The Sheikh's Bartered Bride

She’d felt the pain of rejection many times in her life, but nothing had ever been like this. To know she was nothing more than a commodity to be bartered by her dad and a means to an end to the man she had loved. To know where she had believed herself loved, she had been merely tolerated. It was too much. Too much betrayal. Too much pain to take in.

She tried to stand again, forgetting Hakim’s iron grip on her arm. She looked at his hand curled around the black lace sleeve. It hurt to see it, to know he was touching her. She didn’t want his hand on her, but her voice would not work to tell him so. So, she looked away, letting her gaze roam over the rest of the room.

Shockingly, no one seemed to notice the holocaust of emotion at the head table.

Then she realized that everyone else had kept their voices down, their expressions bland. Even Lila, whose eyes registered remorse wore a plastic smile on her lips. Hakim was no longer talking to King Asad.

He was talking to her, but the words weren’t registering over the rushing in her ears.

“I want to go to our room,” she said, right over the words coming out of her husband’s mouth. “Please tell your uncle I am not feeling well and must go.”

She wondered if he would argue with her.

He didn’t.

She watched dispassionately as he turned to his uncle, spoke a few words in the other man’s ears and then turned back to her.

“He will give his official blessing to our marriage and then we will be free to go.”

She did not respond.

She simply sat, wishing Hakim would let go of her arm, while the King stood and spoke his official blessing. When he was done, he instructed the newlyweds to retire to their apartments, saying they had better things to do than listen to old men tell jokes well into the night. The room exploded in laughter, but Catherine’s sense of humor had vanished.

Hakim pulled her to her feet.

She swayed. Stupid. She refused to let her body be so affected by her emotional devastation. That is what she told her mind, but the woozy feeling persisted.

Suddenly Hakim swept her into his arms, making a comment about following western tradition and carrying his bride over the threshold. That was supposed to happen in their new home, but she didn’t correct him. She doubted anyone cared.

They were all too busy cheering her bastard of a husband’s seemingly romantic action.

She said nothing all the way down the long hallway, up the ornate staircase, down another hallway and through the door into their apartments. Silence continued to reign as he released her to sit on the gold velvet covered sofa, but when he went to sit beside her, she spoke.

“I don’t want you near me.”

He ripped his headgear off and tossed it on the desk. It landed smack on the offending mining report.

“What has changed, Catherine? I have not changed. Our marriage has not changed. We discussed this before the dinner. How we met is not important to our future. It is already in the past.”

She glared at him, wishing looks really could singe.

He sighed heavily. “There is no need for you to be so upset.”

“No way did you just say that.”

His jaw went taut, his expression frustrated.

“I find out that I’ve been manipulated by people I should have been able to trust above anyone else in my life, my husband and my father, and you don’t think I should be upset?”

He’d grown up in Jawhar, not another planet… even if he was a sheikh. He couldn’t be so dense.

“I did not manipulate you.”

“How can you say that?”

“Did I coerce you into marriage?”

“You tricked me.”

“How did I trick you?”

“Are you kidding?” She threw her hands in the air and even that hurt, like her muscles were as bruised as her emotions. “You made me believe you were marrying me because you wanted to marry me. Whereas in reality it was all some plan your uncle had cooked up with my father.” Her jaw ached from biting back the tears. “I thought you loved me.”

“I never said I loved you.”

Her heart felt like it shattered in her chest. “No. You didn’t, but you knew I believed it was me you wanted.”

“I did want to marry you, Catherine.”

“Because it fulfilled your duty to your uncle and because my father made it part of his filthy mining deal with an opportunistic king.”

Hakim tunneled his fingers through his hair and clasped the back of his neck. “It also fulfilled my desire, little kitten.”

“Don’t call me that! It doesn’t mean anything to you. All those endearments you use. They’re just words to you. I thought they were more, but they aren’t.”

He crossed to her in two strides and fell on his knees before her. “Stop this. You are tearing yourself apart, imagining the worst and it is not true. It pleased me to make you my wife. It pleased you to marry me. Can you not remember that and forget the rest?”