Chapter Ten
That night I dream I’m walking toward a lush oasis, just over the horizon. I walk and walk, but no matter how many steps I take, it never seems to get any closer. Then I start sinking into the sand…
I wake on my own to the sun of a bright new day and the sight of Nabida and Raima setting up breakfast.
“We planned to let you sleep in,” Nabida says when she sees me sitting up in bed.
“No Zahir,” I guess, and silently curse my pussy for tightening at the sound of his name.
Raima’s eyes widen at my use of his first name without the title but answers, “No, he will not come to you today.”
I think about that. Breathe…and push through the semi-permanent lust haze to ask, “Did his secretary say when he’d be back?”
“No, we were not given this information,” Raima answers.
“But I’m still not allowed to get dressed?”
Raima shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot while Nabida throws me a sympathetic look. Raima says, “If you wish, you are still allowed a robe.”
I take the robe offered to me after my morning bath and force myself to think more about my sex problem with Zahir. This time, I do it while standing over the breakfast table with the smart speaker playing soft Arabian pop in the background.
“Have you finished?” Nabida asks when I’ve clocked more time staring into space than eating.
I blink and nod. Silently adding, finished but not satisfied.
As the women clear the breakfast table, I ask, “Do I still get my phone call tomorrow?”
“Yes, as far as I know,” Nabida answers.
“Good,” I say. I’m forcing myself to keep the robe on, even if it feels like a brillo pad against my skin compared to the pure air I’ve become used to. “Good…”
Day Twenty-Four. I pull an Annie and focus on tomorrow as I push myself through the rest of the day.
Zahir doesn’t show up for breakfast on Day Twenty-Five. That’s fine.
“May I have a pen and paper to write Zahir a note?” I ask Raima when she appears with my requested Bar Exam study guide.
Nabida fetches me a single piece of stationary and a heavy pen. They both watch me as a I write…and are probably surprised when I stop at a single word.
“Can you take this to him?” I ask after folding the paper into a tucked-in triangle, like I am still in high school. Except this note isn’t of the “check yes or no if you like me” variety I considered sending Asir at the height of my school girl crush.
A few hours later, I chat with Sylvie, putting extra effort into keeping my voice clear and engaged. Then I ask if I can talk to Holt. Just for a minute…
Our conversation is stupid awkward, and I have the feeling he is going to have a hell of a time explaining to Sylvie what we discussed.
But I know Holt will relay my message. He’s responsible like that—especially with Sylvie by his side. And I’m right to trust him. Less than thirty minutes after I hang up, Zahir comes crashing through the suite’s doors with my note in his hand, nowhere near the appointed dinner hour.
He growls something to Nabida and Raima in Arabic that must mean “get the hell out,” because they drop their mop and duster, respectively, and scurry from the room. Like squirrels away from an incoming storm.
But I don’t run. I’m not from around here and trust we Jersey chycks know how to handle inclement weather. I stand up and come around the one-chair table like I’m wearing a heavy-duty rain poncho and not just my bare skin.
“Hey, Zahir,” I say with my best smart-aleck smile. “Wassup?”
“You called Holt to request he provide you with a vibrator?!” he asks, his voice barely level.
I blink innocently. “Well, yeah. You’re not seeing to my sexual needs, so I called my wali in the hopes he could negotiate to send me something that would.”
For a moment, he stares at me, outrage and plain old rage warring for face time. “This is not something you do. You do not call another man and tell him you are in need of a sex toy because I am not a satisfactory lover.”
I give him another innocent blink. “But talking to your wali is standard protocol if a wife is unhappy with her treatment. It was written in our marriage contract...dude, have you never been with someone who actually reads her contracts?” I suck on my teeth and shake my head. “Easily fixed with the next wife. No biggie. Now you know. Don’t marry a lawyer if you want some dumb broad who will let you torture her for shits and giggles.”
He takes a step toward me. “I will never grant this request. In fact, you will be punished tenfold just for making it. I will return for dinner this evening, and this time, you will sit on the floor beside my feet. Like the dog you claimed you did not want to be. And that will only be the beginning.”
I stare at him for a beat. Then I shrug and say, “Aw, well, it was worth a try. I guess I’ll just keep using my fingers for the next five months since you’re not up to the task of satisfying me, and you’re too uptight to let me have a vibrator. When I return home, I’m going to find a man who can get the job done properly. Maybe take a lover in the afternoon...”
Zahir stares at me, and I swear I can see a vein in his neck set to pop. But instead of backing down, I ask, “Have you ever heard that song? Oh, Z, if not, we got to correct that right now!” Then I tell the smart speaker to play ‘Gloria’ by Laura Branigan.
The room fills up with music, but before we can get to the lyric I referenced, his voice slices across the room, commanding the smart speaker to, “Stop music.”
The song cuts off like the speaker is as afraid of Zahir as Nabida and Raima.
“You will tell me now why you have reverted to this behavior,” he says, his tone sharp and dangerous as a sword. “You will explain to me why you disparaged my sexual prowess to Holt, and then sent me a note with the word ‘Cal-Mart’ written on it. Are you trying to make some kind of threat against me? Against Holt?”
“What?” I say, jerking my head back. “No! Why would I threaten Holt? First of all, Cal-Mart sells vibrators, which is what I wanted him to send me in the first place. And secondly, he’s my only point of negotiation here. Why would I threaten him?”
“Then what is the meaning of this note!” he demands, shaking the piece of unfolded paper at me.
“Oh, that…?” Strangely, this is where I lose my attitude. This is where it becomes hard to maintain my tough Jersey Girl act. Both my voice and accent falter as I answer, “That’s my safe word.”
Chapter Eleven
Safe word…
The term echoes between us as Zahir stares at me with his flashing dark eyes. For a few raw beats I wonder if I’ll have to explain—but then he’s across the room.
His hand whips out like a snake and fists in my hair. “Get off me!” I yell, scratching at his hand.
But with silent precision, he drags me across the room and only then does he let go of my hair…right before he throws me onto the bed.
I try to recover quickly, but he’s on top of me before I am even halfway turned around. The hand re-fists my hair and he pushes me down, cheek first, into the satin pillows, easily pinning me to the bed.
He’s so much bigger and heavier than me. I should give up. But I don’t. I fight with everything I’ve got, the line between reality and play blurring as I try to get up.
He patiently holds me down with just the one arm, and I sense he is watching my struggle with the interest of a predator deciding when to strike.
Eventually, I stop because I am panting too hard to keep fighting. But as soon as my body goes limp, I hear it. The zwvick of his metal zipper being pulled down.
The sound reverberates and then I feel a hard pressure at the back of my pussy. The monster…it should be familiar by now, but it’s not. Unsheathed, it is bigger…a lot bigger than I expected, not to mention hard and unyielding. Like Zahir.
He rest the fat head at my back entrance and silence envelops us, with nothing but the sound of me b
reathing hard. It takes me a few more pants to realize why he’s paused.
Cal-Mart.
The invitation to say the word, to end this suddenly physical fight and not take it any further, floats in the air above my subdued body.
I think about it for a whole second…then I buck, throwing off his arm. And that one opening is all I need. I twist onto my back, arms finally free to shove and claw my way out of his hold.
But I only get in one scratch across his chest before he brutally flips me back over and falls on top of me. Bringing his full weight down so hard onto my body, I can barely move, much less buck.
“You grew up without any control or boundaries, then your father put you on a show that encouraged you to say anything you wanted, do anything you wanted, as long as it made people gawk and laugh,” he growls, his breath hot on the back of my neck. “But you are mine now. It matters not how this came to pass, it is a fact. I am your control. I am your boundary. You will accept me…now.”
Then he starts to push in…
I cry out at the feel of him…the size of him. The pressure is unbelievable as he pushes his way inside me. Even though I’m wet, soaked with desire and fight sweat… he’s still hard to take. And his dick feels like the punctuation mark to his chant as he slowly enters me, inch by inch. “I am your control. I am your boundary.”
I am locked in place, unable to do anything but lie beneath him as he slow feeds me his dick, chanting all the while. And my body’s response to all this? Well, that’s the most surprising thing of all. Instead of freaking out, a feeling of warmth and safety comes over me, and it is like nothing I have ever known. He is my control. He is the boundary I never had. And then… And then…
I come underneath him, sensations overtaking me for what I’m sure would be a full body shudder if I could move.
Zahir exhales a long, heavy sigh and then his hips lift just enough to start a slow, dominating stroke. His deep, ruthless taking pushes my clit into the bed, rubbing it against the satin. And just as the first orgasm finishes, another begins.
“Z…” I gasp as stars burst behind my eyes.
The second orgasm hits me, but he doesn’t stop. In fact, his hand re-fists in my hair, refusing to release me from his devastating hold as he keeps drawing his enormous erection in and out. “I am your control. I am your boundary.”
Relentless. He is relentless. I cry out, coming a third time as his words echo in my head. I am your control. I am your boundary.
How did he know? How did he see past all my bluster to the fear cowering beneath it? My life has always been out of control. I wasn’t nurtured, just shuffled around the endless pop-up parties my parents threw, like a cute piece of modern art they often forgot they still owned but liked to show off when they remembered. But that was at my parent’s house in New Jersey.
I’m in Jahwar now. In Zahir’s house. And in this room, I have no choices. Zahir feeds me. Zahir trains me. Zahir fucks me and fucks me until, with a sudden surge of Arabic, he spills inside me, hot and sloppy.
I’m not the only one overly effected by my forced submission. His dick kicks inside me, streaming an impossible amount of cum. By the time he’s done…by the time he turns me over, I’m a filthy, naked mess, my brown skin glistening with his cum and my multiple releases.
His eyes darken at the sight of me. Raw desire…but then comes something that looks surprisingly like shame. “I tried to spare you this side of me,” he says quietly. “If you had been patient and let me fully prepare myself for this, I would have treated you better. Like Asir…”
Asir…that name seems so past tense. My crush as made up a story as Disney’s version of Aladdin.
There is nothing but Zahir in my reality. Him staring down at me with his long, thick dick glistening with my pussy juices and still semi-hard. I feel something dark rise in me and I kick at his thigh, striking him hard.
“Do not…” he warns.
My response is to kick him again.
Zahir grabs my ankle, and I notice his dick is no longer semi-hard, but fully erect. “Do n—” he starts to say, but I slam the bottom of my other foot into his other thigh before he can finish.
I’m sick of his polite tone. His royal reserve. His perfectly groomed everything. Manners, beard, and hair.
And besides that, I’m all out of words at this point. All I have left is fight.
But when I claw my hands to come at him again, he lets go of my ankles and vice grips my wrist in one deft wrestling move. Then he falls on top of me before I can use my legs to buck him off.
There’s no slow feed this time. He shoves into me, fucking me into the bed, caging me in with the raw power of his body. Soon I am coming again…and again, the world nothing more than my moans and the sound of his body slapping furiously into mine.
No, he’s not Asir.
Asir is a pleasant G-rated movie the whole family can enjoy. I can’t imagine exploding like this for Asir. Coming again and again like this for anyone but the sheikh ruthlessly driving into me.
The sound soon fades, and I lose myself in a constantly erupting volcano of pleasure. Somewhere in the distance I hear his animalistic grunts as he comes inside me a second time. But this time when my orgasm fades, instead of coming back down, I stay in the sky, floating away…floating away on a sea of pleasure.
Chapter Twelve
I never lose consciousness. Somewhere in my mind, I know Zahir is removing me from the bed. He raps on the table. Which must signal Nabida and Raima because food and water appear, once again delivered from Zahir’s hand. And if I’m not mistaken, he does this in the bath. “Eat…” he commands softly. “Drink…”
The water laps at my pussy as he commands me to “Chew. I will not have you choke.”
I’m there for all of this, but it feels like a coming to when I finally land back on earth. I look around and see I’m still in the bath, but this time I am sitting on a ledge between Zahir’s legs. He’s bathing me with a large body sponge.
“Hey,” I say breathlessly, turning to look up at him. I smile at how intense his dark and dangerous face looks as he runs the sponge over my now very sore body. As if this point of business is as serious as whatever took him to Ardu Alzuhuwr in the first place.
The sight of him makes me giggle and I feel irrepressibly giddy inside.
After what happened to my mother, I will not touch drugs. Not even weed. But I swear this must be what it feels like to be high. I’ve been angry for as long as I can remember. Angry that I was born to a set of reckless fools. Then angry about how my mom died. Then angry that the twins didn’t draw a better lot in life than me as their all we’ve got.
But what I feel now is the opposite of anger. All negative feelings have drained out of me and though I’m no longer caged under his body, the feeling of warmth and security is still there, enveloping me like a blanket.
I grin stupidly up at Zahir and tell him, “You’re pretty underneath all that intensity.”
“And you’re still in sub-space, I see.” This time his low grumbling laugh doesn’t sound quite so mirthless.
“Sub-space? Is that what this weird glowy feeling is?” I ask, and the water sloshes as I lift my hand to check for sure that I’m not, in fact, glowing, Bruce Leroy- style.”
“From what I’ve been given to understand, yes,” he answers.
“Does this happen often? Like, with your other women…or what are they called here? Concubines?”
He stills. “Who told you there were others?”
“Dude, c’mon! I guessed. I’ve seen Japanese love hotels that look less obvious than this place.”
Another grumbling laugh. “You’ve been to many Japanese love hotels, then?”
“No,” I admit, somewhat glumly. “But I saw a documentary once and thought they looked kind of fun.”
“I have a business trip to Asia scheduled for the end of this month. If you are good, I will take you with me.”
I sigh sadly. “I guess I won’t be go
ing then. I think it’s obvious by now that ‘good’ is something I don’t do.”
“And perhaps you now understand that in my own way, I am ‘okay with that.’”
“Okay with that,” I repeat. “Even though I still haven’t unlocked Acceptable status like your other concubines?”
“You misuse the word ‘other,’ Prin. You are not a concubine. You are my wife.”
“For now,” I remind him with a snort.
“Now is where we’re at,” he answers, his voice as calm as that of a Buddhist monk—though obviously tonight has proven Zahir ain’t no monk.
“Do not give your mind to thoughts of other women while we are together. The ‘concubines’ as you call them were assigned to me. But you…” He grows quiet behind me and finally says, “The answer to your question is no, habibti. I’ve never had a submissive respond to my…nature…quite like you.”
“Submissive…” I test the word out on my tongue and don’t find it entirely repulsive. “Does that make you a…what do they call it—a dominant, right?”
“Not formally,” he answers. “I never truly used the concubines in this manner, but I make regular trips to New York and while I’m there, Luca often provides women to my exact sexual preference. But I have never put a formal title on my preferences, and I believe Luca tells the women to role play. I cannot ever be sure if they’re naturally submissive or not. Either way, sub-space has never been an issue and soon after, they leave.”
I think of that old joke: I don’t pay prostitutes for sex, I pay them to leave. But… “I’m still here. And so are you, cleaning me up.”
He sets the body sponge aside with a stiff intake of air. “I know enough about the lifestyle to realize it is not safe to leave a submissive when she is in this state,” he answers, his voice casual. “The effects are similar to alcohol or drugs, and you could hurt yourself if you are not properly monitored until you come out of it.”
“Okay, but you are literally paying not one, but two women to attend to my every need,” I point out with a teasing smile. “But you’re still here with me. And do you normally take baths with your concubines?”
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 34