The Sheikh Surgeon's Proposal

Then he surrendered to his own climax, and the sight of him, the sound of him reaching completion inside her, the feel of his seed jetting his passion into her, filling her to overflowing, had her in the throes of another orgasm until she was weeping, unable to bear the stimulation.

Still buried inside her, he withdrew to view her tear-drenched face. His eyes promised more, all the time, languid and proprietorial, with that added imperious gleam of his Middle Eastern blood. Royal blood to boot.

Carrying her nerveless body, he prowled to Bir Al-Shefa, the warm sulfur spring outside the grove where he’d soaked her so many times, completing her healing. Its waters had done wonders. It was aptly named the well of healing.

He stepped into the water, waded in until he was knee deep, took her down into it, laid her between his thighs, her back to his front, sat supporting her as she half floated.

He moved water over her satiated body, massaging her with it, and she hummed to the bliss reverberating in her bones, in her blood.

She would have taken this if he’d only promised this week. She would have lived on the memories forever. But this was forever. It was so unbelievable she woke up suffocating, believing he’d vanished, had never been hers, that it had all been a delusion. She had to touch him to assure herself he was really there, had to remind herself that he’d promised.

Her heart suddenly started hammering. Felt as if it would ram out of her chest. As if she was having a panic attack. She’d never had one. God—what was wrong with her?

Oblivious to her condition, Malek sighed in contentment, whispered, “Aashagek.”

Aasahagek. Mashoogati. The verb and adjective of esh’g, a concept with no equivalent in English. Far more selfless and intense than love, too carnal for adoration, and as reverent as worship and as impossible to shake. It fit perfectly what she felt for him.

She struggled to bring the quaking that was threatening to break to the surface under control, turned her face into his cushioning chest and whispered back, “Wa ana aashagak.”

Then they heard it. The single-tone ring of his cellphone. Zeenah. She’d trotted after them, bringing it to him.

Malek exhaled a rough breath. “No way am I answering that.” The quaking broke free. She shook, struggled to sit up. “It could be important.”

“I called the palace before lunch,” he muttered, his voice thick with displeasure. “Surely the kingdom can spare me longer than six hours at a time.”

“Please, Malek, answer it.”

The moon was blazing now. He could no doubt see her twisted face, her body now shaking in earnest.

He rose out of the water, swooped down, half carried her. “Ma beeki, ya habibati? What’s wrong?”

“Noth-nothing.” Her teeth clattered with a surge of agitation, foreboding nearly strangling her by now. “Just—just …”

He rushed her back to Zeenah, dried her, dressed her in an extra toab of his, his eyes growing more anxious as he took in her deteriorating state. The phone didn’t stop ringing.

Just to end its disconcerting effect on her, he snatched it out of his backpack, barked into it, “Aish betreed ya Saeed?”

Jay heard the rush of agitated speech on the other end. Stopped breathing as Malek lurched under the barrage, froze.

An eternity later, he raised blank eyes to her. She almost fell to her knee with the impact of dread.

Then dread became reality, rasped on a voice that had turned darker than the desert’s moonless nights.

“My father is dead.”

Long live the king boomed in her head.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE NEXT TWO weeks were a nightmare.

Seeing Malek’s grief deepening as the knowledge of his father’s death and that he was the last of his family, the king now, was her first real glimpse into hell. She stood helplessly by as all through the funeral and the initial days of mourning, matters of state deluged Malek, keeping him from her. But he swore it was her nearness that made him able to bear it all, begged her to stay near. He needed her.

It was all she lived for, to be there for him when he came back to her, seeking solace.

She stayed in his residence, a secluded building connected to the palace by a grand passageway, waiting for him to come to her, exhausted and anguished, surrender it all in her arms for short hours before rising to continue dealing with the demands of a kingdom that was suddenly in turmoil.

She asked what was happening. He only said not to worry. He was handling everything. His answer, made with a guarded eye and leaden voice, made her worry rise to insurmountable levels.

He hadn’t come back to her at all last night. He’d even turned off his cellphone.

She was just about to lose her mind with a thousand nightmares when she heard his convoy arriving at the palace.

She exploded out of their quarters. She had to beg him to include her, let her help, in any way.

She rushed out into the spacious corridors leading to his stateroom, saw nothing of the impossible grandeur of her surroundings. The guards stood at attention as she approached, opened the door of the antechamber with all the ceremony they showed Malek. She went in, heard Malek’s raised voice through the ajar door of the stateroom—and froze.

He sounded furious, cornered. Oh, God—what was wrong?

“So you will really risk a civil war for your bastard, half-breed whore?” another man’s voice demanded in Arabic.

A sudden explosion of violence answered him. The muffled sound of an unstoppable force hitting flesh and bones, the sound of a heavy body crashing to the ground.

Deathly silence fell, interrupted only by the heavy breathing of those inside with Malek. She’d stopped breathing.

Then Malek’s voice broke out, drenching her in shivers at its murderous coldness. “I didn’t kill you, Zayd, because I know you’re a fool. But being one will not grant you a second chance. As long as I live, you’re never to enter this palace again, and you’re relieved of your position, which demands wisdom and control and diplomacy, everything you so grossly lack. And if you ever repeat your opinion of Janaan again, in any form, anywhere, I will have you tried, and convicted, for defamation. You know the sentence.”

A long silence followed, punctuated with what she knew was the struck man’s efforts to pull himself up to his feet.

Then Malek spoke again, and she wondered if they all fell to their knees as she wanted to. “Janaan is the reason you have a king today. You should pray in thanks for her.”

Another voice, precise and tranquil with age and wisdom, rose. “Zayd was criminally slanderous. You were merciful in your decrees. But as your late father’s advisor, I urge you to consider our solution. If your beloved is the matchless woman you paint her, she’ll appreciate the magnitude of your duties, will help you carry them out. And then she will be honored, given a life of untold luxury. What woman can dream of more than that?”