by Maisey Yates
Last night he had been inexcusable with her. And no mater the outcome, he had to return her to her fiancé. To her father.
He had been wrong to keep her.
And he had been more than wrong to touch her. In that moment, when he’d pressed her against the wall and kissed her, when he’d put his hand between her thighs and felt all of her heat about his fingertips...he’d been conscious of the gates of hell opening up behind him, the flames licking his back, demons threatening to pull him in.
But not before they’d spurred him to commit the deadliest sin possible. A fitting end to his life. Except it wouldn’t really be the end. He couldn’t even count on being dragged into the comparable bliss of hell.
He would have to stay in this life and deal with consequences. Yet again.
Consequences he’d earned with his libido, with his disgusting lack of control. Control he’d thought he’d found out in the desert, deprived of every good thing. But back here, back where he’d started, he seemed to lose all the strength the desert had infused in him.
This, then, would be the test.
He reached down. “Need help?”
She shook her head and approached the horse, putting her small bag of clothes into the saddlebag with his other supplies before pulling herself up behind him onto the horse, wrapping one arm around his waist, her thighs bracketing his, her tempting heat against his back.
Soon the desert sun would block that. Would make it impossible to distinguish her body from the arid air.
He took the head scarf from his lap and handed it back to her. “Take this, habibti. You need protection from the sun.”
She said nothing, but she took it from him, and the movements behind him seemed to indicate that she was following orders.
She wrapped her arm back around his waist, leaning forward, her chin digging into his back. The contact, and the pain, soothed him.
“Let’s go,” she said.
His agreement came in the form of spurring his horse on and heading toward the back gate of the palace. Out into the desert.
Here, he would find his salvation or his damnation.
And he wasn’t entirely sure which one he was hoping for.
* * *
He didn’t push his horse the way he had that first day they’d met. Instead, they rode at a more decent pace, and they arrived at the oasis just as the sun was becoming too punishing for her to endure.
“We’ll stop here,” he said, indicating the outcrop of rocks. “There is water just behind the rocks. I’ll set up the tent there. Under the trees.”
He got off the horse, and she dismounted too, pausing to stroke the beast’s nose. “He needs a name, Zafar.”
Zafar turned and looked at her, brow raised. “Why?”
“Calling him horse is stupid. I don’t call you Grumpy Man, do I?” Approaching the subject of the horse’s name was easier than confronting what had passed between them last night.
Thinking about the horse’s name was easier, too. Which was why she’d spent the silent ride to the oasis pondering that instead of how being in his arms had felt. Of how hard and muscular he was, and about just how much she’d enjoyed contact with that hard muscular body last night.
Yes, thinking of a name for the Horse was much safer.
“I was thinking Apollo,” she said, following Zafar to the oasis, where he was headed, bundled-up tent in hand.
“Why?”
“It’s transcendent. Godlike.”
“He is neither.”
“Excuse me. Are you maligning the noble steed carrying us through the desert on its back?”
“I’m hardly maligning him. I just don’t think it’s a good name for him.”
“You’ve had him for how long?”
He tossed her a quick glance before setting the tent down by the water and continuing on in his labor. “Nine years.”
She shook her head. “And you haven’t named him. Any name is better than Horse.”
“Not Apollo.”
“Achilles. Archimedes. Aristotle?”
“Why Greek and why all with A?”
“He seems Greek. And also I’m moving alphabetically.”
“He is an Arabian horse. He should have an Arabic name.”
“All right, name away.”
“Sawdaa. Means black.”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and didn’t bother to keep herself from looking at his backside while he worked on the tent. “Original.”
“Better then Horse, yes?” he asked, finishing with the tent’s frame.
“Barely.”
“All right then, what would you call him? Not the name of a Greek god, demigod or philosopher, please.”
“Since you said please. How about Sadiqi. Friend.”
“I know what it means.”
“Well, he’s your friend.”
“He’s my horse.”
“You love nothing, Zafar? Nothing at all? Are you so determined to keep it that way that you can’t even name your horse?”
He straightened and shot her a dark glare. “You know nothing about what I’ve been through. Telling you...it doesn’t make it real for you. You don’t know what I had to do to survive. To move forward. To make myself a valuable person.”
“I admit,” she said, walking down to where he stood and taking a position beneath the shade of a palm, “my life story has less blood spilled than yours. But I know what it’s like to try to change yourself so you can have some value. I know what it is to break everything.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the tree as she let her least favorite memory wash over her. “I ran through my mother’s sitting room. She had her own sitting room, a parlor for entertaining her friends. And she kept her collection of antique dolls in there. She loved them.” She swallowed. “I was always loud. Brash. And I moved too quickly. So one day I ran through her sitting room and I knocked against the doll cabinet.”
She could still remember the little sandy-haired doll tipping off the shelf, landing wedged between the locked cabinet door and the shelf. And she’d prayed so hard that it wasn’t broken.
Her mother had come running in and opened the cabinet, and pulled out the now-hollow-faced doll, the porcelain reduced to dust on the bottom on the ground.
“I broke it,” she said, trying so hard not to picture the look on her mother’s face. Trying and failing. “My mother said...she said I was making her crazy. That I was always ruining things. That I’d ruined everything. Ruined things she’d loved.” She swallowed the lump that was building in her throat. “I don’t think I was one of the things she loved anymore.”
Ana breathed in deep. “She left the next day. I’m twenty-two years old, and I know my mother didn’t leave me because of a broken doll. I know there were other things. I know she probably had some problems. But then...then all I could think was...if I were more careful. If I had taken more care to listen to her, to move slower. Maybe be quieter and more poised. More helpful....if I had been those things she wouldn’t have left. And if I wasn’t careful...maybe my father would leave, too. After all, I ruin everything.”
Her voice choked off. She hated this. Hated that she was doing this now, with him. But this was the truth of it. The truth of her life, that she hid behind fake smiles and feeling polished and pulled together.
She’d pulled her hair into a bun and learned how to say yes to everything, to be efficient, to do what was expected of her.
“You do not ruin everything,” he said, his voice rough. Then he swore, vilely, harshly. On her behalf. It made her stomach tighten.
“Zafar...”
He crossed to where she was standing, every inch the desert marauder he’d been when she’d first met him, only a small wedge of his face
visible, the rest concealed by his headdress.
He tugged the bottom of it down. And she saw the difference from the first day she’d met him. His clean-shaven jaw. She’d done that. She’d changed him, at least on the outside.
It made her feel strange. Powerful.
“You did not make her leave,” he said. “My mother was taken from me by death. No force in heaven or hell could have removed her from me, no matter my behavior, had she been given a choice. And it is not because I was a better son than you were daughter. I was dissolute. Lazy. Obsessed with women, sex. And yet she loved me, because of her heart, not because of mine. Your mother’s rejection...it was not because of you. It was her heart, habibti. It was her heart that was damaged, not yours.”
“You say that but...you claim you don’t even have a heart. How do you know all this?”
“Because,” he said, his voice hoarse, “these past years my emotions have been dried out, unused. Dead. If anything on earth would make me wish to have them back...Ana, it’s you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek and she didn’t bother to wipe it away. She had always tried to be who she thought she had to be. Had always tried so hard to be perfect.
But with Zafar, something in her was unleashed. The wild child she’d been born as, maybe. The girl who’d run through the halls of her family home, who’d liked to laugh and be silly. Who hadn’t trembled at the thought of having a grade point average that dipped below perfect. Who hadn’t been consumed with making sure she improved every situation, rather than being a bother.
She’d constructed a shield for herself. So perfect and shiny. And she wanted it gone now. She didn’t want to be the person she’d built herself to be. She wanted to be the person she was born to be.
She remembered her despair last night after their near-lovemaking session in the stairwell. It hadn’t been because she was sorry. It had been because she was afraid. Afraid of wanting something for her, something that her father wouldn’t want for her.
And Tariq...clearly she had to examine her options there. She did not love him. She’d never been more certain of that. She’d wanted to marry him just to please her father; she’d just been too stubborn to acknowledge it.
Right now, she knew what she wanted.
“Zafar,” she said, her voice a near whisper. She cleared her throat. She wasn’t going to ask for this with any shame, any embarrassment. “I want you to unmake me. Out here. Just like it happened for you. I don’t want to be who I was. I don’t want to be weak. I don’t want to be quiet. I don’t want to live for anyone else. I just want...Zafar, I want. For me. Please...”
“You want to be...unmade?” he asked, his voice rough.
“That’s what you told me the desert did for you. That it took the boy you were and made you the man you were. That you had to unmake yourself so you could reemerge the man you needed to be. I need that.”
She pushed away from the tree and closed the distance between them. “I have spent so much of my life walking on tiptoes. Trying to be the person I thought I needed to be in order to be bearable. But it’s not bearable to me anymore. I don’t like me. I am trained to do as I’m told, and that day in the gym...you were right about me, Zafar—I dare not step out of line because I’m afraid if I do my father, or my friends, or the teachers I had who were more like mentors, that they would decide I wasn’t worth the trouble. So I made myself indispensable to them. Want to plan a party? I’ll help. Need me to marry a sheikh so you can secure easy access to oil? I can do that, too. I’ll even do my best to love him. So...no one could get rid of me because I made everything easy for them.”
“Except me,” he said. “You don’t make my life easier. You make it a damn sight harder.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “I’m...I’m so glad. And I know you want to get rid of me, but honestly, I can’t blame you.”
“Circumstances being what they are,” he said, his voice rough.
“Yes. Naturally.”
“How would I go about unmaking you, habibti?” he asked, his tone lowering, dark eyes intense on hers. She looked away, her breath coming in short, uneven bursts. “Ana,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft. She looked back at him.
Then she turned away, running to the edge of the water. And tilted her head back, the sun scorching her face. She opened her mouth and took a breath, air burning all the way down.
And then she screamed. Her voice echoing all around them. Her. Ana. She was here. She wanted to be heard. She wanted to make a sound. Make an impact that was bigger than the dreams of other people. Have a life that meant more than serving the desires of other people.
Then she turned, shaking, her throat raw, and walked back toward Zafar, his expression looking as though it was carved out of stone.
“I don’t want to be quiet,” she said.
“And so you are not.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not. And I want...I want more than that even.” She met his eyes, dark and intense. “Make love with me.”
“Ana...I can offer you nothing. Nothing beyond a physical encounter. Is that really what you want?”
“Yes.”
She debated whether or not to tell him she was a virgin. And decided against it. Because, given her very obviously inexperienced kissing technique, he’d probably guessed. And she didn’t want to bring it up and make things any more awkward than they were.
“Why would you want me?” he asked. “I am a great sinner. Responsible for the near fall of a nation. Plus, I have not treated you admirably.”
On that, she would give him total honesty. He was giving her honesty, the look in his dark eyes haunted. He needed to know why she would choose him, and she had so many reasons.
“Because, before you...I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. Not just the desire, the sense of wildness. That’s what it is, Zafar. I’ve felt from the moment I first met you that you’d opened up this part of me I’d tried to choke out. A part I’d thought just didn’t exist anymore. But I was wrong. It’s the part of myself I closed off. Because I was afraid of being rejected. But I wasn’t afraid with you. Mainly because I wanted you to let me go.” She laughed. “I didn’t have to please you and I just pleased myself and I found this part of me I’d buried. A part of myself I’m so glad to have back.”
She put her hand on his cheek. “And as for the desire...I’ve never known anything like this. I don’t want to go my whole life without exploring it.”
“Attraction is easy enough to come by. You will find it, maybe with Tariq.”
“Not like this,” she said. “Tell me honestly, and then I’ll leave it alone. Has another woman made you feel the way that I do? You told me this wasn’t normal. That this was stronger than most lust. It must be, because I spent most of high school being a paragon, focusing on school and things that made me...useful. And then even more in college because of Tariq, because of that alliance. Even my major, International Studies...it was all for the future with him. To be useful in that future and that meant forsaking anything else. But I can’t ignore this, and that right there, that says something. But if it’s not the same for you, then tell me. And maybe I can let it go.”
He looked away. “I have never felt this before.”
“Then take me,” she said. “Have me. Give us both this gift.”
“I cannot,” he said, the denial dragged from him. “Whether you like the idea of it or not, according to custom, you belong to the Sheikh of Shakar, and my taking you is grounds for war. I have caused a war because I couldn’t resist a woman. I caused death and destruction because of my lust.”
“But I don’t want to manipulate you. I just want you,” she said. “I have belonged to other people for a long time. Tonight...I don’t want to be Tariq’s property. And I don’t want to be yours. I want to be mine. And I know what I want.”
&
nbsp; He growled and dipped his head, kissing her hard and deep, swiftly, pulling away from her abruptly. “Be sure,” he said. “Be very sure, because I can’t stop myself. I am shaking, down to my bones, Ana. For you. Because of you.”
Her heart tightened, ached. “I’m sure,” she whispered, kissing him. “I’m sure.”
“I am so glad I don’t have to make conversation about salad forks now. Because all of those times, what I wanted to say was that you were beautiful. That I wanted you to the point of distraction. That your body is enough to make grown men drop to their knees and give thanks to God that they were born men. I wanted to tell you that your red dress should be illegal. That taking it off you was one of the single greatest privileges I’d ever been given. But of course I could not, because I was relegated to the bland. But not now.”
“No. Not now. Now I just want you. All of you.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he said, tracing a line over her cheekbone with his fingertip, down to her lips.
“Then show me.”
“Ana...”
“Zafar, what do you see when you look at me?”
“Beauty,” he said, without hesitating.
“Anything more?”
She looked in his eyes, and she realized she didn’t need more. He was here, putting everything on the line for her, betraying himself for the passion that had ignited between them.
There was heat and sand and Zafar.
Everything else burned away.
“There is so much more,” he said, his lips on her neck, her collarbone, his hands tugging at the hem of her shirt, drawing it up over her head. “So much,” he said, pressing a kiss to the curve of her beast, just above the line of her bra.
“Show me,” she said, lacing her fingers in his hair, fighting the release of the sob that was building in her chest, pressure so intense she was afraid she might burst.
He stepped away from her and turned, his back to her, his eyes on the water in front of them. And then he reached in front of his body and started working the tie on his robes, divesting himself of the layers, placing them on the sandy ground, until he was completely naked.