Just then something caught his peripheral vision. Something white. He went over to it. It was near the shoreline, on the ground.
Sharif stooped down and picked it up. A scrap of material. White. Cotton. Plain. Underwear.
A flash of memory came back to him—the woman stepping out of her clothes. Diving into the water.
She had been real.
The relief that coursed through him made a mockery of his assurance that it had all been a dream, but Sharif’s mouth firmed. It might have been real, and he might have acted completely out of character, but she was gone now, like a ghost, and she would have to remain that way. Within a few hours he was to marry a woman he’d never met. He didn’t need the distraction of an erotic temptress.
It was time to avenge his mother’s betrayal and her death, and nothing would get in his way.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOUR WIFE MAY now reveal her face.’
Liyah’s heart was thumping so hard she was surprised no one else could hear it. It had taken off like a racehorse, obliterating the escalating dread, the minute she’d seen her husband-to-be and recognised him as her nameless lover from the previous night.
No longer nameless.
He was Sheikh Sharif Bin Noor Al Nazar. Or, as he was better known in America and Europe, Sharif Marchetti, CEO of a vast luxury conglomerate.
This information had been supplied to her by the gossiping women at the henna painting ceremony earlier that day, while there had also been mention of how handsome he was.
Liyah’s head had been too full of the previous night to take much notice.
He was resplendent in Al-Murja royal dress, which made him look even taller and broader. The cream silk of his royal robes, with gold thread piping, enhanced his dark skin tone. He wore no headdress. But Liyah noticed that his hair had been trimmed since last night. And his jaw was clean-shaven.
She remembered the graze of his stubble against her inner thighs...
She slammed a door on that incendiary memory.
The shock that had hit her like a body-blow as soon as she’d recognised him still gripped her, keeping her in a sort of paralysis. The only thing that had given her the time to absorb that shock was the fact that he hadn’t yet recognised her. But he was about to...
The women came forward—her sister Samara was one of her attendants today—and they deftly and far too quickly removed the elaborate face shield that was a traditional part of weddings in Taraq, and had been for hundreds of years.
Liyah blinked as her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the throne room in the royal palace. A grand description for what was really a modest fortress.
She looked up at her husband with dread lining her belly and saw the expressions chase across his face as if in slow motion. Recognition. Confusion. And then shock, disbelief. Anger.
And then his mouth opened and he uttered one word. ‘You!’
Somehow—miraculously—no one seemed to have caught Sharif’s exclamation of recognition, and the ceremony finished as Liyah’s hand was placed over his—the moment when she was deemed to be his wife.
Her hand was covered in the dark, intricate stains of henna. The red swirls swam a little in front of her eyes and she had to suck in a breath, terrified she might faint. The heavy robes and headdress she wore weren’t helping.
Her gaze had slid away from his as soon as he’d spoken, but she could feel those dark eyes on her, boring into her, silently commanding her to look at him.
She felt numb, and she welcomed it, because if the numbness wore off then she knew she would be subjected to an onslaught of sensations and memories.
When she’d returned to the palace earlier, and undergone the pre-wedding bathing ritual, she’d lamented her mystery lover’s touch and smell being washed from her body, even though she knew how inappropriate it would have been to go to another man while his imprint was still on her.
But he was no longer a mystery. He was her husband. And that fact filled her with so many conflicting feelings that she felt dizzy all over again.
They were led in a procession with the guests and both families into another formal room. The ballroom. Where a lavish feast had been laid out.
Normally weddings in Taraq would be three and four-day affairs—but, as her father had told her, this was to be a much briefer celebration.
Liyah and Sharif were seated at the top table, side by side. She took her hand from his and sat down, studiously avoiding looking to her right, where he sat. The ring that had been placed on her finger during the ceremony felt heavy. She’d barely looked at it—a thick, ornate gold ring, with a bluish stone in a circular setting surrounded by diamonds.