by Nadia Aidan
“Sleep,” he murmured, before tenderly kissing my brow. I let my eyes close then. Minutes later I heard his muffled voice in the distance. He was on the phone, and I soon realized it was his friend, the one he was staying with for the holiday. Or maybe not. I heard him tell his friend that he needed to take care of his god-sister—me. He then apologized, saying he would not be able to make it to dinner tomorrow after all and that he would see him back on campus.
In the foggy recesses of my mind, somewhere between consciousness and sleep, I realized Khalil was staying with me for the next few days, that we would be here alone together, and then I realized what that meant. I know I smiled, although I was half asleep, and just before I drifted off I felt Khalil join me in bed, pulling me deep within the circle of his arms. As I snuggled into the warmth of his embrace, I knew three things—that I was in love with Khalil al-Aziz, that he probably felt the same way even if he had yet to realize it, and that for some reason I couldn’t explain I also knew he was going to break my heart.
*****
Khalil closed his eyes as he buried himself inside Sabeen’s sweet body. The sigh that escaped him was almost reverent, as it trembled through his entire being.
Heaven.
He was certain if making love to her wasn’t what it was like to die and go to heaven, it was the closest thing. He wanted to remain inside her for as long as he could, but she was wild and impatient as she began to rock her hips against him, urging him to finish what they’d started when he’d joined her in the shower that morning.
Water rained down upon them, his fingers slipping when he tried to pin her hips against the tiled shower to still her wanton movements.
He growled out her name when she began to rock harder and faster against him.
“Please,” she begged, the soft lilt of her voice his undoing. Withdrawing all the way to the tip, he slammed back into her, groaning when her hot, tight tunnel enveloped him. With her legs wrapped around him, she clutched at his shoulders, as soft cries tumbled from her lips with every stroke.
He wasn’t going to last much longer, and already he could feel her pussy beginning to pulse and tighten around the hard length of his cock as he pounded into her, drilling her against the shower wall. When she screamed out his name, her nails digging into his back, it was all he could do to breathe with her cunt fisting around him until he couldn’t move.
“Fuck,” he growled, the last vestiges of his control now completely obliterated as he came seconds after Sabeen, his seed spurting out of him to coat her shuddering walls. He lost himself inside of her, savoring the moment’s euphoria until the tremors racking him finally eased, and Sabeen unfolded herself from around him.
He stared down into her beautiful face, her eyes wide and innocent; although there’d been nothing innocent about the things they’d done to one another over the past few days, he mused with a rueful smile.
“What’s so funny?” she questioned.
“Not so much as funny.” He shrugged. “I was just thinking of everything that has happened over the last few days, and how would I even begin to explain to your father if we discovered you were pregnant.”
“We?”
Khalil’s gaze took in her teasing smile and the laughter in her eyes, but that did nothing to stop the feelings of possessiveness at the thought of Sabeen pregnant with his child.
“Yes, we.”
Her eyes widened at the unmistakable firmness of his voice and eventually she nodded. “Well, I just got on the pill, so the chances of that happening, I’m guessing are pretty low.” When he remained silent, her eyes narrowed. “You almost seem disappointed at the idea that I’m not.”
Was he?
He couldn’t answer that definitively. What he did know, however, was that he wasn’t bothered by the idea if she was, and he already knew why that was so.
At some point when he hadn’t been looking, Sabeen had grown up, and turned into a woman he didn’t know, but desperately wanted to. The Sabeen he’d grown up with had been spoiled, shallow and selfish, but this woman was anything but. She was thoughtful, and possessed a sharp intellect, along with a sarcastic sense of humor, which constantly kept him on his toes with her. Their sexual chemistry was undeniable, but it was more than that. They were sexually compatible in ways few would ever be able to comprehend.
He wanted Sabeen—and not just for a night. What he felt for her, defied even his comprehension, but he was certain of the depths of his feelings for the woman he now held in his arms.
As he stared down into her upturned face, it was on the tip of his tongue to just tell her, knowing it would shock her, but instead he hesitated. No matter that they were in the States, far away from the customs and dictates of their native homeland, Khalil was bound by them in this. Before he could stake his claim on her, he already knew he would have to speak to her father, and until he did, he wasn’t free to make any claim upon her, yet.
“Let’s just say I’m not troubled by the idea if you are,” he finally replied to the statement she’d made just moments before about the possibility of her being pregnant.
He glimpsed the uncertainty in her eyes, as if she wanted to believe what his words suggested, but just couldn’t imagine such a thing was possible. Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her gently. “You mean more to me than you could ever know,” he murmured against the crown of her head. “I won’t make promises to you until I know I can keep them, but I can promise you this I would never abandon you, especially not if you carried my child.” He lifted his head, his hands clasping her face so that she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “I can also promise you that I have never been more serious when I say I want more than this weekend with you.” The smile that spread across her face, was more than enough assurance for him that even if she wasn’t yet in love with him, he wasn’t alone in his feelings either. He joined their lips again in a kiss that threatened to spiral out of control, but before it could, he pulled away. He smiled when she protested, but he refused to give in to her this time. They had been at it for days, and she needed to rest, despite what she claimed, and he needed to get them something to eat that wasn’t on the room service menu, and he said as much.
“I’ll be back in less than an hour,” he said when she continued to argue, and then offered to join him. She was only mollified when he promised they would go out for dinner that night, since it would be their last night together.
It took what was still left of his waning willpower to leave Sabeen naked and alone in that shower, and get dressed, but it was absolutely necessary because the conversation he needed to have with her father was one best conducted without her for an audience.
Fifteen minutes later he was headed to a nearby Chinese restaurant to grab take out when his mobile rang. Thinking it was Sabeen asking him to pick something up for her he answered it without looking at his phone. For many years he would wish he had just let it go to voicemail, although had he ignored the call from his cousin, it would have only complicated what would turn out to be an impossible situation.
“Alo,” he answered, using the common slang term of greeting, popularized by the younger generation of Arabic speakers in the U.S.
“It’s me.”
Khalil grinned, immediately recognizing the voice of his cousin, Amir. Having grown up together, they were as close as brothers, and they were only half-joking when they told others they were closer to one another than they were to their actual brothers. That was due to several things, one being that they’d been born less than a year apart, and the other was because as the eldest sons, they both shouldered similar burdens of one day leading their family clans. Although, Khalil readily acknowledged, that Amir’s burden was far heavier, given that he would be expected to one day govern over Sharjah when his father eventually retired.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down, man, I missed all that,” Khalil said, when he realized Amir had been speaking the entire time he’d been lost in thought.
“I said that I’m
betrothed—to Sabeen.”
Amir’s words stopped him dead in his tracks. He couldn’t have possibly have heard that right. “What did you say?”
“Man, what are you doing?” Amir barked impatiently. “I’m engaged to Sabeen. It’s some bullshit contract our parents entered into when we were little, and now that she’s eighteen they want me to marry her—“
“What! You can’t do that!” Khalil shouted angrily, and it wasn’t until there was a long silence on the other end that he realized how he must have sounded.
“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were madder about this than me,” Amir chuckled but Khalil easily heard the sharp edge of bitterness just beneath his cousin’s laughter. “I’m not. I mean I can’t marry her so I told my parents no. I’m not even thinking about marriage, and especially not to Sabeen. She’d like a little sister—a fucking bratty ass, empty headed—”
“Chill dude, I get it,” Khalil interrupted, before Amir’s description rattled him further. He didn’t blame his cousin for thinking that, because his impression of Sabeen had once been the same as Amir’s, but that had all changed days ago.
But Amir didn’t know that. Khalil’s body which had already been tense from the moment Amir had spoken, now corded tight with anger, frustration, and a host of other nameless emotions that ricocheted inside of him. Amir didn’t know his opinion of Sabeen had changed, along with his feelings. And neither did his parents, her father, and obviously not Amir’s parents either; which made him wonder about Sabeen.
“Does Sabeen know she’s engaged to you?” Khalil was proud of himself that he managed to get the words out past the heavy knot now clogging his throat.
“As far as I know, not yet, but my parents told me her father has been trying to reach her to let her know. They were all supposed to wait until Sabeen and I were home for winter break so that they could sit us down and tell us together, but apparently Sabeen and Abdul had some big fight before the holiday, and she hasn’t spoken to him since. She must have told him something crazy like she was going to run off and become a hooker because Abdul insisted that both of us be informed at once of the contract.”
So Sabeen didn’t know. So there was a chance that if he could get to Abdul first, and maybe reason with him—“I gotta go.” Before Amir could say another word, he hung up. Khalil had almost completely finished inputting the sequence of numbers to call Sabeen’s father, when he abruptly stopped. His fingers actually trembled over the numbers, because he already knew that his call to Abdul would change nothing.
As the eldest son, he’d been raised to one day become the head of his family and clan, so he knew well the customs and traditions of his homeland, no matter how outdated they were to him.
Abdul had no power to break the contract he’d entered into. Truly the only real person who had that power was Amir, and even his was limited, it was also considered dishonorable to break betrothal contracts, and one thing Khalil knew of his cousin, was that Amir valued his honor and that of his family’s. He wouldn’t break the contract, and despite her rebelliousness, Sabeen’s loyalty to her family was unshakable. She wouldn’t protest being bartered and signed away, anymore than Amir would. It was a political marriage, a powerful one at that. It made sense for the two families to enter into such an agreement, upon realizing their oldest offspring were close in age. The only problem was Sabeen and Amir were not in love, and they never would be.
Khalil didn’t even acknowledge his own feelings as an equally important problem, because his feelings didn’t matter—none of their feelings mattered. Now completely numb to the ache in his chest, he quietly slipped his phone back into his pocket.
He returned to the hotel almost completely in a deathlike trance, because he was unaware of any of his surroundings or how he even got there. It was a herculean struggle to try and reconcile himself with the turn of events over just the last hour, but he knew he had no choice. He was in love with the woman his best friend and cousin was promised to marry, and because she was promised to Amir, he could never have her.
Anger and bitterness threatened to boil over inside of him but he tamped it down. Both emotions were a waste of his energy, and neither of them would help him get through what promised to be the most agonizing night of his entire life.
For Sabeen, he would pretend that all was right in the world, even as he admitted he was selfish in wanting to savor these last hours with her, because come morning, he would have no choice but to turn his back on her and walk away, as if their time together had never been—as if it had meant nothing.
*****
I knew something was wrong the moment Khalil returned from grabbing breakfast. For the rest of the day, until we dressed to go to dinner that night, we made love, but his touch was different. There was almost a quiet desperation in the way he took me, the way he clung to me as if he never wanted to let me go. With every thrust inside my body, he branded me, keeping himself locked inside of me for several charged moments as if he never wanted to leave the haven of my embrace.
Even after he would fill me with his release, Khalil would hold me within the circle of his arms until I drifted off to sleep, only to be later wakened by his touch, and the hunger of his need for me.
Dinner was a tense, nearly silent event. Gone was the teasing banter and heated debates that had filled these past few days. I even questioned him, only to be met with a dismissive response. We were now so intertwined, that I could actually feel his despair as he waged a war within himself. He wanted me, I knew it. And just as surely, I knew he loved me, but despite the urgency that drove him to make love to me at every waking moment, I could also feel him withdrawing from me.
The next morning I made one last attempt to pierce the seemingly impenetrable wall he’d built around himself. Wrapped in his arms, I sensed this would be the last time he would make love to me, and if I missed this chance, I would never get another one ever again.
As he’d done so many times before, he entered me on one deep thrust. I gasped, the sound blending with his deep groan of pleasure. He plowed into me, and I clung to him, my nails furrowing into his back as I wrapped my legs tighter around him meeting his every thrust.
“Nala.”
My forbidden nickname on his lips could have easily been a reverent prayer or a tortured cry. He quickened his pace, pounding harder into me until the sounds of our bodies joining almost drowned out our mingled cries and groans of pleasure.
With my pleasure mounting, and locked in his embrace, it was all too much so when he whispered against my ear, “I’m about to come.” I completely shattered.
I screamed out his name and as my orgasm swept through me, I said those three words that some days I would later regret, and other days not, because it was my final attempt to reach him.
“I love you.” Like a hair trigger he came immediately. I knew, just like my words, his climax took him by surprise and he gasped his body stiffening then relaxing as he erupted inside of me. He shuddered, and then groaned. I held him close, lightly stroking his back as tremors racked him until finally he collapsed atop me.
Eventually he rolled off of me, his chest still heaving as he stared up at the ceiling. I watched the wide expanse of his torso rise and fall, as the silence blanketed the room, heavy and dense like an early morning fog.
My phone rang then and I reached for it to look at the Caller ID.
“It’s my father,” I said almost absently. Frowning, I silenced it. The argument we’d had almost a week ago still left a bitter taste in my mouth. As the eldest child, I knew I had responsibilities to my family, but leaving Sharjah to go to college, I’d felt was something I needed to do for myself. My father had hardly approved, but of late he’d taken to laying on the guilt pretty thick by always stressing the importance of my duty to my family. He’d been calling all week, and I was now pretty sure that was why Khalil had come to check on me. I planned to call my father after Khalil left, which from the looks of things was at any moment.
*
He was a coward. He knew it. He could barely look at Sabeen as he finished packing. When he was done, there was nothing left for him to do but face her. He knew what he had to do, and with every fiber of his being, he dreaded saying the words he’d rehearsed over and over in his head. He hated himself even more because not one of them, he meant.
He was in love with her. That was what he wanted to say. At that very moment as he stared into her amber eyes, he felt a fire burning in the space where his heart beat just remembering how her whispered words of love had overtaken him. He’d been unprepared for her declaration, and for the first time in his entire life, he’d completely lost control of himself in the arms of a woman. And it was only fitting that that woman would be her. Before he could take his next breath, he’d found himself coming deep inside of her, the ecstasy of that moment leaving him speechless.
Khalil found himself speechless once again, except it was for the exact opposite reason, but he had no choice. Sabeen was far too tenacious. When he left, he had to leave her with absolutely no doubt that they were over.
“Look about what you said earlier—you have to understand, you were a virgin, I was your first. You’re young, and at this age women confuse the two, but you don’t love me Sabeen, no more than I love you.” He grabbed his bag, just to give him a reprieve from the intense scrutiny of her stare. Slinging it across his shoulder, he met her gaze. “The last few days were fun and you’re cool and all, but don’t make this awkward, ok? Because of our parents we’ll have to see each other again, so let’s be adults about this and agree to be friends.”