Over to the other side of the room and as far away from her as possible!
She blinked as she struggled to catch her breath. ‘Hashim?’ she croaked in confusion. ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ He paused before answering her question, sucking in a deep breath as he sought—successfully—to bring his desire under control, to be replaced with the slow simmer of rage. ‘I think that we’re through with playing games, don’t you?’
Sienna sat up on the bed, aware that her clothing was in disarray, feeling somehow cheapened as she stared into the forbidding mask of his face. A Hashim she’d never seen before, and one she barely recognised. ‘Why are you behaving like this?’ she questioned in bewilderment. ‘Don’t you...don’t you want to make love to me? Properly?’
‘You think I would deign to contaminate myself by entering you?’ he questioned insultingly. ‘You who have fooled me!’
‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about!’ But some self-protective instinct made her begin to button her dress with trembling fingers.
‘The sweet little virgin!’ he ground out furiously. ‘Like hell you are! Sweet little virgins don’t take their clothes off and pose for pornographic photos!’
And then it all became horribly, horribly clear. That calendar. Those twelve photos. Oh, those wretched, wretched photos.
Sienna flinched and let out a shuddering sigh. ‘You’ve seen them?’
Had there perhaps been some insane part of him which had been hoping that it was all a mistake—that she had a secret identical sister waiting in the wings, perhaps? Because, if so, that futile thought was banished by the look of guilt on her face.
His hopes and dreams for what might have been now crumbled before his eyes like desert dust as he realised his mistake. He had believed her to be the woman he wanted her to be, not the woman she really was. He had been sucked in by her beauty and her air of innocence. Oh, what a fool he had been!
‘Yes, I’ve seen them!’ he grated, remembering that he had been about to introduce her to his family! That he had actually been entertaining thoughts of her as a future bride. Fool!
‘Hashim—please—it isn’t how it looks,’ she said desperately.
She had agreed to do the calendar as a one-off to get her mother the operation she’d needed. Her mother had been crippled with pain and facing ruin, and the badly needed operation had been expensive. It had been an unconventional way to get the money, yes—but the only way which had been open to her at the time. And surely if Hashim realised how desperate she had felt. How hopeless her mother’s predicament...
‘Please, Hashim...I can explain—’
‘What? How you came to be rubbing your breasts and simulating orgasm?’ he cut in brutally, but despite his disgust he nevertheless felt the hard leap of desire. For even though their existence destroyed any future between them, he was not hypocritical enough to deny that they were magnificent photographs. ‘You think that there is any acceptable explanation for that?’ he snapped.
‘It isn’t—’
But his rage was such that he barely heard her. ‘On the head of my camel you are a magnificent actress—I commend you for that! You have succeeded in fooling me. And you have lied to me,’ he added bitterly, remembering the way she had told him that she was a virgin—and that she loved him.
‘I did not lie to you! I just...’ She looked at him and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘Couldn’t think of the right time to tell you.’
‘But there would never have been a right time! In my culture, such conduct from the consort to the Sheikh would be utterly repellent—surely you must have known that?’
Sienna stared at him. Of course she had. Was that another reason why she had buried it away? As if by doing that she could pretend it had never happened? So that she wouldn’t have to face the repercussions of her actions? Could carry on living in her little fantasy world with Hashim—untouched by the past and untroubled by the future? But had she ever imagined that the outcome would be any different from this? That there would be some magical, fairy-tale solution despite what she’d done?
No. Hashim would never forgive her.
The reality of seeing the contempt in his black eyes was almost too much to bear, and Sienna stood up and picked up her shoes, her hair falling down over her face, concealing her pain from him.
But she paused by the door, lifting her gaze to his, unable to suppress the tiny flicker of hope which stubbornly refused to die.
‘Is that it, then, Hashim? Is it...over?’
‘Over?’ His mouth hardened, for he wanted to wound her. To hurt her as she had hurt him. To destroy her dreams as she had destroyed his. ‘I think you forget yourself. Did you ever expect that it would be anything other than a very temporary diversion?’ he questioned imperiously. ‘For I am the Sheikh and you are but a commoner.’ His made his final thrust.
‘A true commoner.’
How painful the past could be.
But as the mists of memory cleared, and Sienna looked into Hashim’s steely black eyes, the pain came flooding back as if the years in between had never happened.
She remembered the way she had stumbled from his suite that evening, the tears beginning to slip from beneath her eyelids. Somehow she had made it home and howled into her pillow like a wounded animal. She had never known that it was possible to cry that much. Or to hurt that much. To be revolted by the thought of food and want only to sleep—but sleep had never seemed to come, and when it had, it mocked her with images of the dark face she had grown to love so much.
For the first and only time in her life she had understood the meaning of the word heartbreak—and she never wanted to experience it again.
It had taken her countless months to put her life back on track, to rejoin the human race. But a lot had changed since then—and most importantly she had changed. She was no longer the innocent young girl who didn’t have a clue about life or how to handle men.
Just keep telling yourself that, she thought, with more than a hint of desperation as she met his glittering stare.
‘You’re remembering the last time we saw each other,’ he observed, an odd kind of note in his voice.
Had her face given her away? Maybe he had read in it her vulnerability and her anguish. ‘How could I not?’ she questioned, trying to keep her voice from shaking. ‘I only have to look at you and it all comes flooding back.’
He stared at her and his black eyes were as hard as jet. Did she imagine that it was any different for him? He felt the hard leap of desire. ‘So it does,’ he agreed softly.
‘Maybe we should try a joint counselling session,’ she suggested, trying to keep it light. ‘You know—like people who want to stop smoking.’
How flippant she sounded, he thought—and how cynical. Were those traits that she had kept cleverly hidden from him? And why not? Had she not been a woman adept in the art of concealment? ‘But maybe I’m not ready to stop,’ he said deliberately.
Sienna felt an odd kind of lump in her throat, and something both seductive and yet infinitely threatening hovered unseen and unspoken in the air. Now her voice did tremble. ‘And wh—what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, at least for you it was a...how shall I put this?’ A cruel