“He’ll be returned to OR for debridement until no necrotic tissue is left before we close the wound. But I believe he’ll walk again.” He looked at Rafeeq. “Great job, Rafeeq. Bring him round. Take him to IC then prepare for the next procedure.”
Management and surgeries continued non-stop for the next fifteen hours. Four patients were beyond help, five were still critical, but the remaining would survive with minor or no handicap. All would have died without intervention. Saving twenty-five should have felt good. It didn’t.
Malek had remained within those three feet of her, his eyes on her every second he didn’t have them on his job, seething with so much that distressed her, that she couldn’t fathom.
It was noon by the time they returned to their convoy. Their team was exhausted, physically and spiritually, as they made their way to their trailers. Malek walked her in silence to hers, seemed about to say something when Hessuh caught up with them and climbed inside before Jay.
After a long moment of hesitation, he only rasped, “Get some rest.” Then he turned away.
She stumbled inside, found Hessuh in bed, fully clothed, eyes closed. Jay fell face down on her own bed, the last flicker in her receding mind an image of Malek as he’d left her.
Janaan moaned and burrowed into a wonderful feeling.
Hot, male, encompassing. Malek.
Only he made her feel this protected and cherished. This hungry, this incredible, and this miserable!
She opened her eyes, expecting the echoes of their night together to dissipate, leaving her cold and empty and alone—alone forever. And he was there. Then he didn’t vanish.
Malek. He was really there. Stretched out beside her. Like that night in her hotel, drenching her in caresses. Disoriented, she blinked, at him, around the trailer.
“I asked Hessuh to leave us alone,” he answered her unspoken question, the richness of his voice twisting in her heart, in her loins, the spike of sensation so severe her teeth rattled with its force. The drugged tinge to his gaze suddenly lifted, a dull bleakness replacing it. Then he was leaving her!
He staggered up to his feet, seemed to sway before he stood up straight. Or maybe it was her world that was churning, would never right itself again.
“Habibati, samheeni—forgive me, I saw you sleeping and I couldn’t—couldn’t … Ya Ullah-hada w’Ullahi tholm.”
Tholm. Injustice.
What was? That he was, that he made her feel all this?
She shakily swung trembling legs over the side of her bed, sat staring up at him with her hands helpless and cold in her lap, sick electricity flooding her body as he drove his hands in his hair like a man about to lose his mind.
Oh, God—was something wrong with him?
Then he suddenly growled, the sound of a man at the end of his tether, “My name is Malek ben Muraad ben Amjad ben Munsoor Aal Hamdaan.”
She stared at him. Why was he telling her his.? Oh.
Oh God.
No. No. He couldn’t mean …
From a long distance she heard a wavering rasp.
“Muraadben … He’s—he’s …” She stopped, stared at Malek.
“Damhoor’s king, yes. My father.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
DAMHOOR’S KING. Damhoor’S king. Yes. My father. My father.
The words ricocheted inside Jay’s skull, building up to a cacophony that almost burst it apart.
It was all just too—too.
And she suddenly howled with laughter, hysterical, agonizing, bone-rattling laughter.
She laughed until her lungs shut down, until her eyes were wrung dry, until her insides twisted together in a knotted mess.
He watched her all through it, his eyes heavy, grim.
At long last the first enormity of shock and realization abated. It left her trembling, limp.
She finally rasped, “And to think you called me Janaan of the ceaseless surprises. First you’re a sheikh, then a surgeon, then the Health Minister. Now you’re a prince.”
He made a frightening sound in his throat. Then he almost spat out, “I’m not a prince. I’m the prince. The crown prince.”
Silence crashed down again.
Numb now, Jay finally gave a short, stunned giggle. “It just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?” Then a distant memory struck her like a lightning bolt. “But … over a year ago, when my father started saying he’d get me a job here, get my mother a home, I researched Damhoor, and the crown prince’s name was—was …”
“Majd,” he muttered. “The Glory of Aal Hamdaan, as he truly was. My elder brother. He died of a ruptured brain aneurysm ten months ago.”
His loss. This was it. The loss behind the hot empathy that had permeated her when she’d related her loss of her mother the day they’d first met, seemingly many lifetimes ago.
He suddenly closed his eyes, inhaled. He opened them a moment later, but she’d seen it. The spasm of anguish that had contorted his very being.
“We were just walking out of a squash court after a grueling match where he’d trounced me. And he just collapsed at my feet. I forgot everything, seeing him there—there was not a single medical shred left in my mind. For a whole minute. Then it was a blur of trying to keep him alive till I got him to the OR. He died before I got him into an ambulance.”
She kept watching him, breathless.
He inhaled another breath. “I ordered the autopsy, attended it. My father begged me not to do it. I disregarded him. I knew a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage was the cause of death, but I had to ascertain exactly how and why—that there was no suspicion of foul play. I think it hit my father harder that I cut Majd open than that he’d died. He grew old and infirm in front of my eyes those hellish days. Then he accused me of causing Majd’s death.”
She surged up, shaking with horror, her hand begging permission to approach, to defuse the shock waves of his revisited anguish. He caught it, buried his face there, nuzzling her clammy flesh with the fierceness of a tiger seeking solace, the blackness of his voice, his pain, lancing through her.
“Majd was far frailer than I am, always pushed himself to fill his big-brother role.”
“Aneurysms don’t rupture on exertion and you know it!” Her vehemence was instant, final.
His let go of her hand, let his fall to his side, his lips twisting in self-revulsion. “If I didn’t tire him to death, I caused his death in a different way. I’m the doctor in the family. Ever since I became one the whole family has let me take care of their health, make their every medical decision. Majd was not only the brother I worshipped, he was this land’s crown prince. I should have checked up on him routinely. A simple CT or MRI to the brain would have detected the aneurysm in time to do something about it. He trusted me, and he died because of my negligence. I failed him.”
This was what he lived with?
She caught his hand and squeezed it. She had to stop him doing this to himself. “You can’t even let yourself think that. Since when are CTs and MRIs routine or done without serious indications? If he didn’t have symptoms to warrant them, you know it’s contraindicated to have them! There was no negligence on your part. You didn’t fail him. It was fate.”
His pupils dilated, like a black hole consuming the sun. She squeezed his hand harder, desperate to yank him out of his mire of guilt and self-hatred. He resisted her for a moment. Then he succumbed, snatched her hand to his lips, his eyes burning with gratitude, acknowledging her intentions, if not their validity.
She’d thought his name so fit him, lord and owner of her heart, king of all men in her eyes. How little she had known.
And though she’d never thought he’d ever be within reach again, it was only now that she felt him … vanish. Forever. She withdrew her hand, let it fall, a useless, lifeless thing by her side.
It didn’t seem he noticed her withdrawal, pressed closer, intent on sharing the rest of his torment, unable to stop now he’d started. “As a younger son, the odds were that the throne would
never fall to me and I was left free to pursue my goals. Then the unthinkable happened and I’m no longer free. This mission is my last indulgence in my old life, my old purpose, before I’m forced to relinquish my vocation to take on the mantle of diplomacy in preparation for the time when I’m forced to ascend to the throne. But that isn’t why …”
His words halted, something imploring entering his eyes. She heard the rest loud and clear.
This isn’t why I tried to push you away.
She felt a strange detachment descend on her as she watched him struggle with revealing just why, her mind a blank.
“Majd had two daughters, so now I, next in line to the throne, must choose a possible future queen from the list of acceptable women from our major tribes. I must choose a bride to produce an heir. At the time the succession fell to me, I considered it just another duty I’d have to fulfill. But now, though this won’t happen a minute before I’m forced to, months—years if I can at all help it—after I take the throne, I still—still …”
And he said no more.
And she still couldn’t get why he’d felt the need to push her away.
Had he thought she’d expected commitment from him and pushed her away because he couldn’t promise any? Didn’t he know she’d never entertained the possibility, even when she’d thought he was only one of the many thousands of royals around?
The only explanation was that he had no idea what she thought, and his acute sense of honor had refused to raise her hopes in vain. Or maybe he knew she’d realized all she could ever have with him would be fleeting yet felt he owed his destined status more caution and the wife looming in his future more fidelity.
Whatever he thought, it distressed him. And she wanted to release him, give him peace. She tried to.
“Malek, I—I ache for your loss, for your burdens. I sensed them, wanted to do all I could to make them hurt less that day when we came back from Mejbel. But that’s all I wanted. I never expected anything in return—or anything at all. Believe me. You don’t need to explain your obligations or feel bad about me or about anything you did. You never led me on.”
He rumbled something harsh, laden in fury and disbelief. “I didn’t? Strange. I led myself on.”
A gasp scraped her throat. What did he mean?
“I led myself on all the way,” he growled, turning on her, ferocity blasting off him. “All the damned way to no return.”
Oh, God. Is he saying he—he feels the same?
No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t possibly have fallen in love, too.
Yes, love. Far beyond love. She hadn’t dared name the immense, all-consuming feelings she had for him, which had been building since the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, wishing to keep even a shred of herself un-surrendered. But it had been an exercise in futility. Reality would have remained the same no matter the lack of label or the escape from self-confrontation.
“Malek—don’t …” She had no idea what she wanted to say. Elation and desperation were hacking away at her, and she couldn’t bear that he’d be feeling the same.
He wouldn’t let her find words. He snatched her off her feet, making her feel weightless, powerless, soaring, then his arms pulled her against his hardness, crushed her to his chest where she’d dreamed of being.
She moaned her surrender, her greed, her welcome, clawed back at him. He took her to the trailer’s wall, pushed her against it, dominated her. But he was also a supplicant, worshipping, devouring, his lips wrenching hot, blind, desperate kisses from hers, every convulsive press of his hands, every molten glide of his lips, every invasive thrust of his tongue showing her how much—just how much—she would be losing. Would never have.
But she had it, him, now. He was there, losing himself in her. She had to hoard all she could of him.
She’d barely started when he tore his lips away. She cried out, surged up, desperate for his breath so she could breathe, for his heartbeat so her heart wouldn’t stop, needing one more plunge into his taste and potency to fill up for the desolate future without him.
He thwarted her, his hands shackles on her shoulders holding her off, his face contorted in agony. Her hungry sobs became ones of answering agony, tears that felt like acid eating their way out of her eyes and down her face.
The sight of her tears seemed to snap something inside him, and with a rumble of surrender the tension holding him away deflated, bringing his proud head down to hers with a dark groan, pressing, rubbing his longing.
He let her drag him down, only to graze her lips in an open-mouthed kiss before burying them, and his whole face, into her neck, her breasts, his growls of enjoyment and suffering elemental, jolts of molten agony to her core. And that was before his thick, ragged confessions tore into her.
“Ahebek ya rohi, ya galbi, ya agli—k’m ahebbek, k’m abghaki …”
Oh, God, was he saying he loved her? That she was his soul, his heart and mind—how he loved her, craved her.?
And it didn’t matter what came next. She had to convince him that it didn’t. Nothing did. He loved her now. She knew he did. With all his indomitable, magnificent being he did. For now. And she wanted to have every spark of it, of him. For as long as possible. If even for one day. One hour. She wanted it. Needed it. Had to have it.
She started struggling in his arms for more, opening herself up, offering all she had, all she was. She frantically locked her legs around him. She arched back on a wild moan with the feel of his hard hips filling her legs’ hug as his muscled bulk filled her arms’, with the feel of his erection pressing into her core, daunting, assuaging even through the barrier of clothes. She pressed his head harder, leading him to her bursting breasts, and with another growl of voracity he gave in, opened his mouth over her sweatshirt-smothered flesh, bit into it. She screamed, bucked with the slam of pleasure, losing what remained of her coherence with wanting more. He gave her more.
He pinpointed her nipples, nipped and suckled through her clothes until her moans became keens. Then he came up, devoured her vocal, irrevocable confession of need, of surrender, his tongue plunging inside her mouth, filling her, mating with hers, each slide spearing ecstasy to her core, each thrust layering arousal until her tears poured again, unable to withstand the build-up. He was as lost as her now, a constant rumble echoing in his chest. He ground his erection into her, simulating the plunging she was burning for. She writhed in his arms, snatched at him, lost, mad, blackness frothing from the periphery of her vision, a storm front of pleasure and suffering advancing from her core, where he was so near, so far.
She sobbed it all in his mouth. “I love you, Malek, love you—just take me—just make me yours, oh, please, please.”
He jerked up, staggered away, leaving her to crumple to the floor without his support.
She sank in a heap of mortification, his rejection hacking at her. But it was the look of horror and contrition on his face that hurt most.
He sagged down on her bed, as if he couldn’t stand any more, in every way. He dropped his head into his hands. His distress poured strength into her limbs, made her lurch up to her feet, rush to his side, trying to contain it in her hug.
He shook his head, groaned, “Aasef habibati, aasef-ya Ullah—I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have …”
She hugged him harder. “Don’t, Malek. I just want to love you. I never for one second thought you could be mine, in any way, but I just want to be yours.”
He shook her arms off him, his eyes boring into her, incensed. “No. Don’t offer, Janaan, don’t be a fool. It doesn’t matter that I’ll always be yours in my heart. I’ll never be yours where and how it matters. Do you understand?”
She’d always understood. But she understood something new now. She was compounding his burdens, tearing at his heart, compromising his sanity. Just by being near, she might destroy him. She’d die first. She must leave him alone. And she would.
This time she knew what she’d say. “Don’t do this to yourself. I can’t see you so—s
o anguished. I’ll leave Damhoor, and you’ll forget me.”
He gave a short, savage laugh. “Aih, right after I forget myself. When I said rohi wa galbi wa agli ya, Janaan, I wasn’t plying you with sweet nothings. I’ve never said those things, and I’ll never say them again to another. You are your name, ya hayati, you’ve become my very soul and heart and mind.”
When would the pain reach its peak?
“You—you don’t know what you’ll feel a month from now, a year. Time will—”
“Time and duty and another woman will only plunge me into a lifetime of withdrawal, will destroy my spirit with deprivation.”
“But I don’t want that.” She almost screamed it. “Don’t make me hate myself for being the reason for all this. You have so much to live for, so much to give so many people. I don’t matter. What happens to me doesn’t matter.”
Malek stared at her, love tearing at him, demanding fulfillment, surrender. Then her words registered and a tidal wave of dread inundated him.
Could she, like her mother, love too much, destroy herself with the force of her desperation? Could she end up harming herself, snuffing out her life? Ya Ullah, laa, laa!
His hands sank into her flesh, shook her, as if he’d jog her back from the brink of an abyss. “Never—never, ever say, ever think anything so insane. I forbid you, do you hear me? You matter, you matter more than anything!”
She almost smiled at him, as if reading his fear, letting him know how far-fetched it was. But was it? Was it?
He could swear he heard his heart fracturing when she smoothed his hair, leaned her head on his shoulder and murmured, “I’m just telling you that you have more important things to think about, a whole country, and more, sooner or later. I don’t matter compared to that. I—I just want you to fulfill your destiny and be happy.”
Before he could rave he’d never be anything but miserable for the rest of his dismal life, she pushed away, swayed up to her feet. “Just go now, Malek. Please, arrange for my return to Halwan at once. I’ll leave Damhoor and you won’t see or hear from me again. I’ll never cause you discomfort.”
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