He’d said enough. Ya Ullah, the things he’d said…
And beyond words, the way he’d lost all sense of self in her, surrendered to her as she’d dragged him into their dimension of carnal excess and sensory overload, spilled himself three times inside her in the delirium of ecstasy, each time with the image of all this pleasure forming another miracle like Mennah. She could already be pregnant again. The wish that she was, or soon would be, the need to tether her to him by any means, spread through him like a mind-altering drug…
La ya moghaffal—no, you fool. Stop.
He must decide how to proceed, couldn’t go back and take her again. Not on her terms. He had to set new ones before he did. As he would. As he had to. His sac felt heavy and painful again, his erection straining, every inch stinging to feel her beneath him, around him. And that was only the physical part. Everything else in him was clamoring for her. Her voice, her eyes, her wit, her hunger. Her warmth and sincerity…?
He struggled to deny the pangs as he ignored her tremulous call, crossed his space to the bathroom. He felt her gaze following him, her confusion and hurt palpable.
He gritted his teeth against their influence, entered the bathroom, crossed to the huge sunken tub, hit the heat-regulating buttons, started it. He’d soak. Until this seizure of hunger passed. Until she went to bed…
“Is this what I should expect from now on?”
Don’t turn. Send her to bed. Don’t look at her.
He turned, looked at her. He’d known he shouldn’t have.
She was naked, as he’d left her, the cascade of her hair a burst of color under the spotlights among her paleness. She looked like a mermaid who’d suddenly grown legs and was thrown on land, unsure how to stand. Her voluptuousness bore the marks of his eroded restraint, her thighs slick with the ecstasy he’d found inside her, her shoulders hunched, her arms hugging her middle as if bracing against crippling pain.
“We have sex, then you walk away?”
She called the chain reaction of cataclysms they’d just shared sex? But then, he’d treated it as such.
“You expected cuddling?” he bit off, furious, with her, with himself. “Expected the old Farooq?”
He could swear he felt something inside her quiver before it shattered. Hope? For what? The clean slate she’d asked for? Or a renewed hold on him for a new plot?
Her eyes reddened. But their expressiveness, which for their six magical weeks and throughout this night had told him she was his in every way, was expunged, as if she’d ceased to…exist.
“I just needed to know what to expect. Now I know. When you get tired of me, will you let me move out of your quarters?”
“Who says I’ll get tired of you?”
“The old Farooq. He gave me three months, of which I served half. Should I expect that after serving the other half, whatever fascination I hold for you will be depleted and you’ll let me go, let me be Mennah’s mother only?” As he’d thought in her apartment. A few lifetimes ago. “Or have you decided you have a taste for hurting and humiliating me after all?”
“Enough,” he snarled. “You’ve changed your tune again, I see. All through the night you’ve begged for me, been mine and now…”
“Now it doesn’t matter what I am. It never mattered. To you or to anyone else. It’s what you are that matters. What you do, what you decide. I’m not in your league, Farooq. You pointed that out to me early on. As if I needed to be told. You’ll do what you want, and I have no say in the matter.” Without warning tears splashed her face, her arms, the ground. “I only ask, for Mennah’s sake…don’t destroy me.”
It was the most macabre thing he’d ever seen. Her face, as vacant as a corpse’s, flooded in tears streaming from eyes so red he felt they’d start gushing blood any second.
This was real. Wasn’t it? He could trust her. Couldn’t he? He couldn’t bear it if he was hurting her and she didn’t deserve it. If she was and had always been his. If she loved him…?
He wanted to say…everything. But he couldn’t. He had to make sure first. Because once he said it…he’d be hers, too. Forever.
He must find out if she was his, the same way. His heart and mind said yes. Now he had to await the verdict of time.
But he couldn’t abide time now, couldn’t bear her tears one more second. Couldn’t stand to see her turning away after she’d given him the most sublime night of his life. After she’d given him all of herself. And tonight, she had. This he was certain of.
“Carmen, come here.” She didn’t stop. He strode after her, caught her at the threshold of his expansive bathroom, took hold of shoulders that slumped with defeat. “Come, Carmen.”
Her tears flowed undeterred as she said, “Again? I’m sorry somow’wak, but this is probably beyond my physical abilities right now. I know you’re used to making things happen with a word, and in my case, with a touch, but after sixteen months, and even though I begged you for every bit of it as you pointed out, having you three times will probably leave me unable to walk for a week.”
And he laughed. Was there no end to her surprises?
Next second his laughter died. The burst of insight was blinding. She was trying to blind him to her tears, her weakness, using quips. Her wit was her only weapon against him.
Suddenly he hated that the power imbalance between them was so immense. He could balance it with three words. But those might unbalance it in his enemies’ favor. And he wasn’t just a man with his own heart, faith and life on the line. He would soon have Judar’s, the whole region’s fate resting on his clarity and decisiveness.
For now, he would obey, his instincts, not the murkiness of the doubts that had poisoned him for so long.
He cupped her face in his palms, damned himself when her teeth chattered as her features crumpled, her eyes those of a woman who would welcome the assurance of despair over the cruelty of hope.
“Your eyes are the first things that caught me, Carmen. Rivaling Judar’s skies and seas in their openness, their depths. They make me see how the Arabian Nights tale in which the tears of a princess drowned a kingdom wasn’t so ludicrous. Yours could drown a realm. I would kiss them away, stem the tears as I’ve been their source, but we have a saying here. El boassah fel ain tefar’raa.”
That stopped her tears. “A kiss in the eye separates?” He nodded. She hiccupped. “And you consider that a bad thing?”