by Sophia Lynn
Elise saw Nadim the closest he had ever been to angry when, two weeks into this new treatment, she asked if perhaps he was getting tired of her, if this arrangement was over.
To her shock, he had risen up like a sleeping volcano, his eyes as black as midnight.
"No," he had growled. "No, I will damn well tell you when it is over!"
Elise found herself pinned against the wall, his hand closed over her right wrist like a cuff, his form looming over her. There was such a darkness to him then that she should have been afraid, but instead she only ached for him.
"Then why?" she asked softly. "Why will you not touch me? What am I here for?"
She raised her hand, and his eyes narrowed. Instead of pushing him away or striking him, however, she simply lay her hand along his cheek, touching the warm skin the way that she wanted to for what felt like an eternity.
For a moment, she thought that the strange chill that lay between them was broken. In that moment, he looked like the man that had given her such pleasure and such laughter in the weeks before the sailing trip. Elise could have cried with relief, but then he stepped back, his eyes like black ice.
"You are here because you are being paid to be here," he said, and Elise gasped in pain at the coldness and contempt in his voice. "Remember that, and don't ask any other questions."
The pain from his words flooded through her so hot and so fast that she barely registered it when he turned and walked away. It almost would have been better if the door to his study had slammed, but instead it closed with a finality that felt as if it might have broken her heart.
I am glad I am not crying, she thought distantly. God, that would be humiliating.
Then it occurred to her that crying was far less humiliating than what was happening now, and she ran out of the house entirely.
It was a surprisingly gray day for Omorphia. The sky retained barely a trace of blue, and there was a wind that blew in from the north. When Elise came down to the beach, she felt the wind as a stinging force, and she welcomed it. The sting and the feel of the water against her bare feet made her more alert than she had been, forced some of the grief out of her only to replace it with a wild fury that she could barely contain.
She realized that she still held the red pebble he had given her tight in her hand, the one he hadn't pinned to the wall. She had to force her hand to open so that she could look at it, and she turned it over in her fingertips as if she had never seen it before. She had been holding on to it so tightly that it had left a small dent in her palm.
It glittered in the weak light of day, beautiful and subtle, and it reminded her of a warmth that was beginning to feel more and more like a distant memory.
Her fingers closed around it again, and she could feel her arm rising almost out of its own volition. Elise could see the next moment almost as if it had already happened. She could see her arm describing a perfect arc, the red pebble flying from her fingers until it disappeared again into the sea. Perhaps it would be shattered between grinding rocks. Perhaps it would be buried. Perhaps in another ten, twenty, a hundred years, it would wash up on the shore again, and a man would offer it to a woman whose heart had been torn from her body.
She closed her fingers over the stone, and after a moment, she slid it into her pocket.
Elise realized that she wasn't ready to lose it yet. Someday soon, someday very soon, she might, but right now, she needed something else.
Elise's voice had always been her outlet. At times, it had been her weapon and her source of self-defense, and now she used it to its full stretch.
It might have started out as a song, but soon enough, it became a scream. There was no one on the beach, no one that she might have bothered or frightened or disturbed, and so she simply screamed her rage and her confusion to the ocean.
She screamed for the anger that was coursing through her, for the confusion that refused to resolve into anything that made sense, for the grief of what it felt she had lost.
In this primal moment, there was no way to pretend that it was not a loss. She had tried to push the feelings that she had for Nadim off as a crush or an infatuation, and now she realized that that had never worked. She had never managed to keep it contained, to keep it as boxed up as it should have been.
What was growing in her heart right now was love, love for the law of Hadara, for Sheikh Nadim himself, and her scream contained the unfairness of it, and the anger at herself as well for allowing such a thing to happen. It was love for the man who had just told her to know her place while preventing her from knowing anything about it, and it was terrible.
Finally, Elise dropped to her knees in the surf, her throat raw. She hadn't screamed like that in years, if ever, and she had a moment where she wondered if she had damaged her throat.
The idea of having damaged her throat would have thrown her into a panic a few months ago, but right now, Elise had been thrown into such a torrent of emotion that it felt very distant. Right now, all she could do was simply sit in the oddly chilly water, staring up at the sky, and pant. Out of the emptiness of her still mind, a thought rose up. It was as clear as crystal, and it rang like a perfectly pitched note.
This isn't fair.
And then it was followed with an even clearer thought.
He can't do this to me...
She rose from the water, pausing to wring out her dress. Even as she did so, the fabric slapped wetly against her thighs, but she didn't care.
Instead, Elise walked with great deliberation to the cottage. When she got inside the house, she left damp muddy footprints behind her, but she decided that she could clean that up later, if there was a later.
Elise was almost pleased to find that Nadim's study door was still locked against her. It would make this so much easier.
So he thought that she was a girl who could simply be shouted into submission, as if she were some cringing thing that would bow and scrape and take whatever moods he felt like offering.
Well, guess who's got another think coming.
She looked around and saw a small blue lamp sitting on the small table nearby. She picked it up and hefted it in her hand for a moment. Elise allowed herself to appreciate the density of the lamp's ceramic base, and with an almost casual tug, pulled the plug out of the wall.
Earlier, she had felt as if she were dropped into a tornado of fear and pain and anger. Those feelings were still there. They had died down to a subtle roar that told her that she needed to act. She couldn't let anyone treat her like this. They weren't going to get in her way, however, and she appreciated that.
With a smooth overhand motion, she threw the lamp with as great a force as she could manage, and the lamp crashed into the door with satisfying smash before it fell into a thousand pieces.
***
Nadim was shaking as he turned away from Elise. His fists were clenched into fists, not because he was angry, but because he was afraid. He was terrified that if he let up on the iron control that he had had to develop around her, he would turn back.
He would sweep her up in his arms, giving into the craving that felt as if it had pervaded his entire body, and all of the words that he had been holding back would spill out.
In that moment, looking down into her eyes that looked like spring, he was on the verge of losing it all. In that moment, he was ready to abdicate his throne, run away from everything that had ever mattered to him or to his family. He was ready to turn away from everything his dynasty had ever built and the people who were depending on him to be the leader they needed, all for the beautiful girl who quivered in front of him.
The day she had looked back at him on the ship, he had felt something fly out of him and rest in her. It was a permanent thing, a thing that he had no control over. It was his heart, and Nadim realized that however they had started, he was now completely and irrevocably in love with this young woman.
Perhaps it had started when he first heard her sing, or perhaps it had started when she had rescued him
in the alley. He was at least fairly certain he was already in love with her when they kissed for the first time.
Nadim realized that he loved Elise and that it would destroy him. He could not leave his throne and his people. He could not marry her. He could not allow her to leave him. All he could do was stay in this strange, dark place.
He dropped his head into his hands, and for a moment, he actually thought that he might weep, the first time he had done so since he was a little boy. He sat there for a long while, staring blankly at the wall.
Then there was an almighty crash on the door, and he leaped up, every nerve stinging with alarm.
Heedless of the danger, ready to confront rogue agents, kidnappers, or robbers, he strode to the door and threw it open...
Only to be confronted by a beautiful young woman in a soaked blue dress, regarding him with green eyes that glittered like ice.
"What the hell are you doing?" he blurted out, and she smiled at him. It had absolutely no humor in it, and he caught a glimpse of teeth in it as well. She was utterly dry-eyed, and her strength radiated it from every inch of her.
"I want to talk," she said, every word dropping from her lips like a bit of glass. "Be careful, there's a broken lamp there."
He looked down in surprise to see the source of the crash, a lamp that had been shattered against the door. He was wearing shoes, but he could see how wickedly sharp the ceramic shards that lay strewn between them were. It made her own bare feet look distressingly vulnerable, and he glanced up at her with a scowl.
"What do you think you are doing?" he asked again, and she laughed.
"I am getting some answers," she responded smoothly. "I want to know what I am here for."
He scowled, for the moment glad he had locked his emotions down so tightly. Otherwise, it would be impossible to deal with this glittering woman who seemed to radiate anger.
"I told you," he growled. "You are here because I am paying you for it..."
"Right, like I'm a whore or some kind of concubine or mistress," she said, and even if he flinched from the words, she didn't. With a brief pang, he wondered if those had been the words she had been using to describe their relationship in her head. Uttered out loud, they seemed terribly ugly.
"But here's the thing, Nadim," she continued, "I believe that whores and concubines actually go to bed with their men. They're used for pleasure at least, and in my case, I'm being used to get you your sons."
"You're not..." Nadim bit off the rest of that sentence. God, was that truly how she saw herself? She didn't pay any attention to his interruption, continuing with a smooth flow of words and a voice that never shook at all.
"However, once again, I may be a little naïve about how royalty does things, but I seem to think that if you want sons, there are certain activities that are not negotiable, or perhaps we should be talking about more scientific matters?"
She shook her head, and at last, her composure seemed shaken.
"Why, Nadim?" she demanded. "What changed? What did I do to make you so angry with me?"
She at last managed to shock an answer out of him.
"I'm not angry with you..."
"Yes, you are!" Elise shouted. "Yes, you are! Don't bother to deny it! You're angry with me, or you hate me, or for some reason, you've become too disgusted to want to touch me, something! My god, I hope it's anger, because I don't think I could bear the rest of it!"
"Elise..."
Something in her broke because she shook her head. When he reached for her, she shrugged him off violently and started to run past him to the bedrooms beyond.
She had barely gone a step before he realized that she meant to run straight through the blast radius of the lamp, straight into the sharp ceramic shards that would rip her feet to ribbons. Without thinking at all, he stepped to her and scooped her up, almost in one motion. She was so small and light that she felt like a cat in his arms, and after a single moment of shock, she fought like one too.
"No!" Elise shouted. "No, put me the hell down! You don't get to...to ignore me like you can't stand me for weeks and then manhandle me like I'm some kind of prize of war whenever you like!"
"That's where you're wrong," he growled, walking forward. "I can do whatever I want with you. As you just reminded me, I am paying for the privilege, remember?"
"Goddamn you!" she cried. "You're a savage. I can't believe that you would do this to me! Why do you hate me so much? Why are you so angry? What did I do?"
The questions hammered against him even as she struggled, even as he kicked the door to the bedroom open. When they had first come to Omorphia, it had been a place of great pleasure and laughter. Over the last few weeks, the pleasure and laughter had gone, leaving a painful coldness in its wake. Suddenly, Nadim could understand her fury when he had taken it away.
When he felt her lovely body twisting against him, when she looked up at him with green eyes that were brilliant with fury and passion, Nadim's heart broke and so did his will. Without anything in his mind but the need to be with her, he slammed his mouth down against hers. There was a deep ravenous hunger to it that did not care about pleasure, hers or his. Instead, all it cared about was being close to Elise, stopping her from being any farther away from him than she was already.
She uttered a cry into his mouth, and then they were at the bed. She gasped when he threw her down onto the mattress, and then he reached down to rip her dress from her shoulders. The sound she made was a cry that could have been mistaken for protest, but then she looked up at him, her eyes nearly black, and licked her lips.
“Don't stop,” she said, her voice shaking. “Or have you lost your nerve?”
Chapter Eleven
For a moment, when Nadim had ripped her dress from her shoulders, Elise saw Nadim freeze. She could see the flash of guilt there, the teetering moment where he might have stopped, even run away from her in shame, but she couldn't allow that, not when they were so close, not when he was actually touching her again.
When she uttered her challenge however, she could see his back straighten and his shoulders square up. His eyes narrowed, and she knew that she had pushed him past the point of no return.
“Take off the rest,” he growled, and she allowed a victorious smile to play across her lips as she did just that.
Elise had to admit that her time with Nadim had been educational in many ways. She had grown in confidence when it came to what they did in bed. Though the past few weeks had shaken her confidence intensely, she regained all of it when she saw the hunger that leaped in his eyes as he looked at her.
Though there was a small voice in her head that told her that she had to hurry, that at any moment, he might stop and tell her no, he didn't want her after all, she ignored. That was the voice of fear, and she had never listened to it much. Since she had started spending her days with the sheikh of Hadara, she had paid it even less attention.
Elise could feel the leashed fury behind Nadim's restraint, but she allowed it to simply build the heat inside her. She let it work on her as she knelt up on the bed, reaching behind herself to unfasten her bra and to let her heavy breasts free. Slyly, she squeezed them a little, drawing a deep groan from Nadim before her hands drifted down to the waistband of her panties. With just a little fumbling, she had slid them down her legs and thrown them on the floor. Then she glanced up at Nadim, gazing at him with the most sultry glance that she could muster.
Well?
He didn't disappoint her. For such a big man, Nadim moved fast. One moment, he was watching her, and the next he was bearing her down to the bed, his weight above her, his mouth devouring hers. Instead of fighting him or resisting, she utterly gave herself up to the onslaught of sensations. She let herself revel in the coarseness of his clothing pressing against her soft body, and she lost herself in his wild kiss.
"What the hell are you doing to me?" Nadim groaned, and Elise laughed softly, a deep and wild sound.
"I'm giving us what we both want, what we're bo
th starved for," she purred, and she leaned up to catch his lobe between her teeth. She could feel his breathing slow when she nibbled, and then he growled when she bit.
"Brat-!"
She laughed again, but that laugh was cut off when he pushed off of her. For a moment, she was stunned by his departure, but he didn't leave her wondering for very long. With a single powerful movement, he flipped her over on her stomach, pinning her in place with one hand between her shoulder blades.
"Go on, struggle," he whispered in her ear. "I'd like to see that."
Elise squeaked and then tried to do as he said. The pressure on her back was gentle unless she pushed against it. There was no way to roll to one side or another, and finally, she gave up, her breathing hard and excited.
"Can you get away?" Nadim murmured, and she had to shake her head no.
"Mm, good, then this will make what comes next much easier."
She started to ask him what he meant, but then he landed a light open-handed blow right on her rear!
The yelp she made was all out of proportion to what he had done, but she still turned reproachful eyes on him. It certainly didn't help matters that that light, nearly-gentle blow had sent desire spiking through her body, focusing on one particular spot right between her legs.
"What are you doing?" she asked, and she might have intended to sound stern and demanding, but her voice came out high and excited, even eager. Nadim laughed, and it healed something in her heart to hear it. It felt as if it had been ever so long since he had laughed, and she was so consumed by the other things that she had almost forgotten it.
"I'm giving a brat like you what she richly deserves," Nadim retorted. "You have behaved abominably. You shouted like some common street urchin, you screamed at me, you broke a lamp, and worst of all, you nearly injured yourself."
Nadim paused, nuzzling the sensitive skin at the back of her neck, until she sighed with pleasure. That was one of the secrets of her sensuality that they had uncovered together. When he touched her there, under the heavy fall of her blonde locks, she felt a sweet lassitude flow through her. She felt open and soft, and there was no hint of dread at all to her posture.
