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“But—-”
“But nothing. Now be a good girl and stay quiet while I help you.”
She didn’t even have time to protest, with the sheikh immediately moving to suit actions to words. He put her clothes to right, tucked loose locks of her hair back into her cap, and he did so with such efficiency that he had even time to arrange the soft layers of her headdress into place with minutes to spare.
The sheikh stepped back with a smug smirk. “Well?”
The words ‘thank you’ were stuck in her throat. She just plain hated it every time he proved his superiority, and so she glared up at him instead, saying ungratefully, “I wouldn’t be in trouble in the first place if it wasn’t for you.”
But the sheikh only chuckled. “As always, my sweet – your sheer graciousness simply takes my breath away.”
The barb successfully reached its mark, and Anisah could feel herself turning red again. “I honestly don’t know what I see in you,” she muttered under her breath. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you of bewitching me—-”
“Maybe I had.” The sheikh sent her a lazy, devastating smile. “After all, did you not say you found me ‘somewhat irresistible’?”
Anisah’s mouth opened and closed. Was it just her imagination, or had the sheikh echoed those old words of hers like they were the height of disrespect?
Tarif almost smiled when Anisah suddenly planted her hands on her hips as she threw him a suspicious glare. “Correct me if I’m wrong, alshaykh, but it has suddenly occurred to me that the reason you have been so insistent in coming here was to prove—-”
“I am completely irresistible to you as opposed to my brothers?” He turned his hands open in a gesture of casual admission. “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.”
“You pompous, petty man!” No wonder it had seemed to her the infernal man was hell-bent on not taking no for an answer, and Anisah cringed at the memory of how that very forcefulness of his had been more effective in arousing her than rousing her suspicions.
Seeing that Anisah was working herself up into a temper, Tarif did not hesitate to play his trump card and immediately reached for her hands, saying, “Maehdina, anisdi. There are still times when I have this crazy urge to prove to myself that I am the only man you find completely irresistible...” He looked down at her. “Am I?”
“That is not the point,” Anisah flung irritably at him.
“You have not answered my question, my sweet. Am I the only man you find completely irresistible—-”
“Oh, for heaven’s—-”
“Or am I merely on equal footing as my brothers, who I’m certain you find ‘somewhat’ irresistible?”
Anisah’s mouth snapped shut, her words of rage all but forgotten. Oh, curse his dastardly good skills in manipulation! The man knew that he only had to frame things in that perspective, and she was good as his slave.
It had been a month since they had gotten back together, a month in which her free time was divided into two distinctly separate compartments: half of it was spent being ravished by the sheikh, while the other half was spent cooped up in the royal library, with Anisah tirelessly combing through the classified records of the palace’s historians.
In it, she had found horrifying testimonies about Tarif’s suffering, files that would only be revealed to the public fifty years after his passing as demanded by Ramilian laws. Those harrowing words were now engraved in her mind, and her heart still hadn’t stopped crying over them. She doubted it ever would.
How could she when she might be in love with Tarif Al-Atassi?
Even now the realization made her want to shrivel up in fear, and there were still so many nights she would lie awake, body bathed in cold sweat at the thought of how much her life would change if it turned out to be true, and she had done the most unforgivable, irrevocable, and irreparable thing by falling in love with the sheikh.
And worse than that...she had a terrible feeling that the sheikh knew it, too.
“Uh oh.” Tarif attempted to make light of the situation as he let go of his fiancée the moment he caught the look in her eyes again. More often than not, it meant she wished to speak of that matter again –
“Are you free this afternoon, Your Highness?” Anisah asked casually.
“Depends on why you’re asking, my sweet,” he answered just as casually.
She frowned up at him, and he smiled down at her.
“We can’t continue this way for long, Your Highness.”
“Why not?”
“There are things we have to talk about—-” Like the horrifying fact that I might need to commit myself if it turns out I’m indeed in love with you.
