“Can you come back for to see us in the musical in April?” Kasha asks, interrupting Sasha’s to-do list. “Just for a visit?”
“I wish I could, sweetie, but I’m not allowed to travel for another six months per my marriage visa.”
It is a lot easier to lie to them than it should be. But I don’t want the girls to worry about me or get wind of what’s really going on over here. That means I have to stick to the lie I had Sylvie relay to them. That Zahir invited me to stay at his palace under a temporary marriage contract because it’s the only way to “date” in Jahwar. But really this is simply a way for me to study for the bar in peace, while I see where this thing with Zahir leads. And no matter what, I’ll be returning to the States in six months to take the bar in September.
Romantic Kasha happily buys my story, but Sasha asks me a bunch of questions, including the new Disney princess standard, “Seriously, you went and married a guy you’ve only known for a day?”
I answer as vaguely as possible, but I don’t blame them for sounding confused when we finally say good-bye an hour later. I’m confused, too.
I thank Zahir for the phone when I see him next at dinner. I do this even though I really don’t want to. Truth is, he’s manipulating me into behaving politely…. he’s playing me like I’m a record on his turntable. And I’m letting him win.
“You are doing very well, Prin,” he says after my head down thank you. “I will have the phone brought to you twice a week from now on.”
On Day Six, I start getting things. First my phone privileges, then—on Day Seven—my bedding. On Day Eight, Nabida leaves me a wash cloth for what has now become my after-dinner alone time. And on Day Nine, after my afternoon study break, Raima serves me a full tea, which I’m allowed to eat by myself: sparkling date juice, scones, crustless finger sandwiches, salmon pinwheels, and a black sage tea Nabida claims will help me digest the afternoon meal.
I’m allowed to call the twins twice a week and have afternoon tea on my own. But my closet remains empty, and Raima continues to bind my wrists before each shared meal with Zahir. Fourteen more days to go. Just two more weeks until Holt and Sylvie’s big family vacation is finished, and they return to Connecticut. Then I can call Holt and put a stop to all this without feeling like I’ve ruined his post-wedding vacation with his new wife and sons.
But then on Day 10, a blob of jam falls off the piece of brioche Zahir is placing into my mouth. It lands on one of my naked breasts.
We both look down at the orange spot, and then back up at each other.
“May I get that for you?” Zahir asks, his voice perfectly polite. As if there’s any possibility I can do it myself with my wrists bound as they are.
I nod and add, “Yes, please.” Because this is the game I am being forced to play with Zahir until I can call Holt without a fit of conscience.
But instead of reaching for a nearby white cloth napkin, Zahir lowers his dark head…
I gasp, both my stomach and my pussy tightening as his mouth captures my full breast and gently licks off the jam. I watch his tongue as it makes its way towards my nipple… mesmerized by the sight and the feeling it leaves on my skin. Long after the jam is gone, Zahir continues to suckle at me, drawing on my nipple as if there’s more jam to be found and he’s determined to remove it.
Then I feel the monster again. Pushing against the back of my pussy in hard, unyielding circles while Zahir’s tongue milks my breast.
I want to tell him to stop…I should tell him to stop…but instead, I come. It’s a tiny orgasm, the kind that would normally make me wait a half hour before trying again with my Magic Wand back home in Jersey.
But I’m not in New Jersey. I’m in Jahwar, naked in Zahir’s lap, unable to deny what just happened. I had an orgasm. Caused by a man. And with that, my original reply to his question from the first day of training goes from zero…to one. One man has given me an orgasm, while fully clothed and with nothing more than his mouth and the imprint of his dick.
“Are you satisfied?” he asks, his voice little more than a coarse growl in my ear as I tremble in his lap. “Have you had enough?”
No. No, I have not. My pussy aches with the faint echoes of that little orgasm, as if insisting it wasn’t nearly enough. But I manage to gasp out, “Yes. Yes, I’m done!”
This immediately earns me a one-way ticket out of his lap.
Zahir may have released me…but I soon learn it is the kind of reprieve a cat gives a mouse—right before slamming a paw down on its tail when it tries to escape.
He becomes very clumsy over the next few days. At lunch, he spills honey on my other breast. At dinner, a bit of cream cheese from the khaliat al nahl honeycomb bread falls on the left breast again. Then more jam plops onto the right the next day at breakfast.
“Are you certain you are satisfied?” he asks after another small lunchtime orgasm. “This is only finger food. Imagine the meal I could give you if you would only ask me.”
I somehow mumble my way off his lap but as soon as he leaves the room, I tell Nabida I need to take a short nap. And this time, I am unable to imagine anyone but Zahir as I finger myself to completion.
By Day Twelve, Nabida and Raima have fallen into a new routine of allowing me a thirty-minute “nap” after breakfast and lunch. But it is not enough. I’m tired of only my hand to give me pleasure, and the orgasms I achieve on my own feel shallow in comparison to the dark promise in Zahir’s voice. More often than not, they leave me feeling even more bereft. Like sparklers when what you really wanted were 4th of July fireworks.
Chapter Nine
Things quickly go downhill from there. I am no longer starving, but I give up studying for the bar because I’ve lost the ability to concentrate and lyrics, sensuous and needy, are the only thing that come out of my pen when I try to take notes. Being cooped up in Zahir’s concubine room only makes it worse. The satin sheets are torture against my skin and the bath’s undulating water laps cruelly at my naked core. Almost like a tongue…but not nearly enough.
I tell Nabida to stop the mid-afternoon tea, because just the smell of food sets my pussy to clenching uncontrollably. And soon after I have to tell Raima not to pat me dry when I get out of the bath for fear of what my livewire body might do.
I’m still tracking the days until I can call Holt, but the hours of those days seem to have rearranged themselves around the torturous meals. The rest of time is a blank space filled with desperate, unsatisfying masturbation and lyrics knocking on my brain, asking to be let out. And soon the primal wanting and the deep unsatisfied ache become all I know.
Day Twenty-One finally arrives, but Zahir does not.
“He is away in Ardu Alzuhuwr on business for the next two days,” Nabida says while doing my makeup. “But he has left you another gift.”
Raima presents me with not one, but two smart speakers from a slick tech company I’m pretty sure hasn’t officially announced their development of a smart speaker to compete with Alexa and Google Home.
She places one in the bathroom, and one in the main room so I can to listen to music while I study… if I can ever pull myself together enough to study again.
Nabida announces I have been given special permission to eat alone at the table until Sheikh Zahir returns from his trip. I also get my robe back.
Zahir is gone. This is what I hoped for. But the reprieve feels less like a reprieve and more like forty-eight hours in solitary confinement. Without the prospect of Zahir joining me for lunch, the food tastes like ashes in my mouth. Something I have to choke down to stay upright.
I learn another lesson shortly after breakfast. And that is just how quickly the human body gets used to being nude all the time. The robe feels like a cloth cage now and I end up throwing it into the hamper before returning to bed where I take a fitful mid-morning nap.
That afternoon, I text the twins instead of calling them. And I have little to say when Sylvie phones to check on me.
“Are you okay?” s
he asks worriedly after my third mumbled reply.
“Sorry, I just woke up from a nap and I think the heat is getting to me.” It’s a lie, and not a lie. During the two days that Zahir is gone, I spend most of my time napping or touching myself in the heated bath-pool. Eating is something I do to refuel…to tide me over until Raima ties my wrists again on the morning of Day Twenty-Four.
I don’t want to say I missed him. I refuse to say I missed him. But when I exit the bathroom that morning, we both pause and stare at each other though nothing has really changed. I am naked and bound, as always. And save for his shoes, Zahir is fully dressed in yet another sharp suit. Still, we take each other in until, with a nod of his chin, he directs me to sit on his lap.
My body relaxes as soon as I feel the familiar hard mound. No, nothing has changed. And perhaps that’s what I’ve been craving. A return to routine.
“I’ve brought some champagne back from my visit with the royal family of Ardu Alzuhuwr,” he tells me. “Would you like to share a glass with me at dinner tonight?”
“I thought none of the UAK royals we’re supposed to drink,” I answer, tilting my head to look up at him.
“We are not and we do not. None of us have ever touched a drop,” he answers. “Would you like some champagne with dinner?
I snicker, appreciating the joke. Especially from serious him. But I shake my head, a picture flashing through my mind of my mother dancing sexy with a newly signed rap duo, a glass of champagne held above her head. “No…thank you,” I answer politely, because if I start drinking under these circumstances, I might never stop and now’s not the time to fall into one of my mother’s many vices.
I have to stay strong, I remind myself. I can’t let myself starve. I can’t let myself become altered in any way. Especially with Zahir.
Unlike the morning of days Twenty-One and Twenty-Two, the mix of Jahwar and European breakfast items taste delicious. But something is off. I am beyond full and slowing down as I always do to indicate I’m finished. However, Zahir simply stops feeding me breakfast.
No “accidentally” spilled food. And the only thing he wipes off are his hands with the cloth napkin I thought he would use on me after the first food slip.
“Are you satisfied?” he asks, placing the used napkin back down on the table. “Have you had enough?”
“No…” I reply, my voice broken. I’m done. Just too worn out by the two-day hiatus to muster any more pride. It’s gone. All of it. My reserve has completely run dry…unlike my wet pussy, which desperately grabs at his hard mound, seeking and still not receiving. Not even a tiny orgasm today.
“Please,” I whisper, and I begin to squirm. It is much harder to do with my hands bound, but I wriggle my hips in a frantic circle, my eyes closing as I get lost in the hypnotizing rhythm…
…only to fly open when he suddenly grabs my face in the crook of his hand, fingers squeezing my cheeks as he jerks me around to look directly at him. “You must beg,” he reminds me.
My breath catches at his hard command, and my heart beats a wild, out-of-sync rhythm as I re-check my pride reserve…but no, it is still empty. Which makes begging so much easier.
“Please!” I moan, meaning it.
“Please, what, Prin?” he asks viciously. “Please let you come on my covered dick again? Please use my fingers on you? Please unzip these trousers and give you what you really want? Tell me exactly what you’re begging me for.”
“Please, fuck me!” I gasp, a piercing ache going through me at the thought of it…the thought of him inside of me. “Oh, God, please, please, please, fuck me!” I beg with tears in my eyes, my voice little more than a desperate moan.
He stills and for a moment, I brace myself to finally get what I couldn’t admit to wanting until now.
But instead of unzipping his pants, he lifts me off his lap and sets me on my feet like he did when I still had some pride left and could lie to him about being satisfied.
“No…no…” This time I don’t stand on trembling legs, denying the obvious. I fall to my knees because my legs won’t hold me. “Please! Please!” I beg from this position. “I’m begging like you said.”
He stands, his face cold as a New York winter. “I said you would beg. Those were my exact words. And you have.”
“What?” I whisper, struggling past the suffocating lust to make sense of what he’s telling me.
Zahir regards me with the same cold contempt from the wedding. Then he raps on the table.
“No…no…”
I crawl forward, prepared to grab at him. But I am weak with want and he…well, he has all the power here. I watch him leave the room as Nabida and Raima enter.
They rush over to where I’ve collapsed on the floor in a pile of tears and frustration. The two women speak to each other in hushed Arabic as they all but carry me to the bath.
Zahir doesn’t return for lunch. Or dinner.
“What did I do wrong?” I ask Nabida and Raima as they gently remove my make-up and rebraid my hair after dinner.
My body is slumped to the side, weak with frustration and still-raging desire.
I must be worrying them because Raima actually responds, “I do not know. It has never gone on this long. Usually, he deems a woman acceptable within a couple of days, a week at most. This…what he’s doing to you is different.”
Different…so he is torturing me.
I think. And I breathe, trying to ignore the way my core is still wildly clenching. Then, I accept. This isn’t his standard training. This is a punishment that may never end.
Chapter Ten
That night I dream I’m walking toward a lush oasis, just over the horizon. I walk and walk, but no matter how many steps I take, it never seems to get any closer. Then I start sinking into the sand…
I wake on my own to the sun of a bright new day and the sight of Nabida and Raima setting up breakfast.
“We planned to let you sleep in,” Nabida says when she sees me sitting up in bed.
“No Zahir,” I guess, and silently curse my pussy for tightening at the sound of his name.
Raima’s eyes widen at my use of his first name without the title but answers, “No, he will not come to you today.”
I think about that. Breathe…and push through the semi-permanent lust haze to ask, “Did his secretary say when he’d be back?”
“No, we were not given this information,” Raima answers.
“But I’m still not allowed to get dressed?”
Raima shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot while Nabida throws me a sympathetic look. Raima says, “If you wish, you are still allowed a robe.”
I take the robe offered to me after my morning bath and force myself to think more about my sex problem with Zahir. This time, I do it while standing over the breakfast table with the smart speaker playing soft Arabian pop in the background.
“Have you finished?” Nabida asks when I’ve clocked more time staring into space than eating.
I blink and nod. Silently adding, finished but not satisfied.
As the women clear the breakfast table, I ask, “Do I still get my phone call tomorrow?”
“Yes, as far as I know,” Nabida answers.
“Good,” I say. I’m forcing myself to keep the robe on, even if it feels like a brillo pad against my skin compared to the pure air I’ve become used to. “Good…”
Day Twenty-Four. I pull an Annie and focus on tomorrow as I push myself through the rest of the day.
Zahir doesn’t show up for breakfast on Day Twenty-Five. That’s fine.
“May I have a pen and paper to wrote Zahir a note?” I ask Raima when she appears with my requested Bar Exam study guide.
Nabida fetches me a single piece of stationary and a heavy pen. They both watch me as a I write…and are probably surprised when I stop at a single word.
“Can you take this to him?” I ask after folding the paper into a tucked-in triangle, like I am still in high school. Except this note isn’t of the �
�check yes or no if you like me” variety I considered sending Asir at the height of my school girl crush.
A few hours later, I chat with Sylvie, putting extra effort into keeping my voice clear and engaged. Then I ask if I can talk to Holt. Just for a minute…
Our conversation is stupid awkward, and I have the feeling he is going to have a hell of a time explaining to Sylvie what we discussed.
But I know Holt will relay my message. He’s responsible like that—especially with Sylvie by his side. And I’m right to trust him. Less than thirty minutes after I hang up, Zahir comes crashing through the suite’s doors with my note in his hand, nowhere near the appointed dinner hour.
He growls something to Nabida and Raima in Arabic that must mean “get the hell out,” because they drop their mop and duster, respectively, and scurry from the room. Like squirrels away from an incoming storm.
But I don’t run. I’m not from around here and trust we Jersey chycks know how to handle inclement weather. I stand up and come around the one-chair table like I’m wearing a heavy-duty rain poncho and not just my bare skin.
“Hey, Zahir,” I say with my best smart-aleck smile. “Wassup?”
“You called Holt to request he provide you with a vibrator?!” he asks, his voice barely level.
I blink innocently. “Well, yeah. You’re not seeing to my sexual needs, so I called my wali in the hopes he could negotiate to send me something that would.”
For a moment, he stares at me, outrage and plain old rage warring for face time. “This is not something you do. You do not call another man and tell him you are in need of a sex toy because I am not a satisfactory lover.”
I give him another innocent blink. “But talking to your wali is standard protocol if a wife is unhappy with her treatment. It was written in our marriage contract...dude, have you never been with someone who actually reads her contracts?” I suck on my teeth and shake my head. “Easily fixed with the next wife. No biggie. Now you know. Don’t marry a lawyer if you want some dumb broad who will let you torture her for shits and giggles.”
ZAHIR_Her Ruthless Sheikh Page 8