Ya Ullah, she’d run, as if she was his old Carmen, as if he was everything she had or could ever want. She’d groped for his hand, cleaved to his side like a vital part of him that had been hacked out and then restored.
And now her hands. Those hands that had once weaved spells and wrung sanity from him were doing so again with the incantation of his name in all the tongues she commanded, in an unprecedented confession. As her offer of herself, her every act of generosity had once done.
This was no plea for a clean slate. This was a command for carte blanche. One he wanted to obey with everything in him. Especially now that his king had succumbed to Tareq’s insistence on attending the ceremony and he’d seen how she’d looked at him.
Her reaction had been unmistakable. Revulsion. Dread.
Had Tareq been blackmailing her? Threatening her? This was a new motive he hadn’t thought of before. One that would make her a victim rather than an accomplice. Dare he believe it? That this time she had no ulterior motive? That she’d always been coerced, that the only truth had been her desire for him?
The jewels of Carmen’s eyes corroborated her hands’ silent confession. Fanned the flames of hunger. And of hope…?
No. He hoped for nothing. But he hungered for everything.
He nodded to the ma’zoon, watched him place the monogrammed House of Aal Masood handkerchief over their hands, hers bearing her passive weapon of mass destruction, heard him clear his throat.
“Somow’el Ameerah Carmen, repeat after me…”
It was done. And he was trapped.
At his king’s side. In the mire of protocol. Unable to roar to everyone that they’d done their bid for foreign policy, and to go away now so he could ravish his bride.
The bride who, besides entrancing the crowd en masse before proceeding to entrench her effect one-on-one, was in the advance stages of wrapping his king around her finger. The king who’d told him last night what a time bomb he considered her.
Having Carmen now was a necessary evil, he’d said, to secure the succession, but didn’t Farooq realize that, as a woman not of their culture and creed, she might be the lit fuse to set off the volatile mess Judar was mired in?
Then, ten minutes in her company and she’d had him laughing as he hadn’t laughed in years. Two hours later, as they’d made the rounds of all the heads of state, he was showing her off as if she were one of his daughters.
Farooq had given Carmen two more hours to work her magic on the crowd, bringing poles together, riding the currents of the rife-with-potential-pitfalls situation, milking it for all the boons it could yield. In testimony to her effect, after talking to her at length in his mother tongue, an Argentinean magnate who’d formerly decided not to set his next worth billions IT project on Judarian soil had approached Farooq with his change of heart.
But even if she’d manage to negotiate an end to major conflicts if she circulated longer, he wasn’t waiting one more second. He turned on the mike clipped to his abaya’s collar.
“My king, venerable guests…” Everyone turned to him. “I thank you for the honor of your presence and the generosity of your blessings. I hope you’ll continue to enjoy yourselves longer, but I have an urgent matter to attend to…” He dragged Carmen to him, stabbed his fingers into her garnet waterfall beneath its flowing veil, crashed his lips down on hers. He invaded her, consumed her in the kiss he’d been depriving himself of, the one he intended to go down in history. He reeled with her reaction, taste, feel, with the incongruity of hearing hoots from such a congregation. Those people welcomed the spontaneity for once, didn’t they? He kicked to the surface with all he had, swept the half-fainting Carmen up in his arms. “I’m sure you’ll all see the pressing urgency of putting my estranged wife where she belongs. Back in my bed.”
Ten
Carmen felt no heavier than Mennah, felt airborne, invincible, felt cherished and craved, and everything that wasn’t real all the way to Farooq’s quarters.
Or were they? She’d been lost in the tumult of marveling at his beauty as he swept through the palace, in the single-mindedness of his intentions and the way he’d announced them to everyone. Now she was no longer sure where he’d taken her. The sleeping quarters she’d seen this morning had been the utilitarian space of a man who had few needs and not much time for luxuries. This place was a cross between a sultan’s chambers of erotic decadence and a bridal suite from another reality.
But it was the same place, if only judging by its structure. Not one piece of the furniture she’d seen remained. On the right wing was a sitting area of wine-red couches over acres of handwoven silk Persian carpets of complementing colors. On the left was a dining area for two with a polished hand-carved mahogany round table set with an incredible dinner. Separating the wings, from previously bare ceilings rained cascades of extensively pleated, cream-colored voile drapes that caught and suffused the lights from hundreds of candles burning at the base of each of the arabesque columns ringing the huge space. Sweet-spicy ood incense burned in urns below the arches, its fumes swirling up in the blazing candlelight like scented ghosts. In the background, evocative recorded music droned, on an instrument also called ood, Spanish guitarlike but with more exotic intonations, adding to the mystic lasciviousness that permeated the place.
Farooq crossed the intricate woodwork floor toward a square bed that spread below the dome, surrounded on two sides by drapes, with a gigantic mirror in a gilded, elaborately carved frame as headboard. It was the largest, thickest mattress she’d ever seen, layered in cream and white sheets, looking like a huge mille-feuille, with the last layer the frosting of a cream lace cover. Dozens of colorful pillows of all sizes were scattered all over it and around it, like fruits surrounding an indulgence.
She tried to cling to him, bring him down with her, on her, as he placed her on it. He pulled back. Her arms fell away, stinging with the need to be filled with his bulk, with the letdown. He circled the bed, then did something that sent her heartbeats scattering. He mounted it, stood there at its far end. Just stared at her. She couldn’t take it, held out her arms again, begging for him, risking another rebuff.
It was as if a switch was hit, pushing everything inside him to maximum, the intensity emanating from him marrow-jarring.
Yet he still didn’t move, stood there, containing it all, his body clenched with the effort, examining her abandoned pose.
He waited until she lowered her arms, her hands fisting on the hollow pain inside her chest, before he drawled, “What changed your mind, to borrow a question of yours?”