The Desert Lord's Baby (15 page)

“We have sex, then you walk away?”

She called the chain reaction of cataclysms they’d just shared
sex?
But then, he’d treated it as such.

“You expected cuddling?” he bit off, furious, with her, with himself. “Expected the old Farooq?”

He could swear he felt something inside her quiver before it shattered. Hope? For what? The clean slate she’d asked for? Or a renewed hold on him for a new plot?

Her eyes reddened. But their expressiveness, which for their six magical weeks and throughout this night had told him she was his in every way, was expunged, as if she’d ceased to…exist.

“I just needed to know what to expect. Now I know. When you get tired of me, will you let me move out of your quarters?”

“Who says I’ll get tired of you?”

“The old Farooq. He gave me three months, of which I served half. Should I expect that after serving the other half, whatever fascination I hold for you will be depleted and you’ll let me go, let me be Mennah’s mother only?” As he’d thought in her apartment. A few lifetimes ago. “Or have you decided you have a taste for hurting and humiliating me after all?”

“Enough,” he snarled. “You’ve changed your tune again, I see. All through the night you’ve begged for me, been mine and now…”

“Now it doesn’t matter what I am. It never mattered. To you or to anyone else. It’s what
you
are that matters. What you do, what you decide. I’m not in your league, Farooq. You pointed that out to me early on. As if I needed to be told. You’ll do what you want, and I have no say in the matter.” Without warning tears splashed her face, her arms, the ground. “I only ask, for Mennah’s sake…don’t destroy me.”

It was the most macabre thing he’d ever seen. Her face, as vacant as a corpse’s, flooded in tears streaming from eyes so red he felt they’d start gushing blood any second.

This was real. Wasn’t it? He could trust her. Couldn’t he? He couldn’t bear it if he was hurting her and she didn’t deserve it. If she was and had always been his. If she loved him…?

He wanted to say…everything. But he couldn’t. He had to make sure first. Because once he said it…
he’d be hers, too.
Forever.

He must find out if she was his, the same way. His heart and mind said yes. Now he had to await the verdict of time.

But he couldn’t abide time now, couldn’t bear her tears one more second. Couldn’t stand to see her turning away after she’d given him the most sublime night of his life. After she’d given him all of herself. And tonight, she had. This he
was
certain of.

“Carmen, come here.” She didn’t stop. He strode after her, caught her at the threshold of his expansive bathroom, took hold of shoulders that slumped with defeat. “Come, Carmen.”

Her tears flowed undeterred as she said, “Again? I’m sorry
somow’wak,
but this is probably beyond my physical abilities right now. I know you’re used to making things happen with a word, and in my case, with a touch, but after sixteen months, and even though I begged you for every bit of it as you pointed out, having you three times will probably leave me unable to walk for a week.”

And he laughed. Was there no end to her surprises?

Next second his laughter died. The burst of insight was blinding. She was trying to blind him to her tears, her weakness, using quips. Her wit was her only weapon against him.

Suddenly he hated that the power imbalance between them was so immense. He could balance it with three words. But those might unbalance it in his enemies’ favor. And he wasn’t just a man with his own heart, faith and life on the line. He would soon have Judar’s, the whole
region’s
fate resting on his clarity and decisiveness.

For now, he would obey, his instincts, not the murkiness of the doubts that had poisoned him for so long.

He cupped her face in his palms, damned himself when her teeth chattered as her features crumpled, her eyes those of a woman who would welcome the assurance of despair over the cruelty of hope.

“Your eyes are the first things that caught me, Carmen. Rivaling Judar’s skies and seas in their openness, their depths. They make me see how the Arabian Nights tale in which the tears of a princess drowned a kingdom wasn’t so ludicrous. Yours could drown a realm. I would kiss them away, stem the tears as I’ve been their source, but we have a saying here.
El boassah fel ain tefar’raa.
”

That stopped her tears. “A kiss in the eye separates?” He nodded. She hiccupped. “And you consider that a bad thing?”

“I can’t think of a worse thing.”

Her expression became lost. “Hot or cold, Farooq. Choose one temperature and stick with it. Please.”

“I can’t, when neither serves or applies. Scorching and incendiary still don’t,
ya ajmal makhloogah.
” She moaned at his endearment, the most beautiful creature, squeezed eyes that leaked again. He bent, swung her up in his arms. “About not being able to walk for a week, who said you have to? Your feet won’t touch the ground,
ya Ameerati.
” He took her to the sunken bath, descended into the perfect-temperature water. Their groans of aching relief at its fluid embrace echoed each other. “As for your physical limitations, let’s see how far we can stretch them…”

And he stretched them far, proved to her he could make her come again as he soothed the soreness he’d inflicted on her, stroking and suckling her to a dozen gentle orgasms before he let her melt back against him, drained but somehow awake in the warmth of water and intimacy. Then he took her back to their marriage bed, cuddled her as his heart dictated, not like the old Farooq would have, but as the new one who felt far more, far, far deeper.

As she slipped into sleep, he clung to her swollen lips one last time, told her all he could tell her at the moment.

“I will never get enough of you, Carmen.”

“It’s such a pleasure to see you and
Maolai
Farooq, so happy,
ya Maolati.
”

Carmen couldn’t look at Ameenah. Mennah was standing, seemed determined to take her first step today. Maybe even right now.

Oh God, she had to call Farooq. “Ameenah, my cell, please, the one with the hotline to Farooq. And my video cam.”

Ameenah zoomed out of the room. Carmen barely breathed, not daring to show any reaction to throw Mennah’s concentration off. Ameenah was back in seconds.

Just as Carmen turned on her cam, was about to hit the dial button to summon Farooq with shrieks of urgency to see this milestone with her, Mennah sat down, crawled away and busied herself with the cubes Farooq had gotten her yesterday. He had then spent the entire evening playing with Mennah and Carmen.

Smiling in self-deprecation, at her still-booming heart, at the false alarm she’d been about to raise, she thanked God Mennah had pulled the plug on this situation when she had. Farooq had a vital state meeting, but at her word he would have dropped everything and come hurtling over here only to find a sitting daughter and a terminally embarrassed wife waiting for him.

Carmen looked at the broadly smiling Ameenah and sighed. “You were saying something when I sent you on that wild-goose chase?”

Ameenah repeated her previous statement, and Carmen only smiled. She was wrong. They weren’t happy. They were delirious. At least, she was. He was…better than her old incomparable Farooq.

After their history-making wedding night, he’d seemed to let go, the bouts of anger and suspicion fading, his ups and downs becoming ups that kept only heightening. Their nights were intensifying infernos of ecstasy and abandon, and he no longer pulled away afterward, coming closer instead, letting down his guard until she felt he’d let her in all the way. Their days, which he designed with utmost care for leisurely family time with her and Mennah, followed a pattern of escalating joy.

It had been six weeks now, completing the time she’d thought she’d have before he had enough of her. But true to his word, he hadn’t. He seemed to want more of her, and then more. In and out of bed.

They made heart-melting love and had recuperation-needed-afterward sex. They shared times that flowed from serious and contemplative to tender and bantering to teasing and hilarious. He started depending on her experience and counsel, delegated responsibilities to her, for the first time entrusting vital details to another. And in every possible situation, he was letting her skills and imagination soar to their full potential.

No, this wasn’t happiness. This was bliss.

So much bliss that her heart hit the ground at random moments, with fear so brutal, she couldn’t breathe.

When would it come to an end?

Then Ameenah added, “I only hope you won’t let your happiness be affected when it’s time for
Maolai
to do his duty.”

And she knew.
Now
was when. She rasped, “What duty?”

Ameenah’s eyes rounded with horror as she realized she’d slipped up, no doubt seeing her statement’s impact on Carmen. “
Ya Elahi,
ana assfah—
Maolati samheeni,
I beg your forgiveness, I didn’t mean to…”

Her heart started to implode. “Stop apologizing and freaking out, Ameenah. Now tell me what this duty is.”

“If
Maolai
hasn’t told you, it isn’t my place—”

Carmen raised a hand. “It is your duty to do as I say, isn’t it? Now I’m telling you to tell me.”

After an oppressive minute, Ameenah said, “
Maolai
is to enter a marriage of state.”

The world disappeared, the void outside joining the void inside, until she felt she would be no more…

“When?” Was that disembodied voice hers?

Ameenah was on the verge of tears by now. Carmen felt nothing as Ameenah choked, “No one knows. The bride hasn’t even been picked yet.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a complicated story, and I’m not the one best equipped to tell it to you…”

Carmen interrupted her agitation. “You’re my best friend around here, and if you won’t tell me, I’ll only be in the dark, and miserable.
Please…
tell me.”

Ameenah finally nodded. “It started six hundred years ago…”

A bleeding huff burst out of Carmen. “God, it was preordained Farooq would marry someone else that far back?”

“It was that far back that the Aal Masoods ended the tribal wars and founded Judar. But ever since King Zaher fell ill, Judar’s second-most influential tribe, the Aal Shalaans, started demanding their turn at the throne, threatening an uprising. Offering them settlements didn’t work, and a forceful solution seemed the one remaining option. A solution that would lead to civil war. A war the Aal Masoods will do anything to prevent. Even if it means giving up the throne. Which would still tear Judar apart.”

Carmen stared at her. Wow. Farooq couldn’t be involved in anything that wasn’t world-shaking, world-
shaping,
could he? Was it any wonder he’d shaken hers, shaped it?

Ameenah went on. “Then our neighboring kingdom, Zohayd, was dragged into the crisis. The Aal Shalaans form the ruling house and the majority of the population there, and they started pressuring King Atef to support their tribesmen’s rise to Judar’s throne. He refused. The Aal Masoods are his biggest allies and the reason behind Zohayd’s and the region’s prosperity, and their losing the throne would destabilize the whole region, maybe the world. His refusal was about to plunge Zohayd in civil war, too.

“But through the Aal Masood brothers’ intensive negotiations, the Aal Shalaans accepted a peaceful solution. That the future king of Judar would marry the daughter of their noblest patriarch so their blood would enter the royal house of Aal Masood. The problem is, after much deliberation, that patriarch was determined to be the king of Zohayd himself, who has no daughter.”

This kept getting better and better. Carmen felt twinges of hysteria rising through the numbness. “So now what?”

“They’re in negotiations again,” Ameenah rasped, as if confessing a crime. “Over picking another patriarch, I guess.”

“And once this happens, Farooq will marry his daughter, to stop the whole region from going to hell in a handcart.”

“Yes. But,
Maolati,
this won’t affect you, you mustn’t let it. You are the wife he picked himself, the one he loves.”

She burst out laughing, shocking Ameenah like she’d once shocked her husband. This
was
a prime example of
sharr elbaleyhah ma yodhek—
the worst plights induce laughter.

She’d been tormenting herself with all the reasons it would end, and now she was going to lose him over something she couldn’t have imagined. She couldn’t even be angry that he’d married her knowing he’d take another wife. Farooq sure married only for momentous reasons. His daughter’s future, now Judar’s—the whole region’s.

He’d marry another woman, come to
her
after copulating with that woman to produce the heir who’d avert civil wars…