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The Sultan often lit a fire underneath Zartasha's skin when she thought about his words, his mannerisms, his maqaam but she hadn't expected his touch on the edge of her jaw to burn the way it did. Maybe it was the heat of his large hands or maybe it was the way his fervid gaze was roaming over her disastrous face and form.
For her belief in her beauty being a thing of calamity was reaffirmed ever since it invited the worst of their time into her life; Sultan Arzam Hyderi.
Whose eyes of umber were now running across the length of her, pausing for a few moments at every curve, slope, and angle. It seemed her husband was memorizing the way their Rab had made her; from stubborn clay and a rebellious soul. A slave to her own greed and hatred.
And with that flicker of malice in her heart growing, she stood quiet and let Arzam learn her with his hands. Pressing against her skin and feeling the heavy fabric of her clothes in wonderment. Only when his rough hand came back to cup her face with his thumb itching to trace over her lips did she wrap her nimble fingers around his wrist. The Malka closed her eyes and tucked her secrets back into her bosom so they wouldn't spill out of her mouth in the heat of her anger. She exhaled sharply and let a simpering smile onto her lips before lowering her gaze to the floor.
Arzam knew it was a false facade of coyness, for Zartasha was a bold woman at heart. She was a woman of colour and trickery, it was what made him want her. It was what made her his. Still, the supreme ruler of Kalthura decided to go along with what his Malka had intended to do and say to him in the solitude of the Hyderi mehal's throne room.
In that moment, in his arms, in those chambers of harnessed rage and boastful victory; Zartasha was divine. While she was staring at him in saccharine disdain, all he could see was her and despite the Sultan's timeworn eye for detail, his bride blurred into the shades of his junoon in front of him. The red of her lehenga bleeding into the deep stain of her hand's mehendi was nothing but a reflection of his own red eyes as he drank her in.
Noting Arzam's enthralled state, she moved his hand away from her face and closed the distance between them. The Malka then placed an agitated hand on his shoulder making him raise his head in question. She answered his tacit demand to explain herself with one of her scarlet-dipped fingers fluttering towards his jaw. "You called me beautiful, you called me cruel."
Sherqul's shehzadi made a show of voicing her simple musings into Sultan Arzam Hyderi's ear when they both knew that it was going to lead to something entirely else.
He only hummed in response for he looked forward to whatever his bride would grace him with.
Zartasha sighed and her jewellery moved with her chest as she stepped forward to drag her hand across the ends of his cropped beard. She had a feeling that the ghussa inside of her would eat her whole if she didn't let some of it out and the sting of her words could only be soothed by her touch if she were to deliver it to him.
So she twisted her fingers around his course jaw and turned the Sultan's indomitable neck away from his view of her face. The warm-blooded king stood malleable for his wife, he would let her finish what he had started.
The Malka pointed out, "You also called me your dulhan."
Arzam nodded his head slowly, finding nothing wrong with her statement but his restraint snapped when she retracted her hand before opening her mouth to tell him what she was foolishly seeking, "I've heard of cruel, beautiful dulhans before but have you ever heard of a runaway dulhan?"
Raising one brow, her lips tilted up to her right as she planted a seed of caution into the triumphant ruler's heart.
"What if I turn out to be a dulhan of that sort too?"
With the last words of her soft sentence in the air, she moved to leave him with some of her fire but found herself being spun around and facing the other way, with her body plastered against the Sultan. Zartasha was once again reminded of how easily he could overpower her when he deemed it necessary but the glaring reality that she had been ignoring before was now the only truth she knew of.
The Malka was reminded that first and foremost, her husband was a volatile man - bound to rage, bound to destroy. The second thing she noted was his tight hold on her upper arm and how there was a silent sort of shake to his grasp. Her last, and most troubling, realization was how close he was. She could make out every robust crevice of his abdomen with her tailbone. Kalthura's bride could feel his bullish heat warm her back.
Zartasha had now lost count of how many times Arzam had burned her with himself. It seemed the number would remain lost because she suddenly felt his shuddering breath against her neck. Then she felt the scratching edge of his chin press into her shoulder. The Sultan began running his nose along the elegant length of her neck. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It was reverent for him. Unbearable for her.
Arzam sharply inhaled and touched his lips to the curve between her throat and the breadth of her shoulder. "Zar." He then clicked his tongue in reprimand and dipped his nose into the hollow of her clavicle from behind.
His worship didn't stop. "Zar, Zar, Zar." Even when she told him to. "Stop chanting my name like an idiot."
The next thing that graced her ears was his chaffing laugh. "Quiet, you spoke your heart. Now you will listen to mine."
The Sherquli shehzadi was grateful her husband couldn't see her profile because her widening eyes gave away her panic when he wrapped both strong forearms across her chest. Trapping her to him.
Arzam's voice was back at her neck, "One of us had to say the other's name. God knows when you'll give me the pleasure of hearing my name on your tongue."
Unable to do anything due to the cage of limbs he had placed her in, Zartasha only scoffed in reply.
Taking her lack of protest as a prompt, he continued.
"You forget who you are now." The Sultan had to remind Zartasha that she was not alone anymore. "When you couldn't come and go without bounds as a shehzadi, what makes you think I'll let my Malka go anywhere without me?"
He hummed as he trailed his lips across the brown column of her throat. It was as if every touch made her a little bit more noxious than before. Arzam repeated her biggest truth to her, he didn't want her spending her days dreaming up a lie. "You are my Malka. Learn to live with it."
The Sultan then turned Zartasha back around to face him. Perhaps that was his first mistake because he knew the remnants of his sanity were done for when she tilted her head and looked at him. She really looked at him, at the white kurta covering his large physique, at the night's craftsmanship in the form of his siyah waistcoat. The power, the wealth, and the wickedness of the man before her was not lost on her but it seemed she had to remind him who she was too.
"Do you forget that I came here, into your fortress of a home, on my own?"
Her proud chin jolted in surprise when Arzam answered her question with a rhetorical one of his own, "And do you forget how one window was left shattered and completely unguarded for you?"
Sultan Arzam Hyderi kissed his teeth and shook his head, inky locks brushing his nape before he grabbed for Zartasha again. His hand cradled hers gently this time before he said, "You are here because I wanted you here."
He thickly swallowed and it was as if once the brutish man began to bare his feelings to her, he couldn't stop. Frantically, he revealed, "Ever since I have seen you, I have wanted you here every moment of every day."
Arzam began taking his bride with him, walking her back to his throne whilst Zartasha stayed silent, letting him finish.
"And I have spent all my dreams of all my nights on you. Thinking of a way to have you by my side."
The Sultan stared at his Malka with adoration in his fierce gaze and Zartasha decided that she would no longer speak of her impending absence out loud. Not when the renowned king of kings was looking at her like he would bring the world to her feet.
She didn't trust him. No, that was not a thing Sherqul's shehzadi ever gave but she had to accept that he was someone she had to work around now. Zartasha could not ignore his presence in her life, besides making use of his presence was why she had married him, to begin with.
The sound of her anklets jingling, the rustling of her lehenga against the dark floor, and the jasmine scent of her hair as she moved with the Sultan made his heart sing.
Sensing his bride's unexpected calmness, Arzam sat her on his lush seat of conquer and told her, "You are free to do with Sherqul as you please but why don't I begin by showing you what your role as Malka here looks like?"
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