‘Come here and I’ll show you.’
She was almost trapped by his smile. But the memories of the wedding night were still too clear, too raw. She had no wish to fall into that trap again. To try to reach out and grasp some wonderful little thread of hope, only to have it snatched away from her, leaving her lost and empty as before. She’d been cleared by his investigators, so now she was expected to fall into his hands like a ripe little plum. The fact that she yearned to do exactly that only made her own inner turmoil so much worse.
‘I don’t want to,’ she tried now, determined not to give him the easy victory she knew he was expecting.
That curve grew, became a knowing smile.
‘And you, my lovely wife, are a liar. A very bad one.’
It was dangerously soft, almost gentle, but all the same it sent a shiver down her spine.
‘Will it help if I tell you how I feel? If I let you know the truth of what these past six days have done to me?’
He shouldn’t have reminded her of the six days since their wedding. Nabil might think he had her in his power by force of strength and control. If only he knew that she was there because of something much stronger, much more unbreakable.
Wasn’t the truth that she had stayed because she couldn’t bear to go? Because, in spite of everything, she still foolishly, impossibly, held on to those dreams she had had of him when she was young? There had been tiny moments when the hard, set mask he wore day in and day out had seemed to slip and there was a glimpse of someone else underneath. Someone she wanted to know more about.
She had wanted to stay to try to reach that Nabil. To reach him and show him that whatever had made him so cynical so young was not inevitable and unchangeable. She had wanted him to know that there was someone he could trust. But also, digging deep down and staring the truth right in the face, hadn’t she also wanted to stay because she couldn’t leave him?
She was here because she still loved him, never having lost that heartfelt crush she had held for him all those years ago; she had never grown out of it as she matured. And now, as a woman, she felt the same. But this time it was deepened and complicated by the recognition of the primitive call of his male body to hers, the power of sexual hunger that no one else had ever awoken in her.
And Nabil knew that. She didn’t have to say a word. It was there in every look she gave him, the way her eyes lingered on his body, the irresistible draw of his mouth, so that she felt her own lips tingle whenever she saw it, remembering the way he had tasted. And it was there in the way she tossed and turned at night, restless even on the silken sheets, waking in the morning feeling—and no doubt looking—like a zombie.
‘Why? What have they “done”?’
Her eyes went to his, dazed gold clashing with polished black so sharply that she could almost feel the sparks that flared between them.
‘Was it so very tiring to have me investigated? Did that snap of your fingers as you sent your minions out to hunt for scandal—look for something that might incriminate me—wear you out? And incriminate me for what? For pretending to be a maid one night rather than myself, and possibly get my family into trouble when you found me roaming about the palace on the night of the celebration? Dear me, you must have had long, sleepless nights planning and organising all that!’
To her astonishment Nabil’s response was the exact opposite of what she had been expecting. He laughed. He threw his head back and laughed loudly, the movement exposing the long, bronzed line of his throat below the rich, black beard, deepening the vee at the opening of his unbuttoned shirt so that her eyes were inevitably drawn over the tanned skin and down to where the crisp black hairs on his chest were revealed.
Since they had arrived at the mountain palace, he had abandoned the formal robes he wore when in the capital and adopted a more relaxed way of dressing, in jeans and a casual shirt. The way that the worn denim clung to his long legs and lean hips, belted close around his narrow waist, had set her pulse racing; but now the sight of him with his head thrown back, his chest expanding with laughter while his hands were pushed deep into the side pockets of his jeans, made her feel as if her legs might melt beneath her.
‘I had sleepless nights all right, lady,’ he managed at last when the laughter subsided and he caught his breath, eyes bright with amusement as he looked at her. ‘But they weren’t from planning any investigation into your behaviour.’
‘Then—what?’
Was she really that naïve? Nabil had to ask himself. Was it possible that she could actually be unaware of the effect she had on him, the way that he found it impossible to focus on anything but her if they were in the same room together? Had she really not noticed the way that he never slept at night, that he read or watched TV turned down low, or tossed and turned in a painful effort to force himself to stay where he was on the couch and not get up and make his way to the other room where she slept in his bed? Hellfire, was she so damned lucky that she slept too deeply to even be aware that he was so close?
‘I saw no sign of these sleepless nights you’re claiming. After all, by the time I got up and came out of the bedroom, the bedding on the couch was always folded and packed away...’
‘Exactly,’ Nabil cut in. ‘Do you think I wanted anyone to know how it was with us? To ruin your reputation with everyone there—let them think you were not to be trusted when I had no proof of that? If I was wrong—which I was—then I had to make sure you and I could start again, with no taint of distrust over our marriage.’
If I was wrong—which I was... The words rose up inside her like a golden bubble. Too fragile, too precious, so that she was afraid it might burst if she even looked at it too closely. She needed to hear the words; had to have them said out loud.
‘Tell me,’ she persisted. ‘What was it that kept you from sleeping?’
‘Just you.’
The look she turned on him from those golden eyes was so blatantly sceptical and yet tinged with a tiny hint of something that Nabil wanted to be fool enough to call interest glowing in the amber depths.
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘It’s the...’
Unexpectedly the word failed him. He wanted to be able to assert that it was the truth and nothing but, but there was no way he was going to admit that bruised pride had had a part in his sleeplessness, as well as everything else.
The newly woken physical hunger that tormented his days, heated his nights, was bad enough but the realisation that he had allowed the shadows of the past to reach out and enfold him, just when he had thought that he was freeing himself from them, had stirred the mix to toxic proportions.
He had wanted to believe her—hell, deep in his soul he had known she was innocent of the black suspicions that had risen up between them. But it was the fact that he wanted it so much that had forced him to take a step back and reconsider. He had rushed into marriage with Sharmila on just that assumption. With Aziza he had to get it right or it would ruin both himself and his country.
‘You think I was happy to settle and sleep after that night?’ he demanded, going on to the attack to hide the restless, scrambled thoughts inside his head.
‘You were the one who told me I was to sleep alone,’ Aziza pointed out now, making him curse his memories and the fact that he couldn’t deny her accusation.
In his dreams—in the rare times of sleep he managed—he could still taste the intoxicating blend of sugar from the grapes and the provocation that was pure Aziza, and his hands still burned from the intimacy of the search she had subjected herself to. A search that had had nothing to do with calm common sense and everything that came from need and desire—a desire that was still frustrated. And that was only his fault.
Stiff-necked pride had stopped him from admitting the truth. That he had made a mistake from the first, and regretted