The Desert Lord's Baby (13 page)

Then, ten minutes in her company and she’d had him laughing as he hadn’t laughed in years. Two hours later, as they’d made the rounds of all the heads of state, he was showing her off as if she were one of his daughters.

Farooq had given Carmen two more hours to work her magic on the crowd, bringing poles together, riding the currents of the rife-with-potential-pitfalls situation, milking it for all the boons it could yield. In testimony to her effect, after talking to her at length in his mother tongue, an Argentinean magnate who’d formerly decided not to set his next worth billions IT project on Judarian soil had approached Farooq with his change of heart.

But even if she’d manage to negotiate an end to major conflicts if she circulated longer, he wasn’t waiting one more second. He turned on the mike clipped to his
abaya’
s collar.

“My king, venerable guests…” Everyone turned to him. “I thank you for the honor of your presence and the generosity of your blessings. I hope you’ll continue to enjoy yourselves longer, but I have an urgent matter to attend to…” He dragged Carmen to him, stabbed his fingers into her garnet waterfall beneath its flowing veil, crashed his lips down on hers. He invaded her, consumed her in the kiss he’d been depriving himself of, the one he intended to go down in history. He reeled with her reaction, taste, feel, with the incongruity of hearing hoots from such a congregation. Those people welcomed the spontaneity for once, didn’t they? He kicked to the surface with all he had, swept the half-fainting Carmen up in his arms. “I’m sure you’ll all see the pressing urgency of putting my estranged wife where she belongs. Back in my bed.”

C
armen felt no heavier than Mennah, felt airborne, invincible, felt cherished and craved, and everything that wasn’t real all the way to Farooq’s quarters.

Or were they? She’d been lost in the tumult of marveling at his beauty as he swept through the palace, in the single-mindedness of his intentions and the way he’d announced them to everyone. Now she was no longer sure where he’d taken her. The sleeping quarters she’d seen this morning had been the utilitarian space of a man who had few needs and not much time for luxuries. This place was a cross between a sultan’s chambers of erotic decadence and a bridal suite from another reality.

But it was the same place, if only judging by its structure. Not one piece of the furniture she’d seen remained. On the right wing was a sitting area of wine-red couches over acres of handwoven silk Persian carpets of complementing colors. On the left was a dining area for two with a polished hand-carved mahogany round table set with an incredible dinner. Separating the wings, from previously bare ceilings rained cascades of extensively pleated, cream-colored voile drapes that caught and suffused the lights from hundreds of candles burning at the base of each of the arabesque columns ringing the huge space. Sweet-spicy
ood
incense burned in urns below the arches, its fumes swirling up in the blazing candlelight like scented ghosts. In the background, evocative recorded music droned, on an instrument also called ood, Spanish guitarlike but with more exotic intonations, adding to the mystic lasciviousness that permeated the place.

Farooq crossed the intricate woodwork floor toward a square bed that spread below the dome, surrounded on two sides by drapes, with a gigantic mirror in a gilded, elaborately carved frame as headboard. It was the largest, thickest mattress she’d ever seen, layered in cream and white sheets, looking like a huge
mille-feuille,
with the last layer the frosting of a cream lace cover. Dozens of colorful pillows of all sizes were scattered all over it and around it, like fruits surrounding an indulgence.

She tried to cling to him, bring him down with her, on her, as he placed her on it. He pulled back. Her arms fell away, stinging with the need to be filled with his bulk, with the letdown. He circled the bed, then did something that sent her heartbeats scattering. He mounted it, stood there at its far end. Just stared at her. She couldn’t take it, held out her arms again, begging for him, risking another rebuff.

It was as if a switch was hit, pushing everything inside him to maximum, the intensity emanating from him marrow-jarring.

Yet he still didn’t move, stood there, containing it all, his body clenched with the effort, examining her abandoned pose.

He waited until she lowered her arms, her hands fisting on the hollow pain inside her chest, before he drawled, “What changed your mind, to borrow a question of yours?”

He meant about wanting him. She told him the truth, as she would from now on. “I haven’t. I never said I don’t want you.”

His jaw tightened. “I remember statements to that effect.”

“I only lied to you about that once, Farooq. Anything I said or implied since then was because it seemed best not to complicate matters by bringing up what I thought you no longer wanted from me.”

“So you want me.” She came up on one shaking elbow, reached out a hand in confession, in supplication. “No. I must have more than silent invitation and surrender. More than my name all over your hands. Say it, Carmen. I must have the words. The words you once lavished on me.”

And she gave them to him. “I wanted you from the moment I saw you. I never knew there was wanting like that, that I was equipped to feel something so fierce, so total. I never stopped, and I can never stop craving you, Farooq. God knows how hard I tried. Whatever I said since we met again was me trying to spare myself pain and humiliation.”

His pupils, his whole body expanded in affront. “You’re saying I hurt and humiliated you?”

“No,”
she cried out. “You only ever gave me every satisfaction and consideration. Even when you found me again and had every reason to feel betrayed and insulted, to exact punishment, you still treated me with restraint, gave me rights another man would have considered forfeit. You even wanted to give me much more than I could ever accept. I wasn’t protecting myself from you. I realize now I never feared you. I feared circumstances, reality, your complex status and existence, my own hang-ups. But I knew I would be injured anyway. I couldn’t afford to get hurt when I must be the mother Mennah needs and deserves.”

His teeth scraped together, his nostrils flaring. “So again I ask, what changed your mind?”

“Everything sank in,” she said, coming to terms with her own feelings and decisions. “The depth of your feelings and commitment to Mennah. Then last night I realized you still want me, and not just as Mennah’s attachment, as you at first made it sound.”

The ood trilling in the background launched into a haunting passage, as if scoring her words, underscoring the silence that expanded between them in their wake.

Still standing there like another wonder from the hyper-reality of this place, a colossus carved by gods of virility, he said, “Do you remember the night you walked out on me?”

“God, don’t…”

He cut across her plea. “Do you remember what I said?”

She fisted her hands on the lace cover trying to alleviate the stinging that felt like her nerves had turned into hot needles, all trying to burst out of her skin.

“I remember what
I
said,” she moaned. “Do you know how many times I wanted to take it back? Every moment I was myself, and not the single, working mother, that’s how many times. Every time I imagined how I would explain my behavior then, how you trapped me when you wouldn’t let me walk away without explanations, that I considered pretending to take your offer, pretend that had been my objective, but couldn’t do that to you. Not after you gave me a glimpse into what being
you
means, what kind of segregation and alienation you live in, unable to trust anyone’s feelings and intentions toward you…”

Something burst out of him, too furious and abrasive to be a laugh. “So you thought it better to let me think you were a promiscuous wretch than a mercenary bitch? You decided to stab my emotions as a man, my ego as a male, rather than consolidate my paranoia as a prince? Only you could think of something like that.”

“At least I retained part of the truth,” she quavered. “That my desire was real and for you, not what you can provide.”

His hands fisted. “While it lasted, you mean.”

So he still wanted more…assurance? No. That implied emotional involvement, and none of this had been about that on his side.

But…he’d said she’d “stabbed his emotions as a man.” Did that mean…?

No.
No.
Don’t even go there. Don’t even think it.

But the way he’d said it all…“You talk as if you bought my act, when the first thing you said was that you saw through it.”

“You keep putting the weirdest things in my mouth. When did I ever say anything to that effect?”

“You kept saying things like ‘save it,’ ‘more acts’ and commenting on my acting abilities.”

“The act I was referring to was that of the unbridled lover who couldn’t get enough of me. Now you tell me
that
was the truth. The only truth. I believed you the first time, every word, every touch instantly and completely. This time, I’m in need of proof.”

And she wanted to give it to him, wanted to give him everything in her. If he wanted it. It didn’t matter for how long.

She held out her arms to him again, shaking with the enormity of her love, the jump she was taking, the depths she was exposing. “Make your demands, Farooq. I’ll meet them. Whatever they are.”

He bared his teeth on a silent growl, his body tensing as if at the shock of a lash. Did her offer, the echo of his all those months ago, in words if not in meaning, hit him that hard? Because she was matching his material offers with the one thing she owned, could give, herself? Did he even want that much of her?

He still wouldn’t move, his eyes becoming almost scary in their focus. “I asked if you remember what I said. Not what I said after your dropped your bomb. What I said when I came in. That I was almost afraid to touch you, that I thought it would take us to the edge of survival, after two days of deprivation.” She lurched under the power of memory, the potential of reality. He started to move then, in steps laden with the danger of ebbing control, of near-explosion fierceness. “Use that insight of yours and picture how I feel now, what it will be like, after sixteen months.”

Her senses ricocheted within a body that felt hollow. Every breath, every tremor, electrocuted her. Every heartbeat felt like a wrecking ball inside her chest. He kept coming, cruel in his slowness, blatant in his intentions.

“I don’t need to picture anything,” she gasped. “It’s been tearing at me all that time, it’s tearing me apart now. Please, Farooq, show me what the edge of survival feels like…”

He gave a rumble that traveled through the mattress then through her, made her feel she was lying on a livewire. Still rumbling, he stopped above her, looking at her like a lion deciding which part of his prey he’d devour first. Then he started to undress. The sheer injustice overcame her enervation, sent her surging up to snatch the privilege for herself.

He held out a warning finger. “Don’t touch me, Carmen. It is no exaggeration, what I just said.”

The one thing that made her abide by his admonition was realizing he wasn’t undressing. He was just removing his ceremonial dagger and sword, his metal belts, like a warrior back from battle, relinquishing the evidence of one form of savagery, his eyes promising her another.

Throwing everything to the end of the bed, he kneeled beside her, let his hands hover over her, like that night, mimicking in pantomime all he’d do to her, all the liberties he’d take. Then he bent over her, his lips tormenting a flight pattern of their own.

And he told her. “I couldn’t touch you for real, couldn’t kiss you when we were alone. I had to remain distant, until I came to grips with the violence of my craving for you. But I can’t. I never lose control. Unless it’s you.”

This was everything she could dream of, would risk everything for.
Her
Farooq back, confessing the depth of his desire.

Disregarding his warning, she lunged for him, hands trembling on the fastening of his pantaloons, the thousand buttons keeping his flesh away from her greed.

His growls detailed his enjoyment of her frenzy even as he ended it, grabbed her, flipped her on her stomach. Then he straddled her hips. She raised her head, met their images in the mirror headboard. He raised his eyes, meeting hers in the reflection. Instead of imparting a measure of detachment, the replicas moving in the coolness of glass sent her blood seething in her veins.

She cried out, arched her hips up, seeking more contact with him. He pushed her down, one hand flat on her back, his hardness digging into her buttocks, before he moved her again until she was lying sideways to the mirror, for a full-body view. He lay on top of her, keeping her eyes captive, grinding into her, mimicking what she was longing for him to do without the chafing barriers. Then he reared up, slowly unclipped the veil from her hair.

“I never liked red hair. But this…” He threaded his hands into it, raised the locks, let them fall. “This texture, this wave, this hue, that it’s on top of
this
head…” His fingers dug into her scalp, massaged, had her thrashing beneath him. He suddenly bunched her locks, pulled on them as if they were reins.

She arched back, lips opening on the sharpness of stimulation, panting for his. He slammed into her buttocks, gave her a hand to kiss, to bite into, before he pushed her down again.

“Do you know what seeing you in that outfit did to me?” He began to unzip her corset top. Then he stopped. She saw his face seize in the mirror. She twisted around to get the reality, saw his raptness focused on the henna patterns on her back, felt his renewed rumbling forking through her. And he hadn’t even seen their extent yet. Next moment the rumbling quaking her bones intensified as his fingers traced the spots where the patterns made up of his name clustered. He’d deciphered her homage.

She was elated now that he had. She should be alarmed that she was tampering with the control of a being of such destructive potential, but she wasn’t. He’d never lose control. Not that way. Not her Farooq. But he
was
losing his distance, his separateness to her power over him, to the sight of his name emblazoned all over her body. That was one of two things she wanted from life.

He flipped her onto her back, gloriously rough, dragging her top down to her waist, spilling her breasts into the palms they’d been made to fill, kneading them with a careful savagery that had her bucking beneath him. Her hands flailed, trying to tear his top open, needing the crush of his chest. He grasped both her hands in one of his, the other holding his top at the neck and shredding down. He tore off his
abaya,
pushed his tattered top wider, exposing the magnificent sculpture of his torso. She keened as her salivary glands stung. She needed her lips and tongue on his flesh, her teeth in it.