Kitabı oku: «The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess», sayfa 3
Like its predecessors, that comment flowed with the bad blood he’d established. This time he realized what the spasm that shot through him was. Regret. If only…
But he of all people had no time for if-onlys. He wasn’t just a man with his own emotions and convictions at stake, he was a monarch whose actions controlled the reins of peace in a whole region.
“You don’t consider anyone at all,” he bit off.
“By that you mean I’m not bowing to everyone’s wishes without a word, don’t you? What did you all expect me to do? To feel? To say? Oh, two more parents? Cool! The old ones aren’t my real ones? Bummer. They lied to me all my life? Shame. All those hunky cousins are really my half brothers? Phew. Good thing I haven’t lusted after any of them. I have to give up my life to get bartered in a political game to a boor? Whatever. Can I have a latte now?”
This was no laughing matter. But the way she’d delivered her parody, her choice of words, her sheer cheekiness, was irresistible. His chuckle overpowered him.
She sighed. “Glad you see the black humor in this ‘situation.’ It is what sharr el baleyah ma yodhek was coined for, a plight big enough that only hysterical laughter can do it justice.”
He gave a grudging nod. “The revelations must have been a shock, I grant you that….”
She clapped in mock delight. “Ooh, can I frame your grant?”
He fisted his hands against the urge to lunge across the table and drag her over to him and willingly rose to her bait. “You can. I can even issue you a royal declaration for a more frame-worthy concession.”
“Wow. You’ve grown generous in your old age. Don’t splurge on those decrees and declarations, though. They might dry up on you.”
“Can you by any stretch of your admittedly wildly fertile imagination see that happening?”
“Nah, this here Pacific would dry up first.”
“This here Pacific has to take care of its own abundance. I have that of my decrees and declarations taken care of. As for you—” he leaned closer, his gaze sweeping resigned appreciation over her “—it’s abundantly clear your own old age has been good to you.” He raised one eyebrow. “If not to your tongue. I don’t remember it being anywhere near this…forked.”
That tongue came out to glaze those perfect lips, sending his hunger roaring to sample the moisture, drain it. “No? Are you sure your memory, once so reliable, isn’t going?”
“My memory will be the last thing that dims in me, around the time I turn a hundred and twenty.”
“You intend to deteriorate that soon?”
“Just being realistic here.”
“Heh. You probably are, too. But one word of advice. In this constant gloating state over your superiority, don’t drive while anywhere outside of Judar. You’d be apprehended for driving under the influence of a mind-altering high.”
“What and whose purpose do I serve if I don’t act on my superiority? You don’t see a lion hiding his just so that other animals won’t think him full of himself.”
“A lion, huh? You’re really stretching to fit the job description, aren’t you? Lord-of-all-you-survey galore.”
“You mean you don’t think the shoe fits?”
“You mean you think any shoe exists to fit your figurative foot?”
“One must never give up hope.”
“You mean you don’t give hope decrees?”
“I don’t currently have it on my subjects’ roster, no.”
“That must be why there’s still hope.”
“I’m working on acquiring its controlling shares. Enjoy wild, unregulated hope while you can…” He paused when her eyes stilled on him with a new intensity until he groaned. “What?”
“I’m watching for the moment you slip into that coma. I’m also debating seeking help or leaving you passed out on the floor.”
Another laugh took him by surprise. Just as this whole meeting had. This tug-of-war of wills and wits had dragged him into its rapids, was so fluent, so unlike anything he’d had with her, yet somehow the same. Their conversations in the past had been about mutual pleasure, not one-upping each other with witty salvos, but they’d been perfectly matched, totally on the same wavelength, kindred in tastes and views and perceptions. And how he’d missed that.
But the mind that had housed all those qualities he’d craved had also been infested by vices that had appalled him…
Her voice brought him out of his unsavory musings. “But all macabre comedy aside, that’s how you all wanted me to react, right? So you could move on with your plans without the inconvenience of pausing for a few minutes to think about how I’m grappling with my identity and past, plus your proposal to completely mess with my future?”
“I am pausing for a whole evening.”
“Yeah, sure. You want to hear about how I’m coping. Your memory isn’t going but gone if you expect me to believe that.”
He pursed his lips. “We must leave the past in the past.”
She imitated his expression. “How very convenient for you.”
“It’s convenient for both of us. For our future together.”
She jerked as if he’d slapped her, flooding his mind with the emory of her similar reaction when he’d revealed to her the ugliness of his agony and madness seven years ago.
After a long, frozen moment, she rasped, “This was all fun and reminiscent of the sordid past. But let me set one thing straight. We don’t have a future together. Our kingdoms will have to come up with another way to secure whatever they’re hatching together. I’ll never marry you, not for politics, not to save my life.”
It was his turn to stiffen as the mind-warping disillusionment of the past crashed into him, blasting away all softness and the spell she’d been weaving—that he’d let her weave—on him.
She’d changed, all right. Not for the better, as he’d been fooling himself up till now. But into a vindictive harpy who’d send a whole region to hell to have her revenge on him.
He sat forward in his chair slowly, slammed her with his own rage and animosity. “This was my mistake, as it was in the past—being so civil and accommodating that I give you illusions about your importance. But in reality, you always served only one purpose. The difference now is that it’s a worthwhile purpose for a change. And you will serve it. As for what you think or feel, it’s time you realized that your emotions and identity, your past and future, you, don’t matter. Not at all.”
Three
Aliyah didn’t jerk this time.
Not even when the fork clattered to her plate, fracturing the silence that had fallen in the wake of his barrage.
Time reversed like a screeching record. It came to a jolting halt at her last time in this mansion. Then it started to play. Memories of begging his valet to let her wait for him. Trembling on the way up to his bedroom. Gambling away the last of her pride. It hit Pause on his face as he’d issued his final threat. Then it all overlapped, merged with the same savage face now flaying her with his loathing.
Fool. Reason and self-respect lashed her, harsher than he could ever be. She’d been letting them slip away ever since she’d laid eyes on him again. They sneered at her now, at her flimsy struggle to slow down her headlong plunge under his spell. At the way she’d let him encroach on her senses, wiping her memory as he’d advanced.
After his initial shock—which she could only attribute to her changed appearance—he’d seamlessly changed tacks, scorching her with the appreciation smoldering in his eyes, the awareness in his vibes and the amusement in his expressions, his words.
He’d laughed at her barbs, volleyed them back without rancor, baring himself to her ridicule, appearing to enjoy it, had stopped trying to reciprocate the abuse that had soon ceased to be that, morphing into teasing instead. He’d lulled her into loosening her grip on her rage and memories.
Then he’d mentioned a future. Together. And reality had slapped her in the face. With the rush of recollections. With the realization that every second of this evening had been another undetectable maneuver of a master manipulator.
She’d groped for her resolve, said what she’d come here to say. And he’d decided it was more efficient to give up trying to coax her into submission and was now coercing her into it.
He leaned forward in his seat, magnifying his silhouette against the light radiating from the room, his face in the moonlight a hewn mask of inhuman beauty and coldness.
Then he spoke, his voice freezing her. “Now that I’ve made this clear, let me make another thing as unequivocal. This marriage is happening. That’s not up for negotiation. I’ve only called you here to discuss our terms in the deal.”
Her vision began to blotch. She inhaled a choppy stream of oxygen before it blinked out, heard her wavering whisper. “It’s another hostile takeover for you, this so-called marriage, isn’t it? You make no distinction between discussing one or the other.”
He leaned back in his seat, relieving her of a measure of his influence so that breathing turned from a struggle to a mere effort. “For once we agree. Hostile takeover just about sums it up. You’re hostile, and I am taking over.”
“You’ve got that only half right. I sure am hostile. With the best and worst of reasons. Not that you, your imminent majesty, are the essence of friendliness. As for taking over, not in this life. In any other, you can take your ‘deal’ directly to whatever devil you worship, in whatever hell you’ll end up in.”
He sat forward again, probably to make sure she saw the glint of revulsion in his eyes before he grated, “I am taking my deal to the devil I have to deal with, am walking into the hell I have to end up in. Now stop aggravating the ugliness of the initiation rites of this hellish pact and state your terms.”
She wasn’t crumbling under his onslaught. She wouldn’t let him shove her to the ground and walk all over her again.
Her scoff was still weak as she choked on his venom. “Have you gone deaf from the repeated injury of perpetually hearing only your own voice booming inside your head? I said in plain English there’ll be no deal. You need it translated to something you understand better? Mafee sufquh.”
“Lell assaf, es’sufquh mafee menha maffar. To translate—regretfully, there’s no escaping the deal, in case you no longer understand more than the rudiments of your mother tongue.”
Indignation at the dig she’d heard a thousand times infused heat into her chilled bones, steadiness in her voice. “I’m as much an American as I am a Zohaydan, even if in reverse to what I thought. So don’t play the turning-my-back-on-my-roots card.”
His lips stretched on a silent snarl. “How about the turning-your-back-on-your-family card?”
“Oh, no, not that one, either. You don’t know anything about me or about how it’s been with my parents, not in the past when there were only two, and surely not now there are four of them. You have nothing to do with any of it, so don’t you dare even have an opinion on how we all deal with it. Keep out of it and it’ll turn out fine. The only person I’m turning my back on here is you.”
His eyes narrowed, intensifying his menace. “I know far more than you so obliviously think. About you, and about what you put and are still putting your parents through. And though there’s nothing I want more than to watch you leave thinking you’ve gotten your own back, I’m not letting you walk away.”
“Aren’t you going too far into the realm of irrationality to enforce your will? To put through this ridiculous ‘deal’? You walked away from me calling me a depraved slut, if you remember. You’d make a slut your queen and the mother of your heirs?”
His gaze froze as silence stretched until it almost snapped every nerve in her body. Then he turned his face away, presenting her with the precision and power of his profile. Just when she thought he had nothing more to say, that she’d rested her case, his voice poured into the night, as deep and permeating.
“I remember one sunny day seven years ago, here in L.A. I was getting into my car when you threw yourself at me right in the middle of the street. After I pried you off me, you stalked me, did it again everywhere I went, not caring who saw your exhibitions or heard your shameless pleas, probably wanting to publicly embarrass me enough so I’d give you the chance to work on me again in private. If your memory is as intact as you claim, you surely remember what you said. Things along the lines of ‘I need you’ and ‘I’ll do anything.’ Ring a bell? You make it sound as if I was insulting you, calling you what I did. Try to put yourself in the position of an unbiased observer and tell me, how would you describe your behavior as anything other than depraved and slutty?”
Had she burned to ashes? How had she not, after he’d shriveled her up once again with the memories? Of her own condition then, her actions, his reactions?
She finally rasped, “Depraved is right. As in out of my mind. But I’m very much in it now.”
He turned back to her, his gaze the essence of ridicule. “A piece of precious advice. Drop the act. I had to tear your talons out of my flesh to make you let go. You want me with the same ferocity still.”
A surge of scalding acknowledgment had her on her feet, quaking with mortification. That he was right, that her hated hunger had never died, the weapon he’d damaged her with. That he knew. Before any defense took shape in her mind, he rose to his feet, too, slow, measured, pitiless.
“In case you’re preparing to launch into empty posturing and pretense, save it. I can feel it, coming off of you in waves. All this ‘I’d rather die than marry you’ is to goad me into giving you what you want, isn’t it? A game of pursuit? With some reluctance and dominance thrown in? Go ahead, admit it and I’ll promise to give you what you know will leave you gasping within an inch of your life with satiation, and let’s move on to something important.”
She shuddered with rage. At herself, at his unjust words and malice. Was this how people had arteries burst in their heads? She felt herself going numb, her tongue filling her mouth, swollen with the incoherent need to lash out.
Nothing came to her rescue. Nothing but, “You…bastard.”
His lips pressed together for a moment. Then they spread on a heart-wrenching parody of a smile. “It’s not me who is one.”
She almost doubled over.
She didn’t, stood there feeling as if he’d just punched through her, stared his cruelty full in the face. After all he’d done to her, she still hadn’t thought him capable of such a level of heartlessness. Her mind emptied, her heart flooded. With the acid of desperation. For something to deflect the pain with, to send it ricocheting into his black heart, to not let him have the final word. Not when it was that.
But what could be enough to answer a stab through the heart?
She shouldn’t have walked into his trap. Should have known how this would end. Shouldn’t have taken him on, shouldn’t…
Just get out of here.
She staggered around, felt the floor turning to quicksand, struggled not to sink into it.
Suddenly something sank into her—the fingers that an hour ago had barely touched her on the elbow and disrupted her balance and wrenched a response from her, that had once stripped away whatever control she’d developed before she’d met him. She wished they were violent. They were only inexorable in intent, cruel in effect.
He aborted her momentum, kept her on her feet, turned her around to meet his wolf’s eyes as they flared with antipathy. “You’re not walking out on your responsibilities like you have all your life. It’s time you behaved like the princess you regretfully are. You will honor your duties and for once be of use to others.”
“Use?” she threw at him, hating him even more for the quaver that robbed her pain of any retaliatory effect. “That’s all you think people are for, don’t you? To be used. Well, as you say, I had one use to you in the past, and damned if I’m ever going to be of any use to you again. It’s not dramatizing to say I’d rather die.”
“You think it’s any kind of life for me to be forced to make use of you? Do you think I want to marry you? The woman I found out was too depraved to be even one of my sex partners? But I will marry you. For the throne of Judar.”
Every word lodged into her with the force of an ax in the chest. And for the millionth time, the frustration, the sheer mind-con-suming confusion reverberated inside her.
Why all this revulsion? All this fluency of abuse? All she’d ever done once was lose her mind over him….
And it was there again. Like the ocean, advancing on her with its endlessness and blackness, the tide of volatility. Her vision, her emotions began to distort, to fracture, the swirling black hole she’d once been unable to exit staring at her, pulling…
No. She would not let him do this to her.
She wrenched herself from his hands, spat, “You and your throne and your Judar can go to hell.”
He seemed to expand, his hands fisting at his side. She knew that if she’d been a man of equal size he would have pulverized her.
Finally he ground out, “What about Zohayd? And your father and king? You probably care nothing if they go to hell, too, but before you consign them there, give it some thought. Think what you’ll lose, if Zohayd is dragged into civil war.”
“Civil war? What are you talking about?”
“The war that will break out in both our kingdoms if our union doesn’t come to pass.”
She stared at him as if he’d started talking a language she barely understood, shook her head. “Don’t you think you’re being far-fetched here? Zohayd is rock stable. You want to convince me that if a personal deal between you and my uncle…my fa-fa…K-King Atef falls through, Zohayd will go up in flames?”
His gaze was long and considering, the flames of his own fury banking. “So I’m being far-fetched, eh? You think anything less would make me come near you again, let alone give you access to my life, this time as my wife, to carry my name, my honor, my heirs? You won’t take my word, just as you didn’t take your adoptive parents’ or King Atef’s? When would you be convinced that our marriage is imperative? When rivers of blood run through both our kingdoms? When neighbors turn against each other, kill each other’s children and blood feuds erupt to spread devastation for centuries? When our whole prosperous region turns into another war zone that breeds anger and hunger and intolerance and spreads its infection to the rest of the world? Or would you even then say, sorry, not my business? Just because you are a woman scorned, you’d send millions, entire countries, to hell?”
The images he painted, his conviction, suffocated her. She raised her hands as if to ward off a barrage of blows. “Please…stop. I—I—God…are you telling me the truth?”
“No, I project death and destruction for millions of people because it’s fun.”
“God…” She couldn’t speak for a long moment, her throat feeling as if it were clogged with thorns. Then she looked at him through the film of moisture that manifested her dissolving control. “I didn’t know—didn’t realize the situation was anything like that. My unc—my fa…King Atef…he—he…Dammit! That medieval throwback! He said nothing like that. I know Zohayd and Judar are still tribal beneath their ultraadvanced veneers, but this is taking the entrenched stupidity of not including women in matters of state too far. He told me only that it was a political marriage, gave me the impression it was something personal between the two of you, as two monarchs. I…h-had no idea w-what was at stake…”
Then she could say no more.
Every muscle in Kamal’s body bunched, pulled, contracted, until he felt as if his spine would snap and his skull would cave in.
Tears. Gathering in those eyes, rippling like ponds shaking from nearby explosions, magnifying the moon’s beams, shooting them out in erratic flashes to blind him.
As she struggled to contain the weakness, stem the weeping, he felt her every tremor shudder through him, shaking him.
Ya Ullah, how could the sight of her distress disturb him this deeply, disarm him this totally, still? Had nothing changed? Was her spell unbroken? Or was it unbreakable?
B’Ellahi. What kind of king would he be if on his first and foremost act on behalf of his kingdom, he let his only vice, his clearly uncured addiction, take hold of him again, steer him?
He had to remember the times she’d wept for him when she’d been lying to him with every breath. The months her unbridled abandon had snared him when it—and the warnings that she was nicknamed Alley as in alley cat—should have cautioned him.
But he’d heeded nothing and no one, had thrown himself into an inferno that raged higher every day. If her mercurial nature and evasions had bothered him, she’d overwhelmed his reason with the pleasure she’d given him in every way, with her fervent protestations of love. She’d even had him agreeing that what worked—and spectacularly—was for them to keep on stealing scorching times together out of their busy and conflicting schedules.
Yes, she’d manipulated him to perfection. Until he’d showed up unannounced at her condo, unable to wait to see her and had been let in by one of the girlfriends who seemed to use Aliyah’s place as theirs. And he’d discovered her stash of a drug he knew was abused for appetite suppression and as a stimulant.
It had all made sense then. Her hyperactivity, her thinness, her insistence on keeping her distance, and the hundred other details of unexplained reticence and secrecy.
But fool that he’d been, though anguished at his discovery, he’d still tried to make her confess her problem so he could offer her his strength, his support. But she’d denied drug use, ever.
Even with the blatant lie, he’d been so deeply under her spell, he’d only wanted to save her, though he knew from agonizing experience that addicts only plunged deeper into addiction until nothing of them was left, while they dragged everyone who loved them right along with them to hell. For a month he’d struggled to decide how to proceed, the indecision infecting him with reticence, too, which had made her even more eager for him—and increasingly more volatile. At last, with his decision set—to confront her and break the vicious circle she was prisoner to by any means necessary—he’d gone to her condo again. This time, he’d found a man there.
He still couldn’t believe how far in her power he’d been that he’d refused to jump to conclusions. He’d told himself she hadn’t been there after all, and this man could have been one of the friends she gave free run of her place.
But the man, Shane, had introduced himself as one of her American cousins…and lovers. He’d still accused Shane of lying. Shane had scoffed. With his barbaric ways and views of women, did Kamal think that a woman like Aliyah, free and capricious like the wind, could settle for him alone? Kamal might be an all-powerful prince, but Aliyah valued her sexual freedom above all. Why did he think she never agreed to enter his gilded cage, even fleetingly?
Kamal had left before he killed the man, but sensing Shane was jealous and probably trying to drive him away, he’d called Aliyah to get her side of the story, giving her every opening to tell him about Shane without accusing her of anything. She’d said only that she was spending the night at a sick girlfriend’s bedside. Almost convinced that she’d given her backstabbing cousin the use of her place for the night, he’d still waited in his car, to make sure that she didn’t come back. But she had.
Everyone had been right. She’d been a promiscuous lost cause.
Then she’d walked in here today, and he’d forgotten that. Had wanted to forget. Still wanted to. As he couldn’t.
He had to brace himself against her influence. He wouldn’t sweep her into his arms and comfort her even if his heart was bursting from the holding back. Now he had to get on with his plan.
He inhaled. “I’ll suppose what you’re saying is true. But if you didn’t know before, you know now.”
“B-but how? Why? What could be so important about a marriage between the Aal Masoods and Aal Shalaans all of a sudden?”
He gave a bitter huff. “It’s heartwarming how involved you are in your region’s internal affairs. I beg your pardon, your half region. I bet your abundant…roomies know far more than you about the situation between Judar and Zohayd at the moment.”
Those mystic eyes glittered their indignation at him. “And that’s another piece of misinformation in the sea of misconceptions that form my character in your mind. I live alone as I always have. I only ever helped friends by giving them a roof over their head when they needed one. And I’m a hermit when I’m preparing for a show with most of its paintings commissioned. I haven’t been following the news and as I told you, nobody chose to enlighten me. Must have been their misguided way of being kind. Rather than dropping all bombs on me at once, they decided to space out the explosions for prolonged suffering.”
She sounded so convincing. But then when had she ever not?
He exhaled his frustration at how she kept snatching resolve out of reach, made him struggle to grab it back.
“I’ll pretend that’s a good enough excuse for your obliviousness.” He paused to gather the threads of the situation that had lead to this point. He hated recounting it, and to her of all people. But she’d asked. She didn’t know. And she had to, as his future queen. He exhaled again. “When my father, the crown prince of Judar, died, and with our late king having no sons, leaving the succession to his nephews, the Aal Shalaans in Judar demanded their turn on the throne. They threatened an uprising if they didn’t get it. An uprising that would drag Judar into civil war.”
Though reddened and wounded, her eyes stained with disdain. “If you care for peace so much, why don’t you just give it to them?”
“You think giving up the throne in a country that’s made up seventy percent of Aal Masoods and tribes loyal to them would promote peace? Wouldn’t exchange an uprising by the Aal Shalaans for one by the Aal Masoods, leading to the same end? Spare me your insights into a better solution for this catastrophe. If there’d been one, I would have gone to the ends of the earth, would have, as you so theatrically said, laid my life down for it. But there isn’t. The one thing that will maintain peace now is introducing the purest Aal Shalaan blood into the royal house of Aal Masood’s lineage.”
She looked everywhere but at him, as if seeking an escape, and mumbled, “And why not go for the foremost Judarian Aal Shalaan house for this blood-mixing ritual? Why is King Atef the one whose blood must provide the magic ingredient? He’s Zohaydan, not Judarian, for God’s sake!”
“You’ll have to ask the Aal Shalaan genealogists that. They’re the ones who decreed that King Atef has the purest Aal Shalaan blood in both kingdoms, from both sides of his family for as far back as possible. Since he had no daughter that we knew of back when that was determined, it became clear it was a two-sided ploy. To throw the most powerful Aal Shalaan at us, and to corner him into giving in to their demands to help the Judarian Aal Shalaans in their quest to rise to the throne, something he’d already refused to do point-blank at the risk of having an uprising in Zohayd. Then King Atef discovered he did have a daughter, and you know what happened from then on. Now the Aal Shalaans have cornered everyone, including themselves. They can’t go back in their decree, and King Atef’s daughter—you—is what satisfies their demands. But in case we don’t marry, they’re very clear they’ll seek their so-called rights to the throne through less than peaceful measures, in both kingdoms, plunging both into chaos and dragging the whole region right along. Any solution other than our marriage is a lose/lose proposition. I trust you didn’t forget everything about our region? You do remember how history went? How feuds start at the least provocation only to widen and engulf everything in their path?”
Silence crashed down again, as did the ocean waves as if in response to the enormity of his projections.
Her eyes remained riveted on his, as if begging for a repudiation, even a qualification. As they had seven years ago.
He’d had no idea he was that strong. To remain where he was, not to obey the clamoring instinct to crush her into his arms.
When he remained rock-still and silent, hope seemed to seep out of her. “It is that bad, isn’t it?”
Everything inside him stilled. He’d thrown in her face his assertion that she craved him still. He’d been out to provoke her, to punish her for daring to remain his craving, his addiction. Now that dejection, that desperation in her eyes—could it be that this wasn’t another manipulation?
It didn’t matter. Manipulation or truth, only one thing was relevant. He told her.
“It’s worse. We have a deadline.”
“A deadline?”
Aliyah heard the quavering voice of the punch-drunk entity that seemed to inhabit her body.
Kamal, that forbidding stranger, only nodded. “In five days. The day of my joloos will also be our wedding day.”
She felt as if she were going under, struggled to kick to the surface, to snatch one last breath of air. “There has to be another way, Kamal…We can’t get married…we hate each other….”
He flexed his fists as he closed the gap between them. “And you’d be surprised how many kings have married queens they abhor for their kingdoms. But here comes another decree to ameliorate the horror. After you conceive a male heir, I won’t touch you. After you give birth, I will divorce you.”
She stared at him, too much blaring through her mind in a loop.
And he was going on. “The Aal Shalaans won’t care after that, as you are only the instrument of securing the heir they want. Once that happens, everyone will get something out of this mess. King Atef will get Zohayd’s continued peace, and I will secure Judar’s throne and future. What do you want? State your demands, Aliyah.”
