The Last Prince of Dahaar

CHAPTER SEVEN


AYAAN LEANED AGAINST the hip-length wall on the roof terrace, letting the peace and quiet steal into him. But even with the rooftop lit up, the dark black of the night seeped into his blood, working its shadows on him. He hadn’t seen Zohra after yesterday, not even at the dinner with her family just now.

He hadn’t wanted to inquire after her in front of King Salim and upset his already frail health. But after seeing the pain she hid from her father, the utter loneliness he had spied in her gaze, he didn’t want to leave for Dahaar without seeing her.

He should have kept quiet about the man she had loved. But he had told her the bitter truth. Because the alternative had been to let her believe that she hadn’t been loved. And he just couldn’t do that.

A wave of possessiveness, selfish and unyielding, hit him hard. Did she still love that man? Was she even now bemoaning his loss somewhere in the palace?

His unwilling wife had left an indelible mark on the palace in just a few days, and more importantly, on his life.

In such a short space of time, Zohra had seen the truth, while his mother and he had struggled, danced around the issue, caused each other immense pain because they had each thought they were doing the best for the other.

Ayaan had endured the torment of seeing his brother’s things, the medals from his military service, his degrees, the sword he had been presented, he even lived in the wing that had been specifically designed for Azeez when he had been crowned.

Because he hadn’t wanted to hurt his mother.

But he couldn’t bear it anymore, not when being near them stifled the breath out of him. So he had finally told her last night.

Ayaan had stood stiffly at the entrance to the day lounge she used, like one of the old iron-armored soldiers that adorned the palace, unable to move, unable to look into her eyes, terrified that she would touch him or even worse embrace him.

She had come to stand by him, and stopped suddenly as though realizing what her nearness did to him. “I will arrange a different wing for Zohra and you, away from the old ones. I only...want you to be happy, Ayaan.”

To which he had nodded, incapable of answering, and walked away without a backward glance. Even though, for once, he hadn’t felt like a pale shadow of his brother, hadn’t felt the ball of guilt around his neck.

There were still things unsaid between them; her grief and his isolation were indefensible walls. But in that moment for the first time in eight months, the tight band around his chest had eased a little.

And he owed it to Zohra.

Every time he saw her, a little bit of his hold on himself loosened, forever vanished in the face of his escalating need to touch her. The need to feel like he could connect with at least one person in the world, to feel like he wasn’t one man standing in the midst of a desert, alone. It was a dangerously seductive need.

Which was why he was standing here, waiting for his errant wife instead of on his way back to Dahaar.

He looked up as she appeared on the other side of the roof. A long-sleeved white shirt hugged her upper body, tucked into cream-colored jodhpurs. The outline of her torso, the long line of her thighs made his mouth dry up.


There was a strain on her features which fractured the mask of strength she donned so easily. She had left for Siyaad without a word to him, exactly as they had agreed. But her sudden disappearance had rankled more than he liked.

She stayed there, her gaze widening gradually.

He looked around, noticing what she saw. The rooftop glittered with hundreds of tiny, artistic lanterns lighting up the vast expanse, throwing orange packets of light everywhere.

A small table stood at the center of it, a traditional one of low height. A myriad of desserts sat atop it on silver plates, a silver jug with intricate patterns next to it. Two divans with plump cushions were placed either side of the table.

It looked incredibly romantic. A setting he himself would have orchestrated in another life. And he hadn’t noticed it until Zohra had joined him, as if she was the only one who could awaken things in him that were not for mere survival.

He reached her side and leaned against the wall, smiling at the stiff way she held herself.

Finally, she met his gaze, extreme wariness in hers. “What is all this?”

“I asked Saira to summon you here to meet me. And that we were not to be disturbed.” He looked around himself. “Apparently, Saira has a very active imagination.”

“And I have no idea how to wake her up to reality,” she said, shaking her head.

“Is it so unbelievable that for Saira, this life, this reality might not be so bad, Princess? Amira’s wedding had been arranged, too. And I know that she was extremely happy. If you love Saira, you have to accept her reality, too.”

She nodded without argument, her expression thoughtful.

“How long are you staying in Siyaad?” He hadn’t realized he even wanted to know until the words left his mouth.

She frowned. “I checked with your assistant and mine before I left. There were no state functions or ceremonies that needed my—”

He cut her short, irritated with himself. “It was a casual question.”

“Oh.” Her frown didn’t ease. “I thought you were flying back to Dahaara before...nightfall.”

Her unspoken concern lingered between them. She knew what new surroundings did to him at night. “I will leave early morning tomorrow.”

“Another night you will just forego sleep then?”

So she was aware that he had taken to skipping sleep for days together. He stayed silent, refusing to be baited into an argument.

The silence stretched between them.

“Was there a reason you summoned me here, Prince Ayaan? More interrogation about—”

He grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. “I never want him mentioned again, Princess, ever,” he said, enunciating his words through gritted teeth. “Is that clear?”

She nodded, surprising him again. She was definitely acting strangely tonight and he didn’t have to think too much to figure out why. “Why do you do that?” he said, fighting the flare of anger at her actions.

“Do what?”

“Call me Prince Ayaan? Address me as if we were...”

She quirked an eyebrow, the stubborn jut of her chin more pronounced.

“As if you were a stranger who hasn’t seen me at my worst, as if you are not the one person who sees past the prince to the co—” She halted his words with her finger on his mouth, shaking her head. He pulled it away, accepting the very fact he had been fighting for three weeks. “As if you were a lowly servant instead of my wife, my equal.”

Her eyes went wide, her mouth trembled. And his curiosity about her multiplied. Why did she look so surprised? “And I didn’t realize I needed a reason to see my own wife,” he said, uneasy with her uncharacteristic silence.

His gaze fell on her hair, and instantly the long, silky length of it draped over his pillow flashed in his mind. It was an image that teased him constantly. “Do I need one to tell her that she looks striking?”

She blinked, color seeping under her skin. She didn’t smile though and he wanted to be the one who put it there. For one evening, he wanted to pretend that there was nothing wrong in his life.

He picked up the thin envelope he had left on the table and handed it to her.

She looked at his hand as if he had sprouted claws.

“My mother reminded me of another custom I didn’t keep. The groom’s gift to the bride.”

She looked up at him, her gaze softening. “You spoke to her?”

He cleared the knot of emotion from his throat and nodded. “Mostly she did. But I said a few words, too.”

A quiet joy lit up her eyes, her mouth curving into a wide smile. “That’s...wonderful. She must have been ecstatic.”

She grasped his hands with hers, and a longing of the most intense kind swirled into life inside him. His gaze stayed on their hands, his throat dry.

She looked down at their hands and stilled. The tension around them could have detonated with the smallest spark. She slowly pulled her hands back as though afraid of just that, but he felt the tremor that went through her.

He leaned back against the wall, and after a second’s pause, she did the same at his side. “You like her,” he said, surprised. “Even with all the rituals she makes you go through.”

She stretched her arms across the wall, a thoughtful expression on her face. The movement stretched the white shirt tight across her breasts and he looked away guiltily. “It’s hard not to like her. She is so...strong. She bears so many responsibilities, she has been through so much and yet, through it all...” She cleared her throat. “She’s your father’s strength too, isn’t she? She doesn’t let him rule over her. With her by his side, I’m not surprised he was able to weather everything he has with such dignity.”

Ayaan had always thought of his father as the strong one. Not that he thought his mother weak. To Ayaan, she was a woman, a mother and nothing more. And yet no one would have been able to stay standing after what had happened five years ago, but his father had kept going.

Because he’d had his wife. And he had taken on immense pain by lying to her. Zohra might not understand it but Ayaan understood why his father had done it.

When you had something or someone so precious, you had to protect her from any pain. In a different reality, he...

He quashed the thought before it could take form. This night, these stolen moments with her, this was his reality.

Even this was wrong. But for one night, he didn’t want to be honorable.

He wanted to be just Ayaan. Not the son of grieving parents, not a shadow left behind of a beloved brother, not the wrong man to have survived, not the crown prince who was choking under the joy of his people.

He pulled up her hand and placed the envelope in her palm. “This is more of a thank-you than a ritualistic gift.”

She took it with trembling hands, the envelope slipping from her grip. He held her fingers in a steadying grip and heard the slight catch in her breath. His own breathing balled up in his throat. She turned it over and over in her hands.

“After a few unsuccessful ideas, I called Saira,” he said, to puncture the seductive allure of the silence, to fight the intimacy the evening weaved upon them. “Luckily, she informed me you had no love for jewelry before I settled on a behemoth rock.”

Whatever lingered on her lips never found a voice. She opened the seal and the small slip of paper fluttered in her hands. She scanned it quickly, a frown knotting her brows. “What is this?”

“Your itinerary. Saira told me how much you’d always wanted to see Monaco.”

Shock widened her beautiful eyes. “My father refused to let me go and I didn’t have enough money to go on my own.”

“Maybe he was worried you wouldn’t come back.” Suddenly, he couldn’t imagine this world, his world, without her. Unease skittered up his spine.

“I turned eighteen six years ago and I have American citizenship. I have a little money to my name and an uncle who lives in Boston. If I had truly wanted to leave, I think I would have left by now.” She frowned, as if realizing the import of her own words.

“So....” she swallowed visibly, “this is a trip to Monaco?” A thread of hope whispered in those words. Utter satisfaction swept through him.

“In ten days, I am heading into the desert for the annual tribal conference.” He spoke the words almost without choking. That in itself was a victory. “You can leave for Monaco that same day in a private jet. A family friend will greet you there and take you to the resort we own. My parents have been informed. You will have a security detail. You have a week to yourself, Princess. Without obligations, duties or anything royalty related. The only condition—”

“I won’t bring shame upon Dahaar,” she whispered.

He turned her around, something in her tone tugging at him. She didn’t sound happy, or surprised. She sounded utterly crushed. “I know that it’s not exactly the lifetime of freedom that you want, but—”

She moved closer to him, and placed her finger on his mouth. The simple touch pinged along his nerve endings, making him aware of every inch of his own skin. “It’s the most thoughtful gift anyone’s ever given me.”

Her gaze shone with unshed tears, more beautiful than the precious gems he had perused last week. He clasped her face with his hands. “They why do you have tears in your eyes, Princess?”


She clasped his wrists, and smiled through the tears. It was filled with such bleakness, such heart-wrenching desolation that his heart constricted. He waited for an answer that never came.

He could handle the Zohra that was all fire and attitude but this...this hurting, vulnerable Zohra, this he couldn’t handle. He couldn’t bear to be near because he couldn’t not touch, not comfort. And the comfort he wanted to offer took only one form.

It shook him from within, this need to taste her mouth, to crush her against him.

He backed up against the wall just as she turned toward him, testing his will to the last frayed edge. Before he could blink, she was standing close, too close. He could see himself in her eyes, could see the blue shadows under them and worst of all, he could see the ache in her eyes. Her hands found purchase in his. Her body tilted forward and he was incapable of moving away.

He swallowed, assaulted by an avalanche of sensations and desires. The scent of her bound him to her effortlessly, the whisper of her body’s heat sparking an inferno in his. He closed his eyes, willing himself to do the right thing.

She rose up on tiptoes, curled her hands on his chest and kissed him on his cheek.

The touch of her soft lips, the accompanying murmur of thank you, the brush of her body against his, and he became unraveled. It was a moment he wouldn’t forget in ten lifetimes; a sensation that seeped into his very cells.

The hunger he had been denying himself roared into life with a vengeance. He gripped her nape with his fingers, dragged her against his body and found her mouth with his.

Sparks of pleasure ignited inside him.

Her mouth was so soft, her shocked gasp lost in the friction between their lips. He licked her lower lip and it went straight to his groin. His blood roared in his ears.

He deepened the kiss, forcing her to open up to him and she did. Her surprise lasted maybe two seconds and then she was kissing him back with the same frayed edge of need.

She tasted like everything he had imagined, like sunshine and light, like an oasis in the desert. He worshipped her mouth with his own, his hunger for more burning through him like a wildfire. The graze of her breasts against his chest shredded the last edge of his control.

Grasping her by the waist, he tugged her up until not even a whisper of air could come between their bodies, until every inch of him was trembling, feverish with the need to possess, to consume, to...

He filed away every little sound she made, filed away the feel of her body trembling with pleasure, filed the erotic hunger that swept through him as he stroked her tongue. This taste of her, this feel of her, it had to be enough to root his sanity in ten days.

Zohra felt dizzy with the powerful sensations flooding through her. It was a scorching heat that threatened to turn her inside out, an aching need that began pulsing between her legs.

The taste of Ayaan exploded in her mouth, her whole world reduced to him.

The ground felt like it had been stolen from under her. Her hands laced together around his neck, and she realized she was off the ground.

The assault of his mouth was relentless, stealing her breath and infusing it with his own. Pleasure and pain fused together, rippled out of her in a guttural sound as he tugged her lower lip with his teeth.

His hands around her waist loosened, moved up and down over her back. A string of Arabic fell from his mouth and she realized he wanted to soothe her.

Except she didn’t want to be soothed. She wanted to be ravaged, she wanted to forget her own mind, she wanted to...she burned with escalating need everywhere he touched her.

In return, she sank her fingers into his hair, and pressed herself closer, angling her mouth, giving him everything he wanted and more.

One hand at her back pressed her hard against him, one at her nape so that she didn’t move, every hard muscle, every ridge and hollow of his body imprinted itself over her, branding her. The hard ridge of his erection rubbed against her belly and a lick of sinful heat bloomed low within her.

His groan surrounded them when she moved restlessly.

His lips learned every inch of her, deep, languorous strokes on one breath, biting and sucking the next. Reverent one minute, passionate and possessive the next. Just when she thought she would expire from the sinful heat his kiss evoked, his mouth left hers and moved toward her jaw.

His hands traveled feverishly over her waist, her back, her name falling from his lips.

She shivered uncontrollably. Her heart pounded, every beat of it a whispered warning.

She wanted to let him fill the hole she had found in her life yesterday. She had already been feeling vulnerable after what Karim had said, and what Ayaan had made her face about Faisal.

But it was Ayaan’s gift that crystallized everything for her. This was what her future was going to be—dream holidays with no one by her side.

This loneliness, it was going to be there forever, shriveling her from the inside out. Her future stretched out endlessly with no lasting attachments, no purpose.

The need to find comfort in his arms, to lose herself in his touch, it scraped her raw. She was no more real to him than she was to anyone in her life. But she didn’t want to care. She wanted to use him just as he was using her.

She kissed him back with every pent-up longing inside her. Tugging her mouth away from his, she ran her hands over his chest, feeling the solid, hard muscles tighten painfully at her touch.

His mouth found the pulse at the base of her neck. She threw her head back and groaned when he nipped the skin with his teeth. He traced the spot with his thumb, licked it with his tongue.

His fingers moved over her neck, to the slight opening of her shirt. His tongue laved at her lower lip again, and his hand covered her breast, the tips of his fingers splayed against the shape.

She jerked, a pang of delicious need shooting down between her legs.

He didn’t move his hand farther, his harsh breaths the only sounds around them. His lips caressed her neck, breathing words into her very cells. “You are turning me inside out, Zohra.”

Her name on his mouth, the ragged edge of need in it was an intimate caress, a crack in the fortress around him.

She clasped her fingers around his wrist, and held his palm over her breast, needing the pleasure only he could give. She pushed herself into his touch, shuddering as the tip of his finger grazed her taut nipple. Need knotted there.

His hand tightened over her breast and she moaned.

Before she could draw a much-needed breath, she felt the air around her turn chilly, felt the sharp sting of his retreat.

His cheekbones were flushed with color under the olive skin, his eyes hazy with desire. His chest rose and fell with each breath. His fingers held her with a hard grip. The first sign that not every aspect of him was under control.

Except, he released her and stepped back. Her gut tensed.

She moved closer to him again, every sense alive, as though waking from a long slumber. “Don’t call it a mistake.”

He didn’t. The bleakness in his gaze, the tension simmering around him said it all. “I should not have stayed back or asked to see you.” He ran a hand through his hair, palpable rage vibrating beneath his jerky movements. “It will not happen again.”

“I have never met another man who detested himself more for what he is, for possessing the smallest weakness. Despite your best efforts, you are a man, not God. There is a limit to how much you can rise above a man’s needs and desires.”

“God...Zohra? I am barely even a man.”

“By whose standards? Will you forever measure yourself against your brother?”

A muscle tightened in his jaw, his gaze flashing absolute fury. “Don’t. You. Dare. Mention. Him.”

Zohra backed down. She couldn’t bear to see the anguish in his expression. She took his fist in her hands, unclenching his long fingers one by one.

Ayaan closed his eyes, unable to think with her hand in his. Her skin was soft against his, her fingers trembling. He shivered, every cell in him hungering for her, to touch and shape every rise and dip of her body, to give in to what both of them wanted. Would she be that soft everywhere? Would she welcome his touch everywhere as eagerly as she had enjoyed his kiss? Would she be shocked at all the ways he thought of having her?

“You like being near me, you like touching me,” she said, the boldness she sought not hiding the little shiver spewing into her words. “That’s why you are here. You made a conscious decision, didn’t you, Ayaan?”

He drew a ragged breath in, realized why she had never uttered his name. His name on her lips sounded like an intimate caress that crossed an invisible boundary that neither of them had wanted to breach.

“Tonight you decided to indulge yourself. But tomorrow you will despise yourself for taking this moment. You can’t even bear to look at me.”

He snatched his hand back, shock robbing him of speech. Every word she said could have been plucked out of his mind. Almost as though she had a direct line to his thoughts.

Self-loathing pounded through him in waves, but not enough to hide the sharp pulse of fear beneath. He had thought to enjoy an hour in her company. But the truth of his hunger for her was far more lethal.

She had somehow become his only way out of a crushing isolation, the one person he sought out instead of running away from, the one person who made him crave normal things even as she brought his darkest fears to the surface.


“If you are saying I came here planning to kiss you—”

“You didn’t but it happened. You find comfort near me.” She shrugged, reducing his earth-shattering need for her into something inconsequential. “I don’t even care that it has nothing to do with me.”

How could she be so alluring and frustrating at the same time, so damn perceptive and thickheaded that he wanted to shake her? He fisted his hands at his sides. He would not touch her again. He had done enough harm. “You think the fact that I am drawn to you has nothing to do with you?”

“I’m beginning to see what a clever, cunning man my father is, beginning to understand what Karim meant,” she said, shaking her head. “If you were a different man, one not plagued by the atrocities you had to endure, you wouldn’t have looked at me, much less married me. But like you said, reality is better if one accepts it. I am beginning to see how miserable I have made myself by not doing that.

“I have been alone for eleven years. I have no friends, no one to lean on, no one to tell me that I am ruining my own happiness.”

She was thinking of the man she had loved and there was nothing he could do to stop it. She moved toward him again and he braced himself. As if she were a knife that could tear into his flesh, a bullet that could lodge under his muscle.

When had this slip of a woman gained so much power over him? How?

She met his gaze, a quiet strength emanating from the very way she held herself. “I have no strength left anymore to be alone, to beat my head against things I cannot change.”

He felt spine-tingling cold. There was no other word for the chill that suddenly permeated him inside out. “Zohra...don’t.”

“I can’t go back to Siyaad as a cast-off wife. I can’t spend the rest of my life among those people...not even for Wasim and Saira. Neither can I turn my back on them. Which means...this life with you is the only option left to me. And I am not going to fight it anymore.”

“You have chosen a hell of a time to stop fighting your fate. Except nothing has changed here,” he said, jabbing his temple.

Her gaze was unrelentingly stubborn. The knot in his gut tightened another notch. “I have seen what you think is your weakness and I have not run away. You do not see me as someone tainted. Isn’t that enough of a start?”

Anger roiled through him, turning his very blood into bitter poison. “You want to be my wife and play happy family? You want to lie down next to me at night when I devolve into nothing but an animal scared of its own shadow? You want to bear the children of a man who is a disgrace on the very name of his ancestors?”

He hated her at that moment, hated that she was not a traditional kind of woman who wouldn’t have dared question his actions, hated that she was a constant reminder of everything he couldn’t have, hated that she dared to call him out on his weakness.

“Do you want to strip the last thread of dignity from me?” he shouted, his throat hoarse.

She pushed at his chest, her lithe form shaking from head to toe. Even in her studied indifference toward their relationship, she had been temptation personified. Now she felt like a powerful sandstorm that could bury him beneath the weight of his own needs and desires.

“Is your dignity more precious than living your life? I’m not talking about love and rainbows, Ayaan. In this life, I know that there is no place for anything but duty. And I’m making my peace with that. You came to my rescue, you promised to ruin Karim for what he said to me today. Why can’t I—”

His blood still boiled with remembered rage. “You are my wife. Your honor is my honor. I will ruin any man who looks at you wrong, who dares to insult you.”

“Can’t you see how unique that very statement is in my life? No one has ever looked at me the way you do, as someone worthy of honor, of respect. You are entitled to all that and I’m not? If I can be of help to you, if I can—”

“You think you can save me? That all it takes is for me to open myself to you, to lose myself in your body and I will magically be a whole man?”

“You are a ticking bomb. You barely sleep, you are killing yourself with that physical regimen, you work hours that no sane man does. If you find a minute’s comfort in being with me, in...touching me, I am...”

“You will let me into your bed knowing that I’m just using you?” he asked, making his words as insulting and mocking as he could, falling lower than the scum who had insulted her, “Knowing that you won’t mean anything more than a willing body to me, knowing that I will never love you?”

She met his gaze unflinchingly, the resolve in her eyes unbroken. “I don’t care. I want to have a purpose to my life. I want to...belong in Dahaar.”

He shivered where he stood, ice-cold fingers clamped around his spine. “Forgive me, Princess. But I am not one of the projects you take up to fix.”

“Then don’t touch me ever again. I mean it, Ayaan. No rituals, no gifts, no gestures for the sake of the damned public, I don’t even want to breathe the same air as you.”

He moved closer to her and she stilled, as if she was gathering herself into a tight ball so that not even his shadow touched her.

Desire was a deafening drumbeat in his very veins.

Had she any idea how much she had worsened his torment by making that offer, how much he wanted to let go of the little honor he had and possess her? How every cell in him wanted a taste of the escape she offered, how much he wanted to steal a moment’s pleasure, seek a moment’s peace with her?

Because that’s what her presence gave him. An irresistible combination of pleasure and peace, except it came with a very high price.

“All or nothing, Zohra? And if I don’t agree? If I continue to touch you and kiss you whenever I want without agreeing to your ridiculous proposal?” And he wanted to. He wanted to take the little he needed without guilt cloying him, without regret scouring him. “We both know all it takes is for us to lay eyes on each other to feel it.”

“But you won’t, will you? You’re furious that I dared change the rules on you.” A lone tear trailed down one cheek and she wiped it away roughly. “I might know nothing about traditions and customs. But I know a little about honorable men, about men bound by duty, men like my father and you.” Bitterness poured out of every word she uttered. “You would rather see the people around you suffer than violate your esteemed principles. You will no more let yourself touch me again than you will realize that you are so much more than the memory of a man long gone.”