“I need time.” She was unprepared for the reality of the man he’d become. Dark. Beautiful. Magnificent. Angry.
He raised his eyes from his perusal of her throat. “No. I am no longer willing to indulge you.”
She had no response to that flat statement. Four years ago, Tariq had delighted in letting her have her way. She’d never had to fight this warrior. Back then, he’d been careful with her innocence, but when he’d touched her, Jasmine hadn’t felt like an outcast. She’d felt cherished. Today, she didn’t feel that beautiful but fragile emotion. Tariq wasn’t acting like a lover, but rather a conqueror with his prize. The true depth of what she’d lost was only now becoming clear.
He moved and set her free, but remained on her side of the car, one arm slung negligently over the back of her seat. “So, you have been studying fashion design.”
“Yes.”
“You wish to be a famous designer?” He threw her a look full of male amusement.
Jasmine bristled. Though used to her family mocking her dreams, she’d never expected it from Tariq. “Why is that funny?” She aimed a scowl at his savagely masculine features.
He chuckled. “Sheathe your claws, Mina. I simply cannot see you designing those ridiculous things on the catwalks. Your dresses wouldn’t be see-through, hmm, displaying to the world treasures that should only be viewed by one man?”
She blushed at his heated gaze, ridiculously pleased that he wasn’t laughing at her.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
“I want to design feminine things.” Her dream was real to her, no matter what anyone said, but until this moment, no one’s opinion had truly mattered. “These days, the male designers seem to have an incredibly macabre idea of the female form. Their models are flat boards with not a curve in sight.”
“Ah.” It was a wholly male sound.
She looked up, suspicious. “Ah, what?”
Tariq spread one possessive hand over her abdomen. She gasped. “You’re full of curves, Mina.”
“I never pretended to be a sylph.”
His warm breath close to her ear startled her. “You misunderstand. I’m delighted by your curves. They’ll cushion me perfectly.”
Biting hurt turned to red-hot embarrassment and shocking desire. Blinded by longing, she barely finished her explanation. “I want to design pretty things for real women.”
Tariq regarded her with a contemplative expression. “You’ll be permitted to continue this.”
“I’ll be permitted to continue my work?”
“You will need something to do when I’m not with you.”
She gave a frustrated little scream and shifted until her back was plastered against the door, making it possible for her to glower up at him. “You have no right to permit me to do anything!” She poked him in the chest with her index finger.
He captured her hand. “On the contrary, I have every right.” The sudden chill in his voice stopped her.
“You are now my possession. I own you. That means I have the right to do with you as I please.” This time there was no hint of humor in his expression, not even the shadow of the man she’d once known. “You would do well not to provoke me. I have no intention of being cruel, but neither will you find me a fool for your charms a second time.”
When, after a frozen moment, he released her and moved back to the opposite side of the car, she gathered the shreds of her composure around her and turned to the window. Had she done this? she asked herself. Had she with her cowardice so totally destroyed the beauty of what had once been between them? She wanted to cry at the loss, but something in her, the same something that had urged her to come to him when she’d heard of his parents’ deaths, refused to surrender.
Unbidden, she remembered the way he’d held her so protectively in his arms when she’d run to him, frightened by the suffocation of her home.
“Come home with me, my Jasmine. Come to Zulheil.”
“I can’t! My parents…”
“They seek to capture you, Mina. I would set you free.”
It was a bitter irony that the very man who’d once promised her freedom was now intent on caging her.
“I was only eighteen,” she exclaimed abruptly.
“You are no longer eighteen.” He sounded dangerous.
“Can’t you understand what it was like for me?” she pleaded, despite herself. “They were my parents and I’d only known you for six months.”
“Then why did you—what is your phrase?” He paused. “Yes…why did you lead me on? Did it amuse you to have an Arab royal at your beck and call?”
He’d never been at her beck and call. At eighteen, she’d had even less self-confidence than she did now, but he’d always made her feel…important. “No! No! I didn’t….”
“Enough.” His voice cut through her protests like a knife. “The truth is that when your family asked you to choose, you did not choose me. You did not even tell me so I could fight for us. There is nothing further to say.”
Jasmine was silenced. Yes, it was the truth. How could she even begin to make a man like him understand what it had been like for her? Born with a mantle of power, Tariq had never known how it felt to be crushed and belittled until he didn’t know his own mind. Shrinking into her corner, she thought back to the day that had changed her forever. Her father had forbidden her to see Tariq, threatening to disown her. She’d begged on her knees but he’d made her choose.
“The Arab or your family.”
He’d always called Tariq “the Arab.” It wasn’t racism, but something much deeper. At first she’d thought it was because they expected her to marry into another high-country farming family. Only later had she understood the ugly reality of why they’d crushed her small rebellion under their feet.
Tariq had been meant for Sarah.
Beautiful Sarah had wished to be a princess, and everyone had assumed it would happen. Except, from the moment he’d arrived, Tariq’s eyes had lingered on Jasmine, the daughter who wasn’t a daughter, the daughter who was a cause for shame, not celebration.
The huge spread in the hills, which had been Jasmine’s home, had been in the Coleridge family for generations. As the beneficiaries of that heritage, Jasmine’s parents had been used to controlling everything in their high-country kingdom and they had feared Tariq’s strength of will. Added to that, his choice of Jasmine over Sarah had made him anathema. To let Jasmine have him when their darling Sarah couldn’t, would have meant being continuously faced with both their failure to manipulate Tariq and the wrong daughter’s happiness. It was ugly and it was vicious, but it was the truth. Jasmine was no longer a needy child, and couldn’t pretend that they’d had her best interests at heart.
“Did you implement that irrigation system?” Her voice was softened by pain. They’d met when he’d visited New Zealand to learn about a revolutionary new watering system discovered by a neighboring family.
“It has been operating successfully for three years.”
She nodded and laid her head against the seat. At eighteen, she’d made the wrong choice because she’d been terrified of losing the only people who might ever accept her, flawed as she was. A week ago, she’d turned her back on those very people and ventured out to try and recapture the glorious love she’d had with Tariq.
What would he say if she told him that she was now alone in the world?
Her father had carried out his threat and disowned