by Tara Pammi
Without another word, he walked out, shattering her hopes.
Nikhat slid to the seat behind her, too shaken to even shed tears.
She had thought that she had molded life to suit her will, that she had survived through her biggest pain, that she could tackle anything life threw at her, and yet, back in Dahaar, when it came to the one thing that truly mattered to her, she was truly powerless.
Useless rage boiled over inside her, the urge to pack up and leave without looking back pounding through her blood.
She heard Azeez’s slow gait coming toward her. And for once, she couldn’t care to hide her desolation.
He came to a standstill on her right, leaning against the dark chaise her father had just vacated. “And here I thought Ayaan had convinced you to whore yourself out to me in return for your big clinic? A reunion with your family is the prize you’re going for?”
Anger burst through her, liberating and consuming, fraying the last rope of hope that had been holding her together. His words cheapened everything they had once shared, minimized everything she had become.
She shot to her feet, and reached him, adrenaline pumping through her blood. The force of her fury shaking through her, she slapped him hard.
The sharp sound reverberated around them, the impact of it jarring her arm, shaking her very breath.
He ran a hand over his jaw, an unholy light shining in his eyes. “Feel better?”
Her stomach folding on itself, she fisted her hand to stop the tremors. He hadn’t even tried to stop her.
She had played directly into his hands. His gaze burned with a fire that she knew not to go near. But she couldn’t step back, couldn’t break eye contact with him. “You provoked me on purpose.”
Pity and something indefinable danced in his gaze. “You looked like you would perish from the grief running through you, like you would never hope again. It was either I slap you or you slap me.”
She didn’t want to owe him more than she already did. “Now you know what we all see when we look at you.”
She thought he would laugh at her. Instead, a thoughtful look dawned on his face. “Is that why you are here, Nikhat? Because you pity me?”
Folding her arms, she faced him. “That’s the one thing I can truthfully say I have never felt for you, Azeez. You make it hard to pity you.”
Relief dawned in his gaze. With his hands gripping the armrest, he sank into the chaise. “Ayaan will order your father to let you see them. He will have no choice but to follow his orders. Having to choose between your family and your profession, or anything else, is not something anyone should have to face.”
Their gazes held, a wealth of memories fighting for breath in the air around them. He had spoken those words to her before too. He had made promises and he had kept every single one of them.
She…she had made one promise. And she hadn’t been able to keep it.
Shaking her head, she pushed those memories back to where they belonged. “My father’s right. I don’t know where I’m going to be in six months’ time. With a future so uncertain, it is better I stay away from my sisters.”
“Or you could simply leave. I will help you get out of the palace. Ayaan will not force you to return.”
“Are you so eager to be rid of me, Azeez?” She regretted the words the instant they were out.
“Yes, I would like nothing more than for you to leave,” he said with crippling honesty that had always been a part of him.
Taking the option he was giving her, going back to New York where she had unfettered freedom, where her every movement, small and big, wasn’t dictated by someone else, away from the man looking up at her with a dark fire that drew her nearer every day, it was the easiest thing to do.
She could save both of them from the misery of reliving a painful past because, try as she might, it kept rearing up its head.
And she wouldn’t feel this desolation at being so close to her sisters and still not seeing them. But the same loyalty that was in her father’s blood filled hers too.
“I made a promise to Ayaan. Whatever happens in the next few months, I want to live in Dahaara. I want to head that clinic. There’s a lot of good I can do here.”
He rubbed his forehead with long fingers. “Of course. You have goals, and plans to accomplish those goals. And if something fails, you dust yourself off and move on.”
“Why did you come here, Azeez?”
“I want you to help me convince Ayaan that everything is wonderfully perfect up here,” he said, poking himself in the head.
“So that you can leave the palace and get yourself killed?”
“I don’t have to leave the palace to accomplish that.” He said the words softly, slowly, as if he was crushed by a weight he couldn’t shake. He stood up from the chaise and walked toward the door, his frame tight with tension. When he met her gaze, the depth of pain in it shook her. And they all thought he didn’t care, that he had become a shell of his former self. “I cannot bear to be here, Nikhat. I have to convince Ayaan that leaving Dahaar is the best thing for me, for him, for our parents. I have to leave Dahaar. And it has to be done in such a way that Ayaan feels no guilt.”
Nikhat shook her head. “That’s a tall order. I’ll never be able to convince him, because I don’t think it is the best thing for you.”
“But you will do it.”
The arrogance in his tone stole her breath away. “Why will I do it?”
He leaned against the wall, his hand gripping his hip. “Do you want me to die a slow, painful death?”
A shiver went through her at the desolation in his eyes. She reached him, desperate to relieve his pain, desperate to do something. “Azeez, you can’t—”
He threw an arm out as if to halt her from coming near him. When he spoke, it was through gritted teeth. “This palace is eating me up alive. Everywhere I turn, I see the destruction I have wrought on Ayaan, on my parents, on Dahaar itself. If I have to live, it has to be outside these palace walls.”
Dahaar had once been an integral part of him, his life, his blood, his passion. To hear him say it was stifling the life out of him was the most painful thing she had ever heard.
For whatever reason, Azeez held himself responsible for everything that happened, and as long as he did, he couldn’t breathe in here. Broken dreams, and ghosts of a glorious past, the palace was full of it—it was a pain she felt, an agony that she understood.
Which meant she had no choice but to agree.
What he was asking of her, it was a betrayal of her promise to Ayaan, a betrayal of the promise she had made to herself. But, as it always had been, when it came to Azeez, nothing else mattered to her. Not even her own happiness.
She wanted him to live, and if she could help him do that the way he wanted, then so be it. “I will help you, Azeez,” she heard herself say.
And was rewarded by a puzzled nod from him.
CHAPTER FOUR
NIKHAT FOLLOWED THE palace maid down a maze of intricate marble-lined corridors, her heart slowly climbing up her throat with every step she took.
Agreeing to Azeez’s proposal was one thing. Venturing into his suite with an action plan in hand, another. At least, Ayaan had been pleasantly surprised when she had informed him what she had in mind, during Princess Zohra’s morning checkup.
With a nod, the maid pointed her to intricately designed double doors and left. Clutching her iPad with shaking fingers, she stepped over the threshold and stilled at the utter magnificence of the suite. She had thought her suite was the lap of luxury. Compared to this one, hers was more like a storage room, in sheer size and the magnificence of it.
She had been here that first night, but in her anxiety to see Azeez, she had paid no attention to her surroundings. She had spent innumerable hours in the palace, ro
amed most of the corridors and wings with Amira, everywhere but here. Because it was the Prince’s wing and had been forbidden to all of them.
Azeez’s suite, she discovered, looking past the main area, backed onto private gardens and was a cavernous bedchamber rather than a mere suite. She walked past the vast foyer into the main area and stilled. Her breath hitched in her throat. Cream-colored walls flowed seamlessly against the similarly colored marble floors, inlaid here and there with gold piping. She knew it was gold because she had once asked Amira, her mouth falling open to her chest.
Dark red velvet curtains brocaded with gold threads hung heavily beside the floor-length windows. A sitting area was on her left containing gilt-edged sofas and chaise lounges with claw-feet made in intricate detail. Lush Persian rugs in colorful designs lay here and there. A silver tea service, along with a variety of mouthwatering dishes on the table, all lay untouched.
A crystal decanter, which looked as old and priceless as the rest of the trappings of the room, stood next to the tray, the gold liquid swirling at the bottom telling its own story.
Against the opposite wall sat a vast bed, almost waist high, with a wide, intricately designed metal headboard, and sheets again of the darkest red. A velvet-covered stool stood off to the side.
Cushions and pillows of every possible size lay haphazardly atop the sheets. A white cotton shirt was at the foot of the bed that looked half crumpled.
Her feet carried her to the bed—because really she had no idea she had decided to walk toward it. A hint of sandalwood, underlaid with a scent that was his, reached her nose, invading her skin with a lick of heat.
She sucked in greedy bursts, drawing it deep into her lungs before she realized that she was doing it. The sheets were soft and warm against her shaking fingers, and her mind conjured an image of him tangled in them.
A low, thrilling pulse rang all over her body like a bell. She had imagined being in his bedroom, countless times and in a countless number of ways all those years ago. And her body still reacted to it in the same way, even with a gulf of pain and dreams separating them more than ever.
She was in the Prince of Dahaar’s bedroom—an intimacy that was strictly limited to his immediate family and the woman he would marry, the woman who would irrevocably belong to him.
The very thought sent a stab of pain through her middle, cooling the illicit thrill.
She clasped her nape, and rubbed it, fighting the wave of melancholy. Ya Allah, what madness had led her to agree to this?
A slow burn of awareness inched under her skin. She turned slowly, bracing herself for a caustic remark from those cruel lips.
Azeez stood at the doorway of the bathroom, clad only in loose white trousers that tied with fragile strings.
Sinuous heat drenched Nikhat inside out, zigzagging across a million spots, places she shouldn’t be thinking of in front of him but was painfully aware of.
His shoulder blades were outlined by his lean frame. The golden olive of his skin gleamed dark against the white fabric, stretched tight over his abdomen, delineating every bone and muscle. Sparse chest hair covered dark nipples, arrowing down in a line that disappeared into those trousers. Her gaze instinctively sought the evidence of the bullet wound. Only a small length of a scar, puckered and stitched up roughly, was visible above the band of the trousers.
He didn’t have a whole lot of muscle on him, and yet there was no softness to his abdomen either.
Suddenly, all she wanted was to trace the angular jut of his collarbone, rake her fingernail over his nipple, see if he felt the arc of electricity between them as strongly as she did.
She met his gaze, and something flared into life between them, contracting the space and world around them, as though shoving them both into a world of their own. His breath left him in a soft exhale and she watched as the lean chest rose and fell with it.
Liquid desire, she realized what it was, flowed through every nerve in her body, a thrill coiling her muscles. She wanted to move forward and touch him, feel the heat of his skin slide against hers, smell that intoxicating masculinity that had made her realize her own femininity for the first time.
Eight years ago, she had been naive, green, too overwhelmed by what and who he was to understand the raw awareness between them, too caught up in society’s rules and her own insecurities to comprehend the power and beauty of this thing. The dark heat of his glances, the fire of his checked desire, the power with which he had leashed it so that he didn’t scare her, she had never fully comprehended it. Until now.
It was not her body that had caught up, as he had mocked. It was her mind. And it reveled in the raw charge between them, reveled in the fact that she could put that feral look in his eyes.
The slight rise of his brows, the almost undetectable hint of widening of his jet-black irises—he was amused and yet it was not the eviscerating kind. He was as surprised as she was at her daring.
Coloring, she fought the instinct to look away, to hide from what he made her body feel. She had denied herself so many things. But the simple thrill of watching the Prince of Dahaar, of holding that intractable gaze without shying away, she couldn’t deny herself this. It made her dizzily alive. In that moment, she could believe herself his equal.
His mouth didn’t turn into a sneer, his gaze didn’t mock her for her unwise audacity. He just stood there and stared at her, as though waiting to see how long she could hold it.
She could drink him in for the rest of her life. But of course, she had a job to do.
Searching for that brisk efficiency that she had become well known for among her colleagues, she waved the iPad toward him. “Since you refuse to see an actual physiotherapist, I contacted a friend of mine and downloaded some videos he recommended. Most of them are pretty easy to follow, but I have requested that Khaleef be present in case you need physical—”
He shook his head.
She instantly knew what he was saying no to. “But Khaleef can—”
“I want you.”
She swallowed at the searing heat that blanketed her as he pushed off the wall and moved closer. He had said those words deliberately, she reminded herself. He was testing how far her recklessness of a few moments ago would carry her. And yet they had no less effect on her. “Fine. For this week, our goal is to get you moving again, and for you to attend a dinner with Ayaan and Princess Zohra at the end of the week. And figuring out where it is that you want to go when this is…over, and what you will be doing there.”
Every muscle in his face stilled. “Where I want to go?”
“Yes. I thought about your…leaving Dahaar a little more.” It was all she had done, she felt consumed by it really. This time, she was going to be here and he was going to leave.
She had long ago resigned herself to a life without him and she had accomplished far more than her wildest dreams.
Still, the thought of living in a Dahaar that didn’t have him in it was a reality she had never imagined. “Ayaan won’t just let you wander back into the desert. It seems more feasible that Ayaan, King Malik and Queen Fatima will—” he grimaced at the mention of his mother, and she willed herself to continue “—will let you leave if you show an interest in one of the worldwide business ventures that Dahaar invests in.
“You cannot cut them out of your life completely, Azeez. Nor are you capable of wiling away your life doing nothing. That, of all the things in the world, will kill you.”
He didn’t question her assumption. “I can try.”
She didn’t qualify that with a response. “I asked Ayaan a few questions, pretty much lied and said it would give me something to talk about with you.”
“I’ve forgotten how meticulous you are when you set your mind to something.”
“Your options are the investment house in New York, the race course in Abu Dhabi and, of c
ourse, your all-time favorite, Monaco.” The last words stuck in her throat like thorns, refusing to come out.
She had developed the most violent and irrational hatred toward that place every time she had looked at the paper and read about his exploits in the year before the terrorist attack. His words that first morning had only intensified it.
A challenge glimmered in his eyes. “Is there something you would like to say, Nikhat?”
The question simmered in the air between them, like an explosive in the middle of a peaceful desert. And the slightest hint of demand from her could detonate it and crumble her carefully constructed life.
She shook her head, clinging to ignorant sanity.
Walking by his side, she adjusted her stride to match his slow one.
“I saw that—” she breathed in a deep gulp as his forearm grazed hers “—I noticed that you’re not completely out of shape, but you’re also obviously in pain.”
He laughed, but there was no real joy in the sound. “Don’t tell Ayaan. When he captured me in the desert, he knocked me off my feet and I landed on my bad hip violently. Fighting him cost me—”
“And yet you did it.”
He continued as though she hadn’t interrupted him. “Also, the longer—”
“The longer you sit around, drinking and throwing bottles at imaginary figures, the worse the pain gets.”
“Yes. But it was too much fun, Nikhat.”
She shook her head, even as a smile rose to her lips. That roguishness—it was incredible to see that still inside him. “I figure the logical step is to get you to move as much as possible every day. I inquired about a hydro-pool, but the hammam should do quite well for our purposes. The steam will loosen the hip joint before we do a little exercise every day. Do you know who I can contact about requesting some medical records about your bullet wound?”