love had been so pure and intense, had permeated him from her every touch and word and action, he’d basked in its unbelievable blessing with every breath. He hadn’t known how or why she’d loved him, but she had.
He’d been trying to tell himself that, with Laylah being so overt about her emotions, when she agreed to marry him, no one would suspect that their marriage was not for the right reasons. That it would serve his purpose, get him everything he’d planned.
But with every hour in her company, every other consideration had ceased to exist. Nothing mattered anymore but her. Everything from her, with her, had overwhelmed him, undone him. With her he’d finally understood what happiness was.
But he’d left it too late. Even when he’d done everything in his power to stop her from realizing the truth about him, time had exposed him to her for what he was. A damaged, dangerous monster.
What had he expected? He shouldn’t have been in her heart in the first place. He didn’t deserve to be there.
Without knowing how, he found himself on her apartment doorstep just as she opened her door.
A huge gasp escaped her at the sight of him, the streams of tears already pouring down her face thickening.
Feeling sorry for him? Regretting that she had to let him down?
He couldn’t bear for her to feel bad. Never on his account. He’d sacrifice anything for her to never shed another tear.
Before he could say anything, she dragged him inside, her eyes all over him before she hugged him with all her strength, smothering her face in his chest.
“Rashid, ya Ullah, Rashid… you’re okay, you’re okay…”
Struck to his core at feeling her against him again, he stood, unable to move in her embrace, everything inside him demolished.
“I went insane when I heard that commotion and the line went dead and I couldn’t call you back. I thought you had an accident…”
Her voice broke on a sob that fractured his muteness, made him choke, “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“What matters is that you’re okay.” Suddenly, she undid her frantic hold on him, embarrassment in her every line as she moved away. “I—I meant what I said, Rashid.”
That she wanted him to forget that she’d said she loved him.
He owed her the complete truth, if only in this. “How can I ever forget the one real honor and profound joy I ever had? The memory that you once loved me will fuel the rest of my life, and at its end, will be my one worthwhile achievement.”
Confusion then stupefaction gripped her loveliness.
Then she blurted out, “What do you mean ‘once’? You think I…? Oh, no, Rashid, I only meant I wasn’t pushing you to reciprocate when I said I love you. I had no other purpose behind it but telling you how I feel. I thought you felt pressured by my confessions because the month I asked for is up and you didn’t—didn’t…”
It was his turn to be flabbergasted.
“You thought…” He stopped, hope too joyous, too brutal. “You thought your declarations of love made me reconsider my proposal?”
Delightful peach invaded her honeyed cheeks. “I didn’t know what to think, so I thought the worst. Y-you must know what yesterday was.”
“It was the one-month anniversary of the attack. But this morning, this hour, is the one-month anniversary of my proposal.”
Her eyes rounded on still-fragile hope. “Y-you mean…?”
“I mean I was coming at the exact time I proposed last month, this time to ask… to beg that you consider marriage. Not because I want you and because my honor dictates it. But because my life would mean nothing anymore without you.”
Suddenly, his arms were full of hurtling, clinging love and eagerness made flesh and blood. And he wrapped himself around her, containing her, vowing to never let her go again.
Those minutes when he’d thought he’d lost her had hurt far more than the injury that had left him scarred, had been more desperate than any time he’d thought he’d die.
Deluging him in kisses, Laylah buried her fingers in the hair he was growing back for her, her voice a throb of silk and night and hunger. “My life would mean nothing without you, too. It never did. I love you with everything I am, Rashid…”
Reeling with disbelief that this perfect being continued to love him, he carried her where he could seal the magic of those moments with that of their passion and turn the once-impossible fantasy into reality.
What felt like a lifetime later, but what was actually only a couple of hours, still overcome with Rashid’s last possession and the echoes of the aborted scare, Laylah stretched luxuriously against his hot, hard body.
His beloved face was flushed a marvelous copper tone. His whisper, when it came, spread its dark compulsion inside her. “Do I take it all that was a yes?”
She snuggled into his body more securely. “You mean you didn’t hear any of the hundreds of yeses I said? I must have raised Chicago’s noise pollution levels to an all-time high.”
“Just give me one now that your blood has cooled.”
She rubbed her thigh against his. “You mean you don’t know yet that you and cool blood are mutually exclusive?”
His arms gathered her into his body with such tender reverence, trembling with the same emotion that blazed in his eyes. “Laylah… give it to me. One yes. Total and final.”
And she gave it to him. Her irrevocable pledge. “Yes, Rashid. As total as my whole being and final to my life’s end.”
His groan was one of relief and elation as he took her lips, sealing their lifelong pact.
As she surrendered her all to him yet again, it felt different this time. She’d always been his, but this time, in her very essence, she became his wife.
Before Mira returned from work, Rashid took Laylah back to his place. It was evening when he took a break from branding her with his most tender lovemaking ever, carried her to the shower, then to the kitchen, where they now delighted in cooking together.
He was handing her the pesto he’d prepared to add to the pasta she had made when she said, “Do you have a preference for how exactly we should get married? Me, I’d like a tiny ceremony.”
His hand froze midway with the pesto. Then he placed it on the island, pulled her to him. “We can’t start thinking of the ceremony yet. Accepting me is only half the battle won.”
She squinted up at him, perplexed. “What do you mean half?”
“Now I need to go win the other half. Your family.”
“What do they have to do with anything between us? The most involvement they’ll have is to get stuffed in their fineries and come to our wedding. Those I’ll let attend. If they behave.” His hands cupped her face. For the first time ever, she removed them. “You’re not talking me out of this, Rashid. My family stays out of our lives, and that’s final.”
His eyes grew watchful, as if he was gauging how to handle her sudden volatility. “If it were up to me, I would have vowed myself to you in absolute seclusion. But you are a princess…”
“Oh, no. You’re not princessing me again!”
He coaxed her into his arms again, caressing resistance out of her a nerve at a time. “I know you want it not to matter, but it does. Tradition is important, even when it’s infuriating. But this won’t only be about us. It will be about our children.” The concept of children, his and hers, liquefied something inside her. “I want there to be peace and acceptance surrounding our union from the start, for you, for them. What makes things