Aiden was still trying to regain his breath when Zain rolled off him and said, “Go to your room.”
Lifting his eyelids, Aiden turned his head and studied him carefully. Had it been only a minute ago when the entire universe had shrunk to just them, to their bodies and Zain’s dark eyes fixed on him as though Aiden were the only thing in the world? Zain’s face was absolutely inscrutable now.
“I will, as soon as I get my legs working,” Aiden said, adopting a light tone. “They feel like jelly, so you’ll have to put up with me for a little while.”
Stretched out on his back, Zain stared at the ceiling. “I don’t have to put up with anything.”
Aiden smiled. “Someone is extra grumpy tonight,” he said, running his fingers over Zain’s hard chest and watching the muscles tense up at his touch.
Zain caught his fingers, forcing them to be still.
Aiden couldn’t look away from his pale hand covered by Zain’s hand. The sight made him feel funny. Zain had beautiful hands, with long fingers that seemed very elegant despite their size. They always fascinated him. Aiden wondered what it would feel like to kiss them, kiss those strong knuckles and then—
“I’m going to let you go.”
Aiden looked at Zain blankly.
“Wh—what?”
Zain’s face gave nothing away as he repeated, “I’m going to let you go.” His hand let go of Aiden’s and curled into a fist by his thigh.
Aiden blinked, feeling dazed. “I… I don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand?” Zain said, his expression blank. “Isn’t that what you wanted? To leave?”
“I…” Aiden laughed a little. “Of course I want it! But I don’t understand what brought this on!”
“I originally acquired you for my brother. Since you aren’t helping with him, I have no use for you.”
Aiden opened his mouth and then closed it.
That was… true.
Zain had no reason to keep him.
He tried to summon the elation he was supposed to feel, but all he could feel was confusion and something that felt uncomfortably close to panic.
“Okay,” he finally managed. “So you’ll just let me leave? Right now?”
Zain’s jaw tightened. He glowered at the opposite wall and didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Not right now,” he finally said, his voice a little clipped. “I need to arrange your trip home. You can hardly travel officially when you don’t have any ID and aren’t supposed to even be in this country.”
“I can go to the US Embassy and sort it out, I guess,” Aiden said, even though it felt surreal to imagine that he could just walk out of here and go to the embassy.
“No,” Zain said curtly. “There would be questions. I’ll get you out of the country myself. Until then, you’re not to contact your family.”
“Okay.”
Zain gave him a strange look. “Okay?” he repeated. “You’re not going to bitch and sulk over it?”
Smiling crookedly, Aiden shrugged. “At this point it doesn’t matter. It’s been more than seven months since my disappearance. My family probably thinks I’m dead, and another few weeks won’t make a difference.”
Zain looked away. “It might take longer than a few weeks. I’ll need to find someone discreet but reliable. I can’t exactly give you back to the people who brought you here.”
“Please don’t,” Aiden said with a chuckle. “They’d just sell me to someone else.” The thought was chilling and Aiden squirmed closer to the older man, pressing his nose against Zain’s bicep and closing his eyes. It was a little worrying how much he liked just being close to him, but Aiden decided not to dwell on it much. It didn’t matter. He was going home soon.
Once again, the thought failed to cause elation. The most positive emotion that he could feel was relief. Relief that this unhealthy fixation wouldn’t have the time to grow into something else. Into something worse.
“Don’t fall asleep here,” Zain said.
Aiden ignored him, nuzzling his bicep sleepily.
“I’m serious, Aiden. I’m going to dump you in the corridor if you fall asleep here.”
“Don’t be a grump,” Aiden murmured, kissing his arm. “It’s your own fault that I’m so starved for company. You can put up with my touchy-feely ways for a little while longer. Then you’ll be rid of me and we’ll never see each other again.” His stomach knotted up at the thought, and Aiden squirmed even closer, maneuvering them so Zain’s arm was around his shoulders and Aiden’s leg was slung over Zain’s hard thigh.
Zain let out a long-suffering sigh, but Aiden noted with some surprise that he wasn’t pushing him away, his arm a heavy, comforting weight around him.
“Can I ask you something?” Aiden said after a long while of blissful cuddling.
Zain hummed noncommittally.
“Why don’t you get your brother out of the country too? He’s clearly miserable here.”
“I can’t.”
“Bullshit,” Aiden said, running his fingers through the fine dark hair on Zain’s arm. “If you can get me out of the country when I’m legally not even here, getting Gadiel out shouldn’t be a problem at all. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of making your dad angry?”
“It’s complicated,” was the terse reply.
Aiden rolled on top of Zain, folded his arms on Zain’s chest and put his chin on top of them. “Uncomplicate it for me, then,” he said, looking at Zain curiously.
Zain didn’t look amused. “What gave you the impression that you can lie on me?”
Aiden smiled, looking into his brown eyes. “Sorry, but after having your dick in my ass and my mouth hundreds of times, you aren’t that scary anymore. And don’t change the subject. I know a diversion when I see one.”
For a long moment, Zain didn’t say anything, just looked at Aiden’s smiling face.
At last, he averted his gaze and spoke. “My parents were a love match. It’s very rare in our circles—most marriages are arranged—but they were ridiculously in love. At least that’s what everyone says. I barely remember it. My mother was diagnosed with dementia when I was four. She got progressively worse and died when I was twelve—fell down the stairs, running away from me.” His tone was so flat it completely lacked any emotion.
“I’m sorry,” Aiden said quietly, his teasing smile gone. He knew how hard it was caring for someone with dementia: to watch the person you loved fade away before your eyes, replaced by an aggressive, confused stranger who didn’t recognize you. He’d seen it happen to a friend: she was absolutely burned out by the time her beloved grandfather died. He’d never wish that on his worst enemy.
Zain gave a jerky shrug, his gaze distant. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel sorry. It’s relevant to Gadiel’s situation.” His lips thinned. “My father’s mental health deteriorated with my mother’s condition. The worse she got, the worse he got, becoming moody and depressed. He started drinking, which is haram—taboo—for a Muslim, but he couldn’t seem to stop. The more he drank, the more mistakes he made—political, financial, personal. I don’t think I saw him entirely sober a single day for years. It got worse after my mother’s death. He drank to excess, he whored and gambled and—” He cut himself off, a shadow passing over his features. His voice didn’t have any emotion when he continued. “My older brother, Omar, was studying abroad, so it fell to me to clean up after our father’s messes. I even had to forge his signature to keep the emirate running and our people oblivious to how much of a mess their emir was.”
Aiden pursed his lips as he imagined a young boy growing up in that kind of atmosphere and having to carry such immense responsibilities on his shoulders on top of dealing with losing his mother to one of the most brutal diseases. Christ, Zain’s mother had died in front of him, probably irrationally scared of him if she had been running away from her own adolescent son. Had Zain even been able to properly process her death and grieve if he had to take care of his father? Was that why he was so… emotionally unavailable? Aiden wasn’t sure.
But now some things finally made sense. Now he understood what Zain had meant when he’d told him that his religious education had been spotty and that children learned by example. His father had been a very poor example who had forced his son to take care of his shit rather than the other way around. This man had effectively raised himself, without any real moral compass or religious guidance. Whatever code he possessed, he’d fashioned it on his own, for better or for worse.
“You had to grow up very fast.”
Zain gave a clipped nod. “The only good thing that came out of my father’s whoring phase was Gadiel. My father knocked up a British expat, so he had to marry her. That seemed to have shaken him enough to get a grip. But by then, it was too late. Our fortune was mostly gone, and it didn’t help that out of misguided pride, my father had been hiding our financial situation for years by keeping up a luxurious lifestyle that we couldn’t really afford. He told me that we were on the brink of bankruptcy when I was seventeen.”
Aiden was confused. “And? What does that have to do with you not being able to get Gadiel out of the country?”
“My father’s solution to our situation was a business venture that required an insane amount of investment—investment the Emir of Abu Dhabi was willing to make as long as we became a family through marriage.”
Oh. Aiden could see where this was going.
Zain’s lips pursed. “My father and Al Sharabi created a joint business on the assumption that it’d be kept in the family. It was initially funded by Al Sharabi and it brings billions annually.” Zain sighed, his expression becoming tight with frustration. “If the marriage doesn’t happen, things will get very messy. In the years since the deal, Al Sharabi has become even more powerful—he’s now the President of the UAE on top of being the Emir of Abu Dhabi. Not only will Al Sharabi be able to take the company away, he can take all the assets of our family as compensation. And that would be the least of our problems. Al Sharabi isn’t a man who will let go of a public insult easily—and neither is my father, for that matter. They might literally kill Gadiel if he escapes the country to be gay in the West. They certainly have the money to track him down, no matter where he is in the world.”
“Damn,” Aiden said, pulling a face. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Why haven’t you been married off if arranged marriage is still a thing here?”
“That’s none of—”
“My business?” Aiden finished with an eyeroll, giving him a crooked smile. “Come on, tell me. You already told me a lot. So what difference does it make?”
Zain just looked at him for a moment, his expression rather tight. He brought his hand to Aiden’s face. His knuckles pushed against the side of Aiden’s cheek where Aiden knew his dimple was, as if he were attempting to erase it. What a weirdo.
“It’s hard to make me do something I don’t want to do,” Zain said. “My father learned that when he attempted to arrange a marriage between me and Gadiel’s bride.”
Aiden blinked. “You were supposed to be the one to marry her?”
Zain shook his head. “Since Omar was already married at the time, my father wanted to arrange the match for me. When I refused, he arranged it for Gadiel. Al Sharabi never knew that a match with me was a possibility, or he wouldn’t have settled for Gadiel.”
“You said it happened when you were seventeen. And your dad just accepted your refusal? He doesn’t seem like the type.”
Something flickered through Zain’s eyes. “He didn’t at first,” he said. “He had to give up when none of his… methods worked and I threatened to publicly humiliate him with disobedience.”
Seeing his carefully blank face, Aiden had the sudden urge to cradle it with his hands and kiss him gently.
“It doesn’t seem like much of a threat,” Aiden said, quashing the ridiculous urge. It was one thing to want to kiss the man because he was in lust with him, and it was completely another to kiss him because he wanted to—what, comfort him? This man wouldn’t want comfort from him anyway.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Zain said with a wry smile. “Our cultures are too different. Disrespecting one’s father in public is much more unthinkable here than it is in the West. Disrespecting him in private was bad enough of an offense for my father to cut me off financially. He would have publicly disowned me too if he could get away with it—it is considered haram for a father to disown his children. Our relationship has been very strained ever since. It pisses him off that I didn’t need his support to become successful.”
Aiden hummed, stroking Zain’s collarbones with his fingertips absentmindedly. “I do know our cultures are different. That’s why I don’t even blame you for being homophobic. I understand. I know it’s hard to overcome prejudice when it’s normalized in your culture.”
Zain narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have to butter me up anymore. I already agreed to let you go, so you can drop this soft-eyed, nice and understanding act.”
Aiden blinked before laughing. “You think I’m pretending to be nice?” He laughed again. “I’ll tell you a secret: you’ve seen me at my bitchiest and moodiest in my life. I’m not actually an angry person, Zain. I am nice. This fucked-up situation threw me off balance, but anyone who actually knows me would tell you that I’m one of the most easygoing, lighthearted, and nicest people they’ve met.”
Zain’s dark eyebrows drew together. “I’ve known you for nearly five months.”
“Yes, you have. But for the majority of that time we were either angry with each other or later fucking every time we weren’t too angry, and the rest of the time you thought I was trying to manipulate you by being my normal very nice, smiley self. The circumstances of our first meeting gave you a very skewed impression of me.” Aiden smiled. “So nope, I’m not pretending to be something I’m not. If you’re really letting me go, I’m not going to bitch and sulk anymore. It’s as simple as that.”
The look Zain shot him was almost baffled. “You can’t be serious. I still bought you like a thing. I treated you abominably. I tried to coerce you into being my brother’s sex pet. And you’re not holding a grudge? No one is that nice.”
Aiden shrugged with a laugh. “I am. You’re a high-handed asshole, but being angry at you for being a high-handed asshole is like being angry at the sun for being too bright.”
Zain gave him a look of consternation. “You’re not nice. You’re dumb.”
“Now that’s not a very nice thing to say,” Aiden said, pouting exaggeratedly. “I think I’ll take offense to that.” Aiden made a show of pulling away from Zain, but Zain didn’t let him.
“I didn’t say you could go,” Zain said, holding Aiden tightly.
“I thought I was a free person now,” Aiden said, trying hard not to smile but failing. “Or are you taking that back, Your Highness?”
Zain rolled them and, leaning down, glared at him, as if Aiden’s levity bothered him. “Stop smiling.”
Aiden smiled wider, looking into his dark eyes. “Sorry for not being a grump like you—”
Zain kissed him.
Aiden melted into the kiss, parting his lips eagerly and looping his arms around Zain’s strong neck, trying to tug him closer. God, it shouldn’t have been possible to want this much, when he’d had a spectacular orgasm just a short while ago. But he did. He wanted this man, wanted to crawl into his mouth, between his ribs, wanted to curl around the heart within and know him from the inside out. Down to the marrow. Every molecule.
When they finally parted for breath, Aiden licked his wet, swollen lips and whispered, holding Zain’s gaze, “Round two?”
Zain nodded, though it seemed absentminded, his eyes not quite focused as they roamed over Aiden’s face. “I can’t wait to get rid of you,” he said.
“No,” Aiden said, pulling him so their foreheads pressed together. Fuck, he wanted to inhale the air Zain exhaled. It was probably weird. “I can’t wait to get rid of you.”
And then they were kissing, and nothing else mattered.
