“I’m only trying to tell you the truth. I didn’t know any of what you just said. And—” He suddenly stopped as her last words registered. Then he rasped, “Know what?”
“That I’m pregnant.”
His instantaneous reaction was one of such consternation, it felt as if the heart hanging inside her by tattered strings was torn out completely and hurled on the ground.
The storm of misery that had been building inside her for the past week broke over her like a hurricane, destroying her soul and sanity.
She wept so hard, her tears became a downpour, draining her of everything that powered her being. Her hopes, her faith, her love...her soul.
She writhed weakly in his arms as he groaned and begged and tried to contain her in the now-oppressive circle of his arms, the embrace of deceit and cruelty.
Sobs hacked her insides and her words. “Now you know...your heir exists...you want to have it with the least conflict with the one who’s regretfully carrying it...and what better way...than to con me again? The stupid, trusting, lovesick mark...you played from the first moment.”
“No, Jenan, no, you have to listen to me.”
“No...you listen. I loved Numair...I would have died for him, but now it’s worse than if I’d simply lost him. Now I know that he never existed.”
“I not only exist, and would die for you, but I only came fully into existence when I loved you. Before you, I never truly lived... Jenan, habibati, believe me...”
Unable to bear the scorching agony of his touch, she fought him frantically until he let her go.
She ended up against the door, sobs stabbing in her chest like skewers. He towered over her, a tempest of frustration and agitation raging on his face, knotting his every muscle. No doubt because things were no longer going his way.
But as everything in her clamored for him—the man who’d been as close to her as her very heart—another wave of desolation crashed on her. For she now knew.
She’d never rid her essence of the need for him. She’d never drain the poison of yearning from her blood without draining her very life with it. She’d never truly live again. Instead, she was doomed to just survive. For others. And without the man she’d loved, the man who’d turned out to be an illusion.
Once the conviction struck her, her weeping turned off abruptly. The suffering and desperation were too vast for tears. All that was left to feel was the resignation.
A deadened rasp issued from a throat that felt cut by thorns. “If you’d told me the truth, I would have realized you were the one powerful enough to save Zafrana. And if you’d wanted me at all, for real, I would have taken what I could with you even knowing you’d never feel for me what I feel for you. When you got enough of me, I would have at least remained intact. You could have gotten everything you wanted without destroying me.”
She opened the door and spilled outside. Finding the helicopter still there was like finding a means of escape out of a flooding tunnel.
Before she stumbled to her salvation, he caught her back, his entreaties incessant.
Unable to endure one more touch or word, she wrenched herself from his arms with the last of her strength. “Don’t you get it? You don’t need to act anymore. I’m the one who’s at your nonexistent mercy, who’ll beg you not to deprive me of my baby. You won. Your plans worked. You’ll have everything. Everything but me. But that won’t matter to you, since I’m the only thing you never wanted.”
Ten
So this was helplessness. This was desperation.
After a life of unimaginable ordeals, Numair had finally learned what these were. He’d been abused in every way, tortured to within a breath of his life, and he hadn’t known anything like the sanity-destroying dread of the letdown, the desolation, the end, in Jenan’s eyes.
And he couldn’t do anything about it. Still, every cell in his body now fused with the manic urge to rampage after her, bring her back and keep her prisoner until he made her listen, made her believe him again.
But his every attempt to pull her away from the edge had only hurled her deeper into the abyss of distrust and betrayal. Anything more would only make things worse. She was in shock, and it would only intensify before it lessened. He had no idea when she’d be ready to listen to him. If she ever would again.
Suddenly, the sound of a helicopter approaching almost made his heart detonate with hope. He found himself outside without even realizing he’d moved.
Then everything inside him shriveled again.
It wasn’t her. It was Najeeb.
He stood there as the helicopter landed, as Najeeb jumped off, and hoped the man wasn’t back to antagonize him again. He couldn’t trust himself to pull back this time.
The signs of his earlier attack were becoming more evident by the second in the swelling and discoloration of Najeeb’s face. But there was something new in the depths of his eyes. Not the early antipathy or the fleeting warmth or the recent bitterness. He looked troubled, anxious.
Najeeb started talking before he stopped before Numair. “When you said that my father had yours murdered, was that what you intended to say to shove both him and me from your path to the throne, or is it what you really believe?”