Stolen by the Desert King

by Clare Connelly

  But danger seared his soul.

  Danger in the way she’d laughed with him, smiled at him, seemed to so completely understand him.

  There was danger in the way his body had tightened with a need to protect her. Seeing her on the edge of the garden with his bird overhead, knowing her to be so vulnerable. She had been manipulated by those who should have loved her most. She had become a pawn to them at the moment of conception. He felt an ache of vulnerability for the child who’d buried her parents and shaped her life after their loss. Who’d lived her life as a tribute to their loss!

  Didn’t she realise she was part of a greater plan? She spoke of fate and destiny; but these mattered not when choices were made.

  Imagining her life if she’d married Fayez Haddad – knowing how close she’d come to doing exactly that – showed more danger, for it infuriated Khalifa and burned him with rage.

  There was danger in the way he’d wanted to talk to her, to tell her about his secrets and his needs. Danger in the way he wanted to learn hers.

  His wife was not for that. He didn’t want to get to know her – the woman who would have sold herself to Fayez. He didn’t want to encourage her to care for him. Romance, love, affection, these were all foolish distractions and he had already been distracted by them once in his life. Losing Selena had damned near demented him for a time.

  No, he hadn’t married Kylie for any warm and fuzzy reason.

  She was a means to an end and that end was revenge. Avenging Selena’s pain in the only way left open to him –he wouldn’t let his mind wander. He wouldn’t let this become about Kylie – about Kylie’s needs. Nor his need for Kylie. Sex was one thing. Any other form of intimacy was not on his agenda.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE THOUGHT HE WASN’T going to come to her. Somewhere between two and three in the morning, she gave up waiting, and let her eyes drift shut. And it was only an hour or so after that his kiss woke her, his lips gentle on hers, his body a weight she craved like no other. Her arms twisted around his neck and she pulled him down, aching to feel him, needing his weight, his dominance, him. All of him.

  He made love to her as she wanted; as she needed, but then disappeared.

  It was the same the next night, and the next. For a month, every night he visited her room and made her body tremble with desire, and then he would leave with a single kiss, locking the door behind him.

  It took her three weeks to realise that was what he was doing. The small noise hadn’t meant anything to her at first but then, one night, after he’d left, frustrations had nibbled at her mind and she’d given into them, finally deciding to go and speak to him.

  And she’d found the door locked.

  The inequity of his having access to her room without reciprocating was instantly unpalatable to her, but when she brought it up the next night, he simply laughed. “You do not need to come to me, surely? You can’t want more than this?” And he’d thrust into her, driving any thoughts from her mind but pleasure and power. Hers, and his.

  But finally, a month after they’d been in the desert together, Kylie felt something inside of her snap. Her body was covered in perspiration, but her heart was cold.

  “Khalifa?”

  He was already withdrawing from her, pushing away, and she felt the familiar surge of panic at the realization that soon he would be gone.

  “Sleep, azeezi.” And it was kind and it was considerate but it was also like a red rag to a bull. Kylie pushed out of bed so that she was standing, stroking her silk nightgown down over her hips. Modesty was a ridiculous concern in that moment, given the way he’d just possessed her, but she didn’t want that side of them to overtake her. She needed to speak to him, away from the fog of sensual heat and need, the awakening he’d stirred in her that at times made Kylie wonder if she’d lost her senses.

  “No.”

  He paused, in the midst of running a hand through his hair, his body gloriously on display for her. She forced her gaze to stay locked to his face.

  “No?”

  “We need to… talk.” The word was insipid and she spoke it quietly, then cleared her throat, internally shaking herself to be braver than that; to be better than that.

  “About what?”

  “This.” She waved a hand towards the bed, her cheeks flushing when she saw the state of wild abandon in the sheets and pillows. “I’m sick of it.”

  “You are … sick of it?” Disbelief etched in his features and she groaned.

  “Not… it,” she said softly, her cheeks flaming a darker red. “I’m sick of it being so one-sided.”

  “It is hardly that,” he said softly. “You are not the only one enjoying yourself in bed, if that is what worries you?”

  She gasped, her eyes showing her frustration. “No, it’s not. God, you’re arrogant! I don’t mean the sex is one sided, or the pleasure for that matter.” She bit down on her lip and looked away. Though their making love was always dictated by him. He was in charge. In control. Just once she’d have loved to sneak up on his sleeping form and take him in her mouth; to wake him up by kissing his body all over.

  “So what is it, then?”

  His impatience fueled her fire. “This isn’t enough.” She shook her head, frustrated at her own inability to express her thoughts. When she was alone, in the day, she could conjure up a thousand and one things she wanted to shout at him – to throw in his face. But faced with the hulking figure of her husband – the naked figure of her husband – words were deserting her. “I don’t just want you to come into my room and make love to me each night.”

  He didn’t argue the distinction between having sex and making love. There was no point. Neither of them had any experience with the latter – the act of two bodies coming together as a sign of adoration and appreciation. Rather than a lust-fueled, primal possession that they were both seeking, night after night.

  Instead, he took the easy loophole in her argument.

  “You don’t?”

  Her eyes were pleading when they met with his. “Not without … it’s not fair. I can’t ever come to you. I don’t just mean at night for … for … this,” again, she pointed at the traitorous bed with its evidence of passion so clear for them to see. “I mean that I don’t see you except here. This isn’t a marriage.”

  He balled his hand into a fist, disbelief raw in his gut. “And what did you expect? Roses and deep and meaningful conversations?”

  She pulled away from him as though he’d slapped her. It only angered him more.

  “The man you were going to marry would not have given you that.”

  “I’m sure he would have given me more than an hour of his time each day.”

  His laugh was a sound rich with disbelief. “You saw for yourself what he is capable of. Are you actually saying you would prefer to be with him, even knowing his violent temper?”

  “No,” she shook her head, lifting a hand to her temples and massaging them. “I’m not. But I can’t do this, Khalifa. Every time you touch me, it’s so perfect. In that moment, this feels real. And then it’s over and you go and I’m forced to accept that I’m married to a stranger. I don’t want us to just be about sex.”

  He said nothing; his face was unreadable, his eyes closed-books, so dark she felt as though she’d stumbled into the depths of midnight just by looking at him.

  “You have spent your life preparing for this,” he said without sympathy. “You arrived in Argenon prepared to marry a man about which you know nothing.”

  “That’s not true,” the words were croaky. “I’d met you. And I believed you were to be my groom…”

  “But had I not come to Sydney?” He pushed, his eyes narrowing. “Had I not interfered? You would have been brought to this country, dressed like a whore at a pithaki for all to ogle and you would have married that son of a bitch! A man who would have made your every moment a misery. So do not complain to me!”

  She sucked in another breath, seeking air, needing something.
>
  Her face had drained completely of colour – she was as white as the sheets she’d been laid against minutes earlier.

  His outburst kept firing through her brain – statement after statement exploding like a row of bombs. “What’s a pithaki?” She whispered, the words tortured from her soul.

  “A brothel.”

  She winced, spinning away from him and moving towards the doors to the balcony. It was pitch black outside, but still not as dark as her husband’s eyes; her husband’s soul.

  And could she blame him for his black rage?

  By his reading of events, she’d had a choice in this. He hadn’t. If she’d pulled out of the wedding, then he would still be free to live his life. To be single. He’d had to marry her. And he was making the best of the situation – sleeping with her even when he apparently wanted nothing else from his wife.

  She stifled a sob, lifting a fist to her mouth, wondering at why she was so upset. Why any of this surprised her.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were soft. She whispered them even as her own heart was breaking.

  “For what?” His response was whip fast and no calmer than his earlier outburst.

  “I’m sorry that you had to marry me. I’m sorry that my family and his family have some ancient grudge against your family. I’m sorry that you married me. That we married.” She pressed her palm flat against the glass, staring out unseeing at the desert beyond. “If there was any way I could undo this, I would.”

  He stared at her, long and hard, every cell in his body revolting against the idea. He told himself it was because this marriage served many purposes – one of which was making the Haddads suffer. Of hurting Fayez.

  His mouth was a grim line in his face. “And yet, we can’t.”

  She blinked her eyes shut – until that moment, she hadn’t understood how desperately she needed him to say something. To comfort her in some way; to tell her he didn’t want that. But of course he did.

  “No.” She bit down on her lip, running through the situation as though it were an equation. All her life, maths had been the only thing that had made sense to her and she’d become adept at slotting real-life conundrums into a mathematical context, in an attempt to unwrap them fully. “We can’t undo this, so we have to live with it.” She sucked in a breath, nodding slowly as events multiplied and then divided and formed a sort of line in her mind. There was no ready-answer, but there were wrong-answers, and sometimes they could be just as illuminating. “And I’m telling you, I can’t live with our marriage if this is all there is. I’d rather have nothing from you – nothing – than an hour in bed together that makes me feel … that makes me feel…”

  The words tapered off and Khalifa waited with barely disguised impatience. “What does it make you feel?” He prompted after several beats of thick silence clogged the air between them.

  “For the time you’re here,” she turned slowly, just enough to angle her face towards his, “I feel like it’s real.” The words caught in her throat and unshed tears sprang to her eyes. “You’re the first man I’ve ever been with and in bed… it’s so perfect … This feels real. Our marriage. Us. What we mean to each other. But it’s not, is it?”

  His eyes flecked with something she didn’t understand. Her equation jolted. Quivered. Waiting for new information that would suddenly make everything better.

  “You are my wife.”

  She made a scoffing sound of frustration. “And it’s that simple to you?”

  “It is as simple as it ever was. And I cannot see that any woman who agreed to marry, at twenty two, a man about which she knew nothing, has any right to argue. You are comfortable. You are cared for. You are safe,” he said the last word in a way that sent shivers down her spine. She frowned, not quite sure how to interpret it.

  “You don’t get it,” she said with a sigh. “Arranged marriages aren’t a property transaction. I expected to marry someone who would have the same desire to make our marriage work. To make it a real marriage. In this way I would have been far better off with Fayez Haddad.”

  Something inside Khalifa flashed with a dark emotion. His expression shifted, haunted, and a muscle jerked along his jaw, as though he was working hard to control that same emotion.

  “He is a monster,” Khalifa said darkly.

  “And you’re not?” She spat the insult at his feet. “You think using me for sex when it suits you makes you some kind of hero? You think you’re not every bit as bad as him?”

  Khalifa was very still, his body like stone, his expression tight in his face. “Careful, azeezi. You are close to taking it too far.”

  “I don’t care! I want to take it too far! I want to speak my mind and argue with you and talk to you and interact with you in some way that’s not sex!”

  “Why?” He demanded, ignoring the screaming accusations of his inner-self. Everything she was describing was what he’d forced himself to ignore. That day in the desert had been a wake-up call for him, reminding him of the dangers that would come from seeing this woman as anything other than a convenient bride. Yes, a very sexy, very desirable one. But Khalifa had had great sex before. That wasn’t enough to ignore common sense for.

  “Because that’s marriage!”

  “So is this!” He stalked across the room and lifted her hand, showing her the ring she wore, the ring that marked her as his.

  He wore no such jewellery.

  “You’re wrong. That’s a chattel.”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes glinting. “But it is one that binds us both.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said with a frustrated shake of her head. “There’s more here. We could be so much more.”

  “No.” A harsh denial. Kylie sucked in a sharp breath. “I do not want more.” The words were like daggers to her soul. “I do not want more.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking from both corners. “Well, I don’t want this.”

  Something like regret twisted in his gut. He crossed his arms and ignored the feelings. “Perhaps you should have thought twice before signing your life away for a few million dollars, mmm?”

  She looked up at him, confusion obvious in her features.

  “I bought your debts, azeezi. If that was enough reason to marry Fayez, it is enough to stay married to me.” He lifted a finger to her lips, tracing the outline, his expression strange and foreign.

  She pulled away from his touch, her body ice-cold.

  “You know that’s not the only reason I would have married him…”

  “Oh, yes. Your parents.” His expression was terse. “I do not think they would complain that you have ended up with me. So far as groom-swaps go, you have got a far better arrangement now.”

  She stomped her foot, her hair flying about her face. “Stop being like this. Stop it! It’s not who you are! I don’t know why… I don’t know why you’re acting like you don’t feel this too but I know you do. Why are you ignoring it?”

  “Ignoring what?”

  “There’s something … like … I look at you and I know you feel it…”

  “You are speaking in riddles.”

  “I don’t know what it’s called. Not love,” she said with a shake of her head. “And yet … maybe? I don’t know. I just know I’ve never felt it before.”

  “What you are feeling,” he said with surprising kindness, “is lust. You have not had sex before and it is natural that you would confuse those feelings with something bigger.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “It’s different. It’s more.”

  “Believe me, Kylie, I have had great sex before, and I have been in love before. We are one of those things only.”

  She flinched at the delivery of this news – both its content and its horrible, strange pointedness. The gulf of what she didn’t know about him spanned the ground between them, like an impassable ocean. He’d been in love? So he was capable of that emotion?

  And he didn’t feel it now.

  She nodded, her expr
ession unknowingly crestfallen. She turned away from him, moving away too, needing distance and space. Time to think and feel and examine her heart.

  “Fine.” It wasn’t fine, but she needed him to go. She needed to be alone so badly.

  Minutes later, she was. And her heart ached.

  *

  It was the first night of their marriage in which he hadn’t come to her.

  She told herself she was glad. She spread out in her bed and stared at the ceiling and replayed their argument in her head, remembering his determination not to listen to her. To make her accept the black and white limitations of their marriage. She told herself he was respecting her wishes and not using her body for sex when he wasn’t prepared to open his heart.

  She told herself it was a good thing.

  But when he didn’t arrive the next night, it became harder to listen to that comforting advice.

  Four nights alone in bed and she realized there were worse things than being in a loveless marriage. Being in a sexless marriage was Kylie’s new nightmare. Having been made to crave and need his body, she found not being with him an unbearable absence.

  So much so that on the fifth night, somewhere in the small hours of the morning, she tiptoed to the door between their room, intending only to press her ear against it and see if she could hear anything of her husband.

  Her ear flat against the door, she lifted her palm for support and the door clicked and gave, opening inwards with a very quiet whoosh.

  She startled, jumping backwards guiltily, a hand lifting to her lips. She was instantly confused. Tempted beyond belief! Her pulse raged through her body, devouring her vascular system angrily, marking her from the inside. And then, without even realizing it, she took a step forwards. And another. Until she was just a door’s width from his room.

  She could hear the water lapping and, again, of their own volition her hands lifted and turned the door knob. It was ancient and brass and very heavy but the door sprung inwards with surprising alacrity.

  He was swimming.