The Sultan's Choice

With a wince as she felt how tender she was, Samia got off the bed, picking up her discarded dressing gown. She pulled it on, tying it securely with a shaking hand, and picked up her panties and nightgown too, before hovering uncertainly. She didn’t know what to do.

Sadiq emerged from the bathroom again, steam billowing out behind him and as gloriously naked as the day he was born. Feeling absurdly embarrassed, Samia said stiffly, ‘Can you put some clothes on?’

She averted her eyes and heard his dry response. ‘It’s a bit late for that now, don’t you think?’

But she sighed with relief when she heard him pull up a zipper, and sneaked a look to see him finish buttoning his shirt. He picked up what she saw was a damp towel—presumably to clean the blood—and her heart beat unevenly.

She put out a hand, mortified that he was even still here, witnessing this. ‘Please, I’ll do that. You should go. I’m sure it wouldn’t look good to be found in my room on our wedding morning.’ She attempted to sound light. ‘It wasn’t in the etiquette book.’

It was only when Sadiq looked at Samia that he felt as if he was finally coming back to his senses. For a long moment he’d felt a little concussed. His brain numb after the onrush of too much … pleasure.

He wanted to go and pull Samia back into his arms, carry her into the shower and wash her from head to toe himself. And then he wanted to take her back to bed and pleasure her until she couldn’t move a muscle. But something in her rigid stance made him stop. He might have suspected that he’d hurt her, but he’d felt the powerful contractions of her orgasm. She would be sore, though. She’d been so tight.

This intensity of feeling … it had to be because she’d been a virgin. Had to be. He hadn’t even used protection, and as much as he wanted heirs he certainly hadn’t planned on this. This surge of a desire so strong that there’d been no time for a rational discussion about anything.

Feeling exposed in a way that was becoming horribly familiar with this woman, he put down the towel and said, ‘You should have a shower. You’ll be sore.’

Samia flushed with embarrassment and silently pleaded with Sadiq to leave so she could be alone and make sense of what happened. ‘Yes … I will.’

She felt rather than heard him come close, and despite the tenderness in her body she was already melting and responding. He tipped up her chin so she couldn’t avoid his eyes and she cursed him inwardly. For a moment he didn’t speak, and tension coiled deep in her belly. His eyes were stormy again, and there was some emotion that made her hold her breath. Finally his mouth quirked in a tight smile. ‘I don’t think I handled that very well.’

Samia blinked. She would imagine he hadn’t had to say anything like that to a woman for a long time—if ever. ‘What do you mean …? It was …’ She blushed even harder. ‘It was fine.’

It had been more than fine. Sex with Sadiq had exploded the very secret fear that she might be frigid and she’d tasted paradise. Fine was a ridiculously ineffectual word for what had just happened.

His jaw clenched. ‘I meant afterwards … I’m not the cuddly type, Samia. And I’m sorry you bled. I hope you’re not too sore. But I’m not sorry we slept together. And when we return from our honeymoon you’ll be moving into my rooms.’

Samia’s face was stained a delicate pink that had Sadiq almost carrying her back to the bed to take her again, even though he knew he couldn’t. She had to recover. She bit her lip and looked away, before looking back with such artless sensuality that his body throbbed painfully.

‘I’m not sorry we slept together either … and the pain … it wasn’t so bad.’

Sadiq could remember the way her eyes had watered, beseeching him to ease that pain. He gritted his jaw to stop himself from bending down to kiss those swollen lips. He backed away while he still could, because despite what he’d just said he was suddenly feeling the urge to offer to spend the night in her bed, just sleeping. ‘Get some sleep, Samia. You’re going to need it.’

It was only when Sadiq had closed her door behind him that he realised he’d not planned on sharing his rooms with his wife at all. He’d planned on keeping his own private space, anticipating that the marriage bed would be purely a functional place. But suddenly everything had changed, and there was no way he could contemplate that Samia wouldn’t share his bed for the foreseeable future. He was going to find it hard enough to get through the wedding without touching her.

He reassured himself as he walked to his own room that once his desire for her diminished they would renegotiate sleeping arrangements.

Samia looked at the henna tattoo as the hot water sluiced down her body in the shower and saw that some of it had run and become smudged. She’d have to ask Alia to get the women to refresh it in the morning, and she wondered if they’d be able to tell what had happened.

Her head and heart were all over the place. She wasn’t sure how she felt any more—about anything. She thought of Sadiq’s stark statement that she’d be moving into his rooms, and the prospect of repeating the intensity she’d just experienced night after night was overwhelming.

The whole anatomy of this marriage was changing almost by the minute, resembling nothing close to what she would have imagined in London. She put her hands to her belly under the spray, recalling the warm rush of his release deep inside her. Her heart clenched. His obvious lack of concern about contraception said it all. Not to mention her part in that unforgivable oversight. But in all honesty she’d thought that they’d discuss things rationally before embarking on the physical side of things. There had been no

thing rational about tonight.

Her hands trembled on her belly and Samia turned and rested her forehead against the marble wall while the water sluiced down her back. She could already be pregnant with Sadiq’s baby. She knew that for him it would be a mere tick on the list of his things to do after marrying his convenient wife, but for Samia the future wasn’t looking so black and white any more, and she had an awful sick feeling that all her lofty notions about love were about to be seriously challenged.

CHAPTER NINE

ON the final and last evening of the wedding celebrations Samia felt wrung out and extremely on edge. She was sitting alone for a rare moment, in the palatial banqueting hall where she and Sadiq had repeated their vows earlier in the day for the second time, in front of a huge crowd. The wedding band was heavy on her finger, glinting in her peripheral vision like a brand. She was now married to Sadiq. He was her husband.

He was just feet away, talking to her brother, his broad back to her, making her think of what it had been like to rake her fingernails down it to his muscular buttocks, when he’d shattered her in pieces the other night.

She sighed deeply. She wondered now if it had been a distant dream. Sadiq hadn’t shared her bed again since then, and Samia would like to be able to say that she’d been relieved—but she couldn’t deny that at every moment over the past three days she’d been acutely aware of Sadiq and had had to battle flashbacks to the sounds of their hearts beating in deafening unison and the way he’d felt between her legs.

It had felt wickedly decadent to know that they’d already been intimate, but that had quickly turned to frustration as Sadiq had seemed determined to keep Samia at arm’s length—sometimes visibly flinching if she touched him, even in the rare moments they’d been alone. As a result she now felt incredibly sensitive and raw. Especially after seeing all the beautiful female guests one by one making a beeline for Sadiq. She’d had to wonder which of the more cloying ones had been his lovers.

Adding to her sense of dislocation and being on edge had been the fact that her brother had turned up with the last woman Samia would have ever expected to see him with again. The Englishwoman who had broken his heart years before. When Samia had raised an enquiring brow as Kaden had introduced Julia to Sadiq, he’d just quelled her with a fierce look, and she hadn’t had a chance to question him since then.