Chapter 54
Boston
The next day
I watch as the driver I sent to pick her up parks in front of my residence in Boston.
As soon as we got engaged, I ordered my lawyers to look for a property in the city. This is the place where Madeline was born, and she will surely want to visit it frequently.
Yes, I am assuming that we will be together as a family. She is my woman, and even though I agreed to give her space, there is no way I will give up on us.
I dismiss the staff and open the door myself, trying to maintain the neutral expression that, as the leader of my country, I have been trained to have over the years. I grip the doorknob and turn it slowly, but there’s nothing I can tell myself that can stop my heart from pounding.
I thought that after all this time apart, I could at least act with a modicum of civility once I saw her. Show her that yes, I can be a composed man, take it easy.
But it was all an illusion.
When we finally lock eyes, I, the ruler famous for his speeches, can’t form a sentence. Words are incapable of expressing the crazy passion, the all-consuming love I feel for her.
It’s as if, with the distance, I have been deprived of air.
I am a Sheikh, and at this moment, Madeline is my guest. Perhaps I should greet her using the exquisite manners with which I was raised.
But above all, I am a man madly in love and hungry for his woman, so I set aside every damn rule I was brought up with: I walk up to her like a caveman ready to claim the one who will own his heart for as long as he lives.
I don’t even know what happens first: whether it’s our lips locking fiercely or my hand tangling in her hair, but when I hear her moans, when I realize her attempt to undress me right here, standing in the hallway of my house, I lift her in my arms and start climbing the stairs.
“I love you,” I swear, backing away just enough to say the words she seems eager to hear. After all, my feelings for Madeline can’t be captured in one sentence.
Air, food, home.
My heart. My everything.
I now understand what my father felt for my mother. Giving up Madeline would be surviving but never living.
I don’t even bother to close the bedroom door.
I set her on her feet, and as if we had agreed on it, there’s a wild rush to get rid of our clothes. The urgent need for each other turns us into a tangle of arms, mouths, and teeth seeking each other.
It’s a primal longing, a lustful, dirty desire.
Our hands seek for any place they can touch. We kiss each other in a voracious, raw, unscripted way.
There are bites and licks. Sucking, scratching, and the desire to hear each other’s moans.
Still standing, she masturbates me while I test her wet pussy just enough to make sure I won’t hurt her, and when Madeline starts riding my fingers, I reach my limit.
I lift her in my arms and fully enter her, both of us crying out in pure ecstasy, passion.
She goes up and down against me, but it’s still not enough, so I take her to the bed and put her on her hands and knees.
I thrust deep, grabbing her hips, continuously pounding into the slippery and warm shelter of her pussy.
We’re both shaking, and as I devour her, I finally feel like blood has started flowing through my veins for the first time since our separation.
I am lost in her, in a mix of scent and sensations.
I pull her hands back, holding them in mine, and she has no choice but to rest her face on the mattress.
“Spread your legs more. Let me go deep.”
I give longer and longer thrusts, and seeing her pussy open up to the invasion of my thick cock destabilizes me.
She whimpers, wriggles. I thrust harder, my insatiable hunger intensified by the desperation of longing.
My emotions are volatile, and I can’t stop fucking her.
I lean over to touch her clit, and with a scream, Madeline comes for me, squeezing me inside her body.
I come immediately after, a violent orgasm, but I am not satisfied, so I turn her over on the bed and put her legs on my shoulders, entering her again.
I kiss her, swallowing her moans. I don’t want to leave yet. I need her warmth.
I pump more slowly while teasing her nipples, sucking on one and then the other.
Her inner walls are warm, wet, and I plunge deep, fucking her for endless minutes.
She smiles at me, her face beautiful with a mix of love and desire.
Madeline begins to tighten around me as a warning that she’s going to come again. Her reactions drive me crazy.
“Kamal, my Sheikh, my love,” she moans, giving me her pleasure.
Her cheeks are flushed, her nipples swollen. Every inch a woman. Mine.
I change the rhythm, fucking her hard, feeling my own orgasm building.
I can’t hold it anymore and let my release flood her.
I lie back, half dazed, pulling her into my arms. ”Ya ba’ad shabdi, Madeline. I can’t live without you, my woman.”
“I want to go back home. Sintarah. Our people,” she says.
I close my eyes, absorbing her words. ”Our people, our home, rohy.”
“What does that mean . . . ?”
“It means ‘my soul.’ You are my world, Madeline. I can’t promise to be perfect, and there are aspects of me that will never change, but I promise to try not to argue as much.
However, separations are not up for negotiation.
Fight with me as much as you want, destroy the whole palace, but don’t leave. ”
“Where would I go, Kamal, when my world is only complete with you in it? Before meeting you, I was afraid to dream, to desire, but now I want everything: you and our children. Our family.”
The next day
Adonis and Demetrius, the twin sons Zoe Lykaios was expecting, come into the world prematurely, and we’ve just visited them at the hospital.
Madeline told me that there are cases of twins in her family, and her mother, Adley, even had a miscarriage of twins once, so there’s a possibility that we might be blessed in the future with twins as well, or perhaps even triplets.
“I’m nervous,” she tells me. We’re inside the elevator, on our way to an appointment with an obstetrician here in the United States.
I wish she’d continued with the same doctor from Sintarah, who will probably deliver the baby, but after having taken the risk of a miscarriage when she was almost kidnapped, Madeline wants to make sure everything is alright with the baby before we take the flight back home.
“My mother told me that when she visited you at the hospital, she said that the baby is fine.”
“Yes, she talked to me too, but still, I want to hear it from a second doctor.”
Minutes later, while the obstetrician examines her belly covered in some sort of gel, I can’t take my eyes off the screen. “So tiny,” I say.
“No, within the normal size for the gestation period. Your baby is developing as expected.”
“Thank God!” Madeline squeezes my hand, emotional, and perhaps sensing that we want privacy, the doctor leaves.
“You were scared,” I say because I felt her tension throughout the whole exam.
“You weren’t?”
“No. My mother never gets her predictions wrong. Our child will be fine.” I lean down to kiss her. “We’ll be fine, my love.”
“What happened to that man?” she asks as I help her get off the examination table. “The one who tried to kidnap me, I mean.”
“He was arrested that same day. He’s awaiting trial, just like Adil, who, by the way, is my father’s son.”
“Oh my God!”
I tell her everything I found out: both about Adil’s origins and the fact that he seduced and impregnated Hiba.
I spare her, however, from what he said about his twisted plans and taking her life.
With all the confusion of our separation, I ended up focusing solely on us, forgetting to tell her about the unfolding of the situation regarding her near-kidnapping
“Your brother! What a horrible man, Kamal. I understand him holding a grudge against your father, but against you?”
“I never realized it. I loved him like I loved Zarif and Irfan, as if he were my blood, and the irony of it all is that he was.”
“But he used that and privileges he received to harm you instead of trying to be your friend or even form a family. Your father made a mistake by not acknowledging him as his legitimate son. Knowing your mother as I do, Amapola would have welcomed him into her home with open arms.”
“I believe so.”
“However, nothing justifies what Adil did. He destroyed the life of a poor girl, driving her to suicide.”
“I think Hiba would have done it anyway. Getting involved with another man while being engaged to me would have made her an outcast in our society.”
“Maybe not. She probably wanted someone to take responsibility for the child. We’ll never know, but the fact is that Adil is a vile human being. I’ll never forgive him for putting our child’s life at risk.”
“Nor will I, my wife. He’ll pay for what he’s done. That’s a promise.”