The Desert Lord’s Bride

Ten

Farah floated all the way up to Bill’s office. She smiled left and right at all the people she knew or didn’t know. She even skipped as she passed Bill’s sedate personal assistant. She didn’t wait for anyone to announce her arrival, just sailed through his door.

She found him at his desk, his elbows resting on it, his head between his hands.

And all the jubilation that had been bubbling over inside her since Shehab had kneeled at her feet stilled. Besides Shehab, Bill was the strongest person she’d ever known. No matter what blows he sustained, personally or professionally, he weathered them all without any outward indication of pain or weakness. Now he looked spent, defeated.

She rushed over to him, and he raised a bruised gaze. “Your lover brought you back promptly, I see. Do you know who he is?”

She started at his harshness. So he knew why she’d taken the sabbatical. Figured. Bill would find out anything he put his mind to. But why was he glaring at her? Was he worried she might have divulged vital information about him during pillow talk? She had to put his mind to rest at once.

“Yes, of course I do, but…”

His harsh sigh cut across her qualification. “Lord, I wasn’t ready for this, even though I knew you were bound to change your mind about sleeping with men. And who better than this man, eh? Sleeping with him serves so many purposes.”

Farah’s discomfort metamorphosed gradually into confusion. Was something wrong with Bill? He was making no sense.

And he went on, making less and less sense. “Perhaps the world is telling me something, that I should admit it was me who pushed Stella away. But if I’ve had enough, got over the rage and heartache, maybe it’s time to see if she’s learned her lesson, too.” He glared at her again, his eyes blazing blue in his florid face. “But why didn’t you confide in me? Though I’m floored that, for once in your personal life, you’ve made one move that’s good business-in this case, the best business-I would have understood. Hell, I would have given you pointers.”

“OK, I’m calling your doctor. You’re talking gibberish.”

Bill sighed. “Who thought you’d have the sense to test-drive Judar’s crown prince before consenting to marry him? These royal Middle Eastern marriages are forever, after all. But from your blind expression as you walked in, seems you found Shehab Aal Masood’s sexual prowess…satisfying, to say the least.”

The world stopped. Became a vacuum.

It seemed hours later when it restarted with a screech and air tore into lungs that had collapsed with shock.

“You think Shehab is…” She coughed the hysterical giggle of someone who’d just escaped being hit by a bus. “But I can see how. The crown prince’s name is Shehab, too, huh? Guess it must be a popular name. Likening their sons to the grandeur and destruction of meteors must appeal to those desert lords. But Shehab’s last name is Aal Ajman. He’s the tycoon who-”

“I know exactly who he is. The tycoon who seemed to come out of nowhere three months ago. Aal Ajman is his mother’s family. I bet he didn’t think I’d investigate that when he created his alter ego…” He stopped, rose slowly to his feet, a tide of rage advancing over his face as everything seemed to fall in place in his mind. At the same moment it did in hers. “But I wasn’t his target with the deception, neither was the business world at large. You were. You refused to marry him, so he decided to con you…” He stopped again, horror replacing rage on his face. Or was it only a reflection of the one on hers?

But there was no horror inside her. Realizations too atrocious to register, to take in, bombarded her, like the meteors Shehab was named for. And like a meteor shower, they left only annihilation in their wake. The nothingness of wreckage.

Shehab. He was not the man she thought she knew to the farthest reaches of intimacy. He was the prince her newfound father had said she must marry. The one she’d refused to even hear about. She’d thought she had a choice. But she’d had none. He’d hunted her down to have her rescind her refusal, relinquish her will, surrender her heart and soul, her life. Things he had no use for. He’d been talking about himself when he’d described how Dan had manipulated her, taken from her, when he’d reviled the gift she’d made of herself.

She’d felt his exploitation that first night, too. She’d just been too ignorant to suspect its truth, then too eager to disbelieve her senses and believe his coaxing.

How he must have hated to perform for her benefit, how he must have loathed every second in her company, must be seething with impatience until he could discard the pawn he’d been forced to cater to, to make her obey his tribal laws.

She suddenly heard her voice, the distorted sound of a zombie. “I want a favor, Bill. I want to use your helicopter.”

Bill’s eyes narrowed. “He’s waiting downstairs for you. You don’t want to see him.”

“No. Never again.”

He exhaled heavily, nodded, reached for his intercom. His hand froze over the button. “You’ll let me know where you are.” She gave a sluggish nod. He persisted. “And you won’t hurt yourself…in any way.”

She looked at him out of someone else’s dry-as-stone eyes and wondered how he’d even worry.

How could she hurt a self that had already been destroyed?

Shehab gave in, stormed into the skyscraper after Farah.

She’d been inside for three hours. And for the past hour, her cell phone had rung with no answer.

Inside, he met with evasions until he resorted to threats. Only then did he discover she’d left the building by helicopter.

He stormed outside again, telling himself to calm down.

She must have left on the urgent business her boss had called her all the way back there to deal with. She’d call as soon as she was done. She probably hadn’t thought he’d wait for her to get off work. And she probably hadn’t heard the phone over the helicopter’s din.

Nothing he told himself worked. So he did what every self-respecting, madly in love man in pursuit of the woman who held his fate in her hands to confess his crimes and beg forgiveness would have done. He tracked down her phone’s GPS signal.

Even with the endless resources at his fingertips, it took four hours to locate her, and then fly to her location. A bungalow hotel in Orange County.

After a good look at Shehab’s diplomatic passport and a short explanation about the situation, a duly awed desk clerk told him where to find Farah, even gave him an extra card key.

Shehab walked there, his heart’s pounding escalating as he caught her scent on the wind. He could have followed it, and her vibes, to her exact location without being told where she was. Doubts intensified with each step, too.

This didn’t look like a place where any business of Hanson’s could be conducted. So why had she come here? Why had she not called him in so long?

Before he slotted the key card in, something made him knock on the door instead. After long moments of silence, steps neared, slow, almost dragging. Then the door opened.

A stranger stood across the threshold.

A stranger who looked exactly like Farah.

So it’s true, Farah thought.

She’d opened the door and found Shehab there. And she hadn’t felt a thing. Not shock, not surprise, not anger, not pain. Nothing. It was over.

“Habibati…” he groaned as he surged forward, surrounding her, his impossibly handsome face, the face that hid all his cruelty and deceitfulness, contorting on another array of those expressions so uncannily simulating emotions. “I almost drove myself insane when you didn’t answer your phone. Why are you here? Is this where Bill sent you? What for?” When she didn’t answer, only slipped from his arms to close the door, turned to look at him out of some other entity’s eyes, he moved closer like a panther careful not to let its prey realize it would be a meal in seconds. “Hayati, what’s wrong?”

He still didn’t realize. Or he was still trying to bluff his way out of it? He probably thought he could. She was too stupid to live, after all. She’d proved it for six long weeks.

But something terrible was happening. The sight of him, his scent, the feel of him, the very idea of him was seeping through the layers of numbness. The total anesthesia was lifting. And damage began to spread through her, expanding, taking shape, endless in scope, in details, the enormity of his betrayal, of her gullibility.

Crazed with pain. She now knew what that meant, felt like. She could feel everything that made her a person, that formed her mind, disintegrate as each memory of the past six weeks regurgitated to the surface like oozing acid, until her brain was a mangled mess.

And he took her in his arms again, shuddered as she filled them. As if he cared if she lived or died.

She visualized an escape. A version of reality where she was the woman the rumors painted her to be. The woman who wouldn’t only survive this, but who would walk away laughing. Invincible like him, playing her roles to gain her ends. Ending each without feeling or remorse. Heartless.

But she was heartless now, too. He’d hacked out her heart.

She pushed out of his arms. “I want to thank you.”

His gaze wavered. He couldn’t read her for the first time. And he was worried. “What for, ya habibati?”

Habibati. My love. His love. When she was his nothing. Just an instrument, a means to an end. Every word a lie. Every touch and smile and moment-worse than a lie. A cold-blooded, abhorrent role he’d had to play, to get her to succumb to her role in his kingdom’s politics. She was a chess piece he’d maneuvered with inhuman skill, premeditation and indifference.

And she couldn’t let him go on laughing viciously at her expense, knowing he’d made her his grateful, worshipping fool.

She channeled his female counterpart, heard herself murmuring coldly, “You did what everyone before you failed to do. You’re the only one I had a liaison with who Bill knew was a real threat. But then you’re the first crown prince I’ve ever been with. Of course, I knew. I went along because you wanted to play it that way, and I wanted to play, too. But it really made him panic. He called me back to offer marriage at last.”

Before Shehab doubled over in shock, he realized.

Farah had found out who he was, was teaching him a lesson.

Now she’d slap him for keeping his identity from her, rant and rave, then end up laughing at his deserved horror. And he’d sweep her in his arms and let her have whatever revenge she saw fit. Then much, much later, he’d show her how he’d take anything from her, but there were certain things she should never joke about, or use in his chastisement. One thing. Her love for him.

But she didn’t slap him, didn’t rant, didn’t laugh, just looked at him with those unfamiliar eyes, spoke again in that unfeeling tone. “It’s been fun while it lasted. You’re a great host and an OK lover. I’m sure you didn’t mean your marriage offer, but even if you did, Bill is by far the better proposition. You’re too…demanding, you understand.”

He couldn’t breathe. He wouldn’t until she yelled at him, or until she made a face and stuck out her tongue, as he loved to see her do. But she did neither.

She passed him, opened the door. “Bill is very sensitive about you right now, and I have to humor him until he writes up those prenups. Maybe after everything is settled I can see you again. If I don’t hook up with someone else meanwhile, that is.”

Everything he’d heard about her. The rumors as she’d called them. She was admitting to them all. And she wasn’t joking.

“Of course, if we do hook up again, you’ll have to excuse me when I drop the wide-eyed, adoring idiot act. I strained to keep it going and won’t be trying it again any time soon.”

Stop. Stop. The roar bloodied his throat, even when it went unbellowed. But she didn’t stop.

“I would have invited you in for goodbye sex, but Bill’s joining me in an hour, and you don’t do quickies, so…” She made a dismissive gesture, showing him the door.

He couldn’t have moved if his life depended on it. An avalanche had buried him, made up of all the moments since they’d met. Every one twisted around, grinning hideously, showing him its true macabre face. He’d deceived her about his intentions for the best of reasons. She’d deceived him about her nature, seamlessly, for the basest ones.

The woman he worshipped didn’t even exist.

But he couldn’t stagger to his knees and bleed to death now. It didn’t matter if she was a perverted soul who thrived on entrapping men only to destroy them. It didn’t matter that she’d pulverized his heart and soul. Those were the man’s. The crown prince of Judar didn’t need them to fulfill his role as future king. And he’d make her fulfill hers-as future queen.

He took the door from her, closed it with a calm that only losing everything can bestow. “So you think you can just send me on my way. Interesting. More interesting is that you seem to think any of the last six weeks was actually for you. A woman’s ego is boundless, especially when enough flimsy men give her the impression she is irresistible. I would have preferred to do this my way, the painless way, but since you think I’ll let you merrily go on to your petty agendas, I will have to apply pressure. It’s up to you how much I do apply. You can come with me now, without further persuasion on my part, and spare yourself the unpleasantness, or I can make you, and your senile lover, live to regret it. Then you’ll do what I want, anyway.”

Farah almost smiled. How easy it had been to make him take off the mask. Bare his true face. The soulless sheikh who used and abused people to his ends.

With the morbid fascination of someone mortally wounded and wondering how her murderer would release her from the pain, what the killing blow would be, she cocked her head at him.

“You’re drunk on your power, aren’t you? How would you do any of that? We’re in America now, not your island, or in your kingdom.”

The smile he gave her would have been scary, if she could feel a thing. “Can I give you a list? How about starting with grinding Hanson into the ground, until he’s filing for bankruptcy? If I show him how I’ll do it, and how he could stop it, he’ll throw you aside in a blink. Then I won’t leave you anywhere else to turn and you’ll come crawling to me. And I’ll take you, marry you, a repulsive duty for my kingdom’s sake. I only endured your so-called inexperience and your odious character to obtain my end. The highest end. Retaining the throne of Judar, and with it the whole region’s peace.”

And it came. The confirmation. The end of hope that maybe anything, one hour, one time with her, had been for her, had been real. It was Dan all over again. He’d even used his words.

But Dan she hadn’t loved beyond self-preservation, beyond sanity. His animosity and disgust hadn’t mattered to her. Shehab’s finished her.

And she was pushing past him. Running and running.

She didn’t get far. In a minute he had her cornered between his men and his approach. And like prey that knew there was no point in struggling, she stood there, let him catch her.

He took her to his limo, his eyes those of the stranger he was, his real emotions fueling his gaze, pitilessness, aversion. She sat huddled against her door all the way back to his jet.

As soon as they were in the air, she turned lifeless eyes on him. “So you’re kidnapping me for real this time.”

He made a disgusted sound. “I’m taking you to your father. Fate has it that you’re the daughter of a great king, and the salvation of two kingdoms. I have to look beyond your shortcomings and at what good you’ll do by simply existing.”

“What’s this stuff you keep talking about? Retaining the throne, the whole region’s peace, the salvation of two kingdoms?”

“King Atef told you all about it. Spare me the pretense.”

“I’m not pretending. I’ve talked to King Atef maybe a dozen times. The first few times I was still reeling after my Mom dropped the bomb that he was my father. I-I really liked him, but I was afraid I might be desperate for another father figure.

“He was so eager to know me, seemed so happy to have found me, and I started to open up. But I still felt like a yo-yo. One minute I’d get excited about finding him, the next I’d feel guilty, as if I were betraying Dad’s memory. Then he came to meet me and told me I had to leave my life behind to marry a prince I’d never met as part of a political pact. And I knew that his friendliness had all been another setup. He wasn’t happy to know me, had only been saying whatever would get me to go along with his plans. I couldn’t listen to a word he said after that, told him to just leave me alone.”

“And so, thinking your feelings were the only thing to consider, you refused to marry me. That’s why all this happened.”

She stared at him, another layer of misery suffocating her.

He glowered back. “But since you’ll regrettably be Zohayd’s princess and Judar’s future queen, you should know how things stand. I’ll pretend your question indicated interest, or at least curiosity.” He paused, as if expecting her to comment. When she kept staring at him, desolation deepening, he exhaled.

“The Aal Masoods have sat on the throne of Judar uncontested since they brought all feuding tribes under their rule and founded the kingdom six hundred years ago. But our king, King Zaher, has no male heirs. And then, both his brothers, one of them my father, died, leaving only his nephews to rise to the succession. With the direct line of succession broken for the first time in six hundred years, the Aal Shalaans, the second-most influential tribe in Judar, felt it was time for their turn on the throne, and their demand was accompanied by threats of an uprising that would end Judar’s reigning peace.

“Offering them settlements didn’t work, and options dwindled to a forceful solution-a solution that would lead to civil war. A war the Aal Masoods will do anything to prevent. Even if it means losing our throne, which would still mean tearing Judar apart. Then Judar’s neighbor, Zohayd, was dragged into the crisis, for another branch of the Aal Shalaans form the ruling house there.”

“So King Atef is an Aal Shalaan?”

“As you are. You didn’t even know his full name?”

“I-I didn’t want to know anything more. I didn’t know-I didn’t think-I…” Her defense stifled under the mercilessness of his gaze, which before had been sympathetic, empathic. But he was done acting. She choked out, “So what happened after that?”

It was a long moment before he continued his account, his voice grating her raw. “The Zohaydan Aal Shalaans pressured King Atef to support their tribesmen’s rise to Judar’s throne. But he wouldn’t support such madness. The Aal Masoods are his biggest allies and the reason behind Zohayd’s prosperity, not to mention that losing our throne would destabilize the whole region. He was willing to side with us in a war against anyone, kinsmen or not. But that would have plunged Zohayd into civil war, too.

“After intensive negotiations, the Aal Shalaans in both kingdoms decreed that the only peaceful solution was for the Aal Masoods’ future king to marry the daughter of their most pureblooded patriarch so that their blood may enter our royal house. Things calmed down as disputes lengthened over which patriarch in their extensive tribe had the purest Aal Shalaan blood, with Farooq, my older brother, then Judar’s crown prince, poised to marry his daughter. But that patriarch was determined to be King Atef himself, who didn’t have a daughter.

“It was then we all realized we’d fallen into a trap, realized who’d been behind the conspiracy. It was my cousin Tareq, the outcast would-be crown prince. He stirred old hatreds, cornered us until we had no way out but to fight for the throne. Or to let it go. Either way, Judar and Zohayd would be destroyed in civil wars that would drag the whole region into chaos. He plotted a perfect revenge on the royal house that had cast him out, and the kingdom that was its biggest ally. Then a miracle happened. King Atef discovered he had a daughter from an American lover. You.” His eyes blazed down her face and body, razed her. “And a pact was struck between the two kingdoms, thwarting the conspiracy, appeasing all involved. But my brother Farooq loved his wife so much he couldn’t contemplate taking another wife, no matter the cause. So he stepped down. Now it’s my responsibility to save the throne of Judar.”

And there was silence. For what had to be hours.

So he had a legitimate cause for destroying her. She was what the military liked to call collateral damage. But then, what did she matter in something of this scope? The fate of a whole region hung in the balance. And he’d been forced to do whatever was necessary to bring the stupid goose who’d unwittingly been about to tip everything into hell in line, to fit into the critical slot haphazard fate had placed her in.

“King Atef…m-my father should have insisted on explaining…”

His teeth clapped together before scraping a sound that made her nausea surge. “He must have conveyed the exigency of the crisis. But as you confess, you didn’t listen. Why would the fate of two kingdoms you can’t find on a map matter to you?”

She raised those eyes that belonged to someone else, beyond hurt or pain now, praying she’d remain in that dead zone forever. “I’ll marry you.”

Something terrible flared in his eyes. She would have cringed if she’d had a life to fear for.

He finally grated, “And of course that noble decision has nothing to do with knowing that it’s your only option now that you’ve lost every bet you made.”

She shrugged. “You won. What else do you want?”

He lowered his eyes, his spectacular eyebrows drawing together as if on a spasm of pain. Then his gaze shot up, slammed into her, hostile and enraged. “I want you.”

“No, you don’t.”

Shehab heard Farah’s deadened dismissal and wondered if this was how men broke, under the weight of agony and disillusion so vast, they just buckled.

He’d already known they’d come to the point when he had to force her to marry him, by any means necessary. There was no other option left. This was far bigger than either of them.

But she’d consented, without further pressure. As if she were consenting to an amputation.

Memories of her first consent, the ecstasy of it, gored his mind. To know she would marry him now as a capitulation, a compromise, was crippling.

But what made this beyond his ability to withstand was what he’d confessed. To her. To himself.

He damned himself for feeling anything-everything-for her after she’d smashed his heart, his faith, but there was no escape for him. There never would be.

But if she’d made him her prisoner, he’d make her his.

“Yes, Farah. I want you.”

Some life entered her gaze, agitation, alarm. “But you said…”

He exploded to his feet, stormed to her, plucked her out of her seat and into his arms. “I don’t care what I said. It doesn’t matter what either of us intended or planned. The one reality here remains this…” His mouth crashed down on hers and she convulsed in his arms, cried out. He took advantage, thrust inside her, his tongue driving with unchecked emotions.

He strode to the bedroom in which they’d lost themselves in each other’s arms only hours ago. A lifetime ago. When they’d been different people. He placed her on the bed and came down on top of her. She cried out again, pushed at him.

He stilled at her struggle, slid off her. He’d never force her, not even the woman she’d revealed herself to be. But he’d force her to acknowledge one thing. “You want me, too. I know when a woman feels pleasure at my touch, but you-in my arms, you disintegrated in ecstasy. You’re shaking with needing me inside you, assuaging the ache, giving you the release only I can bring you. Don’t even try to deny it, because I know. And if this is all we can have, then we’ll have it. All of it.”

He held her eyes, demanding her concession, her confession.

And she gave it. With her lashes hiding her expression she dragged his mouth back to hers, scorched him in a blast of hunger as her hands trembled at his belt. He growled in relief, in agony, tore at her clothes. He had her naked, only shredded his shirt open, freed himself, settled his chest over her breasts, rubbed her to a frenzy as she clamped her thighs around him in silent supplication for him to invade her, to merge them.

Unable to stand one more heartbeat outside her heat, her hunger, he rammed inside her.

And right there, buried inside her, knowing that the next thrust would hurtle them both over the edge, he stilled. Reared up. Looked down into her eyes, saw it. The soul that was right, that was perfect, for him, come to complete him, discovered to show him what life held of possibility, to fulfill the promise that had remained unrealized until she was there.

Then she moved, taking him as he took her, her eyes never leaving his. And the dam of pain and anger and disillusion shattered, and every beautiful, overpowering thing he felt for her flooded him. Images of a child with emerald eyes and hundred-color hair deluged him as he jetted inside her, feeling he’d poured his lifeforce into her, causing her paroxysm to spike. Ecstasy rocked them, locked them in a closed circuit until it seemed they might not survive the heights of pleasure, the depths of agony.

When he felt as if his heart would never restart, the excruciating release finally relinquished its merciless grip, let it beat again. Then she let go of his eyes, the deadness back. And the madness lifted, left him groping for breath.

“All those things you said were fabrications.” His choking words were not a question. They were him, realizing the enormity of the mistake he’d made. “Ya Ullah, why did you say them?”

She moved, making it clear she wanted to end their merging. He groaned at the pain of separation, had no choice but to watch her get out of bed like a malfunctioning automaton, go to the wardrobe he’d filled with clothes tailor-made for her, pulled on an emerald summer dress that had made her eyes iridescent when she’d first tried it on. Her eyes were muddy now, vacant.

“I’m just beginning to realize the full implications of you being the crown prince of one of the most powerful oil states in the world. You probably hold the power of life and death over your people. You want it over me.”

He rose from the bed, shuddered at the lifelessness of her voice as he did up his pants, approached her. “I don’t…”

She cut across his protest, her voice becoming an almost inaudible rasp. “You don’t think it enough to have me where you want me, a pawn in your political game and an eager body in your bed, proving your irresistibility. You want to wring me of the last drop of dignity to placate yours.”

“B’Ellahi, Farah, stop. This isn’t what I…”

“You want to know why I said what I did? Can I give you a list?” She echoed his earlier taunting. “How about a reaction to finding out I was means to an end all along? Or wanting to walk away from the worst degradation of my life with the illusion of being on equal ground? Or needing to make you show your true face, so it would be superimposed on that of the man I loved, erasing it from my heart and mind so I can go on living?”

“Atawassal elaiki, I beg you, ya habibati, let me…”

“I beg you to stop. Your plans worked, you got what you wanted out of me, in every way. So go do your duty and take your pleasure with whomever you want for real, for herself, let her provide the ego strokes you need and leave me alone.”

He tried to reach for her. “I can’t…”

She staggered away. “Not until I give you an heir? Is that why you’ll keep having sex with me? What if I told you-”

“You must listen to me. What I said, how I’ve behaved in the past hours, I was only lashing out after all those ugly things you said. Ya Ullah, you made them sound so convincing, the blast of shock blew away my memory, my knowledge of you. But even before you explained, I remembered, each moment-”

“I remembered each moment, too.” She cut across his desperate words, and he looked on in horror as she seemed to fragment before his eyes. “I’m remembering now, each look, each touch, each word I said to you, each sensation as I listened to you, as I felt you touch me with your eyes and hands and lips, cover me, move inside me. And I play it back and superimpose the truth over the illusion. I see your real feelings and thoughts as you watched me squirm in longing and pleasure and hope, as I fell flat on my face in love with you. I see you as you hid behind your shield of indifference, gauging when to poke me, how to make me beg, pant, and humiliate myself more and more.”

He surged, blind, out of his mind with agony, with the need to absorb hers, clutched her into a frantic embrace. She struggled wildly, tore herself away, quaking on sobs so hard he feared they were tearing her insides apart.

“God…the way you strung me along, the way I looked up to you, thought you unique, a man who cares about a woman’s feelings, not just her body, who cares about me. And all the time you could hold back because I was nothing to you, because you felt nothing. All the time you watched me making a fool of myself, lapping up the crumbs you kept dropping, yelping in gratitude. How pathetic did I seem to you, craving your appreciation, disbelieving my senses and believing in your every lie, bursting into flame without you even trying, writhing in pleasure at your merest touch, begging for more? How ridiculous did you find my insecurities and gullibility and readiness to die for you? How much did you snicker the moment my back was turned? How hard did you laugh when you were alone? How hard, Shehab?”

Her accusations, the realization of the extent of the damage he’d inflicted on her, paralyzed him. For the first time in his life he felt powerless, helpless. How could he undo a wrong of this magnitude? Heal wounds this deep?

He fell to his knees before her, like a detonated building, struck, mute, her tears raining on him, burning away his soul.

He finally heard a thick, unrecognizable voice choking his defense, his plea for leniency. “I did manipulate you, but only because I believed the lies I’d been told about you. By the time I knew they were only that, I couldn’t risk your reaction, so I kept on deceiving you about my identity, but that was the extent of my deception. The magic we shared was real, from the first moment. Ana aashagek. I never lied about my feelings for you. I was going to confess everything, today, but ya Ullah, I left it too late.”

Her tears turned off abruptly, the nothingness creeping back on her face. “It’s really my fault. I was reckless and self-destructive and I got what’s coming to me.”

“No, b’Ellahi, you will believe me, believe that I care about nothing anymore but you, and restoring your heart and faith in yourself, in me. I will spend my life…”

She raised a steady hand. “Just…don’t. It doesn’t matter if your pawn is intact or glued together. I will serve my purpose.”

The rest of the journey was consumed by his frantic efforts to reach her. But it seemed the most vital mechanism inside her, her soul, was damaged beyond repair. She’d opened herself, given of herself so fully to him, and the blow had shattered her.

Shehab felt desperation becoming resignation, that she’d never trust him, or feel the same boundless emotions for him again. And he’d die without her trust. Without her love.

But he didn’t matter now, or ever. Only that he restored her. Only that she would be whole once more. But he no longer knew how he could do that. If he could ever do it.

All the way to the royal palace, she pulverized his heart all over again when she didn’t resist him when he reached for her, stroked and kissed and swore his love over and over.

And he knew. She’d succumb to him, to her duty, to the hold he had on her senses, and she’d die slowly. She was dying now.

And it came to him. What he must do. What he would do.

He’d let her go. Completely.

They were entering King Atef’s court when he finally decided how to phrase his resolution, started to voice it only for her gasp to silence him.

His gaze followed her shock, found King Atef standing between two women-his sister and a tall, slim, blond woman. Anna Beaumont, Farah’s mother. But it wasn’t surprise at her presence that he felt, but trepidation at the expression on their faces.

As they approached, Anna looked at Farah with reddened eyes, mouthed a soundless, “I’m sorry.”

Farah wobbled at his side, and he hugged her to him fiercely, glaring at King Atef. He understood nothing, but he’d give his life not to have her wounded again.

The king had eyes only for Farah as he came forward, the pain on his face portending devastating news.

Then he delivered it. “Farah…I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but it falls to me to divulge a most upsetting fact to you. As much as I rejoiced in finding you, now it crushes my heart to lose you. You are not my daughter.”