by Mel Teshco
She was a quick study if she was able to pick out words from his rapidly spoken Arabic. "I introduced you to my servants. Many do not speak English but they have been ordered to see to your comfort."
Lilly stared at the long line of servants. "There are so many of them. Just how closely related are you to the king?"
Chapter Five
Lilly paced her suite, which faced on to a magnificent landscape of ornate gardens and fountains but she couldn't look at them. Several servants entered and left a tray of drinks and a range of delicious-looking snacks. Well they would have been delicious if she could eat. Instead her stomach was in knots and she had a horrible sense of foreboding. She tucked her coat around herself.
James or Jamal as he was called here, which suited him so well she wondered why she had ever bothered calling him James, barked something in Arabic and the servants bowed and left the room. He filled a glass of iced tea and brought it over to her. She clutched it with trembling fingers and gulped down the liquid. "Why didn't you tell me you are Sheikh Jamal El-Amin? I had no idea I was working for the future king of Qutum."
"Does the idea please you?" Jamal stood near her, sleek and at ease in the white thobe he'd changed in to, a type of long tailored shirt that finished at the ground. On his head he wore a white ghutra fastened in place with a black rope. Despite his relaxed stance, his dark eyes glittered and she had the image of a cat and a mouse trapped in a room.
"It would if I understood what was going on. My company works with lots of wealthy people in London and they're never backward in announcing who they are. You hid that you were royalty. I need to know why." A curling of unease sat in the pit of her stomach and she wanted to be sick. A prince like this should have a host of top designers and a project manager to boot. He wouldn't deal with a worker barely out of university, yet her boss had said he'd insisted on her. She'd been so pleased, so flattered. What a fool.
Jamal took the empty glass out of her leaden fingers. "How much do you know of your heritage, Lilly?"
"You know I don't know much."
"Then I shall tell you. Your grandmother's tale was not a fantasy. Your grandmother and my mother were the daughters of the hilltribe sheikh, though they were born many years apart to different mothers. The sheikh was a distant cousin of the Qutum king. It is the custom of the royal family of Qutum to marry their distant relatives or those with royal blood from families in the region. It was the duty of your grandmother to do as her father ordered and marry the Zimbian sheikh."
Lilly took a step backward until the backs of her knees hit the sofa. She had to hear what he was about to say but as he closed the distance between them the prince seemed to be looming over her. She could smell the scent of spice on his breath and the musk of his body. "But my granny wouldn't. She'd met my English grandfather instead."
"After she ran away the Zimbian sheikh invaded again. Every man, woman and child in this fort died that day because she wouldn't do as she was ordered — to marry and make peace. The only reason the hilltribe sheikh survived was because he was in Qutum hospital having treatment, but when he returned to the hill fort there was barely anyone he knew to greet him."
"Stop!" Sickened, Lilly couldn't bear to hear anymore. "What has this got to do with me?"
"Your line owes the hilltribe a blood debt."
Lilly froze, her veins ice. "Do you mean you want a sacrifice?
Jamal put his hands on her shoulders and stared down into her face. "The tribe needs...my needs are not so vile. I don't require a human sacrifice. I need a wife of royal blood, bred from the hilltribe sheikh's line. I want you."
"A wife!" Lilly's head swirled in disbelief. "Are you mad? This is not medieval times. Besides, you're engaged."
"I'm not engaged. You are my wife. I have paid your tribal elder the bride price. You see, some ways do not change here. Not for a royal."
"Go to hell. That's not legal."
"It is here. You do not have a choice, Lilly Jones."
"Like hell I don't." No wonder her grandmother had fled this country, this place, this fort with its crazy traditions. She twisted out of his arms and raced for the door. She grabbed the handle but Jamal was on her in a heartbeat.
"Not so fast, little princess. You do not have my permission to leave." His hand pressed over hers, creating enough pressure so that she let the handle go.
"Let go of me, you arrogant prick." She kicked out at him, aiming for his balls but he blocked her with a simple move of his leg. She slammed her fist into his face.
Jamal moved his head to the side so that her fist caught his lip. She heard the crunch of knuckle against bone and a sharp pain in her hand made her yelp. Hell had she broken her knuckle?
"I'm army trained, Lilly. I can take torture. I can absorb more than you can give." He took hold of her fist and forced it downward.
Rage made her blood boil. "Really? Well I topped my school in every sport they could throw at me. I'm tougher than I look. You'd better learn not to sleep because if you imprison me here, I swear I'll drive a knife through your heart."
"I wasn't aware that your expensive school taught knife work."
"It taught archery and javelin and I was damn good at every sport. I'll drive something pointy through your thick skull if you persist with this stupidity."
"I thought the wildness was bred out of you." There was a look of admiration in his eyes and something else. Lust. "We will make fierce sons to rule our people."
This whole deal was a set up. His betrayal cut deep. The rotten bastard. "You'll be a dead man before that happens." She went to slam her other fist just underneath his sternum but he blocked it, took hold of both and kissed her knuckles. A frisson of pleasure rippled up her arm. Why did his touch have to please her so?
"When I first saw you I was delighted with you. You are a beautiful, intelligent girl, Lilly Jones." He maneuvered her against the wall and pressed her against it with the length of his body.
She wanted to press against him. Hell! She hated her trecherous body as much as she hated him. "I don't care what you think. I hate you. You lied to me." She tried to get away from his hold but he had her pinned with his hips.
"Actually my princess, I've told no lies."
"You tricked me to get me here."
"Would you have come if I had told you we are married?"
"Don't be ridiculous and we're not married." She managed to get her hand free and she rammed it under his chin. When she hit him he did nothing but smile, his eyes blazing with excitement, then he kissed her. Claimed her with hot, firm lips that left her in no doubt as to who was in control. The trouble was, she wanted to kiss him back. The press of his body was an aphrodisiac to her senses. She had to stop this.
Lilly pushed her hands against his chest, trying to shove him away but he was too strong. She bared her lips to bite but Jamal fisted her hair so she couldn't turn her head, and moved his lips to her throat.
In spite of her dismay, his lips were passionate and she could feel her nipples tightening under her bra. One of his hands slid under her coat to cup her breast but she gripped his wrist before he could.
"Why are you twenty-two and still a virgin?" he murmured.
"How the hell do you know that?" Her heart was fluttering in her throat. Pressed against her, the prince sported the most toned body she'd ever felt. His chest and arms bulged with muscles under his thobe and his hard cock nudged at her hip. To think she'd found him attractive in London. Now there was nothing but sheer black anger at his treachery.
He kissed along her collarbone along the line of her shirt. "Virginity is a requirement of my bride."
"Have you been following me?" Despite her dismay, her skin where he kissed rippled with pleasure.
He unbuttoned several of her shirt buttons. "Don't be silly, I have servants for that. I have answered enough questions. It's time for you to answer mine. Have you let a man touch you?"
"Plenty." Calm down. Think. There must be some logical way out of this
. Why did his touch have to feel so good?
"Liar. What do you know of desire?" he asked huskily.
"Let me go, Jamal. This is madness. Please." She'd beg if she had to. Fighting him seemed to inflame him.
To her surprise he stepped back. She skirted around the edge of the wall to get some distance between them as her mind whirred. All the time he watched her with smoldering eyes as if he were just stopping himself from seducing her.
"Lilly," he said, his voice gentle, "you are mine."
"No." Words were useless. Centuries of rulers had created Jamal. Men who demanded and got what they paid for. It was like trying to restrain a stallion. "Jamal, you can't possibly think we can be happy if you force me to be your wife?"
"On the contrary, I think you'll make an excellent wife. I liked you from the moment I met you. You have everything I want in a woman."
"'Like?'" she spluttered. "That might be good enough for you, but it's not for me."
"Come on Lily, we worked together in London for a month on my house. We had fun together. I know you enjoyed my company. What we have can grow."
"That was a client relationship. That's different. I plan to love my husband and I'll be damned if I'll accept this sham of a marriage. Let me go back to England."
"No." His face darkened with lust as he stared at her.
Lilly ran. Flew with the fleeting feet of a deer through an opened door and into the acres of garden outside her apartment rooms, along the pebbled paths, leaping over hedges until she hid herself in a thicket of palms and bent over to catch her breath, her ears tuned like the prey she was.
Jamal was close by.
Think, Lilly think. The walls surrounding the fort were far off in the distance below. Beyond them she could just make out the rooftops of the city they'd passed through. If she could find some way out, dressed in the dark coat, headscarf and sunglasses, she could lose herself in the busy town below.
"Lilly. Come out. There is no way to leave the fortress." Jamal passed by her, his boots crunching on the stones.
"Don't bet," she murmured under her breath, pulling the scarf from around her throat over her hair and fastening the buttons on her dark coat. Hell, she'd climb down the rock face if she could. She'd done rock climbing with her pals right through university and she wasn't afraid of heights. Anyway, she was determined to try rather than become Jamal's toy.
With the constant sound of the fountains, the trickling water and birdsong, it was easy to walk unheard in leather flats. Light on her feet, Lilly made her way downhill through an ancient olive grove, toward the old unrenovated fort bordering the bottom of the complex, except here the land became barren. Too dry even to leave footprints. She stopped. To her left lay clumps of date trees, too thin to disguise her. In front of her, large chunks of rock lay scattered on the ground where the old fort had been slighted. Away from the carefully cultivated oasis, the air became parched and sweat formed under Lilly's coat beading on her skin.
She'd studied the plans for hours in London and knew the layout. In an hour it would be dusk. If she could just stay hidden until then, she would be difficult to spot wearing black. No stranger to athletics, she needed to ascertain if it was possible to climb down the ancient wall to the city below. All she required was enough handgrips and toe holds to make her way down.
From memory, on her right there were caves below ground, close by. She remembered seeing them on the drawings though Jamal had refused to talk about them.
She couldn't hear or see Jamal. Perhaps he'd gone back to signal alarm and the place would soon be covered with servants. Lilly made her way from rock to rock looking for the entrance to the caves. It took her some time before she located the entrance which had a wrought-iron gate fashioned into the cave entrance. Steep steps had been cut into the stone. In the distance, she could hear male voices. Hell, she hoped she could open the gate. A ripple of panic made her fiddle with the latch only to find it loose so that the ominous bars opened easily. The place had a strange smell which she couldn't place as she stepped down into the darkness. It was like fermented wine and sweet herbs.
She counted the stairs as she went down, knowing it would help her keep her bearings. By the time she'd reached fifty she was deep underground and the air was a miasma of earth and cloying strangeness. She sank onto the last step, sweat running between her breasts, praying there weren't scorpions.
In the distance she could hear the sound of feet thumping on the man made paths and the calling of her name. Jamal had another thing coming if he thought he had some helpless little woman who was going to give in to his whim. The only thing she feared was being imprisoned.
Like she was here.
The gate at the entrance to the cave rattled and she could see a powerful flashlight and a figure looming at the entrance. Lilly froze; heart in her mouth. She needed to get deeper into the cave fast, but she couldn't see and didn't want to fall into an abyss. God knows what was down here with this weird smell. With small tentative steps, she slid her feet on the flat rock surface, hands held in front of her face, trying to find something, anything to hide behind. Above her, she heard the gate open and someone making their way down the stairs. Her hands touched a rock shelf and as she explored with the tips of her fingers she noted there was something long wrapped in linen. Perhaps this place was still used for storage.
"Come out, Lilly Jones. I know you are here," Jamal said. "We have security cameras all over the fort. I saw you enter."
Lilly blinked as Jamal walked down the stairs flicking his flashlight. Keeping her back against the cool rock wall on the opposite side of Jamal, she barely dared to breathe until he pulled a lever.
Light flooded the cave.
Lilly put her hand to her mouth to stop herself screaming. Row after row of dead bodies wrapped in white linen lay in carved out hollows of the wall for as far as she could see. They weren't like the mummies she'd seen in museums. They were body bags with black ropes tied at the heads and at the ends. Hundreds of them. She sprang from the wall she'd been leaning against seeing there was one behind her. "Let me out of here."
Jamal grabbed her in a vice-like grip, when she raced for the stairs and turned her so that she faced the chamber. "It's time you met your ancestors, Lilly Jones. Every body you see here is a blood relative who died on the day of the massacre. The result of Lilliantha not doing her duty. Look about you."
His words hit her like a sledgehammer, making her reel. "No! It's too horrible." She squeezed her eyes shut.
It was one thing to hear about the massacre and another to see the results of it before her. She opened her eyes determined to escape his arms as tears sprang free. Jamal wrapped his arm around her waist, imprisoning her as he marched her forward. "Your grandmother lied. She said she led the charge while her brothers cowered. Believe me, they fought too and were cut down where they stood. Meet your grandmother's brother who died defending his wife and their baby."
"Stop this. I don't want to." In front of her in a hollow lay three bodies, one of them a baby, the size of the shroud no more than a pillowcase.
"All the people here are your blood, Lilly Jones. In the other caves lie the bodies of their servants. Every man and woman you met in the entrance to the fort has someone here."
"Stop it. This is not my fault." Lilly sucked in a deep sob.
"As a blood descendant of this tribe, as my wife and queen, they expect you to do everything to keep them safe. This marriage is of vital importance."
She wanted to run, to get away from the cloying sense of death, from the hideous responsibility he was holding over her. "You can't put this on me. Why didn't the Qutum army help these people?"
"When the invaders came, the people drove them out and dispatched them. Then they invaded again after the insult of Lilliantha's rejection of the marriage. They killed all the men and then they found this place where the women and children had gone to hide. Your grandmother's brothers' bodies were both found at the entrance to the tomb. My grandfath
er, the sheikh then, had to call in the morticians to embalm the bodies because the ground was too rocky to bury them and it is against our religion to cremate them. Here they lie, together again in death. We honor their sacrifice."
"So many people." Tears ran down her face and her throat clogged. She'd thought Granny had been right to leave and follow her own will. But when she saw this, this travesty, it was a knife to the heart. Granny had let down her family. Oh God, she didn't know what to do. This wasn't her responsibility and yet seeing the bodies, people who were her blood, changed everything. Her life and work would have such impact on so many people if she stayed.
But Jamal's betrayal of her trust cut so deeply she bled inside.
Jamal's tight grip on her lessened and his voice gentled. "It is not just your blood debt, Lilly. It is mine too. Those who remain expected me to marry from the bloodline of the survivors, which is why this has fallen on your shoulders. They want to know their sheikh will wed into their tribe and keep them safe, so this never happens again."
Chapter Six
Lilly pushed from Jamal's arms, sprang up the stairs from the crypt without stopping until she reached the top. Jamal raced after her. This Lilly Jones was more of a handful than his Grand Vizier had let on. The thought sent a strange mix of joy and fear to his heart and a rush of heat to his cock. He'd never been more alive. She marched further down the hill like a soldier until she stopped at the old unrenovated fort that overlooked the city below. Once there, she turned on him. "That was cruel of you, Jamal."
"I didn't force you into the caves, Lilly. You found your own way there. I hope that you understand your duty. My country needs you. I need you. I cannot heal this blood debt without you."
Lilly stared out beyond the old fort. She stroked the walls, as tears ran down her face. Magnificent carvings lay broken at her feet, the whole place an archeological find just waiting to be restored. Beautiful, majestic and broken. "It's like time has stopped here. That's why the pain never goes away."
