by Tara Pammi
Wide eyes pinned him with the regal grace of a queen even as she righted herself. She had been bred to be one—the utter elegance of it was imbued into her every moment. “Do not touch me then.”
Even as silent tears poured down her cheeks, she didn’t berate him for what he had done to her. Pangs of guilt gripped him.
“You need to calm down. It’s not good for you or the baby. Your panic was making you choke—”
“I think I would prefer to choke than endure your touch right now.” She whispered the words—almost as if to herself. And it was that more than anything that delivered a punch to his midsection.
He advanced on her, holding onto his control by the skin of his teeth. “Shall I put that to test, ya habibiti?”
“It is a test I shall fail and you shall win. As unwilling as my mind is now, there are triggers in my body that sway the brain. It’s millions of years of evolutionary instincts firing into action because when it comes down to it, the animal part of my brain recognizes you as the most aggressive male, the best for procreation. Neither does it help that there are other hormones at play that make me even more susceptible to you.”
“So you agree that if I touched you now, if I pulled that dress off you and kissed the curve of your breast, licked my way over the satin silk of your belly to the treasure below, I shall not find you unwilling.”
“No, you won’t. But later, when my brain recovers from the adrenaline injected by the orgasm you give, I shall hate you. Even more than I do now.”
I shall hate you...
For four months, all he had done at night was dream of her enthusiastic responses, her soft curves beneath his hard body, the inviting cradle of her thighs. He had spilled himself again and again into his own hand at the remembered memory of her soft cry as she had found her own release.
All he wanted was to reclaim her, to take her on the night she should have gone to his half brother’s bed, to seal his victory. He wanted to make her take those words back.
And yet, one look into her eyes was enough to douse his feverish lust.
He was a man who thrived on control—of himself and his surroundings. This desire he felt for a slip of a girl was nothing. He would have her—again and again until the lust in him was satisfied, yes, but he would not give in to it like a green boy looking at his first nude woman.
He would not touch her until she came to him as his wife. Until she learned her place in his life.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again.
Eyes filled with that nauseating fear met his. He shoved away the dismay that caused inside him. Enough was enough!
It was time to take things in hand. “You are pregnant with my child.”
Knuckles white from the tight grip she held on the torn edges of the dress, she stared up at him, innocence and resolve an irresistibly complex combination. “Are you so sure it’s yours? What if I had stolen a hundred other nights with a hundred other strangers after you? What if there has been a parade of men in my life and in my body since that night? What if what I shared with you was so good that I didn’t wait for—”
He pulled her to him, the pictures she painted making bile rise through his throat. She was his. Only his. “Do not cheapen what happened between us.”
Silent tears drew wet paths on her cheeks. She looked so painfully innocent as she dabbed them away with the back of her hand. “You did that. Not I.”
“Games do not suit you, Amira. That child is mine.” His voice shook on those words. Fear clamped his spine. Fear of loss. Of all the things he had never had and now to lose this, too... “If I had been an hour late, if you had become Zufar’s wife, that child, my child would have been cast into—”
Whatever she saw in his face clearly startled her. She went to him, a fierceness in her eyes. “Whoever the father of this child is in legal terms, I would never have let him or her go. Never. Adir, I love this child already. I just needed...a way out. I don’t want to talk about the past anymore. I...want to look toward the future.”
He nodded, seeing the truth shine in her eyes. Whatever her naïveté, Amira would be a good mother. “It is good then that we can agree on what’s important.”
“Then let this farce end here and allow me to leave.”
“We will marry as soon as it can be arranged.”
They had both spoken at the same time. Words and eyes collided, the silent room exploding with unspoken emotions.
“No.” He had indulged her enough. It was time to set things straight.
Her eyes searched his, wide with shock, seeking the truth. She fell onto her haunches, that stillness turning into shivers. Before he could reach for her, she shrank away from him. Tremors overtook her slender body and she hugged herself.
Adir waited, his patience wearing thin, and yet he felt as if he was on the cusp of something.
When she raised those eyes to him again, terror shone in it. And he felt as if he fell from that cliff into some dark abyss below. Whatever had been between them, that flimsy, intangible thing, he knew it was lost.
Forever.
She looked at him as if he were a stranger, a monster.
Even as he struggled to get a grip on reality, the loss dug into him.
“Amira?”
“A minute ago, you...you were planning logistics and timing to consider me for a temporary lover. Yet now you command that we marry? I didn’t want to marry Zufar. I definitely do not want to marry you.”
“Neither you nor I have a choice in this matter anymore. Like you said, actions have consequences, yes? My child will not be born a bastard. I don’t want a wife that looks at me as if she doesn’t know me anymore than you—”
“I don’t want a husband whose every word is a lie, who not only is not different—as I had foolishly assumed—from all the arrogant, domineering men already pushing me around, but actually hides it beneath a veneer of kindness and charm.”
“I’m the same man, Amira.” If only his people could hear him now—their sheikh offering an olive branch to this mere slip of a woman, when her fate was all in his hands anyway.
“The man I thought you were that night doesn’t exist except in my fantastic imagination. Ordering me or threatening me will not accomplish what you want. I have years...” there was a catch in her tone and she shied her gaze away from him and swallowed “...of experience dealing with men who want to have their way no matter what. You could beat me into a pulp and I would still not surrender my will.”
He reached her before he knew he had even moved. “Do not compare me to your father ever again. I’m a man of honor. What I do or don’t do has consequences, Amira. People look to me for guidance. And for the final time, my child will not be born a bastard.”
Something in his words pinged inside Amira’s head, bringing every panicky thought to a grinding halt. Dread twisted into a tight knot in her chest as she struggled to form the question she should have asked that night.
He had talked of Queen Namani as if he had personal knowledge of her. Of Prince Zufar denying him what was his. Of honor and his station in life and strategy and logistics...
Oh, God, what had she done? Who had she tangled with?
Sweat ran down between her shoulder blades, and an invisible cage began to weave all around her again. “Who are you? Please...the truth this time.”
“I didn’t lie to you that night. You wanted a night of fantasy and I gave it to you.”
She had been so naive, so stupid. Even though her father had prepared her for the reality of royal life from when she had been a little girl, she had still built castles in the air. She had still developed romantic notions. She had believed that fairy tale could be real, if only for one night.
“A night of fantasy, sure. And now it is time to pay the price for that night, yes? My father was right—nothing comes freely in this world. So tell me, who a
re you?”
“I’m Adir Al-Zabah, the High Sheikh of the Dawab and Peshani tribes. I own three multinational information technology companies. I have a degree in law specializing in international politics and land rights. I have been informed, now and again, that I possess a passably attractive face. And you’re carrying my child. I shall protect you, keep you in luxury and more than anything, I would cut my hand off before I would raise it against you. Now, shall we seal the bargain, Amira?”
It felt as if the world under her feet had pulled away.
Shock settled over her skin like a cold chill while Amira stared mutely at the arrogant stranger arranging her life according to his wishes.
Adir Al-Zabah...of course, the renowned High Sheikh of the Dawab and Peshani tribes. His reputation was legendary even among the royals of Khalia and Zyria for he had single-handedly united the Bedouin tribes of this region. Warring among themselves and their way of life dying out, he had breathed new life into them by bridging the gap between tradition and progress.
Powerful, arrogant and educated, there was no equal to him in strategy and in maneuvering the volatile politics of the region. He had brought two IT companies into the cities bordering the tribes’ lands in the desert—a move that had been laughed at by political critics, yet in the space of three years had provided his tribesmen with a new mode of living.
A legal dispute had been in court for decades regarding the encroachment of a local government into the lands of the Peshani—he had won the case by bringing the Dawab and Peshani together and driving the incursions out forever.
A mere thirty-one years old, he already was a ruthless leader and a cutting-edge businessman. He was a herald of a new age for the tribes—of not only survival, but economic thriving.
She had thought they were similar souls looking for a connection in their lonely lives. He was no more lost or lonely than the lion was lost in the jungle. No less ruthless than her father or Prince Zufar in how unscrupulous he had used her naïveté and trust.
And they had no more in common than she and Prince Zufar had.
He was another controlling man who thought nothing of her own wishes or dreams.
“No. I will not marry you.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. Clearly, he was not used to being denied anything. “It is high time to let go of your foolish dreams, Amira. Do not make me take away your choices.”
“It’s not much of a choice if it is the only option, is it?”
She thought he would be furious, he proved she didn’t know him.
He stared at her for so long that Amira wondered if the loud thunder of her heart echoed in the room.
And then he smiled. It was the smile of a predator. Of a man who always got what he wanted. Of a man who had ruthlessly seduced her while he had planned her betrothed’s humiliation.
“I thought you would be happy to be free of your golden cage. Free of all the expectations and burdens that were thrust on you. Free of Zufar’s indifference and your father’s brutality. This is the result of a choice you made. So live with it.”
“No! You—”
“Enough!” Adir said, losing his control.
Her rebellion was of the insidious kind. It was there in the defiance in her eyes, the upward tilt of her chin as her slender body cringed away from him.
It was the impression she gave. She was small and slender with exquisite curves in all the right places and yet if he closed his eyes now, all he would see would be the bright shining light of her will. Of her determination.
But much as he tried to suppress it, he had to admit there was a niggle of shame. A looming sense of...something he couldn’t even recognize. And the unknown quality of it made his voice harsh, his words cruel.
“Will you now act as if I forced you into it all, Amira? You proved that you have no loyalty toward Zufar when you slept with me. You were more than desperate to—”
“You would shame what I gave you honestly? I don’t care what you or my father or the entire damned world thinks. I gave my body to you. You think I was overcome by fear, that I wanted escape—?”
“Why romanticize it when it’s exactly that? You used me and I used you,” he said bluntly, even knowing that her inexperience, her sheltered worldview would never see it that way. Her father might have reared her to be a queen—to play politics and games—but there wasn’t a malicious bone in her body. But she had to learn fast if she wanted to survive life with him. “Wasn’t it payback, too, on your father for his cruelty, on Zufar for not giving you enough—?”
“No! Don’t you dare tell me why I did it.” For the first time that day, he heard pure steel in her voice. In a matter of seconds, she had transformed from a sweet, innocent temptress to a tigress breathing fire. “Your own twisted motivations color mine. I...was attracted to you. Something about you made me realize a woman’s desires for the first time. That I wasn’t just a pawn to be used. I chose to let you kiss me. I chose to let you give me pleasure. I chose to give myself one night of escape in your arms. All my life, I fought to make choices of my own within the few parameters I was allowed. That night, I chose you. And neither you nor my father nor the world—no accusations, no shame heaped upon me, no force on this earth—could take that away...the choice I made...from me.”
“Then now it is time for us both to live with the consequences of that.”
She was nothing to him.
No, she was not nothing to Adir.
She was used to being nothing all her life. She had been nothing before—an object of indifference and neglect to Zufar. But his indifference had mostly left her unharmed.
She had been a means of attaining wealth and power for her father. A pawn to be used for gaining advancement. Even as she had hated it, somehow, Amira had used that to her own advantage. She had time and again persuaded her father that her education, her training to be a nurse, the charity work she did with poor women and women without healthcare, all of it increased her worth as a queen.
She had wielded her betrothal to Prince Zufar as a weapon to achieve her biggest dreams, all within the constraints her father had laid down on her.
But not once had either of them been allowed to touch her heart.
She had endured whatever they had thrown her way but hadn’t let them touch the core of her.
What Adir had done to her, what he had stolen from her—oh, she had given her virginity happily enough and she still couldn’t regret it—but what he had stolen from her was so much worse.
She had allowed him into her heart.
He had been the first man who had ever made her feel safe, cherished, wanted. And all her life, Amira had never been cherished.
For the first time in her life, she had seen herself as something other than a pawn. He had given her a taste of utter happiness...
Amira sank to the floor when he walked away without another word. Tears filled her eyes and for the first time since she had learned of her pregnancy, she couldn’t stem their flow.
She should think of her child, she should think of its future.
And for her child, she would marry him. But she would never again trust him, never again be so naive as to believe that charming facade.
He would be her husband, the father of her child, he would have ownership of her body, her mind, her thoughts, but never her heart.
Never again would she forget that the man she was marrying had no heart.
CHAPTER FIVE
“HOW ARE YOU feeling today?”
Amira jerked up from the bed. Her scrambled movements only made the man staring at her frown.
No, he wasn’t just a man.
She needed to see him as he truly was—a powerful man used to getting his own way. She had lived her whole life dealing with such men and yet quietly achieving her own way. She would this time, too.
Now that she had made
and accepted her decision, relief filled her. Even being the Queen of Khalia couldn’t have done what Adir had done for her. She was free of the controlling grasp of her father and that was a good thing.
Having lived with her father’s constant belittling and control, Adir’s arrogance and dominance was nothing. If she had learned one thing from her father, it was that every relationship had a power exchange.
And while she had always been the one with less power in all of her relationships, there had almost always been something to bargain with. Leverage.
And she desperately needed to find what that was when it came to Adir.
“Amira?”
An edge of impatience crept into his tone. For three days, he had wisely left her to stew in her own company.
But she had never been alone, for one or another woman had kept showing up. First to look after her health, she had been told. Then the lovely, funny Zara had shown up to keep her company. And lastly, the old woman Humera.
She shoved away the bitter answers that rose to her lips one after the other. “I have made peace with my fate. And nothing is wrong with my health. But I still do not like you,” she said, opting for honesty.
“Look at me when I speak to you.”
Exhaling a deep breath, she turned. “Yes, Your Highness.”
And just like that, all her reassurances and promises fled.
Awareness filled every pore as those amber eyes watched her with that thoroughly possessive leisure.
He was dressed simply in white robes that suited the desert today. His head was covered by a red and white scarf to keep the heat at bay. His face gleamed dark gold after a morning in the sun, his potent masculinity taking over the tent.
Even having spent two days in his luxurious tent, even having spent two restless nights in the vast expanse that was his bed; even after woman after woman bowed, scraped and saw to her every need as if she were indeed a queen; even as she heard the respectful whispers and the widening amazement in her helpers’ eyes when they spoke of him, the reality of it all had still eluded her.
Until now.