Annie West - The Sheikh's Reluctant Queen - The Sheikh's Destiny

The smile that wreathed Amjad’s face was the very essence of longing and indulgence, as if he was transmitting it to his wife. Rashid somehow believed Maram would feel it. “And then some. I gave up everything I had and was for her. I would give up far more if she’d let me. You’d do the same for Laylah, wouldn’t you?”

“I would.”

At his nonnegotiable answer, Amjad patted Rashid on the back as they entered the grand hall. “Then there’s no rush with those seven tasks, Hercules. You’ll be spreading them out throughout your lives together.” He suddenly shuddered. “Just seeing her in labor is going to teach you the meaning of terror and take you to the limit of your endurance and beyond.” They’d stopped in the middle of the expansive hall, below the hundred-foot central dome where Laylah’s male kin were gathered in rows like a Roman senate, when Amjad gave him a playful punch. “You lucky bastard.”

It was a marvel watching Amjad in action.

As he informed the Aal Shalaan elders that Rashid was going to marry Laylah, Amjad did the opposite of what kings, or anyone sane, should and had been known to do. In the past twenty minutes Rashid had watched him put down, make fun of and alienate everyone in the hall, including his father, in lieu of courting their favor. It was staggering how fluently and inventively he did it. But what was truly flabbergasting was that everyone loved him for it. They not only obeyed him, they practically invited him to walk all over them some more.

Maybe he should take private lessons in Amjad’s School of Kingship, after all.

Suddenly, every thought in his mind dispersed as they walked out of the hall, only to be filled with one thing. Laylah.

She was striding toward him from the other end of the grand corridor, her dress’s looseness only emphasizing her lethal curves, its cream color accentuating her sunlit hair, skin and eyes.

She had a taller woman with her. Maram, Amjad’s wife and Queen of Zohayd. But though Maram’s flawless complexion and silky hair approximated Laylah’s hues, they didn’t strike anything inside him like the burn of appreciation Laylah’s did.

The moment it took to register Maram dissolved, everything gravitating to the center of his universe again. It struck him again how pleasurable it was to behold Laylah, how beautiful he found her. How terrified he was that this miracle wouldn’t come to pass.

Suppressing the need to run to meet her halfway, he watched her and Maram approach, weighed down by the worry that kept ambushing him—that it would be impossible for everything to keep going so smoothly, incapacitating him further with each attack.

Maram flowed into Amjad’s arms as if slotting into her other half. Then Laylah, flaunting tradition and inciting kingdom-wide wagging tongues, did the same with him. It was frowned upon for married couples to indulge in physical affection in public. It was unheard of between the unmarried.

Most likely presuming his stiffness was caused by his sense of propriety, Laylah grinned up at him. “Did those fossils agree to let you take me off the shelf or do I have to go in there and show them what the last remaining, if fraying around the edges, Zohaydan treasure will do if they snap her last decaying nerve?”

Maram groaned. “Those expressions reek of Amjad.”

Laylah giggled. “Discipline him for me, will you?”

“It’ll be my pleasure.” Maram chuckled. “Though I suspect it will be his, too. I think he misbehaves on purpose.”

Amjad pulled his wife deeper into his embrace. “Like any love-slave worth his salt, I live to provoke my next punishment.”

As Maram laughed her pleasure, Laylah prodded him. “Well? Any need for drastic action on my side?”

Before Rashid got his constricted throat to work, Amjad produced the phone his kabeer al yaweran —his head of royal guard—had handed him as they’d exited the hall.

He gave it to Laylah. “I thought you should have an audio memento of me kicking our family’s ass as I acquired for you the groom who’s going to save you from a fate worse than death.”

“You recorded the meeting?” Laylah exclaimed as she pounced on the phone and a chill assailed Rashid when she let him go. Then he once again heard the medley of abuse Amjad had exposed his family to. Amjad hadn’t even introduced Rashid’s proposal, had only pulverized everyone to their true size before announcing the upcoming marriage as a fact, and announcing that he’d be passing the royal decree documents for everyone to stamp with their house seal.

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