by Leslie North
Terribly mistaken and terribly naïve.
In fact, the longer it dragged on, the more embarrassed she felt. Maybe it was better to just pretend. Not open her mouth, never admit her feelings, and just live in a dreamland bubble about this fake relationship that had an expiration date and a completely unromantic origin.
Who was the stupid one here? The man who didn’t love her because she’d always been his easiest choice toward keeping the throne, or the woman who saw a business opportunity and mistook it for romance?
Regret and humiliation and sadness swarmed her, but she kept busy to avoid dealing with it. There was nothing to deal with, after all. She still had all her duties and plenty of items on her checklist. There was no time for wallowing in her ill-informed feelings.
Calla had recruited some of the tribal wives to help with the gala planning, mostly because she needed the help, but also because Fatim’s staunch silence toward her had left her a freewheeling mess. By the third day after her confession, she was just starting to feel the whispers of normalcy spreading through her. Maybe her skin would stop buzzing every time she thought back to that horrifying silence after she’d said the L word.
Luckily, having all these women around her gave an intrinsic sense of support, even if they didn’t realize they were lending it.
“We need to pick a theme today,” Sharisi said that morning in the royal tents. They’d expanded the seamstress area to include a makeshift command station for the gala planning.
“You’re right.” Calla felt listless and lost every time the theme idea circled back to greet her. But there was no more putting it off. “But I just don’t know what it should be.”
“Let’s stick to tradition,” Uli suggested.
“Even though we’re all so excited to break from it?” Calla cracked, lifting a brow. “Part of the reason behind this gala is precisely because we’re taking a turn toward modern times.”
“Exactly,” Uli said. “But we can twist it. In the style of ‘everything old is new again.’” Excitement shone on her face, her big, brown eyes sparkling. “What do you think?”
“We can bring back old traditions, maybe,” Sharisi added. “They’ll feel new again. Just for a night.”
Calla sighed. At this point, she didn’t care. She was just waiting for the time when she didn’t feel like such an idiot. Such a loving, heartsick idiot. “I think that sounds fine.”
“You know, we could have a buffet of ancient foods as well,” Uli went on.
Calla nodded, scribbling the idea in her notebook. Strange but good. “I can run these ideas by Fatim today when we meet. I’ll even arrange for a taste test of the ancient foods. But I imagine he’ll love them.”
Once Calla had arranged a few details with the kitchen staff about an ancient menu sampler, she texted Fatim to push back their meeting time to the evening so that she could come to him with the sampler and all the newly made decisions regarding the gala. They’d outright cancelled yesterday’s lunch meeting, Fatim claiming he had something come up, though she couldn’t help but wonder if it was because he wanted to avoid seeing her one on one. Like having to face the heavy L word was so outrageous that he’d rather cancel their luncheons for the rest of the year.
Maybe she was being overdramatic. Maybe she had this all wrong. Truthfully, she couldn’t tell any more. All her common sense had flown out the window the day she agreed to marry the king of Amatbah.
The rest of the morning passed quickly, and she opted to take lunch in the tents with the rest of the ladies as they continued planning. Calla snuck in some design work before the kids got home from school, then it was the non-stop wrangling of homework, playtime, cleaning scuffed knees and practicing her firm “no” each time Rashid asked if he could stick ants up his nose.
Calla sent the children with a palace employee when it was time for her taste test with Fatim. She had the cook bring the sampler plates of the ancient menu to the small breakfast nook, which was intimate and quiet. They didn’t often eat there, so it would be a nice change of pace. And it wouldn’t remind her of when she was sitting with him in the private dining room and dared to admit that she loved him.
Fatim breezed into the breakfast nook right on time, sending her an easygoing grin. “Hello there. How has your day been?”
She could only stare at him as he took his seat at the small table, his energy as unaffected and laidback as ever. No trace of awkwardness or tension, as she’d been imagining and fearing.
“Quite busy,” she said, trying to mimic his good mood. She should take a page out of his book. Just pretend like the awkward thing didn’t exist. “We’ve got a lot of decisions to go over, and I think you’ll like what we’ve come up with.”
The cook brought out eight total plates filled with a wide variety of ancient foods—including a pasty-looking gruel and some lumpy blobs of duck meat. Calla grimaced.
“Not extremely aesthetic, is it?” Fatim asked, sticking his fork into a strange taupe sauce.
“I guess the ancients hadn’t perfected the art of hosting,” Calla murmured. “These don’t even have garnishes.”
Fatim snorted with laughter, then bit into a slice of a dark barley bread. He chewed thoughtfully, then nodded. “This is good. Albeit slightly ugly.”
Calla giggled, and loaded up her own plate of ancient, ugly food. He watched as she tried a few things. He was thankful for the distraction of this tasting. He was trying his best to pretend that her confession two nights ago hadn’t happened. If he waited it out, the discomfort would recede to a dull roar, and then it would disappear altogether.
He was an expert at this—at avoiding feelings, at keeping people in their prescribed roles. He had to be, if he wanted to rule this tribal nation.
Besides, he couldn’t tell Calla he loved her, even though a very deep, dark part of him wanted to bring her into the most secret parts of him, let her see and poke around. She inspired that intimacy with him, and he both admired and feared it.
It was exactly that type of intimacy that led to problems down the line.
Problems like losing his footing or letting a country fall to pieces.
Still, the more they tasted and joked about the awful presentation of the food, debating on which things tasted best, the more he was drawn to her. As he always was. To the plump pinkness of her lips, the porcelain sheen of her cheeks, the sweet shyness in her voice whenever she looked to him for his thoughts.
And even though love needed to stay out of it, he certainly loved when she unraveled for him. When she let that shadowy, vixen side out to play.
“I can’t decide which ones we should eat for the gala,” Calla said, after having tried all the plates.
“I know,” Fatim said, wiping at his mouth with a napkin. His cock was hard as rock, pressing at the linen of his pants. She hadn’t noticed yet, but she was about to. “How about I just eat you instead?”
She cocked him a look that said come on. “Fatim—”
“I want to eat you right now, Calla.”
Her mouth parted, and he pushed his chair out before getting onto his knees in front of her. Her brow was a hard line. “What—“
He tugged her chair away from the table and then pushed her dress up until it bunched at her waist. Understanding softened her face.
“But you—” she began.
“I’m hungry for something this ancient menu doesn’t have,” he murmured, skipping kisses up her inner thigh. He brushed his thumb against the crotch of her panties, and he found her damp and wanting him. He took a healthy bite of the inside of her thigh, and she shivered, melting back against the chair.
“Fine, but I can’t be a part of the final menu,” she teased weakly.
“Oh no,” he said, tugging her panties down and over her ankles. “This is a special menu item just for me.”
He dove in before she could even respond, his tongue finding the smooth, slick crease of her pussy. She moaned low as he sought out the hard nub of her clit, kissi
ng and licking and prodding her with his tongue until she was trembling in his arms and crying out.
“Fatiiim,” she moaned, like a warning.
He pushed a finger inside her, finding her slick and hungry, clenching at his finger as if she needed him. And that’s what he wanted. He wanted her juicy and needing him. He eased in a second finger and then a third, fingerfucking her as he lavished attention on her throbbing clit.
Calla didn’t last long. She knotted her fingers in his hair, and a strange squeak escaped her. Thighs locked around his head like a vice. And then her whole body jolted, like an electric shock, and she arched her back.
“Ohhhh, Fatiiim,” she moaned, shudders wracking her body. He didn’t let up until he was sure he’d drained every last dreg of pleasure from her body. And then he sat back, beholding the expression of pure, sated pleasure on her face. She wilted into the chair.
“Mmmm.” He kissed the inside of her knee, then came to standing. He was still hard as a rock, but after her confession the other night, he thought proper sex should stay off the table for a while.
It didn’t mean other things couldn’t happen. But their sex was explosive, and it was too good. It even got him thinking wild things, and he knew better than to consciously indulge in that.
“Now that you have a clear head,” Fatim said, reaching for the phone he’d left on the dinner table, “I trust you can make the final selection of the plates.” He cast her a devilish grin before he started toward the door. “You already know my favorite, though. The one thing that’s not on the menu.”
16
A week later and Calla had formally recruited Nara to help with the gala planning. The girl was so curious about the party and just couldn’t stop coming up with fantastical ideas for the event. Calla figured this was a way to help the girl find her voice, so she allowed Nara to shadow her on the days when it made sense.
But sometimes Nara wheedled her way into helping with the wives even when it didn’t make sense. Which was how Calla found herself with Nara emerging from the curtains in the formal sitting room of the palace only moments before a journalist was scheduled to arrive.
“Nara!” Calla hissed. Her nerves had been jangling all day—all week, really—worrying about the details of the gala and every other thing on her plate. Keeping an eye on Nara hadn’t been in her schedule for this afternoon. “What are you doing here? I sent you with Uli to get the ribbons organized.”
“It’s so boring,” Nara whined. “I just want to be with you. Some of those other ladies smell funny.”
Encouraging Nara to find her voice had a mixed bag of results. But Calla couldn’t complain about her honesty. “Fair enough. But I need you to be very quiet. Very still. A very important man is coming to interview us. I mean, me. He’ll be interviewing me.”
Nara gasped, clapping her hands together. “An interview!”
A knock sounded on the grand wooden doors of the sitting room, and a palace employee poked her head in. The journalist was here. He came through a moment later, grinning and friendly. Calla shook his hand and introduced Nara, who fidgeted by Calla’s side as the interview began.
The journalist had basic questions about the upcoming gala and who would be in attendance. The idea was to put out an article to generate buzz, so that word would start traveling about some of the recent shifts in leadership within the tribe. But when the journalist asked about who was more excited about the gala—Fatim or Calla—Nara piped up.
“My Calla is more excited because she and Daddy will get to dress up and kiss,” she said proudly.
Calla laughed weakly, sending an apologetic look to the journalist. “Well, that’s certainly a natural byproduct of the gala,” she said.
“Do your daddy and Calla often have a good time together?” the journalist asked, directly to Nara.
Nara nodded vehemently. “They are so in love. Like the most in love people I have ever, ever seen.”
Calla felt her neck heat up. Good lord, this was embarrassing on so many levels. Thankfully, the journalist and Nara weren’t aware just how awful this was for her.
“How sweet.” The journalist offered Calla a genuine smile. “The people love when the king is in love.”
Calla swallowed hard. Except he wasn’t. Maybe it was better his people didn’t know that. Calla tried to steer the interview back toward safer waters. When the journalist had concluded his questions and excused himself, Calla and Nara sat in the sitting room.
“I want to read the article!” Nara hopped around the room a few times repeating this while Calla smiled wanly. Surely the journalist wouldn’t take a six-year-old’s outburst as journalistic fact?
As she herded Nara through the palace and back toward the tents, where they’d spend the remainder of the afternoon working on the gala, Calla tried her best to calm herself down.
But it was hard, when the big ugly beast of Their Love That Actually Wasn’t was thrown back in her face.
If anything, they had a lust for the ages. Fatim had no problem eating her out—he’d done so plenty of times over the past week—but somehow continuously dodged real sex. She wondered if this was his ploy to make her forget that he still hadn’t said he loved her, or even brought it up.
She couldn’t complain about the ploy, if that’s what it was.
But it certainly didn’t make her forget. If anything, it only drove home how one-sided their relationship was. And how much more one-sided it was sure to become as time went on.
The next morning, Fatim and Calla were trudging through their morning routine, bleary-eyed and yawning as usual. Ever since gala planning had taken over the palace, they’d both been keeping longer hours and arriving to bed much more stressed than usual.
Fatim watched as Calla brushed her teeth. She stared dully into the mirror. Stressed or not, Calla had seemed sad the past few days. Uncharacteristically low. He stepped into the brightly lit bathroom, tugging his kaftan over his head before taking his spot at the sink beside her.
“Are you okay, Calla?” He reached for his toothbrush.
She barely looked his way as she paused in her brushing. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He struggled to find his words. “You’ve seemed a little low the past few days. Is it gala planning stress?”
His heart hammered in his chest as he awaited her response. He may have unwittingly opened Pandora’s box. She was quiet for a few moments as she spit out her toothpaste and rinsed. Then she turned to him.
“I think I’m sad. I’ve been thinking about things the last few days. Running over what my life looks now and…” A sigh escaped her. “I have all the makings of the life and career that I’ve always wanted without even knowing exactly what I wanted. I mean, I have it all here.” Her eyes were wide, earnest. “And yet nothing feels right. My designs aren’t coming together as they should. I don’t know what’s wrong, what’s missing.”
Fatim let her words cycle inside of him as he brushed his own teeth and spit. His phone pinged from the bedroom just before he spoke. “Sometimes, it’s the ‘everything’ that’s the problem,” he said, squeezing her shoulder before heading into the bedroom. Over his shoulder, he added, “It’s an adjustment period. You might still be feeling the growing pains.”
He didn’t hear if Calla responded while he reached for his phone. A new email had arrived from the journalist that Calla met with yesterday. He had the draft of the article he planned to submit to the newspaper. As tradition called for, all published items about the sheikh had to pass through him first.
“The article is ready,” Fatim called out as he swiped to open it up. He sat on the edge of the bed and started reading. Calla came out a moment later, heading toward the closet to pick out her clothes.
“Let me know how it sounds,” she said, her voice muffled from inside the walk-in closet.
The article wasn’t long, and it took Fatim only a matter of minutes to read through the entire thing. But it wasn’t what he’d expect
ed. Not at all. He read it a second time before saying anything—but on the second time around, it made him even madder.
The article title was “A Love for the Ages”. The whole thing was focused on the stunning, epic love of Fatim and Calla. The gala was hardly a background mention. When Calla came out of the closet a moment later, he swung his gaze up to find hers.
“Is this a joke?” he demanded.
Her eyes widened. “Um, sorry?”
“The article. What the hell did you tell the journalist?” He handed her the phone. “This article barely even mentions the gala. Instead, it goes on and on about some mythical fairy-tale romance that we have. How dare you bring our relationship into this!”
Calla’s mouth parted as she read the article, then it turned into a hard line. She tossed his phone onto the bed.
“I didn’t bring our relationship into it,” she said in a low, wavering voice. “In fact, it was hardly mentioned. I’m sure the reporter just thought this would be a nice touch to excite the tribe, not realizing that the king himself is so offended by the idea of love.”
Fatim gritted his teeth. She had no idea what it took to rule this nation, or what sacrifices had to be made to keep it together. That she could just run her mouth about this fantasy made him angrier than he could even articulate. The article had called Calla another “beautiful outsider” married in a “fit of passion.”
“Why did you talk about all of this?” Fatim demanded. “I can’t even believe you’d call what we have a ‘fit of passion.’ When did I ever give you that impression?”
“Trust me,” she spat. “You never have. I think those words are what’s called creative liberty. I never said any of that to him. If I wanted to be accurate, I would have called our relationship what it is—a hastily made business decision because you were backed into a corner.”
Fatim scoffed, but Calla barreled on.
“Besides, what’s so wrong with being seen as in love? I don’t get it. I do love you. I’ve told you as much. It’s not a secret, and it shouldn’t stay one.”