‘Noelle—’ His voice caught on a note of near-anguish and he reached one hand out to her, as if he would comfort her. How ridiculous was that, to be comforted by her captor? And yet she still longed for him to touch her, could almost imagine the warmth of his hand on her skin. She averted her head and he dropped his hand.
‘Please, Ammar.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You can,’ she insisted, angry now. Anger felt stronger, simpler. ‘You brought me here; you can let me go. You just don’t want to, and I have absolutely no idea why.’ She glared at him, and Ammar gazed steadily back.
‘I brought you here because I want to be with you,’ he said, choosing each word with care.
Noelle blinked. Stared. Her mind seemed to have slowed down, snagged on his meaning. He wanted to be with her? ‘What—’
‘I want us,’ Ammar said, ‘to be husband and wife.’
AS SOON as he said the words, Ammar felt they were wrong. It was too soon; he shouldn’t have revealed so much. He should have waited until she had relaxed a little, trusted him more. Yet how? How? He didn’t know what to do other than issue orders, bark commands. And demand obedience.
Now her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open and she stared at him in what could only be described as horror.
‘That,’ she finally managed in a choked gasp, ‘is impossible.’
Ammar felt the old instinct kick in. Defend. Deny. Don’t ever admit any weakness. And hadn’t he just done that, telling her he wanted to be married? Husband and wife?
Pathetic, romantic notions she obviously scorned. He sat back in his chair, his body rigid, everything in him fighting the awful sense of exposure he felt. ‘Not,’ he said coldly, ‘impossible.’
‘Impossible for me,’ Noelle retorted. She looked angry now, angrier even than when she’d realised he’d had her kidnapped or told her he wouldn’t take her back to Paris. Her cheeks were flushed and underneath the caftan her breasts rose and fell in ragged breaths. ‘I have absolutely no desire to be married to you again, Ammar. To be husband and wife.’ He heard the contempt she put into the words and fury fired through him.
‘This isn’t about what you desire.’
She laughed, the sound hard and sharp. ‘Obviously not, since you drugged and dragged me here—for God’s sake!’ She rose, throwing her napkin down on the table. ‘This is the most absurd conversation I’ve ever had. Did you actually think, for a single second, that I would consent to being married to you again when you had to bring me here by force? When you completely and utterly rejected me in the worst way possible just months after we were married? Why on earth would I ever want a repeat of that heartbreak?’ Her eyes flashed and her body trembled. Thunder and lightning. A storm right here, between them.
Ammar stared at her, his body pulsing with an anger he could not suppress even as he bleakly acknowledged she was right. He could not deny a single thing she’d said. ‘We said vows,’ he said tautly.
‘Vows you broke the same day we spoke them! Where was the love in leaving me alone, waiting for you on our wedding night? Or how did cherish come into bringing me to that wretched island of your father’s and leaving me there for two months?’ Her voice broke and he thought she blinked back tears; her eyes were luminous with them. ‘You hurt me, Ammar,’ she whispered. ‘You hurt me terribly.’
Ammar didn’t answer. He couldn’t; he had no words. He never had the right words, yet he hated that he had hurt her. The thought that he’d caused her so much pain—enough that it still made her cry years later—was unbearable; he forced it away, along with all the other thoughts that he couldn’t face. There were, he knew, far too many of them. ‘Then let me make it right,’ he said. The words felt unfamiliar, awkward, and yet he meant them.
‘How?’ She swiped at her eyes, angry again.
‘By giving our marriage a second chance.’
She stared at him, her eyes wide, like a trapped animal’s. Then she looked away. ‘Our marriage,’ she said flatly, ‘never was. Annulled, Ammar. Like it—we—didn’t exist.’
‘We did exist.’ Sometimes he felt as if his time with Noelle, his self with Noelle, was more real than anything before or after. Yet he was not about to admit such a thing to her now.
She shook her head, her anger replaced by a weary bewilderment. ‘Why do you even want such a thing? You didn’t want to be married to me before. Why now?’
‘I always,’ Ammar said, ‘wanted to be married to you.’
Her mouth dropped open and she looked as if she wanted to argue. Again. He looked away, fought the rush of painful fury he felt at revealing such weakness.
‘I cannot believe that,’ Noelle said flatly. ‘I won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because—’ She pressed a trembling fist to her mouth, her eyes still so heartbreakingly wide. ‘Because it doesn’t make sense.’
He knew it didn’t. He felt the weight of all the things he hadn’t told her, things he was afraid to tell her because he knew she would look at him differently. She would hate him, perhaps far more than she thought she did now.
‘None of this makes any sense,’ she whispered.
Ammar stared down at the table, took a deep breath. ‘You loved me once.’
Silence. He looked up and saw her staring at him with such confused sorrow that it made everything inside him burn and writhe. Why had he said such a thing?
‘Yes, I did,’ she finally said. ‘Once. But you destroyed that, Ammar, when you rejected me without any explanation. You refused to come to me on our wedding night—or any night after. Do you remember?’
He clenched his jaw so hard his whole head hurt. ‘I remember.’
‘You ignored me day after day, left me to rot on that wretched island without so much as a word of explanation. And then,’ she finished, her voice breaking, ‘when I came to you and tried to seduce my own husband, you sent me away in no uncertain terms!’
Every word she spoke was true, and yet still they made him furious. He rose from the table, laying his palms flat on its surface as he faced her and her accusing glare. ‘Clearly there is no point in continuing this conversation. You may return to your room and we will talk again tomorrow.’
She let out a harsh sound, something caught between a sob and another sharp laugh. ‘What is this, Ammar, The Arabian Nights? Am I to be fetched day after day into your presence until I finally break down and agree to your ridiculous demands?’
His head throbbed and he forced himself to speak calmly. ‘If I remember correctly, Scheherazade gained her own happiness at the end of that tale.’
‘And was threatened with death every day!’
‘I am not threatening you,’ Ammar said, suddenly unbearably weary. He did not want to fight her. He had not wanted this bitter acrimony at all, and yet he recognised it was at least in part his own damnable doing. ‘You are safe here with me, I promise you. But you are too tired and it is too late for you to go anywhere tonight. Rest. Sleep. We will talk tomorrow.’
‘And then you’ll let me go?’
He stared at her, saw the hungry