“But men don’t have to feign anything. Put a willing woman in their bed and that’s all she wrote.”
“Your inexperience with anyone else but me is showing.” He rose, savoring every nuance of her chagrin at being unable to contest his exclusive ownership of her body. “Those indiscriminate men you describe are aroused by the novelty, the challenge. They are notorious for losing...steam quickly when with a familiar body, no matter how tempting. But the more I had you, the more my hunger for you raged. I craved you enough that I would have jumped into an inferno—or even into marriage—to keep you.”
“Then it’s fortunate Najeeb’s revelations pushed me to make the decision I’d been circling for a while, saving us both from a fate worse than hell.”
“I’m just telling you my side. And now that you’ve told me yours, I understand why you walked away. A combination of commitment phobia, resentment and outrage is pretty potent. You were doing what you believed was right for yourself. But that’s your mind. What about your body? How long did it ache in demand for mine? How severe were the withdrawal pangs?”
Something dark and enormous expanded in her eyes.
His heart hammered. Ya Ullah, was that...anguish?
The disturbing expression was gone before he could be sure he’d seen it. “I can tell you for a fact that for the next year there was no aching or withdrawal.”
That didn’t sound like a spiteful denial. She meant this.
Could it be she’d walked away at no cost to herself? There’d been no emptiness in her gut and loins, no burning in her senses and skin, needing his assuagement, his completion? Could the love she’d sobbed out loud in pleasure-drenched nights have evaporated so absolutely that not even a remnant of the physical yearning remained?
No. He wouldn’t buy that. She’d melted again at his touch. Her body still proclaimed him its mate and master.
As if to contradict his conviction, she said, “I haven’t had other men since because I was too busy with work, and I’m not the kind for one-night stands. It wasn’t because I was pining for you.”
“If you’d found the intensity of attraction and totality of arousal you had with me, you would have made time. But you wanted that or nothing at all. Sometimes hunger is so vast, nothing but what you crave would fulfill it.” Giving her no chance to back away, he took her in his arms. “I know, because nothing could fulfill my craving but you.”
“Yeah, sure.” She squirmed, only inflaming him more.
He hauled her tighter against him. “Fact is sometimes stranger than fiction. It was as unreal to me as it sounds to you now. This chemistry we share wasn’t only an aphrodisiac, but a mind-altering substance.”
“Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to abuse. So why are you doing this? Or are you just making the best of your ‘mission’ this time, too?’
“This time, it’s all me. How much has Kamal told you?”
Sullenly, she told him. Kamal had only told her the general situation, hadn’t even mentioned him by name. So he now filled in his part of the story, leaving out only that he could abort the hostilities without her marrying him.
She digested everything, inert in his arms, eyes somber. “So you’re going to be king. That’s unexpected. But it also enables you to resolve this without little Aal Masood me.”
Her analytical powers were unerring. As he well knew.
But he couldn’t corroborate her analysis or this was over before it began. “The peace through marriage is what my uncle would agree to.”
“How ironic. I was the only woman he couldn’t abide for his heir, now I’m the only one to serve his purposes.” She pushed away, hard. “He can go to hell, right along with you.”
He hated to play this card, but he’d run out of options. “You once said you would repay me one day.”
That made her go rock still, a world of reproach filling her cognac eyes. “I also said I won’t do that with my life.”
“I’m not asking for your life. Just your hand in marriage. Just your body in my bed.”
A scoff burst from her. “My choice, my future and my body. That just about wraps up what makes up my life.”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“Oh? What else is there that you’re not laying claim to?”
“Plenty. Your heart, your mind, your soul.” At her immovable glare, he found no recourse but to push. “I am collecting my debt now, Jala. It is that imperative.” For him.
Apprehension gradually replaced ire on her exquisite face.
Then she finally exclaimed, “You’re all really going to do something insane if we don’t get married?”
And he seized that first wavering in her resolve, drove his advantage home. “We have to get married. Nobody said we have to stay married.”
Five
Jala couldn’t believe it.
That gargantuan weasel had made her say yes.
He’d used his every weapon, from seduction to logic to cajoling, playing havoc with her vulnerabilities and convictions, making her revoke her edict consigning him to hell.
But then, the situation was dire.
From her work in regions festering with conflict, she was too familiar with how wars ignited over much less than the current stakes. In places like their region, where pride and tribalism and other inherited, obsolete conventions still ruled to a great degree beneath the modernized veneer, once blood was spilled, enmities could—and did—rage for centuries.
Kamal and Mohab, damn them both to hell, had pegged her accurately. They’d both counted on her inability to stand by and let something like this happen if she could help it. They’d known that after her first shock and outrage, once she realized it was true only she could help, she would.
But she drew the line at marrying Mohab to do it. The best she’d do was agree to a fake engagement.
Yeah, another one. But one she knew was fake. She’d go through the motions for the sake of peace.
And that was huge of her. Engagements around here were excruciating, rife with maddening customs and obscene intrusions. Wedding preparations made some of the war zones she’d been to look peaceful.
But she’d use those torturous rituals to draw out this charade until treaties were signed. Then she’d bail out.
One thing still had her red-alert sensors clanging, though. The ease with which Mohab had agreed to her terms.
At first, he’d insisted only an actual marriage would appease King Hassan, that they’d have to dispense with an engagement to give him the quick union that would force him from his warpath. He’d suggested a six-month period before separating. According to him, that was enough time to settle all treaties and resolve all disputes.