by Sophia Lynn
He nodded. Irene knew that she should keep the next part to herself, but some innate honesty refused to allow her to do so.
“I… I am not going to tell you anything,” she said quietly. “I won’t. I can’t…”
To her surprise, he did not seem to be angered by her pronouncement. Confused, Irene tried again.
“I mean it. I have no intention of telling you what you want to know.”
“I heard you,” Raheem said, his tone gentle. “I only know that that is going to change.”
For a moment, she wanted to laugh at him for his confidence. Regardless of the situation she had landed in, she had always been a very strong-willed person. Now he was implying that his will was stronger than hers. Instead, Irene nodded.
“All right.”
“And I hope you understand that you are my wife. This is not an arrangement in name only, or something created merely to remove you to my custody. This is a real thing, consecrated by law and by tradition.”
Under his hot gaze, she could feel the color rise to her cheeks. She knew exactly what he was talking about. Perhaps another woman would have been afraid or horrified, but for her, her heart began to beat faster.
“I understand,” she said softly. “And I submit.”
Something about the way she said the words made the desire in his eyes explode into a bonfire. For a moment, she thought he would simply lunge at her and make her his right then. To her surprise, she saw him rein himself in, a slight smile on his sensuous lips.
“All right. Good. Then we shall have no problems.”
***
The plane touched down next to an oasis in the middle of miles of desert. Irene couldn’t get over how the land seemed to jump for a moment, dropping the lush green forest of the oasis in the middle of the barren desert.
“The sands look like they could kill you,” she murmured, looking out over the darkening land.
“They can,” Raheem replied, coming to stand next to her. Together, they watched the plane take off into the night. It would return for them at the end of the week.
“I don’t feel as if I am in danger, however,” Irene mused. “I feel… safer here than I have in a long time.”
To her surprise, he pulled her back against him, kissing the top of her forehead. It was a different kiss from the one they had shared on the plane. This one was tender, almost ordinary if it hadn’t been happening in the most extraordinary of circumstances. It felt affectionate, and though she knew that they were operating in a strange space, a part of her craved more.
“Good. That is how I want you to feel.”
He led the way to a luxurious house set back by the water. It was a gorgeous home, a gem of modern design set in the middle of an ancient landscape. It had all of the modern conveniences of the city while being lost in a wild paradise.
He went to build a fire in the steel pit at the center of the living room, looking over his shoulder at Irene.
“You should go shower. There are clothes in the small bedroom to the right, if you wish to get out of those robes.”
“You gave me these robes,” she said, and he shrugged.
“You can wear what you like. The robes were simply convenient and would get you out of the city without too much trouble.”
She wasn’t sure what to say, so she found her way to the bathroom, where there was a shower in an enclosed glass chamber with water sprinkling from the ceiling in a gentle rain. For several long moments, she simply luxuriated in the spray, reminding herself of her freedom all over again.
When she got out, she considered the clothes in the bedroom. They were obviously new. Someone had come out with clothes that were roughly her size, the tags still on them. Irene wondered if she should be worried at how thoroughly Raheem had planned all of this, but she pushed it aside.
She found a simple dress with a lovely flowing skirt in deep blue, shot through with silver threads. It was a dress she would have sighed after before, and now, after a moment of hesitation, she slipped it on.
Before Irene made her way back into the living room, she found herself looking at the pile of jewelry she had discarded. She hesitated for a moment, and then she simply went with what was in her gut. She left the earrings and bracelets, but she picked up the necklace. Something about its cold heavy weight comforted her, and when she put it around her neck and looked in the mirror, the moonstone seemed to wink at her. Good enough, she decided.
Back in the living room, the fire was crackling away. Raheem had removed his own robes, and now he wore a simple pair of dark trousers and a dark tunic. Though they were simple, the cut and quality were obvious, and she thought absently that he looked like a model in the gorgeous living room, the fire crackling merrily and throwing lively shadows on the wall.
When his eyes lit on her, they brightened, and he gestured for her to come sit next to him. Though she felt more than a little shy, she came to sit on the couch. Then it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to lean her weight into his body, pressing against him.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he said, and she laughed a little.
“Is it a command from my lord and master?”
“A request from your husband,” he said instead, and for that reason alone, she considered for a moment.
“All right,” she said softly. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Why you studied art. Where you grew up. What you think of Khanour.”
She bit her lip. Talking about growing up and Khanour seemed too risky, but the other…
“I was never an artist,” she said. “A lot of people who go into art history are artists, and surprisingly good ones, but that was never me. Instead, I always wanted to spend all my time fascinated by the art, allowing it to surround me and subsume me. It was something I have always wanted, from the first time I saw a Matisse painting at the art museum in Chicago. There was always something about how good it felt to look at a painting that was beautiful, and that had history behind it. It was… uplifting. Elevating.”
“And so you wanted to make it into your career?”
“I would have been happy waiting tables if it had covered my tickets to the art museum for the rest of my life,” Irene said with a rueful laugh. “But I won a scholarship in my senior year of high school, and I thought that I could simply go work with the art myself.”
“I saw in your records that you were in graduate school,” he said thoughtfully. “What do you think you would do with that degree?”
“Work in museums,” she said promptly. “In conservation especially. There is so much art and beauty that could be returned to the world if we only knew the right ways to take care of it…”
She stopped abruptly. What museum or archive would be willing to hire her on if this came out? If she had a future at all after this week? She shivered, pressing a little closer to Raheem. His arm tightened around her, but he didn’t comment on it.
“I have never had a choice about what I was going to do,” he said. “From the time I was very young, I knew that I was going to be the sheikh. I knew that I was born to rule and care for my country.”
“Do you regret that?” she asked.
There was nothing but sincerity in her voice, but he laughed.
“You mean do I regret the wealth and the luxury?”
She tilted her head to the side, wondering if she was going to be laughed at or mocked.
“Yes,” she said. “When I got that scholarship, I could feel the world open up for me. I could be anything. I could be a nurse who helped people, or I could be an engineer who built things. I could be a librarian or a lawyer.”
“And you chose to study art.”
“I did,” she said thoughtfully. “And I don’t regret it at all. That moment of choice… that was freedom.”
He laughed, but this time, there was a slightly strangled sound to it.
“I don’t regret it,” he said with a soft sigh. “Not really. I am good at what I do. My co
untry prospers, and my people love me. The wealth and the fame doesn’t’ hurt. But that choice. You are right. It is a freedom that my money and my family could not buy for me.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and then he spoke again.
“I wonder what it would have been like if our places had been switched,” he mused.
“You mean if you were a poor scholarship student from Pennsylvania and I was the sheikha of Khanour?”
“Hmm. I imagine that I would have wanted to go to college,” he said, “and perhaps I would have studied engineering, but I wonder if history would have called to me.”
“History?”
He grinned, slightly rueful.
“Yes. Where you saw the beauty of art, I saw the wide stretch of human history. From the moment we could write, we started writing down where we had come from and what we wanted. Who we were and what we did. Those stories… above almost anything else, they are precious. We are no one without knowing where we came from.”
“Where we came from…” Irene repeated.
It was such a luxury to imagine the past as history. If it was history, it was carefully contained in a book. It couldn’t hurt her. It couldn’t be used to hurt the people who shared it with her. A memory popped into her mind, and before she could stop herself, she started speaking about it.
“When I was just a little girl in Pennsylvania, my brother, Peter, and I went out to play. There was a pond behind the house, and the ice had been frozen thick. It was warming up, however, and we all knew that the ice was going to go… well, maybe Peter didn’t know.”
“Was he your younger brother?”
“Yes, but as twins, that matters less than you think,” she said with a wry smile. “He was reckless, running out onto the ice. I knew better, but after a terrible moment, I ran out after him. There was a crack, like the end of the world, and he fell in.”
She paused, remembering how terrible it had been, how the black water seemed to open up under the rough ice, ready and able to swallow up something as small and unwise as a little boy.
“What happened to him?”
“If I hadn’t followed him out there, he would have died,” she responded. “He would have thrashed under the water until his strength gave out, and he would have died. Instead, I was there to pull him out, screaming for help as I did so. When I pulled him out, I was exhausted, but fortunately a neighbor heard.”
Raheem’s arm tightened around her as if afraid for the little girl that she had been.
“And what happened then?”
“The neighbor took us into her garage, stripped off our sodden clothes, and got us into a warm bath. It’s an old trick for people who have suffered a shock. She gave us hot chocolate, which looking back, I’m certain was laced with a bit of brandy, and she called our parents.”
Irene laughed to herself a little bit.
“They were furious. We were both grounded for months, until it was spring at least. Terrible.”
“But you had done nothing wrong,” Raheem protested, frowning at the injustice. “You saved your brother.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Irene said, her voice slurring a little. In the warmth of Raheem’s body, and clean and dry in a way that she hadn’t been for what felt like years, she could feel herself dropping off.
“I would think it matters a great deal,” said Raheem, who already sounded a little distant.
“Doesn’t,” she insisted. “He’s my brother. He’s my family. I have to look after him. Always.”
She had the idea that Raheem was saying something else, but it didn’t matter. Instead, the world was falling away into a deep and indigo haze. She was safe now, and her body needed it so badly that she fell asleep without another thought.
***
Raheem watched his wife sleep for a few moments. She was a warm weight against his body, gorgeous and soft and pliant in a way he had never seen her before. It took all of his strength not to touch her, not to kiss her again. It wouldn’t be right. When he kissed her, he wanted her to kiss him back, to know what was happening and to want it as much as he did.
Not for the first time, he wondered if he had bought a kind of trouble that would be with him the rest of his days. He could feel that fingerhold she had on his spirit and his heart growing greater, but he put it out of his mind. That reckoning could come later on.
Right now, there was more to think about. For several long moments, he simply stroked her bright hair, relishing the way the firelight glinted off it. She fell asleep in his arms so trustingly that it made a foreign part of him ache. He was not known to be a sympathetic man, or sometimes, even a compassionate one, but this little thief brought it out in him.
If she was a thief at all.
The story she had told echoed in his head until he realized what he had to do. With a gentle touch, Raheem detached himself from her, leaving her curled on the couch. She uttered a small sigh of protest before drifting into a deeper sleep, and he smiled a little.
He stepped into another room briefly, his phone in hand.
“Yes, it’s me. No, sorry about waking you up, but this can’t wait. All right. I want you to put together a dossier on Peter Bellingham, Irene Bellingham’s brother. Yes, her twin. All right…”
Chapter Four
Irene awoke slowly, blinking her eyes against the bright morning light. For a moment, she thought that the past few months had just been a dream. She was still in her graduate dorm in Khanour, and she had nothing ahead of her but the study to which she had devoted her life. Her brother was fine, and everything was safe.
Then she woke up a little further, and while she wasn’t in the prison cell any longer, she was far from home.
The bed that Irene had been sleeping on was enormous, white cotton in all directions. She started to wonder if it was the bed that had given her one of the best nights of sleep that she had ever enjoyed, but then she heard another person’s breathing.
She finally woke up the rest of the way when she saw that she was not alone. Sleeping beside her was none other than Raheem himself. Against the stark white of the covers, Raheem’s dark skin seemed to glow. For the first time, she could simply look at him, and her chin in her hand, she took the opportunity to do just that.
His hair was inky black and as shining as a panther’s pelt, and now she could see that he had gorgeous eyelashes, long and dark. There was a trace of stubble on his jaw, and as he slept, the hand resting by his face on the pillow curled and uncurled, making her want to touch them to see if he would wrap his hand around her fingers.
Even asleep, there was a sense of command around him, she thought. This was a man who kept his country in the palm of his hand, protecting it from all comers and putting himself first in the line of defense. Next to him, her place in the world felt very small.
Irene reminded herself that as long as she got through this week, she would be fine. As long as she managed to play by his rules, she would walk free, and then, theoretically, Peter could as well.
With a start, she realized that he was watching her.
“Good morning,” she murmured, and he smiled at her.
“In Khanour, it is considered the tradition for women to bring their husbands a cup of tea before they rise.”
“Why’s that?” she asked without thinking.
“It shows that she places his comfort above her own, and that she rose early with his comfort in mind. It is a common thing from the greatest of houses to the least of them.”
“But I bet the wealthier ladies have the cooks prepare it and bring it to the door,” she pointed out, and then she blushed at how contentious she sounded. Fortunately, Raheem seemed only amused by her statements.
“I am sure you are right. Personally, left to my own devices, I prefer my own morning ritual.”
“What’s that?” she asked, and then before she could think of anything else, she found herself pinned to the mattress, the sheets and blankets a riot around her.
“This,” Ra
heem said, a split second before his lips crashed down on hers.
She flailed for a moment, but then the sensual touch of his lips on hers carried her away. The heat between them flared up, leaving her clinging to his body. Recklessly, she ran her hands along his back. His skin was smooth and warm, but when she realized that he wasn’t wearing anything on his lower part at all, she froze.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, pulling back, and she pushed him away in shock.
“You’re not wearing anything!” she blurted out. Then, after a quick check, she felt her cheeks glow with embarrassment as she made another realization.
“I’m not wearing anything either!”
“There are sleep clothes in the wardrobes, but I generally prefer to sleep naked…”
“What did you do to me?” she asked, startled, and a dark storm came over his eyes.
This time, when he pinned her to the mattress, he looked straight down into her eyes. There was a fire there that was part passion and part fury, and she wondered then if she should truly be afraid.
“Nothing,” he breathed. “I did nothing to you. Not because I did not want you. Not because I did not think about it, but because it would not have been right.”
Irene could barely breathe, but she got her breath enough to swallow before she spoke.
“Am I supposed to thank you for that?” she asked. “For acting like a human being instead of a savage?”
For a moment, she thought that something terrible had just been unleashed. Then, as abruptly as the fury had appeared, it was gone. He pulled away, and if there was a trace of chagrin there, it was directed at himself.
“No,” he admitted, “But believe me when I say that I have no intention of forcing you to do anything that you do not care to do.”
She felt something in her that had been tense since they arrived at the oasis relax inside her. She couldn’t have said what had frightened her then, but now she could tell it was the fear of being simply overwhelmed, of being taken without her will.
“I am glad,” she said, but she couldn’t stop herself from watching him with a little bit of wariness. Now she knew how fast he could be, and she could see that he saw the distrust in her eyes. Raheem sighed.
