Before she succumbed and attacked him in her desperation for his feel and passion, he preempted her, dragged her down to him, surging up to take her lips as she tumbled across him.
Knowing, now that the kissing had started, neither Mohab nor Jala would want them around, the cats jumped off the bed and prowled out to the quarters’ farthest sitting room.
“Habibati, wahashteeni...” Mohab groaned into her lips as he swept her around and bore down on her.
I missed you, too, my love almost burst onto her lips. But as she’d done for the past six months, she swallowed back the endearments and the confessions until they’d scarred her forever with the intensity of their need for release, with the necessity of withholding them.
Mohab had them both naked in seconds, and she groped for him, opened herself for his possession as he cupped her buttocks and thrust inside her. This fever was a continuation of last night’s conflagration, no need for buildup, just an instantaneous and ferocious plunge into delirium. He was soon pounding inside her, his force and momentum building along with her cries of abandon until it all exploded into a blaze of intensity. She remained conscious this time as he collapsed on top of her, his weight completing the magic and delivering the final injury.
When she couldn’t take it anymore, she fidgeted beneath him. He rose off her, separating their bodies. For the last time. As she had to make it.
She took the plunge. “The six months are up tomorrow.”
A slow smile spread on his heartbreakingly beautiful face. “So they are. How about extending for another six months?” He plucked her lips. “Then another?” Another pull, harder, deeper. “And so on and on?” His teeth sank into her trembling flesh, sending shards of pleasure and heartache splintering through her. Then he pulled back, grinning. “These constant extensions might be a great idea to renew the novelty and keep the fire raging...if we needed help in those departments. Which we don’t. None what...so...ever.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“So you’re going for the permanent version straight away. I approve.”
“I am actually reinforcing the terms of our marriage. I agreed to six months, then it’s over. As it is.”
He stilled, the smile faltering on his lips, draining from his eyes. “What do you mean?”
And she smashed her own heart. “I mean I want a divorce.”
* * *
The sense of suffocating déjà vu closed in on Mohab.
This couldn’t be happening again. Not this time. This time he was certain of what she felt for him. Of what they had.
Numb, he sat up. “Joke about anything but that, Jala.” When she made no response as she, too, sat up, he tried to find a sign of mischief in her eyes. There was none. “You can’t be serious!”
“I am. Ermi alai yameen al talaag.”
The oath of divorce. She was asking him to “throw” it at her, ending their marriage.
Ya Ullah...she wasn’t joking.
A bewildered groan escaped him. “Why? Why are you doing this? Again?”
“I’m only doing what we agreed on.”
“But you can’t want the same thing you did six months ago. Just last night, just now.... Ya Ullah...you’ve never been more incendiary in my arms.”
“You know I could never resist my desire for you. But I have to now. It has to end.”
“It wasn’t only desire. You love me.”
“I never said I did.”
He opened his mouth to roar a contradiction, then it hit him. Skewered him right through the heart. She’d never said it. He’d only assumed she did. From her actions and desire.
He couldn’t accept it. Wouldn’t. “Even if you don’t feel for me what I feel for you, if you want me that much, why leave me?” She only averted her eyes, and the expanding shock shredded his insides. “And if you’d already decided to leave me all along, what was last night and just now all about? Were you giving me one last ride before you walked away?”
She rose from the bed, so slowly, as if she was afraid she’d come apart if she moved any faster. “Let’s not make this any worse than it has to be, Mohab.”
Again. Just as she’d said almost seven years ago when she was leaving him the first time.
Paralyzed, he watched her reach for the dress he’d yanked off her half an hour ago. When she’d been his. She put it on now, no longer his, had said she’d never really been.
Then she was walking away.
At the door she turned. “I’ll go to Judar until you conclude the procedures. Please, don’t make any further personal contact. Goodbye, Mohab.”
* * *
“Did you put her up to this?
Najeeb rose as Mohab burst into his office, placed both palms flat on his desk, his pose confrontational. “I assume you’re talking about Jala.”
“It won’t take much to snap the last tethers of my sanity, Najeeb. Then I won’t be responsible for what I do.”
“King of Jareer or not, you’re on my turf. Even if you weren’t, you don’t threaten me and walk away in one piece.”
“I’m not threatening you, I’m promising you. If you’re the reason why Jala left me...”
Najeeb straightened, a vicious smile of satisfaction spreading on his face. “So she finally did. Good for her. She should have never been with you in the first place.”
“I swear, Najeeb...” Mohab’s apoplectic surge drained. “You mean you had no idea she did, or would?”
“Do you have such a low opinion of the woman you married, you think someone can put her up to anything, let alone something like this?”
“No. But...” Anger deserted him, leaving him enervated with desperation and confusion, and he sank onto the nearest armchair and dropped his head in his hands, darkness closing in on him. “I don’t know. I can’t think anymore. I can’t find a reason why she left me and I was groping for anything, even if it was insane or impossible. I just want to understand, so I can do something about it.” He raised his eyes to Najeeb, who came to stand over him, his gaze pitiless. “I have to stop her, Najeeb. I can’t live without her.”
“Ya Ullah, if I didn’t know better, I would have believed you without question, would have run out right now and tried everything I could to bring her back to you. But I know, Mohab. So stop your act right now. Now that Jala will no longer be your wife, it releases me from my promise to her.”