AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He rested his head against her collarbone. “That is good,” he said. “That I was able to have you in this place. It healed something in me.”
“What if we went to the garden?” she whispered. “Have you been outside yet?”
He kissed her neck. “Not yet.”
She nodded. She understood. There were certain things that were going to take time.
Of course, what she did not expect was for that time to be dramatically shortened when a holy man from the country arrived at the palace.
“I have just come from the desert. And I have no wish to cause anyone harm or distress, but I am compelled to give you honesty. Your brother, Cairo, has married your fiancée.”
She could see a black rage come over Riyaz. And her heart broke in two.
Ariel had married someone else. And that choice had been taken from him. It was only a few moments later that it registered to her that... Cairo was married. Cairo, whom she had fancied herself in love with before the beginning of all of this.
It was a moment of brutal clarity. She wasn’t in love with Cairo anymore. The hurt here was that... Riyaz would never be able to choose her over Ariel. Because Ariel had been taken from him.
You idiot girl. You don’t want him to choose you. You don’t want to stay here. What kind of a life is this? With a man like him.
“Brianna,” he said. “We must go to the desert.”
“Riyaz, you haven’t even been outside yet,” she said.
“It is of no consequence,” he said. “I decree that we shall, and therefore we shall. The desert will bend to my will.”
And that was how she found herself in a helicopter, clinging to the seat for all she was worth. She didn’t like this. Not at all. Her breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, panic making itself known in every facet of her body. Completely uncontrollable.
And there was something about the way he was right now. Wild. Untamed. And she didn’t know what to make of any of it.
He was clearly in a jealous rage, over his brother marrying a woman that he hadn’t even seen for sixteen years. It made it obviously how little what had happened between herself and Riyaz mattered to him at all.
But also, she had a vague concern that Riyaz meant to shed Cairo’s blood. Cairo was supposed to be the one that she was in love with. That was the thing. Cairo was supposed to be the one who mattered.
He was the one who had saved her. He was the one that she had thought herself to be in love with. And she had no idea what any of that meant now. When her body still ached with the memory of Riyaz’s touch.
Well, her body did not ache now. It was trembling.
Helicopters really were terrible.
Riyaz, for his part, was stone. Motionless. Showing no emotion as they flew quickly over the desert. As he experienced this sort of freedom for the first time in all those years.
It was like he had shut all that off. Like none of it mattered.
And maybe the way that he compartmentalized all these things with such brutal efficiency was part of how he had survived, but she found it... Jarring. Painful. And then, even with her eyes partway closed, she saw beneath the helicopter, a tent. Out in the middle of the golden desert sand.
“Here,” Riyaz said to the pilot. The helicopter lowered suddenly, and in spite of herself, Brianna clung to Riyaz’s arm. Her anxiety had no pride.
And when the helicopter touched down, Riyaz stepped out onto the desert sand. And she couldn’t help but feel something momentous well inside of her. Because there he was, out on the sands as he was meant to be. As he had not been all this time. And he strode toward the tent, with Brianna scrambling after him. “Riyaz,” she said. “Please don’t do anything...”
And then he opened the flap of the tent, and Brianna saw Cairo in the flesh for the first time in weeks. He was standing there looking ready to do battle himself. And she waited. To feel something. For Cairo.
Instead, all she felt was terror.
“And here I find you. With my woman,” said Riyaz.
“My apologies,” said Cairo. “She is no longer yours. I have married her. And we have consummated it. Quite thoroughly. You will find.”
“So I see.” He looked around the tent, his gaze assessing. And she worried... She could feel the energy vibrating off of him and remembered the way that he had come apart in the library. Brianna touched his arm, and he stiffened beneath her fingers, then...he came back to himself. “What is it?” he asked, looking at her.
