“Of course.” Farooq grinned his elation, before turning to Carmen to share their special smile. “She’s a prodigy.”
Shehab laughed at Mennah’s continuing efforts to throw herself at the screen. “I promise I will soon come to you and we can play catch-you all day long.”
As soon as Carmen and Mennah disappeared, Kamal grated, “It’s so heartwarming to see you both enjoying your family life when our whole region is on the brink of widespread civil war.”
Farooq glared at Kamal’s screen, then exhaled and turned to Shehab. “It’s true, regretfully. The Aal Shalaans are getting restless again. They’re demanding proof that King Atef’s daughter will marry you, that we aren’t only pacifying them until we find a way to cheat them out of having their lineage introduced into our royal family. They gave us two more weeks, threatening extreme action afterward. I don’t know what’s been going on on your end, and I don’t want to know. But you now need to give us an answer. Will she marry you, or won’t she?”
Shehab closed his eyes. So the time had come. He had to ask her. And she was indeed ripe to say yes to anything he asked.
She’d been that for weeks now. But he’d felt that, as soon as he asked her, he’d be counting down to the moment she’d find out the truth. He hadn’t been able to face the possibilities.
So he’d shut out the world, had taken all he could with her while he could.
Now the world had come crashing back on him and he had to brace himself for its weight, its reality. Its inescapability.
Feeling bile fill him to his eyes, he ground out, “She will marry me.”
Nine
He reentered his quarters, theirs now, covering the long distance to their bed slowly, to savor the image she made, naked and tangled in the sheets, one breast jutting out, nipple still erect, just because he was there, existed, her thighs pressed together on the ache of satiation and the renewed need he knew must be gathering in her body as it was in his.
He stood over her and she opened her eyes, the look of total desire and delight there skewering through him as she held up her arms, spreading herself for his ownership.
He surrendered, filled her arms with a pained groan. She rained kisses over his face, his neck, his shoulders and he shuddered, drew back. The hungry, playful look in her eyes gradually turned uncertain, then anxious.
“What is it, darling?” She came up on one elbow, a quiver that thrummed in his heart permeating her voice. “Is something wrong with your family?”
He squeezed her shoulders, forgetting anything but what had churned inside him like slow poison since he’d laid eyes on her, the one thing he had no answer for. The one thing he needed answered. Now. “Only one thing is wrong. One thing I need to know. When you leave here, will you go back to your lover?”
She fell back on the bed as if he’d backhanded her.
“H-how did…?” She gulped, squeezed her eyes shut, her color rising until she almost glowed in the dimness. At last she opened her stricken eyes. “W-was that what this phone call was about? You’ve investigated me?”
“Did I need to investigate you, Farah? After all the things we shared, you couldn’t have told me yourself?”
She scrambled up to her knees, her eyes filling, with tears and beseeching. “I should have, but I couldn’t. I was so thankful you hadn’t heard the rumors…”
“Rumors? Are you telling me Bill Hanson isn’t your lover?”
“Oh, God, no. He’s the only one of Dad’s acquaintances who stood beside us when Dad died and all our assets were lost. He offered to give us whatever we needed to regain them. But my mother admitted her lack of business acumen was what led to our losing Dad’s fortune in the first place, and that she’d only lose whatever Bill gave us again. I was too young to take over and soon realized that I wasn’t cut out to be the CEO of a multinational corporation. So I asked him for a job instead. He offered me one at a huge salary, and I worked my tail off to earn every cent. He soon promoted me to his personal advisor and analyst. When I accused him of being charitable again, he insisted I was the best person for the job, having been taught by Dad, who was the best, not to mention that he trusted me implicitly, something he couldn’t buy with all his money.
“The rumors started the day he promoted me almost two and a half years ago, and Bill asked me to let people think they were true, said it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I wanted to keep suitors away, and he wanted revenge on his wife, who’d left him for a man their youngest son’s age. I was content with the arrangement until I met you, and I was so happy you hadn’t heard about it as I just wasn’t up to explaining, was even afraid you might not believe me.”
She fell silent, out of breath, her eyes seeking his reaction anxiously. He doubted he had any outward reaction. He felt as if he’d turned to stone.
After he’d become certain she hadn’t been sexually active, his mind had taken off on ugly tangents to explain how a woman could manipulate a man like Hanson without using her body.
But he’d dismissed each explanation as impossible. Not her. Not Farah. And now this. This demolished every doubt. Made her a total innocent. Made his deception infinitely worse.
For he believed her. Without question. She was only telling him what his every instinct had been telling him from the first moment. She didn’t have one exploitative cell in her body.
But there was one thing. He grabbed at it to yank him out of the mire of realizations and guilt. “Why didn’t you want suitors, a woman of your youth and beauty?”
“Suitors was the term Bill used. Mine is predators. I’ve had them circling since Dad died, first for my inheritance and then since I became Bill’s right hand, because of my position.”
“That’s why you…?” He choked on his question, memories bombarding him.
“Why I accused you of having some sort of agenda the night we met? Yeah, my insecurity reared its ugly head. I was so stupid, it even crossed my mind that you might have something in common with those petty men who wanted a piece of Bill.”
“But surely you realize that you, alone, without any other incentive, are enough to drive men wild?”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Yeah, right.”
“How can you even doubt it? Don’t you see what you do to me? What you did to me since that first look?”
“I think it’s a miracle, that you want me as much as I want you. But before you, I didn’t care if there were men who might want me for myself. I never wanted a lover again, after my one experience left me convinced I was incapable of enjoying sex.”