by Zeenat Mahal
“Shahira?”
“We should get ready. We leave in two hours, don’t we?” Shahira asked, even as her heart wrung with this new pain. She’d been stupid enough to trust a man again. She deserved this. She deserved every bit of it.
The children were inconsolable at the thought of losing both of them together, but Hussain said he would talk to them alone and explain. So he took them to his room, saying he needed to speak to them about something very important and after fifteen minutes when they came back, both wore identical grins and their eyes were sparkling.
Shahira raised an eyebrow at Hussain and he shrugged. He had a bit of a grin, too. After that they were no trouble at all. In fact they saw them off rather enthusiastically.
In the car, on the way to the airport she asked, still slightly put off, “What did you say to them?”
He gave a short laugh and said, “I don’t know whether you can be trusted with the information yet. Maybe, I’ll tell you. Depends.”
Throughout the flight he was just as attentive as he’d always been to her but she wasn’t falling for this routine again. They went to the same hotel they’d stayed at last time, only this time their suite had just one bedroom.
Hussain seemed almost apprehensive.
“Would you like some tea? Or anything else?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
“Well then...er…just make yourself comfortable.”
Then, as an after-thought, he added with half a smile, “And I do mean, make yourself comfortable, like you were the other night.”
She looked at him, confused. He smiled almost mischievously and Shahira suddenly recalled that he’d caught her in her lingerie the other night. Instead of feeling embarrassed, as she would have normally, she felt insulted and angry. How dare he bring that night up, after using her so brutally for his own petty ends?
In some spirit of vengeance or stupidity, she’d brought along a couple of her sexiest La Perla lingerie and taking out one lacy red and black little number, she took a luxuriant fragrant bath, lathered herself in expensive smelling body lotion as extra armor. She came out, determined to be the femme fatale and not the scared little girl Hussain took her to be.
But when she came out he was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly deflated, she sought the comfort of the bed, feeling tears of defeat sting her eyes.
She didn’t know how long she’d been hiding under the covers, it seemed like hours, but was in fact not more than fifteen minutes perhaps, when she heard Hussain come in and after a while get into bed.
Every nerve in her body was alive and aware of him. This sensation was entirely new to her, and it was uncomfortable in a thrilling sort of way.
“Shahira?”
“Yes?”
“I was afraid you’d gone to sleep.”
Swallowing the lump in her throat, and determined to confront him, she said in a quivering voice, “I will as soon as you explain to me why it was so important for the Arabs to have me at a business meeting. And why you had to pretend with all that sappy stuff to get me here. I would’ve come if you’d just asked anyway. Why did you do that? I don’t get it.”
After a stunned pause he said quietly, “I wasn’t pretending with all that sappy stuff. And there aren’t any meetings.”
Confused and angry again, she asked, “What do you mean? Then why…?”
“What else was I supposed to tell Ami? I thought it was very obvious. I…I thought you’d realize that that was just an excuse…”
Outraged she threw the duvet off and stared at him.
“You made this whole thing up? What did you need an excuse for…?”
She stopped because he shifted too, and he was much closer than she’d thought.
Softly, he said, “This…”
And he pulled her towards him gently.
“If you’re okay with it?”
Shahira smiled and simply nodded.
***
Groaning with acute embarrassment she buried her face deeper into the pillows when she woke up the next morning. Had she actually done that? She’d never felt this horrified at her behavior her whole life. How was she ever going to face him again?
With a new wave of mortification, she remembered how she’d shuddered against him uncontrollably, not once but every time, while he’d held on to her soothing her and then she’d actually cried. Oh, my God! He must think she was the biggest idiot in the world. What with his own candid admissions of having had numerous affairs, and she with her sexual deprivation…oh no, no, no!
A strange swell of emotion was rising in her chest that left her almost breathless. Hussain had made her feel beautiful and desirable whereas she’d felt dirty and humiliated before. She’d never behaved with such abandonment. Admittedly, all her previous experience had been with a selfish and mentally sick man.
“Hello.”
She heard Hussain’s soft greeting as he came and sat down on the bed beside her, but she lay still, hoping he’d leave thinking she was still asleep, because she couldn’t face him just yet. She still hadn’t decided how to put on her morning face.
He gave a soft laugh and said, “I know you’re awake, so get up while the coffee’s still hot. Unless, this is a hint for me to get back in?”
She spluttered, “No…no, I just woke up…”
He was laughing at her again. His voice infused with laughter, “I can’t believe you didn’t know what an orgasm was—you were most poetic in your reactions.”
An embarrassed cry of protest escaped her, and with another laugh he pulled her against him, and whispered in her hair, “I’m just teasing. Oh God, Shahira. I love you so much.” His voice gentled as he added, “I said it last night, but you may have missed it, seeing as you were reacquainting yourself with your lost libido.”
She gave a muffled laugh and Hussain continued, also laughing, “I’m in love with you, totally and desperately. I’m quite sure you missed that part, and I rather like saying it. I’ll try and make you happy, always. I’m not going anywhere, ever again. I’ll appoint people to look after the other offices and set one up in Lahore so I can stay with my lovely family and my beautiful, gorgeous wife. I’ll always love you.”
Shahira sighed with a sudden surge of happiness.
“You’ve given me everything that I thought I’d lost, Shahira. But that’s not why I fell in love with you. I loved you long before I thought redemption was possible.” He paused and his voice changed a fraction. “It would be really nice if you loved me a little, too, but it’s okay if you don’t, yet. I’ll never hurt you, Shahira. I promise.”
She was still propped up against his broad chest and smiling. Well, she hadn’t just been re-discovering her lost libido, but a lot more, much more than she could ever have expected or even imagined life could offer. She’d been falling in love, for the first time in her life, and she’d been falling for a while now, she just hadn’t known it.
Her wicked sense of fun urged her to say, “I am bound by a contract,”
After one of his signature pauses, he said with mock gravity, “Yes, you certainly are, and if last night was any indication of how seriously you take…”
“Stop it,” she cried, turning bright red, and pushing him away.
Hussain pulled her head back a little to look into her face, his eyes knowing, and smiling, he said, “I’m sorry. It’s hard to resist when I’m feeling so happy. You know you could just admit that you’re head over heels in love with me too. Or I’ll be forced to remind you exactly how much. Or maybe that was your plan all along.”
Hussain kissed her passionately, making her heart sing because she knew now that this man would always be kind and chivalrous to her; that he meant what he said, and would say only what he meant. That finally she could trust a man enough to love him, and depend on him to not destroy her because she did.
≈
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zeenat Mahal (@zeenat4indireads) is an avid reader and has been writing for as long as she can
remember. She has an MPhil in English literature from Government College Lahore and is currently doing an MFA in creative writing from Kingston University London. She won a BBC short story competition in 2001 and has been a regular contributor to local newspapers. Zeenat has eclectic tastes and an insatiable desire to learn. Her romances are a heady mix of the traditional and the contemporary, old world values face the challenges of a shrinking globe that impinge upon and help shape South Asian sensibilities.
The Contract is Zeenat’s second published novella. Currently she is working on a literary novel with elements of magical realism, while continuing to write romances. She can be contacted on her FB page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zeenat-Mahal.
Zeenat currently lives in Kingston Upon Thames with her fabulous sons.
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