by Olivia Gates
Her lips spread, bliss humming in her bones. “You mean I knocked you out.”
His indulgence deepened until she drowned in it. “That you surely did. I just woke up. I’ve never slept that well in...probably ever.”
Her hands roamed his face, his head, shoulders, arms and back, reveling in every inch of him. “Anytime. And I want you to take that literally. I want you anytime, all the time.”
“Habibati.” His growl went down her throat as he took her lips, pressed her under him and came fully over her.
And he took her up on her offer, plunging into her without preliminaries, knowing she’d be molten with need for him, would love his urgency, his ferocity. She more than loved it, she was mad for it, the fullness and the power and the domination of him. Just a few unbridled thrusts hurled her into ecstasy all over again. And he joined her in the abyss of pleasure, roaring his completion, jetting his seed inside her until he filled her.
He spoke as soon as she opened her eyes. “All these years, all I wanted was to have you again, have what we had, what kept me starving for you. Now I have you again, and it’s not the same.” Her heart thudded. Did he mean...? “It’s way better. When I never thought there could be better.”
Her heart filled with so much she couldn’t reveal. But she could tell him at least one thing. “It is way better.”
She didn’t go on to say that she believed it would be that way only at first, with six years of frustration behind the initial explosiveness, before everything leveled then tapered off.
Needing to take them away from such disturbing discussions, she asked one thing that had been worrying her since she’d arrived here. “Why didn’t you bring the kitties?”
His laugh revved beneath her ear. “Not even I would bring cats to my wedding night.” He laughed again. “Though I might have considered it if the place had another room. They’re good about staying in another room if I want to be alone...or with you, like that first night back in Judar. But they’re in their favorite new place back in the citadel with all those places to explore.”
Another worry struck her. “What if someone leaves a door to their quarters open? Or a window? Or if one zooms out when someone goes in to feed them or...”
Mohab swept her in a soothing caress from shoulder to buttock. “I’ve left as many paranoid instructions about keeping them safe as your heart can desire.”
Still not satisfied, she said, “Can we check on them?”
“We certainly can. Mizar would even come to the phone. Then I will devour you again, and this time longer and harder, just for being so protective of my kitties.”
She gasped as he turned her onto her back and reached over her for his pants on the ground. “Aren’t they mine, too, now?”
“Oh, yes, they are. They are part of me, and I’ve already given you carte blanche to me and mine.”
And as he called his people to fulfill her wish, she threaded her aching fingers through his silky hair, and wondered.
Did he mean everything he said to her the way it sounded? Did he really feel this way about her? The way she felt about him? Did she even want him to feel that way?
No. She didn’t. She wanted to have this with him, let them enjoy each other as much as they wanted, as much as they could and nothing else. For six long—and way too short—months.
Twelve
“Can you believe six months have passed so fast?”
Jala felt the smile beginning to sink its claws into her flesh as she handed Sette to Ala’a, Kamal and Aliyah’s five-year-old son. It gave her something to do so she wouldn’t answer Aliyah’s exclamation.
For what could she say? That there was nothing else she’d thought about every minute of these six months. That the days were passing so horribly fast? And now that the six months were up, she felt as if her very life was, too?
Aliyah threw herself beside Jala on the couch, grinning at her son’s retreating back as he rushed to his sister in the other room with the last piece in his treasure, the tolerant Sette, having now collected all four cats.
“I thought once I got the kids four cats, too, they’d stop demanding to visit you to see yours every week, but no...your foursome are their first loves.”
“One more thing to thank the cats for, then, making me see you all much more frequently than I would have without them.”
Aliyah laughed. “We all thought we loved cats, but you and Mohab put us to shame. Last time I saw Mohab he said you’ll adopt dozens more as soon as you settle your schedules and make the citadel your base, because cats hate traveling.”
Every word fell on her like a blow so that she almost gasped in relief when Aliyah’s phone rang.
Thankful for the respite, she contemplated her sister-in-law. Aliyah was her very antithesis, glowing with health and happiness, her world built on the unshakable foundation of Kamal’s love and of her certain future with him. While she... She’d been counting down the days she had left with Mohab and was withering inside. She’d taken to putting on makeup to prevent outward signs from showing.
Watching Aliyah melt with love as she talked to Kamal, she couldn’t be happier for them, but at the same time, it made her own despondence deepen until it suffocated her.
With a last intimate whisper, Aliyah ended the call. “Kamal sends hugs and kisses. But insisted I tell you that your husband conned him.”
Alarm burst inside her chest.
Aliyah went on. “He says Mohab said he doesn’t know the first thing about dealing with the executive realities of running a kingdom, especially one that is growing and changing as much and as fast as Jareer. He now believes Mohab’s protestations were just total pretense so he’d get him involved—not because he needs his help, but to get on his good side, so he’d help him have you, and now continues to rely on his input for your sake, too.”
“I don’t believe this is true....”
Aliyah waved her hand, her smile widening. “Kamal said you’d think that, but he knows a man who’d do anything for his woman when he sees one. And take it from me, that ‘twin’ of yours has...extensive experience and insight in that arena.”
Any other woman would have considered this everything worth living for. Knowing the man she loved with all her being felt the same. But having someone corroborate the depth of Mohab’s involvement, which she’d been becoming more certain of with each passing minute, only sank her deeper into despair.
“Kamal would have respected the hell out of Mohab for achieving what no one believed could be done around here, let alone in this time frame. But the fact that he has you at the top of his priorities makes Kamal feel progressively more smug that he pegged Mohab right from the first meeting, when he came proposing peace between our kingdoms...and offering it all as your mahr.”
Time did keep proving that she and Kamal were identical. For it had substantiated that she’d pegged Mohab right, too, from that first second she’d laid eyes on him. That he was everything she would ever want in a man, everything she could—and did—love, respect and admire. And that everything that happened to make her believe otherwise had been just tragic mistakes and misunderstandings.
Contrary to what she’d tried to convince herself of in the years of alienation, that Mohab was unfeeling by necessity, he actually turned off his feelings on demand only in his work. In his personal life, with her, she’d never known anyone who was more in touch with his emotions and so generous with demonstrating them. And it had been killing her to realize how she’d misjudged him, what she’d done to him. What she’d have to do still.
Time had also proved she was a superlative act
ress. Not even Mohab, Kamal and now Aliyah, the people who loved her most, suspected there was a thing wrong with her.
Demonstrating her obliviousness, Aliyah went on, “I think you’re making one hell of a queen, too. It’s like you’re made to rule this specific place beside your man, your every skill and quality just what it needs. I’m so impressed by the originality of your social and educational projects and the effects they’re already having. I need you to teach me how to translate that to Judar.”
And she could take no more. “Please, Aliyah, stop.”
The pain in her voice had her sister-in-law sitting up in alarm. “What’s wrong, Jala?”
Everything, she wanted to scream.
Up until Aliyah’s visit today, she’d been escaping making a decision, thinking she could go on for a while more, maybe another month, maybe another six.
But after what Aliyah had told her earlier, so offhandedly, believing it would be nothing to concern her, she’d been feeling her world had already ended.
She swallowed past the burning coal that used to be her larynx. “I want to tell you something, Aliyah. And I need you to make Kamal understand that it is in no way Mohab’s fault....”
* * *
“How are my darlings today?”
Mohab walked into their bedroom, taking off the band that held his hair in that severe ponytail, his smile flooding the soothingly lit chamber.
By the time he reached the bed where Jala was sitting with the four cats arranged all around her, he’d stripped off his jacket and shirt. Then he threw himself down beside her, grinning, spreading himself for his cats to climb all over him, stroking and kissing them. After a purring storm interlude, he turned his focus to her.
Before she succumbed and attacked him in her desperation for his feel and passion, he preempted her, dragged her down to him, surging up to take her lips as she tumbled across him.
Knowing, now that the kissing had started, neither Mohab nor Jala would want them around, the cats jumped off the bed and prowled out to the quarters’ farthest sitting room.
“Habibati, wahashteeni...” Mohab groaned into her lips as he swept her around and bore down on her.
I missed you, too, my love almost burst onto her lips. But as she’d done for the past six months, she swallowed back the endearments and the confessions until they’d scarred her forever with the intensity of their need for release, with the necessity of withholding them.
Mohab had them both naked in seconds, and she groped for him, opened herself for his possession as he cupped her buttocks and thrust inside her. This fever was a continuation of last night’s conflagration, no need for buildup, just an instantaneous and ferocious plunge into delirium. He was soon pounding inside her, his force and momentum building along with her cries of abandon until it all exploded into a blaze of intensity. She remained conscious this time as he collapsed on top of her, his weight completing the magic and delivering the final injury.
When she couldn’t take it anymore, she fidgeted beneath him. He rose off her, separating their bodies. For the last time. As she had to make it.
She took the plunge. “The six months are up tomorrow.”
A slow smile spread on his heartbreakingly beautiful face. “So they are. How about extending for another six months?” He plucked her lips. “Then another?” Another pull, harder, deeper. “And so on and on?” His teeth sank into her trembling flesh, sending shards of pleasure and heartache splintering through her. Then he pulled back, grinning. “These constant extensions might be a great idea to renew the novelty and keep the fire raging...if we needed help in those departments. Which we don’t. None what...so...ever.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“So you’re going for the permanent version straight away. I approve.”
“I am actually reinforcing the terms of our marriage. I agreed to six months, then it’s over. As it is.”
He stilled, the smile faltering on his lips, draining from his eyes. “What do you mean?”
And she smashed her own heart. “I mean I want a divorce.”
* * *
The sense of suffocating déjà vu closed in on Mohab.
This couldn’t be happening again. Not this time. This time he was certain of what she felt for him. Of what they had.
Numb, he sat up. “Joke about anything but that, Jala.” When she made no response as she, too, sat up, he tried to find a sign of mischief in her eyes. There was none. “You can’t be serious!”
“I am. Ermi alai yameen al talaag.”
The oath of divorce. She was asking him to “throw” it at her, ending their marriage.
Ya Ullah...she wasn’t joking.
A bewildered groan escaped him. “Why? Why are you doing this? Again?”
“I’m only doing what we agreed on.”
“But you can’t want the same thing you did six months ago. Just last night, just now.... Ya Ullah...you’ve never been more incendiary in my arms.”
“You know I could never resist my desire for you. But I have to now. It has to end.”
“It wasn’t only desire. You love me.”
“I never said I did.”
He opened his mouth to roar a contradiction, then it hit him. Skewered him right through the heart. She’d never said it. He’d only assumed she did. From her actions and desire.
He couldn’t accept it. Wouldn’t. “Even if you don’t feel for me what I feel for you, if you want me that much, why leave me?” She only averted her eyes, and the expanding shock shredded his insides. “And if you’d already decided to leave me all along, what was last night and just now all about? Were you giving me one last ride before you walked away?”
She rose from the bed, so slowly, as if she was afraid she’d come apart if she moved any faster. “Let’s not make this any worse than it has to be, Mohab.”
Again. Just as she’d said almost seven years ago when she was leaving him the first time.
Paralyzed, he watched her reach for the dress he’d yanked off her half an hour ago. When she’d been his. She put it on now, no longer his, had said she’d never really been.
Then she was walking away.
At the door she turned. “I’ll go to Judar until you conclude the procedures. Please, don’t make any further personal contact. Goodbye, Mohab.”
* * *
“Did you put her up to this?
Najeeb rose as Mohab burst into his office, placed both palms flat on his desk, his pose confrontational. “I assume you’re talking about Jala.”
“It won’t take much to snap the last tethers of my sanity, Najeeb. Then I won’t be responsible for what I do.”
“King of Jareer or not, you’re on my turf. Even if you weren’t, you don’t threaten me and walk away in one piece.”
“I’m not threatening you, I’m promising you. If you’re the reason why Jala left me...”
Najeeb straightened, a vicious smile of satisfaction spreading on his face. “So she finally did. Good for her. She should have never been with you in the first place.”
“I swear, Najeeb...” Mohab’s apoplectic surge drained. “You mean you had no idea she did, or would?”
“Do you have such a low opinion of the woman you married, you think someone can put her up to anything, let alone something like this?”
“No. But...” Anger deserted him, leaving him enervated with desperation and confusion, and he sank onto the nearest armch
air and dropped his head in his hands, darkness closing in on him. “I don’t know. I can’t think anymore. I can’t find a reason why she left me and I was groping for anything, even if it was insane or impossible. I just want to understand, so I can do something about it.” He raised his eyes to Najeeb, who came to stand over him, his gaze pitiless. “I have to stop her, Najeeb. I can’t live without her.”
“Ya Ullah, if I didn’t know better, I would have believed you without question, would have run out right now and tried everything I could to bring her back to you. But I know, Mohab. So stop your act right now. Now that Jala will no longer be your wife, it releases me from my promise to her.”
“What promise?”
“Not to be your enemy. But now I will be, Mohab. I knew you were manipulating her when you announced your engagement out of the blue, but I couldn’t object since I realized she was making a decision knowing full well that you were. Then it seemed as if your marriage was real, and happy, and I no longer knew what to think.” He narrowed his eyes to dangerous slits. “But if she left you, then you must have dealt her another unspeakable injury. And for that alone, Mohab, no matter what it takes, I will destroy you.”
“B’Ellahi...what are you talking about?”
“About how you set her up in the past. She made me promise never to confront you, wanted the ugly page turned and forgotten. I honored her request till this moment.”
Mohab shook his head. “I know you found out and told her, and that was one of the reasons she left me then. She told me everything the very first night I saw her again. It’s why I thought it might have been something you said to her that made her end it this time, too.” He exhaled roughly. “This...and the dread that never went away—that I did come between you in the past, that your feelings for each other went beyond friendship....”
Najeeb wrenched his shoulder, his face contemptuous. “You think Jala could have had emotions for me and still came to your bed? Betraying us both?”
