by Sophia Lynn
Of course, she thought, there are better times to do that than right before a wedding.
The religious portion of the ceremony had been handled earlier in the day, and by Allatfi custom, it was short, little more than a quiet moment where papers were signed and the marriage legally acknowledged. She had been fine then, even smiling when Kashif winked at her as they both leaned over the contract. Neither of them had parents to witness it, so they had pulled in some of Kashif's lawyers to sign with them.
At the time, it had struck Honey as a surprisingly lonely thing, two orphans entering into a purely political marriage so that things could start going right.
Not just political, Honey had thought as she signed.
Kashif had had the first two million dropped in her account before they'd left the US. Whatever happened now, her debts were paid off in full, and even if nothing else came of this, she could spend the rest of her life in comfort.
That's a lot for just my name on a piece of paper, Honey had thought, but now, dressed in a lavishly embroidered tunic that clung to her chest and flared out over hips, an actual tiara resting on her dark hair and sitting in the limousine bringing her to the palace for the first time, she knew it was no little thing at all.
As the limousine pulled up to the palace steps, and as she saw the enormous crowd gathered on the palace lawn, she understood in a way she hadn't before that this was real. This was her life. Those people who she had been introduced to over the last two weeks as the sheikh's childhood sweetheart and heady fairytale love affair, were cheering for her, and she was terrified.
I can't, I can't, she thought, and then a sterner voice – one that sounded a little like her father's –chimed in and told her sternly that she had to.
A deal's a deal, and…
…and I can't disappoint or embarrass Kashif.
She wondered when not embarrassing Kashif had taken such a priority, but then the door opened, and all she could do was step out of the car, standing up with her chin in the air and her eyes focused somewhere over the heads of all the cheering people.
There was a moment where she thought she would flee after all, but then a strong arm circled her shoulders, drawing her close to a far larger body that seemed made of strength. Instinctively, she stepped closer, and then Honey looked up into Kashif's grinning face.
“I was wondering if you were trying to convince the limousine driver to get you out of here,” he murmured softly, and she found herself grinning up at him.
“Well, I might have, but I don't like to leave before the end of a party.”
That made Kashif laugh out loud, and he shook his head as he guided her up the palace steps through the cheering throng.
“You may regret those words,” he warned her. “We're expected to stay until the last guest goes, and it is our duty to shut this down.”
Honey suddenly remembered what her life had been in the years before her mother died, how everything had grown small and shrunken, and how her life had seemed to consist of nothing more than an endless list of errands and chores. Now the world was very different, and it felt good.
“We'll see who shuts what down,” she said, and then they were sweeping into the palace itself, their entrance greeted with the cheers of the wedding guests inside.
While the legal part of the ceremony had been short and sweet, the celebration itself certainly would not be. All of Allatf’s nobility had turned out in its very best to see the young sheikh wed, and everyone wanted to wish the new couple a brilliant marriage and a joyous union. There was a blur of faces and well-wishes and offers of advice, and through it all, Kashif was at Honey's side, solid and calm as a brick wall.
Honey's earlier reticence began to melt away as she realized that she could depend on Kashif being there, directing her towards people he liked, steering her away from people who looked as if they might be trouble.
I'm royalty, Honey realized a few hours in, and Kashif laughed. She blushed. She hadn't even realized she was speaking out loud.
“You are,” he said, and the possessive look he gave her sent a shiver straight down her spine, making her toes curl inside her heels. Suddenly she remembered what he’d said the first night he had stumbled back into her life, about satisfying their urges the old-fashioned way, and wow, that was not the right thought for her wedding day.
After the long few hours of greeting all of the people who had come out to wish them well, the room suddenly cleared in the middle, and the lights dimmed. Honey knew what that meant, and she swallowed hard as the first lilting strains of an old Allatfi love song rang through the quieting expectant air.
“Are you ready?” Kashif murmured, and Honey gave him a smile that was only a little panicked.
“What happens if we're not?”
“Then we do it anyway and hope,” he said, and suddenly she felt a million times lighter.
Dressed in clothes that cost more than she could begin to think about, Honey allowed Kashif to take her hand and lead her to the center of the empty floor where a bright light shone down from above. A few moments before, they had been surrounded by people on all sides, and now there was no one around at all but them.
Kashif let her go, and they stood some six feet apart in the light. It should have felt terribly vulnerable, not having him there suddenly, but she could feel his eyes on her, a weight that made her heart beat faster, and she smiled at him just as he smiled at her. In all that enormous room, the only person whose gaze mattered at all – that would ever matter – was Kashif's.
The music changed, going from introduction to movement, and she raised her hands to waist-height, her spine straight, and she started to circle Kashif just as he started to circle her, his hands held in the same position.
They had practiced this dance together and apart for the last two weeks. It was a traditional part of any Allatfi wedding. It had been performed in one form or another for almost three hundred years, and something of that history settled on Honey as she danced it with Kashif.
They didn't touch as they circled one another, always staying just a hand's breadth away. She stepped back, and he followed her. She spun and he spun with her. In his traditional black formal tunic, there was something incredibly gorgeous about Kashif, something that made her breath catch, and that was likely why she missed her step.
One moment she was going through the steps that she thought she knew right down to the bones, and the next she had somehow snagged her toe right underneath her heel, and she was falling.
Oh no, I've ruined everything, she thought, and with the burst of fear and humiliation, there was also shame, for having ruined something that Kashif needed to go perfectly.
She braced to hit the floor, but instead, she found herself in Kashif's arms, held close to his broad chest as the crowd broke out in cheers.
“Very good time, my dear,” he said with a little wink. “That looked like quite the dramatic finale.”
Honey blinked in surprise as he set her back on her feet, taking a bow to the crowd as Kashif did.
“You saved me,” she said in surprise, and he gave her a wry grin even as he walked her off the floor.
“I always will,” he said, and why, oh why was there something terrible in her that believed him?
The rest of the night passed in something of a chaotic blur. Kashif was presented with a sword so they could cut their incredibly enormous and fancy cake, there was more dancing and more people to be introduced to. There were speeches both delightful and dry, and there was just so much.
Honey was beginning to feel almost dizzy with noise and excitement when the final guests filtered out of the hall just a short while before dawn, and Kashif turned to her. Even hours on, he looked crisp and strong, ready to go another day if necessary.
“Well, that's our duty seen to,” he said. “Shall I return you to your rooms?”
Oh, it's not real, she thought in a surprising amount of disappointment. We're really not… I have my own rooms...
&nb
sp; There was nothing wrong. There was nothing wrong at all, and Honey had no idea why she suddenly felt as if the weight of the entire palace had just dropped on her shoulders.
Chapter Four
Kashif
Kashif knew he was running a con. It was the most benign con in the world. It was a con designed to help the least fortunate among his people, bringing them the aid they needed to truly live and thrive. It was a con with absolutely no victims beyond the pride of the old men who thought they knew best.
Kashif knew he was running a con, and the first rule of running any con was not to get taken in himself.
However, when Honey fell into his arms, her eyes wide and sparkling amber, her berry-red mouth slightly parted in surprise, his first instinct was simply to kiss her right then and there in front of the world.
It would have been acceptable. Even the older generation that frowned on any display of physical affection in public would have unbent enough to allow a supposedly infatuated man a kiss on his own wedding night. It would have been fine. It would have been better than fine. It would have been something that was photographed and shared and offered up as yet more proof that the sheikh was entirely in love with his new bride.
And yet.
He couldn't do it. He wanted to. He wanted to kiss the beguiling young woman in his arms very much. He wanted to hold her and to kiss her again, because sometimes it felt as if that was all he had thought about since their first kiss weeks ago.
Kashif didn't think of himself as a particularly good man. He liked to think that he tried hard. He liked to think that he was leaving his world a little better than he’d found it. He wasn't much troubled by morals or by the great questions of the age, however, and of course he liked getting his own way best.
However, there was something in him that couldn't kiss Honey just then, not because he didn't want to, but because it wouldn't have been for her. It would have been for the gossip mongers and for the press and for the people who were looking to see if their relationship was the real thing.
So instead, he put her back on his feet, and for the rest of the wedding celebration, he had put to the back of his mind every feeling she had awakened in him.
The palace was silent as he walked her back to her rooms, the staff mostly overseeing the breakdown of the wedding festivities.
“I'm sorry about the lack of a honeymoon,” Kashif found himself saying. “I would like nothing more than to take off for a month-long trip to Vienna or the Caribbean, but matters with the board of finance—”
“Ha, I wouldn't expect you to,” Honey said, waving it off, and Kashif couldn't stop himself from thinking why not? Why shouldn't a gorgeous young bride demand a honeymoon? If she was providing him with a sham marriage, why shouldn't she deserve the best damned sham marriage money could buy?
“We could go off in a month or so,” he found himself suggesting. “What's your favorite vacation spot? Anywhere you'd like to go?”
She gave him a slightly wry look.
“You saw the house I was living in, didn't you?” she asked. “A vacation was staying at home and catching up on my reading or on my television.”
“Ah. Well. Anywhere you want to go. Think about it.”
She was silent for so long that Kashif thought she wouldn't respond at all, but then at her door, she turned to him.
“You don't have to do that when there aren't any cameras around you know,” she said, and Kashif raised an eyebrow at that.
“Do what?”
“All of it. The sweet husband thing. You're treating me like I'm your wife.”
“As a matter of fact, after the ceremony today, and especially after the festivities, you are my wife, by law and by custom.”
“Yes, but not really,” she insisted. “I mean, of course we're going to act like husband and wife in public, but we're not in public right now.”
If he hadn't been looking straight at her, he would have missed it, the slight blush on her cheeks and the way she bit her lower lip.
“No, we're not,” Kashif agreed. “So what do you propose we do when we're not in public?”
They had come to the door to her suite. It was right next to his, and there was a door between them as well as the exterior entrances. More than once over the last few weeks, he had stared at that door, wondering what it might be like to simply open it and see what she was doing when alone after the wedding preparation.
“Well,” Honey said, taking a deep breath. “I assume we will be courteous with one another.”
“Courtesy is a very good thing,” Kashif agreed.
Honey lingered in the doorway, the inside of her suite shadowy behind her.
“What else?” Kashif asked, his voice low and gentle.
“Well … I would like to think that we'll be friendly as well. That was one of the reasons why I thought we could do this. Something about meeting you back in the United States, well… It made me think we could be friends.”
“I would very much like to be your friend, Honey,” Kashif said, and when she looked up at him, her teeth biting into her plump lower lip, he knew the tension between them wasn't just in his head.
“What else?”
“What else should I ask for?” she asked, and there was a slightly desperate note in her voice, something strangely wild and longing and doubtful all at once. “You already married a poor excuse for a noblewoman—”
“Never,” Kashif said swiftly. “I have no intention of letting any media group say that about you. I don't see why I have to put up with you saying it either. You are no poor excuse. You are the one I chose.”
“Because no one else wanted you,” Honey said, and Kashif ignored the sharpness of her tone. His little rose had thorns, and he was coming to realize that he loved it. Instead of taking offense, he grinned at her.
“Then maybe you should think of me as the lucky one,” he said. “Maybe you're the one doing me the favor.”
“Kashif—”
“What I want to know right now,” he continued, “is what you want.”
“What I want?” she echoed, and there was such a dubious note to her voice that he thought that no one must have asked it of her very often.
“Yes. No cameras, they're forbidden in this hall unless they belong to one of us. No listening ears, no one here but you and me. All I want to know, Honey, is what you want.”
She looked up at him, and in the dim light, her eyes were luminous. Kashif thought that she might shrug and finally duck back into her room, done with this game. He thought she might pull away, and that would be the end of it. Instead, she surprised him.
“You,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I want you.”
It was as if all unawares, his self-control had been tethered by a single straining thread. For this entire wedding, perhaps even the entire time since he had brought Honey to Allatf, it had been stretched and strained, and now, finally, with a single bare word from Honey, it shattered entirely.
One moment he was admiring her beauty in the moonlight, and the next moment, she was in his arms, her perfect face lifted up to him, her soft lips parted and her small hands knotting in the fabric of his tunic.
Their kiss was wild and frantic, not entirely graceful as her teeth knocked against his in their first passionate rush. They pulled back for a moment, but then they rejoined, Kashif pushing them both into her suite and slamming the door behind them.
The kiss they had shared before was nothing on this blaze. This was nothing but heat and need and wonder, and though there was a part of him that cautioned him to take it slowly, to make it last and to savor his beautiful new wife, the rest of him could not wait, could never wait.
Mine, he thought, and there was no doubt in him, never could be, that he was wrong in this matter. She was his, and it didn't matter how they had started this, nothing would change it.
Chapter Five
Honey
One moment, Honey was going to do the right thing and go to bed. It had b
een a long day, and she had just gotten married to one of the most powerful men on the continent. There was a lot to go through, and she had told herself firmly that it was important to be alone and to think about what came next.
However, the part of her that always wanted her to do the smart thing, the right thing, had not anticipated getting married to Kashif Riaz. She had not anticipated how handsome he was, how his every touch seemed to drive her closer and closer to the edge of some unseen cliff, no matter how gentle.
She had not expected him to ask her what she wanted, and so, unable to help herself, she had only told him the truth.
The kiss carried her away, and then they were in the dimness of her suite, the only lights on soft and amber and romantic. She vaguely remembered her maids (she had maids now, what was that all about?) giggling and saying it would set the mood for her first night as a married woman. She had thought it was a silly thing before, but now as Kashif scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, she felt as if she were falling into some kind of dream.
“This can't be real,” Honey found herself murmuring, and Kashif pulled back just far enough to give her a smile.
“Then it is a dream, and there is nothing in dreams that can hurt you, is there?”
She didn't know about that. She had had nightmares since she was small, and the last few years certainly hadn’t been very conducive to any good dreams showing up. However, she forgot all about her doubts when he laid her tenderly on the mattress, coming to kneel by her side.
“I remember what you asked me,” he said. “When you first agreed to this.”
He leaned down to kiss her, his lips sweet and beautifully gentle, ghosting over her temple and down to the corner of her mouth and then over her chin.
“I would never hurt you, darling,” Kashif said, and that promise sent a longing throb through her body. She had known him when he was a careless little boy, and now she was getting to know him as a man. This man, the one who gazed down at her with such care and such fire, wouldn't lie to her like this.