7
A hundred miles away, Sheikh Ephraim watched his semen spurt all over the naked brown buttocks of the woman spread before him on the red, hand-woven Persian rugs that covered the sandstone floors of the southern wing of Habeetha’s Royal Palace. He glanced down at the petite hand of the second woman who was furiously jerking him off, her fingers looking tiny wrapped around his thick shaft. Ephraim knew he was coming, but it felt like nothing. He grunted as he pulled the woman’s hand away from his cock, turning away from the naked nubiles and walking towards the back balcony that overlooked a date-palm orchard. He stood there naked and bronze, the sunlight bearing down fiercely on him. Once again he looked at his cock, long and gleaming, thick and oozing. Then he snapped his fingers and gestured for the two women to leave.
He watched their bare bottoms move as they hurriedly gathered their robes. Once upon a time he would spend hours talking to the women of his harem, getting to know them, enjoying their spirited company and varied conversation before even touching them. He’d always enjoyed the challenge of making the women of his harem orgasm under his touch—it seemed like that was the ultimate test of a man’s skills. Can you make a whore come every time?
Of course, the women of his harem were not prostitutes. They were not whores. They were not paid directly for their services, and they were free to leave at any time. What they got were private chambers in the southern wing of Habeetha’s Royal Palace, every need taken care of—and Ephraim had always prided himself on making sure his company was their number one need. The women of his harem were his friends and confidantes, his lovers and his playmates. He used to know the hopes and fears of every one of his women. Now he barely even remembered their names.
That feeling of desolation returned to him as he stared out over the tops of the palm trees. The emptiness inside had been growing over the past few years, leading him to make decisions that he still wondered about. He’d angered every Sheikh and ruler in the region by violating Islamic law and allowing alcohol, prostitution, and gambling in Habeetha. But he’d had the last laugh when tourism skyrocketed, and within a few years Habeetha became known as a playground for young Arabs, the Las Vegas of Arabia, Sin City on the banks of the Golden Oasis! The new revenues were astronomical, and Ephraim knew that it would serve his country well in the long run, when oil was no longer the fuel of choice. Habeetha was oil-rich, but poor in other natural resources. If the oil money dried up, it would be a disaster. This way there was a second revenue stream.
Yes, he thought as he took a deep breath and squinted past the swaying treetops, towards the distant horizon. Tradition be damned. People gamble, drink, and fuck anyway. Better to have it accepted and regulated than hidden in shame and shadows. That was not a bad decision, not matter what the clerics and traditionalists said. But the other big move—opening up the borders and taking in thousands of young Arabs, providing them with money, alcohol, and sex while putting them in the military—ya Allah, that had set something in motion. Something big, dangerous, and irreversible.
He’d done it on a whim, overruling his own council by insisting that Habeetha would be able to handle the influx of immigrants. It had felt like a benevolent, expansive move: After all, if he was going to make Habeetha an oasis of openness, should he not also open the borders?
What Ephraim had not counted on was the lopsided gender mix of the immigrants. He’d expected there to be more men who chose to come, but not such an overwhelming majority that he was forced to close his borders after only six months. Ephraim had always liked the idea of required military service as part of a citizen’s education, a way to combat laziness and sloth and build good physical health and mental habits. And he’d hoped that having a number of women doing military service would add something positive to his image as a modern Sheikh. But the vision of a large, modern army with a good-sized mix of women did not come to be. Instead he had a hundred-thousand young men living and training on the banks of the Golden Oasis, everyone wondering what came next.
Fantasies of a glorious war and conquest of new lands had played themselves out in the Sheikh’s rich imagination countless times over the years, dating back to when he was a hot-blooded young student. A part of him still believed that a king’s job was to expand his kingdom. Was that not what every great king throughout history, everywhere in the world did? Why do we remember Alexander the Great or Xerxes the Magnificent or Genghis the Khan? Because they were never satisfied with what they had. They always wanted more. They wanted it all.
Invading Noramaar would be unprecedented, but it might work. No doubt every Sheikhdom in the region would denounce it, but most of the neighboring kingdoms were too small to maintain large standing armies, and so their denouncements would be just words. Saudi Arabia was the only concern, but chances were they’d stay out of it as well. After all, Saudi Arabia and the United States were close allies, and the U.S. had no interest in getting involved in another Middle-Eastern war—especially one between tiny kingdoms like Noramaar and Habeetha. Which meant that the U.S. might well advise the Saudis to stay away and let the local Arabs fight it out for some land in the middle of the goddamn desert.
Dreams of conquest aside, Ephraim took no particular joy in sending men and women to their deaths. But the problem of overpopulation was real, after that rash move to open the borders. Habeetha was small, and most of its land was shifting sand and almost impossible to build towns and cities on. All the population lived in Habeetha’s capital, on the banks of the Golden Oasis. And as the population grew, the only place to expand would be across those shimmering waters. To Noramaar, the land of Sheikh Darius. Ephraim had boxed himself in with his own actions. He could not simply kick out hundreds of thousands of immigrants! And when those immigrants had children and those children had more children, eventually Habeetha would be bursting at the seams! There was no longer a choice but to look to Noramaar!
Early on in the game Ephraim had decided that if he could provoke Darius into attacking Habeetha first, he might be able to get away with a quick and decisive response that would yield results while the rest of the Arab world bickered about who was the good Sheikh and who was the evil invader. So Ephraim had planted a rumor that he was secretly planning to dam up the underground aquifers that fed the Golden Oasis. Technically Ephraim had the right to do that—after all, it was his land. Darius had taken the bait, and now, three years later, the two Sheikhs were regularly trading veiled threats of aggression in speeches and local television appearances. Ephraim knew that Darius was the calmer, more level-headed of the two. But he also knew that Darius was supremely proud and fiercely competitive in his own way, and he’d hoped that Darius would lose his cool and perhaps send in some spies to investigate the rumors. Then Ephraim would capture the spies, publicly blame Darius for something nefarious like trying to assassinate him, and boom, justification for war!
But three years later it was all still talk. And that last meeting with Darius in Dubai made it clear that Darius was not going to lose his cool. He was content to play the game of words in the public arena. Darius was good at that. He understood that eighty percent of war is propaganda and publicity, and would keep doing battle in the press as long as possible.
The public eye is the battleground Darius has chosen and I must change that battleground to one where I have an advantage, Ephraim thought as he strolled back to his chambers and reached for his black silk robe. He draped the cool cloth over his broad, muscular frame, leaving it open in front, not caring that his long cock was hanging out obscenely when he summoned his female attendant to bring him some wine.
As he watched the veiled woman pour the thick red wine into a silver tumbler, something jogged Ephraim’s memory about that meeting with Darius. Something Darius had said right before that American professor’s lecture:
Not so bad on the eyes, Ephraim. Make sure you get a seat with a good view.
“Take the wine away and bring me some sweet tea,” commanded Ephraim suddenly, his hand going to his face as he rubbed his jaw furiously. The remark was made in passing, but it was an odd statement coming from the “good Sheikh Darius,” was it not? And the look on Darius’s face when he said it . . . Ephraim had seen that look before, had he not? Years ago, when they were two Muslim kings at Oxford University in England. That one night when Darius had decided he would try alcohol, because, as he’d proclaimed at the time, a king must experience everything at least once.
A king must experience everything at least once.
And alcohol was not the only thing the two kings had experienced that one wild night. Experienced together.
“Ya Allah, Darius,” Ephraim muttered as the attendant came back in with a pot of steaming tea and set it down, her dark eyes flashing as she glanced at his cock, which had hardened on its own in the few minutes she’d been gone. “Are you saying we should move our fight to a new battlefield?” He thought back to the curvy, dark haired American professor who’d taken to the stage in her skirt suit and confidently lectured to Sheikhs and billionaires, even drawing a few laughs. Ephraim had indeed gotten a good look at her: She was pretty, with wise eyes that were unfortunately mostly hidden behind those ugly glasses. Her curves were strong and compelling, with womanly hips and sturdy thighs that made him want to see what was beneath that tight black skirt of hers. Yes, there was something to her. “Still,” he muttered as he sipped the tea and winced, wondering if the sweetness of Darius’s favorite drink had driven the good Sheikh mad. “What sense does it make? How can that solve anything? How can she solve anything?”
Ephraim drained the tea and tossed the silver cup onto the teakwood table, striding to the balcony and staring out toward the distant shores of Noramaar across the oasis. Darius could play the game as well as anyone, Ephraim knew. He had something in mind with this woman. He was bringing her into the game. But why? Was he trying to signal that perhaps this could be resolved without bloodshed and without either Sheikh losing face by standing down? Was he not just changing the battlefield but changing the game itself?
“So what is my move now?” Ephraim muttered as he turned and went to his massive teakwood desk and flipped on the forty-inch retina computer display as he took a seat at the keyboard and quickly typed in the woman’s name, frowning as the search results came back. “What is my move?”