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He wouldn’t admit to it, but she knew. He wasn’t thrilled about waiting. But it thrilled her that he wasn’t badgering her into an early acceptance. That he was letting them experience this phase of their relationship, enjoy its wonders.
He rose, swinging her up in his arms, making her feel weightless. “Let’s explore some of the new props.”
“You mean you already have some here?”
“You mean you didn’t notice the new additions? I thought they’d stick out in the void downstairs.”
“With you meeting me at the door and taking me against it, before hauling me here semiconscious with pleasure? I wouldn’t have noticed if said void had been engulfed in a meteor crater.”
“Now that might not be a bad idea. A crater I’d fill with perfect temperature water.” Somehow holding her with one arm as he descended the stairs, he smoothed his knuckles against her cheek tenderly. “Would you like an indoor swimming pool?”
Afraid she’d pour through his arms, she sighed. “A huge tub with you in it? Well, duh!”
He sat her down on what she realized was a swing.
As her imagination flooded with erotic possibilities for that “prop,” he gave her lower lip an approving nip. “Duh it is, then.”
“So why is Laylah not staying with you?”
Mira’s question caused Laylah to look at Rashid intently as he drove all three of them back from an excellent dinner out.
For the past three weeks he’d been sharing something new with her every day. Picnics, hikes, business trips, museums, shows. Intimate rendezvouses at his place and then at secluded hideaways while the pool had been installed. Tonight he’d taken her—and Mira—to an incredible restaurant for another unprecedented experience.
“I mean,” Mira went on from the backseat, her voice half an octave higher as always in Rashid’s presence. “You return her so late every night it’s always after I go to sleep.”
Rashid looked at Mira in the mirror with that tranquility that Laylah knew indicated unending patience with her for being her best friend. It still amazed her that there wasn’t the least bit of male appreciation in his eyes for the fiery and statuesque beauty who turned heads wherever they went.
He inclined his head in gallant apology. “I am sorry if I’ve been the reason for disturbing your sleep.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Mira spluttered, as always out of her depth around Rashid.
Laylah could sympathize big-time. Rashid’s larger-than-life vibe could mess with anyone’s balance. Especially those with XX chromosomes. It had to be loving him that much, and his unlimited indulgence with her, that made her function somewhat normally around him.
Mira elaborated, “Hey, I’ve been having the time of my life with you guys these past weeks. I love the ride home every day from work in this wonder car, and in the company of my favorite couple in the world. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all that wish-fulfillment stuff you keep pulling—flying me in private jets, getting round-the-clock medical attention for Dad at home and taking me out with you to places I didn’t know existed, not to mention the magic wand you’ve touched our business with. I’m just wondering, since you’ve been condensing your working hours to the bare minimum to make more time for each other, why not stay in the same place to have even more time together?”
“According to Laylah,” Rashid said, “it’s because I’m terminally archaic and can’t evolve beyond my Azmaharian programming.”
Yeah. She’d told him that. And a few more elaborate frustrations. He would be with her only during “appropriate” hours. But he wouldn’t hear of her spending the nights at his place, or her reputation would evidently disintegrate to ashes. The only time she’d spent the night with him had been that first night.
But that paled in comparison to another matter.
Tonight was their one-month anniversary.
At least it had been. Now after midnight, the day had passed.
And Rashid hadn’t asked her to marry him again.
She’d remained on pins and needles all day, thinking he’d say something during their late lunch. He hadn’t. Then at dinner, he’d invited Mira along and had so far said nothing.
Because Mira was around? Why invite her if she’d cramp his style? What did it all mean?
Had he rethought his offer? Decided it had been rushed and rash? With her being so free with her favors, maybe he thought he’d been wrong to worry about her “honor” when she wasn’t worried about it herself. Maybe he thought he should just enjoy what they had.
She’d want that, too, as long as it was long-term. But what if his change of heart meant that whatever he thought they had wouldn’t last long? What if he started winding down gradually to an inevitable end? Maybe he’d made that decision early on, and that was why he’d been adamant about her not moving in or even staying the occasional night. Maybe he didn’t want to cloak their intimacies in any kind of permanence.
She tried to shake off her doubts, listen to the almost one-sided conversation between Mira and Rashid. She couldn’t.
He pulled up to their building and said good-night to Mira, who responded with the self-possession of a starstruck schoolgirl, before she exited the car, murmuring for Laylah to take her time.
She didn’t. After a kiss that she initiated and he ended too soon, Rashid said that he had to rush away.
She stood on the sidewalk watching him drive off, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the weather creeping into her bones. She hadn’t thought twice about what it meant any other night when he’d dropped her at her place and driven off. But tonight…
Could it be he didn’t realize what tonight was?
No. No way. Rashid forgot nothing. And since he’d said nothing, maybe he just had nothing to say.
It was a long time after he’d disappeared that she’d dejectedly turned and entered the building.
Unable to face Mira again, she waited outside their apartment, struggling with tears, until she heard silence inside.
Once in her room, she rushed into the shower, dissolved the hot tears she could no longer hold back in hotter water, as suspicions overtook her thoughts.
Why had he insisted on Mira’s presence tonight of all nights? Had he needed her as a buffer against any possibility of intimacy? Today had been the first day without any form of that. Had he considered today, instead of being the beginning of a new phase in their relationship, to be the beginning of the end? Had her prophecy come to pass? A month in her company had been more than enough, and she’d started to grate on him?
But last night he’d made love to her with as much hunger as ever. Was that not enough anymore, and being the chivalrous knight that he was, he was trying to find a painless way out of this mess? What would she do if this was true?
After a night in a hell of uncertainty, morning brought with it the searing light of realization. Why Rashid was pulling away.
It had to be because she’d told him she loved him.
At first, it had been in the throes of passion, then gradually afterward she’d said it at every opportunity. She hadn’t worried when he hadn’t said it back. She’d thought it had been too soon for him, but she had been certain it was coming.
What if, instead of being truthful with him about her emotions, as she’d thought she should be, she’d only pressured him? And his response to her fervor, when he believed he couldn’t reciprocate it, was to pull away?
Unable to hold back anymore, anxiety and urgency eating through her restraint, she snatched her phone up, dialed his number.
He picked up on the second ring. She recognized the background sounds. He was in his car.
“Laylah—”
She cut him off before he could say anything more. “I didn’t… didn’t mean anything when I said I loved you. Please, just forget I said it.”
Eight
A cacophony of sounds was all Rashid heard after Laylah told him to forget she’d told him she loved him.
It wasn’t until a policeman knocked on his window that Rashid realized the noise was a storm of honking.
He’d braked in the middle of the street.
He didn’t remember ending the call with her, or what exactly he said to the policeman. He only knew he found himself parked in front of the entrance of her building, staring up at her window, one thing pummeling through him.
She’d come to her senses.
He’d been dreading she would. Almost waiting for her to.
He shouldn’t have waited. He should have pushed for marriage sooner. But he’d been terrified he’d scare her away, yet it had been hell trying to pull back. But it had also been a heaven he hadn’t known existed, being with her. Being loved by her.
For she had loved him. Her love had been so pure and intense, had permeated him from her every touch and word and action, he’d basked in its unbelievable blessing with every breath. He hadn’t known how or why she’d loved him, but she had.
He’d been trying to tell himself that, with Laylah being so overt about her emotions, when she agreed to marry him, no one would suspect that their marriage was not for the right reasons. That it would serve his purpose, get him everything he’d planned.
But with every hour in her company, every other consideration had ceased to exist. Nothing mattered anymore but her. Everything from her, with her, had overwhelmed him, undone him. With her he’d finally understood what happiness was.
But he’d left it too late. Even when he’d done everything in his power to stop her from realizing the truth about him, time had exposed him to her for what he was. A damaged, dangerous monster.
What had he expected? He shouldn’t have been in her heart in the first place. He didn’t deserve to be there.
Without knowing how, he found himself on her apartment doorstep just as she opened her door.
A huge gasp escaped her at the sight of him, the streams of tears already pouring down her face thickening.
Feeling sorry for him? Regretting that she had to let him down?
He couldn’t bear for her to feel bad. Never on his account. He’d sacrifice anything for her to never shed another tear.
Before he could say anything, she dragged him inside, her eyes all over him before she hugged him with all her strength, smothering her face in his chest.
“Rashid, ya Ullah, Rashid… you’re okay, you’re okay…”
Struck to his core at feeling her against him again, he stood, unable to move in her embrace, everything inside him demolished.
“I went insane when I heard that commotion and the line went dead and I couldn’t call you back. I thought you had an accident…”
Her voice broke on a sob that fractured his muteness, made him choke, “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“What matters is that you’re okay.” Suddenly, she undid her frantic hold on him, embarrassment in her every line as she moved away. “I—I meant what I said, Rashid.”
That she wanted him to forget that she’d said she loved him.
He owed her the complete truth, if only in this. “How can I ever forget the one real honor and profound joy I ever had? The memory that you once loved me will fuel the rest of my life, and at its end, will be my one worthwhile achievement.”
Confusion then stupefaction gripped her loveliness.
Then she blurted out, “What do you mean ‘once’? You think I…? Oh, no, Rashid, I only meant I wasn’t pushing you to reciprocate when I said I love you. I had no other purpose behind it but telling you how I feel. I thought you felt pressured by my confessions because the month I asked for is up and you didn’t—didn’t…”
It was his turn to be flabbergasted.
“You thought…” He stopped, hope too joyous, too brutal. “You thought your declarations of love made me reconsider my proposal?”
Delightful peach invaded her honeyed cheeks. “I didn’t know what to think, so I thought the worst. Y-you must know what yesterday was.”
“It was the one-month anniversary of the attack. But this morning, this hour, is the one-month anniversary of my proposal.”
Her eyes rounded on still-fragile hope. “Y-you mean…?”
“I mean I was coming at the exact time I proposed last month, this time to ask… to beg that you consider marriage. Not because I want you and because my honor dictates it. But because my life would mean nothing anymore without you.”
Suddenly, his arms were full of hurtling, clinging love and eagerness made flesh and blood. And he wrapped himself around her, containing her, vowing to never let her go again.
Those minutes when he’d thought he’d lost her had hurt far more than the injury that had left him scarred, had been more desperate than any time he’d thought he’d die.
Deluging him in kisses, Laylah buried her fingers in the hair he was growing back for her, her voice a throb of silk and night and hunger. “My life would mean nothing without you, too. It never did. I love you with everything I am, Rashid…”
Reeling with disbelief that this perfect being continued to love him, he carried her where he could seal the magic of those moments with that of their passion and turn the once-impossible fantasy into reality.
What felt like a lifetime later, but what was actually only a couple of hours, still overcome with Rashid’s last possession and the echoes of the aborted scare, Laylah stretched luxuriously against his hot, hard body.
His beloved face was flushed a marvelous copper tone. His whisper, when it came, spread its dark compulsion inside her. “Do I take it all that was a yes?”
She snuggled into his body more securely. “You mean you didn’t hear any of the hundreds of yeses I said? I must have raised Chicago’s noise pollution levels to an all-time high.”
“Just give me one now that your blood has cooled.”
She rubbed her thigh against his. “You mean you don’t know yet that you and cool blood are mutually exclusive?”
His arms gathered her into his body with such tender reverence, trembling with the same emotion that blazed in his eyes. “Laylah… give it to me. One yes. Total and final.”
And she gave it to him. Her irrevocable pledge. “Yes, Rashid. As total as my whole being and final to my life’s end.”
His groan was one of relief and elation as he took her lips, sealing their lifelong pact.
As she surrendered her all to him yet again, it felt different this time. She’d always been his, but this time, in her very essence, she became his wife.
Before Mira returned from work, Rashid took Laylah back to his place. It was evening when he took a break from branding her with his most tender lovemaking ever, carried her to the shower, then to the kitchen, where they now delighted in cooking together.
He was handing her the pesto he’d prepared to add to the pasta she had made when she said, “Do you have a preference for how exactly we should get married? Me, I’d like a tiny ceremony.”
His hand froze midway with the pesto. Then he placed it on the island, pulled her to him. “We can’t start thinking of the ceremony yet. Accepting me is only half the battle won.”
She squinted up at him, perplexed. “What do you mean half?”
“Now I need to go win the other half. Your family.”
“What do they have to do with anything between us? The most involvement they’ll have is to get stuffed in their fineries and come to our wedding. Those I’ll let attend. If they behave.” His hands cupped her face. For the first time ever, she removed them. “You’re not talking me out of this, Rashid. My family stays out of our lives, and that’s final.”
His eyes grew watchful, as if he was gauging how to handle her sudden volatility. “If it were up to me, I would have vowed myself to you in absolute seclusion. But you are a princess…”
“Oh, no. You’re not princessing me again!”
He coaxed her into his arms again, caressing resistance out of her a nerve at a time. “I know you want it not to matter, but it does. Tradition is important, even when it’s infuriating. But this won’t only be about us. It will be about our children.” The concept of children, his and hers, liquefied something inside her. “I want there to be peace and acceptance surrounding our union from the start, for you, for them. What makes things a bit more complicated is that I’m not a prince…”
“You’re worth a thousand of every prince who ever lived!”
Pride and pleasure glittered in his eyes, softened his lips. “Your approval and allegiance mean everything. To me. But I need to get theirs, too. Your family includes some very powerful individuals, and I’m not on their right side to start with. I don’t want them to bother you with their disapproval or attempts to come between us. I need to… defuse their danger.”
“And how are you supposed to do that?”
“As per tradition, your family tribunal will make demands of me and put me through trials, as outrageous as they can make them. They’ll agree to give me your hand in marriage only once I pass all their tests and meet all their requirements.”
“Shades of Antarah ibn Shaddad when Ablah’s father asked for a thousand red camels to stymie him! I’m all for defusing their danger, but I draw the line at hurtling back in time to the eleventh century to do it.”
“That’s what tradition is—age-old practices.”
“I have nothing against those when they’re about innocuous stuff like food or design or celebrations. But I’m damned if I bow to traditions that delete centuries of progress and make me some prize to be won for the right price. I might as well throw away my master’s degrees in business management and information technology. How would I be different from any tent-bound maiden bartered to whomever haggled with her elders for her, before carrying her away as one of his possessions, a bit above his goat, but certainly beneath his horse and sword?”
“In my case, it would be private jets and multinational corporations.” She rewarded his teasing with a rib nudge. His eyes softened as he gathered her more securely against his hard body. “We’ll just play along to save headaches.”
“You really intend to submit to such a… ridiculous practice?”
“I will, ya habibati. Like I will worship you with my body and serve and protect you with my wealth and strength, I will submit to anything to honor you before your family and the world. I want there to be no doubt to what lengths I would go to, to have the privilege of your choice, the power of your love.”
And what could she say to that?
Resistance almost gone, she tried one last thing. “But according to this moronic tradition, if ten percent of awleya’a el amr—the elders—refuse you, you won’t be able to marry me.”
Something inexorable came into his eyes. “I will have zero percent refusals. Failure is not an option.”
Nine
For years, Rashid had considered returning to Zohayd an impossibility. Now he wasn’t just back in the country, he was in a limo heading to Zohayd’s royal palace, a place he’d sworn never to tread again.
But then he was sitting right next to another impossibility. Laylah. Who loved him. Who wanted him. Who believed in him.
Having her by his side made returning to Zohayd… bearable.
This was the land where he’d spent too many years watching Laylah from afar, unable to return her glances or reciprocate her interest. Where he’d found and lost those he’d thought of as brothers given to him by fate in exchange for taking everyone else away from him. Where he’d suffered the betrayal that had left him mutilated.
Then, claiming the kingship of Azmahar had become his life’s goal, and he’d known he’d be forced to return to Zohayd one day. But even when he’d started his plan, he hadn’t imagined this would be how he’d return. With Laylah as his world, not his pawn.
The supple hand entwined with his tugged him out of the darkness of his memories and worries to the sunniness of her smile and reality. “So who’s waiting for us at the palace?”
“I informed King Atef. I assume he’ll tell everyone else.”
Her grin widened. “Word of advice. Don’t use the word king around Uncle Atef. He hurled the title at Amjad and seems to want to forget the decades when he was one.”
“He’s been King Atef to me since I can remember. It’ll be very difficult to think of him as plain Sheikh Atef now. And of Amjad as king.”
“I know what you mean. Amjad is such a virtuoso in infuriating everyone and pulverizing rules and protocols, I thought he’d bring Zohayd down in a week when he became king. But though he’s taken being outrageous to a new realm, he’s now head-to-head with Aliyah’s Kamal for the position of best king in the region’s history.” She snuggled deeper into him, her smile catching the fire of adoration that he now felt he needed to sustain his vital functions. “Of course, the region hasn’t seen you as king yet.”
His heart trembled at how he’d come to depend on her esteem and belief. At how he felt he didn’t deserve them. “You always talk as if becoming a king is a sure thing for me.”
“I can’t see how it isn’t. You’re the absolute best man for the role, ever. Apart from my opinion, you’re a pureblooded Azmaharian, a decorated war hero and your success in business has surpassed even Haidar’s and Jalal’s. And you’re an Aal Munsoori.”
“Azmaharians hate that name now.”
Her expression became adorably serious. “They hate only one branch of the family, but still think of the Aal Munsooris at large as their rightful monarchs.” Her smile dawned again as her eyes devoured him. “And if anyone ever looked the part, it’s you.” Her hands strayed all over his shoulders and chest… and lower. “They must have coined the adjective regal for you.”
He caught her hands, his gaze shooting to the partition between the limo’s compartments. Even though he knew Ahmad couldn’t see or hear them, he didn’t want to start something he might not be able to stop. And he’d made a decision that, while in their region, he wouldn’t do anything to compromise her image.
It was still almost beyond his ability to deprive them both of the needed pleasure. He was almost panting when he said, “You’re clearly not in the least biased.”
She lay back against him, her hands captured in his, her eyes gobbling him up. “I am the essence of impartiality. If Azmaharians know what’s best for them, they’ll choose you.”
“If they do, how do you feel about becoming their queen?”
Her blink was surprise itself.
Would she ever stop surprising him? “You didn’t think of it?”
She sat up, her smooth forehead furrowing. “Uh… thinking wasn’t among my priorities this past month. But then I not only didn’t connect the dots between you becoming king and me becoming queen, I never contemplated being one, when it was all my mother thought of making me, too.”
His heart contracted at what he hadn’t contemplated. “It would be an unwelcome burden? A life you wouldn’t want for yourself or our children?”
The eyes that always shone with appreciation and humor grew somber. “It would be a huge responsibility and a radical change. It would take as drastic an adjustment.” Before he could blurt out that he would never disrupt her peace, that he would forget his kingship ambitions, her eyes glowed with conviction. “But I’ll share your choices and your life’s developments no matter what they are. If it’s your destiny to become king, then it’s my destiny to become your queen.”
And he forgot his abstinence resolution. His arms convulsed around her, his lips mashing to her forehead, to her cheeks, her lips, his heart overflowing. “Habibati…”
A rap on the limo’s window jerked him out of his surrender to poignancy. It had Laylah starting out of his embrace, too.
They both turned to find Amjad Aal Shalaan, Laylah’s oldest cousin and the infernal king of Zohayd, smirking down at them through the window.