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Chapter 72 I Don't Care If You're A King
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DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 73 This Is Real Life
“This is real life.” And though her voice was quiet, he could hear the undercurrent in it that told him how deeply her feelings ran. But then, so did his. “It is Troy’s real life, Omar Farouq. This isn’t whatever game you think you’re playing with us. His life matters more than whatever dies are cast or whatever court intrigue is happening here. He has nothing to do with any of it.”“That is where you are wrong,” Omar Farouq replied, and he sounded almost regretful, there in the gathering night. Though he was not. There was nothing here to regret. Not when there was vengeance waiting in the coming night and, here between them, this same, simmering desire that had been there from the start. “You have had five years to enjoy being the sun and the moon and the whole of the stars for that little boy. That was not real life, Aaliyah. That was only ever a fantasy, and had I known sooner, it would not have lasted as long as it did. Because for all your talk of fairy tales and the things that
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 74 She Was On Fire
And later, after she’d whirled around and rushed off, he stared out at his city arrayed below him. The way he’d dreamed of doing these last two years. The dark came in at last, inky and thick, and he welcomed it.He exulted in it.For it was time to put the skills he’d taught himself at the Hermitage to good use at last. It was time to enact his vengeance.But he found he stayed there on that terrace—thinking of her mouth beneath his and the memories he wished he really had blocked from his own head—for much longer than he should have. When there was the whole of the island to reacquaint himself with under cover of night.No one would expect the King to tread in the places Omar Farouq intended to go in search of justice for his parents.And that was precisely what he was counting on.Ghosts or no ghosts.AALIYAH STAGGERED OUT into the hallway and then tried to walk along it as if everything was fine. As if she was fine when she very much doubted that she would ever be anything like fi
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 75 You're The King
The palace wedding machine lurched into gear, starting early the next morning. Squadrons of smartly dressed and impeccably cheerful staff members descended upon her in shifts, all of them insisting that everyone—by which, they meant Aaliyah needed to pitch in to get her ready for the role they’d decided she must take.But Aaliyah refused to play along.No matter how brightly her attendants told her that she needed to turn up at this time or in this place, she didn’t. Instead, she and her aunt took Troy for long walks when it was sunny, out on the rambling palace grounds, which she was sure had to be bigger than her favorite park in San Francisco. When the weather was less cooperative, they raced up and down the grand marble halls, as if the palace was no more than a playground.And in many ways, it was better than any playground they had ever been to before. The palace not only had hallways stuffed full of antiquities, but many of them also featured suits of armor and sharp weapons th
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 76 That Beast Inside Of Him
“I am,” Omar Farouq replied. And he wasn’t dressed in suspicious black today. He wore black, yes, but not the sort of black that anyone would use to scale a wall. Today, it was a dark suit with quiet touches that lent him that air of offhanded elegance. He looked darkly blond and beautiful, the way an archangel might, and Aaliyah had to restrain herself from slapping her own face at that idiocy. “I hear your name is Troy.”“I am Troy,” Troy replied, in that overtly serious way he sometimes had. He blinked. “What’s it like to be a king? Did that crown hurt your head? Do you get to play with it whenever you want?”He continued to ask questions, one blending into the next. And Aaliyah braced herself for Omar Farouq, who she couldn’t imagine in the company of the child, turning away. Looking at his own child with disdain—and she was ready for that. She would fly at him, she told herself. She would snatch Troy up, and run, and scale the wall herself. She would never let him treat her son b
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 77 I Can't Change The Past
He expected she might flinch at that, but if anything, she stood taller. And her gaze remained as it ever was, direct and steady. “You didn’t care about me. Why would it cross my mind that you’d care if I had a child? I’ve already apologized, Omar Farouq. And I’m sorry that you can’t accept my thinking on this. But that doesn’t mean I’m lying about it.”“And do you truly believe that I will ever let you leave my sight again?” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, his voice a dangerous throb. “Do you imagine for one moment that now, having finally met the son you kept from me, I would ever let him go again?”He watched that move through her and was glad of it. Glad that she might feel some small portion of what he did.“I told you that I’m happy to share custody with you,” she said very carefully. And perhaps not as steadily as before.“Do you imagine your happiness signifies?”“I saw how you were with him today. It was...” And he thought that the way she swallowed then—too hard, too l
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 78 There Is Only Eternity
Molten gold, impossible flame, and that maddening, glorious, drugging heat that was only and ever Aaliyah.Each thrust was better than the one before. Each gasp, each touch, a revelation.There was the fury, the rage. There was the hurt, the need.But beneath it was a deep kind of recognition.A truth he was not sure he could name.They tumbled this way and that. She rolled on top and stayed there for a while, riding him with abandon. Then he could take it no longer and flipped her again, coming over her once more. He took her hands and hauled them up over her head so she arched against him, and both of them sighed out the sweetness of it.All of it was sublime. None of it was enough.Maybe he had known all along, back then and in all the years in between that it never could be. That it never would be.That there was only this woman for him.No matter how he’d tried to pretend otherwise.No matter how he’d failed to forget her.Omar Farouq levered himself down, getting his face as clo
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 79 Roller Coaster of Emotions
Especially when she found her aunt sitting on a swing in the rose garden, watching Omar Farouq and Troy kick a soccer ball back and forth on the royal lawn.Her heart squeezed so tight she had to stop walking and fight to breathe. Aaliyah had to remind herself—sternly—of the six hard years she’d struggled through.Almost entirely alone.She found she had to do that a little too much as the days wore on.“Maybe it’s not all bad,” said Corrine on one of their walks through the extensive palace gardens.Back home in Tahoe: They had often tried to put in a bit of a summer garden in what summer there was so high up in the mountains. Unkillable geraniums seemed to be the height of their gardening prowess.It felt a bit like a metaphor that even the gardens here were unutterably lush.“There are worse things, of course,” Aaliyah allowed, trying not to sound disgruntled.When, in fact, she felt disgruntled. She’d woken from strange, dark dreams to find Omar Farouq in the shower. He had bid he
DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS Chapter 80 Omar's Cousin Khalid
“We received the news from an emissary of your...of the King,” her father said after several moments inched by. He scowled at her. “He insisted that we come and support you.”“And, naturally, since a random king I doubt you’ve ever heard of insisted, you came at once.”“We heard of him when those rude journalists camped out on our doorstep,” her father barked at her. “The neighbors will never look at us the same way.”“The horror,” Aaliyah murmured, with a bit more sarcasm than befitted an almost-queen.“I see that the years haven’t softened you any, Aaliyah,” her mother said with a sigh that made it clear she considered herself the victim here. “That’s a shame.”Aaliyah let out a laugh. “I didn’t want to give Troy away. You wanted nothing to do with me unless I did. I’m not sure what softening would have done to make that scenario any better.”Her father made a low noise as if registering how concerning he found this conversation. But Aaliyah kept her focus on her mother.As ever, An
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