33
Irene stayed quiet as she watched the Sheikh gather his thoughts. Inside her she could feel a sense of dread rising, like some creeper vine tightening around her insides. She’d passed all kinds of tests, overcome all sorts of obstacles, defied all the odds to be here now, alive and all right, with her son by her side, another on the way, and a man who made her feel so good, so real, so complete.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “Nothing can change what I’m feeling, Bilaal.” She cradled her son and touched her belly, instinctively understanding how women could stand by their men no matter what, that she was truly prepared to accept anything and everything about him, the father of her children, the man who made her feel like . . . a woman.
He smiled, his green eyes darkening as he looked deep into her eyes. He is deciding whether he can trust me—trust me in a way that he’s never trusted anyone, perhaps not even his lost wife, she realized. And as the realization hit, she knew this would be the biggest test, that if she could handle what was coming, she could handle anything and everything that this Sheikh might bring into her life.
“Nitrogen,” said the Sheikh, bringing a frown to Irene’s face.
“What?”
“I was near death myself when I got to the surface with my wife. Ascending so fast gave me a case of the bends. When I recovered, I found out that the investigators had checked my wife’s air tanks and found that the mixture was out of balance. Too much nitrogen and not enough oxygen. It can lead to hallucinations.”
Irene’s frown grew deeper. “That’s why your wife suddenly pulled out her mouthpiece? She lost track of where she was?”
The Sheikh nodded. “It appears so.”
“So . . . it was an accident? An oversight? A mistake? Or was it something—” She held off, not wanting to re-open his wounds any more than necessary.
“Could have been a mistake by the man filling the air tanks back on shore. Or perhaps the mixture was wrong to begin with, and someone else at the diving company was responsible. Maybe the gauge showing oxygen levels on my wife’s tank was off. Allah only knows whose fault it was.” The Sheikh took a breath and smiled thinly, his eyes meeting hers, his gaze tormented yet cold, stoic yet vulnerable. “So I blamed all of them. Every man who worked for that diving company.”
The Sheikh didn’t go on, and Irene waited for almost a minute before pursing her lips and frowning again. “So you sued the company? Put them out of business? Had the authorities file charges for negligence?”
Bilaal held that cold smile and slowly shook his head. “No, Irene. I did not sue anyone. I did not file any charges. I simply administered justice.” He blinked and broke the gaze for just a second before looking back into her eyes, the change in his expression startling her.
“Bilaal . . . are you saying that you . . . wait, what are you saying?”
“The blood test results for my wife showed a high level of certain hormones in her serum, so they did more tests and found she’d been with child.” The Sheikh gritted his teeth. “Irene, she was pregnant at the time. Our first child. She hadn’t told me. I do not think she herself knew at the time.” He clawed at his hair and continued, the words coming slowly, like he was forcing himself to say things that had never been said. Not to anyone. Perhaps not even really to himself. “I lost it, Irene. When I realized what I had lost down there, I lost my mind as well. I lost any sense of what was right or wrong, of what was fair or unfair, of what was justice or simply a man taking vengeance on the world.”
“Oh, God, Bilaal,” she muttered, instinctively placing her hand over Sage’s cheek, like she was shielding him from his father. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
The Sheikh nodded, that coldness back in his eyes. “Every last man. Thirteen of them. I waited one year, and then I invited everyone from that diving company for a trip on my yacht. A party, I told them, to show them how gracious and forgiving a king can be. We sailed far out to sea. I fed them, entertained them, laughed and joked with them. Then my men and I slaughtered them all. I felt nothing as I did it. We fed their remains to the sharks in the dark of night, and when the sun came up, my helicopter picked us up. We sank the boat and that was the end of it. Investigations went nowhere. Search and rescue teams found nothing.”
Irene stared in stunned silence as the father of her son, the man she’d given herself to body and mind, told her that he was a killer, a depraved madman who’d planned an execution for thirteen men simply for revenge. She wanted to throw up, take her son and get the hell out of here. How could she possibly understand a man who’d done something like that? How could she possibly even consider being with him, letting him near her children?!
Things have been dreamy and exciting the past two months, she reminded herself. But you still don't really know this man, do you? What happens a year from now? Five years from now, when the honeymoon has worn off? Will we have a fight that ends up with me in a dungeon, or taken out to the open desert and “made lost”? Perhaps he just breaks my neck when he gets sick of me and wants a younger woman ten years from now!
Stop it, she told herself. Take a moment and look inside yourself. You know how you’re supposed to feel: horrified, scared, morally repulsed. But how do you really feel, Irene? How do you really feel?
She looked up at this towering beast of a man who stood before her, his face rippling with anguish, even fear—fear that she would walk away. He is telling me this because he is tired of being alone with his burden. He wants me to help him. He wants me to give him a home in my heart, to accept the worst parts of him as easily as I accept the best of him. Once again, just like that night three years ago, this ruthless, violent, proud king needs my help.
He needs my shelter.
And I will give it to him, she knew.
As she thought it she felt a rush of relief, that although she needed some time to process it, she’d be OK. She’d accept it. She’d accept the worst of him, because that was the essence of love, wasn’t it?
“Irene?” he said quietly. “You are not speaking. Is it as I fear? You now fear me? You believe I am capable of—”
“I don’t think I had any doubts about what you’re capable of,” Irene said, surprising herself at how firm her voice sounded. “Just like I didn’t with Dan.”
The Sheikh frowned and touched his jaw, stroking his heavy beard. “What do you mean?”
Irene raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know exactly what Dan did for the CIA. But I knew he wasn’t a goddamn accountant. Every trip took him farther away from me. I could see that he was holding what he did tight inside him, that it was rotting him from the inside out. I never asked him about it. I know he couldn’t tell me details. But who knows—maybe he’d have talked about it if I had asked.” She sighed and stroked Sage’s hair before looking at the Sheikh. “I should have asked him, classified secrets be damned. I should have forced him to tell me. I should have shared the burden. That’s what a good wife does. I wasn’t a good wife.”
The Sheikh frowned and opened his mouth like he was going to say something. But he clamped shut the next moment.
“What were you about to say?” she asked him. “Something about Dan? What?”
Bilaal shook his head. “It is nothing. There is nothing to say. Life is for the living, Irene. Life is for the living.”
Sage let out a giggle just as he said it, and Irene’s attention was whipped back to the now. He was right. There was nothing to be gained by wishing things had been different with those who were lost. Would it have changed anything if Dan had related every detail of the men he’d killed in the name of country? Had he killed women and children too? Had he killed a few others, just for the hell of it as well? Was he a monster who’d slept in her bed every night with his secrets? When he touched her and closed his eyes was he thinking of the girls and women he’d fucked in those faroff places? Who knew?
Irene really didn’t have any idea, but that look on Bilaal’s face when she told him she hadn’t been a good wife to Dan said a lot. Perhaps it said everything. The Sheikh, killer or not, was too honorable to speak ill of a dead colleague, but his eyes told her what she needed to know: That she’d done enough penance.
“Enough,” she whispered, walking towards the Sheikh. “Enough beating ourselves up over what we did or didn’t do in our previous lives. Like you said, life is for the living, yeah?”
The Sheikh’s massive body shuddered as he embraced Irene and Sage, and she could almost taste the relief in him. The relief, and the love. The joy of being accepted, faults and all.
“So you are willing to give this a shot with a man like me?” he whispered against her hair.
She pulled away just enough to look at him cockeyed. She glanced at Sage, down at her belly, and then back into his eyes. “Um, I’m holding your three-year-old in my arms. We’ve got a bun in the oven. And I’ve been living in the woods with you for two months, without any underwear. Yeah. I think it’s safe to say I’m willing to give this a shot with a man like you.”
“I thought so,” he grunted.
Irene pulled away again. “What do you mean you thought so?”
The Sheikh shrugged, mischief in his eyes as his expression finally softened. “I mean, I was certain you would indeed accept me, killer and all.”
“Well, that’s a little presumptuous.”
Bilaal paused a moment and touched his lip. “Irene, you do recall that I watched you kill a man two months ago.”
Irene puffed out her cheeks and pouted. “Well, he kidnapped me and Sage. He put my child in danger. He was planning to murder all of us in a bomb blast. Most importantly, I thought he killed my horse! Sorry, where I come from, you don’t get away with that shit.”
“Marry me,” said the Sheikh.
“What?”
“Marry me.”
“Uh . . . like right now?”
“Yes. Immediately.”
Irene laughed in disbelief, pushing her hair away from her face so she could look at him. Then she glanced out the window. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was shining right at them, bathing the room in golden light. Outside the trees were turning, and soon autumn would be in full swing. She’d always liked the idea of being a summer bride, and there wasn’t much summer left. Dan and she had gotten married at the Cody town hall in November, and she’d never really had a “wedding” as such.
“Sunset,” she said. “I’ll marry you at sunset.”
A huge grin broke on his face and he reached for her, but she stepped back and shook her head. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
The Sheikh looked around the living room that was by now immensely lived-in, with makeshift wooden and cloth toys for Sage strewn across the throw rugs, shawls and blankets draped haphazardly over the couches and chairs, the dishes from lunch still sitting on the massive oakwood table near the kitchen area.
“A ring,” he muttered, his eyes scanning every inch of surface. “Let me see . . .”
Irene watched in amusement as his face lit up and he rushed from the room. “Where do you think Daddy’s going?” she whispered to Sage, who had stomped over to one of his toys, a reasonably good likeness of a bear carved out of smooth driftwood from the river.
Three minutes later the Sheikh was back, and he strode up to Irene, grabbed her left hand, and slipped the ring on her finger. She looked down at it, and then she snorted and stepped back, one hand on her hip, her toe tapping the wooden floorboards.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked, looking at the strip of rawhide that had been fashioned into a ring.
“It is indeed, my wild mustang,” he whispered, glancing at Sage to make sure he wasn’t looking. Then he reached out and softly grazed her right breast, gently pulling on the nipple until it was pert and pebbled. “Now come here, my frontier bride.”
“Not yet,” she said, struggling to keep her composure as he touched her other breast, getting both nipples hard and tight, making her hot beneath that pantyless skirt. “You still need to go down on one knee and do it right.”
“I should remind you that I am a king,” he muttered as he twisted her right nipple and held on, drawing her in so close she could feel his hardness against her rapidly moistening crotch. “I do not go to my knee for anyone.”
She smiled and shrugged, biting her lip as she reached down and began to raise her skirt. Up, up, up, she pulled it, until she could feel the breeze swirl its way between her thighs, carrying her frontier scent up to this king who refused to go down on his knees for her.
“Then again,” he growled, sniffing the air and then slowly leading her by the nipple to the enclave near the dining room where Sage couldn’t see them. He kissed her hard on the lips, tweaked her nipple hard one last time, and then went to his knees, pushing his face deep into her warm crotch as she tried not to moan too loud.
“Will you marry me, my wild woman, my she-wolf, my mama-bear?” he muttered as he licked her slit until she was dripping wantonly down her thighs. “Will you marry me, my lover, my woman, my . . . queen?”
“Yes!” she groaned as she felt his tongue slide inside her. She could feel that leather ring get tight on her finger as she closed her fist and covered her mouth so she wouldn’t yelp from the way he was driving his stiff tongue up and around, swirling and jabbing, licking and tapping. “Yes. Now show your fiancée that she's a taken woman. And hurry up, because I have to make a wedding dress before sunset.”