the women can’t care less.”
Shaheen blinked, noting the people gathered around Johara for the first time. Women who’d treated her with condescension, or at best the dismissive courtesy due to a valuable employee’s family member, were now treating her not just as an equal but as a celebrity.
But it was the men’s behavior that made aggression swirl inside him. Many were openly ogling her and courting her attention and favor. His muscles turned to steel as every territorial cell in his body primed for a to-the-death fight for his mate.
Yes. No matter what she’d done or how impossible it all was, his body, his very being, considered her his mate. Accepted nothing else.
Aliyah turned back to him. “What about Johara?”
His burning conviction seemed to force Johara’s gaze to him. He muttered, low and hungry, “Bring her to me.”
Shaheen was about to combust.
With frustration.
It had been two hours since he’d told Aliyah and Laylah to pluck Johara from her new rabid fans and bring her to him.
After a brief surprise, the two women, who clearly weren’t aware of the seriousness of the situation that necessitated his making a marriage of state, thought it a brilliant idea.
They thought he should flaunt the royal council’s decrees and marry whomever he liked. And with their former connection, who better than Johara?
They’d gone after her as dozens of people inundated Shaheen again. He’d fended them off as he struggled to track the two women’s efforts to disentangle Johara from her companions.
After sinking in the quicksand of the court’s convoluted maneuvers, the two women could only look on as they lost Johara to another tide of eager fans until she exited the hall.
He had no doubt she’d thwarted them on purpose, had escaped. He had no idea where she’d gone, or if she’d even remain in Zohayd.
By the time he’d freed himself, he’d had a choice between interrogating guards and servants and having the news that he was looking for her spread like wildfire throughout the kingdom, or inspecting every guest suite in the palace himself and causing an even bigger scandal for his—and her—father.
So here he was, pacing his quarters, barely stopping himself from driving his fist through a wall.
He couldn’t let her avoid him. He had to confront her. If only for one last time.
Plans were ricocheting in his mind, each seeming more ludicrous than the next, when a knock floated to his ears from his apartment’s door.
“Go away,” he growled at the top of his voice.
He’d thought whomever was unfortunate enough to seek him now had heeded his order when the knock came again, more urgent.
He stormed to the door, flung it open, ready to blast whomever it was off the face of the earth.
And there she was. Gemma. Johara.
>
She stood there, in the gold dress that echoed her hair’s incredible shades and luster, looking up at him with anxiety in her gaze, a tremor strumming those lush, petal-soft lips he’d been going mad from needing beneath his for eight agonizing weeks.
“Shaheen…”
The memory of that night when she’d said his name, looked at him like that and changed his life forever ripped through him.
He didn’t give her a chance to say anything else.
He swooped down on her with the same speed and determination he had two decades ago, when he’d snatched her away from death’s snapping jaws. He hauled her into the room, his feet feeling as if they were leaving the ground in his desperation to have her against him, beneath him, with him.
Everything merged into a dream sequence. Gemma, Johara, filled his arms, her sweet breath mingling with his, her lips pressing desperately against his own, her flesh cushioning his, her heat and hunger enveloping him.
But questions gnawed at him, eating a hole through his gut as big as the one her disappearance had left in his heart. Why had she withheld the truth from him, why had she left him that way, why had she chosen now to come back, and the most important question of all—had she come back for him?
Nothing came out but an agonized, “How could you?”
She jerked as if the words singed her. She wrenched away, pressed her face into the bed. “You’re angry.”
“Angry?” He rose on one elbow, gazed down at her trembling profile. “You think I’m angry?”
“N-no.” The tears he could see glittering in her eyes welled, spilled over to drench her cheek, making a wet track down to lips that trembled. “You’re way more than angry. You’re enraged. And outraged. And y-you have every right to be both.”
“I’m none of those things. I’m…I’m…” He sat up, raked his hands through his hair, felt close to tearing it out. “I still can’t believe you did this to me.”
“I’m so sorry. I know I should have told you who I was…”
“Yes, you should have. But that isn’t what I meant. How could you leave me like that? Didn’t you realize how I’d feel? I felt…” He paused as she hesitantly turned to face him, searched for the words to describe his desperation and desolation after her disappearance. Nothing came to him but one word. It gashed out of him “Bereaved.”
