The Sheikh's Claim

To her shame, that hadn’t been what had finally made her walk away.

After all, he’d promised her nothing to justify her feeling bad, let alone betrayed.

Cursing herself for regurgitating those sordid memories, her eyes darted around the hotel suite. She’d reserved it for the coming weeks as it was within walking distance of the hospital so she’d be constantly available for her aunt.

She’d just come back from starting arrangements at the hospital. Just thinking of what lay ahead filled her with dread. No wonder Aliyah’s call had shaken her. She was already in turmoil. And it had nothing to do with any other Aal Shalaan.

She rose and headed to the kitchenette to make a cup of herbal tea. She needed to be calm for the drive back to her aunt’s at the outskirts of Durrat al Sahel. Traffic in the capital had gotten far worse than she remembered.

With the first sip from her hibiscus brew, a loud, melodious noise shattered the suite’s silence. She gulped the hot liquid, scalded her tongue and choked.

She was coughing her lungs out when the noise went off again. A doorbell. She hadn’t even realized the suite had one!

It must be housekeeping. And she hadn’t thought of hanging a Do Not Disturb sign—she’d planned to stay only an hour.

She stalked to the door, flung it open, intending to let them in and herself out … and froze. Her heart did, too.

Filling the door, dwarfing her and causing the world to shrink, stood Jalal. The reason behind every tumult in her life since she’d laid eyes on him.

But he wasn’t only that man. He was … more.

She’d once thought nothing could surpass him in beauty and magnificence. And nothing had. And during their affair, he’d proved only he could best his own standards. That six-foot-six broad-shouldered, divinely proportioned body she’d thought the epitome of manhood had kept maturing to godlike levels, as she’d had hands-on proof. Every day they’d had together had hewn his face further with the chisel of maturity and virility, manifesting his intelligence and sensuality and dominance in its every slash and angle and expression.

But something had happened to him since she’d last seen him two years ago. As if the darkness and danger she’d long suspected he’d hidden beneath the facade of graciousness and gorgeousness had manifested in his looks, emanated from his every nuance. It turned his beauty, his impact, from breathtaking to heartbreaking.

He was staring down at her as if he, too, was shocked to see her. When he was the one who’d almost given her a heart attack just by showing up.

After what felt like an hour of suspended thought and escalating distress, his whiskey-colored eyes narrowed, singeing her. Then his voice poured over her, feeling like a dip in lava.

“I said I’d delete you from my memory, but it appears there is no forgetting you without erasing it altogether. So I’ve decided to stop trying, to go all the way in the opposite direction. I now think my only cure is to revive every memory, to reenact every single intimacy we ever shared.”

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