“Don’t you see?” Peggy whispered. “Even if it doesn’t work, it still works! I’ll go to jail for life if I have to. I’ll sit on death row and watch my sons become princes, kings, fucking Gods!”
She pulled the trigger as she said the words, and Zayaan howled in pain as he felt the small-caliber bullet tear into his right shoulder, spinning him around as he felt the second bullet graze his head.
“Peggy!” came the voice through the chaos, and Zayaan blinked and stared up from the floor. It was Nat, carrying flowers and a bottle of wine, like she was there to celebrate something. She dropped the flowers and wine, screamed again, and then tore in through the bedroom door and grabbed Peggy in a bear-hug from behind, pinning her arms down by her sides as the gun went off a third time.
Peggy howled as the bullet went into her own foot, and she dropped the gun as both women went to the floor. They rolled on the floorboards together, until finally Peggy went limp, sobbing hysterically as Nat held onto her and panted, staring up at the ceiling, her eyes wide with adrenaline and shock.
“Henry, are you all right?” Nat said finally.
Zayaan blinked and took a breath. He was in shock. He was in pain. But he was alive. “Zayaan,” he said after taking another breath, a long, deep, trembling breath during which everything passed before his eyes: His past, his present, and his future. “My name is Zayaan.”
24
ONE YEAR LATER
“Ten years? You think it is fair she gets only ten years for attempting to murder her husband, the father of her children, my brother! He is royalty, Nat! My brother!”
Sheikha Natalie Norwood looked down at the purple silk robes that dragged along the sandstone floor as she walked along the open hallways of the Royal Palace of Ladaak. Behind her were two veiled women, each carrying one of the twins that had been born just three months earlier. Usually Nat carried both of them close to her breast, whether she was holding court with her husband the king or simply relaxing in the Eastern Wing, which was reserved for her and her alone. But today she’d asked the nannies to hold her children because she thought she might need all of herself to handle the Sheikh, who was boiling over with rage at Nat’s decision to reduce Peggy’s sentence from life to just ten years in the Ladaaki prison that was within view of one of the high outside balconies of the Royal Palace.
“I should remind you that your brother did not want her imprisoned at all,” Nat said coolly, lifting the bottom of her robe just enough so she felt the warm desert air swirl its way beneath her silk skirts.
“It is not his decision. And he has been out of this world too long to make the correct decision anyway. Life in America has made him soft,” said Zameer, scowling as he strode alongside his queen.
Nat snorted, reaching out and casually touching one of the sandstone pillars, running her fingers over the rubies and emeralds driven into the rock to form the shape of a peacock. There were attendants waiting to serve them in every room, private jets ready and fueled at the world-class airport, gold-plated Range Rovers to carry them across the desert, Rolls Royce limousines to whisk them down the broad, perfectly paved streets of Ladaak. Oh, and bank accounts, investments, and property all over the world—assets that were worth so much Nat made sure she never thought about it because she might seriously go insane.
“Right,” she muttered. “Life in America was so easy and lavish that it made him soft. Unlike here, of course.”
“What was that?” the Sheikh said, turning his head and raising an eyebrow. “You said something?”
“Nope,” Nat said, smiling and widening her eyes in a look of pure puppy-dog innocence.
“I could have sworn I heard some kind of sarcastic remark. But no matter. What were we talking about?”
“How your brother, your royal brother, who’s taken his place in your court, by your side, to rule alongside you, asked for his own wife to be released from prison after you flew her back to Ladaak and tossed her behind bars without so much as a trial. I don’t know what strings you pulled with the U.S. government to get them to look the other way, but here we are. Life in prison without a trial. That’s not reasonable. I’m sorry.”
“Trial? Is there any doubt about what she did? You saw it yourself! Zayaan told us in simple English! The bullets they dug out of him match Peggy’s gun! Not to mention that Peggy herself admitted everything she did. Everything!”
Nat sighed, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and nodding to her attendants to take the twins and leave the room. She waited until they were alone, and then she sighed again. “Yes, Zameer. And if Peggy hadn’t done what she did, we never would have met, and you never would have been reunited with Zayaan.”
Zameer almost spat on his own floors as he turned to her, his green eyes ablaze. “But that was not her intention, and you know it! What she wanted was herself on the throne, and she was willing to do anything to get it! Including cheat on her husband, even shoot him dead! Not to mention she manipulated both me and you into—”
“Into falling in love? Making two beautiful children? Living happily ever after?” Nat said. “Oh, the horror! We should have her beheaded for that!”
“You are not making sense. You know as well as I do that us falling in love was not her intention. It was what made her plan fall apart!” Zameer shot back. “She expected me to shut down your winery, and she assumed you would join her in this plan to get my DNA and send it to Saudi Arabia to get matched with Zayaan’s sample.”
Nat shook her head and waved him off. “It isn’t about intentions. It’s about the result. Don’t they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? So isn’t it just as true to say the path to heaven is cobbled with bad intentions?”
The Sheikh laughed, his eyes narrowing and shining green as they strolled towards the verandah of the Western Wing of the Royal Palace. The sun was low on the horizon, casting its golden light over the faraway dunes. The domes and minarets of Ladaak were shimmering like jewels in the oblique light, and in an hour Nat knew she’d hear the familiar prayer call that marked the end of another day in this new life of hers that still seemed like a dream.
“I have never heard that saying. You cannot just make up proverbs and throw them at me as if that ends our argument.”
“There is no argument,” Nat said. “I’m your queen, and since you and your brother Sheikh Zayaan couldn’t come to a reasonable agreement, I had to step in and take over.”
The Sheikh sighed, his eyes going misty. Nat knew he was happy, even though he wouldn’t admit it. He’d been in this state of happiness ever since Zayaan came out of the shadows, stood up and spoke his name, admitted to the world that he’d voluntarily stepped away from the Sheikhood, and that he was now ready to come back and take his place by his brother’s side, to rule as second-in-command to his younger brother Zameer: The younger brother who had persevered through hardship and doubt, had proved himself to be the leader that the people of Ladaak deserved.
Zameer took a breath and slipped his arm around her waist, making her shudder, just like she had the first time he’d done that back when they stood at that railing overlooking her vineyard in Virginia.
“All right,” he said gruffly, but there was a softness in his voice that Nat recognized as a grudging respect for her judgment. “Perhaps you are correct. I wanted Peggy to hang, or at least spend the rest of her years in prison. Zayaan wanted to forgive Peggy, give her a chance to redeem herself. And you decided that the middle ground of ten years behind bars was appropriate.”
“Ten years, with yearly evaluations to see if it makes sense to release her early. And she’ll always have certain allowances that get increased every year,” Nat reminded him. “She gets to see her kids as often and as much as they want. She gets to attend any and all school events—graduations, school plays, soccer games . . . whatever.” Nat took a breath and sighed. “Huh,” she said, a half-smile formin
g on her lips. “So in a way, Peggy did get what she wanted. Part of it, anyway.”
“How is that?”
“Well, her sons are now officially Princes of Ladaak, aren’t they? And they will always be princes, always be royalty.”
The Sheikh paused for a moment, and then he shrugged. “True. They are my brother’s children. My nephews. No one can take away their royal blood. They are part of the Royal House of Ladaak.” Then he snorted. “ Ya Allah, perhaps you are correct with that clumsy proverb you just invented. Perhaps the path to heaven is indeed cobbled with bad intentions. Clumsy but apt.”
“Clumsy?! I’ll show you clumsy, you big oaf!” Nat squealed, pushing his hand off her waist and smacking him hard on the shoulder.
The Sheikh growled and brought his hand back around, smacking her bottom tight as he pushed her up against the sandstone parapet of the verandah. Below them stretched open courtyards, manicured gardens with perfectly laid-out rows of desert plants, including ten different varieties of cacti, some of which were unique to Ladaak. He rubbed her ass as she moaned and placed her hands firmly on the parapet, smiling as she waited for his fingers to find what she’d carefully placed there to mark this special day.
“Ya Allah,” the Sheikh muttered as he ran his fingers along her rear crack and stopped in the middle. “What is this?”
“You know what it is,” she whispered, the arousal rising in her body so fast she almost swooned as she was taken back to that wild moment a year ago in Virginia.
“Is it the same one?” the Sheikh muttered, his fingers circling the outline of the cork that was firmly planted in her rear—her rear which had admittedly gotten larger since she’d pushed out two chubby little babies. “You kept it?”
“Of course I kept it. I saved it for today.”
“Why? What is today?” the Sheikh muttered, already circling behind her and pulling her purple silk skirts up over her rump so he could see.
“Shame on you,” she scolded. “It’s been three months since the kids were born. And that means it’s exactly one year since . . . since you uncorked me.”
“Ya Allah, woman,” he groaned from behind her, and she could feel his warm breath against her naked ass. Slowly he twisted that cork in her, pushing it deeper as she tightened and then moaned out loud. “How does that feel?”
“It feels like . . . like cobblestones on the path to heaven,” she managed to mutter, planting her feet firmly on the sandstone tiles as she prepared for what she knew was coming, coming hard, coming deep, from him to her, always and forever. “It feels like the entrance to heaven. Happy anniversary, Zameer. Go ahead. Go ahead and do it. Uncork me. Just like the first time, Zameer. Uncork me.”
∞
EPILOGUE
Nat sighed as she looked out over the rows of cacti decoratively planted in the acreage that was her new backyard. She wanted to block out the feeling, but she couldn’t help be taken back to memories of her winery, those days of selecting the grape-seeds, carefully planting rows upon rows of what would become that vineyard—her vineyard.
Both Zameer and she had compromised on the winery issue: Nat had grudgingly agreed that although they would rule Ladaak as progressive leaders, encouraging freedom of religion and speech, they could not ignore certain political realities of the Middle East.
“Politics is about compromise, about picking your battles, about give and take,” Zameer had told her during one of those long evenings when Nat was trying to get her arms around her new role as Sheikha, queen, leader of a nation where she was an outsider. “And although I agree we need to keep moving towards openness and freedom, we must accept the realities that we are constantly playing this game of give-and-take with kingdoms like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are strictly Islamic. We cannot fight every battle at once, and we need to decide which ones to fight first. Think about it: After Zayaan came forward, Saudi Arabia immediately sent Siddiqui back to Ladaak for incarceration, and they pulled back all sanctions, along with issuing an apology. They play the game too, even though they are powerful enough to simply step on all the smaller kingdoms of the region. So we must play the political game along with them and the others. We must decide: Do we tackle the acceptance of alcohol—something that is clearly forbidden in most interpretations of Islam—or do we first tackle more serious issues like the oppression of women, draconian punishments like severing limbs and death-by-stoning, and the freedom of thought and speech?”
Nat had taken a breath and nodded. “You want me to give up my winery, don’t you?”
The Sheikh had looked at her, his jaw tightening. “You are my wife, my partner, and my queen. I will not tell you what to do on this one. I am asking you to consider the perception issue, and decide for yourself what will put you—put us—in a position to do the greatest good for our kingdom and for the Middle East in general.”
And so Nat had thought about it, and finally she’d come back to the Sheikh with a compromise. “I’ll give it up, but I won’t let you shut it down. That’s too much, and I can’t subscribe to the extreme view that you’re morally responsible for the winery even if you sell it to someone else.” She paused and raised an eyebrow, challenge in her brown eyes. “You need to pick your battles too,” she added, a smile turning the corners of her lips.
The Sheikh laughed, pulling her close and kissing her hard on the cheek. “All right. It is done. We will sell it, and allow it to continue. Your wine-babies will live on, albeit under someone else’s parentage. I will instruct my American investment managers to put the winery up for sale immediately.”
Nat had nodded. “Who is your new investment manager in Washington, anyway?”
The Sheikh shrugged. “You remember Laila?”
Nat frowned. “You’re kidding. She still works for you?”
Zameer nodded, pulling her close. “Yes. Why, you want me to fire her? Say it and it is done!”
Nat thought for a moment. Laila was young, pretty, and ambitious. And she’d fucked the Sheikh before they met. So what? Should she be penalized for any of that? Wasn’t it a young woman’s right to fuck any man for any reason? Did Nat feel threatened? Should she destroy a woman’s career because of something that had happened before she’d even met this man?
Pick your battles, she told herself, finally shaking her head and smiling at Zameer. She was a queen, and this was her king. She’d never feel threatened by another woman, she decided. By now she knew she gave him everything he needed, and he gave her everything in return. Everything and then some.
“No,” she whispered. “Of course not. Just so long as I am the one who deals with her from now on.”
The Sheikh raised an eyebrow. “You are jealous of her? Are you mad? Do you understand how insignificant she is in comparison to you, Nat?”
Nat laughed as she felt his hands reach for her breasts, slide down her sides, caress her ass as she squirmed and moved closer to him. “I’m still a woman,” she said. “And sometimes a little jealousy is healthy. Gives things an edge that can be . . . fun.”
Nat laughed again as she thought back to that conversation, of how it had ended with sweaty, mad sex, the Sheikh taking her from front and behind, coming three times in the span of an hour, filling her cunt, her ass, and then finally exploding all over her stomach and boobs when she’d been too sore to take him into her and simply jerked him off as he knelt above her, his cock sticking straight out, his muscular body rigid and erect as he arched his neck back and roared like the king he was.
But the end of her laughter was tinged with a hollowness born of the restlessness she was feeling. She loved being a mother. She loved being a queen. She loved being a wife. But there was still something missing, and as she glanced out over the rows of cacti she knew what it was.
“Zameer,” she said later that evening as they were being served dinner. “Tell me again about that cactus.”
“Which one?” Zameer asked. “There are many, and I am no expert.”
“Neither am I, but I want to become an expert,” she replied.
The Sheikh raised an eyebrow and then blinked. “An expert in what?”
“Cacti. That one specifically: The one you mentioned a year ago. The one that produces an intoxicant that’s allowed by the Islamic faith. The one that’s a loophole, if you will.”
The Sheikh frowned, and then he shook his head. But it wasn’t a denial. It was him shaking his head in wonder. “The loophole,” he said, a twinkle coming to his eyes, his gaze running down along her curves, pausing on her rump for a long moment before he blinked and then nodded. “You want to cultivate that cactus? Are you being serious?”
Nat shrugged. “Everyone needs a release. An escape. This one is legal and accepted. And you did say we need to have some other product to export besides oil.”
The Sheikh smiled, his green eyes sparkling with admiration. He glanced over at his children in their high-chairs, then back at his wife. “All right,” he said, his eyes moving down along her body once more as Nat turned red from the way the napkin on the Sheikh’s lap was rising. “But before I allow you to take advantage of that loophole, I will need to take advantage of your loophole. It helps me think, you see.”
Nat almost fell off her chair as she glanced at her oblivious children and then the group of attendants, at least some of whom understood English. She dabbed her mouth and glanced up at the Sheikh, blinking as her face went flush.
“Well,” she said slowly. “Politics is about give and take. So if it helps you make a decision, I suppose I will have to, um, bend for you on this one.”
That napkin on his lap was now a goddamn tent, and Nat just looked up with all the elegance of the queen she was, snapped her royal fingers at the blushing attendants, and said, “Clear the room. The Sheikh and I have some unfinished business.”
Uncorked for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 14) Page 14