by Olivia Gates
“You heard that, ya sagheerati? Your mother thinks she can get away with anything as long as you’re around.” He turned eyes heavy with disturbing things on Carmen. “She forgets there will be times when you won’t be.”
The sheer danger of the sensuality infusing his words kicked into Carmen’s heart and loins. It made her melt. It made her mad. It made her reckless.
She tossed her head, straightened from her swooning position. “You really know nothing about me if you think I’d use Mennah as a shield—or as anything. And I need no shields against you.”
“You don’t?” His stare was all mock-serious interest, giving her more rope. “Are you certain about that?”
Oh God, what was she doing, provoking him this way? She knew she was no match for him, even in her own country. No one was a match for him, anywhere. He was just too powerful, as a diplomat, a tycoon and royalty. She was audaciously speaking her mind counting not on Mennah’s presence but on his restraint, his basic benevolence. Both qualities she’d already strained to the limit.
But there was no stopping her now. After the upheaval of the last hour, her emotions were hurtling at the speed of her chaotic thoughts, without brakes.
“It’s clear you have an ego of planetary proportions,” she taunted. “You must have Atlas-level strength to be able to lug it around. And to think I once contributed to expanding it.”
His gaze scraped down her body, making her feel he’d taken off every scrap of clothes, leaving her exposed, vulnerable. “You think your being the first and only woman to ever end a liaison with me contributed to my cosmic ego?”
Was that an edge of bitterness? Had her desertion meant something to him after all, on a personal level?
No. This intensity must be the outrage of a prince who expected people to prostrate themselves before him, who couldn’t believe that, for whatever reason, she hadn’t, just that once.
She shrugged, all artificial animation and contentiousness draining out of her. “Oh, I’m sure I caused a chink in it. One that could be detected with a microscope.”
“We’re talking galactic scope. Don’t you mean a telescope?”
“Whatever.” She exhaled, ran both hands through her hair. “I’m sure your ego is satisfied, now that you know why I did end it.”
His eyes followed her movements, the way her shirt stretched over her breasts, spiking her arousal as he drawled, “Oh, I’m not satisfied. You’ll have to work to that end. Hard. And long.”
And it detonated in her every cell. The memory of every sensation, every tremor of the ecstasy he’d inundated her with, how hard and how long he’d done it, taking her the way she hadn’t known she’d needed to be taken, giving her far beyond what she’d imagined she could be given or thought she could withstand.
Her legs wobbled, sending her groping for the counter’s support. “If you feel that strongly when only your ego is involved, you take yourself way too seriously. You must try the occasional letdown, maybe even criticism. Very therapeutic.”
In answer, he picked up the serving plate, prowled toward her like a panther measuring the moment he’d pounce, savoring the kill. He looked at Mennah. “Your mother is being very brave, Mennah. Or very foolish. Or she knows exactly what she’s asking for.”
“I’m only asking that you—that you—” The rest struck in her throat. He was nearing her as if he intended to collide into her.
“That I what? Take you up on your challenge?”
She leaned back. At the last moment he slowed, imprinting his body on hers as he reached around her with a hand holding the plate, the other joining it, imprisoning her with an arm on either side as he put the plate on the counter behind her. She once again felt something burning. Her skin this time. Her nerves.
He looked down into her shocked eyes, the gold of his turned to lava. “Wise of you to know when to stop.”
Before she showed him just how unwise she was and answered with something inflammatory, he leaned harder into her, pressing his erection into her midriff.
Before she could process that he was aroused, berate herself for the surge of elation that she affected him still, he pulled back, pulled up the high stool for her, his gaze steady on hers, telling her to sit down and shut up.
As if she could talk now, still feeling his potency digging into her, liquefying her insides. She sat. More like collapsed. Not to obey him or the voice of reason, but because she no longer had solid bones inside her limbs.
She watched with surreal fatalism as he served the filet. Until she noticed he’d taken two thirds himself.
“Relative body mass,” he murmured at her glare. “But I’ll feed Mennah from my share. Let’s see what she can consume.”
He sat down beside her, picked up a knife and fork and sampled a piece of the filet. His eyes rose to hers in surprise.
“It’s even more delicious than it smells.” Before she voiced the crack that catapulted to her tongue, he turned to Mennah.
“And you, ya kanzi, are so clever you knew how good it is, how to ask for more.” He cut a tiny piece over and over, mincing it. “Open up, here comes more…” He carefully forked it into Mennah’s eager mouth.
Carmen tensed, ready to jump if Mennah choked, felt Farooq’s echoing vigilance. Mennah gulped it down easily, asked for more in delighted shrieks. He chuckled, complied at once.
It didn’t even occur to Carmen to eat as she watched father and daughter demolishing his portion. It wasn’t until he turned enquiring eyes on her that she realized she was gaping at them.
At that moment Mennah repeated her sudden sleeping maneuver making him relieve her from his silent interrogation, his eyes captured by Mennah once again. And once again the tenderness there shocked Carmen. It was something that, despite his generous ways with her in the past, she hadn’t suspected he was capable of.
“Does she always fall asleep that suddenly?”
Carmen could only nod. His lips melted with indulgence as he rose and removed Mennah from her chair, then, enfolding her, walked out of the kitchen. It took Carmen a minute to lurch after him. She caught up with him as he exited the nursery.
He closed the door, said without preamble, “You don’t need to pack anything. Make a list of your needs and everything will be at the palace on our arrival in Judar. If you forget anything, order it and it will be brought to you within the hour. After you’ve settled in, I’ll order major store managers to come to the palace with their catalogs for you to pick whatever you wish.”
She stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
An edge hardened his rich, dark tone. “We’re leaving right away. My jet should be ready for the return trip.”
She felt the tethers of her sanity snapping one by one, groped for an anchor against his sweeping incursion. “Listen—”
He cut her off. “If you decide you feel nostalgic about your things, I’ll send people to pack every shred you have here later.”
“Now wait a minute. I’m going nowhere….”
“You are going exactly where I take you. To my kingdom.”
She shook her head, groped for breath. “I—I can’t travel…my passport isn’t valid….”
“I don’t need one to take you out of the country and into mine. My word is enough. Anyway, I’ll arrange for one. It will be waiting for you when we arrive at my home.”
“I’m not leaving my home.”
“You are. In case you haven’t grasped it yet, I’m having Mennah. Since you are her mother, this means having you, too.”
His declaration felt like a slap. A stab.
A hurricane of emotions started churning inside her.
Even if he had wanted her for real, she would have been in turmoil. He wasn’t just the man she loved—had thought she loved—he was a prince from another culture. She had no idea what being his wife entailed. But to have him state his intentions this way, as if she could have been anyone he’d endure now that he’d accidentally impregnated her, that she was just an
unwanted accessory that came with the daughter he wanted so much…
Trying to hide her humiliation from his all-seeing eyes, she tried to scoff, “Phew, I hope this isn’t how you make your peace proposals. Your region would be up in flames within the hour.”
He gave her a serene look. “I save my cajoling powers for negotiations. This isn’t one, Carmen. It’s a decree. You had my child. You will be my wife.”
The world began to tilt, overturn, nausea rising with his deepening coldness and clinical unconcern.
She somehow found her voice again, found something logical to say. “Okay, I appreciate the strength of your commitment to Mennah. But if you want to be her father, you can do that without going overboard. Parents share a child’s upbringing without being married all the time, all over the world.”
“I’d never be a long-distance father. My daughter will be brought up in my home, my land, exposed daily to my love and caring, taught her privileges and duties as a princess with her first steps and words. But for her best mental and psychological health, she also needs her mother constantly with her. By marrying you, that’s what I’m providing for her.”
Put that way, what he’d said was incontestable. But…“This can all happen without marriage. I don’t want to live in Judar, but I would for Mennah. We can both always be there for her.”
“And what would she be if you don’t marry me? My love child? Do I even need to state that a marriage, to give her her legitimacy, her birthright, is beyond question?”
“But I…” The quicksand beneath her feet snatched at her. And she cried, “I don’t want to get married ever again!”
Carmen’s vehemence hit Farooq like a gut punch.
He’d been fighting the urge to close his eyes every time she spoke, to savor that voice that could bring a man to his knees begging to hear it moaning his name.
That was until she’d said…
“You’ve been married before?” he rasped.
Her face contorted before she looked away.
Something hideous sank its fangs into him. Jealousy? Why? When he’d long known everything they’d shared had been a sham?
He knew why. His instincts still insisted he’d been her first passionate involvement. How could they be so misled? Even after she’d claimed he’d been one in a hundred? How did they still insist that had been the lie, and what he’d felt when she’d abandoned herself in his arms had been the truth?
But her upheaval indicated true involvement. A husband who’d meant so much, his mere memory brought that much pain.
Another thought struck him with such violence he wanted to drive his fist through the wall. Had she been on the rebound when she’d accepted Tareq’s mission? Had her seeming abandon been part of her efforts to forget the man she’d loved?
“When were you married?”
At his question, she kept her eyes averted until he thought she’d ignore him.
Then a whisper wavered from her. “I wasn’t yet twenty. He was three years older. We met in college.”
“Young love, eh?”
Her color rose at his sarcasm. “So I thought. Long before he divorced me three years later, I realized there was no such thing.”
So he’d divorced her. And she was still hurt and humiliated that he had. But if she’d been twenty-three then, she’d met him two years afterward. Had she still been pining for her ex then?
But what man could have walked away from her? He wouldn’t have been able to. Hell, he’d been willing to marry her. Granted, he would never have gone as far as marriage if it hadn’t been what was best for Judar, but she’d been the only one he could have considered for such a permanent position in his life, the only one he’d wanted in his bed indefinitely.
“I swore I’d never marry again.”
Emotions seethed at her tremulous declaration. “Don’t you think it’s extreme to swear off marriage after such a premature and short-lived one? You’re still too young to make such a sweeping, final vow. You’ll still be young ten years from now.”
She shook her head. “It has nothing to do with age. I realized marriage isn’t for me. I should have known from my parents’ example that marriage is something that’s bound to fail, no matter how rosily everything starts.”
“Your parents’ marriage fell apart, too?”
“Yeah.” She leaned on the wall, let out a ragged breath.
“Theirs lasted a whopping five years. Half of them in escalating misery. I was only four and I still remember their rows.”
“So you have a couple of bad examples and you think the marriage institution is set up for failure?”
Her full lips twisted, making his tingle. But it was the assessing glance she gave him that made him see himself taking her against the wall. “Don’t you? You’re—what? Mid-thirties? And you’re a sheikh from a culture that views marriage as the basis for life, urges youths to marry as early as possible and a prince who must have constant pressure to produce heirs. You must have a worse opinion of marriage than mine to have evaded it this long, to be proposing a marriage as a necessary evil to solve a problem. Uh…make that a potential catastrophe.”
He gritted his teeth. “Marriage, like every other undertaking, is what you make of it. It’s all about your expectations going in, your actions and reactions while undertaking it. But it’s mainly hinged on the reasons you enter it.”
“Oh, my reasons were classic. I thought I loved him. I thought he loved me. I was wrong.”
“Then you were responsible for that failure, since you didn’t know him or yourself well enough to make an informed decision. And then, love is the worst reason there is to enter a marriage.”
“I can’t agree more now. But I know us well enough to know that what you’re proposing is even crazier, and your reasons are even worse. At least I married with the best of intentions.”
“Those famous for leading to hell? Figures. But my reasons are the best possible reasons for me to marry at all. They don’t focus on impossible ideals and fantasies of happily-ever-afters and are, therefore, solid. Our marriage won’t be anything like the failure you set yourself up for when you made a wrong choice.”
“And you think this isn’t another one?”
Another argument surged to his lips, fizzled out.
What was he doing, trying to change her mind? This wasn’t about her, neither was it about him. This was about Mennah. And Judar. What they wanted didn’t feature into the equation.
“This isn’t a choice. There isn’t one,” he said.
“There has to be!” she cried, her eyes that of a cornered cat. “And—and you’re a prince. You can’t marry a divorcee!”
“I can marry whomever I see fit. And you are my daughter’s mother. This is the only reason I’m marrying you. What’s more, I will declare that we are already married, have been from the beginning. Now we’ll exchange vows.”
“Ex-exchange vows? But—but we can’t do that!”
“Yes, we can. It’s called az-zawaj al orfi, a secret marriage that’s still binding. All it requires are two consenting adults and private vows, recited then written in two papers, a copy for each of us, declaring our intention to be married. We’ll date the papers on the day I first took you to my bed. Once in Judar, we’ll present these papers to the ma’zoon, the cleric entrusted with the chore of marrying couples and we’ll make ours a public marriage.”
She stared at him openmouthed. At last she huffed in incredulity. “Wow, just like that and voilà, you’ll make me your wife in retrospect. Must be so cool to have that loophole with which to rewrite history. Wonder how many times you’ve invoked that law to make your affairs legitimate.”
“Never. And I couldn’t have cared less if everyone knew I’d taken you out of wedlock. Everyone knows I accept offers from the women who mill around me, and that I make sure there are never repercussions. I didn’t with you. Now it’s fortunate I have this method of damage control to fall back on, to reconstruct your virtue and protect Mennah
from speculation on the circumstances of her conception.”
Her breathing quickened as he flayed her with his words until she was hyperventilating, her color so high she seemed to glow in the subdued light of her corridor.
At last she choked, “God, you’re serious.” Then a strangled sound escaped her as she whirled around and ran.
He stared after her, his body throbbing, his nostrils flaring on her lingering scent.
If he’d thought he’d wanted her in the past, that was nothing to what he felt now. It was as if knowing all the ecstasy they’d wrung from each other’s bodies had blossomed into a little living miracle had turned his hunger into compulsion.
And then there was the way she was resisting him.
That was certainly the last response he’d expect from any woman to whom he deemed to offer marriage. And he’d only ever thought of offering it to Carmen. She’d thwarted him the first time he’d been about to offer it. Now that he had, she seemed to think throwing herself off a cliff was a preferable fate.
It baffled him. Enraged him. Intrigued him. Aroused him beyond reason. It wasn’t ego to say he knew that any woman would be in ecstasy at the prospect of marrying him. As a tycoon and a prince, he assured a life of undreamed of luxuries. So what could be behind Carmen’s reluctance and horror?
He entered her bedroom, found her facedown on her bed, her hair a shroud of silk garnet around her lushness, her body quaking with erratic shudders.
Was it upheaval over her ex? Was it fear of, or allegiance to Tareq? Was this another act? Or was it something else altogether?
No matter what her reasons were for being so averse, they were of no consequence. He didn’t just want to pulverize her resistance, he needed to. It was like a red flag to an already enraged bull.
He came down beside her on the bed and she lurched, tried to scramble away from him. He caught her, turned her on her back, captured her hands, entwined their fingers then slowly stretched her arms up over her head. She struggled, arching up in her efforts to escape his grip. She only brought her luxurious breasts writhing against his chest. He barely stopped himself from tearing open his shirt, tearing her out of hers and settling his aching flesh on top of hers, rubbing against her until she begged for the ravaging of his hands and lips and teeth, until she screamed for the invasion of his manhood. That would come later.
