To Tame a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 1)

Time ceased to matter, to exist, as he came down on top of her as she demanded, anchoring her after the tumult.

Then he brought her over him, a drape of satisfaction, everything he wanted wanting him back, and back in his arms.

“Ahebbek, ya joharti. Aashagek. Enti hayati kollaha.”

She jerked at the words he whispered against her cooling forehead. Then she pushed feebly against him, demanding to be released from their union.

It took a moment before he could bring himself to release her, worry replacing satiation and bliss at her agitated breathing and renewed tears, which he was sure didn’t indicate renewed arousal.

“Don’t…say things like that again.” She wiped tears away, half stricken, half furious. “I believe you want me like you’ve never wanted another, but don’t say what you can’t possibly feel.”

He sat up, caught her face in both hands, made her look at him. “That is how I feel. And more.”

Thicker tears overflowed from her reddened eyes. “How can you? How can you love me, worship me, think that I’m all your life? Before today, we had only one night together.”

“We had eight years. And all the years we’ve been apart. I loved you each moment of those.” A sob tore through her as she shook her head, tried to escape his grip again. He wouldn’t release her, persisted. “Why do you find it unbelievable? You loved me each moment of those years.”

She dipped her head, her hair swishing forward in waves that looked like sun rays spun into glossy satin, obscuring her expression. “I…never said I loved you.”

“Yes, because you’re trying not to ‘compromise’ me, or ‘impose’ on me, by keeping this on the level of the senses, and away from the domains of the heart and soul.”

She bit her trembling lower lip. “W-why do you think that?”

“Because I know you. I’ve known everything about you since you were six and grew up under my proud eyes. You didn’t just share everything you thought with me, you shared how you thought. I can predict everything that goes inside your brilliant if misguided mind and your magnanimous, self-sacrificing heart. That’s why I love you so completely. And you love me as totally, as fiercely. I feel it. I felt it from the first moment I met you again. I might not have recognized you consciously, but everything in me knew you, and knew I had always loved you.”

She gaped at him. And gaped at him. Then she burst in tears.

“Oh, Shaheen…I n-never dreamed you c-could feel the same.” Words tore from her between sobs. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have tried to see you again. I don’t want to complicate your life.”

He pressed her hard, stopping her self-blame again. “As I told you last night, you’ve done nothing but make my life worthwhile. In the past, being with you was the best thing that ever happened to me…until Aram made me feel like a dirty old man.” She jerked at that. He almost kicked himself for bringing it up. He tried to divert her. “Then, from the night we met again—”

She wouldn’t be diverted. “How did Aram make you feel like that?” He shrugged. She clung to his arm, ebony eyes entreating, undeniable. “Tell me, please.”

How could he resist her when she looked at him that way?

And then, he wanted no secrets between them. Ever again.

He exhaled. “You remember how I used to spend every possible second with you and Aram, either individually or together. Then one day, after a squash match—he’d trounced me, too—I related something clever that you’d said to me the day before, and he tore into me. Called me a cruel, spoiled prince, accused me of ignoring him for years whenever he’d tried to warn me about treating you too indulgently, to stop encouraging your hopeless crush on me. Then he threatened me.”

“Wh-what did he threaten you with?”

“Not death or serious injury, don’t worry. But that was actually what shook me most—how intense but nonviolent he was. It was as if he hated me, and had for a long time. I would have preferred it if he’d beaten me up, broken a few bones. I would have healed from that. But I never healed from losing his friendship. He told me that if I didn’t keep you away from me, he’d make my father order me to never come near you again.”

“So that was why you suddenly shunned us!”

He nodded. “I tried to defend myself at first, said you were the little sister I never had and how dare he say I’d think of you—or encourage you to think of me—that way.”

“So you never thought of me…that way?”

“No.” She seemed dismayed at his emphatic negation. “Come on, Johara, I was a man of twenty-two, you were a kid of fourteen. I would have been a pervert if I had thought of you that way. But you were my girl, the only one who ‘got’ me. I had to explain myself to everyone else, even to Aram and my family, but not to you. I loved you, in every way but that way. I love you in every way now.”

He poured his emotions into her eyes, then her lips. She surfaced from the mating of their mouths, panting. Then pleasure drained from her face as the pall of what they’d been discussing resurfaced. “What happened after that?”

He sighed again. “Aram said he didn’t give a damn what I thought or felt. He only cared that I was emotionally exploiting you. And he couldn’t stand by until I damaged you irrevocably. I realized he was doing what he thought best to protect you, which is why I was never really angry at him. Perhaps subconsciously, I was waiting for you to grow up so that I could feel that way about you. So in a fit of mortification, I swore I’d never talk to you, or him, again, that neither of you would have to put up with the ‘cruel, spoiled prince’ anymore. That’s why I pulled away, in a misguided effort to keep my word to him.

“Then, as I agonized over how much I’d inadvertently hurt my best friends, you left Zohayd, and your father announced that you wouldn’t be coming back. My last memory of you was of your forlorn face as you left the palace. I felt I’d betrayed our friendship. I left Zohayd soon afterward, and came back only sporadically through the years, until Aram left Zohayd a few years back. I felt I didn’t have the right to try to heal our friendship.”

She stared at him, chest heaving, emotions flashing in dizzying succession over her ultra-expressive face.

Then she threw herself at him, crushed him to her. “Ah, ya habibi, I’m so sorry. Aram was so wrong.”