by Tara Pammi
With trembling fingers, she pulled her wedding gown off, hung it up and pulled on another silky one. Just taking off the heavy wedding gown helped her breathe better. Felt like the first step in taking control of her own life. Like she had stepped out of an invisible cage that had stifled her all these years.
She stepped out from behind the partition.
Something flared in Adir’s eyes, but when he spoke, he was all business. “Come, I have a Jeep waiting just outside the courtyard.”
Amira joined him. As if she were a feather, he lifted her onto the broad windowsill.
Amira swung her legs over and was about to jump when Galila and the maid came back into the room, their hands full of jewelry.
“Amira? What’s going on? Where are you—?” And then, “Adir! What are you doing here? In Amira’s chamber!”
Amira’s racing pulse shuddered to a thundering halt as her mind slowly processed Galila’s reaction. And the recognition in her eyes.
Galila knows Adir! How? Who is he?
Adir’s rough palm covered her mouth before she could form the question. His arms around her shoulders, he climbed over the windowsill.
Hanging over the ledge, holding Amira with one arm firmly around her, Adir turned to Galila, a grim smile curving his mouth. Darkness shimmered in his eyes, sending a shiver down her spine.
“Tell your brother I’ve not only seduced his precious bride but that she runs away with me willingly. Tell him I’m stealing away his future queen, just as he stole my birthright.”
And before Amira could believe that she’d heard those words fall from his lips, much less understand them, they were both falling.
He had seduced her? To humiliate Prince Zufar?
Suddenly, the night she had spent with him looked twisted, distorted. The solid ground beneath her feet couldn’t stop her world collapsing around her.
A sob clawed its way up her throat, swallowing her protest. His fingers clamped around her wrist, Adir pulled her after him.
Heart beating in her throat, Amira watched as Adir maneuvered them around the swarming guards. Sounds and sights came at her like drowning waves. The morning sun throwing off overpowering heat stole her breath. Her throat was parched, her mouth dry.
All the questions Amira wanted to ask of Adir danced on the edge of her tongue as spots swirled around her vision and she sank into the inviting oblivion.
CHAPTER FOUR
ADIR SLID A frowning glance toward Amira’s unconscious form while he maneuvered the four-by-four along the rough track slowly transforming into the desert floor.
Her vibrant golden skin looked alarmingly pale, like whisper-thin parchment. Blue shadows hung deep under her eyes. Her lashes, long and thick, feathered toward those sharp cheekbones like the unfurled wings of a falcon soaring against the sky.
Innocent and sophisticated, refined and sensuous, she was truly a prize worthy of a king and he had stolen her away from under Zufar’s nose. Now Zufar would face the world and his precious Khalia and its people without a bride, in utter humiliation. Just imagining the thunderous expression on his half brother’s face made Adir smile.
Why wasn’t she coming around?
His gaze taking in the long column of her throat, he seamlessly took the truck hundreds of feet up a giant ocher sand mound that offered three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of the desert floor and the border of his own region.
Khalia, Queen Namani’s promises, Zufar’s arrogance, the turmoil he felt every time he came near his siblings... It was all behind him now.
Here, he ruled.
Here, he was the master of the harshest mistress of all—the desert. Here, he had forged an identity from the ashes of the dirty secrets surrounding his birth.
Even though he had lived here for thirty-one years, the sight in front of him, the harsh beauty of it, never failed to steal his breath. Miles and miles of ripples, undulating dunes in all four directions. And against the backdrop of the desolate sight lay his own encampment. A lush mirage against the stark contrast of the stretching emptiness around it.
Here was his destiny, among his people.
Armed guards, trained not to show their obvious curiosity, stood a few feet away as he turned off the ignition. His concern quickly turning to anxiety, he walked around the Jeep and gently picked up Amira. By the time he brought her into his own chamber, water, fruits and several other items he might need to bring her to consciousness were already readied around the expansive room.
Just as he laid her down amidst colorful pillows on the divan, her eyelids fluttered open.
His knee pressing into her hip, his arms around her slender back, he stayed on the divan as she came to slowly.
Eyes so dark that they were almost black were wide in her small-boned face and their intensity pinned him to the spot. Recognition, followed by pleasure and an incandescent joy stared back at him. It was such pure, radiant emotion that it seared him through to his soul. And even as he was staggering under the impact of that, it vanished like the mirage of water under the harsh desert sun.
Wariness and fear dawned in those eyes. A breath later, she jerked away from him so suddenly that all his fighting instincts came rushing to the fore.
His entire body froze, his heart kicking against his ribcage. He had felt something, mere seconds before she moved back. When his arm had grazed her midriff. When his palm had rested on her stomach.
A slight swell. A bump where she had been flat before. He knew because he had kissed and licked the softness of her belly, tickled it with his breaths...
Was Amira pregnant? With his child?
His knuckles turned white—rage and fear and so many things crowded him, stealing his thoughts. And if he had been an hour late, if he hadn’t given in to that primal pull he felt for her against all his rational instincts, against the warnings that he was weakening for a mere woman—an unprecedented thing—Zufar would have married her.
His child would have been Zufar’s under the law—to do with what he pleased.
Forever lost to him. And he would never have known.
A growl fell from Adir’s mouth. “Amira—”
“No, don’t!”
She was half lying down, half sitting up, her hands fisted on both sides into the thick rugs, her breaths shallow and panting. Her eyes were panicked and out of focus. She looked like a deer caught in the sights of the predator. He was the predator she feared.
Reacting to her fear, he put his hands up, showing that he meant her no harm. And still her breathing wouldn’t settle. Worse, the more her eyes traveled over him and the tent, the more her agitation increased. The upper curves of her breasts rose and fell. Her cheeks turned an alarmingly pale shade while sweat beaded on her lips.
“I can’t...breathe,” she whispered.
Adir pulled the knife he always kept against his leg, straddled her hips and with precise movements, cut through the bodice of the dress from the neck to just a little below her navel.
He’d always thought of himself as an educated man, a man dedicated to progress, a man determined to bring as much advancement in technology as possible to his tribes—the man who straddled tradition and progress for the betterment of his people. And yet as he cut away the dress, Adir felt like one of his desert ancestors from the stories he’d been told when he had been a boy. Of warriors capturing cities and claiming prizes and untold treasure.
A treasure was in his hands now.
“No, wait—” she begged in that panicky voice.
He didn’t. Holding the knife between his teeth, he grabbed the ripped edges of the dress in his hands and pulled.
And then slowly, with carefully controlled movements that wouldn’t tease his control, he got off the bed, re-sheathed his knife and only then did he allow himself to look at her.
Wavy, lustrous strands of hair fell away fr
om the sophisticated hairstyle, falling in wispy curls caressing her face. Some ridiculous, flimsy, sheer thing made out of cream lace covered her from her chest to her thighs. Adir’s breath punched up to his throat.
For four months, he had dreamed of her. Of this.
There was nothing else beneath the transparent lace. Nothing but her flesh. Flesh he had held, touched and kissed, cajoled and caressed but not seen, except in flashes and stolen glances under the cover of moonlight.
Every time he went near night-blooming jasmine, he was reminded of her. Of supple curves and soft cries and skin like silk. Of tight flesh enveloping him so completely. Of dark intimacy and indescribable pleasure.
Now, every X-rated thought and sensation he had enjoyed of that night was finally granted glorious, Technicolor vision. Nothing he had imagined could equal the ripe beauty that was Amira Ghalib.
It was only a few seconds that he took to look—dark red nipples jutting proudly through the cream-colored lace; full, high breasts that had filled his palms so perfectly that he ached to cup them again; the fragile curve of her waist, the lush flare of her hips, with jet black curls at the V of her thighs and...the clear, round swell of her belly.
Ya Allah, she was pregnant!
With a horrified gasp, she pulled the torn edges of the dress together covering it up. But he had already seen it.
A snarl escaped his mouth.
She would have been tied to Zufar irrevocably, owned and possessed, forever out of Adir’s reach. His child out of his reach.
Another bastard denied his true parentage.
Another thing stolen away from Adir.
“Are you pregnant, Amira?” The question was eating away at him.
Her voice broke into his thoughts with a soft clang, “Is it true? You came to steal me away from Prince Zufar?”
“I said—”
Leaning against the colorful kaleidoscope of vibrant rugs that covered the wall, she looked impossibly lovely and painfully innocent. And stubborn. “Answer my question first,” she demanded.
“Yes,” he said, indulging her far too much, while his heart beat like a thundering tribal drum in his chest.
Color leached out from her face. “Why?”
Guilt bit into him, and he threw it off.
He had asked her and she had come with him. That his actions had been motivated by something else shouldn’t matter to her. “You heard what I said to Princess Galila.” It was the moment he had sensed her going utterly still in his arms on that windowsill.
She frowned, and then something dawned in her gaze. “Why did you come for me, Adir? We made no promises to each other. Four months went by after that night. And yet you appear, the morning of my wedding, a mere hour before the ceremony would begin.”
“I kept thinking about you. About that night and how incredible it felt. About how I wanted to be inside you again. About how...you were caught in a situation that you didn’t want.”
With each question she asked, he sensed a wall being erected around her. As if she were calling layer upon layer of composure and self-possession, pushing him out. Removing the Amira of that night out of his reach. “Ah...so you came to be the hero of my story?”
The soft sarcasm jerked his gaze to her. Gone was the sweet, trusting Amira. Instead here was a woman who stared back at him with wariness and mistrust...
No matter, he told himself, as his mind made plans upon plans. What was done was done. If she was going to be in his life in a permanent role, she might as well understand that the Adir she had met that night was only an illusion he had woven to please her.
“Nothing so admirable. I did want to offer you an escape. And indulge in the passion between us a little more, if you were still so inclined.”
“So you decided I would be your lover?” Her taunting words couldn’t hide the color slowly seeping back into her cheeks.
His concern faded a bit.
“Yes...maybe.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t exactly worked out the logistics of that. My position does not make it easy for me to have lovers. At least, in a longer time frame. But I knew I wanted you and you needed escape, so it was just a matter of figuring out the optimum timing. I had a guard keep a close ear to the ground in the palace regarding the wedding to relay the news to me as needed.”
“You waited, on purpose?” A flash of anger in her eyes. “As if this...as if my life were a chess game? As if I were a pawn?”
“Strategy is my blood, the air I breathe. My libido could wait and so could you if it meant a better result.”
“What result?”
“If I were to steal you away on the morning of the wedding, in front of Khalia, in front of the whole world, in front of all of his distinguished guests, Zufar’s humiliation would be...complete. My revenge even more fulfilling.”
“Why? Why do you hate him so much?”
“Because he continues to deny me what is rightfully mine.”
If he thought the sweet Amira he had known would crumble in front of him, he was very much mistaken. “That night when you...” a betraying flash of color seeped up her cheeks, and yet she pushed on bravely, and he couldn’t help but admire her composure “...invited me to spend time with you, I had, fortunately for you, confessed who I was. Had you already planned it? To have sex with me?”
Some flicker of emotion in her eyes, desperate and yearning, flashed now. Trained though she might be to weather anything as the future Queen of Khalia, her naïveté and inexperience weren’t shed so easily.
Much as she tried to hide it, she was immensely hurt by his actions.
But tenderness was an affection unknown to him. He had neither the intention nor the inclination to soften the truth for her. Nothing—not her wounded big eyes nor her body—would change what he was inside, what had driven him that night to seduce her.
He was a loner. First by fate and later by design. His mother’s letters had taught him early on how necessary it was to hold himself apart if he wanted to rise to achieve his destiny.
If not for her, he would have been another goat herder, a small-time rug weaver or any other average tribesman.
But by following her words as tenets, by keeping himself separate from others, by not letting emotions rule his life, he had risen to his current station in life. To heights even she couldn’t have imagined for him.
If not for the queen’s fiery words, he would have been content to be a simple man, a follower.
But instead, her words had spurred him on, made him a leader. Despite his low beginnings.
Even now, now that he was the sheikh of two tribes, a businessman with interests in multinational corporations, he had no close friends, no family. No women in his life who made him weak or emotional. Only advisors and people who followed his commands. Only people who filled certain roles in his life.
He depended on no one but himself. He let no messy emotions enter his life except what drove the betterment of his people and his destiny.
Just as a ruler should.
He only knew two things in life: his duty to his people and his destiny as he’d learned from Queen Namani’s words for so many years. If Amira needed him to answer a few questions about their short past so that he could move on to planning their future, so that she understood her own station in life now that she was inevitably tied to him, her own part in his life, then so be it.
“Was I standing on that stairway waiting for Zufar’s betrothed to fall into my hands?” He let a smile curve his mouth. “No. Did the time I spent with you, doing what we did, add a sweet, exhilarating edge to taking the grand prize that rightly belonged to Zufar? Did I revel in stealing from him as he does from me? Am I, even now, with his runaway bride here in my tent like this, imagining his humiliation, reveling in this moment? Yes, to all.”
She sank into the wall behind her as if she meant to burrow inside and d
isappear, one hand still holding the tattered edges of the dress closed with the other.
He clamped his hands behind him to stop himself from reaching for her. From preventing her retreat.
He wanted to uncurl her fingers gently from that silk and lay her bare to his eyes again. He needed to rip that lace off her body with his teeth and sink into her tight flesh. He desired her arms around his sweaty body, his name on her lips again. Entreating, begging, needing him.
He could banish her fear with his touch, bend her to his will, yes. But he had tasted her willing surrender once and nothing else would do now.
“Does that answer all your questions, Amira?”
There was a faint tremble in her lithe body. Even, white teeth dug hard into her lower lip, sending a shaft of pure sensation to his groin.
“Very clearly, for the moment, yes, thank you.”
“Then maybe now you can answer mine—”
And then he saw it. Perversely, it was the sun’s rays filtering through the small crease in the tent. He saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. The utter defeat in the bow of her shoulders.
She dragged her breath in through her mouth in a huge, noisy inhale. Bright red painted nails scraped through her lovely hair as if tugging it would give her back her grip on herself.
He lost control of himself then.
He cupped her shoulder, meaning to pull her into his arms. He would just hold her for now. She had been through shock and once she was over it, she would acknowledge that she had chosen to come with him. He would allay all her worries—the fear she must have been living with for four months under the atrocities of her bullying father, knowing she was pregnant and unable to hide it for long.
His motivations didn’t change the fact that she had chosen him over Zufar—both that night and today.
That was his true victory—that Zufar had had this woman in his possession and lost her to Adir Al-Zabah. She would again look at him with—
With a soft cry, she jerked away with such force that she almost tripped against the table with refreshments.
“Do not cringe away from me.”
