REWRITTEN AND EXTENDED VERSION
The story so far: Lisbeth Somerset is a 36-year old English workaholic who teaches human rights at a university in an Arab country. She is caught handing a bomb to the assassin who had plans to kill the children of the local ruler and of other dignitaries. That ruler, Sheikh Fouad, consumed with rage, considers the death penalty even too lenient for her and makes her an offer: she will be his prisoner for life having to serve him in his harem as a slave. From that moment on she is Rosebud.
Having no way to prove herself innocent of the crime she realises her only chance will be forgiveness and to be granted that the best she can do is to try and be very good at what he wants her to be and warm his heart towards her.
However it is the Sheikh himself who does prove her innocent as he has each stone upturned because he cannot believe this woman he has gotten to know very well will ever be capable of murder. When he realises he has imprisoned an innocent woman he moreover forced to share his bed he immediately sets her free and puts her on a plane home to England. By this time she however is already pregnant.
Her homecoming is less joyful then one would imagine. People start to question her story as she is looking well and is obviously carrying someone's baby while people had expected her either dead or in a prison-cell. Her "married to a member of parliament"-sister is pissed off with her thinking she is damaging her husband's career by having whored while he was petitioning for her release. Wherever she goes tongues are wagging or eyes are following her around.
She realises that although she is happy to see her parents again she is missing the Sheikh at the same time.
Sheikh Fouad was making love to his favourite harem lady. He had buried himself deep in the wet, hot core between her soft white thighs and was now slowly moving inside her. It had been a long time since he had her in his bed and he was enjoying every second of her body writhing under him.
Keeping himself positioned with one arm his other hand was stroking her velvet skin. His bronze fingers travelling the white skin of her breast. Red flashes caused by her arousal colouring her neck. Her pink pebbles now looking raw and red like wet raspberries after his lips had sucked on them diligently. Her curls were sticking damp to her face. With her eyes closed she was drowning in waves of pleasure, her face pressed against one pillow while her hand, with her knuckles white, tried to choke the life out of another pillow on the other side of her head. His little Rosebud. Trying not to make a sound. Completely focussed on what he was doing to her.
He brushed the damp strands of hair away and kissed her again. "
Habibi
" Her blue eyes opened for a second, the beginning of a smile on her lips, when she flung her head back again and new waves of pleasure were drowning her once more. Her breath laboured, gasping for air. He felt the muscles in her belly move under her skin. Her hips meeting him while he was hammering in her. The muscles of her channel clenching around him.
Suddenly she pushed her behind down in his bed, changing the angle of his thrusts in her. Stretching her torso, arching her back, soft moans escaping her lips, her walls gripping him, adding more moisture and he knew she was coming soon. His own body responding and about to climax as well. He felt his seed rush. "Rosebud, Rosebud" he growled in victory. "Fouad"...
"Fouad! Lord, lord, wake up. Fouad! They are waiting for you."
The Sheikh tried to focus. His mind waking up slowly. He looked into the face of Idriss his head eunuch and old friend who was happy to serve his friend in this capacity as he, as a gay man, was a safe man to protect his lord's women and run his household. His hand reached out for Rosebud but his bed was empty. Slowly realisation dawned. She was gone. He had lost her. She and the unborn son she was carrying in her belly would live in England and he could not hold her in his arms anymore. Grief flooded his chest.
"The servants knocked lord, but you slept so soundly they could not wake you, so they came to me. It is the day to hold court and grant people an audience like you always do on Thursdays. People have been cueing in front of the palace gates for hours already," said Idriss.
Suddenly the big black man sat down on the bed of his best friend and placed a hand on the Sheikh's shoulder looking him in the eyes. "Fouad you were calling out her name! Why do you not go and get her back to West Tripolitania?"
"A Sheikh cannot go and beg a woman to come to his bed!"
"Lord forgive me but is that not just your pride talking? The two of us know how you feel about her. Go to her and tell her!"
"Idriss even if I would forsake my position and my pride, have you considered how weak I and thus our country would look when I would go to her and ask her to come with me back to my harem and she would refuse? Because she will refuse. For her as a Western woman and a feminist human rights professor to boot, it is degrading to serve a lord like that! She does not want me or a life with me in my harem."
"She might not tell anyone but her sister will. That bitch of a sister with her MP husband have tried to use her already. That sister would not hesitate to tell the media this Sheikh, who imprisoned her sister, now crawled on his knees to ask her to come to him again and that he was refused. I know Rosebud never named me but do not count on that awful woman! People will come to know as well that I forced Rosebud to come to my bed. We will have a full international incident at our hands and Rosebud will never have any privacy again."
Idriss nodded and had to admit his Lord was right.
"She will be happy now she is free again and at home with her family. At least I could give her that."
So Idriss made sure the Sheikh would be in time for the audiences and then packed his stuff and left the palace.
-******-
A few days earlier
"Beautiful," he heard a woman say in Arabic from behind his back. The young dark man stopped sketching the carvings on the portal of the old Norman village church and turned around to see the daughter of the reverent standing there.
"I did not know you speak Arabic," he said.