by Maisey Yates
He kissed her neck and she moaned, low and long. “Ever so much more enticing than a one, two, three count,” he said, remembering the day she’d tried to teach him to waltz. “Though I found that quite distracting, as well.”
“Did you?” she asked, her voice choked.
“Yes.” He pushed into a sitting position, her legs wrapped around his back, her breasts at just the right height for him to taste her. And he did. He traced the tightened, sugar-pink buds with his tongue, relishing her sweetness. Sucking her deep into his mouth. She arched against him, her hands in his hair, tugging, the slight pain the only thing keeping him anchored to earth.
He lifted his head and looked up at her face, flushed with desire, her eyes focused on him. “I liked you giving me instruction.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I think you should do it now.”
“What?”
“Count, habibti.”
She huffed out a laugh, then lifted a trembling hand to trace the line of his lips. “My pleasure, I suppose.”
“Ours,” he said. “Are you ready for me?”
“Always.”
She drew up slightly, onto her knees, and he positioned himself at the slick entrance of her body, gritting his teeth as she lowered herself onto him, as he sank deep within her body. He could drown in this, in the pleasure, white-hot, so much so it was nearly painful.
She raised herself up, hands gripping his shoulders, fingernails digging into his skin. “One,” she said, “two,” back down, “three.”
He held tightly to her, his hands on her hips, letting her lead, for the moment, holding her steady.
“One, two, three.” She repeated the numbers with the motions, her voice a bit more strangled each time, her nails biting harder into his skin. “One, two... Ohhh.”
He chuckled. “Do you think I’m qualified enough to lead this dance?” He kissed the top of her shoulder.
“You were right,” she said, panting. “I need to be uncivilized. And right now, I don’t need you to act polished. I just need you.”
It was all the permission he needed. He growled and gripped her waist hard, reversing positions so she was on her back and he was over her. She arched, pressing her breasts to his chest. “Yes, Zafar. Please.”
She didn’t have to ask twice.
He put his hand beneath her, on her butt, lifting her up into his thrusts as he pushed them both toward pleasure. There was nothing quiet or civil about their joining. His skin burned where her nails met his flesh, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might bruise his body inside, leaving a dark stain over his chest.
She draped her legs over his calves, locking him to her, holding him. He increased the pace, and she went with him, matching his every thrust, his every groan of pleasure.
And when he felt himself being tugged downward, his orgasm gripping him and taking him down beneath the waves, he felt her go with him. And they clung together, riding out the storm in each other’s arms.
The desert was still there, dry and harsh around them, and they were insulated from it, refreshed, renewed. Lost in another world, another space and time, where there was nothing but this.
Nothing but Zafar. Nothing but Ana.
He held her afterward, his arms locked tight around her, breathing an impossibility. He was still lost to the world, to reality, floating underwater with Ana. He rested his head on her chest, between her breasts, listening to her heartbeat. So alive. So soft and warm and perfect.
If only this was all there was. If only he had been created this second, born from the sand. If only he didn’t have all those years, all those sins, all that blood in his past.
But in this moment, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this.
Nothing mattered but Ana.
* * *
Zafar smelled sulfur. As he always did when hell found him on earth. Fire and gun smoke. And screaming. And pain. So much pain.
And his mother’s face. Her eyes. So scared. Wounded.
Then they met his. And he wanted to scream that he was sorry. That it was his fault. He wanted to fall down on his knees and take the beatings. But his enemies seemed to have no interest in hurting him. Not physically.
They just wanted him to watch. Wanted him to see what his confessions to Fatin had enabled them, empowered them to do. How the foolish prince of Al Sabah had given power over to another nation.
His hands were chained, his legs chained, his mouth gagged. The confession pushed at his throat, made him feel like his chest would explode. He wanted to scream and he couldn’t.
Instead, tears streamed down his face, the only release his enemies had allowed him.
As he watched his mother die. In pain. In fear. As his father watched, part of the older man’s torture. And then met the same fate.
Zafar was back there, his cheeks wet, waiting to be killed.
Praying he would be killed.
And then he woke up.
He was gasping for breath in the dark, a feral shout leaving his throat scraped raw, his skin slick with sweat, his face damp with tears.
He was poised, ready to fight, ready to kill. To destroy those who had hurt his family, who had killed them. And he realized he held his enemy in his hand, fingers curled tightly around his neck.
Zafar reached for his knife, which he always kept near his bed, and discovered it wasn’t there. And he was naked, no weapon in the folds of his robes. Nothing to use against the people who had killed his parents.
Who had left him here to deal with the pain by himself.
But his thumb was pressed against his enemy’s throat, and one push would end it all.
“I will kill you with my bare hands, then,” he growled, looking down for the first time, trying to focus on his enemy’s face. All he saw was a pale shadow, glistening eyes in the darkness.
Slowly everything cleared, and he realized where he was. Who it was in his tent.
Damn him to hell. He had fallen asleep. With Ana.
“Ana.” He released his hold on her immediately and she fell back. He wanted to go to her, to comfort her, to touch her. But he had no right to touch her. Not after he’d put his hands on her like that.
He was still breathing hard, each breath a near sob, sweat coating his skin. He shivered as the heat in him died out, gave way to a chill that permeated his entire being. “Ana, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I would not hurt you. I would not.”
She stood, slowly, her whole frame trembling. And he looked away.
He didn’t want to see her eyes. He didn’t want to see her now that she’d truly seen him. Now that she’d seen everything ugly and destroyed inside of him.
Now that she’d nearly been cut on the jagged edges of his soul.
“I know,” she said, her voice shaking.
He collected himself enough to find his bag, and pulled out a battery-powered lantern, lighting it so that he could see.
And then he wished he hadn’t. There was a tear glittering on her cheek, sliding down to her chin. And she didn’t wipe it away.
“Ana,” he said, the pain wrenching his soul so deep he thought he would break. “This is why I don’t sleep with anyone. This is why...”
“What do you see?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No...Ana...do not ask for that. Do not try and help me when I have...”
“How can you live with it inside of you?” She approached him and extended her hand, as though she meant to touch him.
He jerked back, unable to take the balm of her touch. Undeserving of it.
“I have to,” he said. “It was my fault. It was my...it is my burden, one I earned.”
“Tell me.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. I have done enough damage to you.” He raised the
light and saw a slash of red on her neck. “Oh, Ana, I have done enough damage to you,” he said again, his voice rough.
“Zafar, let me have this. Let me help you.”
He shook his head, turning away and forking his fingers through his hair. “You know it already. I told Fatin where my parents would be that day. When they were moving to an alternate location for safety. Because she asked and I thought nothing of it. It was all very Samson and Delilah. If only I had been betraying myself alone. But it was them, too. We were all captured. Held in the throne room of the palace.” He started shaking while he spoke of it, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop, he had to finish. “We were bound. I was in chains. They were not just content to kill my parents. They had to torture them. My mother first, so my father and I could see. Then my father, for me to watch. To watch the strongest man I had ever known be reduced to nothing. A demonstration of power and evil I had never before fathomed.”
He drew in a breath. “My hands were bound. My feet. My mouth gagged. I wanted to tell them it was my fault. I wanted to beg them to kill me. I could say nothing. I could only...I could only cry like an infant, desperate for his mother to hold him. Knowing it would never happen again. And that it was my own fault. You see, Ana, I thought I was a man, but I realized in that moment I was nothing more than a foolish child whose stupidity had torn away everything important in his life.”
He swallowed. “And they didn’t kill me. They left me and I prayed for death, lying on the floor of the throne room with my parents’ bodies. I prayed for death.” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t receive it. My uncle found me in the morning. Our army defeated theirs in the end. But it was too late to save my parents.”
He looked down at his hands. “And he asked me how it had happened, so I confessed. And he sent me away. I am under no illusions here. It suited my uncle to tell me those things. He was not the one who had led the rebellion that killed my parents, but he was just the sort of man to seize the chance to have power if there was an easy way to grasp it. He told me there were bound to be rumors and I would be better off if I wasn’t in the city. That I had to leave the palace. That I would never make a king of Al Sabah. And I believed him. So I ran. Out into the desert until my lungs burned. Until I lay in the sand and waited to die there. But again, I was denied.”
“The Bedouins found you.”
“Yes, it was the beginning of my allegiance to them. Because I realized that while death was certainly the kinder option for me, it would do no good for anyone else. Especially when it became clear the manner of man my uncle was. Power hungry, with much more love for himself than for the people of my country. But I was a disgraced boy, and he was a man with an army, so my battles had to be waged another way.”
Ana couldn’t breathe. Zafar had woken her from her sleep with a guttural scream and then his hand had wrapped around her throat. It had been terrifying. Confusing. She’d frozen, searching his face in the dark. And she’d realized that he wasn’t there, tears on his cheeks, his eyes unseeing.
She’d been afraid to move. Afraid to make a sound. She knew what sort of man he was, how strong, how able to end her with the press of his thumb.
Now, hearing his story, she understood what demons tormented him. What haunted him in his sleep.
She pushed her fear aside. Pushed everything aside and focused on him. On his pain. His need. She crossed to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He stood stiff, but she didn’t care. She stroked the back of his neck. Held him like he was a child, because it had been too long since someone had soothed him that way.
“Zafar, it’s not your fault.”
“It is,” he said, his voice tortured.
“No. It’s not. Zafar, I would tell you anything now because I trust you, and if you betrayed that trust and went and caused harm with it, whose fault would it be?”
“Ana...”
“No. Zafar, if a child breaks a doll and their mother leaves, whose fault is it?”
“Ana, please don’t do this.”
“Whose fault is it?”
“Never yours, Ana. Never yours.”
“And yet it was yours?”
“I didn’t break a doll. I broke the whole country. I broke my life. My parents’ lives. I might as well have landed the killing blow myself.”
“No.” Her heart broke for him, his pain living in her, roaring in her chest. “Zafar, you can’t think that. You have to...you have to stop blaming yourself or you’ll never be free of it.”
“You’re wrong, Ana. I have to realize my own fault so that it never happens again...even knowing it... Have I not made the same mistake? I was too weak to resist you.”
“This is different.”
“Is it?”
“I love you,” she said.
“She said she loved me.”
Anger, passion, desperation, mixed together in her chest, combusted, exploded. “I’m not her,” she screamed, so easy for her to do now. To make a sound. To demand she be heard. “I gave you my body, my soul. I gave you who I am, and there is no one else on earth who has that. I love you.”
He shook his head. “No. You don’t love me. You love who you think I could be, maybe, but you’re wrong.”
“About loving you?”
“About who I could be. I am broken, Ana, so deep it won’t ever be fixed.”
“Love goes deep, Zafar. Let it in. Let it heal you.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Enough water can quench even the most cracked earth. An oasis like this can be here, even in the middle of the desert. You don’t know how much love I have to pour out. Don’t tell me what it can and can’t do.”
“It is a drop of water in an entire desert, habibti,” he said. “It will never be enough.”
A tear slid down her cheek. “You think so? I thought you knew me, but now I doubt it.”
“It is you who doesn’t know me.”
“And you think my feelings don’t matter? You think me naive? Zafar, I just saw your worst.” She took a step toward him, wrapped her hand around his and placed it at the base of her neck. “I know what manner of man you are, Sheikh Zafar Nejem, and I’m standing here offering you everything.”
He lowered his hand, his fingers trembling. “Then you are naive and a fool.”
“And you...do you feel anything for me?”
“I am the desert. I have nothing to give. I’ll only take.”
“Don’t give me your mystic storytelling metaphors. Give me words. Tell me you don’t love me,” she said, her lips cold.
“I do not love you. I love nothing, habibti, not even myself. I just want to ensure my people get returned to them what I stole. That is all I am. I will never be a husband to you. Never a father for your children.”
“But you said you would marry.”
“Someone else. Not you.”
She felt it like a blow. “Then what was this? This compromising everything so we could sleep together? So you could get off? That’s just...stupid.”
“Lust and heat. Both addle a man’s brain.”
“What if I’m pregnant? You weren’t...careful last time.”
He nodded once. “I will offer whatever support you need. But it would be better if I wasn’t involved in any way beyond the monetary. Let us pray that there is no child.”
He was gone, her Zafar, the man she had made love to for hours today. The man who had made her reach down deep and find her own strength. The warrior had returned—the fierce, frightening man he’d been the first moment she’d met him and he’d paid for her with a bag of silver.
Strange how he had purchased her with the last of his coins, and yet, in the end, she felt she’d paid the highest price.
“Take me back,” she said.
“Now?”
&nbs
p; She nodded. “Yes. I’ve had enough sleep.”
“As have I,” he said. “Dress. We will be ready to leave in a few moments.”
Zafar left the tent, his clothes still outside by the water. And Ana stood there, her heart falling to pieces inside of her. It wasn’t fair. She should have known better than to believe there was a future with him. Going into it, she hadn’t even wanted one, and yet her feelings had grown.
And in that moment when he’d been his darkest, she’d realized the truth. That seeing him as he was, seeing all of the brokenness, she only loved him more. Knowing what he’d been through, knowing the man he was in spite of it, because of it, she wanted to be with him.
He was strong. He was brave. He was hurting.
But he didn’t want her love. He didn’t want her.
She dressed quickly, putting on new clothes, not the clothes she’d been wearing before they’d made love the first time. Her hands were shaking, her stomach sick.
She would leave Al Sabah. And she couldn’t bring Zafar, the man, with her. But she would bring Al Sabah and Zafar with her. He was in her, his effect on her blended in with the marrow of her bones, strengthening her, reminding her of who she could be.
He couldn’t ever take that from her. In spite of all the pain she was in now, at least he couldn’t take her newfound strength, her resolve to find her own place in life, her own happiness.
She would leave here stronger for having known him. And with a broken heart for having lost him.
* * *
She was fatigued and windburned by the time they reached the border that stretched between Shakar and Al Sabah. They had ridden for hours without stopping, time melting into a continuous stretch that she could only measure in painful, tearing heartbeats.
“I will have you call your father now,” he said. “And I will wait with you until he is here.”
“But you...”
“I won’t be seen.”.
This man who thought he had no heart.
“Good. I don’t want you to be injured.” It was too late for her heart, but even so, she didn’t want him to get hurt.