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Sayid strode past Alik and started up the curved, white stone staircase. “I don’t require your opinion on the matter, Vasin.”
Alik shrugged and walked to the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll leave you to your fiancée. I have some security measures to check.” Alik disappeared around the corner, and Sayid continued on up the stairs, anger still coursing through his veins. There was no reason for it, not really.
Had he not told Chloe he would be taking other lovers? And had he not extended the same courtesy to her? Neither of them were likely to be celibate for sixteen years, and if Alik was one of the lovers she chose, could he truly be territorial about it?
Yes, dammit.
There was a line. And Alik would not cross it. He would make sure the other man knew that.
Sayid stalked down the hall and toward the open doorway that led out to the balcony that overlooked the sea. He saw Chloe, sitting in a plush chair, wearing a very small dress. Aden was in a bassinet at her feet, and an elderly woman was kneeling in front of her, singing softly and painting intricate designs on Chloe’s hands and feet.
Chloe looked up sharply, shimmering strands of red hair catching the light, the backdrop of the blue ocean highlighting the depth of her eyes. She had no makeup on, but then, Chloe rarely did. Nothing beyond the minimum. But something about her struck him as different. Fresh, her freckles clearly visible, her skin pink.
She was brighter, he realized. Not as exhausted. The dark circles under her eyes had faded away.
“I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” she said.
The woman who was working on the henna turned and bowed her head low, her forehead brushing the ground, then she turned back and continued on with her design. The display meant nothing to him. A customary show of servitude. But at this point, one he gladly took as a positive sign that he was being accepted in his temporary position. That his impending marriage to Chloe was having the desired effect.
“When were you expecting me to show up? Just in time for vows?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“Well, I’m not quite so last-minute. I wanted to go over security measures with Alik.”
“Oh, right.”
He watched her face closely when he said his friend’s name. “You’ve met Alik?”
“Of course. He’s very friendly.”
“How friendly exactly?” he asked, his teeth gritted.
“Well he…” She cut herself off. “Are you… irritated?”
“No.”
“You are. Are you… bothered by the fact that he was friendly to me?”
He snorted. “That’s ridiculous. I would hope he was friendly to you. You are the future sheikha of Attar.”
She tilted her head to the side and squinted, as if she was studying a specimen beneath a microscope. “You… are you jealous?”
“I am not given to the emotion in any circumstance. Not even with a woman who is my lover. There is absolutely no reason I would feel it in connection with you.”
“That’s very true. There isn’t a reason. Except that I’m marrying you tomorrow and while the institution is human in concept, the idea of a male possessing his mate with some form of exclusivity runs across species. How else can a male be certain his offspring is truly his?”
“The offspring in this instance is not mine, as you well know. And as I don’t—” he looked down at the woman, still working on Chloe’s feet “—as you are well aware, our situation is different.”
“But it’s a deep-seated male need, so the fact that your brain knows it doesn’t necessarily mean your body does.”
He arched one brow and looked at her. Color crept into her cheeks slowly, staining the freckles a darker shade. “I suppose that is true,” he said, just for a moment, one moment, embracing the dark, restless ache that spread through his body whenever he looked at her. Acknowledging what it was. Attraction. Lust. Letting himself fully visualize all the fantasies that had been rioting through his brain in fuzzy, half-formed pictures for over a week.
Her body, beneath his, arching into him as he chased his release inside of her. Bending her over, making her grip the headboard, hands tight on her hips as he thrust inside.
Oh, yes, that was what he wanted.
And he would not allow himself to have it. Because the lust he felt for her wasn’t simple. It went deeper, went to a place he had to deny existed. The place with all the cracks. The place that held his weakness.
“You think you know what it is my body wants?” he asked, aware that his voice sounded rough.
The color in her cheeks deepened. “I mean, in terms of… the fidelity aspect and the um… reproductive um… and laying claims to offspring, and so on… well… yes?”
He chuckled, letting the erotic images of a few moments before replay in his mind. “No. I don’t think you know what my body wants. I’m not sure you know what yours wants, either.”
She frowned, lush lips pulled down. “That’s ridiculous. Of course I know what my body wants.”
“But you think I don’t?”
“No, I think what your body wants and what your mind believes to be true are at odds. That’s different.”
“I see. And what is it your body wants, Chloe?”
He waited, watched as she seemed to have a mini-realization. Her lips parted slightly, her eyes widening. “Not… not that,” she said.
It was as though she’d only just picked up on the depth of the innuendo in the conversation. And that seemed strange to him. A woman of her age and beauty, should be well aware of the undertones to conversations between men and women. She should be well versed in the words beneath the words.
Yet, it seemed as though she wasn’t. He wasn’t sure how that could be possible.
“Alik is off-limits,” he said, deciding that the direct approach would work best with her.
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re telling me this because you honestly thought I would… Ugh.”
He looked down at the woman kneeling before Chloe. She was putting the finishing touches on the flower, and as soon as she had completed the task, he spoke to her in Arabic. “You are dismissed.”
She nodded once and gathered her things, walking quickly from the deck without looking at either Chloe or him.
“What did you say to her?” Chloe asked.
“I told her she could go.”
“She didn’t look at us.”
“Giving us our due respect.”
“I don’t require that people treat me like… like that.”
He shrugged. “I don’t require it. But I gladly accept it. It’s a sign that no one is out to oppose me. There are reasons that deference is appreciated. Especially given how well received I was initially.”
“Hmm,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, her eyes trained on the vines that curled around her foot and back behind her ankle.
“You disapprove?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. But I am curious.”
“Fine. It’s just another way that patriarchal men reinforce their dominance. I grant you, it’s not the most despicable way, but it’s a way.”
“There are plenty of queens in the world, habibti. Queens who are intent on crushing their subordinates beneath a spiky heel. Don’t think it is unique to men.”
“Well, you’re not making a great case for it in terms of behavior.” She stood, swooping down to collect Aden. He noticed that she was more confident now with the baby than when he’d first met her. “Coming out here playing the part of territorial wolf. Trying your best to claim exclusive rights on a, uh… a caribou carcass you don’t even want.”
“Did you just compare yourself to a caribou carcass?”
“Unfortunate parallel aside,” she said, “the point remains valid.”
“I never said I didn’t want you,” he said. The words torn from him, the admission unwelcome. And they hung between them, thickening the tension that had building ever since the first moment he’d seen her.
He took a step toward her, her scent, sweet, feminine, filled with honeysuckle, grabbed his throat and threatened to choke him with his lust.
She was very wrong if she thought he didn’t know what he wanted. He knew. And it involved her naked and crying out his name, with pleasure rather than the complete frustration he usually heard coming from her.
“But I… you. You did. I’m sure you did. There was all kinds of talk about other lovers and… and I’m sure the implication was…”
“That I’m not committing myself to a sixteen-year exclusive relationship with you. Which means it’s best if nothing ever happens between the two of us.”
“Oh. But… but it could. You’re saying it could in terms of… because you’re… are you attracted to me?”
The way she asked the question, the utter lack of guile and calculation in the words, was astonishing to him. It was as if she’d missed the tension. No, she hadn’t, he was sure of that, but it was as if she’d imagined she’d been the only one to feel the electricity arching between them.
Everything in him wanted to wrap his arm around her waist and pull her to him, to show her, exactly, how he felt. To press his lips to the hollow of her throat, lick the indent at her collarbone. Continue down to the valley between her breasts.
But she was holding the baby like a very convenient, living shield.
“Am I attracted to you?” he asked, taking another step toward her, desire flooding through him, hot, reckless. “When I arrived here and saw Alik, and I thought there was a chance he might make a play for you, I had fantasies of tying a rock around his neck and throwing him into the sea.”
Chloe looked at Sayid, into the dark, intense eyes that were so sharply focused on her that she felt as if she’d been put beneath a microscope and cut open, so that every piece of her, every secret hidden from the naked eye, was on perfect display, out in the open for him and for anyone else to look at.
His voice was low, shaking with intensity. She wrapped her arms more tightly around Aden, her heart thundering heavily, her hands shaking. And for the first time she identified the tightening in her stomach, the racing of her pulse, with ease.
She was attracted to him. She desired him.
That had never happened to her before and it was making her feel a little dizzy.
“Then I came out here,” he continued, moving to the side, circling her, slowly, like a predator who had spotted prey. “And my fantasies changed. I would have you,” he said, his voice almost a growl. “Bent over in front of me. Saying my name as I brought you to pleasure, over and over again.”
The pictures his words painted were so vivid, so shocking, the reaction they created so visceral, that she had to look away from him. Her face was burning, her breathing short, fast.
She knew how he would be, she didn’t need experience to understand. He wanted to dominate her. To use her body against her. To create a kind of sexual euphoria that would put her under his spell.
No, she didn’t think he would use violence against her. But Sayid had other power. And she knew he would use that.
And she had seen all that a woman would endure for the man who owned her body.
She wouldn’t allow him to do that to her. Ever.
She moved away from him, trying to get her breathing under control. “As charming as that little bit of verbal pornography was, I’m going to have to say no.”
“You aren’t attracted to me?” he asked.
She could never lie all that convincingly, but who needed a lie when a well-placed insult would do? “I’m not impressed by your neanderthal behavior,” she spat. “I’m not into the dominant male thing.”
“Really?”
“Really. I agreed to this for Aden, but I didn’t agree to this,” she said, waving her hand in the space between them, “so if you’re having a bout of pent-up sexual frustration, I suggest you go and find a willing woman to work it off with.”
“That’s what you want?” he asked, his voice taking on a deadly edge now.
“Yes,” she lied, “it’s what I want.”
“I thought you wanted discretion?”
“Bend her over the balcony for all I care,” she said, letting anger fuel her now, anger and fear, “it won’t bother me.”
She turned and walked back into the palace, fighting against the tears that were threatening to fall. She sat down on the lavish, four-poster bed that had been provided for her in her room and unbuttoned her shirt with one hand, unclipping her nursing bra and guiding Aden to her breast. She was getting used to this. To this part of motherhood. But Sayid…
She’d never been so confused, so afraid of her own body, in her entire life.
And the man who was causing her all this grief was the man she was marrying tomorrow.
There were few guests at the beachside wedding, and none of the usual Attari pre-ceremony traditions were being observed. No three-day feasts, no group dances and the henna party had, blessedly, only included one woman.
Chloe was thankful for those small favors, but she was still nervous about the event itself. Especially after her last encounter with Sayid. And, of course, she hadn’t even bumped into him in the hall since she’d stormed away the evening before, all but commanding he find some other woman to do it with on their wedding night.
Not that it was their wedding night in any way that mattered.
It wasn’t a wedding that mattered. The most important guests in attendance were a few carefully selected members of the press who would write up a nice story about the event and bestow hope upon a nation. In theory. Theirs had to be the most magical lie in history, if it really possessed all that power. But if it did, and the outcome was as good as predicted, she could hardly feel bitter about it.
As it was, for the moment, she felt a little bitter.
Think of Aden. And not of everything you’re leaving behind.
She pressed her hands over her eyes and tried to breathe. It felt as though the sand was sliding beneath her feet, slipping away. Leaving her with nothing to stand on.
She heard the music change, heard her cue to walk down the aisle.
She took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the tent that had been raised on the beach for the dinner that would follow the ceremony, lifting the hem of her dress so that she wouldn’t stumble over the delicate fabric. It was completely plain, a flowing, cream summer dress that brushed over the sand as she walked. A white, silken scarf covered her hair, shielding her from the sun. She didn’t hold any flowers. She didn’t have an attendant to take them from her when she reached her groom. She had no one standing there with her.
