To Touch a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 3)

“You’re not a fool, Maram. The only fool here is me. I should have told you what was going on.”

“And spoil your game? You know what I thought when you put me through the wringer? I believed you were struggling with your trust issues, coming to terms with your fear of intimacy, that I and only I could help you through them. I applaud your ability not to howl with laughter at my I-would-do-anything-to-heal-you stupidity.”

“This was not how—”

She spoke over his protest again, her voice losing its blankness, claws of pain raking across it. “Then you kept prodding me to see how far I’d go. And like the lemming I am, I breathlessly rushed to my doom, handing you any power over me with the cherry of carte blanche exonerations on top. You must have found me hilarious when you kept telling me the truth—that you’re not to be trusted—only for me to flap around in self-perpetuated blindness proclaiming my unconditional trust.”

“Maram, it wasn’t like—”

“When your sandstorm cover story was about to end, and you needed another excuse to keep me here, you pretended to succumb to my ‘seduction.’” Her every feature began to quiver, as if with the advance tremors of an earthquake that would tear her psyche apart. “How you must have despised me as I writhed in ecstasy at your every touch, in agony at the thought of hurting you. How you must have reviled the hell out of me even more when I pretended the world has ceased to exist to prolong my time with you.”

Her ghastly interpretation paralyzed him. He could only shake his head and pant his denial in choking muteness.

And she cracked, like a compromised dam, tears pouring from her eyes under pressure, her face distorting under a force he felt might rip it apart as it did her weeping words.

“And I would…have done…anything to be with you. I would…have gladly…died for you. Oh, God, Amjad…how I loved you. Kamm ashagtak. You were everything to me…ev-everything. And it made me…even more worthless to you…didn’t it? More worthy of…manipulation and abuse. I was b-begging for it, a-after all.”

He surged toward her, grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her toward him as if he was snatching her from the precipice of an abyss. “Maram, no! You’re just distraught now…”

She tore out of his hold with an explosiveness that sent him staggering. Her weeping escalated.

“Now I hate you with the same totality, Amjad…. I would do anything… to never see you again. I don’t want to…ever see my father either. I was…a fool to think power-hungry monsters like you would want me…for anything but to…use me.”

He stood stunned by the hatred that seemed to metamorphose her face, the color of her tears, heart long burst.

She hadn’t finished. Her hacking sobs continued, even as she continued hacking at him. “But you made a…huge mistake, Amjad. You thought I was important to my father. Sure, I am of potential…use and some…sentimental value. But he proved—to you more than anyone else—that I am the ‘mare’ he…puts forward in his petty maneuvers. You’re a fool if you think…he won’t sacrifice me…for something he values for real…like his shot at the throne of Zohayd.”

He reached out trembling hands to her. “I don’t care what you are to your father, Maram. It’s what you are to me—”

She swatted them away. “I am nothing to you. But seems…I am nothing—period. I was nothing…to my mother, I’m nothing…to my father. I’m…less than nothing…to you.”

“That is not true—”

“I heard what you left out as you…threatened my father. That you’ll keep me captive until he ‘complies.’ Maybe even hurt me to force his hand.”

“Maram, la! No!” He surged to her, wanting her to attack him, gouge his eyes out, relieve a measure of her anguish. “Don’t even put these suspicions into words. Don’t let them sully your mind.”

She thwarted him, went limp in his hold, her eyes going dead. “My mind is already irreversibly sullied. And you…”

Suddenly something worse than anything he’d seen on her face so far crumpled it. Horror.

“You’ve checkmated yourself with my improvised abduction, didn’t you? Now only something drastic will extricate you.” Her voice felt like shrapnel. “Only you and your men know I was ever on Zohaydan soil and you can bury me here and nothing would implicate you in my disappearance…”

And he roared with the agony of her insupportable fear and suspicion. “Maram, atawassal elaiki, kaffa, I beg you…stop! You can’t believe for a second I’d do that! To even my worst enemy. But you? Hada kateer, kateer w’Ullah—this is too much, Maram, too much, no matter how much you hate me now.”

His anguish seemed to douse her sudden paranoia. Her eyes lost their rabid gleam, her breathing slowed down.

She finally whispered, “But you did miscalculate. My father must have realized long ago why you kidnapped me. If his brain is really missing and he didn’t, he now knows. If he cared whether I’m returned to him in one piece, he would have arranged my ransom with your brothers by now. He didn’t. And he won’t. I’m of no use to you.” The tears that had stopped under the surge of dread, then the descent of resignation, flowed again, their unnatural thickness turning his guts inside out imagining her eyes were disintegrating. “Just let me go.”

“I can’t, Maram.”

“Your plan won’t—”

He roared again, sanity long evaporated. “Damn my plan. It was actually the most peaceful resolution I could find. Harres did suggest something drastic. I stayed his hand. Now I know why. I didn’t want to hurt your father. And the only reason I can’t let you go now is because I can’t.”

“I won’t tell. I won’t even contact my father again. I just want to get away from you, and him, and out of this godforsaken region, for good this time. You’ll never hear from me again.”

“Maram…b’Ellahi, esma’eeni…listen to me, I beg—”

She slipped through his fingers, crumpled to the floor, sent his plea lodging in his chest with the force of an ax.

She ended up heaped against the settee, pain streaming from eyes filled with the end of all hope of her forgiveness or the return of her love and belief, her whisper hacked by defeat and despair. “All I ever did wrong was love you, Amjad. Don’t punish me any more for it. I beg you. Let me go.”