AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He shrugged. “Perhaps not.”
She looked around the office and she saw that in the corner, there was one of his spy novels that he liked. She picked it up and sat in the chair next to the desk.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought I might read. While you work.”
“Did you?”
“I don’t really have anything to do. And you know, I’m going to need something to do.”
“We will have children,” he said.
Of course they would. And of course he would expect that, and it wasn’t as if they had been having protected sex, but the idea made something slam hard into her chest. Probably her heart. Or maybe every single one of her internal organs, really.
She’d wanted children, of course. It was part of that fantasy. Of picket fences and of neighborhood evenings where kids rode their bikes around until the porch lights came on.
But they didn’t live in a neighborhood, and they didn’t have a picket fence.
They were in the desert, with great stone walls surrounding a palace.
He was a sheikh. She was a woman whose father hadn’t cared about her at all. He was a man who’d basically raised himself in a dungeon.
She wanted it, but she felt sad.
That they weren’t what she’d dreamed.
She wondered if she even could be.
Children. She wanted them. Wanted his children. She wondered what that meant for them both, but didn’t want to dissolve right now.
“Of course. But that... Surely I’ll have responsibilities other than the children?”
“Yes,” he relented. “I suppose so.”
“One thing that is quite important to me is that I have something to do with myself. Something that’s my own. Having lived the kind of life that I did before I left my father’s house... You can understand.”
“What was it like?”
He was looking at her with intent, interest. “Well,” she said, frowning slightly. “It was a huge house, often full of his cronies. It was organized crime, but I’m not sure what all... I don’t want to know, I never have.”
“I can understand. I understand what it’s like to...to need to curate your world. Your thoughts. I had to do that in the dungeon.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, I wasn’t in a dungeon. I was in a big, beautiful house, with no love at all. A big, beautiful house where all of the men were monsters. I had a room, but I slept with the door locked. I had to...make myself a prisoner, in many ways.”
“That’s a terrible way for anyone to live. Before...before all of this. Before the takeover of the country, I had a family. A real family.”
She looked away. “I never did.”
“You can have one here.” He cleared his throat.
“And what is family to you, Riyaz?”
“A distant memory. But I will keep you safe.”
“Do you...your feelings...”
“I have to keep my control. You understand.” And though neither of them said anything about love, she could tell that it had been the topic. She’d asked. He’d said no. “I thought you were going to read.”
