by Olivia Gates
“Then is this about the throne? If you’re trying to complete the last corner in your campaign through her, I’ll save you the trouble. I’ll make the battle unnecessary. I’ll withdraw from the race. I can make Jalal do the same. Just don’t do this to her.”
Something snapped inside him. He hefted Haidar off the floor, slammed him into the wall, a beast’s snarl issuing from his depths. “I will say this once, Haidar. I have always wanted Laylah, but now I find no reason and no way to exist without her. I would rather die, or worse, than hurt her. So if you dare insinuate otherwise, I won’t fight you anymore, I’ll finish you.”
Haidar’s fingers dug into his hands hard enough to penetrate his red haze of aggression, extricating himself from his rabid grasp, his eyes narrowing, as if to gauge Rashid’s sincerity.
Seeming convinced, Haidar exhaled. “With you turning all Comte De Monte Cristo on us, I feared there might be no line you wouldn’t cross. I also thought you’d never fall in love. B’Ellahi, the only girlfriend we ever heard about turned out to be fictional. For years you misled us into thinking you picked that inferior college to be near said girlfriend, not because it was what you could afford. And then, Laylah kept trying to get you to notice her, and you never showed any indication you even saw her.”
“Just as I couldn’t afford a better college, I couldn’t afford to look at her.” His heart convulsed. “I still can’t believe I have her now.”
Exasperation filled Haidar’s face. “This pride of yours—this pathologically huge sense of honor—it stopped you from taking everything that was yours. Our support, Laylah’s love. And it made you saddle yourself with your bastard of a guardian’s debts, so that you derailed your whole life to pay them off, without help from anyone.”
“But when I really needed help, and it clashed with your best interests, you didn’t care if I lived or died.” At Haidar’s bewildered glance, he plowed on. “So don’t think I will spare you now because you’re Laylah’s cousin.”
Still looking confused, Haidar smirked. “Not even if she asks you to? If you love her as much as you claim, you’ll do whatever she wants. Like I would, for Roxanne.”
“I am bound to obey her, even if it means my honor and my life. But if she does ask, I might tell her the truth about you. She would withdraw her intervention if she knew what you did.”
Haidar exploded. “And what the hell did I do, damn you?”
“You damned me.”
At his bellow, Haidar’s stupefaction felt real.
Was it possible Haidar didn’t know what Rashid was referring to?
No. No time to dwell on the possibility of anything this disturbing, this huge. He had to get to Laylah. Only she mattered.
He pushed past Haidar, making it clear there would be no detaining him this time. “Now my salvation is waiting for me, and you’re keeping me from her. I’d decimate you for that alone.”
The moment he cleared the door, his heart stopped.
Laylah. A dozen feet from his door.
After the first drench of unreasoning horror that she might have heard anything, he ran to sweep her into his arms.
“Habibati...” he groaned against her temple, her cheeks, her lips. “How are you here already?”
“We landed earlier.”
“And Zaaher didn’t tell me!”
“At my insistence, so don’t you dare take this up with him.”
His heartstrings vibrated with the delight of having her in his arms again. “To’moreeni—as you command.”
“It’s creepy how you have Rashid doing your bidding, Laylah.” Haidar stopped by their side, dropped a kiss on her head and met Rashid’s incensed gaze with a calm glance. Rashid’s fury rose as Laylah returned Haidar’s smile and kiss. “It’s like seeing a shark doing tricks in a swimming pool. Who knew you had it in you? But keep up the good work, ya bent al amm. Holding the reins of such an unstoppable force can come in handy. For us.”
Rashid bit back something demolishing. He’d never expose her to tension. Which might mean sparing Haidar and Jalal, after all.
He’d think about that later. All he could think of now was that he had her back.
Uncaring anymore that the palace dwellers would see him taking her to his quarters, the moment she said goodbye to Haidar, he rushed back there with her in his arms. He told himself he’d never let her go again.
* * *
Laylah clung to Rashid as if she’d never let him go, feeling reclaimed from the hell of doubts and dread.
Before she could say anything, he opened his mouth on her neck, suckled her as if assimilating her into himself, growling those extravagant endearments he’d been deluging her in of late.
Fireworks exploded in her blood as he put her down, ground the steel of his erection into her belly, showing her she only had to wrap herself around him and he’d fill her emptiness.
She forgot everything but this, him, them, like that.
“Rashid, take me...”
At her urgency, he snatched her dress up, spreading her thighs around his hips. He pressed her against something that rattled as he freed himself, tore her panties out of the way then slid her up to scale his length. She felt the hot hardness of him at her entrance, keened, disintegrating with the firebomb of hunger he’d detonated inside her. Obeying her plea for hard and fast, he let her crash down on him as he thrust up, impaling her.
It took no more than feeling him inside her—filling her beyond her capacity, embedding at the gate of her womb—to shatter her. She screamed as an orgasm unleashed all her tension, squeezed her around him inside and out.
Igniting with her, he fed her convulsions with thrust after thrust, mingling his growls with her shrieks. “Aih, khodeeni kolli, eeji alai—take all of me, come all over me.”
Pleasure raged on until he roared and slammed into her, the pulse of his release wringing her of sensations. She sobbed, her flesh quivering around him.
Possessing her slack mouth, he filled her breathless lungs with his ragged breath, rocking gently inside her, satisfying her to her last tremor.
“Awhashteeni...bejnoon...”
I missed you...insanely...
Her head flopped on his shoulder as she tried to get her nerves to spark. She needed to hold on to his reality, his magic, to ward off the doubts. “It’s been...less than...two days.”
“Kateer. Tw’hasheeni wenti gossad aini.”
Too much. I miss you when you’re right before my eyes.
Could all this...sincerity be a lie?
He strode with her wrapped around him to the bathroom. He lowered her gently on pristine white marble before reluctantly, carefully, withdrawing from her depths.
She moaned at his beauty and caring as he kneeled in front of her, taking care of the evidence of their lovemaking. Then he rose to his feet, muscles rippling under his shirt as he struggled to stuff his erection into his pants, his emotions an open book for her to read in his eyes.
But how could that be the truth? The mainstay of Rashid’s character was his reticence. How could he have become so...uninhibited? Because of her overwhelming effect on him? Or because it was easy to say and pretend what he didn’t feel?
Which explanation sounded more plausible?
The answer, validated by the evidence of history, was so incontrovertible, her stomach heaved. The dream she’d been living in quivered on the verge of plunging into a nightmare.
It was no use trying to ignore this. Doubt was poisoning her, snuffing out her life. She had to know for sure.
What if he denied it? Would she ever feel secure again? Would the doubts ever go away?
Yes. They would. Her mother had no idea who Rashid was. She was projecting her own end-justifies-the-means beliefs on him.
Rashid would tell her the truth. And she’d believe him.
She urged his head up as he rained kisses and words of worship all over her face and neck.
His glazed-with-passion, heavy-with-indulgence eyes met hers.
<
br /> Feeling like she was about to jump off a cliff, she asked, “Do you need to marry me to become king of Azmahar?”
His face shut down. But not before she saw it.
The alarm. The dismay. Of premature exposure.
Everything her mother had said was true.
* * *
Rashid stared at Laylah, feeling his heart had burst.
So this was it. What he’d been dreading. The catastrophe that would end everything.
Every shred of control he’d been struggling for years to muster suddenly drained away. The chaos that was always hovering at the edge of his awareness crashed into his mind, unraveling it...
No. He couldn’t afford to surrender to the volatility that threatened to swallow him whole. He had to contain this.
Then he opened his mouth, and his voice sounded like he felt, desperate, out-of-control. “Is...is that what your mother told you?”
Her eyes, for the first time ever, were a void, expressing nothing. “I want you to tell me.”
His hands dug into her shoulders, feeling if he didn’t cling to her, she’d disappear. “I don’t care about the throne anymore. I only care about you. You must believe that.”
He had no idea if that helped or hurt his case. There was nothing in her expression to guide him.
“But it’s true that, no matter if you’re the best candidate, without an alliance with Zohayd, you won’t claim the throne?”
She needed the truth, and he’d give it to her. He’d explain how things had started, how they’d changed. She’d understand.
Maybe it was for the best this had come out, so he’d stop self-consuming with worry, so total disclosure would leave no possibility for anything going wrong or coming between them.
He still couldn’t breathe due to anxiety. “Azmaharians believe they need Zohayd’s alliance to survive. I always believed this dependence on Zohayd was toxic, and intended to make Azmahar fully independent if I became king. But I was left in no doubt that to become king I had to form a connection with Zohayd. The only way I could rival Haidar’s and Jalal’s blood relation to Zohayd’s king was to form one of my own with him.”
“And the only way was through marriage.” Her voice was as expressionless as her face. “Since I am the closest thing Amjad has to a sister, and I happen to be the only available female Aal Shalaan, anyway, you had no choice but to marry me.”
Hearing her analyze the plan he’d once weaved turned his stomach. And that was before she went on.
“So you planned to hunt me down, pretend you didn’t find me as abhorrent as you did my family and con me into marriage. Once you impregnated me and your heir replaced me as a perpetual blood bond, you’d discard the worthless creature you believed me to be.”
The accuracy of her projections drenched him with desperation. “Whatever I thought or planned, everything changed from that first night. That first hour.”
A faraway look came into her eyes, as if she was looking back into that time. “It was no coincidence that you were there that night. I felt your presence for weeks before that.” His choking silence corroborated her assumption. “You were studying me, like a hunter would his prey, finding out my habits, my haunts, to use this knowledge and my obliviousness to get to me. Once you made ‘accidental’ contact, you used the data you gathered to manipulate me into entering your trap willingly, even eagerly. As I did.”
Hot needles invaded his heart. “That was true, until you were attacked. Everything changed from then on. Everything.”
“You mean the attack you planned? The rescue you enacted?”
He almost doubled over with her accusation.
This was beyond his worst fears. That she’d think...think...
Her next words had protests recoiling in his chest, hacking into it. “The ironic thing is, you didn’t need to set me up. If you, of all people, had offered me a marriage of convenience, I would have jumped at the opportunity. That was how much I wanted you. I would have agreed to your cold deal and dreamed of one day melting your heart, of making you see me as more than a means to your end. I would have probably realized the mistake I had made sooner rather than later, but you would have gotten what you wanted by then. Just think about it—the truth would have served your purpose far better than this charade.”
“There was no charade,” he groaned, desperation taking over. “Every moment with you was the only real thing I ever had...”
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, suffocating him. “But you couldn’t risk my family, especially Amjad, suspecting your motives, so you had to make me believe in your authenticity. But even with an heir binding you forever to the Aal Shalaans, you wouldn’t have risked a falling-out with them when you discarded me.” Her reddened eyes seemed to melt. “Did you plan another attack to get rid of me after I’d served my purpose?”
He’d taken a bullet in the gut before. He’d been showered in shrapnel. He’d been tortured beyond the limits of endurance and sanity. Her projections hurt, damaged him, far more.
He couldn’t even shout his denial, could only choke his horror. “Ya Ullah ya Laylah, laa—don’t even utter such ugliness...”
Those eyes that had bathed him in the balm of their belief, drilled into him now with bitterness and betrayal. “Ugliness is what you did to me, what you plunged me into. Now I’ll never feel anything untainted by its sordidness again.”
Disintegrating with the need to ward off the pain he’d inflicted on her, he extended a trembling hand to her. “You won’t believe anything I say now, but when you’re over the first rage and disillusion, remember what we shared...”
“We shared nothing.” Her voice was thick with disdain. “Nothing but your deceit and exploitation. But I can’t even blame you. I’m the one who threw myself at you. You only obliged and jerked me around. I deserve everything you did to me.”
And it was as if a dam broke. Sobs racked her body, tears ran in torrents down her cheeks.
“Y-you want me to remember? I do. Every thought and emotion as I loved you...craved you...and longed to be there for you. Every sensation as I touched you...as you touched me, moved inside me...until I felt you were part of me. How you must have despised me for...how easy I was, how cheaply I came...”
Her pain crushed his heart.
But his pain didn’t matter. Only hers did. He wanted to absorb her agony.
At his imploring touch, she tore herself away, quaking on sobs he feared would tear her insides apart. “I spent my whole life looking up to you... I thought you were made of honor, of integrity...that if there was a haven in this world for me...it would be you. But not even those who I thought would have raped and killed me could have...debased me like you did.”
He fell to his knees before her, insanity clawing at his mind, begging. “Don’t let pain take you that far, ya habibati, I beg you. Rage and rave and slash me apart...but don’t make me a demon when I’m only a pathetic fool. I did devise the plot, but I didn’t see it through...”
“You did,” she wailed. “That first night—ya Ullah—how did you do it? Anticipating me...adjusting your response on the fly to keep me hurtling...deeper into your trap. You had me in your bed in hours...thinking it was at my insistence. You stayed up all night, didn’t you? It was the only time you forced yourself to stay beside me...burning to close the deal. You must have wanted to strangle me when I...forced you to pretend to court me before I returned with you to Zohayd so ecstatic, I managed to fool...even Amjad for you. You would have seen it through to the end...if I hadn’t found out the truth.”
“That’s not the truth.” His protest strangled as she stumbled away from his begging hands only to collapse a foot away, ending up with her streaming face pressed against the wall, her whole body quaking. “But whatever else you think me guilty of, I beg you, believe I had nothing to do with the attack.”
“Do you know that my earliest memory is of you?”
He doubled over with the surprise confession.
Her
sobs subsided by degrees. “It was my fourth birthday. You were standing behind Haidar, wearing light blue jeans and a black T-shirt. I thought you were the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. As I blew out the candles I made one wish, for you to be my friend. I’ve made no other wish since.
“I idolized you, saw a wealth of beauty in everything about you, even the way you kept your distance. I thought we shared so much, both of us outsiders, with no one who loved us most or put us first. I lived dreaming of our being each other’s allies against all odds. Now all my memories are contaminated with the truth, and my past wasted in loving a figment of my imagination. My future will be consumed in regret over every moment and emotion I wasted on you.”
He crawled toward her, the ground burning him worse than the sands he’d once dragged himself over for days to a salvation that kept receding. Her feeble resistance died as his arms shook around her, taking her drenched face against his heaving chest.
“Don’t say that...don’t think it and make it real in your mind. Don’t do this to yourself, to us. I never lied about my feelings...”
Her head rolled against his shoulder, her eyes meeting his. For seconds he saw his Laylah, felt he might reach her again.
Then she whispered, “I would have laid my life down for you, Rashid. Now I would rather die than see you again.”
She pushed away from him, stumbled up to her feet.
Looking down at him as he remained on his knees, demolished, her eyes were as dead as her voice. “Wishing you the heartbreak you inflicted on me wouldn’t work when you have no heart. So I’ll settle for crippling you like you crippled me. I’ll make sure you lose the only thing that matters to you—the throne.”
Thirteen
“So how did you manage to lose that girl?”
Amjad’s sarcasm scraped across Rashid’s every screaming nerve.
He turned slowly toward Amjad. He’d been doing everything slowly since he’d followed Laylah back to Zohayd less than a day after she’d left him in Azmahar. Any sudden moves might set him off.
His trigger quivered as Amjad sauntered toward him from his office on the ground floor of the royal palace of Zohayd, his signature mockery hitting him between the eyes.
