by Nadia Aidan
With his palm splayed across my belly, he tilted my pelvis slightly so he could drill into me from behind, and with me trapped between him and the wall, it was all I could do to brace myself as he forced me open and took what he wanted with hard, ruthless thrusts.
“Is this what you wanted, Nala,” he rasped, his warm breath caressing my cheek. “Is this what you wanted me to do to you when you snuck in here.” Despite myself, and that my pussy was now sore and tender, a soft moan escaped me. And as attuned to my body as he was, my response triggered his.
Tangling his fingers in my hair, he pressed my face against the wall, while the hand on my belly gripped me tighter. His pace quickened, as he pounded into me with short, furious thrusts, the sound of our flesh smacking together joining the harsh pants and deep grunts that shuddered out of him until finally his body seized and he released his warm seed inside of me with a deep, satisfied groan.
After several long, electric moments where there was only the sound of our heavy breathing and drumming heartbeats, Khalil slowly dislodged himself from my body, even as he remained against me. I drew in a sharp breath, hating the aching, needy feeling that now consumed my body.
“Not quite what you had hoped for, was it Nala?” he said, absently stroking my mound, but never once touching my clit. “But that is what I do to women in this room. I deny them release, while taking my own, until they are so desperate they would allow me to do anything to them, until the need is so great whatever pain I inflict starts to feel like pleasure.” His hand now drifted between our bodies, and slowly he pressed his thumb against the tiny rosette of my anus and I shivered in response. “This was barely a sample of what I am capable of.” He reached above me and released my wrists, and then my ankles. “So count yourself lucky that I have neither the inclination nor the energy to continue.”
Once I was free, I spun around to face him, but I was still so horny that I didn’t realize that I’d begun casually running my hand across my pussy, until his eyes narrowed and he told me to stop.
“I can tell I wasn’t clear when I said I deny a woman’s release. You’re not to come until I allow it and even then I will be the one to give it to you.”
I stood there frozen and dazed, until my disbelief gave way to anger. “So just because I was curious, you get to come, but I don’t?”
“You weren’t just curious, Sabeen. You snuck in here because you were driven by suspicion and distrust—“
“You’re twisting my intentions. I simply wanted to get to know this other side of you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You already know that side of me.”
From the tensing of his jaw, I could tell he was angry, which only fed mine because as much as I realized he was telling the truth, I still felt like he was still holding something back from me.
“How could I possibly know this side of you when you never once told me about this room, or brought me in here? We spent a month together in the desert engaging in rough play and domination, but never once have you denied me an orgasm—“
“That is exactly my point,” he said tersely. “With you it has always been different and as my wife, the last thing I want is to deny your pleasure—although I am thinking maybe I should when it becomes necessary to punish you like tonight.” He muttered that last statement under his breath, but I still heard every word, which I just chose to ignore.
I started to question something he’d said, something he kept saying that had me puzzled, until he looked at me with piercing, coal black eyes and said, “Is this what you want?”
I couldn’t discern what exactly I heard in his voice, but that didn’t stop me either because I had to be honest, anything less and I knew Khalil would know it was a lie.
“Not exclusively, no, but I am open to it, and at some point I would like to explore this side of our relationship.”
He seemed surprised at first, but just as quickly he nodded before pulling me into his arms, to place a fleeting kiss against my lips. When he lifted his head, a small grin tugged at his lips, but his eyes were focused and serious. “If this is something you want, then I too want to explore this side of our relationship with you. If it is in my power, I will never deny you pleasure—“
“Only an orgasm or two, apparently.”
His grin turned smug. “Unless you deserve it and I am forced to punish you.” Khalil’s expression shifted then and he regarded me once again with a thoughtful gaze. “I want you to know I never intended to keep this room from you, and that I will always be open to exploring many things with you in our bedroom, because I am experiencing it with you.” He gestured around him with the jerk of his head. “But the things in here, they’re just toys. They allow for variation, but they don’t enhance the experience in any way because true sexual fulfillment is about the intimate connection you form with your partner, which is something we’ve always had.”
He kept saying that, that what we had was somehow special, different. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him, only that—
Anger sharpened his gaze. “I can’t believe you still doubt me.” He bent down to scoop my dress from off the floor and practically thrust it at me.
“I don’t doubt you,” I said taking the dress and tugging it back on. “I just want to understand why all of a sudden you have no interest in this room or the things in it.”
“It’s not all of a sudden. I already told you that, just as I keep telling you that things are just different with you.”
“But why is that—“
“Goddamnit, Sabeen what is with you and this?” He raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know…” He shrugged, and I could tell he was about to say more, but I would later surmise that the expectant look on my face made him hesitate. I hadn’t thought I was that obvious, but apparently I was because I could tell he’d been on the verge of continuing, but then something made him hesitate. If I had blinked I would have missed the subtle shift in his gaze, right before he shuttered his expression. “Like I said, I don’t know why things are different, they just are.” He turned from me then, and I knew it wasn’t just because he was frustrated with me, and all of my probing questions. I could tell he was also hiding something, and that knowledge was what rekindled all my doubts, old hurts, and past demons that still haunted us.
I knew why an intense pull of attraction and almost synchronous passion had always existed between us. I could deny it to him and everyone else all I wanted, but that didn’t make it any less true. I still loved Khalil—I’d never stopped. That was the difference for me. That was why I’d always known there’d been something missing in my past relationships. I would have sworn on all my possessions that what Khalil felt for me was genuine, that he still loved me too, but I knew if he felt it, he would have said it, but he hadn’t. Whatever Khalil felt for me, it wasn’t love. I would have surmised it was intense passion, but now I knew that wasn’t true either. Whether it was because I was now his wife and he was of the mindset one didn’t chain his wife to a wall, or because of my lack of experience in his world of domination and submission—he had no desire to share the darkest side of his dominant nature with me.
The moment I’d entered that room, I’d been nearly spot on. There was neither love nor trust in our marriage, and while we did have passion—because Khalil refused to be completely honest with me about his carnal nature—our sex life was apparently based on a lie.
“Stay here if you want, but I’m hungry and I plan to have dinner.” Khalil’s words broke through my thoughts and I returned my attention to him just in time to see him head toward the door.
I glowered at his retreating back, tempted to linger there just to spite him, and because I wasn’t eager to sit across a dinner table from him and pretend as if things hadn’t just shifted between us, but then my stomach rumbled, reminding me that I could probably manage to set aside my anger for at least another hour, because damn if I wasn’t hungry too.
Chapter Ten
Khalil had fucked up, and he knew
it. Sabeen’s antics with his cousin, Malik were irritating and as much as they’d begun to wear on him, he’d been able to ignore them; but now she was no longer seeing to her wifely ‘duties’ which was completely unacceptable. Ever since that night in his playroom she’d been withdrawn and distant, that was except when Malik came around. Whether deliberate or not, she was relaxed in Malik’s presence, as if she could be her normal self only with him. That thought alone nearly made him crush the pen he held in his hand, so he set it down before he actually did.
Thankfully, she wasn’t acting toward Malik as she had with Amir, where she would go out of her way to ignore Khalil while fawning all over his cousin—but then Amir had been her fiancé, so as much as he’d hated it, he’d eventually come to terms with the fact that she belonged to Amir, so she had every right to flirt with him. But she wisely hadn’t crossed the line, or flirted with Malik, so he’d had no cause to bring it up as a matter for discussion. The same would not be said for their marital bed. For two weeks she’d placated him with excuse after excuse, and he’d allowed her the time and space because he’d been mostly responsible for the tension that now strained their relationship.
He’d lied to her, not outright, but he’d been deliberately evasive. The second he’d done it he’d regretted it, but it was too late to take it back now. Upon finding his playroom, he’d been unprepared for her barrage of questions, especially when she seized upon the one that he had no words to answer without completely revealing himself. That sex wasn’t different with her—it was simply better and for no other reason than because it was with her, because he loved her. That was the truth, but when she’d stood there waiting for an answer that made sense, instead of telling her that, he’d deflected with what had sounded like bullshit to his ears, so he’d known it had sounded like bullshit to her too, otherwise he wouldn’t be in the middle of a two-week sex drought—which was about to become three weeks since he would be joining Malik on the first flight out of Sharjah in the morning.
The gentle thud of the front door closing shut drew his attention, reminding him that he needed to finish packing. He set the pen he’d nearly destroyed aside and continued shoving clothes into his suitcase that lay open atop the bed. Moments later the door to their bedroom creaked open, announcing Sabeen’s presence. He glanced at the clock. It was well past ten in the evening. She’d texted earlier saying she’d be working late—something that had become a daily occurrence.
“Going somewhere?”
His anger was barely in check, so when she’d entered their bedroom, he hadn’t even bothered to pause long enough to so much as glance her way, but the unmistakable tremor in her voice, which he knew she tried to disguise, finally compelled him to turn around and face her.
Something tightened in his chest with his first glimpse of her. Sabeen would always be the most beautiful woman in the world to him, but it was impossible not to notice the shadows in her gaze, and the dark circles beneath her eyes. She thought he was leaving her. It was written all over her face, and for the first time that day his anger and frustration with her vanished within an instant.
“Nasir has located Amir in Dubai, so tomorrow Malik and I will fly out there to meet up with him, and then hopefully we can all convince Amir to return home.
Sabeen nodded. “I see. Well I wish the three of you the best with that.” She started across the room then. “I’m exhausted, so I’m going to just grab a quick shower and—”
“Before you do that, I was hoping we could talk—”
“I’m really tired, Khalil—”
“It will only take a moment.” He could tell she still wanted to object but she must have caught the sharp edge in his voice, and knew this was one battle she would not win.
“We have an agreement,” he began, “the terms of which I thought were very clear—”
She glared at him. “I’ve been so swamped at work that by the time I get home I’m exhausted.”
He at least gave her credit for not pretending as if she didn’t know what he was referring to, but he easily saw through what had become her convenient excuse, and his resentment flared. “So you say, but I know you’re lying.”
“Appears to be a lot of that going around these days,” she muttered under her breath, so low that he had to strain to make out what she’d said. She hadn’t intended for him to hear her, but when he narrowed his gaze, and she realized he’d heard every single word, he noticed how she straightened up taller as if preparing herself for the argument that was bound to happen.
This wasn’t what he wanted. Every day it seemed as if they were drifting further apart and he felt powerless to stop it. He didn’t realize how weary he felt until he drew in a deep breath of air and let it out. He’d married the woman he’d loved his entire life, and thought when they returned from his desert home they were on the path to build a life together—or at least they had been, but he could feel her slipping away from him, and he knew once again he was the one to blame.
“This isn’t what I want for either of us, Sabeen.”
She seemed startled by his statement and for the second time that evening he realized she thought he was going to leave her. It wounded him to know she thought so little of him, that she believed he would just give up and walk away just because they now faced this hurdle, but then he remembered that’s exactly what he’d done to her.
“What are you saying?” she asked finally.
He wanted to cross the room, gather her into his arms and reassure her, but he knew that was the last thing she desired, so he remained where he stood.
“I’m saying that I want us to have a normal marriage—one based on love, respect, trust, and genuine affection.” He raked a hand down his face, releasing all the pent up frustration he’d been carrying around inside of him as he forced himself to be completely honest with her. “I know it’s not realistic to think that this will all happen overnight, but that’s what I’m saying I want and I thought you wanted the same thing, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only one in this marriage who actually wants it to work.”
“That’s not true.” She looked at him with disbelief. “I want this to work just as much as you do. Without a doubt, you have my respect and my trust—and our physical affection and chemistry has never been in question.”
“But?” Khalil knew there was more.
“But—it took me a long time to get over you Khalil that I don’t know if I will ever be able to give you my heart again.”
Had there been even an ounce of regret in her voice, or some emotion on her face he may have pressed her, or maybe he would have held onto the hope that their marriage would one day get better, but there was nothing. Her face, like her voice were devoid of any feeling, as if she’d already consigned them both to the loveless marriage that didn’t have to be.
Whatever he’d hoped to accomplish that night was not to be so he returned his attention to his suitcase. “Fair enough,” he said with a curt not. “I know you’re exhausted so I won’t keep you from your shower.”
He thought she would slip into the bathroom as quickly and quietly as she’d done every evening for the past two weeks, but this time she hesitated, as if she wished to say more, but when Khalil was about to turn and question her, she must have decided otherwise and chose that moment to shut herself inside the bathroom just as she’d done so many nights before this one.
Chapter Eleven
Just a few days after their departure, Khalil and Malik returned to Sharjah, and true to his word, Khalil had brought Amir back with them. I didn’t see much of Khalil at first, and what I did see of Amir, made me not want to see anymore. His appearance was gaunt, his eyes desolate. He looked liked a man who was lost. I knew that look and those feelings far too well, so I avoided him as often as possible, but I didn’t have to do so for very long because almost as soon as he returned he left for the States upon learning of Daniella’s whereabouts. I was relieved when Amir departed because his presence was akin to picking at an
open wound, reminding me at every encounter what love could do to you when it went wrong.
My marriage to Khalil was falling apart, and I only had myself to blame. The night before he’d left for Dubai he’d given me the opportunity to tell him the truth, about us, about my fears and insecurities—he’d offered me a chance to reveal to him that he wasn’t the only one who wanted our marriage to work, and that there was no doubt in my mind I could one day grow to love him, because I already did. He’d risked a lot, I already knew, by even broaching the subject of the future of our marriage, and more importantly our feelings, but instead of being honest, I found myself returning to old habits. I’d protected my heart with a lie.
Yes, I was still upset that he wasn’t being truthful with me about his dominant nature, but that didn’t give me any excuse to go and lie. But when he’d asked me if we could ever have a normal marriage, that was exactly what I’d done and within the span of seconds things had gone from bad to worse. When I finished showering and entered our bedroom, silence and an empty bed had greeted me, and that was the first night of many to follow that we slept apart. While he’d been away in Dubai our telephone conversations had been brief and strained, and our interactions now that he was back, weren’t much better. It had started out as a small disagreement about that stupid room of his, but it had morphed into something that seemed insurmountable because there was still so much that remained unresolved from our past. We barely saw each other, and when we did, we hardly spoke, and who knows how long we would have continued trudging through this insufferable purgatory had Amir not returned with Daniella.
With Daniella pregnant, and Amir and Khalil working long hours to transform the political structure of Sharjah so that the entire government didn’t come to a grinding halt if a future regent was to step down ever again, Khalil and I had moved into the main palace residence.