MARRYING HER ENEMY & STOLEN BY THE DESERT KING

by Connelly, Clare

  But no one loves me, Kylie thought with a shift of her head, the reality biting through her. No one. Not her parents, for they’d sold her into marriage as Khalifa had insisted all along. Not her husband, who’d used her for his own ends. She was alone in the world.

  She sniffed away a sob.

  Her words, though exactly what he’d been trying to convince her of for a long time, gave him no satisfaction. He crouched before her, shocked by the change in her face. The hard line of grief that marred her beauty. And yet she was all the more beautiful to him in that moment of haunted brokenness. “We are more than sex,” he conceded.

  She shook her head, rejecting the consolation he offered so reluctantly. “I wanted to love and be loved so badly that I imagined the feeling everywhere. I didn’t see that there are other forces just as strong – convenience. Need. Power. Revenge.” She stood straight, her body a taut line. “That’s what you wanted from me, right? Revenge. And I hate that. I hate that you used me… that you let me hope for more, all the while knowing that I was just a means to an end.”

  He shook his head, standing and pulling her into his arms at the same time his lips sought hers but she pushed away from him on a sob. “No!” She shoved at his chest, needing to be free from his touch altogether. “Don’t! Don’t you dare touch me.”

  Her outburst, completely unprecedented and unexpected, surprised him. He stood perfectly still, watching her from between shuttered eyes.

  “Don’t touch me.” It was more tremulous now. She spun away from him, wrapping her arms around her chest. “I can’t bear it.”

  Liar, her body taunted, for it was already missing his nearness, craving his touch. But she would no longer let a physical need for him control her. If she took away the sex, the power of sexual attraction, it was easy to see that there was very little between them. Certainly no trust nor truth, and what hope could there be without either?

  “Fayez Haddad hurt someone very badly. Someone I cared for.”

  “The woman you loved,” she murmured with a small nod of her head.

  Silence throbbed between them, heavy and accusatory. And then he nodded.

  “Yes. The woman I loved.” He lifted a hand to her shoulder but she jerked away. “You must understand, I have known Selena all my life. And Fayez brutalized her. I came to see only my hatred for him. It came to matter more to me than anything else. I needed to hurt him. To make him pay for what he’d done to her…”

  “Why couldn’t you put him in jail?”

  “Because I’m not a dictator, azeezi, and Selena would not press charges. She begged me not to pursue the matter and I didn’t. For many years, I let it go.”

  “And then you heard about me,” Kylie whispered. She turned around, her eyes clearly showing her betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth sooner? Why let me continue to believe it was all about some stupid political coup or something?”

  A frown dragged his lips downwards, yet he couldn’t answer. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  “It changes everything! Marrying me because it might secure your place as ruler of this country, sure. I get that. I understand why that kind of stability would matter. But marrying me because you wanted to take me from him, to hurt him, it’s disgusting. It cheapens me and us, and everything we’ve shared.” She tilted her chin defiantly, staring at him for several long seconds before turning away, her profile autocratic. “You should have respected me enough to tell me the truth. If I’d known…”

  “Yes?” He interrupted, impatience, holding him still.

  “I would have been different,” she said finally, her eyes sweeping shut. “I presume you no longer need me to play the part of your wife?”

  Khalifa’s expression was as tight as a drum. “Meaning?”

  “He kidnapped me. He kidnapped Aïna. He threatened… he threatened…” she shook her head, swallowing bile. “You have everything you need to put him in prison for a very long time. And the rest of his family, I presume. You did it. You’ve got your revenge. And now I’d like to go home.” Her voice cracked on the last word but her face remained stoic.

  Home.

  Home.

  Such a simple word with very complex connotations.

  “Is that really what you want?”

  Was it? To return to Sydney, to her life there, her apartment – an apartment that this man now technically owned, to Mel and the Harbour and her old life? To a life without Khalifa in it? Without these exotic fruits and desert nights?

  “Yes.” She forced herself to be brave; to be strong. “I want to pretend this never happened.”

  “Kylie…”

  “Please, Khalifa. Don’t.” Now she turned to face him, and there was such misery in her features that he lost whatever he had been about to say. “Don’t say anything else. I’ve been a blind fool, but I’m awake now. I’m seeing clearly. And I know what I need to do.”

  His eyes were impossible to read, his lips were pressed together and a pulse beat in his throat. He stared at her, and at his sides, his hands were clenched into fists. She felt the tension emanating him, and she understood the relief that he wasn’t expressing. What a neat little bow she had helped him tie things into! Yet still he seemed to hesitate. Perhaps he hadn’t completely thought through the ending of things. What he would do once he’d got his revenge.

  “Please, let me go home.”

  And that was his undoing. The soft, trembling way she begged him.

  Inwardly he groaned, but he felt himself nodding. “Of course, azeezi. If that’s what you want.”

  Chapter 14

  “FOR ONE WEEK I have languished in this cell and you have not had the guts to see me? For three days I have been here and what? You have been too afraid to see me? You do not want to fight me?”

  Khalifa’s lips twisted with a curl of derision. “Believe me, if I wanted to fight you, you would no longer be able to stand.”

  Fayez’s expression showed disbelief. “Well, then?”

  Khalifa took a step closer, but didn’t so much as lift a hand towards the smaller man. “It would be easy to cower you with my strength, as you do to those who are weaker than you. Don’t you get it? There is no strength in that – only weakness. Every time you hit a woman, every time you used your strength to force them into your bed, you have demeaned yourself. You have shown yourself to be powerless.”

  Fayez moved fast, his fist lifting towards Khalifa’s body, but the sheikh caught it with ease, holding Fayez’s fist in the palm of his hand, his eyes mocking as they met the smaller man’s.

  “So what?” Fayez spat. “You are a merciful King now, are you?”

  “Oh, no.” Khalifa almost laughed. “There is nothing merciful about how you will be treated. You will be prosecuted to the full extent of Argenon’s laws. You will never see the light of day again. Nor will you touch another woman for so long as you live.”

  Fayez smirked. “She liked me touching her.”

  Khalifa was very still, his eyes locking to the smaller man’s as something like violence curdled his blood and bent his resolve. “Selena was young. She believed your lies.”

  “I was not referring to Selena.”

  Khalifa’s nostrils flared angrily and he pushed breath from his lungs. “You do not get to speak of my wife. Ever.”

  He turned and left the room, his heart thumping, his head aching. He nodded to the guards as he left, just catching the sound of the locks clicking back into place as he left the cell, moving into the corridor. And then he stopped, dipping his head forward and staring at the ground.

  For the rest of his life, the idea of Fayez touching Kylie would fill Khalifa with a sense of drowning. A sense of ache and pain from which he’d never recover.

  * * *

  “YOU LOOK WELL,” Khalifa’s smile was tight, his eyes reading every detail of Aïna’s appearance. A week after her kidnapping and only the faintest line of her scar remained.

  “Thank you, your highness.”

 
; He nodded. “I’m pleased you agreed to meet with me.”

  It was such an odd turn of phrase for a man used to commanding at will that Aïna frowned. “Of course,” she dipped her head forward. “I presume you called to have me reassigned?”

  “Reassigned?”

  Aïna’s cheeks darkened with the slightest hint of a flush. “Now that Her Highness is no longer in Argenon…”

  Khalifa’s gut twisted again. She’d been gone for six nights.

  “No.” He grimaced. “I … wanted to ask you about your time in the desert.”

  Aïna frowned. “Of course.”

  “I appreciate this might be awkward for you but I need to know.”

  There was such vulnerability in his expression; Aïna had never seen the Sheikh Sultan in any mode other than confident. She took the seat he’d gestured towards, her hands clasped in her lap.

  “I need you to tell me everything, Aïna. Everything. Omit not a single detail no matter… no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, or how little you think I want to hear it.”

  And so Aïna told him. She told him about the morning at the library, and Kylie’s delight in all the ancient scrolls. About their relaxed enjoyment of the corridors, because the building was secure. About the moment they were blindsided by two men, dressed as library guards. About the smell of the chemical and the immediate effect it had of rendering them unconscious. Of the moment they’d woken to find themselves chained in the dark room. She told him about Kylie’s exchange with Fayez, the things the other man had said, and finally, the things he’d done. The way he’d forced Kylie to drink alcohol and kissed her; the way he had touched her and she’d tried to push him away. Though Aïna couldn’t meet his eyes as she described the latter, her own shame at having been unable to help something she knew she would carry forever.

  And she told him of Kylie’s strength in lifting the table – her certainty that they would escape. Her need to rescue them herself.

  “And then you arrived,” she said with a tight smile, her face pale after reliving her harrowing journey.

  He rubbed a hand across his jaw, feeling the stubble there, his eyes pinned to Aïna without really seeing. “She must have been terrified.”

  “Perhaps. But she was very brave.”

  Khalifa nodded. Hadn’t she been all along? Orphaned and alone, she’d faced the path her parents had laid out for her. She’d married him. She had never run from her responsibilities and duties. She’d been brave.

  So brave.

  And now he had to be likewise.

  Letting her go had taken guts and courage and he was finding himself regretting that decision every day. So? What could he do?

  He saw her face as she’d been on her balcony. Miserable and determined in equal measure. He’d done that to her.

  She’d put all her trust in his hands and he’d proven again and again how undeserving he was of that. Even the way she’d given her body to him so freely, welcomed him, wanted him.

  And he’d been using her.

  She’d been right. He’d used her to avenge Selena’s wounds, uncaring that he was inflicting wounds of his own, and on Kylie of all people.

  “Is there anything else, sir?”

  He startled out of his reverie. He hadn’t realized Aïna had still been with him. “No.” And then, with a tight smile. “I am pleased to see you looking so well.”

  * * *

  “You run as though you’re afraid of your shadow,” Mel complained when they reached the bottom of the apartment building.

  “I’m not afraid,” Kylie responded with a frown, her eyes chasing a jetski over the harbour’s surface, admiring the way it skimmed the water and threw arcs of droplets in its wake.

  “I mean you’re fast! I used to be able to keep up with you.”

  “Sorry,” Kylie said with a grimace.

  “Don’t be. I’m impressed.”

  Kylie took a long sip from her water bottle and then stretched her arms above her head.

  “I’m thinking I’ll grab a cab straight to the bar tonight,” Mel murmured, inserting the key into the lock and shouldering the door inwards.

  Kylie stepped behind Mel into the communal stairwell and followed her up the stairs.

  “Did you want to meet there? Or come to my work?”

  Kylie frowned. “Sorry, what for?”

  “The concert. Remember? The Elantines are playing at The Rosie tonight?”

  “Oh, right,” Kylie nodded, vaguely recollecting a conversation a few weeks earlier. Then again, in the month since returning from Argenon, things were somewhat blurred.

  “So?” Mel reached the landing outside their apartment and paused, her hand hovering on the door.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Kylie said with a nod. “Eight o’clock, right?”

  “Nine,” Mel corrected. “But I’m catching up with a few of the guys around seven for dinner.”

  “Sure. I’ll let you know if I can get there earlier.”

  Mel nodded, but a frown was smudged over her face. “Kyles? Everything okay?”

  Was it? Would it ever be again?

  “What the hell is that?” Mel crouched down before Kylie could answer, and with her back to Kylie, it was hard to know what had caused the exclamation. But then Mel stood, a single round piece of fruit in her hands.

  Kylie recognized it instantly and her heart began to tremble, her skin to flush. Heat pooled between her legs.

  “It’s a kothraki,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off the fruit.

  “A… kothraki?”

  “A type of fruit,” she explained unnecessarily, turning slowly, scanning the landing. It was empty in both direction. There was not so much as a hint in the air to indicate that he’d been.

  And yet a shiver danced down her spine.

  A shiver of awareness and anticipation.

  “Here.” Mel held the kothraki towards Kylie but she stepped back as though it were flame itself.

  “No. That’s okay. I’ve tried them.”

  Mel pulled a face and unlocked the apartment.

  It wasn’t until Kylie crossed the threshold that she realized she’d been holding her breath, half-expecting Khalifa to be inside. Or for more fruit to have appeared.

  She frowned at the emptiness of their apartment.

  “Kylie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s going on? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “I’m going to shower.”

  She disappeared from the lounge area before she could see the exasperation on her best friend’s face. She flicked the water in the shower up as hot as it went, letting it scald her back and bring life back to her blood. She stood there as long as she could, and yet it didn’t make any sense.

  Had he come to her?

  But then why hadn’t he stayed?

  What was the point of leaving the stupid fruit?

  She flicked the taps off and stepped out of the shower, wrapping herself in a large towel and moving into her room. She dressed with a sense of gratitude – how nice it was to be able to select her own outfits and arrange them on her body. Not to feel that she would be offending a servant, nor doing them out of a job.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans and a singlet top, ignoring a bra, and reached for the journal she’d been reading earlier. Through the door of her bedroom, Mel could clearly be heard banging about, getting dressed with all the elegance of a baby hippopotamus playing catch, but she didn’t move.

  She loved Mel, but she didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  For a month she’d dodged questions and been vague when asked about her time in Argenon.

  For what could she say? She’d married a man she thought she’d loved, who’d been using her? Mel would have laughed at her stupid naivety. Worse, she’d have hugged her and told her it was totally understandable and Kylie would have felt even worse for disappointing her friend.

  When she heard the front door click shut she moved
out into the lounge and made a pot of coffee, taking both it and the journal with her.

  And such was the way in which she spent her days. Keeping busy, being distracted, telling herself she wasn’t thinking of Khalifa.

  * * *

  Two days after the kothraki had made its unwelcome appearance, another token appeared on their doorstep. This time, it arrived sometime overnight, so that when Kylie stepped out for her run, early in the morning, she almost trod on it. But something invited her to look down and there it was: wrapped in a silver box, a little tiny timer – filled with sand that she would have bet heralded from the white sands of the Argenese desert.

  The next morning it was a book of children’s stories, a whole anthology, and a bookmark was inserted into a particularly page. She turned to it on autopilot, finding a story about the village of Mesathinî and its brightly coloured buildings, which were rumoured to frighten away the monsters that dwelled in the very depths of the sea.

  There was nothing the next morning and it was only when Kylie ripped the door open that she realised how badly she’d been waiting for the next instalment. The absence of a token languished in her gut all day, but the next morning, there were two. She frowned as she reached for the first – a small vial of water that didn’t immediately make sense. But then, she lifted the gauzey piece of fabric and her heart trembled and cracked. She’d worn this on her wedding night.

  Was this water from his pool?

  She groaned and stepped back into her apartment, her face pale, the past a vivid haunting that was tormenting the depths of her soul. There were not enough bright houses in Mesathinî to ward off these monsters.

  With a soft sound of grief, she moved back to her bed and lay down, staring up at the ceiling, her gut swirling with all of the aches that the absence of love could bring.

  The next morning brought flowers – but not just any flowers. It was an arrangement befitting a princess. All of the blooms that had decorated her apartment in Argenon had been pulled together and sat in a crystal vase right in front of their door.