The Desert Lord’s Bride

Four

Shehab stiffened at Farah’s words.

They could only have one meaning.

She’d realized he was playing her.

How had she suspected? He was certain he’d done nothing to give himself away. So what was it? Intuition? Or was she playing a counter-game of her own? If so, to what end? To have him on the defensive, ready to do anything to negate her accusation, tipping the balance of power in her favor?

But she was trembling in his arms, her eyes brimming with tears again, her breathing so erratic it made her breasts shudder against his chest. Not that she seemed aware of this, or the effect it was having on him even now.

Was she that good an actress? He’d known the best virtuoso improvisers and situation analysts who played out impromptu roles wholeheartedly. But he’d always had an infallible detector for insincerity. He sensed none from her now.

Whatever this was, it had struck him from a blind spot. He had to tread with extreme caution until he figured out what was going on. He must maintain the ground he’d won.

To do that, he couldn’t pressure her. Even if every instinct was telling him to crush her in his arms and kiss her until she was incoherent with need again.

He took his hands away from her, unbuckled his seat belt, rose to his feet. He struggled to empty his eyes of urgency, to infuse them with all the gentleness he could muster. “Farah, ya azeezati-my dear, I don’t understand anything. What’s wrong?”

“Please, stop acting.” She slumped forward, her spun-silk hair and hands hiding her face, her voice thickening with emotion. “I can take anything but that…”

He was at a loss. She knew he was acting. But he wasn’t, not when it came to wanting her. So what did she sense? Could she be so sensitive she could feel beyond his raging desire for her to his basic agenda?

It didn’t matter what she felt or how she’d come to feel it. Whatever it was, he had to divert her, lull her again.

“And I can take anything but your anguish,” he groaned, no longer knowing if his agitation was feigned or real. “Farah, B’Ellahi, mere minutes ago you were as elated as I was at being together and now…Arjooki-please tell me what went wrong.”

She raised streaming eyes, slamming into him with the force of a gut punch. “Everything. I saw it.”

His hand went to his midriff as if to ward off the pain. But he couldn’t afford to let go of her gaze. It would be like admitting his guilt.

He held out against the power of her hurt and accusation, groaned again, “Saw what?”

“Your face, your eyes, filling with…intent, harshness…I don’t know.” She shook her head, her hair undulating her confusion around her shaking shoulders. “But you’re not ‘elated’ to be with me. You don’t want me…you’re just like everyone else. No one ever wanted me for me. Or-or it’s even worse…”

What had she seen? A stray self-congratulatory thought when he’d been prematurely celebrating his triumph?

Fool. He shouldn’t even think anything of the sort before he had her signature on all binding documents.

But her distress felt real. So was that the origin of her cold-as-ice, hot-as-hell persona? Not that he’d seen any evidence of her cold side himself, but he could see how she could have been pursued for all the wrong reasons. Sport, ambition, competition, all forms of exploitation. Had the incident he’d manufactured unsettled her so much that it brought back every unsavory situation she’d ever been exposed to, painting their situation, and him, with the brush of suspicion? Or had it only sharpened her hazy senses so that she felt he was pursuing her for reasons unconnected with her own desirability?

Suddenly he was sick of the whole thing. If her reputation had been unearned, as everything he’d felt from her so far kept insisting, if she’d been hurt by men’s perfidy before, he shouldn’t add to her injuries.

But what could he possibly do now? Confess his plan? He’d stood a chance of a favorable response if he’d told her who he was at the beginning. He would have at least gotten points for truthfulness. But he’d been so ready for deception as a necessity for success, he’d lost that chance. After all that had happened between them, all the lies he’d told her, she’d be incensed, might reject him with no hope of reconciliation.

What would he do if she did, when he couldn’t let her go? Kidnap her as she’d implied was one of the possibilities he’d seduced her for? Then what? Hold her hostage? Force her to marry him?

Just the thought that things could go so far had bile rising in his throat. He had to stop the situation from spiraling out of control. And he had only one way out.

She’d accused him of not wanting her for herself. That he could contest vehemently and sound sincere. For he was.

“You’re so wrong I would laugh if this wasn’t so distressing. I want you, Farah. I’ve never wanted anything or anyone like I want you.” He took a step toward her and she flinched. He flinched, too, stopped. “Ya Ullah, are you afraid of me?” Her eyes closed on a look of total confusion. And he rasped, “Am I paying the price for all of the people who tried to take advantage of you? But as you said, it’s even worse. I doubt you actually feared any of them.”

Her face contorted on emotions so clear it felt as if she’d shouted them in his mind. Mortification ruled them all.

But her tears were stopping. Then she hiccupped. “It was just-just-finding the plane taking off, that look on your face-and I scared myself with my own speculations…” She paused, gave him a hesitant, vulnerable look. “Do you really want me?”

He drove his hands in his hair in frustration he had no need to feign. “Can’t you feel it, in your every cell, setting your senses on fire, how much I desire you?”

She nodded, shook her head, at a total loss. “I do-but I felt…something deeper. If you have any hidden agenda besides…”

He wanted to swear to her that he didn’t. He couldn’t. The lie clogged in his throat. But he had to defuse her doubts. He must. His only recourse was to reach for whatever truths existed between the lies, press those home to her.

He came down beside her, reached for her restless hands, found them freezing in sweat. He exerted enough pressure to beseech her not to pull them away, while letting her feel she could if she wanted, his eyes soothing her with all his will.

“Every word I told you about how much I desire you is the truth, Farah. And I can’t bear to see you in this condition, to know that I’m the reason for it.”

She shook her head again. “You’re not, it was me.”

“It was me.” He smoothed a glossy lock of hair away from her cheek. “I should have realized how this situation would be overwhelming for you. You were shaken from all that had happened in the past hours, our meeting, our surrender to what you so aptly called ‘magic’ followed by the paparazzi’s intrusion and our escape from them. But instead of giving you time to catch your breath, I whisked you onboard my jet, where you found yourself surrounded by two dozen strange men, most of them armed, as you must have sensed. Then, without even consulting you, I ordered takeoff. You thought we’d have dinner onboard on the ground, didn’t you?”

Her eyes said she hadn’t thought at all. He caressed her cheek, almost moaning at its firm softness. “You haven’t even thought what would happen, and you found yourself receding from your world. Then I added insult to injury when the takeoff had my mind straying to a precarious deal I’m involved in at the moment, giving you a glimpse of the ruthless businessman side of me. It’s no wonder you leaped to conclusions.”

She winced, bit her lip. Then she finally quavered, “Can you order us to land, please?”

His every muscle clenched. “You don’t believe me.”

“I do,” she protested. Then she pulled an adorably sheepish face. “I just need to be on the ground so I can dig a hole deep enough never to be seen again.”

He exhaled the breath that had been about to burst his lungs. But he wouldn’t let his guard down again. He’d averted a catastrophe this time. He couldn’t let another brew.

He moved closer, still testing. She melted against him and he inhaled with the reprieve. “Don’t feel embarrassed by your fears, ya saherati. You had every right to wonder, to worry. In fact, I’m almost upset with you for not being more stringent in your examination of my character and intentions before you put yourself in my power this way. You know, like you were cross with me for trusting you based on such a short acquaintance. But then, I believe you wouldn’t have done that with anyone else, that you instinctively felt that you have more power over me than you could ever hand me over you.”

Farah closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of him, wishing she’d blip out of existence.

She’d made a mess of things. And he was letting her off the hook, exonerating her of all blame, shouldering it all himself.

But she couldn’t believe he wasn’t offended for real. She was used to being maligned by strangers, by public opinion, but if someone she cared anything for jumped to such unfounded and offensive conclusions about her, she wouldn’t be quick to forgive and forget. Could it be true he did so completely?

She opened her eyes, found anxiety still tingeing his gaze.

He had. And more. He felt horrible about his alleged role in her out-of-the-blue upheaval. He’d come up with explanations that saved her from looking like an irrational airhead. She felt herself shrink to the size and significance of a bug.

She pressed her face into his hand. “Please, stop being so gallant and understanding or no hole will be deep enough.”

She felt like whooping when his lips twitched. “I can see this developing into a loop, with me saying I did it and you saying, no, I did. So how about we let our feelings of guilt cancel out each other and get on with our enchanted evening?”

“Why would you want to spend more time with a moron who more or less accused you of being a fraud or even a criminal?”

“I can wonder why you would want to spend more time with a lout who didn’t even ask your permission before taking you out of your national airspace. But I won’t. We agreed to think the best of each other’s actions and motivations.”

She gave him a sardonic look. “I didn’t agree to anything. But you’re used to this, aren’t you? You announce stuff and assume everyone’s in agreement with it.”

“See?” His eyes crinkled. “I did it again. You’ve uncovered my biggest vice. I’m part bulldozer.”

She gave in to the urge, ran a finger down a slashed cheekbone. “Only part? And that’s your biggest vice? You sure there aren’t bigger ones?”

“As much as I’d love to have you take my character apart and haul out vices for examination, we have more pressing issues to worry about now. Like food. Didn’t you work up an appetite after all the upheavals? I ordered my chef to prepare my favorite dishes from my country’s cuisine for you to sample.”

The way he said that, and in his mouth-watering voice, too, made her stomach grumble.

His lips spread wide. “I guess I have my answer.”

He pushed more buttons. In minutes he opened the door to a parade of waiters holding their trays high. Even under covers, aromas emanated from the dishes that had her licking her lips.

He rose to his feet, held out his hand. She took it, let him pull her to her feet. Before she fell against him, he pulled back, his eyes once more becoming unfathomable. This time the only alarm she felt was that she might have, in spite of his assurances, introduced distance between them.

He led her behind the screen to a dining area with stainless steel-backed, burgundy velvet-upholstered chairs and a Plexiglas table for two laid out in stunning hand-painted china, silver, crystal and burgundy silk.

As soon as the last waiter had departed, Shehab raised a silver dome off a service plate. The sight and aroma hit her senses in unison.

At her moan he said, “This is matazeez-veal cubes cooked in tomato sauce before adding okra, aubergine and zucchini. The stuff that looks like ravioli is specially prepared dough that’s rolled out and cut and dropped in the mix before it’s fully cooked so that it retains its chewiness. Some people consider this a full meal, some eat it with rice or khobez.”

“That’s this bread?” He nodded, and as she bent for a closer sniff, his smile grew as hot as the dish simmering on the flames. “Who would have guessed you’d know so much about the preparation of the dishes you love.”

“You didn’t think it possible for me to know how to cook?”

“If you do, I’ll know you’re a hallucination.”

He chuckled as he pushed a button, made a chair retract from the table on rails embedded in the fuselage.

She flopped into it, groaned. “Don’t describe any more dishes. Just looking at them and smelling them was making my stomach lick its lips, but your descriptions are making it grow forks and knives.” He laughed. She moaned. At the sound. At the scents of food mixed with that of virility.

He served her a portion, but when she tried to reach for a real fork and knife, he stopped her, sat and maneuvered the opposing chair until it touched hers, picked up a fork and started feeding her, all the time caressing her with his eyes.

And what could she do but wallow in the incredible experience of being waited on, fed, by this god?

She demolished the portion in minutes, exclaiming at the taste and texture, participating in his quiz of guessing the elusive seasonings, correctly identifying cinnamon and nutmeg. That very distinctive spice turned out to be something she’d never heard about before, semmaq, a spice unique to his region.

At some point, he started alternating forkfuls between them, and sharing the meal with him that way surpassed even the intimacy of the frenzied time they’d shared in the gardens.

When he started feeding her dessert, she moaned. “This I have to ask about. You can resume your recipe description.”

He chuckled. “That’s maasoob. It’s khobez, cut into small pieces, fried crispy, mashed with banana and brown sugar and caramelized in butter. The sprinkling on top is paprika, saffron and the tasty black seeds are hab el barakah, literally, blessing seeds.”

She moaned again as the sinful concoction slid on her tongue and down her throat. “Blessing or curse? My hips and thighs are already screaming the latter.”

“Those are a blessing unto themselves. A little more of them would be a bigger blessing.”

“Oh, no. I struggled long and hard with my weight as I grew up and I’m never going back there.”

He put the spoon down, his eyes a heavy caress over her body. “I wanted you to sample the richness of the flavors of my culture, but if this perfection is a result of your hard work, I certainly won’t do anything to sabotage it.”

A tightness clutched her throat. Whenever she’d made a statement like that in the past, everyone had scoffed at her with reactions ranging from disbelief that she had such concerns, to accusing her of fishing for compliments, to choosing to believe she’d just been blessed with a nuclear metabolism and could gorge herself on junk constantly and not gain an ounce.

But he understood. And supported. He was just phenomenal.

And he was on his feet, inviting her to leave the table.

She let him lead her back to the lounge, where he took her to a different seating area, this time sitting on an armchair across from her. She watched him, obsessing over his every detail.

He watched her examining his every inch for a long moment, then he suddenly said, “It just came to me, one more thing that I think caused your alarm. The man you trusted and wanted was the man you saw in the Tuareg garb. Seeing me in these clothes must have made you feel as if I were someone else.”

Her eyes jerked up from watching the ripple of steel muscles below the fine cloth of his pants. “This-uh, Tuareg garb is how you usually dress in your country?”

“Hardly. Tuaregs come from and still live mostly in the North African desert and are quite proud of the purity of their lineage. My ancestors, who come from all over Asia wouldn’t have been allowed within a mile of marriage into their tribes.”

“God, I must sound so ignorant, assuming all Arabs have the same origins.”

The teasing in his eyes intensified. “Tuaregs can’t be called Arabs. They call themselves Kel Tamajag, or Speakers of Tamasheq, a language that has nothing in common with Arabic. But it’s understandable that you might lump peoples who hail from a general direction into one basket. Back home, a lot of people consider all white people ‘Americans.’”

“I’m sure that’s not true of those above a certain education level. People with my education anywhere in the world have no excuse for being so oblivious and making such generalizations. I’m lamentably ignorant about your part of the world.”

“I will teach you. Everything you want to know.”

And she’d bet he didn’t mean only about the complexities of his region and its various cultures and peoples.

She groped for breath. “OK, you can start now. What do you wear where you come from?”

“Most men wear white taub and ghotrah or red-and-white-checkered shmagh with black eggal headdress. They add a black abaya if it gets cold. I wear modern clothes, except in formal functions. Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t always go around looking like I’ve just stepped out of Arabian Nights.”

“It does disappoint me.” And she had to tell him that? Then she told him more. “Which is weird, really. I’ve never much cared for that kind of getup, or even seen the Arabian Nights connection. But then, I’ve never seen you in one…”

It was hopeless. She was doomed to tell him everything just as it formed in her mind. She just prayed it didn’t put him off.

He seemed anything but put off as his eyes devoured her. “Ya gummari, I have an extensive wardrobe right out of my culture’s rich past and I’ll dress up in whatever takes your fancy. I bet I’ll learn to love these intricate outfits when you’re undressing me, layer by layer…” Then he sighed. “Until then, I must settle for fantasies and anticipation.”

Blood shot to her face before splashing through her body.

He shook his head as he took in her condition. “Hours ago you were ready to let me make love to you, and now you’re blushing to your toes at my mildly erotic innuendoes?”

“Mildly? Yeah, right. But that aside, wouldn’t you be embarrassed out of your skin if it was sinking in that you’d almost done something so out of character with a virtual stranger, and but for his clout, it would have been plastered all over the tabloids for the world to see?”

“Don’t you think ‘out of character’ is too mild a description for anything I’d do if the stranger were of the ‘his’ variety?”

She glared at him. “You’re laughing at me!”

His shook his head again. “With you.”

It didn’t placate her. Her brain felt scrambled, would remain so as long as he kept “…making me make a fool of myself.”

Shehab watched her in rising confusion.

Was she telling him she didn’t go for sex with strangers? Didn’t indulge in one-night stands? Or literally few-minutes stands, as she’d begged him to be?

The last of the ease in her pose, the softness in her lips and the dreaminess in her eyes evaporated. “Sorry I said that out loud. No one makes you do anything you don’t want to. I made a fool of myself and I got caught. And I have to face the music sooner or later. So, listen, when we land, forget about what I said about going to a hotel. I’ll take a taxi home, get it over with.”

For some reason the spell kept being interrupted and this unpredictable woman kept swinging between opposites while he was left reeling. First the uncharted reaction to the paparazzi, then that empathic episode. And now. What was it now? Was she coming to her senses, envisioning possible damages from their liaison?

But if she was, why wasn’t she trying to get away with it? So far there was no incriminating evidence against her.

Had she decided he wasn’t worth the trouble of risking anything further? Was she cutting him off?

“You promised to see me again, and again.”

“Yeah, that was before I remembered I was a paparazzi magnet. And I can’t let you be plastered all over the tabloids.”

Was this just an excuse to get rid of him? Or could it be she was really worried about causing him a scandal? Her words did have the inimitable ring of truth to them. Not that, after tonight, he’d recognize the truth if it punched him in the gut.

“You’re concerned for my privacy?”

“It takes one who has none to know how valuable it is. You’ve been very wise to keep your anonymity. Nothing is worth endangering that.”

“You are. Worth that, and far more.”

She winced. “Don’t exaggerate, please. You barely know me. How do you know what I’m worth? And from the way I behaved with you so far, I know any man would be thinking I’m not worth much. But you of all men…So I believe you want me, but I’d hate to peek inside your head and read what you really think of me.”

“I, of all men? What’s so different about me?”

“What’s not different about you? And then, you come from a culture that glorifies feminine modesty and virtue, and is cruel to women who don’t abide by its strict rules, and I-I…”

“Your mind is taking off on tangents again. You’re punishing yourself for a nonexistent misdemeanor. I don’t believe so-called virtue is required of women any more than it is of men. Do you consider me to be a degenerate for letting our first encounter take an erotic turn that fast?”

“You know I don’t. It was you who stopped, you who had control over yourself, while I-I…”

“You were over your head.”

She nodded, her eyes downcast.

“I was, too. The one thing that made me stop was my fear of this exact situation, after your blood cooled and you couldn’t defend your actions to yourself, driving you to push me away in shame and discomfort at what you consider a lapse.”

“I didn’t say it was a lapse. I said it was out of character. So much so, I don’t know how to handle it, don’t know what to think…”

“Well, I do. I think I’ve never known desire like that existed. But it is so pure, so powerful I don’t know how to handle it, either. The one thing I could think to do was to slow down, savor it…savor you. Though you’re making it almost impossible to do that. Everything you say, every breath you draw is making me want to unwrap you and swallow you whole.”

Her color brightened, her gaze wavered. “Are you sure seeing me again won’t jeopardize your privacy? I’m overexposed and quite often maligned, and it would be awful if any of the venom I inspire from the media spilled into your life. I can’t let it.”

He was suddenly incensed. With the people who caused such upheaval in her life. With himself for ever devising the plan that had injured her so much. That could end with him losing her.

He rose from his armchair and joined her on the couch. “The paparazzi can’t touch me,” he bit off. “And I will convince them to collectively forget you ever existed.”

She blinked at his ferocity. Then she did another totally unexpected thing. She giggled. “I assume you’d use methods harsher than what’s fully sanctioned by the law to obtain this miraculous result?”

“I wouldn’t be doing anything they didn’t richly deserve,” he rumbled. “Breeching others’ privacy, shattering their peace.”

“You come from a culture that advocates an eye for an eye, don’t you? Uh…there I go, putting my foot in it again…”

“Never worry about saying anything to me. I have no sensitivities for you to tread on. Even if I did, you shouldn’t censor your words, anyway. I think political correctness is becoming reverse persecution, and I refuse to bow to its unreasonable demands. Anyway, you’re right about my culture, and me, advocating an eye for an eye. But I believe the rest of this decree is the relevant part. The aggressor is to blame.”

Her smile died as she digested his words. He was thankful to note that her agitation hadn’t returned with the dimming.

Then she sighed. “God, that’s tempting. But now that I realize what kind of power your possess, I can’t use it for my own ends. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. I’d feel I was nuking someone for spitting in my face. No, leave them be. They’ll get bored with me sooner or later.”

“You’d be that merciful when they’ve shown you no mercy? When they make their livelihood by preying on your life?”

“I don’t know about merciful. I just can’t be party to the ugliness they propagate, and by retaliating I’d just be poisoning the world more, not to mention muddying my own karma.”

He clamped his jaw on the need to pulverize her reticence, wanting her to give him carte blanche to remove the vultures from her path once and for all.

He wrestled the urge down, if only by coming to a decision that he would do it, if with less-than-harsh methods to honor her choice. He still couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I will keep on hoping that you’ll change your mind, let me use my…discretion in dealing with them. Until then, they’re coming nowhere near you. We won’t go back to your home. And I certainly won’t take you to a hotel. Come be with me, ya jameelati.”

After a stunned moment, she stammered, “I know I gave you the impression-hell, I asked you to-to…but I really am out of my depth here, Shehab.”

“I’m not asking you to come to my place to share my bed. I said we’d go slow, and we will, as slow as we need to. I’m offering my protection and hospitality as long as you need it.”

“Oh, God, Shehab, I don’t think…”

“How about you stop thinking for a while?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “But that’s the problem. I stopped thinking at all since I met you.”

His fingers feathered her eyes open. “And why is that such a bad thing? The past hours have been a roller coaster. Take the next, and all the time you stay at my place, to settle down, relax, enjoy my company, savor me as I intend to savor you.”

“But I have to…to…I don’t know what I have to do, OK? Whatever it is, I can’t do it with you around. Please, Shehab, just take me home. I need to wrap my head around tonight, around what happened between us, the way I-I…”

And she fell silent.

He was losing her. She was coming to her senses. He couldn’t afford to let her. He had to move into a higher gear.

He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket, gave a twofold order. The first part was another improvisation in his plan. He told her the second part. “I ordered the plane to land.”

She nodded, looked anywhere but at him. He put the phone on the couch between them, gritted his teeth and counted down…

A buzz went through her. It took her seconds to realize it wasn’t another jolt of awareness. It was his phone’s vibration.

He answered it unhurriedly, his eyes on her.

After the first seconds his eyes shifted away and his face closed. Her heart contracted. Bad news? Personal?

He bit off a string of Arabic before he snapped the phone shut. She watched him with a thudding heart as he placed it on the table before them, his moves deliberate, as if to delay a reaction to something big. And bad.

Then he finally sought her eyes and her heart lurched. “An unforeseen crisis has blown apart the business deal I mentioned earlier.”

She stared at him, held her breath, hoping he’d elaborate. Next second she wished she hadn’t hoped. She should have known whatever she hoped for would happen in reverse.

He went on. “I can’t predict how long it will take to perform damage control, to reestablish matters. Weeks. Maybe months.”

“Oh.” That was all she could say.

What was there to say when he was telling her it had been too good to go any further? He’d go back home, for weeks, maybe months. And he’d forget all about her.

It was over before it had even begun.