by Olivia Gates
Richard only chuckled. “Not only won’t you flay me alive and all the other lovely sentiments you just expressed, you also now owe me another favor. No, scratch that. I now practically own you.”
“Hang up, Richard.” Numair’s growl was so harsh it scraped his throat raw. “I’ll find her on my own.”
“Will you survive until then? And if you don’t care about your suffering, would you leave her with disillusion preying on her a moment longer if you can help it?”
“Dammit, Cobra, where is she?” His roar made Antonio lurch and wince and Ameen almost lose control of the wheel.
“Don’t give yourself a stroke, Phantom. You need your nervous system intact for crawling at her feet.” Threats hurtled from Numair again before Richard interrupted. “I want a promise before I send you her location.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“Nothing. Now. But when the time comes and I want to collect, I want one of those binding promises of yours that you’ll do it without question.”
“Do what?”
“Whatever I ask.”
Though his head was about to explode with rage, Numair was ready to sign an actual contract that made him Richard’s slave in return for immediate knowledge of Jenan’s whereabouts.
“I pledge it. But say another word that isn’t Jenan’s location and I will flay you.”
* * *
Richard hadn’t said another word. He’d just chuckled and ended the call. The next second Numair’s phone had buzzed with a text message with Jenan’s address.
After dumping Antonio on the nearest curb, Numair had Ameen tearing back to his jet. He was now flying cross-country to California.
According to Richard, she’d rented a place in the desert. A year’s contract had been signed. It seemed she’d wanted to escape her old life and anything that reminded her of him.
The seven and a half hours it took him to be standing on the doorstep of her rented condo in Rancho Mirage finished the last reserves of his endurance.
She opened the door, puffy eyed and precious and everything he wanted in life. He would have fallen to his knees before her if she hadn’t immediately turned around, leaving him to follow her inside.
Clearly not surprised that he’d found her, she started immediately. “I already told you you’d get what you want. You don’t have to mollify me so I’d be easier to handle. I won’t give you any trouble. I know no one can stop you, certainly not me, so I won’t even initiate a losing fight.”
“Jenan...please...”
Her deadened tone cut him off more effectively than if she’d screamed. “I’m pragmatic enough to know that whatever I wanted for my life no longer matters, and any plans or hopes I ever had are over. I have no one to blame for this but myself. I’m the one who disregarded every caution and plunged headfirst into your trap, and the result is an innocent baby, who’s now the one thing that matters. I don’t expect you’d be involved in its life as a regular father would, but you’ll have whatever role you wish. Because I can’t stop you, but mainly because I won’t have the baby suffering the consequences of my folly in making you its father. I won’t compound this disaster by turning its life into a battlefield over it.
“Now that you’ll take over Zafrana and Saraya, you’ll be there most of the time. But since you know my position on living there, we’ll negotiate a schedule when I’ll come periodically, so you can see your child. As long as you stay away from me, everything will be exactly as you want.”
His every fiber shrieked for him to grab her, drag her back from the void of estrangement and into his heart. He could only stand before her, helpless for the first time since he was ten.
“I want nothing but for you to give me a chance to explain. What Najeeb said—”
“—is just what you told him.” She spoke over him again, her lifelessness another blow to his shriveled heart. “But it isn’t the truth still. I can feel it. I always felt you were hiding major stuff, but I deluded myself into thinking it was because they were such intensely personal and painful matters, they were unspeakable to you. I thought it would hurt you all over again if you ever had to relate them to someone. I couldn’t think of trespassing on your private agonies, but I was stupid enough to keep hoping you’d one day feel enough for me, and trust me enough, to unburden yourself to me.”
Suddenly, her mask of numbness started to splinter, tremors of anguish breaking through, eclipsing her fragile eyes, shaking her swollen features. “Now I know you were just hiding your identity and intentions. You never told me any truth. And you’re still lying now.”
With the first tear that escaped the trembling pool filling her reddened eyes, he staggered back, unable to bear the brunt of her disillusion and alienation.
“You’re right. I was still lying. But no more. Though I would have given anything to never have you know the whole truth about me, I owe it to you to tell you everything.”
She stumbled back, too, as if from the path of a bullet. “I’m sure you have some story you think will make me slide back into trusting you, or at least make me sympathize with your motivations and understand why you did what you did. But it’s too late for that. Too late for anything.”
The finality of her words felt like a mortal blow. How he remained standing, or even breathing, he had no idea.
“You already do understand why I did what I did. I wanted what I believed to be my birthright, and I always do whatever it takes to get what I want. As for making you sympathetic, there’s no chance for that. The story I have to tell you—all the things you sensed me hiding—will only horrify you.”
That stony distance in her eyes shredded his insides with regret. She’d once looked at him as if he was the only thing she wanted to see. Now a part of him was growing inside her, a miracle made of their essences and passion, and he was the one thing she’d rather never see again.
Exposing everything about his past—things not even his brothers knew in full—was something he’d never considered before. But he couldn’t hide anything from her again. He owed her everything. The absolute truth was just the first thing among countless others that included the heart he’d grown to love her with, and the life that now meant nothing without her.
Feeling as though he was ending his own life, he told her everything. Everything.
It could have taken hours or only minutes to relate the horrors that had happened to him at The Organization, what he’d been forced to do, to endure, what had been done to him, what he’d been guilty of since that day he’d lost his father to what he now knew had been an accident. With every word he said, absolute shock mushroomed in her eyes.
Then he had no more horrors to relate and finally exhaled a resigned breath. “So whatever you thought I was, you now realize I’m so much worse. Far worse than anything you could even imagine.”
By the time he fell silent, her body and face were shaking as if with a devastating earthquake. But it was the horror in her eyes that told him everything he’d ever feared had come to pass.
He’d scared and repelled her so completely, she’d probably risk whatever she now knew he was capable of to keep herself, and their child, away from him.
He squeezed his eyes shut on the alien feeling of defeat burning in his gut.
Knowing there was nothing to fear for or to lose anymore, he confessed what lurked in the darkest corner of his being. “I did anything I had to do to survive, and once I was free, I thought I could only remain free by
destroying and conquering anyone in my path. I came here believing I’d decimate anyone who stood in the way to what I considered mine. I did intend to claim the unknown daughter of the king of Zafrana, and to use her in the same way Hassan intended to. I never considered things wouldn’t go my way. I never took into account that I’d develop any feelings for you since I believed I was unequipped to feel any. Then you...happened to me.
“Everything else but you disappeared. Only you remained in my universe, a new one I never knew could exist. You melted the steel vault I built around myself. Now I am unable to seek its refuge again. I would die of exposure without you.”
He finally opened his eyes and saw his devastation reflected in hers. “But you are right to reject me. Not because I betrayed you, since I didn’t, but because I am what I am. You have every right to deprive me of yourself, of your love. Of our child. You should, for both of your sakes. I’m a monster. And I proved it when I hurt you—the only one who ever loved me, the only one I’ll ever love.”
Jenan had felt she’d known true agony when she’d thought she’d been nothing but a pawn to Numair.
But what she’d felt for her own injuries was a mere twinge compared to what she felt now for his.
Every scar on his body was the evidence of what should have broken him. But he’d only grown invincible, indomitable.
There was no doubt left in her. That was finally the whole mutilating truth. The answer to her every question and doubt.
He’d truly thought Hassan had been responsible for his father’s death, for his enslavement. If anyone had ever had reason to employ subterfuge to gain his ends, it was Numair.
But there was no trace of subterfuge anymore. She just knew it. This was everything he’d hidden from her. And she no longer had any doubt that what they’d shared had never been among the deceptions.
It had all been real.
As unthinkable as everything else had been, he loved her. As deeply and completely as she loved him. No. Far more, just as he’d said. Her love had been so fickle, she hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt.
A lung-tearing sob of shame ripped through her.
And in the next instant she was in the haven of his arms, his feverish, trembling lips all over her face and head. Every sob that shook her seemed to rack him in agony.
“Don’t do this to yourself,” he whispered. “I’m not worth it.”
She struggled out of his embrace, and his arms fell to his sides with a look of absolute despair. He thought she was rejecting him still.
And she pounced on him, squeezed him until she felt her arms would snap. Her tears were a deluge on his chest. “You’re worth everything. The world isn’t enough to do you justice.”
It was his turn to push away so he could gape at her, incomprehension on his face. “But I thought...”
“Whatever you thought was wrong. I was only hurt because I didn’t know the truth. If only you’d told me...” She stopped, wiped furiously at the flood of tears, remorse submerging her. “No, I had no excuse to behave as I did. I am the guilty one here, not you, since you had every right to keep your secret. What happened to you is so enormous, I’ll live my life unable to fully grasp it all. But I loved you, and at the very first test of that love, I failed you.”
He stared at her, stunned, everything inside him on full display for the first time.
Then he choked, “Loved? In the past tense.”
“Ya Ullah, no. Every single moment in time. Even when I thought I’d never be with you again, I knew I’d never stop loving you, yearning for you. I loved you from the first moment, and I’ll love you till my very last breath.”
A single tear escaped one of his eyes that had turned dark jade as he stared at her, almost panting as hard as she was. As if still afraid to let himself believe, to allow himself relief.
Then he reached out an unsteady hand to cup her cheek. “I need you to understand one thing. Then you can make this declaration again once you’ve heard it. I wasn’t exaggerating. After a lifetime of emotional deep freeze, you’ve decimated all my barriers and hurled me into an inferno, one I need to burn in for the rest of my life. I will love you single-mindedly, ferociously...till my very last breath.”
She hurled herself at him again, rained tears and kisses all over every part of him she could reach. “Yes, yes, please, love me just like that. It’s how I love you...” Her heart twisted again. “Even though I don’t deserve you.”
He hauled her off the ground and crashed his lips over hers, swallowing her contrition and self-blame.
By the time he raised his head, hers was spinning, her body racked with the wildfire of reclamation and her soul with the grief of agony and guilt.
“Never shed any more tears for anything if you love me, ya hayati, ya galbi. You are my life and my heart. When I thought I lost you, I thought my life was over. But it has all turned out for the best. This way we’ve found each other in spite of everything, making what we have all that more unique and unstoppable. It was even my despair over your rejection then disappearance that drove me to finally remember the vital memory that exonerated Hassan and put my demons to rest at last.”
She pulled him down to her for another frenzied kiss before she could reply, “So you really do believe it was an accident.”
“Yes.” His gorgeous lips suddenly quirked. “Now after I was about to puree Hassan, I might even tolerate him for Najeeb and his siblings’ sake. You see, because of you I’ve learned how to compromise. Now that will allow us to have an extended family for our baby.”
The way he said our baby skewered through her heart with poignancy, made her legs give out.
He cursed and swung her up in his arms, homing in, unerringly as always, on her bedroom.
What followed felt like a resurrection. A surrender of everything she was. And a possession of everything he was. A merging.
Then it was next evening, and he was starting to rocket her to the most decadent reaches of ecstasy again when she finally stopped his fondling hands, needing to say something coherent for a change.
“Numair, about the baby...”
He immediately frowned, his eyes turning wary once more. She was suddenly quivering with uncertainty again.
“You said you wanted an heir...but I have a feeling it’s a girl. Don’t ask me how I know—”
His lips stopped her agitated words. “I wish it is a girl. I lived all my life among rough, gruff XY creatures, and now I want to spend the rest of my life wallowing in the delights of female companionship.”
“Really?”
“Really. I will only ever tell you the whole truth from now on.”
She grimaced. “Uh...sometimes the truth isn’t such a great thing to hear. Like when my nose blows up to double its current size with pregnancy hormones.”
He tugged lovingly on a thick tress as he suckled a breast ripening more every day with those hormones. She was still deliciously sore from his nightlong ministrations. “Don’t they believe in the region this only happens when you’re carrying a boy?”
“You’ve done your homework very thoroughly.” She moaned with pleasure, then stabbed her fingers in his now loose hair, making him relinquish her nipple before she lost whatever was left of her mind again. She needed to say something else. “About Zafrana’s throne...”
He lowered his mouth to her flesh again, skimmed his way up to her lips, his smile filling her with joy. “I have no more desire to take over
my heritage. The only thing I care about now is the future we’ll make together for our children.”
“Children!”
“Only as many—or as few—as you like,” he rushed to assure her. “This baby is all I need. You are all I need.”
She groaned with yet another surge of emotion. “You are all I need, too. And I want everything possible with you, and as many children as you want. But let’s just take one child at a time. Let me work on this one first.”
He laughed and hugged her exuberantly. “We’ll work on this one, and everything else, together.”
As he lowered his head and began ridding her of her last shreds of sanity, she squirmed, making him stop again. “But you have to claim your heritage. It would be the best thing to ever happen to Zafrana and Saraya if you merged them and sat on their combined throne.”
Nipping her lower lip, he murmured, “I only want to be on the throne of your heart.”
“You’ve been there from day one,” she moaned. “And you’re now stuck there.”
His chuckle filled her every cell with well-being as he slid his body over hers, setting her every nerve on renewed fire. “Now to make sure I am fused there.”
Crying out as he entered her, merged them, she again tugged on his hair before everything but him and those carnally emotional moments ceased to matter.
“Numair...please...” Drowning in sensation, she clamped her legs around his muscled hips to stop him from tipping her into oblivion. “Promise me you will. You’ll make the best king for our region as well as for my heart.”
He rose above her, his eyes a conflagration of love and devotion. “I might reconsider...if you do something for me.”
She nodded frantically, losing the fight, starting to undulate beneath him, the pleasure so intense it was nearly blinding. “Anything. I’ll do anything for you. I’ll spend my life trying to erase everything you suffered.”
The ferocity he’d promised her blazed in his eyes as he thrust hard, impaling her to her very center. “You already have. Just being you, just loving me against all odds. And now you have to promise me you’ll make up for the fright and desperation you caused me when you disappeared.”