The Sheikh's Reluctant Queen
The other two candidates were Haidar and Jalal, her paternal and maternal cousins. They’d been dubbed the Princes of Two Kingdoms and so many said they were perfect for the throne of Azmahar.
Which was ridiculous. Though she loved them and they were incredible men and businessmen, she couldn’t see how anyone would consider them, or anyone else, when Rashid was in the picture. Apart from being beyond compare as a man, in her own humble opinion, he was full-blooded Azmaharian and a war hero many times over, and the wealthiest, most successful businessman in Azmahar’s history.
Rashid’s deep-velvet voice interrupted her musings. “You still haven’t told me what the first three impossibilities are, according to Zohaydan folklore.”
“I do know it’s not known in Azmahar, but I thought with you once spending so much time in Zohayd you’d be as versed as any of us in local colloquial nuances.”
“That one must have slipped my omni-awareness.”
She couldn’t stop herself from laughing out loud. He kept surprising her. That combination of corrosive humor and straight-faced delivery was lethal. Like everything about him. It didn’t help to discover he was fun as well as hot as hell. As if she wasn’t already in enough trouble.
Feeling as if her smile would never fade, she said, “Al ghul wal anqa’a wal khell’lel waffi.”
The ghoul, the phoenix and the faithful friend.
His lips curled. “I don’t know about the first two but the impossibility of that last one is certain.”
That was what he believed? About Haidar and Jalal? The three of them had once been inseparable. More. Bonded beyond even brotherhood. What could have happened to shatter their vital connection?
Dared she ask?
No. She’d stepped on too many of his privacy toes for one night. Something of that magnitude had to be reserved for later.
If there was a later.
With dejection setting in, she sighed. “Both our issues are tied to those who should have been our closest friends.”
That again seemed to stun him. “Are you suggesting we have something in common?”
Her astonishment equaled his. “I’m not suggesting. I’m stating.”
“It seems more than two years of living in Chicago has dimmed your memory of who you are, princess. And of who I am.”
Her eyes rolled. “We’re back to princessing me, huh? Please don’t tell me you’re even suggesting that when it comes to status, I’m the one standing on higher ground!”
“I’m not suggesting. I’m stating.”
She almost snorted. “Please! You’ve overcome unimaginable adversity and are now a phenomenal self-made success story, with a kingdom begging you to be its king. And what am I? While I made enough money to set up my business, and it’s beginning to take off, it will never be anywhere near as huge as yours. And while my family might have thought they were ‘prizing’ me—what they actually did was hold me back and almost break me down. I’ve barely recovered from a lifetime of emotional abuse. At least when your guardian and his family abused you, you had the comfort of knowing they weren’t your flesh and blood. So no, there’s nothing higher about my status.”
Again she felt that vast… wrath percolate inside him. It made her shiver, even when she knew it wasn’t directed at her.
“You’re still a princess,” he finally said.
“A minor one.”
“The only daughter of the Aal Shalaans is anything but minor. Your parents are siblings of monarchs. You’re next in status only to those in line to the crown of both kingdoms. If that doesn’t make you a major princess, I don’t know what does.”
“Take heart. I’m no longer royal on one side, since my mother’s family was ousted from Zohayd and Azmahar. And with Uncle Atef relinquishing Zohayd to Amjad, having only a cousin on the throne distances me from it and diminishes said lofty status.”
“Whatever the political developments, you’re still royal on both sides going back a few dozen generations.”
She threw her hands in the air. “Ya Ullah… now I know why dates are my fourth impossibility. My statistics make me sound so… stuffy. Not to mention scary. Who wants to go out with a woman with all this ancient blue sludge clogging her veins? And all the minefields that come with it?”
“Any man would do anything to… date you, even if it would jeopardize his very life.”
Was that a compliment? That doozy? Would “any man” include him? Or was he just saying men would overlook the dangers of associating with her for supposedly unimaginable privileges?
Before she could ask what he meant, he was already asking another question. “You don’t date?”
“No.” Because you exist, and any man compared to you is predictable, disappointing and… well, non-existent. Out loud she qualified her response. “I start nothing I know won’t work.”
“How do you know it won’t work out until you try?”
“One try is enough to tell me it won’t.”
Ugh. She’d made it sound as if her M.O. was a string of one-night stands, ditching guys who didn’t wow her the morning after.
Before she could rectify this massive miscommunication, she found him on his feet.
She blinked up at him. “You gotta teach me how you do that.”
An empty glance answered her as he produced his phone. After he again ordered his right hand man to come over, he turned to her.
“It’s time you went home, princess.”
She found herself on her feet, too, her heart almost uprooting itself in dismay. “But I don’t want to go yet.”
“It’s 1:00 a.m. That woman who seems joined to you at the hip must have already reported you missing.”
“Mira had to fly to Tennessee—her father was taken to the emergency room. That’s why I haven’t called her yet, and why I was going home alone tonight. I was also much later than usual because I had to stay behind and finish things for her.”
“So her father forced her into one E.R., and you forced me into another.”
Her lips quivered on a mixture of humor and rising anxiety. “As if anyone could force you into anything.”
“I once believed no one could. After tonight, I stand corrected. Look what’s happened to me since I let that lowlife nick me. I’ve been dragged to the E.R., pushed into the hands of doctors who had anything but work on their minds, blackmailed back into my car, taken home like a minor, informed how I feel, told to sit and where, and fed and pampered like an invalid. Now I can’t even go to bed because you want to fuss over me some more.”
No longer sure if he was teasing or fed up, she blurted out, “I promise to stop fussing over you, if you let me stay the night.”
And she finally did it. She’d shocked him mute.
When she thought he wouldn’t speak again, he exhaled. “Coming here was inappropriate. ‘Staying the night’ needs new adjectives.”
Still not sure what to make of his mood, she ventured a smile. “Unacceptable? Outrageous? Shocking as hell?”
“How about ‘out of the question’?”
“C’mon, Rashid, this is twenty-first century Chicago.”
The hardness settling in his eyes told her no argument would work this time. He’d send her away then tell himself he shouldn’t see her again. Tonight was all she could have.
She caught his arm, her voice shaking then breaking. “You can’t send me home to an empty condo after what happened tonight.”
The frown furrowing his forehead along the lines inflicted by his harsh life was one of bafflement this time. “You’re that afraid of being alone? You didn’t seem worried before.”
“Just because I’m not a mess doesn’t mean I’m okay.” Which was true. “Only being with you has stopped the whole thing from sinking in and ripping at my insides.” Which was also true.
His eyes widened that fraction that told her something major was going on inside him. This was the moment she had to seize, when he was teetering on the verge of relenting, before he talked himself out of softening.
She did. “Let me stay with you. Please, Rashid.”
Her insides were quivering for his verdict when he suddenly let out a long breath.
Before she could gauge if that was exasperation or capitulation, he turned and walked away.
As she struggled with worry, he threw her a cool glance over his shoulder. “One thing for sure, princess. Your mother and aunt were clueless about you. You could influence the dead.”
She hurried after him, needing confirmation. “And since you’re very much alive, this means I can stay?”
“At your peril, princess.”
Five
Talk about false advertisement.
Despite Rashid’s thrilling warning about her spending the night, nothing had happened.
In fact, what she’d feared most had occurred. He’d treated her like an inapproachable charge in his custody.
This gigantic residence turned out to have separate areas, even though none had any doors since the place was made for one person’s privacy. One area was in the mezzanine, behind a partitioning wall, which was used as his bedroom suite. This was the space he’d given her for the night.
The huge room was even sparser than the rest of the place, with only a skylight, a built-in wardrobe and a nine-by-nine-foot mattress spread in dark sheets on the floor. But to her delight, the connecting bathroom was decadent. It was good to know that although his living and sleeping quarters were a throwback to his life as a survivalist, where hygiene was involved, Rashid had succumbed to state-of-the-art luxury.
He’d offered her some of his clean clothes to wear. But since he had nothing to replace her stilettos, he’d encouraged her to go barefoot, assuring her he kept the floors spotless. Then, without so much as a good-night, he’d left her.
And here she was, sitting on his “bed,” flooded to the knee in his sweatshirt and unable to sleep.
Not because he’d let her stay the night with him, but not really with him at all. But because now that she’d had time to think, she realized the real reason behind her earlier desperation to stay. She’d sensed something was very wrong. With him.
She had felt it, heard it and seen it while he’d been ripping her attackers apart. That volcanic rage that had incinerated his reason. Far beyond anything an ordinary man would feel about scum who preyed on a helpless female. Something uncontrollable, consuming. Damaging. Terrible.
The effort she’d felt him exert to bring his violence under control, the volatility she’d felt him struggle with so he could appear stable under her scrutiny, had singed her with its intensity. This hadn’t been a new reaction ignited by tonight’s events. This was old. And immense. She could not begin to imagine what had spawned it. But she knew whatever it was continued to prey on him. That demon she’d felt possessing him, body and mind, was just beneath the surface.
And even before she’d analyzed all that consciously, she hadn’t been able to let that demon consume the man she loved any further, not when it had manifested in full force this time on her account.
Oh, yes. Love. There was no use calling what she felt for him anything else.
So what if he was no longer the same man she’d had a crush on all her life? He was now far more than anything she’d ever imagined. Darker, larger-than-life, more complex and intriguing than anyone she’d ever met. Even under normal circumstances, she would have been disturbed at the prospect of allowing herself any emotional involvement with this highly upgraded Rashid. But she saw no reason for caution or trepidation now when she never had before. She wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of emotions that would no doubt remain unrequited. Rashid was driven, self-contained and off-limits. He had no place in his life for a woman or in his heart for love.
But it didn’t matter. It brought her peace to accept her emotions, even revel in them. To know the one man she could love existed, and why exactly she loved him, and would never be with another.
It wasn’t as pathetic or melodramatic as it sounded. She’d even call it wise, since that was learning from others’ experiences and mistakes. She’d seen too many marriages that had been made without love and how disastrously they’d ended, or worse, continued. She also had the example of those marriages that had flourished because they’d been based on the kind of love that came once in a lifetime, and thrived against all odds. That kind of love she’d feel only for Rashid. It was unwise, even self-destructive, settling for less. But what were the odds he’d reciprocate her emotions? Negligible, really.
He might have let her “influence” him tonight, but only as an extension of his chivalry. Maybe the old times he’d discounted did count for a man afflicted by a gargantuan sense of honor. After all, he’d once gone to unimaginable lengths to pay the debts of a man who’d abused him, to repay that man for the shelter he’d given him when the already motherless Rashid had become a complete orphan.
Suddenly, that familiar chill moved through her.
She now knew the feeling was a Rashid proximity alert. Could he be approaching? If he was, would it be because he…?
She wished. He must be coming to check up on her after she’d misled him about the nature of her turmoil. But what if…
Reality check, moron. He probably just wanted something from the bedroom she occupied.
Breath bated, she expected him to walk in any moment.
He didn’t. Had she imagined it?
No. Something had intensified her awareness of him. This might mean… Something was wrong!
Who knew where that scumbag’s switchblade had been? That wound Rashid had dismissed might be starting to fester. He’d probably refused antibiotics like he had analgesics.
She shot to her feet. At the mezzanine’s railing, her streak came to a stumbling halt as if she’d slammed into an invisible force field. From the far end of the hangar-sized space, something reverberated in her ears, her bones. It felt and sounded like the erratic, furious pounding of a distant, gigantic heart.
She hadn’t heard the sound in the sequestered bedroom area. But it must have been what had sent anxiety skewering through her.
She ran down the stairs, almost slipping on the slick stone. Once her feet touched rougher floor, her dash resumed. The force of the sounds ratcheted up with every step as she approached a wall partition at the far end of the loft. Beyond it, the pounding felt as if it would bruise her insides.
Her own heart thundering in response, she walked around the wall. And she saw the sound’s origin. Rashid.
Stripped to the waist, barefoot and barehanded, he was kick-boxing a punching bag in a constant barrage of viciousness that had almost destroyed its supposedly indestructible form. Those punches and roundhouse kicks could bring down a wall. A single one would have killed anything living. It made her realize he’d actually held back when he’d dealt with her attackers.
It was as if he was venting surplus anger, tearing the bag apart as he hadn’t a chance to do to them. Or was he imagining striking out at those who’d given him his ghastly scar?
Ya Ullah—that scar.
Continuing on a path of mutilation from his neck, it widened as it ran down his back. At his waist it snaked around to his front, as if to shackle his body, slithered up over his abdomen to his chest in a passage of livid disfiguration. Where it ended, its very tip, sharp and jagged, seemed to plunge beneath his skin to skewer into his heart.
It certainly felt as if it had plunged into hers. What he must have suffered!
B’Ellahi—how and when had this happened to him? And more important, what had it done to him? How deeply had that scar sunk into his psyche, into his soul?
It sank talons of anguish into hers.
Yet as she neared, fascination began to replace the anguish that gripped her insides. He was moving so fast, she hadn’t been able to make out what that darkness staining his skin around the scar was. She’d at first thought it was charred flesh, making her almost want to retch. But now she realized what it was.
A tattoo. Weaving around the scar as if to ward off its advance, stop it from spreading its damage.
Then she was close enough to fathom its complex configuration, to realize what the shapes enveloping the scar were. An ingenious pattern made of the symbol of the noble house he belonged to, a distant branch of her maternal family, of which he was the last surviving member.
She stood for what felt like hours, mesmerized, watching that powerhouse display of heart-wrenching rage and mind-numbing might. His skin, flawless apart from the scar that marred it and that he’d so boldly outlined, glowed as if real flames fueled his fury. Sweat accentuated the polish and definition of every formidable muscle, spraying crystalline droplets with each swing. His every line and move was sheer poetry of power and perfection.
What kind of training and drive fueled this level of expertise and endurance? He didn’t even seem to be breathing hard. Or seem to show that he’d ever slow down or stop.
Suddenly, he did, his arms falling to his sides. Fists clenched, he remained rock-still, feet planted apart, primed for reeruption into full-blown aggression, staring at his handiwork, every muscle bunched on the precarious control that momentarily contained the demon driving him to such excesses.
She’d never seen anything so absolutely magnificent.
Even unaware of her presence, lost to his inner struggle, his aura flooded her. It felt mystical, limitless. A knight with might enough to bear mythical burdens, determination enough to forge legends. She had no doubt she was looking at the only man who could restore Azmahar to its now-distant glory. He might have lived as an orphan and an outcast, but he was born to be a king.
He’d always been king of her heart.
And she couldn’t bear witnessing his turmoil. He’d suffered enough. She’d give anything so he wouldn’t suffer ever again.
“Rashid.”
At her tremulous whisper, he swung around, his face a mask of surprise, his slanting eyes widening, the flames beneath his skin blazing brighter.
“Laylah…”
It was the first time he’d ever said her name. Just her name.
Hearing it in that incomparable voice of his, darkness and magic made audible, shot liquid fire from her heart to flood her limbs. Her feet almost tangled around each other as she approached him. The field of agitation enveloping them tightened, choking her as she stopped before him.
Surprise deserted his face, harshness replacing it, hardening its hewn angles. “Don’t you know curiosity always backfires, princess? Now you have to live with this sight polluting your mind’s eye forever.”
Her gaze darted to where his exercise pants hung precariously low on his muscled hips. She forced it back up to his drenched face. “Your all-out revenge on the punching bag?”
Those obsidian flames lashed out from his eyes again. “Are you pretending that this—” he made a sweeping gesture to his tattooed scar “—doesn’t horrify you? I thought you had enough courage and candor to spare me the damned political correctness. Everyone struggles to pretend my scar doesn’t exist, when it’s all anyone can see anymore, and they’re torn between cringing, curiosity and the unreasoning worry that it will somehow infect them. But to a perfect woman used to perfection in everything, especially in men, I know it must revolt you, princess.”
“Rev—?” That zapped any languidness his nearness provoked. “Now listen here, Sheikh Rashid. I’ve put up with your misconceptions, since I realized you know nothing about me, and I was willing to educate you. But this is where I won’t try to convince you. This is where I’ll tell you.” She grabbed his arms, stood on tiptoes, to make up for the disadvantage of being dwarfed by him and his sweatshirt, to inject her posture with authority. “You have always defined perfection to me.”
His eyes shot wider, as if she’d punched him in the gut.
Shocked? How much more shocked would he be when she touched him where his flesh had been sundered and sealed along that terrible rift?
Her hand trembled as it fulfilled her overwhelming need.
It stopped midway, caught in the iron vise of his hand.
Raising her eyes, she found his face gripped with a ferociousness that would have scared off anyone else.
It only made touching him a necessity. Her heart felt it would stop if she didn’t.
Her other hand rose, met with the same fate, made her almost whimper. “Please, Rashid. Let me touch you.”
“Why? Even if I believed your wild claim, my alleged perfection is a thing of the past, from before I was almost torn apart and so sloppily put back together. So don’t you dare placate or pity me. I don’t take kindly to either offense.”
This needed taking care of, once and for all.
Hands gripped in his, she forced her lips to quiver into a smile. “Fine. Just remember, I tried to spare you. You now have only yourself to blame when I give you my uncensored opinion.”
His hands convulsed around hers before he let them go. Then, face empty of expression, he stepped back.
Her heart twisted. It was as if he needed to hear it from a safe distance. He believed her true opinion would hurt.
She bridged the distance he’d put between them, taking his hands, insisting on keeping him in place. “When you were younger and softer and in one pristine piece, you more than defined perfection for me. You filled my ‘mind’s eye’ with your impossible example and made anyone else fade into nothing.” She clung to his hands harder when he again attempted to jerk them away. “But that scar, what you’ve been through to have it, only to come out stronger—how you wear it as a tribute to your family and ancestors, making it the very embodiment of your noble house—it makes you indescribable. And infinitely more irresistible.”
Judging that the time to reach out again was now, when she had him boggling at the audacity of her confessions, her hands released his, making another attempt to reach his scar.
His hands caught them before she could blink. “You can’t really want to touch… this.”
“Did indescribable and irresistible have too many syllables for you to understand? I would find you both even if you were scarred all over. I don’t only want to touch you, I’ve been waiting all my life to do it.”
This time, his stupefaction was almost tangible.
Pouncing on the opening it afforded her, she persisted, “Will you let me touch you? Please?”
A full-scale war seemed to erupt within him.
Then, with his gaze the darkest it had ever been, he let go of her hands.
Her first instinct was to pounce on him. But that starving-woman-at-a-buffet routine would be too much for him at this point.
Instead, she reached out, hands trembling as they made that first contact. With the scar at his heart.
The moment her flesh met his at that mark of old and severe pain and damage, her whole being seized, as if her essence flowed through her fingertips into him. She would give endlessly of it, if it would only erase his suffering, past and present.
On the verge of breaking down, her voice wobbled on the question that seared her. “Does—Does it still hurt?”
“No.”
The monosyllable conveyed how much and how long it had hurt.
“What does it feel like?”
A shudder coursed through him. Or it might be she who was shaking so hard. She couldn’t tell where the tremors originated.
“People stop asking when they know it’s not painful anymore.” His voice was thicker, impeded. “They don’t think any other sensation but pain matters.”
Empathy tightened her throat. “I’m not people. I’m me. And anything that you feel matters to me. Matters, period.” Unable to hold back anymore, one hand curled around his nape, urging his head down so her lips could follow her fingers in exploring that scar that made her only far more appreciative and protective of his every other inch. This time, there was no mistaking the jolt that passed through him as her lips traveled from the edge of his jaw down to the root of his powerful neck. She held him closer, insistent against his damp, hot skin. “Tell me, Rashid.”