by Tara Pammi
She had glared at him, the only one who ever dared to do so with such impunity. “And what is my part in all this? To be a willing vessel when you decide you’re ready to impregnate me again? I’m not your subject, Adir. I’m your wife.”
“And as my wife, you’ll obey me. As to four children, I will think about it.”
And then of course she had said the one thing he didn’t want to hear. “Imagine how different your life would have been if you had grown up with Zufar and Malak and Galila, if you had—”
To which he had walked out with no response.
He hadn’t gone back to their tent that evening, choosing to spend it with the Dawab since he’d been visiting them anyway.
But what he’d been doing was avoiding her. Avoiding the same discussion she was hell-bent on having even as he forbade her again.
His stubborn wife was like a dog with a bit in her teeth. Forever bringing up the subject of the queen and her other children. Forever planting doubts in his mind.
Sharing your day with me, your life with me, hasn’t made any less of a ruler out of you, has it? They like seeing you happy. They want to see you happy. The queen was wrong in making you think you had to do this alone. I wish you would let me share what I know of them. Of her.
She poked at him relentlessly, to what end he had no idea.
Of course, the idea of growing up with his mother was never far away from his thoughts. Did she think he didn’t wonder what it felt like to be with family? To know one’s own roots? To share happiness and grief alike with siblings?
But he had never been given the choice. He’d been denied everything that was his due. And when he had asked for it, when he had demanded it, Zufar had called him a dirty stain.
The only thing that had sustained Adir growing up were those letters. But the only person he had ever been able to count on was himself.
No one else.
He had never received anything that he hadn’t worked for in life, anything he hadn’t planned and achieved himself, and every time Amira got close to him, every time he spied the something he couldn’t define in her eyes, it made him want to run far and fast.
It made him want to shut her down.
It made him hurt her. Even when he had promised himself he wouldn’t.
And since he had had no solution, he had stayed away.
When he had returned late the previous night, after having been gone for two days, she had been so silent, almost a shadow of herself. When he’d demanded that she be her normal self, she had smiled a brittle smile that made his chest ache.
“Is this what you mean to do? Punish me when I disagree with you by simply leaving me alone for as long as you please? And then returning to command me to be happy and smiling? Demand that I welcome you into my body, too?”
He had had no answer for her except to say that he had had not a single relationship where there were so many expectations on him. Where he was given things he hadn’t earned or asked for, like her trust and affection, and he didn’t know how to reciprocate.
At twenty-one, he had become the sheikh and that was the role he always played. No one to question him when he was wrong. No one to demand his time or attention.
And since he had known he was in the wrong and he couldn’t bear to see that spirit of her bent, much less broken, he had apologized and carried her back to their bed.
It was the first night he had not made love to her. Because as much as he’d been aching to be inside her, he hadn’t wanted her to be right. He didn’t want to be the man who shut his wife down emotionally but took physical release. As if she were nothing but a conduit.
He wanted to be more to her, he wanted more out of their relationship, but he had no idea how. It was as if there was a wall between him and the rest of the world, a world that had been erected, brick by brick, by his mother’s words.
Was Amira right? Had his mother been selfish?
And then he had hated himself for doubting her.
And so, he had just held Amira in his arms while she had clung to him.
Now, as the pink seeping through under the tents said it was dawn, he woke her up with soft kisses. Having woken up fully aroused again, his erection neatly nestled against her soft buttocks as she burrowed into him in search of warmth, he laid a line of soft kisses against the arch of her spine.
Despite his common sense warning him that his fragile wife needed rest, he couldn’t help himself. But he had barely rubbed his fingers over those plump nipples and slowly parted her folds to see if she was wet, than with a grumble, she asked him what he was doing.
The deep shadows under her eyes—worse than the past week—chastened him enough. He pulled both his hands to himself, said sorry and asked her to rest.
To which his oh-so-biddable wife said she couldn’t go back to sleep now that he had so thoroughly aroused her. And did he mean to step out and leave her to finish herself with her own fingers so that she could go back to sleep?
“Amira, I need you,” he whispered, as close to an admission as he could ever come to.
And his generous wife turned to him, her sleep-mussed eyes glowing with affection. With tenderness. “I would never deny you, Adir. I didn’t last night, either.”
“I know,” he whispered, while kissing every inch of her body. He said sorry again and again, for things he couldn’t give. For things he didn’t want to give her.
He smiled into her hair—a deep vein of fulfillment spreading through his entire body as he thrust lazily into her tight heat.
Even now, while her climax claimed her and her inner muscles clamped and released him with such mind-numbing, spine-tingling rhythm that his own release tingled up through the backs of his thighs and sent pleasure splintering through him, he didn’t know how the witch had manipulated him into doing what he hadn’t meant to.
His breath burning through his lungs as if he had run a marathon, he pulled her back to rest against his chest. Like a magnet turning to true north, his palm found the slight swell of her belly and settled there.
“Amira, are we...is everything okay?” he whispered at her ear, combing through the long, silky hair.
When she didn’t answer, he turned her onto her back. Cheeks full of color, she would hardly look at him.
His heart threatened to burst out of his chest. Out of fear or happiness, he had no idea. It was a sensation he had never encountered before.
“Amira, what is it? Are you sore? Does it hurt?”
Sleep-mussed eyes stared back at him with such longing that he flinched and sat up. He didn’t want to see such naked affection in her eyes. He could not reciprocate it and Amira was fragile enough to be crushed by this.
Already he had made a mess of their first fight. Already he had hurt her with his inability to communicate. He didn’t know how to have a relationship where so much was asked of him. No parent, no sibling, no friend had ever been a part of his life.
If he commanded something as sheikh, it was done without question. Even Humera, for all she had raised him, had become distant in the past decade, for she very clearly believed in the respect his position demanded. Even when he’d been a boy, she had only been intent on making him strong.
And Amira... Half the time, he didn’t know what to do with her. He wanted to cocoon her, wrap her in safety and only take her off the shelf when he needed her.
Loving her would make him weak, even if he knew how.
What he needed, what they both needed, was a little distance.
* * *
He was not a man who was ever going to admit that he craved a family connection. That even beneath the right he had demanded of Zufar was a desperate need for a place to belong.
“I’m a little embarrassed,” Amira said instead, his sudden withdrawal clear in the tense line of her shoulders. It wasn’t the complete truth, but she couldn’t gi
ve him anything more knowing that he was already retreating from her.
Whatever it was he had seen in her face had utterly spoiled the post-coital haze they had been in.
“By what?” he asked, turning away from her to pull on a pair of pajamas that hung low on his sleek hips.
Fortunately, Amira didn’t have to come up with a lie since a guard announced himself from outside their tent. Amira instantly pulled up the rug to cover her bare breasts.
Adir shook his head. “He wouldn’t dare to come in. But it has to be important if the guard has asked Wasim for permission to disturb me. Stay in bed. And sleep a little. I will see you later.”
“Later when?” she asked, the words slipping out before she could curb them.
She frowned as the guard called out again in an urgent voice.
The dialect was different but she caught the gist of it. Adir’s softly spoken commands dismissed the guard, and she had no doubt that he had all but forgotten about her.
He was the sheikh now, the man who was responsible for his people.
In her hurry to get to him, she moved too fast and his arm around her waist was the only thing that stopped her from stumbling.
The impact of his hard chest against her breasts sent shock waves over her skin. Desire unfurled like petals, a sweet, slow ache in the place between her thighs.
The same desire reflected in his eyes. A wicked smile danced around his mouth. “If you want a kiss before I leave, ya habibiti, all you have to do is ask for it.”
“I want to go.”
His hands fell from her, an instant frown on his forehead. “Go where?”
“To the camp. I heard about the pregnant woman. Adir, I saw her at the henna ceremony. She didn’t look good even then. I was pretty sure it is twins, but Humera wouldn’t let me do a quick checkup on her.”
“Humera was right to stop you. You’re not their nurse. You’re their sheikha.”
“I will always be a nurse first, just as you’ll always be a leader first. If she’s suddenly bleeding, that’s not good. For the babies or her.”
“The mobile clinic is on its way. And Wasim will bring Humera to look after her in the meantime.”
“Humera is a hundred years old and can barely stand as it is. The guard said the mobile clinic was at least five hours away at another remote village. I can be there in a half hour, I know.”
“How? How do you know?”
“I know because I asked the woman which tribe she was from and then I asked Zara where they were encamped. I wanted to visit her in a few days just to make sure she was okay. I could see the desperation in her eyes.”
“You haven’t slept an hour all night and you weave where you stand—”
“And whose fault is it that I didn’t sleep? You’re the one who decided you’d avoid me for two days and then make up for it by keeping me up all night. Sex is not how we solve our arguments.”
His skin stretched taut over those sharp cheekbones, his mouth a straight-pursed line. “Are you saying I kept you up against your will?”
“No. But I didn’t want to deny you.”
“So you only...participated? Why? Because it is your duty?”
Amira reached for him, her heart thumping against her chest. He looked so remote, so furious, and yet beneath it, it was clear that he needed her. He needed her to need him, to want him.
He couldn’t bear that she might stay in this relationship for anything except that she wanted to be with him. Then why couldn’t he see that she felt the same way?
That she needed to be more than just a woman carrying his child, a convenient wife, a prized asset.
She wanted to be the person he needed the most, the woman he loved beyond anyone. And anything else.
She wanted to be enough for him. This life with her—she wanted it to be enough for him.
She wasn’t allowed to talk about even her feelings for him.
Why couldn’t he admit that they were way past a marriage of convenience? That they belonged together—not because of the baby, but because they had chosen each other?
She wrapped her arms around him, laying her cheek on his chest. He was so essential to her and yet he didn’t see that she was her own person. “Of course not. I just... It came out the wrong way. Every time we make love, I’m just as desperate as you are. Just as hungry as you are.” She looked up, hoping he would see the truth in her eyes. “Adir, please let me go. I can be back by tomorrow morning.”
“No. There has to be someone else.” He pushed her away, none too gently, his face set in resolute lines that she hated. As if he was distancing himself from her, becoming a man she couldn’t reach. “Because I know you, Amira. If I let you this time, there will be no end. Every time someone in some camp has a little ache, you’ll go running. You’re exhausted, you’re pregnant and—”
“Why is that such a horrible situation to be in? I want to help. Even that evening, I saw a need that I could fill. Just as you have a purpose, I want to have one, too.”
“Your purpose is to be my wife and the mother to our children. You will not make decisions without consulting me.”
“I’m a trained nurse and to keep me locked away here when someone needs help... Don’t stop me please.” Not even by a flicker of an eyelid, did he relent. “I... I shall never forgive you if you take away the most important thing to me.”
He stared at her, stunned, as if he couldn’t quite believe her daring in threatening him. “And being a nurse is the most important thing to you?”
“Yes. It is the one thing in life that is mine, that I built, that I value,” she croaked out. It was. It always had been. Until she met a stranger in the moonlight and began weaving foolish, impossible dreams. Before she forgot her own promise to herself and fell in love with him all over again.
Adir had been shaped by the harsh desert, by the finicky affections of a weak woman.
“Whether I married Zufar or some other nameless stranger my father arranged for me, whether I was resented or loved, whether I was deceived or wanted, this...this was the one thing no one could take away from me. I thought you of all men would understand how important it is to me. Strip away your leadership of these people and what remains of you, Adir? Do not do this to me.”
* * *
Adir had never imagined a woman would have this much hold on him—this constant clamor to ensure her well-being and safety all the time, as he maneuvered the four-by-four over the rising and dropping desert floor to where the Peshani encampment had last been seen four days ago.
Four days ago when he had sent off his pregnant, tired and ready-to-break wife to see to another pregnant woman. For the first time in his adult life, he felt a burning resentment toward the tribespeople and their chosen mode of living.
Toward the mantle of duty that had always sat on his shoulders and yet had never felt so heavy and grasping, until today. Until now.
Ya Allah, he had barely slept and he had a hundred other matters to look to. Even this drive was unnecessary since Wasim could have easily collected her and Zara and brought them back safely.
But no, he hadn’t been able to deny himself just as he hadn’t been able to deny her.
With all his will, he wished he had been able to say no to her request. To tie her down in his own bed until there was no chance of her putting herself in unneeded peril.
To tell her that she had only one role to play—as his wife and as a mother to their child and as his sheikha. Only, and exactly as he dictated.
He should have held out against her demands. Even Humera, he knew, had been surprised by his assent, however grudgingly it had been given.
But one look into those wide, black eyes, the sight of the quiver of her soft mouth and the urgency, anxiety and the helpless rage that had breathed through her slender body as she had paced around him had made him relent. The
way she had hugged herself, retreating from his touch, as if she meant to brace herself against the heap of hurt he would rain on her... Even the memory of how she had looked made his chest tighten as if something heavy was pressing away at him.
If he had said no, something indefinable would have been broken between them. Something he hadn’t known had already breathed itself into existence.
He would have broken her. And for all his sins, Adir couldn’t stand to be another man, another nameless face that controlled and molded Amira, that relentlessly beat at her spirit until it was a withered, dying thing.
He had seen it in her eyes. He would have lost something he hadn’t known he had.
So he had said yes. At least, if he had been able to accompany her, it would have been better.
But the very tribal chief that had mocked Adir’s parentage—or the lack of it—had sent a message. That he wanted to talk. Adir wanted dearly to punch the man in his craggy, resentful face, but he had to give the starchy, old man credit.
He hadn’t liked Adir, whatever his reasons. But for the sake of his tribe, he was coming forward. He was a ruler who understood that personal matters had no weight in a leader’s life.
Something Adir seemed to have forgotten in just four days.
Why hadn’t the damn woman returned as promised? Why hadn’t Wasim dragged her back as he had been instructed to?
And how could he tolerate sending her away to help someone like this the next time?
He couldn’t. He couldn’t let her weaken him like this.
And if he didn’t, she would... Would he lose her?
He could protect Amira from everything. But this urgency, this ache in his chest, what would he do if he ever lost that respect in her eyes, that affection he spied in her gaze?
And if he did somehow keep it, how long before she realized he would never love her as she deserved to be loved?
That he would always remain, at heart, a man isolated from everyone and everything.
A man who was only capable of ruling but not loving.
