Undone by the Sultan's Touch

Khaled loved her, she knew he did, yet he was willing to give her up because he thought that would make her happier in the long run. That was what she’d sat with after he’d gone, shaking there in that fussy house all by herself. He’d made her feel beautiful and capable. He’d been trying to protect her in his own terrible way. And what had she done in return?

He’d laid it all out before her on Saint Ann Street and she knew he’d been right, as unpleasant as all those truths were for her to swallow. She’d left him without a word. And then she’d thrown her birth control pills in his face—because on some level, she’d known exactly what that would inspire him to do: come after her. And when he did, she’d made him give more than he’d wanted to give because it was what she had wanted. Then, at the end, she’d delivered an ultimatum to cap it all off.

Cleo had come to the lowering conclusion that she was a spoiled brat.

“You know I’ll support you no matter what,” Jessie had said carefully. “But I feel I wouldn’t be any kind of friend to you if I didn’t remind you that you were in a panic when you left him. You were convinced that if you stayed with him, you would disappear completely into his life.”

“I’m not an innocent in this,” Cleo had told her, and there was so much she couldn’t—wouldn’t—share. She’d shoved a hand through her hair and held it there at the crown of her head. “I think the feeling of disappearing has to do with real compromise, and I’m as bad at is as he is. No wonder I panicked.”

Jessie hadn’t looked convinced, but she’d nodded. “But do you think that if you go back he’ll see that as capitulation?”

“I don’t know,” Cleo had whispered. “But I love him.”

And for the first time, she understood how deep that ran, how true it was, how it had sneaked inside and taken root without her being entirely aware of it. How it filled her from the inside out, and of course that felt like too much. Of course she’d run from it. It felt like his desert sky, enormous and unfathomable, endless and bright.

She’d looked at Jessie helplessly. “I have to go and find out. I have to try.”

And it wasn’t until Cleo was hours into the long flight back to Jhurat that she’d realized that she’d never tried particularly hard with Brian. She’d certainly never considered trying after she’d found him cheating. Maybe that was why she wasn’t worried about capitulating now. Because as Khaled had shown her that night he’d let her tie him to her bed, surrender was only a negative thing if it represented a loss. Otherwise, what was it but a little bit of bending?

And love wasn’t worth much if it couldn’t stand to bend.

The car moved swiftly through the clusters of small sun-beaten villages outside the city walls, and then through the towering gates into the old city itself. Cleo saw the ancient buildings, the spires high above and the bright, colorful stalls cluttering the streets and alleys of the marketplace. She saw the slick new hotels and skyscrapers sparkling next to literal hole-in-the-wall restaurants that looked to date back a thousand years. A hodgepodge of vision and determination next to the inexorable march of history.

Just like Khaled, in his way.

It made a lump grow in her throat.

When the car entered the labyrinthine tangle that marked the area around the palace, she found she was holding her breath. Expecting Khaled to appear, somehow, and stop the car the way he had once before. As if he could bookend this whole thing and make it right by taking charge of it. By taking all the responsibility for everything that happened between them once again.

But he didn’t appear and Cleo was forced to face the fact that if she wanted him, she would have to do this herself.

He’d accused her of pride and arrogance, and it was only now, driving back through the gates of his palace and back into the life she’d run away from, that she understood how true that was.

Remember that I warned you, he’d told her long ago, and she’d ignored him, because it hadn’t fit in with her fairy-tale fantasies.

But this time, Cleo didn’t want the fairy tale. She didn’t want any fantasy.

She wanted her husband.

* * *

Khaled didn’t turn around when the door to his office opened and then shut, assuming it was one of his secretaries or guards who wandered in and out freely. He ran his hand through his hair, scowling out the window at the city spread out before him and the waiting, watching desert in the distance while he listened with growing irritation as one of his ministers complained. And complained.