Commanded by the sheikh

‘Olivia,’ Aziz said again, muttering her name against his mouth as his hands roved over her body, pulling at the shapeless robe, his fingers seeking the curves hidden underneath the heavy fabric. His tongue slid into her mouth, sweeping its softness, and Olivia moaned.

Aziz’s touch was like a drug; she was instantly addicted, immediately craving more and more of him. She needed him with an urgency that was shocking and total.

He brought his hands up to frame her face, pulling the hijab completely away as his fingers tangled in her hair. Pins fell on the walkway with a tinkling clatter and still Aziz kissed her, each kiss acting as a brand on her soul, ensuring she would never, ever forget this. Forget him.

He’d changed her, affected her in a way no one else ever had. He’d reached deep inside her with his laughter, his understanding and his kiss.

Oh, his kiss...

She slid her hands under his thobe, felt the heat of his skin through the thin linen of his shirt and pressed closer. Somehow Aziz had managed to get his hand through the front opening of her robe and he brushed his thumb over the peak of her breast, causing Olivia to let out a sharp gasp of wonder and surprise.

The noise startled them both; Aziz yanked his hand away from her and stepped back quickly, a look of appalled realisation coming over his face that might have been comical in any other situation.

As it was, Olivia felt suddenly, cringingly conscious of her undone hair, her disordered robes and fallen hijab, her swollen lips. Of the hunger inside her that now roared to life, demanding satisfaction.

She stared at Aziz, too incredulous about what had just happened even to be embarrassed—yet. Reality was rushing in to fill all the aching, empty places inside her, reminding her that this man was about to marry someone else; that she hadn’t kissed anyone in over a decade; that what she’d just done was beyond stupid.

Somehow she managed a shaky, ragged laugh. ‘Well. If anyone had seen that, they would have been convinced of your fairy-tale wedding, I’m sure.’ She turned then, because she didn’t trust the expression on her face, and she didn’t want to see Aziz’s pity. Had she kissed him first? He’d responded, but maybe only because that was what a Gentleman Playboy did if a woman threw herself at him. Is that what she’d done? So much for staying cool, calm, remote and safe.

‘Olivia...’

‘I need to do something about my hair.’ Her voice trembled and she put shaking hands up to her head as she blinked hard.

‘Let me help.’ Aziz knelt on the path and began to pick up her hairpins. Olivia smoothed her robes and picked up her hijab. Anything to keep herself occupied. She prayed Aziz wouldn’t see how her hands shook. How affected she was.

‘Here.’ Gently Aziz took her hair in his hands and began to rearrange it into a neat coil.

It felt almost as intimate as their kiss, to have him standing behind her, his breath fanning the nape of her neck, as he arranged her hair. She stayed still, her body taut with tension yet still aching with desire, an impossible combination, as he carefully replaced all the pins, sliding them through her hair with a slow gentleness that was nearly her undoing. He wrapped the hijab around her head and adjusted her veil.

‘There. I think you’re presentable.’

She kept her head bowed, still unable to look at him. ‘What if people guess?’

‘They’ll be pleased. Like you said, it’s all part of the fairy tale.’ She tried to move away but he stayed her, his hands on her shoulders. ‘Olivia.’

‘What?’ Her voice came out high and strained.

‘I didn’t mean for that to happen.’

So she had kissed him first. She closed her eyes, fought the tidal wave of humiliation and hurt that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Neither did I, as it happens.’

He laughed softly, no more than a breath of sound. ‘I know you didn’t.’

He did? She opened her eyes. His hands were still on her shoulders, his body still so close to hers. He dipped his head so his lips nearly grazed her cheek. ‘That wasn’t for show,’ he said quietly. ‘No one was watching. That was just me kissing you, Olivia, because I wanted to. Because, for a moment, it felt as if I had no choice. As if I had to kiss you.’

Just as she had had to kiss him. She should have felt gratified by his admission, but she only felt confused. Scared. This couldn’t go anywhere, at least anywhere good. Caring for Aziz, letting him in at all, would just end in her being hurt.

‘Clearly you have poor impulse control,’ she said, her voice thankfully tart, and she slipped from his loose embrace. He let her go. She kept her back to him, fussing with her appearance, even though she knew she looked as put together as she was ever going to, at least without a hairbrush or mirror. ‘How did you get so adept at styling a woman’s hair?’

‘Experience, of course,’ he answered, and his voice was light again. The intimacy of the moment had been broken and Olivia was both glad and ridiculously, helplessly disappointed.

‘We should go back,’ Aziz said. He twitched her veil better into place, his expression shuttered. ‘They will be waiting for us.’

Wordlessly, Olivia followed him through the gardens. The stillness and silence felt oppressive now, rather than peaceful, the tension tautening between her and Aziz. The gates loomed before them and with them the crowds. Olivia knew that once they entered the melee she wouldn’t be able to talk to Aziz. And tonight she would leave for Paris.

Yet what could she say to him? She didn’t know what had happened back in the garden; who had kissed whom or why. She didn’t know how tenderness had kindled so quickly into the kind of raw, urgent passion she hadn’t felt in years, decades—if ever. She didn’t even know if she wanted to feel it, if she wanted to give into that kind of hunger even as her body insisted that she did.

So she said nothing.

They moved through the crowds and she mumbled the Arabic phrases Aziz had taught her, keeping her eyes lowered, her face hidden.

He helped her into the car and then they were speeding back towards the palace, still not having exchanged a word since they’d left the garden.

She snuck a glance at Aziz and saw he was looking out of the window, his eyes narrowed, his arm braced on the window frame, his fingers pressed against his temple. He looked, Olivia thought, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, or at least of a country.

‘Perhaps there will be news of Queen Elena when we return,’ she said and, seemingly startled out of a reverie, Aziz glanced at her.

‘Yes,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Perhaps.’

* * *

He hadn’t meant to kiss her. Guilt churned sourly inside him as they headed for the palace. He hadn’t meant to kiss her, Aziz acknowledged, but the kiss itself had been surprising. Amazing. What at first had seemed like it was going to be no more than a brush or buss had turned into something deeper and fiercer, something more real, than he’d ever felt before.

He might have had many lovers, plenty of mutually satisfying experiences in the bedroom, but that was all they’d been: experiences. Not relationships, not even emotional connections. Just the soulless, pleasurable joining of bodies—which was what he’d always wanted. What he’d chosen. Anything else brought with it the possibility of pain.

Yet when he’d kissed Olivia in the garden he’d felt something different, something deeper, and for a moment he’d wanted the kind of life, the kind of love, he’d never let himself have before.

But love had no place in any relationship he chose, any marriage. Not the marriage he’d intended with Elena, and not the one he now contemplated with Olivia.

The sedan pulled into the palace courtyard and the security personnel jumped out of the other car and opened the doors. Aziz helped Olivia out of the car while his mind buzzed with possibilities.

Tomorrow was his wedding day. But with which bride?

They gave one last wave for the crowds lining the courtyard and then headed into the palace.

As they walked together, Aziz noted that Olivia seemed to have recovered her composure. In the garden he’d seen how shaken she’d been by their kiss—and how desperately determined she’d been not to show him.

‘Perhaps a cup of tea after you’ve changed? I do have English tea here.’ He spoke as if their meeting would be no more than a farewell, knowing he needed to handle their next conversation carefully. Olivia hesitated and he knew she was torn between wanting to spend time with him and wanting to stay safe.

Just as he was torn. They were very similar; he was realising that more and more. Both of them safeguarded their hearts. Hid their true selves, their deepest desires. They just went about it in completely different ways.

‘Very well,’ she said, and after she left Aziz headed for his study where he knew Malik was waiting to debrief him.

‘Well?’ he asked as he strode into the room. He yanked off his turban and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Any news?’

‘I’m afraid not. She was at the camp, but everyone had gone by the time your men arrived.’

‘Gone? Did they have warning that someone was coming?’

‘It is hard to say. I suspect Khalil has gone to one of the tribes for shelter. They will hide him.’

‘I know that.’ Aziz pressed a fist to his temple; his head had started to throb. ‘How can he command the loyalty of people he has never even met before?’ he demanded, and Malik shrugged.