The Sheikh's Secret

by Knight, Kylie

  Ada Witt. He couldn’t think of a thing in the world that was more interesting than her, than that name. She sounded like something that might come straight out of a fairytale, like she was one of those princesses from the stories American children were told when they were small. She looked that way, too. He could still remember being shown Snow White when he was a little boy. His older sister had somehow become obsessed with all things Disney when they were children. Eventually their grandmother had caved and, unbeknownst to their sometimes tyrannical father, had secreted in a copy of Snow White. Having never been to the States at that young age, Darvesh had been entirely enthralled. He had watched that dainty, fair skinned beauty move across the screen and it had been like magic. He had thought to himself ever since watching that film how nice it would be to have a girl like that in his life, how nice it would be if that kind of thing was something he could have in real life. He hadn’t expected it of course, not really, and he knew that he had many other responsibilities in his life that were more pressing and more realistic than any fantasy inside of his head. He was a sheikh, the son of a sheikh on his way to becoming a sheikh in his own right. It was dangerous and thrilling and sometimes all encompassing. He had gone stateside when his father had sent him but he had staid because he had fallen in love. Not with a person. Nothing as cut and dry as that. He had fallen in love with the country, with the city of New York. He had worked hard, built up an empire of hotspots that everyone and their mother wanted to get into, and he had done it all with a single mindedness that magnified his business savvy in a way that he believed must be exponential. He had never even been tempted by anything that could have tested his work ethic up until he saw Ada walk through the doors of his latest capitalist venture.

  Ada Witt, a girl who looked like she belonged in a movie, only in a different way than he was used to encountering. He had seen many a woman who looked like she belonged on the cover of Maxim walk through the front doors of his clubs and many of those women had thrown themselves at him. Some of them knew only that he was a wealthy, prominent business owner in a city where making a business work was no small feat. Some of them knew about his family, that he was one small step below royalty. Either way, none of them had ever peaked his interest in the slightest way. None of them except for the one he would soon learn went by the name of Ada Witt. When she walked into his new club it was like the air in the room changed somehow, like it got sweeter and yet also somehow there was less of it. There must have been less of it because he found it hard to breath when he looked at her. He watched her from her first step inside and although he could see (in a decidedly uninterested way because it was so much like the same thing he saw day in and day out) that almost every other man in the place was lusting after the tall blonde she had come in with, he had only had eyes for Ada. Talking to her was the first time he could remember ever being really and truly nervous when talking to a female and although, looking back on it now, he thought he had hid it very well, he had felt his stomach churning with the anticipation of her possibly rejecting him. But miracle upon miracle she hadn’t. Even when the girl he learned was her sister stormed off in a huff she had stayed and he had managed to convince her to go out with him. God, that first night when he met her one on one, she had looked like an apparition. Her silky dark hair and her sweet honey eyes all wide and full of questions, laughter. It had been the best date he had ever gone on and he had known right then that he could not live without her. He would never have told anyone that, shit, it sounded insane, but he felt that way. God, he did feel that way. He loved her. He loved her and he was going to tell her that just as soon as she woke up. She was laying beside him even now, that rich hair falling over the milky shoulders that rose and fell with each of her soft breaths; in and out, in and out.

  “When are you going to stop watching me while I sleep?”

  “Hmm,” he purred, kissing along the line of her shoulder gently, “how long have we been seeing each other?”

  “Let me think. Four months? Five?”

  “Alright. So if we’ve been seeing each other for five months, give me another…five. That gives me an even ten months to watch you like this.”

  But why?” she smiled sleepily as she rolled onto her back and turned those lovely amber eyes on him, “I can’t think of anything more boring than watching me sleep.”

  “Oh I couldn’t disagree more, my lovely girl. You’re beautiful when you sleep, and much less prone to argue.”

  “Hey!”

  She was about to tell him exactly what about what he said she disagreed with and so he made the executive decision to stop her with a kiss. It started as such a light kiss that it was almost like it didn’t happen at all but slowly, so tantalizingly slowly that it hurt, it turned into something else; something more. The kiss deepened, her lips melting into his until he could not tell where one pair ended and the other began. He moved up onto one elbow, using his free hand and plunging it deep into her hair. He wanted to devour her, to take her in with every single one of his senses. Her hands moved around to his back, her nails raking down his back in a gesture full of desire and need. Feeling her nails running down his skin was the biggest kind of aphrodisiac there was and he could feel himself growing hard against her side. She pulled away from him briefly, looking at him and smiling mischievously.

  “Well hello. What you got going on down there?”

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  “I don’t know about that. I don’t think I would call that nothing much.”

  Her hand snaked down beneath the flimsy sheet that covered them both and Darvesh’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he let the feeling of her hot skin working over his flesh wash over him completely. He could have existed only in this room, only with her like this for the rest of his life and been perfectly happy. He kissed her again, his tongue slipping into her mouth and tasting a familiar sweetness that was rapidly beginning to taste like home. Her hand started to move ever so slightly faster and her breath sped up right along with it. She let out a soft little moan into his mouth that he found completely irresistible and one of his hands moved down between her legs. He ran his fingertips along her quivering inner thigh, teasing her, wanting to see her wanting him in response. By the time his fingers made it down to the fold where her two legs met her entire body was shaking, her skin hot yet simultaneously broken out into goose bumps beneath his fingertips. She broke away from his kiss, gasping, hips bucking in anticipation, back arching up and meeting his body hovering over hers. He wanted her just as badly now as he did the first time he saw her, this woman that he loved, and he was going to have her, too. Except that her cell phone started to buzz, making both of them sigh with resigned frustration. Both Darvesh and Ada were business people and highly successful ones at that. They knew that, where most people could just ignore a phone making noise, the two of them didn’t have that luxury. They didn’t have to like it, being shackled to their positions the way that they were, but the fact that they both understood it and were both in the same position definitely made things easier. Now it was Ada’s turn to prop herself up on her elbows and she kissed Darvesh again, briefly but passionately, before stretching over to the side of the bed. As soon as she looked at the phone Darvesh could tell that something was wrong. He didn’t need to see her face, just the way that her body stiffened and the air around her changed was enough for him to know that something had happened; something bad.

  “What is it, darling? What’s the matter?”

  He put one hand on her shoulder again but this time she shrugged him off. That took him by surprise. In the admittedly short but nevertheless meaningful time they had spent together she had never done anything even remotely like that to him. So it was him, then. Somehow he was related to whatever displeasing information she had just received, although he couldn’t imagine in what way. He had practically lived for this woman ever since the moment he had laid eyes on her.

  “It’s from my sister,” she said in a strange,
strangled voice, “it’s an article.”

  “About what, my love?”

  “Your love?” she laughed without humor as she got quickly out of his bed and begin to throw her clothing on as quickly as she was able, “Funny choice of words, given the circumstances. It’s an older article. It’s about you. About you and your child. Apparently, you’re married.”

  Of all of the things she could have said in the world, never in a million years would he have imagined that it would have been that. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

  Chapter Five

  “But how, P? How could I have been so completely stupid?”

  “Stupid? Stupid how? I’m sorry, sweetie, but I fail to see how anything in this situation makes you stupid. Like, at all. You’re pretty much the least stupid person I have ever met in my entire life, and I’ve met a hell of a lot of people.”

  “Right, but are you even hearing me? Did you hear what I just told you? He’s married, P. And not only that, he has a kid!”

  “Again, how does that make you stupid?”

  “Because,” she almost shrieked, crying and pacing around her apartment at the same time, “it took exactly how much effort for Clara to find that information? Like half a minute? How is that possible? I’m stupid because I could have easily looked him up myself. I could have done just a little bit of digging and figured all of this out before I ever showed up to that first date and I wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t feel like this.”

  Finally, Ada sat down on the couch beside Penelope (yes, her assistant, but as it turned out also her friend; the only friend Ada felt like being around at the moment) and rested her head on the sweet girl’s shoulder. All of the sudden she was feeling very, very tired. Penelope was a good friend, a loyal friend in an age when Ada feared that was a quality not much appreciated by their generation, but there were things she didn’t think she could say to even her. It was true, she did feel stupid, and for all of the reasons she had already given, but there was more to it, too. There was more to it and that “more” was comprised of things she wasn’t sure she could say out loud. Not even to a friend. Not even to herself. Some things just went that deep.

  Ada could still see that scene with Darvesh, all exposed and naked beside him in his impossibly large canopied bed, and it made her feel sick to her stomach these two days later. It made her feel every bit as sick as she had felt when it was actually happening to her. It was astounding to her how quickly the state of a thing could change, how it could go from absolute bliss to utter devastation in no time at all. She had been laying there, her breath becoming more and more shallow as she thought to herself that she believed that she loved this man, that this was exactly what she had been looking for. Then her phone had buzzed, once twice three times, the way it did when she had received a new text message. Per their understanding, just one of many things that worked so well about their relationship for her, Ada had picked up her phone casually (as if there was another way but casual to look at a text message; it seemed ridiculous to think that one could look at a text with any real urgency while feeling serious about it). It hadn’t crossed her mind that it would be anything that might disrupt her world, that it could turn it all upside down in a way that would never be put right again.

  “Ada?”

  “Hm?”

  “Ada. Please, talk to me. I’m not trying to sound like a baby or anything, but you’re kind of starting to scare me a little bit. I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Truth time?”

  “Truth time.”

  “I’ve just never seen you this unglued. Not even close.”

  No, that was probably true. How could she have? Ada had never allowed herself to fall for a guy the way she had fallen for Darvesh. Usually she kept her head, kept her wits about her, so to speak. It hadn’t been so difficult to do. She had never been the kind of girl whose head was easily turned, and that coupled with how undeniably stunning Clara was, had meant that she wasn’t usually confronted by even the possibility of a wild, reckless sort of a romance. There had been one or two men, men she had liked and thought liked her as well, but in the end both of them had really been after the model sister, the blonde one with legs that went on for days and days. Darvesh had been the one to see past those legs strapped into the come fuck me heels, to see her the way she saw him. She had honestly believed that she would be able to take things just as slow as she wanted to, to control the pace of things the way that she had controlled most other things in her life, but she had been so, so wrong. And she had gotten burned. Just the way she knew so many women around the world were every day and every night, she had gotten burned. Thinking about that made her feel helpless, which made her angry, and suddenly she knew what would make her feel better.

  “Hey, P? Would you do something for me?”

  “Um, sure? Probably. I mean, as long as it’s not something that’s going to be bad for you. Or illegal. It seems like now would be a really bad time to start dabbling in things that could be in any way construed as illegal. I mean, right?”

  “P, come on.”

  “Well, who knows? Ada, you’re usually the one who keeps a level head! If you’re the one with the crazy look in your eyes, I don’t have a whole lot of hope for the rest of us. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  “I’m not going to do anything crazy. I just want to talk to Clara. Would you call her for me? Would you ask her to come over?”

  “Here? To your apartment?”

  “Yes,” Ada said with a little laugh that masked how much she was struggling to keep her shit together, “to my apartment.”

  “Hasn’t she like, never been here before?”

  Penelope was right on that one. Ada had lived in her current loft for almost three years and, despite the fact that they worked together and saw each other almost every single day, Clara had never actually come to see it. She claimed that she was simply “too busy,” (nevermind the fact that Ada had seen Clara’s place more times than she could even count) but Ada knew that it probably had a lot more to do with the fact that the loft wasn’t in one of the places Clara considered to be “right.” She had very specific ideas about with neighborhoods were “right” and this neighborhood didn’t qualify. But somehow Ada knew that today she would come. Maybe because she hadn’t been to work in two days, which was by far the longest she had stayed away since the founding of their little venture, and maybe because she simply couldn’t resist looking at the aftermath of the fire now that she had played with it, but Ada knew she would come. And she did. That was exactly what she did. It took almost two hours, which for Clara was actually relatively short, and when Penelope let her in she wore an expression that was a mixture of curiosity and disdain. And fear? Was Ada making that part up or was there the slightest hint of the emotion lingering in the backs of her sister’s eyes, the deep parts that she thought nobody could see? Ada felt a pang of sympathy for her beautiful and somehow broken sister but pushed it aside. She was grappling with too much pain of her own at the moment to just shove it all aside in order to make her sister feel more comfortable. It was something she had done many times, and in the end it hadn’t gotten either one of them anywhere particularly good. No, instead it had gotten them here, a place none of the three women wanted to be.

  “So,” she said with a voice that was meant to sound casually nonchalant but somehow missed the mark, “this is where you live? Cute! It’s cute, Ada. I should have found the time to come and see it a lot sooner than this.”

  “Thanks, Clara.”

  Ada felt much of her anger seeping out of her as she watched her beautiful older sister move restlessly around the loft and knew deep inside of her heart that what had been uncovered about Darvesh was not her fault. It wasn’t her fault, but it had been Clara that delivered the information and she had done so in such a callous way. So no, Ada wasn’t mad at her anymore, but she did need a break. Looking at her now, she knew that was why she had asked
Clara to her home in the first place. Everything still felt turned on its side, wrong in ways that were difficult to define, but she was beginning to see a path unfold before her and that alone was enough to make her want to cry with relief. She was a woman who acted, after all, a woman who had never been one to sit back and passively let things happen to her. She would not become that woman now, just because her heart was broken, and she pushed her glasses up her nose, smiling to herself when Clara wrinkled her nose in distaste. Even now, she was standing there thinking how much better it would be if Ada didn’t insist on sticking to the glasses thing. Clara was nothing if not predictable, at least for Ada.

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that guy from the club. That’s really a bummer.”

  “Darvesh. His name is Darvesh.”

  “Whatever. He doesn’t deserve you, you know? He definitely fell under that too good to be true category. Not to be trusted.”

  Ada took a deep, shaky breath, willing herself to keep the anger from returning. Had Darvesh been interested in Clara on that first night, they would not be having this conversation. But Clara had been rejected and she was not used to not getting what she wanted. She wouldn’t understand what Ada was about to say, wouldn’t like it one bit, but it was becoming more and more clear to Ada by the second that her decision was the correct one.