The Desert Lord’s Bride

He stared at her. Could this woman who was in ecstasies at the idea of hand-feeding gazelles be real? How could she coexist with the one who’d manipulated her aging lover into agreeing to her leaving on her latest fling, into even apologizing for being upset about it and begging for an assurance that she’d miss him? An assurance she’d given as she’d devoured him with her eyes?

His smile felt like it was digging into his flesh as he struggled to keep it pinned on. “I’ve done nothing yet, ya galbi. I want to give you the whole world.”

Her eyes became mossy-green. “Oh, Shehab, it’s wonderful of you to say that. But what would I do with the whole world? I’d take gazelles to pet and feed over that any day.” With that she whooped again, swung away, ran back to Ablah.

He was determined not to rush to her. Never giving her what she wanted when she wanted it was the only way to stop her from winning the battle she didn’t know they were having.

Then she turned to him, a fantasy out of his land’s richest fables, shimmering in the flowing robes of its deserts, incandescent in her excitement, overpowering in her eagerness.

And he gave in, obeyed. He rushed to her.

“…with slow, graceful wing movements, the black-backed manta ray flew through the water like a giant alien bird.”

Shehab’s words caressed her nape as he helped her put on her wetsuit. She sighed, let it all wash over her. His heat and presence, his yacht’s gentle undulations, the early morning sun’s warmth, the salty breeze’s purity. It all coalesced into this incredible new world he’d let her enter, let her share in its adventures. He kept telling her of the many that she hadn’t been there to share before the last glorious two weeks-weeks that had washed away a lifetime of city dwelling and aloneness, had taken over her memory. She could barely remember her life before them.

Hypnotized, she hung on every syllable of his latest tale.

“It was over twenty-five feet across and I could have swum into its mouth as it gaped to sieve plankton-laden water.” He turned her, smoothing her suit, raising her zipper and her longings. “Then it stopped in front of me. Its huge eyes gazed at me for a moment, then with an elegant flip of its wings, it banked away. I was nine and it was my first plunge into the coral reef. Meeting that gentle monster gave me a taste of the underwater world I knew would take me a lifetime to explore. I never wanted to leave, but it took me almost two decades to realize my boyhood dream, when I finally owned this place.”

She exhaled, almost in tears at imagining him as a boy falling under the spell of this island’s diverse magic. “And it’s magnificent. I feel privileged you wanted to share it with me.”

And she felt more than privileged. She felt blessed.

Two weeks ago she’d been scared that emotions would consume her. But this was too glorious. She’d live it at any cost, wouldn’t wish for more. For what more could there be? This was everything. The man of beyond her dreams, patiently lavishing his care on her, even as hunger escalated. The last time he’d drawn back from the precipice, she’d wept, and his distress had been as deep.

But soon, he wouldn’t draw back, and she’d be his. She already was. She’d be his forever. It didn’t matter how long he remained in her life, the life she’d thought she’d live inert, undiscovered. He’d recognized her, unearthed everything that had lain dormant and useless inside her and brought it to life.

She loved him. Would always love him. And her love would always be the best part of her life, the one to give it meaning.

And when his path swerved from hers forever, she’d be happy she’d had that much. The lifetime’s worth of wonders he’d shown her, in the reef, in the air, on land. But the true wonders had been what he’d shown her of him, the companion, the playmate, the incomparable man. She couldn’t wait for the next wonder.

She ran her hand over his sculpted torso in the confines of his own wetsuit. “What will you show me today?” He’d been teaching her to dive since the second day they’d been there.

“Today we dive a little deeper. If you think you’re ready.”

“Oh, I’m ready.”

And she was. Ready for anything at all with him.

After he helped her with her diving gear, double-checked everything, they dove into the luminous green waters. He’d told her it was now infinitely more beautiful to him for echoing her eyes. Their descent was like slow-motion skydiving, a sublime philosophical experience, a plunge into an alien world.

Once they were hovering in a blue-green nothing where she could see neither surface nor bottom, she saw something huge moving in the distance. She clutched his arm in alarm. He soothed her, gestured for her to watch as the shape began to resemble a compact swarm of bees. It turned out to be a school of striated, anchovylike fish. He tugged at her, and they flowed smoothly toward it only for a tunnel to open up in the wall of fish, engulfing them. Her heart thundered with excitement as he hugged her and they swam in what felt like a cave with moving walls as the uncountable fish moved as one all around them as if guided by a single brain, turning the fusion of their own limbs into a dance of oneness she’d never imagined could exist.

He guided them out and gestured for her to watch. He suddenly kicked toward the fish and the school packed itself into a giant ball. The moment he touched it, the ball exploded.

Exhilarated at the fish fireworks he’d treated her to, she clapped as he swam back to her. He made a theatrical gesture, accepting her adulation before clamping her to his side and propelling her up slowly, his light revealing an explosion of color from the fan coral that grew out from the reef wall, their stunning, feathery tentacles constantly performing a rhythmic dance, opening and closing in unison like beckoning hands.

Their legs tangled in their short wetsuits, rubbing in the silk of the fluid dream they were enveloped in. And she couldn’t bear it anymore. She’d beg him for an end of the waiting today.

Suddenly she saw a striated red, yellow and black lionfish hovering behind him, incredibly beautiful fins flowing, long spines separated and-and…poisonous.

The certainty of this once-learned knowledge flooded her with panic as the fish approached Shehab’s back, bending its own like a snake. She pounced on him, swept around him, exchanging places. The next second pain shot between her shoulder blades, as if she’d been skewered by a red-hot poker.

Her scream gurgled into her regulator.

Seven

Farah would remember what happened after the lionfish stung her in the same way she did her garbled dreams.

She’d felt as if she were outside her pain-ridden body, watching as Shehab swept her up in his arms and torpedoed to the surface before hauling her onto the deck of his yacht as if she weighed no more than a few pounds, not her hundred and forty plus the diving gear.

She lay in a state of shock, the white-hot agony lodged in the middle of her back the one thing telling her this wasn’t a dream. She watched him as he frantically took off his gear, pounced on hers. The moment he divested her of her goggles and breathing equipment the tears and sobs they’d been stifling seeped out of her burning eyes and lips.

His hands were shaking with urgency as he stripped her down to her swimsuit, turned her to her side to examine her injury. At the sight, he inhaled a sharp, taxed breath, reached for something that looked like a walkie- talkie and ground out a string of Arabic, his eyes feverish on her.

Then he threw the thing aside, scooped her up and rushed to the shade of the upper sitting area, placing her on a couch on her side so it wouldn’t chafe against her injury before tearing open a first-aid kit and rummaging through it for a tube, his movements slowing down and gentling only after he produced gel from it and carefully applied it to the sting. She moaned as a freezing sensation poured over the burning, her flaccid body going rigid against the bombardment of confusing signals. He soothed her with hands and voice. The spasm passed, and she felt the whole area going numb. She blinked at his blurred image only to wince at his fierceness and focus, barely managed a rasped, “Thanks.”

“Thanks? Ya Ullah, why did you do that?” She stared at him. Was he mad at her? Or was she hallucinating as the poison coursed through her system? Would she die now?