To Touch a Sheikh (17 page)

“Harres!”
She shouted to stem his ferocity. “Be whatever you wish after we find hi…” Words petered out. She
knew
where Amjad was. Urgency bludgeoned her heart. “Do you know where he took me?”

A beat of silence. “I'll look for him there.”

“Not without me, you won't.”

“Why do you want to see him? To hurt him some more?”

“To undo what I did.”

“Undo it when I bring him back.
If
he wants to see you.”

“I swear, Harres, I'll hurt
you
if you're not here as fast as one of your state-of-the-art fighter helicopters can bring you!”

And she terminated the call.

 

An hour and ten minutes later, the sound of a military helicopter interrupted Maram's feverish plans to hurt Harres.

The second the chopper touched ground, she streaked toward it, uncaring of the maelstrom almost blowing her off her feet.

In two interminable hours they landed outside the cabin that had seen her life's most ecstatic and devastating times. Where she'd given everything that she was to Amjad.

She now knew he
had
given her all that he was, too. He was now giving
up
everything that he was
for
her.

And she had to stop him.

Amjad wasn't inside. The stable was empty. And so was the cave. There was no sign of a car.

Had she only made believe she could read him as she'd always thought she could?

No. He was here. And she knew why he wasn't showing himself.

She swung around to Harres. “Get out of here.”

He gaped at her. “What?”

“Hop on your metal monster and leave,” she hissed. “This is between me and Amjad. He won't come out until you're gone.”

“You'll risk staying here alone on a hunch? I might not be able to come back for you for…a while.”

“Sure. Take your time. Now get.”

He gave her a considering look. “You're as intractable as he is, aren't you? You might be exactly what he needs. If you don't kill him first.”

“I
am
what he needs, as he is what I need. And I intend to see him to a healthy, happy hundred.”

Harres suddenly guffawed. “Happy idiot hundred.”

She blinked. “What?”

“An inside joke. Ask him to explain it.
After
you unscramble him.” Harres patted her phone. “If you don't call, I'll assume my shuttle services aren't needed.” He turned, tossed over his endless back.
“Salam, ya marat akhi.”

Her knees almost buckled.

He'd called her “my brother's wife.”

The drone of the helicopter had just faded when she felt…him.

She swung around. And like the magician she'd always thought him, he was there.

Amjad.

He was wearing the same white on white he had when he'd kidnapped her. He hadn't shaved since she'd last seen him. Shadows darkened his jaw, accentuating his beauty, his eyes, resonating with the emotions roiling through her.

She flew to him, charged him, seared him with longing
and scolding. “You overacting, overreacting, over-everything madman!”

He surrendered to her passion, touching her all over as if he couldn't believe she was in his arms again. “I've actually never been more restrained and reasonable.”

She drank of his taste and reciprocation, moaned into his groans. “Whatever. You're done with mammoth gestures and I better not discover you've committed more insanities. I'm not letting you off the hook of sharing every right to our baby. And you're going back and rescinding your—”

“I won't.”

“Now look here…”

A fiercely tender kiss aborted her protest. “Let's revisit the rights thing after a couple of years of exemplary behavior on my part. Nothing else matters to me but being in your heart again.”

“You never left it. You never will. Not in this life or any other. Now…enough.”

“Nothing will ever be enough for you.” She opened her mouth and another kiss closed it for her. “A proof is only a proof as long as it remains in effect. Mine will.”

Frustration and anxiety shot way past the red zone.

He meant it!

Tirades filled her head, of why taking his job back was nonnegotiable, why she wouldn't accept it as proof, why her doubts had escalated, how they were forever defused…

He went down on one knee before her on the sand, took her hands to his lips, ended coherence. “Imagine any ceremony, wear and do anything, reinvent marriage and being together to your liking. I'm giving you carte blanche with our wedding, our togetherness. With the rest of my life.”

She gaped down at him, everything inside her brimming and flowing over his upturned face.

He closed his eyes as her tears rained down on him, groaned as if basking in a healing downpour.

Then he opened them, his lips quirking. “I take it this is your consenting to a full-service union?”

Delight shuddered on her face. “I take it this is your rescinding your view of said union being in ‘servitude for life'?”

“Of course not. I embrace my servitude. I crave it.”

“Kinky after all, huh?”

He winked, swept himself to his feet and her off hers. “You bet.”

 

A long time later, maybe a day, maybe another lifetime, she stretched luxuriously in Amjad's embrace, in their cave.

She now knew impassioned pleas or serious arguments would be met with indulgent or bedeviling dismissals. Maybe teasing?

She slid a leg along his, reveling in how his body stirred. He rumbled, pressed down on the body he'd pleasured to capacity.

“I'm trying to imagine,” she murmured, “what kind of world it will be with the vacuum your declawing will cause.”

His eyes told her he was on to her as he nipped her chin. “The world will remain the same mad place with the same Mad Prince in residence. And if anyone in it, starting with my brothers, dreams I'm declawed around anyone but you, a rag mop will be less shredded than they will be.”

She sighed, acknowledging that method's failure. “Thrilled to know you're still my slicing-and-dicing desert lion.”

“I
am
on a lifetime mission to deserve a fiery, ferocious lioness with an endless fount of mushy forgiveness for a heart.”

She giggled. “My Crown Prince of Snark.”

“Plain Vanilla Prince of Snark, please.”

Before she protested, he rose above her, suddenly serious. “They
didn't
exist, Maram.” She blinked her confusion. “Love and
eshg.
Never to me. Until you brought them into existence, brought me to life.
Aashagek, ya marami, ya amaali, ya koll hayati.
”

Tears of joy surged, only to dissipate.

Nothing was enough to do justice to hearing him, the man
she'd been born for, saying she inspired his
eshg,
calling her his aspirations and desires, his hopes, his whole life.

 

It was another lifetime later when she realized.

He'd taken her, body and soul, he'd given her all there was to be given. But he hadn't taken back his sacrifice, hadn't given her his word that he would.

But he eventually would. Give it to her along with everything else. As she would. Give her all to her intoxicating, incredible, incomparable desert lion…

“Y
ou intractable, infuriating, incorrigible…”

Aliyah, who'd frozen at Maram's explosion, relaxed, chuckled. “Amjad, right?”

Maram growled, “Who else?” and put the phone back to her ear. “I swear on your ex-Crown Princehood, Amjad, if you try to divert me again…” She fell silent, felt her eyes glazing, her face heating, her core melting. He wasn't diverting her, he was devouring her. With words. Making her unable to wait until he… “Argh! You did it again. That's it. Get your luscious hide in here or you're not enacting any of your ‘diversion' tactics for—for…a week.”

“But Mo-
om.
” The family-room's door opened and Amjad walked in, phone pressed to his ear until his legs rubbed against her knees. “I've been
such
a bad boy.”

She flung her phone aside, dragged him down to her. He chuckled as he met her furious passion with his indulgent one.

“It's still disturbing.”

Aliyah's amusement ejected Maram from the spiral of lust her
husband had dragged her into. If, after eighteen months—which, according to everyone, was the hardest time in a marriage, and with a first pregnancy and its sequels, too—she combusted, left the world behind at a touch, she wondered if she'd one day overload with desire and
eshg.

Aliyah went on. “To see Amjad still Amjad, yet paradoxically, deliriously in love.”

“And Amjad is pleased as always to disturb his little siblings,” Amjad drawled.

Aliyah laughed. “Seems you disturb your little wife, too.”

“I live to disturb her—” Amjad winked at Maram “—if in completely different ways.” He tossed Aliyah his best inflammatory glance. “Ways I'm sure your Kamal hasn't heard about, or if he has, can't execute.”

Aliyah gave him such a sweet smile. “Next time you meet, I'll let Kamal deck you. He says it will rearrange your circuitry into something compatible with human company.”

“Since I care only about that of one specific golden lioness, I'll take a pass on his fist-induced rewiring.”

Maram tugged at him, urgency hammering in her heart. “They're
coming.
And you didn't only smear all my makeup—you also didn't give me an answer, you slippery, self-satisfied snake!”

Amjad nipped her earlobe. “I love it when you alliterate.”

She heard voices outside. They were here.

She tugged on his hair.
“Amjad!”

“Here my answer.” He looked down at their entwined bodies. “
This
is all I want to be, together, all I am now—yours, ours.”

“And how will taking your job back stop you from being that?” she seethed. “And it's your duty, your birthright. You don't have to ‘want' it to take it back.”

“I don't have to take it back. That's the beauty of having spare heirs. Me, I only want you and your uncanny replica.” He looked over at Wafaa, who was sprawled asleep on a blanket on the floor. He'd picked her name to express what she symbolized,
Maram's faithfulness and loyalty, the things that had taught him to live and love. “Who, by the way, called me baba today!”

Maram dragged his face back even as her insides melted at the adoration that turned him to jelly in their little girl's grasp. “Tell me you'll take your job back, Amjad.”

He grinned at her. “No.”

“For me!”

His eyes drained of mischief. “Don't play dirty, Maram.”

She couldn't
believe
she'd never thought of
this
before!

She pressed her advantage. “For me, Amjad, for me.”

He said nothing. Then it was too late.

The door opened and his family descended on them en masse.

After lively greetings, every couple turned to showing off their baby and cooing over the others'.

Shaheen and Johara's son, Kareem, who looked like an amalgam of his parents, was fifteen months old. Harres and Talia had postponed starting a family among his demanding jobs as minister of interior
and
crown prince and her jobs as emergency medicine consultant in Zohayd's foremost national hospital and field medicine trainer of Harres's special forces. But they'd arranged their schedules and were expecting their first baby in six months. Aliyah and Kamal's two rascals were four and two and everything that their parents were.

After the kids had been taken to the mansion's garden to play, King Atef rose.

“I have an announcement, my children.” All eyes turned to him. “I am abdicating.”

After a stunned hush, everyone but Amjad burst out in protests. King Atef raised his hands.

After everyone quieted, he went on. “It's time I spent whatever I have left of life serving the love of the one woman I've ever loved, the woman I left to serve my kingdom.”

He reached out a loving hand and gaze to Aliyah's mother, Anna Beaumont. The tall, ethereally beautiful blonde flew to him, seemed to fit into his side. He sighed, hugged her tight.

No one had anything but blessings to this. King Atef had
sacrificed his own happiness for far too long for Zohayd. Now that he was free of Sondoss and his health had stabilized, he could finally live his life the way he'd always longed to.

King Atef received everyone's congratulations and his sons' ribbings before he turned to Amjad.

“I still want you to succeed me, Amjad,” the king said. “Not because you're firstborn, but because you
are
the most accomplished statesman of my sons, the one who will make the best king.”

Amjad's lips twisted. “It was one thing to be stuck with me as your successor due to some cruel trick of timing, but now that you have a choice, how can you consider the Mad Prince would make the best moderator king?”

“Because you have a surefire method to your madness, Amjad,” King Atef said.

Shaheen nodded. “As much as it pains me to say, Amjad, your brand of madness works so well that it's insane. You're the only man capable of bringing our tribes to heel. I bet there won't be any attempts at uprisings or conspiracies during your reign.”

“I do believe it's your destiny,” King Atef corroborated. “To bring about a unification to this kingdom the like of which even your previous incarnation couldn't dream of.”

Amjad snorted. “Ha, bloody, ha, Father. How about we retire this stale Ezzat reincarnation theory?”

King Atef shrugged. “Probably only to replace it with a parallel-lifelines one. Your paths are so similar that it's uncanny. You might have spent longer resisting your fate, but you, too, have succumbed to it and found perfect happiness.”

Amjad looked over at Maram. “That is one thing I won't contest.” Before she ran to him, Amjad looked back at his father, eyes simmering with irreverence. “The first decree I'd make as king would be to auction off the Pride of Zohayd. One piece at a time. Just as Ezzat gathered it, I would disperse it.”

A long silence echoed.

Finally the king exhaled. “It
is
time for radical changes.
No one can bring those about but someone as radical as you, Amjad.”

“And since there's no one as radical as you, just take the damn job back already,” Harres growled. “If you don't want me to die of asphyxiation in business suits and negotiation halls.”

Amjad looked at Shaheen, who exclaimed, “Don't even think it!”

“Wuss.” Amjad smirked before transferring his derision to all of them. “I don't know where you get off lauding my acumen. There was no evidence of basic intelligence when it came to negotiating the most important treaty of my life.” He cast her a look of pained remembrance. “I almost caused an irreparable rift with Maram.”

And she burst out, “
Then
you created total harmony out of chaos.”

His look poured indulgence over her. “Only because you're afflicted with this bottomless genetic capacity to forgive me.”

“Look where forgiving you has gotten me,” she exclaimed. “Zohayd can hope to be a fraction as lucky!” He started to shake his head again, and she rushed to him. “You're my long-term, committed, all-or-nothing man. You're exactly the king Zohayd needs. And I'm such a phenomenal political and financial law consultant, I will smooth out your reign, manage you so well you'll have oodles of time for me and Wafaa to wrap you around our pinkies…”

He devoured her in a kiss reminiscent of the passionate demonstration that had rocked the region during their wedding.

She surfaced, breathless. “Will you stop paying tribute at the altar of your guilt already? I couldn't love you more, if that is what you're after! Not if you don't want me to explode.”

“Listen to your wife and owner, Amjad,” Harres urged.

After looking so deep into her eyes that she knew he'd examined her soul, marveled at how kindred it was to his, Amjad sighed, turned to his family. “Take a good look at the king you'll have. A susceptible madman willingly rolling over at his mistress's merest command.”

A commotion of relief and elation exploded.

Maram jumped on him in delight. “Merest, you breath-depleting man? I've been begging you for eighteen months.”

“You never struck the right chord. You didn't say ‘for me.' Then you did, today. All was lost then.”

“You mean you intended to accept ever since I said that?”

“Yes.”

Maram gaped at him. “And you made us beg to convince you!”

His lips quirked on his trademark goading. “Just rubbing your noses in the error of your ways. And messing with you.” He pressed her closer. “And needing to hear once again how much you love me.”

She cried out in chagrin, laughed, hugged him as his family milled around, celebrating what they all felt would be a new era of limitless prosperity for Zohayd under Amjad's leadership.

For with Amjad there
were
no limits.

And she could and would love him more. And to infinity.