The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride

‘I know… I screwed it up,’ Rashad bit out jerkily.

‘Maybe we both did,’ Polly muttered heavily. ‘In a marriage it takes two to screw up. Whatever way you look at it, it’s a partnership.’

‘No,’ Rashad disagreed. ‘I didn’t allow us to be a partnership. I have no experience of a marriage of equals. I have no experience of sharing feelings or memories. I have always had to keep such things to myself but with you…’ He hesitated, shooting a look at her from shimmering dark golden eyes. ‘With you, my control breaks down and things escape.’

Polly studied him and her heart felt as though he were crushing it because she bled for him at that moment, seeing him boy and man, rigorously disciplined to hold every feeling in, never allowed to be natural. ‘That’s not necessarily a bad thing,’ she whispered shakily.

‘It was a bad thing when I confronted you about your dinner with Rio,’ Rashad pointed out heavily. ‘I was…irrational. Rage engulfed me. I could not bear to think of you enjoying his company or admiring him. You do not need to tell me that I’m too possessive of you… I know it. I have never known such jealousy before and it ate me alive—’

‘Well,’ Polly murmured, inching a little closer because his sheer emotional intensity drew her like a flame on an icy day, ‘I understand a little better now. But it upset me a lot that you seemed to distrust me—’

Rashad swung back to her, his stunning eyes bright with regret. ‘But that is what is so illogical about it. I do trust you and Rio is my best friend and I know he would not betray me but still those feelings overwhelmed me!’

Polly brushed his arm with hesitant fingers. ‘Because you’re not used

to dealing with that kind of stuff. You’re on a learning curve.’

‘I hurt you. If it hurts you I do not want to be on that curve,’ he breathed rawly.

‘But not expressing what you feel makes you a powder keg, which is more dangerous,’ Polly argued.

‘It won’t ever happen again,’ Rashad intoned. ‘I will be on my guard now.’

‘But that’s not what I want,’ Polly admitted ruefully.

‘I have kept too many secrets from you,’ Rashad confessed, striding over to the window, deeply troubled by his sense of disloyalty to his first wife’s memory but accepting that such honesty was necessary. ‘My first marriage was very unhappy—’

‘But you said you loved her,’ Polly reminded him in complete surprise.

‘At the outset when we were teenagers trying to behave like grown-ups, we clung to each other for that was all we had. She was my first love even though we had very little in common. I made the best of it that I could but I did not love Ferah as she loved me,’ Rashad declared with strong regret etched in his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘And she knew it. Her inability to conceive was a constant source of stress for both of us and she became a deeply troubled woman. Nothing I said or did comforted her. I tried many times to get through to her and I failed. What love there was died until by the end we were like two strangers forced to live together.’

Polly stared at him in shock, utterly unprepared for that revelation.

‘Now you know the real truth,’ Rashad completed grimly.

‘But…’ she began uncertainly, frowning in bewilderment.

‘For the last five years of our marriage I was celibate. That side of our marriage ended the day Ferah learned that she could not have a child. She turned away from me,’ he revealed curtly, his difficulty in making that admission etched in the strained lines of his lean dark features. ‘I felt unwanted, rejected…’

‘Of course you did,’ Polly framed, still in shock from what he had just told her, her every belief about his first marriage violently turned on its head and her heart going out to him.

‘And that is why you were right to accuse me of a lack of enthusiasm on the day we married.’ Rashad surveyed her with anguished dark eyes, full of guilt and regret. ‘You said you wanted it all so I am telling you everything. I knew it was my duty to remarry but I dreaded the thought of being a husband again. I had nothing but bad memories of the first experience and my expectations were very low—’

Polly unfroze with difficulty and sat down on legs that felt weak, not quite sure she was strong enough to take the honesty she had asked him to give her because what he was now telling her was beginning to hurt. ‘I can understand that,’ she said limply.

‘I was completely selfish in my behaviour. I was bitter and angry. I felt trapped. And then you saved me,’ he framed harshly. ‘I did nothing to deserve you, Polly. I am not worthy of the happiness you have brought into my life.’

Reeling from that ‘trapped’ word that had pierced her like a knife, Polly studied him in confusion. ‘You’re talking about the baby?’ she pressed. ‘That’s made you happy?’

His black brows drew together. ‘No, I’m talking about you. Our baby is a wonderful gift and I am very grateful to be so blessed but my happiness is entirely based on having you in my life…’

‘Oh,’ Polly mumbled in surprise.

Rashad crossed the rug between them and dropped down on his knees at her feet to look levelly at her with insistent dark golden eyes. ‘I think I probably fell in love with you the first time I saw you. It was like an electric shock. I had never felt anything like it before and of course I didn’t recognise it for what it was. It was love but I thought it was lust because I didn’t know any better…’

‘Love?’ Polly almost whispered. ‘You love me?’

‘Madly, insanely,’ Rashad extended raggedly. ‘I can’t bear to have you out of my sight. I think about you all the time. The thought of losing you terrifies me. And yet I have made mistake after mistake with you and done nothing to earn your regard—’