by Tara Pammi
Strong arms embraced her tightly. “I have to warn you, Nikhat. He’s not the man you or I knew. I’m not even sure that man exists anymore.”
* * *
There she was again, tall, beautiful, graceful.
Like a mirage in the desert, she appeared every day during this time to taunt him, to remind him of everything he was not.
The darkest time of the day when dawn was a mere hour away, when he found himself staring at the rise of another day with nothing but self-loathing to greet it with.
However drunk he got, it was the time the reality of everything he had become, everything he had done, pressed upon Azeez.
He had been the Crown Prince once. Now he was the Crown Prince’s prisoner, a fitting punishment for the man responsible for his sister’s death, his brother’s suffering and so much more.
Just the passing thought was enough to feel the palace walls close around him.
A cold breeze flew in through the wide-open doors to his right. The cold nipped at his bare chest, slowly but silently insinuating itself into his muscles. He would feel the effect of it tomorrow morning. His right hip would be stiff enough to seize up.
But his imagination was stubborn tonight, the moment passed, and he saw her again.
Tonight, she wore a dark brown, long-sleeved kaftan made of simple cotton with leggings of the same color underneath. She had always been simple in real life, too, never allowing him to splurge on her, never allowing him anything he had wanted to do with her, for that matter.
Like kiss her, or touch her or possess her.
And yet, he had been her slave.
Her hair, a silky mass of dark brown, was tied back into a high ponytail in the no-nonsense way she had liked. Leaving her golden skin pulled tightly over her features.
A high forehead that had always bothered her—a symbol of her intelligence—almond-shaped copper-hued eyes, which were her best feature, her too-long nose—a bit on the strong side—and a wide pink-lipped mouth. If one studied those features objectively and separately, as he had done for innumerable hours, there was nothing outstanding about any of them.
And yet all together, she had the most beautiful face he had ever seen. It was full of character, full of laughter and full of love.
Or being a naive, arrogant young fool, so he had thought. Until his love for her had destroyed him, shattered him to pathetic pieces.
Leaning over the side of the lounger he was sitting on, Azeez extended his right hand. The movement pressed his hip into the chair and a sharp lance of pain shot up through it. Reaching the bottle of scotch, he took a quick sip.
The fiery liquid burned his throat and chest, making his vision another notch blurrier.
But the image in front of his eyes didn’t waver. In fact, it became much more focused, as if it had been amplified and brought much closer for his very pleasure.
Because now he could see her long neck, the neck he had caressed with his fingers so long ago. The cheap, well-worn cotton draped loosely over her breasts, losing the fight to cover up their lushness. The fabric dipped neatly at the curve of her hip.
Wiping the back of his mouth with his hand, he grabbed the bottle with his other hand and stood up abruptly.
White-hot pain exploded in his right side, radiating from his hip, traveling up and down. He had been sitting for way too long today and had barely exercised since his brother had locked him up here in the palace.
Gritting his teeth, he breathed through the throbbing pain. He leaned against the pillar and looked up.
The sight that met his eyes stole his breath. The intense throbbing in his hip was nothing compared to the dark chasm opening up in his gut.
Because, now the mirage was torturing him.
The woman had tears in those beautiful eyes. Her lips whispered his name. Again and again, as though she couldn’t help it, as though her very breath depended on saying his name.
In the mirage, the woman he had once loved more than anything else in life, the woman who had eventually destroyed him, was standing within touching distance. And for a man who had almost died happily, only to discover that he was alive, and a cripple at that, it was still the cruelest punishment to see her standing there, teasing him, tormenting him.
With a cry that never left his throat, he threw the bottle at the mirage, needing it to dissolve, needing the torturous cycle of self-loathing to abate.
Except, unlike all the other times he had done it, the woman flinched. Even as the bottle missed her, shattering as it hit the floor with a sound that fractured the silence.
Her soft gasp hit him hard in the gut, slicing through the drunken haze in his head. Shock waves pulsing through him, he moved as fast as his damaged hip would allow.
His fingers trembled as he extended his hand and touched her cheek. Her skin was as silky soft as he remembered. Bile filled his mouth and he had to suck in a harsh breath to keep it at bay. “Nikhat?”
Fear and self-loathing tangled inside him, his heart slamming hard against his rib cage.
The sheen of liquid in her beautiful dark brown eyes was real. The tremble in those rose-hued lips was real.
Azeez cursed, every muscle in his body freezing into ice. And before he could blink again, she was touching him, devouring him with her steady copper gaze.
She caught his roughened palm between hers, sending a jolt of sensation rioting through his body. It was as though a haze was lifted from his every sense, as though every nerve ending in him had been electrocuted into alertness. “Hello, Azeez.”
He pushed her away from him and jerked back. Leaning against the pillar, he caught his breath, kept his eyes closed, waiting for the dancing spots in front of him to abate. He heard her soft exhale, heard the step she took toward him.
Suddenly, utter fury washed through him, ferociously hot in contrast to the cold that had frozen his very blood just a few minutes ago. “Who dared to let you in here? I might be a cripple but I’m still Prince Azeez bin Rashid Al Sharif of Dahaar. Get out before I throw you out myself.”
Nikhat flinched, the walls she had built around herself denting at his words. But she couldn’t let the bitterness of them seep in and become a part of her. This was not about her. “I have every right to be here, not that I think you’re lucid enough to understand that.”
He didn’t snarl back at her as she expected.
He just stood there, staring at her, and she stared back, eight years of hunger ripping through all her stupid defenses.
Jet-black eyes set deep in his face, and even more now with the dark shadows beneath, gazed at her, a maelstrom of emotions blazing within. His aristocratic nose had a bump to it that hadn’t been there before. It looked as if it had been broken and had never healed right.
And then came the most sensuous, cruelest mouth she had ever seen. Even before the terrorist attack, even before she had left him without looking back, he had had a fierce, dark smile that stole into her very skin and lodged there.
Being at the receiving end of that smile had been like being in the desert at night. When the Prince of Dahaar had looked at you, he demanded every inch of your focus and you gave it to him, willingly.
Right now, the same mouth was flattened into a rigid line.
The white, long-sleeved shirt he wore was open halfway through, showing his thin frame. His long hair curled over his collar.
“Leave, Nikhat. Now,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. His gaze didn’t linger on her face. He didn’t meet her eyes, either. “Or I won’t be responsible for what I do next.”
“Apologize to me. That bottle could have done serious damage,” she said, giving up the fight against herself.
The moment she had stepped out of her suite into the dimly lighted corridor, unable to sleep a wink, and wandered through this wing of the pala
ce, wondering if he was nearby, exposing herself to the guard outside, she had given up any sense she’d ever had.
Only, she had thought she would take a quick look and slink away in the dark of the night. Self-delusion had never been her weakness and she couldn’t let it take root now.
“No,” Azeez said without compunction. “Didn’t my brother warn you? You took the risk of visiting a savage animal in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Azeez. I never will be.”
She took another step, bracing herself for the changes in him. He had lost weight and it showed in his face. The sharp bridge of his nose, and those hollowed-out cheekbones, they stood out, giving him a gaunt, hard look.
“Ayaan told me about you last night,” she said, opting for truth. One gut-wrenching lie was enough for this lifetime. “I couldn’t wait. I…couldn’t wait till morning.”
He fisted his hands at his sides, his fury stamped into his features. “And?” he said in a low growl that gave her instant goose bumps. He clasped her cheek with his fingers, moving fast for a man in obvious pain. His grip was infuriatingly gentle yet she knew he was holding back a storm of fury.
His gaze collided with hers and what she saw there twisted her stomach; it was the one thing that did scare her. His eyes were empty, as though the spark that had been him, the very force of life that he had been, had died out.
“Have you seen enough, latifa? Is your curiosity satisfied?”
She clutched his wrists with her fingers, refusing to let him push her away.
And it wasn’t for him. It was for her.
She hadn’t cried when she had learned the news of the terrorist attack and of his death. Her heart had solidified into hard rock long before then. And she wouldn’t cry now. But she allowed herself to touch him. She needed to know he was standing there. She touched his face, his shoulders, his chest, ignoring his sucked-in breath. “I’m so sorry. About Amira, about Ayaan, about you.”
With a gentle grip, he pushed her back. There was nothing in his gaze when he looked at her. Not fury, not contempt, not even resentment. His initial shock had faded fast and he looked as if nothing she said would ever touch him. “Are you, truly?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Why, Nikhat?”
She wasn’t responsible for the terrorist attack, she knew that. And yet, nothing she had said to herself had prepared her for the tumult of seeing him like this.
“You’re not responsible for what I’ve become. But if you want, you can do me a favor.”
The force of his request didn’t scare her. If she could do something to help him, she would. Ayaan had been right. She owed it to Azeez. “Anything, Azeez.”
“Leave Dahaar before the sun is up. Leave and never come back. If you have ever felt anything true for me, Nikhat, do not show me your face ever again.”
Nikhat stood rooted to the spot as he walked away from her. It seemed she was always going to disappoint him.
She couldn’t leave now, just as she hadn’t been able to stay when he had asked her eight years ago.
CHAPTER TWO
AYAAN PUT HIS coffee cup down on the breakfast table when he heard the sound that hammered at him with relentless guilt. The sound of his brother’s approach.
Catching his wife’s gaze, he saw the same shock coursing through him reflected in her eyes.
In the four months since he had practically dragged his brother to the palace, Azeez hadn’t stepped foot into the breakfast hall once. Despite Ayaan’s innumerable pleas. And today…
Ayaan signaled for the waiting staff to leave just as the sound of Azeez’s harsh breathing neared the vast table. He pushed his chair back and looked up. Suddenly, the morning seemed brighter. “Would you like some cof—”
He never saw the punch coming. Shooting pain danced up and down his jaw as it landed, his vision blanking out for a few seconds.
Her loud, abrasive curse word ringing around them, his wife reached him instantly. Ayaan rubbed his jaw and looked up just in time to see Zohra march around his chair and push his brother in the chest.
Azeez’s mouth was curved into a fiendish smile, and Ayaan was about to interfere, when Azeez stepped back from Zohra. He mocked a curtsy, his mouth curled into a sneer. “Good morning, Your Highness, you look…lovely.”
“You are acting like an uncivilized thug,” Zohra said, her gaze furious.
“I am an uncivilized thug, Princess Zohra,” his brother replied with a hollow laugh. “And it is your husband who is keeping me here.”
Flexing his jaw, Ayaan turned to his brother and froze.
Ferocious anger blazed out of that jet-black gaze he knew so well. The same gaze that had been filled with emptiness, indifference, for four months. The constant, hard knot in his gut relented just a little. “What was that for?”
“You are the future king of Dahaar, Ayaan, not of me. Keep your arrogant head out of my affairs.”
Settling back down into his chair, Ayaan took a sip of his coffee. “I have no idea what you refer to, Azeez.”
“I want her out of here.”
The vehemence in his brother’s words doubled his doubts. “Why are you so concerned about Nikhat’s presence?”
Leaning his hip on the solid wood, Azeez bent. “I think all this power is going to your head. Don’t manipulate me, little brother. Or I will—”
“What, Azeez?” Ayaan refused to back down. His cup clanged on the saucer in the ensuing silence, hot liquid spilling onto his fingers.
“You’ll shoot yourself? I fell for that until now, but not anymore. If you were going to kill yourself, you had numerous chances to do it over the past six years. You would have been killed by that bullet. And yet here you are, stubborn as ever and intent on destroying yourself the hard way.” Silence snarled between them. “Nikhat is not going anywhere. Not for at least six more months.”
Emotion flashed in his brother’s gaze but Ayaan had no idea which one.
“If your plan is to bring back memories that will suddenly fill me with a love for life, how about some good ones, Ayaan? Why don’t you invite one of the numerous women I slept with six years ago to the palace?” He slanted a wicked glance at Zohra before looking at Ayaan again. “There used to be a particularly sexy stripper in that nightclub in Monaco who could do the wildest things with her tongue. If you want to see me rejoin the living, send the starchy doctor away, build a pole in my wing and have that stripper on a…”
His words tapering off, his brother looked as if he was the one dealt a punch.
Nikhat stood at the entrance to the hall. Against the colorful, blood-red rug on the wall behind her, she looked deathly pale. Their gazes locked on each other, Azeez and Nikhat stood unmoving, as if they were bound to each other.
Tension coiled tighter and tighter in the air around them.
His brother recovered first. And watching him closely, seeing a dark light come to life in his eyes, Ayaan realized that he’d made a terrible mistake.
“I’m regaling my brother and his wife with stories about Monaco. Was it the year right after you left?”
Beneath the humor, something else reverberated in Azeez’s words, filling the vast hall with it.
“Does it matter when it was that you went around seducing the entire female population in Monaco, shaming Dahaar and your father with your wild exploits?” Nikhat delivered with equally lethal smoothness, even as her skin failed to recover its color.
Walking around Ayaan to Zohra’s side, Nikhat whispered something to her. And walked out of the hall without another glance at his brother.
“Enough games, Ayaan. Why is she here?” Azeez roared the moment she left.
“Zohra is pregnant and is having complications. Nikhat is one of the best obstetricians in the country today.
I need her to take care of my wife.”
Azeez turned toward Zohra, his gaze assessing. “Congratulations to both of you. If she has to be here, keep her out of my way. Tell her she’s forbidden from seeing me.”
“I won’t tell her any such thing. Nikhat is practically a member of this family. And she’s doing me a favor. So unless you want to be my personal prisoner for the rest of your life, you better behave yourself.”
“You’ve become a damn bastard, brother.”
Ayaan laughed, the first in a long time he had truly done that. “I had to become one for Dahaar, Azeez. See, I wasn’t born one like you are. It’s the reason why you were so good at being the Crown Prince too. The minute you want it back, the crown’s yours.”
“That was a lifetime ago.” Tight lines fanning around his mouth, Azeez stepped back. As if Ayaan had asked him to jump into the fiery pit of hell. “It’s all yours now.”
Azeez left the room, leaving a dark silence in his wake.
Once, his brother would have given his life to Dahaar. Once, a fire had shone in his eyes at the mere mention of it.
“Something’s changed in him,” Zohra said, a hint of warning in her voice. “And…Nikhat looked like she would break apart with one word from him.”
Reaching for her outstretched hand on the table, Ayaan nodded. In four months of banging his head against the intractable wall that his brother had become, this was the first time there was a faint crack. He felt tremulous hope and excruciating guilt.
“Did you know if they were more than friends?”
Ayaan shook his head. He hadn’t known before, but something his servant Khaleef had said in a throwaway comment had stuck with him. So he had taken a gamble and commanded Nikhat’s father to summon her.
Being right had never left such an ugly taste in his mouth.
* * *
After a couple of wrong turns, Nikhat reached the courtyard behind the wing she had been shown to three days ago. High walls surrounded the courtyard, shielding it from any curious gazes.