AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There was no rushing as there had been that first night together. No stripping of clothes separately before they came together. This time Rashid undressed her as if he were opening a gift, taking his time to expose each part of her skin, worshipping it with his lips and his mouth—the hennaed patterns of her hands and feet, the insides of her elbows and the backs of her knees—until she was quivering with desire and need before he’d even slipped her golden abaya over her head.
Breath hissed through his teeth when he looked down on her. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her with his words and with his adoring eyes, and warmth bloomed inside her. She felt beautiful when he looked at her that way.
He shed his robes and turned from desert ruler into her ruler. Tonight she was his kingdom and his most loyal subject. Tonight she was his queen. Tonight she was his, utterly and completely, and he gave her everything in return.
They made slow, sweet love, long into the night. Making love, she thought, not sex this time, for that tiny seed of a connection had grown into something more, something richer and more powerful.
Love.
And the thought simultaneously terrified and thrilled her, but tonight it seemed so right. She loved him.
And when he followed her into ecstasy and she heard him cry out her name on his lips, she knew he must love her, too, even just a little.
He pulled her close and kissed her and it didn’t matter that he was sleeping like the dead less than a minute later. In just one night, he’d given her more than she could have ever wished for.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, testing the words, touching his lips with hers, before she snuggled closer and closed her eyes, still smiling.
* * *
There was a noise from beyond the interconnecting door. A cry. Atiyah. Tora listened in the dark, waiting, and a few seconds later came another cry, more insistent this time. Tora strained to hear Yousra’s footfall on the tiled floor but heard nothing and Atiyah was working herself up to full throttle now.
Beside her Rashid slept on. He would be exhausted after the strain of the coronation and the physical excesses that followed. She should leave it to Yousra but she didn’t want Rashid to be woken, so she rose from the bed, pulling on Rashid’s oversized robe, and slipping into her suite.
She scooped Atiyah from her cot and held her to her chest. ‘What’s wrong, little one? What’s the matter?’
Yousra appeared looking ill with dark shadows under her eyes and Tora sent her straight back to bed. Rashid would have to find another carer to share the load now.
Tora checked the baby’s nappy and made sure there was nothing pressing in her clothes or bedding. A nightmare, she guessed, just something that spooked her in her sleep. The baby whimpered and snuffled against her chest and she massaged her back and started singing the lullaby she liked to sing to Atiyah. Eventually the little fingers of the fist holding on so tightly to her robe finally relaxed as she drifted back to sleep.
‘Where did you learn that song?’
She started and turned, the baby still in her arms, to find him standing there, a towel lashed low on his hips. ‘You’re awake.’
‘That song,’ he said. ‘It’s beautiful. How do you know it?’
‘I learnt it at the child-care centre where I worked. We had children whose families came from all over the world and we tried to learn songs from most of the major languages, even though we were never quite sure of the words.’
‘Did you know it was Persian?’
She looked up at him. ‘I knew it was Middle Eeastern. Why do you ask?’
‘Because I’ve heard it before. Apparently my mother used to sing it to me. And maybe my father, too. I’d forgotten it until I heard you singing it to Atiyah, that first night on the plane.’
She stilled at his side, her heart going out to him. She couldn’t begin to imagine how it must feel—the pain on discovering your parent had been alive all those years you’d thought him dead. The betrayal and the hurt would be almost too much to bear.
‘Your father must have loved you a lot,’ she said.
He sniffed. ‘How do you figure that?’
‘Because he left you Atiyah,’ she said, trying to find some way of soothing his pain. ‘I read that her name means gift. He left you questions without answers, I know, but he left you Atiyah, and the gift of joy and love as well, if you will only see it. He must have loved you to have entrusted her in your care.’
He blinked and reached out a hand to touch Atiyah’s curls.
