23
“So you’re just going to hold me prisoner until . . . until what?” Lora said to the two men standing in her living room and staring down at her.
The larger man looked at his watch and grunted. Then he examined his palm, where Lora had bitten him, glancing up at her and shaking his head, muttering something in Arabic as he did it.
“I’m sorry about that,” Lora said, blinking and looking over at Damascus for a moment. The boy was fast asleep. Perhaps he was used to drama by now.
“It is no matter. I cannot fault a woman for trying to defend herself. It is no matter.” He looked at his watch again. “The Sheikh will be here in three hours.”
“Three hours? Isn’t he like ten-thousand miles away?”
“Sheikh Amir was in London on business when we alerted him to the situation. He boarded his private jet immediately, instructing us to prevent the procedure from happening until he arrived.”
Lora took a breath, shaking her head as she let the facts settle. But it was hard to settle down when the adrenaline was pumping through her veins, an excitement that made it hard to sit still and wait. It took her a moment to realize that hell, she was excited! And it took another moment for her to admit that hell, she liked being excited like this!
But still the doubts about what Amir wanted swirled through her mind as she passed the time. She checked on the peacefully sleeping Damascus and offered the men something to eat. Then she excused herself and hurried to the bedroom, feverishly checking herself in the mirror, those doubts rising up again when she saw the dark circles under her eyes from the stress of the past few weeks. She wrinkled her nose up when she realized she’d been perspiring and her deodorant was wearing off.
“Shit,” she muttered as she whipped off her loose blue top and sniffed her armpits. “I should shower.” She glanced at the clock. She had plenty of time. She put her top back on and poked her head out into the living room to check on Damascus, but he was still asleep, safe in his crib. The two men were eating Cheetos and scrolling through their phones. They looked harmless suddenly, protective even—like the Sheikh was somehow already watching over her and her son.
Stop falling back into that Cinderella fantasy, she told herself as she quickly undressed and stepped into the shower. But as the warm water rolled down her heavy breasts and the soap lathered around her crotch and buttocks, Lora couldn’t help herself. Soon she was deep in her fantasy, the rising steam in the shower stall making it seem like she was allowed to let herself go a little, to perhaps dream her dream one last time, with no one looking, no one to judge her, not even herself.
Oh, God, what’s wrong with me, she wondered as she felt her fingers slide between her legs. Why am I having such a hard time with this? Wouldn’t any sane woman just get on the phone and call up the billionaire who got her pregnant and talk it out? What am I so afraid of? That he’ll reject me? Or that he won’t?!
She could feel her wetness begin to flow even as Carmen’s words came back to her: Every woman is part whore and part princess. The trick is to embrace both parts of your femininity, to balance them both . . . to find a man who’ll bring both those sides of you into balance.
Oh, God, that’s it, isn’t it, she thought as she touched her nipples, gasping as they hardened between her fingers. That kiss three years ago, the feelings I had after that, Mark cheating on me, my decision to travel back to Johaar, that night with the Sheikh . . . all of it is me trying to balance these two sides of my womanhood, isn’t it? I’ve always had the dream of that fairytale wedding, that beautiful, supportive marriage, that wholesome family life with kids and dogs and birthday parties and PTA meetings. But at the same time I’ve always tried to reject the other part of my womanhood, the part that wants to be loved, to be taken, to just be . . . fucked.
“Fucked like a whore,” she whispered in the privacy of her bathroom, sliding her fingers into her cunt as she shuddered, tears rolling down her cheeks as she felt herself open up. “Like a whore.”
“Not like a whore,” came the voice through the steam, and Lora whipped around in the cramped shower stall, crashing into his hard, naked body before she even realized what the hell was happening. “Like a queen. Like my queen.”