SEDUCING HIS PRINCESS (13 page)

“A little? I look like a makeup ad!”

“We women need something extra to face cameras, not like those men of ours who look fantastic in any conditions. But since you’re the most beautiful woman ever, all you needed was a brush of mascara, a line of kohl and a smear of lipstick.”

“The most beautiful woman ever, my foot!” Jala snorted.

Aliyah chuckled. “Being Kamal’s female edition makes you incontestably that to me. But then Mohab thinks so, too, and certainly not because you look like Kamal.”

“Are you ladies done making me and Mohab choke?”

Kamal. He was here to take her to her groom. And he was teasing them with the common belief that people choked when others talked about them.

He approached her, his eyes so loving, so proud, she was the one who choked and threw herself into his arms.

He hugged her off the ground, kissing her forehead. “My little, beloved sister—I am so happy you finally have someone to love you as you should be loved.”

There was no stopping the tears from gushing this time. All she wanted to do was burrow into his powerful, protective arms and sob her heartache to him. If only...

Aliyah pounced to separate them before Jala smothered her face in Kamal’s chest and spoiled all her efforts. “Postpone tear-inducing declarations to
el sabaheyah,
will you?”

Stepping away from Kamal, she feigned a smile. “If you think you’ll ambush me and Mohab tomorrow morning, pretending to congratulate us but really checking on the satisfactoriness of the consummation, you have another think coming.”

“I don’t care how old you are,” Kamal growled. “Or that you’re getting married. You’re my baby sister and I’d rather not hear about you and consummation in the same sentence.”

She poked him teasingly. “So you’re okay with knowing it’s happening, just don’t want to
hear
about it?”

Kamal shuddered. “One more word and I take you back to Judar and put you where no man can get his paws on you.”

Aliyah hooted. “My husband, the hopelessly overprotective brother.”

Jala smirked. “Hope he’s not as hopelessly old-fashioned a lover.”

Kamal mock growled and lunged at her.

Everyone continued to laugh as they left her chambers and proceeded to where both the wedding and
joloos
rituals were taking place, picking up her bridal procession on the way. Jala was relieved no one had thought her overwrought moments had been anything more than the prewedding jitters of a woman about to enter into a union that would change her life forever.

As it would. Just not the way everyone thought it would.

Then everything stalled in her mind as she entered the massive hall in the heart of the citadel. Farah had been right. She’d seen the preparations, but couldn’t have imagined how it would all come together.

Wrapped in the mist of musky incense, under the firelight of a thousand torches perched high on the stone walls in polished brass holders, the whole scene was a plunge into the most lavish eras of bygone empires, or even
One Thousand and One Nights.

As her dazed glance swept the space, the details were almost too much to take in. Cascading satin banners with Jareer’s tribal insignias. Acres of tulle and voile wrapping around columns, raining from the hundred-foot-high ceiling and spanning the elaborate Arabesque framework. And the hall that Mohab had installed exploding with flower arrangements. The hundreds of people present looked like sparkling gems themselves in all kinds of finery, from lavish modern evening gowns and tuxedos, to costumes that belonged in a masquerade.

Then everything ceased to exist. In the depths of the hall, on top of a maroon-satin covered platform, with two elaborately carved and gilded ceremonial chairs at his back, there he stood. Mohab.

His hair is loose.
It was the first thing that burst into her mind. He’d never worn it down in public before. But now it brushed the top of his massive shoulders, its thick luxury and vitality gleaming with sun strands in the firelight.

The second thing that impinged on her hazy awareness was that he was dressed like he
had
stepped out of the Arabian Nights. Like everyone in her bridal procession, his clothes had the same color scheme, if in much darker tones. A burgundy
abaya
cascaded from his shoulders to his feet over a gold-beige top embroidered in his tribal motifs. Dark maroon pants clung to his muscled thighs before disappearing into darker leather boots.

He looked like the embodiment of the might of the desert, the implacability of the fates. And he glowed. She swore he did. From the inside. With power and distinction. And she loved him with everything in her. Despite the harsh lessons of the past and the permanent injuries lying in the future.

An eruption of thuds made her lurch, even though she’d known it was coming. The matrons of the tribe began her bridal procession with a boisterous percussive
zaffah
that was a variation of what she was used to in Judar.

She snatched a look behind her at the older women with their chins and temples tattooed. One of them was two feet to her side, whacking away at a
mihbaj
wooden grinder.

Then others joined on all the local percussive instruments—the tambourine-like
reg,
the bigger jangle-free
duff
and the vase-shaped hand drum called a
darabukkah.
After that rousing introduction, melody players joined in, an evocative droning emanating from the string
rababah,
and the squealing of reedlike
mizmar.
Then voices rose, from all around, singing congratulations to the bridegroom for his incomparable bride.

She found herself rushing beside Kamal, powered by Mohab’s hunger that demanded her at his side. Once they were on top of the platform, her eyes clung to her most beloved people, Kamal and Mohab, locked in a firm embrace that exchanged pledge and trust, before withdrawing to grip each other by one hand, while their other exchanged her from brother to husband.

Then she was clasped tight to Mohab’s side, drowning in him, in the hyperreality of it all.

Putting his lips to her ears as the song continued, he whispered, “Do you know I play the
darabukkah?
”

The totally unexpected comment had her gasping, “Can I have a demonstration later?”

“Only if you promise to dance for me.”

She lurched as if he’d scalded her. And he had. He’d injected a whole scene of abandoned sensuality into her imagination. Of her, in an explicitly revealing belly-dancing costume, undulating in a fever to the carnal rhythm, getting hotter with every move before he pulled her on top of him, thrust up into her and rode her into oblivion....

The music stopped, bringing her runaway imaginings to a grinding halt. Then the
ma’zoon
came forward to begin the marriage ritual.
It was really happening.

Mohab took her hand in his and the cleric covered their clasped fingers in a pristine white cloth, placing his palm atop them and intoning the marriage declarations. They repeated only the last parts after him, each accepting the other as a spouse. As the cleric stepped away, she thought that was it and she’d managed to survive the ritual without further upheavals. But before she could move, Mohab took her other hand in his.

Looking soulfully into her eyes, his voice rang out to fill the hall, deep and reverent. “That was what any man pledges to any woman he marries. But
my
pledge to you is that you have all of me, have always had all of me and will always have all of me. All that I own, all that I do and all that I am.”

She stared up at him, nothing in her bursting heart and chaotic mind translating into words, let alone anything as evocative as what he’d just said. It was all she could do to remain on her feet as the crowd roared with applause again.

In a tumult over what he’d just said, wondering if it had been for show or if it could possibly be true, she watched the Aal Kussaimi tribe elder climb up onto the platform.

He announced that by the unanimous vote of all tribes of Jareer, Mohab was appointed as king of their land, with his heirs after him inheriting the title.

After that, she could barely register anything as the cacophony rose to deafening levels while every tribe elder came up to kiss Mohab’s shoulder and offer him the symbol of their tribe, pledging their allegiance and obedience.

Then only she and Mohab remained, and he was talking.

“By the responsibility you granted me, and the privilege you bestowed on me, as your king, I pledge I will rule with justice and mercy, doing everything in my power to fulfill your aspirations and achieve your prosperity.” He led her to the edge of the platform. “As my first decree as king of Jareer, I give you my one treasure to rule beside me, in her wisdom and compassion, your queen...Jala Aal Masood.”

Cheers rocked the hall, rising to thundering levels as Mohab smashed the region’s every ban on displays of public affection and devoured her in a deeply explicit kiss.

Without hesitation, she sank into the rough demand, the ecstasy of his taste and feel. She
would
take it all with him, every second, every breath, every spark of his desire, and make a reservoir of memories for the life ahead devoid of all of that, of him.

Amid a storm of cheering led by her family, he finally relinquished her lips. Then, grinning down at her, eyes blazing with exhilaration, he shouted to her over the din, “Shall we give them the
joloos
they’re after?”

Nodding, his enthusiasm infecting her, she rushed after him to their thrones. After he’d seated her in hers, he came down before her on one knee, his eyes roiling with hunger as he kissed her hand. Then he whispered something she couldn’t hear. But she read it on his lips.
“Maleekati.”

My queen.

Somehow she didn’t burst into tears. But she knew the memory of this moment would fuel weeping jags far into her future, probably till the day she died.

With one last kiss on her hand, he rose to his feet and a hush descended, as if everyone held their breath. She knew just how they felt. Her breath clogged in her lungs as she watched him glide to his throne with the regality of a king born. Then, sweeping his
abaya
aside, he sat down.

Still holding his
abaya
back with a hand at his hip, he leaned forward to prop his right hand over his knee and struck a pose, a display of grandeur and entitlement that would be the standard for every king who came after him.

After he was satisfied everyone had enough photo and video documentation, he turned to her, his smile flaring again. “How about we feed all these enthusiastic people? They’ve yelled enough for their dinners, don’t you think?”

Suddenly she was spluttering with laughter, then with surprise as she found herself plucked from her seat and up into his arms. He descended the steps, with her cradled against him as if she weighed nothing, and waded through the growing din of approval as people parted to let him pass.

The world spun with every thud of his powerful steps, with his feel and scent. Hoping she didn’t mess her face or his clothes too much, she clung around his neck, burying her face in his chest, letting him take her wherever he wished.

Excitement swelled as he whisked her outside the citadel walls, where the gigantic wedding tent had been erected in the clearing overlooking Zahara, which was celebrating their new king and his wedding in the most delightful way.

Under a rising full moon, every dwelling in town had its windows open, and in each room blazed a light with a different color, turning the hills they were built over into a spread of glowing gemstones as far as the eye could see.

Then they came to the tent that looked like a fairy castle made of malleable materials, its whiteness silvered by moonbeams and gilded by the flickering flames of the thousand torches surrounding it at a safe distance. It was so big it would accommodate the three thousand people who were attending from the three kingdoms and the world.

The inside was adorned in the same color scheme of her bridal clothes, the rich tones giving everything a deep luxury bordering on decadence. Mohab carried her past hundreds of tables spread with satin tablecloths, lanterns, flowers, the finest local pottery and blown glass, all in vibrant, complementing colors. Then he was setting her down in their
kousha,
a gilded arabesque “marital cage,” open on one side so they’d preside over the celebrations. Right in front of them was the biggest dance floor she’d ever seen covered in hundreds of hand-woven
keleems.

As soon as everyone took their places around the semicircular tables, affording everyone the best view of the action, Mohab gestured for dinner to be served, and hundreds of waiters poured from every opening of the tent holding huge serving plates under brass domed covers. Her family and his were in the first row of tables across the dance floor. Her family looked so elated, it twisted the shard in her heart deeper. She brought it under control as she contemplated
his
family. Everyone, including that old goat King Hassan, looked happy with the whole thing. Everyone except Najeeb.

He hadn’t talked to her again since the engagement, but his disapproval grated on her every nerve. Najeeb had long come to terms with what his father had done, yet another of his parent’s ongoing transgressions that he’d had to put up with all his life. It was
Mohab
he couldn’t forgive. Najeeb also couldn’t understand why Jala was giving Mohab a second chance after everything that had happened.

As every hurt she’d ever suffered began rushing to her eyes, Mohab tugged at her. The music started to an overpowering rhythm and dozens of young men in flowing beige robes and red
headdresses rushed in to form lines. Many women followed to face them, wearing beige-and-garnet dresses and head covers embroidered in cross-stitch designs. Then one of the most energetic folk dances she’d ever seen commenced, one she hadn’t witnessed during all the entertainment they’d had in the past two weeks. It must be one reserved for big occasions.