by Ella Brooke
She was already limp on the bed when he surged to his own climax, thrusting inside her one last time before he fell bonelessly over on top of her. His weight felt so good that she could not imagine either of them moving again.
After a bit, however, he pulled away, making her whimper just a little, and then he rolled over to gather her up into his arms.
“How do you feel, darling?” he asked softly.
Benny found that she had to think about it before she could make a reply. Earlier, when she had been so upset, it had felt as if there were a dozen different emotions fighting for primacy within her. After what they had done together, however, there was only a blissful peace that made her feel warm and floating.
“I feel...pure,” she said, surprised by how hoarse her own voice was. “I feel as if I have flown through a fire and come out small and clean and relaxed. Like I know how very unimportant things really are, and now I can start over again with a fresh slate.”
He grinned at her, and she could barely reconcile the kindness of the man who lay with her now and the sternness of the one who had turned her rear red. There was some kind of truth in the fact that it was the same man, the same person, the same gentle soul, and it felt like her heart could not contain what she felt for him.
“Good,” he said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “That is how you should feel.”
She smiled, starting to reply, but then her throat closed up with fear.
“Oh god, how long were we at that? What about Jodie...?”
She started to struggle up to get to the nursery, but almost casually, Jinan lay his arm over her belly to pin her in place.
“Hey!”
“Hey nothing,” he said lazily. “Here, I've been keeping an ear open, there's nothing to worry about.”
He reached over to show her his phone, where there was a one way audio feed coming from Jodie's room. When he turned up the volume, she could hear her niece's light breathing rising and falling there, and she went limp with relief. Suddenly, though she wasn't sure why, there were tears in her eyes.
“Darling? Are you all right? Was this too much?”
“No, not at all,” she said, knuckling her tears away. “It's just...you really do think of everything, don't you?”
“I do try,” he said, and Benny chuckled.
“Well, now think of letting me go. I want to roll over and put my arms around you.”
Her body was still tingling with pleasure, and all that mattered was being as close with him as possible.
Chapter Eleven
Jinan knew he was being foolish. He knew with every day that passed that he was only making the future more difficult. However, there was something about the townhouse in Evanston that made thinking about a future impossible.
He knew who he was, and he knew what his fate was going to be. He had known it since he was a young boy, since his father had made clear to him what his duty was meant to be and what needed to be done. He was meant to live for his country. It would give him wealth and acclaim and more luxury than a man could bear, but in the end, his life, more than any one else's in Asrac, was lived for the people.
He knew that eventually, it would mean a wife and children, children that would grow up just as he had and inherit the throne. The wife, in his head beautiful but faceless, would be chosen from the families of the Asrac nobility or perhaps from one of the emirates. She would be pliable, with her own interests and charities, and he had always guessed that at some point or another, they would go their separate ways, married but living entirely separate lives.
It wasn't like that with Benny. He couldn't imagine her being married to someone and leaving them to live their own life. She would simply go after them, insisting on entry, insisting that she could help, that she would accept nothing less than the ability to be a part of his life.
There was no Benny in his future, and no Jodie either. The double loss struck him to the heart, and he couldn't think about it terribly long.
He had known that his time in the United States was never going to be all that long. If he were honest with himself, it should have ended some weeks ago. However, when Benny had ventured a cautious question as to how long he would stay, how long they would stay married, he had waved her away.
“We should still be cautious,” he said. “The Winthrops might want to move against you and Jodie again.”
It wasn't true, of course, and a part of him burned with the embarrassment of the falsehood. He’d had Carolyn Chiu send out a private investigator, and as it turned out, Paul Winthrop's parents were in no condition to make any sort of play. They had entered into some debt of their own and were floundering. From what he could learn, they would not be able to make trouble for anyone for quite some time, if ever again.
It should have made him happy, and he should have told Benny.
Jinan didn't.
Instead, he woke up in the townhouse in Evanston day after day, and he had a woman who made his heart sing, and a baby girl that made him smile. When Jodie reached for him, he could feel his heart swell in a way that he had thought would only happen for a child of his own blood. And when Benny grinned and gave him a kiss, he knew that he had found a piece of paradise fallen accidentally to earth.
Sometimes, Jinan caught Benny watching him, her gaze almost sad. He wanted nothing more than to comfort her, to tell her that it would all be fine, but he knew with a painful certainty that it was not true.
The life in Evanston that they were leading was not a permanent one. It was real, but it was bound by time and space. At some point, Jinan knew that he would have to get back on a plane to travel to Asrac, and though he could and would return to the US to visit, they would never have this time again.
Every day, he tried to steel himself for it, and every day he failed.
He knew that if he waited too long, that decision would be taken away from him, and he could not allow that.
However, the day it actually came to pass came far earlier than he ever thought it would.
***
JINAN HAD LEFT for a meeting in Chicago, and today was meant to be a free day for Benny and Jodie. As busy as things had been recently, she was completely ready to have a day where she simply interacted with Jodie, cuddling the little girl, reading to her and marveling at how she had grown. There was something amazing about being a part of a child’s life like this. It was precious and a privilege, and she hoped with every day that passed that Benny was going to continue to be worth it.
Her first indication that everything was going to change was a knock at the door. She blinked, because as far as she knew, no one ever came to the townhouse. This was Jinan's own private residence, and when people wanted to meet with him, there were dozens of restaurants or conference rooms that could be used for the purpose. There was no reason at all why someone would come to the house.
Benny's first impulse was to ignore it. It was probably just someone who was lost, or perhaps an old-fashioned salesman. The neighborhood was a quiet one in general, but sometimes people went door to door for charity as well.
It could also be someone who is in trouble, she thought, and with a frown, she set Jodie down in her playpen. To her surprise, as soon as she started to lower the child onto the padded surface, Jodie started to weep. The crying was so violent and so very uncharacteristic that she couldn't put her down at all. Instead, she held her closer and glanced towards the door, where the knocking was still going on.
"Crud," she muttered, and holding her child in one arm, she made her way to the door.
At the last moment, her fingers on the latch, she made a decision. Instead of releasing the chain, she opened the door a crack, looking out with a slight frown.
Whoever she expected to see on the other side of the door, it was not a stately older man in a fashionable black suit that looked exactly like Jinan would look when he was in his sixties. The man had the same liquid black eyes, the same frame, the same strong features, but where Jinan was prone to smile,
this man looked as if he was far more inclined to scowl.
"Yes?" she asked, unable to keep the hint of nervousness out of her voice. "Can I help you?"
"Perhaps you can," he said, his voice calm but with a hint of thunder beneath it. "Perhaps you can tell me where to find Prince Jinan al-Touma."
"I'm afraid I can't," she said, her voice practiced with the standard answer. "However, if you go through his answering service and his personal assistant, I am sure that they can help you."
It was perhaps not the best answer she had come up with, but there was a fair amount of truth to it. It was very clear that this man was related to Jinan in some way, but the strange and nervous feeling that she got from him was only growing. It didn't help that Jodie's cries had diminished to soft whimpers as the little girl buried her face in Benny's shoulder.
He looked at her for a few seconds like a general looking over a recalcitrant territory. He appeared every inch like a conqueror, and for a moment, she knew exactly what it might be like to be conquered.
"I think that I will not do that," he said, almost conversationally. "My name is Abbed al-Touma."
Benny couldn’t keep her eyes from opening wide. She knew that name, and now that she had the name, she knew that face as well. This was Jinan's great uncle, a man who had overseen Asrac's military and security affairs for almost forty years during Jinan's grandfather's time. This was a man who brooked no disagreements and suffered no fools, and now he was watching her with a kind of detached interest that made her feel as insignificant as a bug.
"I am afraid that I cannot give you more information than I have already," Benny said, falling back on her standard line. It wasn't a lie, either. It was exactly what she and Jinan had discussed weeks ago. Any of his family who wanted to contact him already had his information. The rest could go through the normal channels.
"I wish I could have been of more help to you, sir," she said, and she knew that her voice was slightly faint, that the lie in it was trembling on the side of being obvious. "I'm afraid that I really do need to go."
Somehow, she thought that being polite and ending the conversation was enough. She was wrong.
As she tried to close the door, Benny was shocked to see him jam his foot in the door, preventing her from closing it all the way. She couldn't slam the door on his foot because the chain wouldn't let her, and she looked up in surprise and fear.
"Sir, I am going to have to ask you..."
"So the rumors were true," he sneered. "He has found himself a concubine."
The words made her blood run cold, and instead of trying to get him off of the doorstep, she only looked up at him with dismay.
"And not only does he have a concubine, he has fathered a child with one." Abbed's lip curled up with a kind of viciousness that made her feel no taller than a flea. "How far the great line of al-Touma has fallen."
"You can't...you can't say that about me, about Jodie," Benny choked out. "None of this is true, none of it! I don't know what you have heard, but there is no truth to it, none!"
He sneered at her, raking her up and down with a scornful gaze.
"Do you have any defense of yourself, trash?" he asked viciously. "Are you sleeping with a man who claimed that he has married you? Are you a secret with a child who has no father? Don't get above yourself. A position such as yours can only last so long."
She could barely hear him over the blood pounding in her ears. She wanted to scream at him, to shout at him, to tell him that he was a foul and bitter old man who knew nothing about nothing. She wanted to be brave, and she wanted to be furious, but instead, Benny felt as if her entire body was taken over by fear.
"Get out," she managed to whisper. "Get out, get out... If you do not leave, I will call the police..."
The look on his face--god, did it have to be so similar to Jinan's?--told her that he was only leaving because he wished to, not because there was anything in him that feared her.
"You see the truth, and you are afraid," he said softly. "You know what will come soon enough."
He pulled away, and Benny slammed the door as hard as she could. She stood staring at the closed door for several long minutes, waiting until she could hear his heavy tread going down the steps before she sat down with a thud on the floor in a trembling pile.
In her arms, Jodie's cries had been reduced to sad, scared whimpers, and Benny hugged her furiously.
"Don't worry, sweetie," she said over and over again. "I swear, I am not going to let anything get to you, I will keep you safe, I promise, nothing is going to happen to you..."
As she said that, however, she wondered if it was really true. Her entire body was wracked with shudders over what had just happened. Perhaps it had taken something like Abbed happening to tell her what Janin’s world was really like.
She got up off the floor and started pacing, nearly as much to calm herself as it was to calm Jodie. Slowly, slowly, it felt as if the fear was receding from her system, but behind it was left all of the doubt, all of the pain, all of the fear.
Benny didn't want to believe that the terrible things Abbed had said were true, but she couldn't deny that there was a grain of truth to them. The word “concubine” stuck with her, and the brutal nature of the words that Jinan had spoken all those weeks ago when she had agreed to marry him made her flinch.
Whether Abbed was correct or not, she had to look at her situation. She had to make sure she was going to be all right, and now she realized that no matter how Jinan left, she knew she wouldn't be. When he went, he would take a part of her with him, and suddenly, Benny knew exactly how much that would hurt.
The idea of that much pain, of him rejecting her, was nothing short of horrifying. She knew she would get up from it and walk away, of course she would, but the amount of strength it would take to do so frightened her.
Jodie reached up to pat her face, and Benny had to blink back tears.
"You don't have to look after me, sweetie," she murmured. "I'm the only one who can do that."
The words felt stark and terrifying, but she grimly thought that she had better get used to them. She needed to start thinking like a single mother, because it was going to happen sooner or later.
Of course, that does not mean now...but perhaps soon.
She took a deep breath and told herself that all she could do was be ready.
Benny thought of Jinan, and an exquisite feeling of pain and grief surged through her. She would never be sorry that he had ended up in her life...but the idea of him leaving it, well, that could tear her apart.
Chapter Twelve
The day was ending at least a little tidier than it had begun, and Jinan was so grateful that he could have shouted with joy. Instead, he inclined his head gravely at the men who might change the course of his country's future and then made his way out of the meeting space at a quickening pace.
If he were honest with himself, his mind had not been on his work at all. The longer the day wore on, the more he found himself thinking of Benny and Jodie. They lit up his life in a way that he barely understood, and the idea of ending it without seeing them hurt.
As he walked to the car, it occurred to him that Jodie was like a lovely little moon, silver, small and perfect in the night sky, while Benny was like the sun, gleaming and giving warmth to everyone she touched. He wondered if he could tell her that, or if it was something she would simply push away with a laugh and a shy look.
They were getting better, though, he decided. She no longer spoke poorly of herself, and he thought she might even have been getting to a place where she understood that he truly believed the things he said about her. It was progress he was happy to make, at least.
He had just gotten into the car when his phone rang. Jinan grinned, assuming that it was going to be Benny, but he blinked when he saw Elli's number instead.
His hardworking assistant in Asrac usually kept their calls sparing, and to have her call unscheduled was a bit of a surprise. Even as he answered it,
Jinan felt a trill of trepidation go up his spine.
"What's going on?" he said, not mincing any words, and she continued briskly as if they had been talking already.
"It is your great-uncle Abbed. He is in a hospital in Chicago. He has been hit by a car. He is stable, but it is quite serious and he is alone."
"Abbed? What the hell is he doing in the United States, let alone Chicago?" It was like hearing that the royal palace had simply pulled up its basements and wandered off into the desert or decided to fly to Tokyo. Abbed was a man known for thinking that everything and everyone had a proper place and they should stay in it. It was one of the things that genuinely made it so hard to deal with him.
"That is a very good question," Elli said, her voice slightly grim. "No one knows. As far as anyone can tell, he's been restless for a while, and then he suddenly pulled up stakes and went to find you. If he had actually asked, I could have found a way to put him in contact with you, but he didn't. Hell, I think he might have been rifling through my documents when he forced his way into my office last week."
Jinan made a face, shaking his head. "That sounds like the old man. Shit. All right. Get me the address of the hospital he is staying at."
He thought longingly of the brightly-lit townhouse in Evanston and of the woman and child who waited for him there. It might be late by the time he got back, if he made it back that night at all, and he cursed his uncle all over again.
At least Benny was a reasonable woman, and she would understand.
Jinan knew that time was of the essence, but he couldn't stop himself from smiling a little at the thought of Benny's smile. It was more than just the longing that caught him during spare moments throughout his day. It was more than just the passion they shared and the need that they had for each other. There was something about her that simply made him happy. When he looked at her, she was exactly what he wanted.
