by Olivia Gates
Laylah laughed, her whole face alight with elation as she looked up at Rashid. “Don’t worry. He needs you in one piece.”
Amjad tutted. “Not a good enough deterrent with that berserker. So let’s play it safe.” He pulled Maram back into his arms, shared with her that look of total allegiance that Rashid had unbelievably found with Laylah. “I have a wife and kids who’d like me around for half a century or so.”
With the trio indulging in more banter, Rashid walked with them to Amjad and Maram’s private quarters, still struggling with the ominous sensation settling deeper in his bones. It just didn’t seem right that everything would go so wonderfully.
When would the other shoe drop?
It did, partially, in the evening.
More Aal Shalaans kept showing up to congratulate them, with their delight and acceptance only setting him further on edge. Then he announced the wedding would be in Azmahar a week later.
It was then that everything went wrong.
Maram and Aliyah led the women in insisting there was no way they’d put together another royal wedding in a week, like they recently had Jalal’s. They’d take a month. And that was final.
When Amjad corroborated his wife’s desire, and Laylah herself didn’t protest for long, Rashid felt that if he did, they’d wonder why he was so nervous about postponement, and grudgingly succumbed.
From then on, he felt each moment as if it were counting down to an explosion that would go off and destroy everything.
Eleven
“You know, there’s this age-old invention. It’s said to have endless merits.”
Rashid gritted his teeth as Laylah whispered in his ear. It had been ten days since they’d come to Zohayd. All the wedding preparations on the Zohaydan side had been concluded. They’d move to Azmahar in a couple of days to start the preparations there, where the ceremony would be held. A couple of days when Laylah wouldn’t be with him.
She’d played a ruse on her companions to get him into her private quarters alone. Normally he would have objected, even refused. Not this time. He had to talk her out of her potentially disastrous decision.
He stiffened when her arms came around him from behind, her hair spilling its fragrant silk over his shoulder as she leaned over the couch where he sat in her old bedroom suite.
She nipped his earlobe. “That invention is called a smile.”
Unable to hold back, he swung around, took hold of her and swept her over the couch and onto his lap.
Giggling, melting in his embrace, her fingers traced his tight lips, tried to spread them. “You do it like that. C’mon, you can do it. I promise you, your face won’t crack.”
He caught her hands. “It’s not the right moment to ask me to try this trick.”
Her face lost its impishness as she sighed. “I’m going to visit my mother, not going on a suicide mission.”
“You mean there’s a difference?” he asked, feeling himself spiraling out of control.
“You were the one who insisted I bring my family into this.”
“I meant the nonvenomous ones only.”
She chuckled. “I am one-quarter serpent.”
“The gene bypassed you.”
“But it might be a good idea to keep in touch with its literal mother lode, just to keep abreast of how to manage it. Said gene might not miss the next generation.”
“It will. That gene stops with your mother and aunt.”
She cupped his face in her hands. “And you know what? I almost believe you’d will that to happen.”
“I would.”
“You’ll make an incomparable king, you know that?”
The fist around his heart squeezed. This subject of kingship had become the one thing he dreaded thinking or hearing about. “Let’s not put me on a throne just yet.” He caught her face in urgent hands, needing to defuse this catastrophe in the making. “Don’t go, ya rohi. I don’t want anything to poison your mood, ya hayati, not now, not ever.”
She flushed in pleasure, her eyes filling with joy.
Amjad had been right. The words of love, as deficient as they were, had come to mean more, just because he said them to her, poured his emotions into them. She delighted in hearing him call her his soul and life. As she was.
After pressing a fiercely tender kiss on his lips, she withdrew. “It’s why I’m going, ya habibi. Because there’s this lingering bitterness that I want to get rid of. It will only go away if I see my mother again, talk this out with her.” She sifted her fingers lovingly through the inch of hair he now had. “I also have this unstoppable need to brag that I not only amounted to something when left to my own devices, but I’m getting myself a husband worth millions of the men she tried to set me up with.”
Struggling with the urge to bundle her up and hide her away, preferably forever, so nothing and no one could hurt her, he mumbled, “Icebergs will tumble in Azmahar’s desert before she shares your opinion of me.”
Her laugh tinkled over his overstrung nerves. “She might not admit it at peril of her life, but she must appreciate the hell out of what you are today, bless her power-hungry soul.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “But no matter what she’s done to me, it has been her own misguided way of loving me. And no matter what she is, she’s my mother...and I love her.”
What could he possibly say to that? That she shouldn’t give her mother any of her love because the woman didn’t deserve it? When he didn’t deserve it, either, yet wanted her to give him all the love she had?
He found himself groaning, “Don’t go, if you love me.”
He winced at how petty that had come out. How desperate.
She caressed his scar, deluging him in tenderness. “That’s going to be a problem, since I don’t ‘love’ you. You’re just the sharer of my soul, and so far the owner of my heart.”
His heart squeezed. “So far?”
“I’m assuming little Rashids will share your status one day.”
The concept of children with her muted him.
Her touch ameliorated his upheaval, boosted it. “My mother won’t attend our wedding, won’t be able to practice her saboteur tricks. I’ll see her in the safety of her exile and be back in less than forty-eight hours. And no, you can’t come with me. I’m not so foolish that I’d put you in her range. And you have much to do. I know. I’m the one who set up your schedule.”
He couldn’t stop her without admitting what he would take to his grave. How this had started. And why he would prefer a worse scar than what he had to having her mother near her, and therefore them, again.
So she’d go. And he’d spend forty-eight hours going insane. More insane than he already was.
He heaved to his feet, taking her up in his arms, rushing to her bathroom. “If you must go, then I must have you first.”
“I should punish you for the celibacy you imposed on us,” she teased as he locked the door. “But I’m just too hungry for you.”
He took her lips, his tongue thrusting deep into her eager warmth. “Not as hungry as I am for you.”
He dragged her down to a fluffy cream mat, tore her clothes out of the way, freed himself. He was heavy and hard and maddened for her molten depths. Ten days since he’d last been with her, inside her, had driven him to the edge.
He entered her in one full thrust, forging into the inferno of pleasure that was her welcoming flesh.
Her cries of pleasure drove him into a frenzy. He buried himself in her over and over, each plunge a shockwave of mindlessness from his loins to his every nerve.
Too soon the friction and ferocity drove them over the edge of insanity and into ecstasy. He poured himself into her depths, transfigured yet again with the power and totality of her desire, with the purity of passion she bestowed on him.
As she trembled and keened her satisfaction beneath him, blind possession overcame him. For a mad moment he wanted to force her not to leave him. He could keep her his willing prisoner...
Her lips open
ed over his scar, crooning his name, her love. Heat blossomed behind his eyes, burning away the instability.
Nothing would ever mean a thing if she didn’t give it freely, breathlessly. He had to let her go.
As he took one last kiss, as if he could transmit his unspoken plea to never stop wanting him, he prayed.
That nothing would ever come between them.
* * *
Rashid had been right. She shouldn’t have come.
Laylah was realizing that with every second. Her mother was even more difficult than she’d remembered. Somayah’s exile, though it was a luxurious one in Jamaica, had brought out the worst in her.
As majestic as ever, looking more beautiful than she remembered, her mother had received Laylah in full regalia, her hair blonder now but still in that signature chignon. She hadn’t even pretended any pleasure to see her daughter, let alone to hear her news.
The news her mother had already known.
Somayah now looked down the four inches between them, disdain rising. “You think you’ll...what? Impress me? Show me how you’ve succeeded against all my expectations? You think you did?”
Laylah’s heart squeezed. She would have given anything to have what most people had. A mother who was on her side.
“My business is taking off, and I’m marrying the man who’ll be your motherland’s king. I’d say I did.”
Her mother’s glance grew more irritated. “You know what burns me? Since you were born, an Aal Shalaan female anomaly, I dedicated my life to making the most of this miracle, while trying to cure you of your Aal Shalaan defects.”
Laylah’s shoulders slumped further. “Yeah, you wanted to excise my Aal Shalaan half, turn me into a pure Aal Munsoori.”
“I certainly wasn’t after that. Though the Aal Munsooris are my father’s house, the mundane, inept genes in our branch of the family are abundant. Just look at your uncle Nedal and his moronic sons. I always belonged body and soul to my mother’s family and I wanted to polish you into an Aal Refa’ee gem. I wanted to raise you from the second-class princess I was to a queen. I worked tirelessly to plan you a marriage that would put you on a throne.”
Laylah’s lips twisted. “Then you should appreciate the irony here. Though you failed to set me up with those useless weasels whose only asset was their royal blood, I ended up with a man who will be king, because he deserves to be.”
“There’s irony in abundance here, indeed. For you to reject all those men because they wanted you for your Aal Shalaan blood, only to choose a man who wants you for just that.”
Laylah’s heart stumbled. Her mother was assuming...
Of course, she was. She believed that blood was Laylah’s only asset, believed everyone would think the same.
“But those men were honorable enough to declare their intentions. This leftover of the lowest branch of the Aal Munsooris, who is festering with hostility toward anyone higher than he is, is manipulating you, not even leaving you the dignity of knowing you are the chip he needs to become king.”
Laylah’s heart slowed down, as if afraid to take every next beat. “What—what are you talking about?”
Her mother’s gaze grew incredulous. “I always knew you had no insight or foresight. But that you didn’t even suspect him is too much. Let’s review history, shall we? For your first seventeen years Rashid Aal Munsoori didn’t look your way as you followed him around like a lost puppy, begging for a pat on the head.” At Laylah’s sharp intake of breath, her mother let out a bitter laugh. “Of course, I noticed. Everyone did. You were so obvious, it was painful to watch. That constituted the major part of my frustration with you. Especially as I watched him take his pleasure in pretending you didn’t exist, and it only made you humiliate yourself more as you begged for smaller crumbs, until a glance your way was the height of your aspirations.
“Then, like all inferiority-complex-ridden breeds, the first thing he did once he could was bite the hands that offered him friendship and support. He did everything he could to destroy your kin, but being the pathetic thrall that you are, I bet you convinced yourself he must have good or even noble reasons.”
“You know nothing about him, in the past or now.”
“I know far more than you do, you stupid girl. Didn’t you even ask yourself why, after you lived without incident in the United States, you were suddenly targeted for kidnapping? When you were no longer a good candidate for ransom, with half your family in exile and the other half off the royalty A-list? Didn’t you wonder how he happened to be there to save you?”
Her mother’s insinuations sank into her brain. “No...”
Her mother barreled on. “Let me guess what happened next. You were so grateful for his saving you, so thankful for the opportunity to be with him, you clung to him. Did he pretend to reciprocate your feelings right off, or did he dangle the bait of reluctance to stir you into a frenzy? How long did he make you pant after him before he deigned to let you closer? Knowing you, I expect you offered him everything, if only he’d take it. And he ended up taking it all, didn’t he?”
Suddenly her legs lost all cohesion. Laylah collapsed on the nearest couch, feeling like the little girl who used to suffocate under the barrage of her mother’s censure. But the way her mother wielded her contempt now was beyond any cruelty she’d inflicted on Laylah before.
And she wasn’t done. “So how soon did he play his hand? Ask to marry you? I expect he made you sweat it first.” That was the only part her mother had gotten wrong. It was as if she’d been with them, only putting alternate, horrifying interpretations on the actual events. “You didn’t find any of what was happening strange? That after a lifetime of shoving your irrelevance in your face, and after he declared war on your family, he’d explode into your life out of the blue and risk his life for yours? Then, in record time, ask to marry you? What reason did he give for this? What’s the reason you told yourself? That he wants you for you, not like all those ‘weasels’ you so righteously and shrewdly rejected?”
Mute with pain, coming apart with dread, that her mother still had worse to say, Laylah stared helplessly up at her.
“Let me tell you why he’s swallowing your abhorred pill,” her mother hissed. “Because you’re the only remedy for a major ailment he has. A severe lack of Aal Shalaan blood. Only a blood bond with the king of Zohayd through marriage will put him on the throne of Azmahar. And the only available female Aal Shalaan is you.”
That “you” felt like a direct hit to Laylah’s heart.
Her mother bent over her as if to make every word a harder blow. “But he couldn’t come to you with a proposition to use you to forge an alliance with Zohayd. Knowing you, you would have agreed to anything he asked, but he probably couldn’t risk the Aal Shalaans, especially that paranoid madman Amjad, suspecting his motives. So he had to make you think this was real. Since he knows everything about you and your infatuation with him, a little act was all he needed to have you thanking fate for bringing him into your life and blindly swallowing his bait. As you did.”
“Please...stop...”
At her bleeding whisper, her mother straightened. “I have nothing more to add. You can now go sacrifice yourself at the altar of your obsession with this psychopath, let him step on you to the throne of Azmahar then kick you aside once he sits on it. Or maybe he’ll keep you until he uses your womb to create a permanent source of Aal Shalaan blood, one he actually wants.”
Laylah stared at her mother, wounded to her core that Somayah would think nothing of mutilating her own daughter to “cure” her of her “obsession” with Rashid. But...what if anything she’d said was true...?
No. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be...
Her mother interrupted her chaotic thoughts. “Go ask him, Laylah. Look into his eyes as you ask, as he answers. If you’re certain in your heart that nothing I said is true, then just forget about it.”
With that, her mother turned, leaving the cloud of her exclusive fragrance behind as she exited
the room.
Impending loss consumed Laylah. Whatever the outcome of confronting him, she’d lose something vital irrevocably. If her mother turned out to be wrong, Laylah wouldn’t forgive her, losing her forever.
If her mother was right, Laylah would lose everything else.
Twelve
“What’s your game this time, Rashid?”
He groaned at the sound of that voice. Haidar. His once-best friend. Rashid hated him now as much as he’d once loved him.
But he had no time to continue their battles. The pilot of his private jet had said he’d be landing in an hour. Rashid had to be at the airstrip to meet Laylah. She’d said not to come, that she’d be at the palace in half an hour. But he could not wait a half hour longer to see her.
He turned toward Haidar. He was blocking the door of Rashid’s suite in Azmahar’s royal palace where he’d be staying while the wedding preparations were being made.
His careless glance answered Haidar’s black scowl as he passed him on his way out of the room. “Schedule a duel with Ahmad on your way out, Haidar.”
His arm was snagged in Haidar’s grip. “Is marrying Laylah part of your war on us?”
Rashid swung around to face Haidar, snarling. “She has nothing to do with any of that.”
“So what will you have me believe?” Haidar hissed. “That you fell in love with her and that’s why you’re marrying her?”
He shook off Haidar’s hand. “I care nothing about what you believe. Will you see yourself out, or do you need help?”
Haidar blocked his way again, furious, urgent, entreating. “Whatever it is you think you have against me and Jalal, do whatever you want to us. We can take it. But Laylah has always loved you, and if you’re using her, it will destroy her.”
“You think I need to use anyone to trounce you?”
