by Ella Brooke
“Miss Saunders, I was told you’d be coming. Sheikh Hakim is having a dinner prepared for you and to meet up with you again. Right now, I’m to get you changed and explain your job to you.”
She arched an eyebrow at the older woman, and then, despite her own desires, breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe Sirhan did just want to be friends and help a fellow human being out. That was better, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it far more sane than the craziness that she’d fallen into at the pool in The Cambrian? She’d played it safe her entire life. It was the credo she lived by, the mantra that had mostly served her well.
Until now.
She was hired help and a friend, she told herself; nothing more. Tiffany didn’t need to concern herself with other issues. She didn’t need to start or finish anything. Not with her father so sick and all the needs weighing on her family.
“So,” she said, plastering a smile on her face. “What do you need for me to do?”
***
After she changed into the traditional lilac kaftan most of the female staff wore, Tiffany was shown the ropes of her maid duties. To be fair, they were far easier than anything she’d done at The Cambrian or in her career working at other hotels. There was no heavy lifting and no toilets. Mostly, her duties consisted of dusting the south wing, as well as care for the Persian rugs in the main entertainment and lounge areas. That took a bit of elbow grease since they were priceless artifacts and had to be beaten clean with the proper technique — never vacuumed — but none of it was as difficult as the work she’d done just a week ago.
It made her both relieved and somehow more anxious. Surely Sirhan wasn’t paying her six figures for chores that still took up only half her day. Was he?
After she finished the first round of dusting and polishing the precious furniture of the south wing, Tiffany was led by Omara to the far side of the palace. It felt like it took twenty or thirty minutes just to walk to the dining room area, as if they were traversing through a major metropolitan area. She was a bit flushed when they arrived at the massive carved doors outside of the room in question.
Omara smiled and helped straighten the slightly wrinkled kaftan Tiffany wore. “Now, you look good.”
She frowned back at the older woman. “What exactly is going on here? I know I’m doing less already than the rest of the maids seem to.”
Omara gave her a sphinx-like smile. “You’re learning yet, but you’re not completely wrong. Sheikh Hakim has other plans for you, and he does want to catch up with you.”
“Should I be nervous about these plans?”
Omara’s smile grew wider and her eyes seemed to twinkle. “My dear, you know you wouldn’t have come all the way to Dubaya if you were only interested in employment. He could have pulled strings to have you hired anywhere no matter what happened before. No, you came here for him just as he managed this job to have you with him. I think that matters quite a bit.”
She paused before heading through the door. “And you’ve known him for a long time?”
“His whole life and, yes, he was a wild boy, but he can be a good man now.”
“I’m probably worried about the ‘can’ part now,” Tiffany admitted.
The older woman gave her shoulders a firm but polite shove forward. “I think you have to explore these things for yourself,” she said.
Taking a deep breath, Tiffany opened the doors to take in the scene before her. The table was easily twenty feet long from end to end, and could have sat dozens. Tonight, at the far end, it was set with only three places. That puzzled her. She’d assumed that only she and Sirhan would be eating together, in order to catch up as Omara had hinted. She had no idea who the third place could be for. She beamed back at the sheikh, trying to push her anxiety out of the way.
“Hey, don’t I know you?”
Sirhan stood, all six-plus feet of him towering over her as he pulled out her seat and helped her to her spot at the table. It felt like something out of a fairy tale, like she was Cinderella given a chance with her prince, albeit things had started out quite a bit more sordid. She wasn’t sure where this story was going or how she wanted to write it. All Tiffany knew was that when she looked into those gorgeous jade eyes, she knew she didn’t want to be anywhere else, or with anyone else.
“That’s cute, my Tiger. How is your father?”
She nodded. “I only saw him for a few days when Mom and I ‘announced’ the so-called funding to him from the angel donor.”
“Was he in good spirits, my Tiger?”
“It’s hard. He doesn’t want even me to see what’s going on. He and I have this special bond, so I get him trying to play happy soldier and ‘it’ll all work out’ with Mom and Kendra. I don’t understand why he feels that he has to work so hard to shelter and protect me.”
Sirhan shook his head. “It doesn’t matter that you share a bond, or maybe it matters more. He has to protect his family, stay stoic for them.”
“Is that how you feel about your subjects in a way? That there are sides of you that they can never truly know or see? You’re supposed to be a comfort for them, to help them feel that everything is going to be alright.”
“It’s different between family and subjects, but I do understand that pressure in a way. Even with the people you care about the most, you work hardest to hide your true feelings. Sometimes you feel you have to be stalwart, that your family won’t really understand if you fall apart.”
She reached out and placed her hand over his and then let her eyes meet his. “You definitely sound like you speak from experience.”
He nodded. “I think my mother wanted me to be more open with her. I was there for her every day when she was in hospice care here, when she had ‘round-the-clock nurses to attend to her, when it was nothing but her and the morphine drip left to her to ease the pain till the end.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“And it was.”
“But you never let her see that it affected you?”
“She wanted me to be honest with her, but one of us needed to be strong. I couldn’t let her see me crumble — not because I was stubborn, but because I couldn’t let her worry more than she already was.”
“But I can take it. I just wish Dad understood that.”
He squeezed her hand back. “Sometimes we’d much prefer to protect the ones we love than make them share our burdens.”
“And sometimes,” a strong voice called out. “We need to be tough. I think that’s always been Siri’s problem. He wants to spare feelings, has a soft heart like his mother. Oh, well. Adira was chosen to be my wife for her beauty, and not for her fierce spirit.”
The man who slid down at the head of the table was as tall as Sirhan but far leaner, shriveled to skeletal dimensions with age and possibly some chronic condition. He had a long, snowy white beard that fell down to his chest and one eye occluded by a cataract. But the most distinguishing characteristic about him was the sneer that twisted his lips.
“I’m Sheikh Duman Hakim, and I didn’t know that we ate with the help,” he said, shaking his head at Tiffany’s uniform. “Siri, I know that you have all sorts of kinks and predilections but the help is a bit too clichéd to be believed, isn’t it?”
She clenched her jaw as if she’d been slapped and took in deep breaths, trying to think of a way to respond. This man was the retired sheikh of Dubaya, but he was still royalty and Sirhan’s father. He outranked her and demanded respect, but the lack of any he doled out bit sharply into her.
Finally, she settled on trying to ignore the slight. “Sheikh Hakim.” Tiffany bowed her head to show deference. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“I can’t say that I feel the same way,” he bit back tartly. Then he turned to his son. “What games are you playing here? Is this some game to flaunt in my face this close to your betrothal announcement to Princess Azah?”
Tiffany’s appetite that she’d worked up while cleaning evaporated like fog in the early morning light. “You’re engaged?�
�
“It’s been a long-standing arrangement. There have been years of planning going into this, and it’s in the best interest of both Dubaya and Qutaria. So, yes, simple maid, my son has no time for you and for more than a dalliance in a swimming pool.”
Sirhan stood so fast that he flipped over his chair. “How dare you talk to her like this.”
“What? Your whore? I think I dare to say anything I want. How dare you work all your machinations in order to mess with something that’s so crucial to both kingdoms, to truly screw over your real fiancée.”
She felt bile rise in her throat and got up as well, setting the napkin back at her empty plate. “I can’t eat here.”
“Exactly,” the older sheikh grumbled. “You don’t belong here, infidel. Now, get out of my palace.”
She didn’t need to hear that twice and gladly fled back to her quarters.
***
The vein was throbbing in his temple and Sirhan had to ball his fists at his sides to keep himself from slugging his father right there. As horrible as the surly old bastard could be, there were lines he could not cross. Striking his father was one of them, and the old man knew it, knew that he could dig the knife deeper but decency kept Sirhan from getting the final gratification of doling truly leveling blows back. He’d never been as skilled with insults as Duman Hakim, a man who leveled his tongue like an especially sharp sword.
“You had no right to talk to her that way.”
“She’s what? What is it that the American infidels like her say? A ‘side piece’?”
“She’s more than that.”
“I have my own spies, Siri.”
“Don’t you dare call me that!” he shouted.
His father shook his head. “You forget your place. You’re still a child to me. You may have the place at the throne because of my health, but you’re not half the ruler I was.”
“I’ll learn, and I can do better than some of the barbaric, backwards policies you had.”
“I don’t see how embracing everything Western, quite literally, will actually help you.”
“It’s better than the war and debt you almost led us into over and over again. But you keep Tiffany—”
His father’s lip pulled tightly across his teeth. “You could not have chosen a more American woman if you deliberately tried, and I can’t understand why. Is this a deliberate poke in the eye? What’s wrong with Azah? Is she not the most lovely of wives that Qutaria could offer? She’s everything a good Arabic woman should be, and she’d be far from someone to do such sordid things in a swimming pool late at night.”
Sirhan brought both fists down hard on the dining room table. The table shook beneath his hands but didn’t break, but the deafening noise roaring from it made his point for him. “I’m so tired of your games and spies, Father.”
His father snorted. “I wouldn’t need a very advanced spy network to hear about that, son. You were hardly discreet.”
“You don’t get to talk to her. You chose Azah for me for your own games and alliances. I never had a say.”
“I didn’t have a say in your mother. Arranged marriages are how things have always been done for our people.”
Sirhan started to pace, even as he raked a hand through his thick, dark curls. “You didn’t care for Mother. You were in bed with the harem when she died.”
“Not that emotional response again. I have no time for it.”
He stilled and spun around on his father. “I do! If being married off for alliance and breeding results in the kind of loveless arrangement that sucked the life out of mother, then I have absolutely no interest in that, not one bit. If and when I marry, it will be for love, and not because you and the King of Qutaria have your own plans.”
“You may yet, but when you do, it will be a real woman, one from our culture and not a pale American imposter.”
“You don’t get a say in that,” Sirhan gritted out as he returned to his wing.
***
The water was hot on his skin, sluicing over it in steaming drops. He tried to go after Tiffany that night after the failed dinner, but she refused to see him and even Omara had advised him to give her space and let the older woman explain more of the old customs of Dubaya to her. He hated that idea, but he knew that Omara possessed a nurturing demeanor and a clever tongue that could say more than he’d ever have a hope of conveying. Maybe she could soften Tiffany up and help her understand that he was betrothed into an arrangement he had no intention of ever honoring. That he was trapped between his father’s wishes and his own, between tradition and his heart.
Closing his eyes, Sirhan lathered up his hands and soon found his length. It was already hard because the sight of Tiffany in the light kaftan, the one draping love over her enticing cleavage had left him aching in his seat. Tonight, he planned to wine and dine her. The sheikh had not planned for his father to force his way into everything. No. Sirhan had planned to both help Tiffany adjust to her new life, and then to make sweet love to her the way he yearned to do since he first spied her cleaning his room at The Cambrian.
He would have to settle for the fantasy instead.
His breath was coming in rapid gasps as he reached down with both hands to fondle himself. The fingers of his left hand wrapped delicately over his testicles, massaging them with a languorous rhythm. His right hand soon wrapped around his hardness and he started to stroke himself. In his mind’s eye, however, it wasn’t about his own hands. No. These were Tiffany’s soft hands caressing his member. They’d be as delicate and nimble as he’d noticed while she’d cleaned. Today, she had a French manicure and that contrast of the white tips of her nails as she stroked his hardness would have been even hotter.
Then she’d get on her knees for him and he’d fist his hand in her hair, threading his fingers through her blonde locks. She’d part those cupid bow lips of hers and then he’d be able to feel her hot mouth wrap itself around his length. He pumped harder into his hand, inspired by the thoughts of his tigress sucking him off.
Sparks seemed to flood up and down his spine, to radiate outwards to his finger tips and throughout the surface of his skin. Then he imagined what his release would have been like, what a true pleasure it would have been to spread his seed down her throat and watch her swallow it up greedily. Somehow, Sirhan knew she’d drain every last drop of him. That thought — that sight imagined so clearly — was more than enough to send him tumbling over the edge. The sparks grew and surged until it felt like he’d been struck by lightning.
His muscles went limp and he had to lean against the wall of the shower, waiting for a long time until even with his water heater, the drops on his shoulders ran cold. When he recovered, Sirhan finally stood and turned off the shower. He needed to get to bed. After all, he had to make everything up to Tiffany, and then he’d feel all of her around him.
Just as he was meant to.
Chapter Six
“You’ve been very quiet this morning,” Omara observed as they started into the polishing of the myriad of shelves in the library. “I was surprised you didn’t demand to leave first thing today.”
“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do,” Tiffany admitted. “You said it was tradition… I couldn’t stand to hear any more than that, but I’m scared if I leave now that I’ll make him angry, and my father’s treatment would disappear.”
“Sirhan would never do that,” Omara said, sticking her chin up defiantly even as she set her cleaning rag aside. “He’d never do anything to hurt another like that, especially someone who might suffer some of the same things his mother suffered.”
“Then why did he lie?”
“He didn’t. Yes, he’s betrothed to Azah, but you two have been thrown together very quickly. Sheikh Hakim didn’t have time to explain everything. This land has been built for hundreds of years on arranged marriages. When Azah was born and Sirhan was barely seven, their fathers made the pact of marriage. He’s fought it ever since he found out about it at twenty-one. W
hat you overheard was what Duman wishes for his son and for this nation, for the control he no longer has over the future of Dubaya. It’s not what’s in Sirhan’s heart.”
Tiffany stilled and stopped cleaning. Her heart sped up, and it was almost too scary to hope. “What?”
“Azah and he were bound to each other at her birth. They see each other only at state affairs, and he’s never wanted this. If he’s brought you all the way from Switzerland and wants to take care of you as he does, Tiffany, then I’d really ask myself why.”
“Oh, his father reminded me of the ‘why.’”
Omara shook her head and put both hands on her shoulders. “I have heard the stories, but only fools listen to idle gossip.”
“It’s true.”
Omara’s expression didn’t change, that care in her eyes was as stalwart as ever and that impressed Tiffany more than she could say. “I still don’t give credence to idle chatter. Sirhan has been a young bachelor for almost nine years. He has had time to sew many wild oats.”
Tiffany swallowed and looked down at the gorgeous and intricate geometric patterns woven into the rug beneath her. It was better to do that and to try and face Omara now that she knew exactly what Tiffany had done. “And he could have anyone on Earth.”
“Yes, but he wants you. He brought you here, and he’s never done that with any woman. He’s never even tried for a relationship with one, much to my frustration and even Ibrahim’s concern. However, it’s all come together; he has a deep interest in you. Don’t let Duman scare you off. He’s like an old viper with no teeth. He wants to hiss and rattle his tail, but there’s no bite left in him.”
Tiffany felt her lip tremble. “But the engagement…”
“Doesn’t have to come to pass if Sirhan doesn’t wish it to be so,” Omara said, her eyes crinkling as she stroked back Tiffany’s hair. “He has a special afternoon planned for both of you in the city. It’s best if you talk everything out with him. But don’t worry about Duman. Let me talk sense into the old man or at least help run interference to keep him away from you.”