TO DEFY A SHEIKH Read online

  “And that’s where we differ. I don’t want revenge, because the purpose it serves is small. I want to serve a broader purpose. And that’s why thinking is better than passion.” Passion was dangerous. Emotion was vulnerability. He believed in neither.

  “Until you need passion to keep air in your lungs,” she said, so succinct and loud in the stillness of the room. “Then you might rethink your stance on it.”

  “Perhaps. Until then…in my memory, passion ends in screams, and blood, and the near destruction of a nation. So I find I’m not overly warm to the subject.”

  “But you don’t anticipate us having a marriage with passion?” she asked.

  He looked at her again. She was beautiful, there was no question, and now that she didn’t have a knife in her hands it was possible to truly appreciate that beauty. She had no makeup on today, but she was as stunning without it as she’d been with her heavily lined eyes and ruby lips.

  “Perhaps a physical attraction,” he said.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The truth of the matter was, he’d given up women and sex that day his family had been killed. That day he’d been handed the responsibility of a nation full of people.

  His father had been too busy indulging his sexual desires to guard his family. To guard his palace. And then he had seen what happened when all control gave way. When it shifted into unimaginable violence. When passion became death.

  He’d turned away from it for that reason. But he’d known that when he married he wouldn’t continue to be celibate. He hadn’t given it a lot of thought.

  But he was giving it thought now. Far too much.

  Those beautiful eyes flew wide. “I hardly think so.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I despise you.”

  “That has nothing to do with sex, habibti. Sex is about bodies. It is black-and-white, like everything else.” She looked away from him, her cheeks pink. “You expect a celibate union? Because that will not happen.We need children.”

  Something changed on her face then. Her expression going from stark terror, to wonder, to disgust so quickly he wondered if he was mistaking them all. Or if he’d simply hallucinated it. “Children?”

  “Heirs.”

  Now her unpainted lips were white. “Your children.”

  “And yours,” he said. “There is no greater bond than that. No greater way to truly unite the nations.”

  “I…”

  Samarah was at a loss for words. She’d been thrown off balance by Ferran’s sudden appearance, and then…and then this talk of marriage. Of passion and sex. And then finally…children.

  The word hit her square in the chest with the force of a gun blast.

  Terror at first, because it was such a foreign idea.

  Then…she’d almost, for one moment, wanted to weep with the beauty of it. Of the idea that her love might go on and change. That it might not end in a jail cell of Ferran’s making. That she might be a mother.

  On the heels of the fantasy, had come the realization that it would mean carrying her enemy’s baby. Letting the man who had ordered her father’s death touch her, be inside of her. Then producing children that would carry his blood.

  Your blood.

  You wouldn’t be alone.

  No. She couldn’t. Couldn’t fathom it.

  And yet, there was one thing that kept her here. That kept her from fashioning a hair pick into a weapon and ending him.

  When he’d said, cold, blunt, that her father had killed his, that he had been responsible for the death of his mother as well, she’d realized something for the first time.

  She would have done the same thing he had done. Given the chaos her father had caused, were she in Ferran’s position, the newly appointed leader of a country…she would have had her father executed, too.

  That shouldn’t matter. The only thing that should matter was satisfying honor with blood. She could have sympathy for his position without offering him forgiveness or an olive branch of any kind.

  But it sat uncomfortably with her. Like a burr beneath her rib cage. And she didn’t like it. But then, she liked this whole marriage thing even less than the murder thing.

  She was undecided on both issues presently.

  And he’d confused her. With his comfy mattresses, delicious food and offers of a life she’d never imagined she could have.

  A chance to be a sheikha. To do good in the world. To remember what it was to be poor, starving and homeless, and to have a chance to make it better for those in this country who were currently suffering in poverty.

  A chance to be a mother.

  A chance to live in a palace with everything that had been stolen from her.

  She would not feel guilty for wanting that. Not even a little. Not when she’d spent so many years as she had. She’d been spoiled once, and after all the deprivation, she felt she could use a return to spoiling.

  It was all so tempting. Like a poisoned apple.

  But she knew it was poisoned. Knew that while it looked sweet it would rot inside of her.

  “I can’t discuss this just now,” she said.

  “You’ve already agreed. It’s the only reason I’ve not had you arrested.”

  Yes, she had agreed. But inside she didn’t feel as if it was a done deal yet. It didn’t feel real, this change in her fate. She’d done nothing but focus on her revenge for so many years. Revenge and survival. They’d kept her going. They were her passion. She had nothing else; she cared for nothing else. Food, shelter, safety, sleep, repeat. All in the aim of making it here, and from there? She’d had no plan. She’d imagined…well, she’d hardly imagined she would survive this.

  He was offering her something she’d never once imagined for herself: a future. One that consisted of so much more than those basic things. One that gave her the chance to add something to the world instead of simply taking Ferran from it.

  He wasn’t a monster. And that she’d known since she first came to live at the palace a month ago. It had been uncomfortable to face that. That it was a man she fought against, not a mythical being who was all terror and anguish. Not the specter of death himself, come to destroy her family.

  She hated this. She hated it all. She hated how it tempted her.

  “I suppose I have,” she said, “but I’m still processing what it means.”

  It was the most honest thing she’d said to him in regards to the marriage. There were implications so far-reaching that it was hard for her to see them all from her room here in the palace.

  “As am I. But one thing I do know is that marriage means heirs. I’m a royal, so there is no other aspect of marriage that’s more important.”

  “Certainly not affection,” she said.

  “Certainly not. I doubt my father had much if any for my mother. If he did, he would not have been with your mother.”

  “Or perhaps they were simply greedy.” She looked down, unsure if she should say the words that were pounding through her head. Because why talk to him at all? Why discuss anything with him? “I think my mother loved them both.”

  It was a strange thing to say. Especially when love had been utterly lacking in her life. But this was, in part, her theory why.

  “What?”

  “I think she loved my father and yours. She was devastated to lose them both. That her husband, whom she loved, was killed in the same few days that her lover was killed…I don’t think she ever recovered. I don’t know that she ever loved anything as much as she loved the two of them.” Certainly not her.

  He paused for a long moment, his eyes on the back wall. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. I don’t think your mother ever loved anyone more than she loved herself.”

  “Yo
u aren’t fit to comment on her,” she said, but there was something about his words that hit her in a strange way. Something that felt more real than she would like.

  “Perhaps not.” The light in his eyes changed, and for a moment, she thought she almost saw something soft. “No child should have to see what you did.”

  She looked away. “I hardly remember it.”

  Except she had. She and her mother had been staying at the palace. Visiting. Of course, she figured out that meant they’d been sneaking time in for their affair. At the time it had all been so confusing. She’d been a child who hadn’t known anything about what had passed between the sheikh and sheikha and why it had caused the fallout that it had.

  Honestly, at twenty-one, she was barely wiser about it than she’d been then.

  In her mind, male desire wasn’t a positive thing. It was something she feared. Deeply. Living unprotected as she had, she’d had to respond with fierce, single-mindedness to any advances.

  It didn’t take long for the men in the city to learn that she wasn’t worth hassling.

  And in her life, there had been no place, no time, for sexual feelings.

  It made it hard to understand what had driven their parents to such extremes. What had made her mother feel her husband, her only daughter weren’t enough for her. What had made her cast off a lifetime of perfect behavior, a marriage to a man she’d seemed to love, and for her father to react with mindless violence. She’d long been afraid that desire like that was some sort of demon that possessed you and left you with little choice in the matter.

  But she didn’t fear it now. Obviously, it wasn’t a concern for her. Particularly not with a man like him.

  “I am glad for you,” he said. “I remember it with far too much clarity.”

  “You didn’t…you didn’t see…”

  He swallowed, his eyes still focused on a point behind her. “I saw enough.”

  All she could remember was being pushed behind a heavy curtain. She’d stayed there. And she’d heard too much.

  But she hadn’t seen. She’d been spared that much.

  “What is your timeline for this marriage?”

  “The sooner the better. You’re certain no one is going to come for you?”

  “You mean am I sure no one will come and save me? Yes, I’m certain. There is no one like that in my life.” What a lonely thought. She’d always known it, but saying it out loud made it that much more real, sharpened the contrast between what he offered with marriage, and what she would get if she used him and went ahead with her plan.

  It was simple. A chance at a future, or nothing at all.

  The offer of a future was so shiny, so tempting, so breathtakingly beautiful….

  “That is not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “Are any of the old regime, the revolutionaries, still after you in any regard?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. The old leader was killed by one of his own, and that ushered in a completely new political era in Jahar. Things are better. But there is still no place for me.”

  “As a symbol, you would shine beautifully,” he said.

  The compliment settled strangely in her chest. Lodged between rage and fear. “Thank you.” The words nearly choked her.

  “It is true. I think people would look at you, at us, and see echoes of a peaceful time. Of a time when our nations were friends. Sure, you won’t be sheikha of Jahar, but you will still matter to the people there. They suffered when the royal family was deposed. They will be happy to know that you’ve risen up from that dark time, as will they. As they have.”

  “It is an idealistic picture you paint.”

  “I’m not given to idealism. This is how it will be.”

  “You seem very sure,” she said.

  He lifted a shoulder. “I am the sheikh. So let be written, et cetera.”

  “I didn’t imagine you would have a sense of humor.”

  “I don’t have much of one.”

  “It’s dry as the desert, but it’s there.”

  The left side of his mouth curved upward into a smile. “I see, and what did you imagine I would be like?”

  “I had imagined you were a ghul.”

  “Did you?”

  She shifted uncomfortably. Because sadly, it was true. In her mind, he’d become a great, shape-shifting creature. A blood-drinking monster.

  “Yes.”

  He reached his hand out, and she swiped it away with a block. He lowered his head, his dark eyes intent. “Permit me,” he said, his voice hard.

  She froze and he lifted his hand again. She stayed there, watching him. He rested his hand on her cheek, his thumb sliding over her cheekbone, over the cut he’d inflicted on her.

  “I suppose,” he said. “To a child who saw me as the one who took her father from her, as the one who stole her life, I would seem like a monster.”

  “Are you not?” she asked, unable to breathe for some reason, heat flooding her face, her limbs shaking.

  With one quick movement, she could remove his hand from her face. She could break his thumb in the process. But she didn’t. She allowed this, and she wasn’t sure why.

  Perhaps because it felt like something from another time. When Ferran hadn’t been scary at all. When she hadn’t hated him. When he’d simply been the handsome, smiling older son of her parents’ best friends.

  But he isn’t that boy. That boy was a lie. And he’s now a man who must answer for his sins.

  “I suppose it depends,” he said. “I am a man with many responsibilities. Millions of them. And I always do what I must to serve my people. From the moment I took power.” He lowered his hand, heat leaching from her face, retreating with his touch. “I will always act in the best interest of my people. It depends on which side of me you fall on. If you are my enemy…if you hurt those I am here to protect, then I am most certainly a monster.”

  “And that,” she said, her words clipped, “is something I can respect.”

  It was true, and it didn’t hurt to say. There was honor in him, and she accepted that. The only problem was, it clashed with the honor in her. With her idea of what honor needed in order to be satisfied.

  “Get yourself ready,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I intend to take you out into the city.”

  “But…no announcements have been made.”

  “I am well aware of this. But a limo ride with a woman who is hardly recognizable as the child sheikha who disappeared sixteen years ago isn’t going to start a riot.”

  “A limo ride?”

  “Yes. A limo.”

  “I haven’t been in a car…well, I rode beneath the tarps in a truck to get across the border into Khadra. Then I got a horse from some bedouins out in the desert and rode here.”

  “What became of the horse?”

  “I sold him. Got a return on the money I spent on him.”

  “Enterprising.”

  “I am a woman who’s had to create resources, even when there were none. Other than that ride in the truck though, I’ve not been in a motorized vehicle in years.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “I walk in Jahar. I rarely leave the area I live in.”

  “Then decide what you think would be best for a limo ride. And by all means, Samarah Al-Azem, try to enjoy yourself.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SAMARAH MADE HERSELF well beyond beautiful for their outing into Khajem, the city that surrounded the palace. It was hard to believe that the child he had known had grown into the viper that had tried to end him. And harder still to believe that the viper could look so soft and breathtaking when she chose. Hard to believe that if he leaned in to claim her mouth he would probably find himself r
un through with a hairpin.

  Today she was in jade, hair constrained, a silver chain woven through it, and over her head, a matching stone resting in the center of her forehead.

  “This is all so different to how I remember it,” she said, once they were well away from the palace.

  “It is,” he said. “Khadra has been blessed with wealth. All I’ve had to do is…”

  “You’ve been responsible with it. You could have hoarded it. God knows my country had wealth, and it was so badly diminished by the regime that came after my parents. Spent on all manner of things, but none of them ever managing to benefit the people.”

  “As you can see, we’ve followed some of what Dubai has done with development. New buildings, a more urban feel.”

  “But around the palace everything seems so…preserved.”

  “I wanted to build on our culture, not erase what came before. But Khadra has become a technology center. Some of the bigger advances are starting to come from here, and no one would have ever thought that possible ten years ago. The amount of Khadrans going to university has increased, and not universities overseas, to take jobs overseas, but here. Some of the change has been mine, but I can’t take credit for that.”

  “I wish very much Jahar could have benefited from this,” she said, her words vacant. As though she had to detach herself in order to speak them. “You have done…well.”

  “You didn’t know about the development happening here, did you?”

  “I saw from a distance. From in the palace, but I didn’t know the scope of it. I didn’t know what these buildings accomplished.” She leaned against the window and looked up at a high-rise building they were passing. “How could I have known? We were cut off from the world for years, not just my mother and I, but the entire country. We were behind an iron curtain, as it were. And in the years since it’s lifted…well, the rest of the country may have made a return to seeing the world, but mine has stayed very small.”