by Olivia Gates
But he couldn’t abide time now, couldn’t bear her tears one more second. Couldn’t stand to see her turning away after she’d given him the most sublime night of his life. After she’d given him all of herself. And tonight, she had. This he was certain of.
“Carmen, come here.” She didn’t stop. He strode after her, caught her at the threshold of his expansive bathroom, took hold of shoulders that slumped with defeat. “Come, Carmen.”
Her tears flowed undeterred as she said, “Again? I’m sorry somow’wak, but this is probably beyond my physical abilities right now. I know you’re used to making things happen with a word, and in my case, with a touch, but after sixteen months, and even though I begged you for every bit of it as you pointed out, having you three times will probably leave me unable to walk for a week.”
And he laughed. Was there no end to her surprises?
Next second his laughter died. The burst of insight was blinding. She was trying to blind him to her tears, her weakness, using quips. Her wit was her only weapon against him.
Suddenly he hated that the power imbalance between them was so immense. He could balance it with three words. But those might unbalance it in his enemies’ favor. And he wasn’t just a man with his own heart, faith and life on the line. He would soon have Judar’s, the whole region’s fate resting on his clarity and decisiveness.
For now, he would obey, his instincts, not the murkiness of the doubts that had poisoned him for so long.
He cupped her face in his palms, damned himself when her teeth chattered as her features crumpled, her eyes those of a woman who would welcome the assurance of despair over the cruelty of hope.
“Your eyes are the first things that caught me, Carmen. Rivaling Judar’s skies and seas in their openness, their depths. They make me see how the Arabian Nights tale in which the tears of a princess drowned a kingdom wasn’t so ludicrous. Yours could drown a realm. I would kiss them away, stem the tears as I’ve been their source, but we have a saying here. El boassah fel ain tefar’raa.”
That stopped her tears. “A kiss in the eye separates?” He nodded. She hiccupped. “And you consider that a bad thing?”
“I can’t think of a worse thing.”
Her expression became lost. “Hot or cold, Farooq. Choose one temperature and stick with it. Please.”
“I can’t, when neither serves or applies. Scorching and incendiary still don’t, ya ajmal makhloogah.” She moaned at his endearment, the most beautiful creature, squeezed eyes that leaked again. He bent, swung her up in his arms. “About not being able to walk for a week, who said you have to? Your feet won’t touch the ground, ya Ameerati.” He took her to the sunken bath, descended into the perfect-temperature water. Their groans of aching relief at its fluid embrace echoed each other. “As for your physical limitations, let’s see how far we can stretch them…”
And he stretched them far, proved to her he could make her come again as he soothed the soreness he’d inflicted on her, stroking and suckling her to a dozen gentle orgasms before he let her melt back against him, drained but somehow awake in the warmth of water and intimacy. Then he took her back to their marriage bed, cuddled her as his heart dictated, not like the old Farooq would have, but as the new one who felt far more, far, far deeper.
As she slipped into sleep, he clung to her swollen lips one last time, told her all he could tell her at the moment.
“I will never get enough of you, Carmen.”
“It’s such a pleasure to see you and Maolai Farooq, so happy, ya Maolati.”
Carmen couldn’t look at Ameenah. Mennah was standing, seemed determined to take her first step today. Maybe even right now.
Oh God, she had to call Farooq. “Ameenah, my cell, please, the one with the hotline to Farooq. And my video cam.”
Ameenah zoomed out of the room. Carmen barely breathed, not daring to show any reaction to throw Mennah’s concentration off. Ameenah was back in seconds.
Just as Carmen turned on her cam, was about to hit the dial button to summon Farooq with shrieks of urgency to see this milestone with her, Mennah sat down, crawled away and busied herself with the cubes Farooq had gotten her yesterday. He had then spent the entire evening playing with Mennah and Carmen.
Smiling in self-deprecation, at her still-booming heart, at the false alarm she’d been about to raise, she thanked God Mennah had pulled the plug on this situation when she had. Farooq had a vital state meeting, but at her word he would have dropped everything and come hurtling over here only to find a sitting daughter and a terminally embarrassed wife waiting for him.
Carmen looked at the broadly smiling Ameenah and sighed. “You were saying something when I sent you on that wild-goose chase?”
Ameenah repeated her previous statement, and Carmen only smiled. She was wrong. They weren’t happy. They were delirious. At least, she was. He was…better than her old incomparable Farooq.
After their history-making wedding night, he’d seemed to let go, the bouts of anger and suspicion fading, his ups and downs becoming ups that kept only heightening. Their nights were intensifying infernos of ecstasy and abandon, and he no longer pulled away afterward, coming closer instead, letting down his guard until she felt he’d let her in all the way. Their days, which he designed with utmost care for leisurely family time with her and Mennah, followed a pattern of escalating joy.
It had been six weeks now, completing the time she’d thought she’d have before he had enough of her. But true to his word, he hadn’t. He seemed to want more of her, and then more. In and out of bed.
They made heart-melting love and had recuperation-needed-afterward sex. They shared times that flowed from serious and contemplative to tender and bantering to teasing and hilarious. He started depending on her experience and counsel, delegated responsibilities to her, for the first time entrusting vital details to another. And in every possible situation, he was letting her skills and imagination soar to their full potential.
No, this wasn’t happiness. This was bliss.
So much bliss that her heart hit the ground at random moments, with fear so brutal, she couldn’t breathe.
When would it come to an end?
Then Ameenah added, “I only hope you won’t let your happiness be affected when it’s time for Maolai to do his duty.”
And she knew. Now was when. She rasped, “What duty?”
Ameenah’s eyes rounded with horror as she realized she’d slipped up, no doubt seeing her statement’s impact on Carmen. “Ya Elahi, ana assfah—Maolati samheeni, I beg your forgiveness, I didn’t mean to…”
Her heart started to implode. “Stop apologizing and freaking out, Ameenah. Now tell me what this duty is.”
“If Maolai hasn’t told you, it isn’t my place—”
Carmen raised a hand. “It is your duty to do as I say, isn’t it? Now I’m telling you to tell me.”
After an oppressive minute, Ameenah said, “Maolai is to enter a marriage of state.”
The world disappeared, the void outside joining the void inside, until she felt she would be no more…
“When?” Was that disembodied voice hers?
Ameenah was on the verge of tears by now. Carmen felt nothing as Ameenah choked, “No one knows. The bride hasn’t even been picked yet.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a complicated story, and I’m not the one best equipped to tell it to you…”
Carmen interrupted her agitation. “You’re my best friend around here, and if you won’t tell me, I’ll only be in the dark, and miserable. Please…tell me.”
Ameenah finally nodded. “It started six hundred years ago…”
A bleeding huff burst out of Carmen. “God, it was preordained Farooq would marry someone else that far back?”
“It was that far back that the Aal Masoods ended the tribal wars and founded Judar. But ever since King Zaher fell ill, Judar’s second-most influential tribe, the Aal Shalaans, started demanding their turn at the throne, threatening an
uprising. Offering them settlements didn’t work, and a forceful solution seemed the one remaining option. A solution that would lead to civil war. A war the Aal Masoods will do anything to prevent. Even if it means giving up the throne. Which would still tear Judar apart.”
Carmen stared at her. Wow. Farooq couldn’t be involved in anything that wasn’t world-shaking, world-shaping, could he? Was it any wonder he’d shaken hers, shaped it?
Ameenah went on. “Then our neighboring kingdom, Zohayd, was dragged into the crisis. The Aal Shalaans form the ruling house and the majority of the population there, and they started pressuring King Atef to support their tribesmen’s rise to Judar’s throne. He refused. The Aal Masoods are his biggest allies and the reason behind Zohayd’s and the region’s prosperity, and their losing the throne would destabilize the whole region, maybe the world. His refusal was about to plunge Zohayd in civil war, too.
“But through the Aal Masood brothers’ intensive negotiations, the Aal Shalaans accepted a peaceful solution. That the future king of Judar would marry the daughter of their noblest patriarch so their blood would enter the royal house of Aal Masood. The problem is, after much deliberation, that patriarch was determined to be the king of Zohayd himself, who has no daughter.”
This kept getting better and better. Carmen felt twinges of hysteria rising through the numbness. “So now what?”
“They’re in negotiations again,” Ameenah rasped, as if confessing a crime. “Over picking another patriarch, I guess.”
“And once this happens, Farooq will marry his daughter, to stop the whole region from going to hell in a handcart.”
“Yes. But, Maolati, this won’t affect you, you mustn’t let it. You are the wife he picked himself, the one he loves.”
She burst out laughing, shocking Ameenah like she’d once shocked her husband. This was a prime example of sharr elbaleyhah ma yodhek—the worst plights induce laughter.
She’d been tormenting herself with all the reasons it would end, and now she was going to lose him over something she couldn’t have imagined. She couldn’t even be angry that he’d married her knowing he’d take another wife. Farooq sure married only for momentous reasons. His daughter’s future, now Judar’s—the whole region’s.
He’d marry another woman, come to her after copulating with that woman to produce the heir who’d avert civil wars…
She gestured for Ameenah to leave her, dropped her head to her knees, doubling over from the disemboweling pain. Jealousy. The one thing she hadn’t suffered on his account. He’d been with her alone before. He had this integrity. But now, if all she felt for him was compounded by marrow-eating jealousy, her sanity would fray…
No. The moment he took another wife, she’d retreat from his life, become Mennah’s mother only again. This meant one thing.
She had to take every breath she could of him, while she could, to hoard the memories for the nothingness ahead.
She pressed the dial button. Farooq answered before the second ring. “Carmen.” His voice shook her with the intimacy he made of her name, the magic, with the roughness that carried his perpetual hunger. “What does Ameerati el ghalyah want?”
Desperation rose with the mercilessness of a sandstorm.
“I want you, Farooq. Now.”
Twelve
Farooq tore through the palace, had people dashing out of his way as they would out of the path of an out-of-control vehicle.
They were wise to recognize the danger in the eagerness that rattled his bones. Just as his opponents had. None had dared make their annoyance known when he’d walked out on the negotiations the moment Carmen had demanded him. Another first that only Carmen could induce. His Carmen. His.
Certainty had been blossoming during the last glorious six weeks. Endless details, momentous and trivial, all incontestable, had reinforced the verdict of his heart. She was his. Had always been. Tareq had lied. She’d never been his mole. The only solid evidence of that had been the words of a man who lived to lie. The rest was circumstantial, with a dozen explanations now that he believed his Carmen would never do anything that wasn’t rooted in nobility and self-sacrifice. He had his proof in everything she was. He’d never bring it up, would never insult her with the inventions of the opportunistic pervert who’d claim-jumped her desertion, twisted it as he did everything to serve his purposes.
But Tareq no longer mattered. Nothing else did. Only Carmen.
Still…there was something about her that troubled him. Not him as Prince Aal Masood, but as her husband and lover. Something, an elusiveness, even through all her surrender and magnanimity, that stopped him from balancing the power between them once and forever. His mind had left the gravity of negotiations to ponder what else he could possibly need from her. Then she’d called, and he’d realized. This was what he’d been waiting for. For her to initiate intimacy, letting down the last barrier, trusting him unconditionally as he’d come to trust her. Did she also know that by doing so, she was invoking her ownership of him?
He stopped in front of their door, racked with emotions. He was ready to be claimed, body and soul, to relinquish all power to her. His voice, his fingers shook as he operated the door, posed on the threshold of the rest of his life.
He stepped inside and she sprang yet another surprise on him.
She charged him, climbed him, wrapped herself around him. He stood for a long moment, claimed, surrounded, deluged in her hunger, drowning in her ferocity. Then he staggered to their bed, his arms filled with happiness made flesh, made woman. His woman. He tried to lower her to the bed, but she twisted in his arms, made him change direction, take her on top.
He saw her then, rising above him, the flames of her hair scorching down on him, her body enveloped in another of those mind-messing creations that echoed her coloring, something semi see-through, stretched over her every perfection, showcasing her, hiding enough to send his imagination tearing through it. Which he would probably end up doing. He touched her and forgot how clothes where supposed to be taken off. But it was her face, her eyes, what he saw and felt there that sent his arousal shooting from distressing to life-threatening, catapulted his spirit on its first rocketing flight.
This. This was what he’d been born for. This woman. This being. This totality. This.
He took her lips, her tongue, letting her in, all the way, needing, living, being, in her, in their merging.
“All of you…I want all of you, Farooq…all…”
He drowned in the depths of her desire as she exposed him to its full measure, ignited fever all over him with touches and bites and suckles all the way down to the manhood he now knew had been created to mesh them together, to give her pleasure.
Then she devoured him. He let her, surrendered, spread himself for her to dominate, to pleasure, to drain.
His fingers shook in her hair, his body and heart in her power. After a life of sufficiency and restraint, of superiority, to feel such dependence was scary, transporting. Vital. He thrust his hips to her ravenous rhythm, sinking deeper into her hunger.
She drove her fingers into his buttocks, warning him not to draw away at his peak. “Give it all to me, darling…must have my fill…”
He had learned to give her this. He never had with others, just as he’d never foregone protection, both lines of intimacy he never wanted to cross. Until her, from the first night. In the past six weeks, she’d showed him beyond doubt there were no lines between them.
His hand convulsed in her hair as his loins exploded. She took his pleasure, lapped it up, climaxing, too, just from causing it, taking it, from rubbing against him to the rhythm of his release.
He snatched her up to his heart, communing in profound mouth-mating, sharing their descent. She reached for him again, knew she’d find him harder, crazed for more. She now knew that he achieved the heights of pleasure only inside her heat and giving, only in her pleasure.
She scampered over him, pushing him to his back, straddling him, looked at him thro
ugh tears that bound him, turning her eyes to the seas he’d been lost in, never wanting to be found.
She held his erection against her scar, caressed him until he was thrusting against her in torment. She rose to scale his length, trembled so much she failed, cried out, “I want you, Farooq.”
“Carmen, ya ghalyah…yes, want me…” He helped her, raised her, positioned himself at her entrance. “Feast on me, show me how much pleasure I give you…”
She took him in one downward stroke. A whiteout of sensation blinded him as her scorching honey engulfed him, his home inside her, his only home. His senses reignited when he felt himself deep within her.
“Farooq…”
He understood her frenzy, rose with her impaled on him, leaned against the mirror, held her buttocks in his palms.
“Ride me, ya rohi. Take me and take your pleasure of me.”
Her palms braced against the mirror, thighs trembling as she tried to rise his length. She’d managed to slide up only half of him when he engulfed one nipple while twisting the other.
Her palms slid off the mirror and she crashed on him, lodging him against her cervix, and wailed, “Farooq…please…”
“Lean on me, ya habibati.” He placed her hands on his shoulders then held her hips and moved her up and down his length in leisurely journeys to the rhythm of his suckles and nibbles.
Then he told her. “Do you know how perfect you are? Do you feel what you’re doing to me? I never dreamed pleasure like this existed. I never want to stop, stop pleasuring you, giving to you.”
“I can’t…Farooq…can’t…it’s too much…”
Again he understood, put his power behind her back as he rolled to ease her onto it in the middle of the mattress, spreading her knees wide-open with his bulk as he lunged forward, sliding up her flaming flesh. He undulated his hips, stretching her around his invasion yet again and stilled, throbbing in her depths, rising above her. “Heaven would be nothing to being inside you.” He withdrew as he spoke. Then holding her streaming eyes, he growled, “Take me, Carmen, take all of me.” And he rammed back into her.
