The Sultan's Choice

He watched Samia walk into the bedroom and dither for a moment before self-consciously pulling on the kaftan which had been left out for her, leaving the towel

around her till the last minute. Clearly she was not used to this kind of intimacy, and evidently Sadiq had become too jaded from seeing lovers eager to display their naked bodies to him, because watching Samia was like watching the most erotic striptease he’d ever seen.

He saw the tattoo again just before it was covered up by the kaftan dropping over her body and had to admit it was sexy, positioned where it was just above the jut of her buttocks, where only someone intimately acquainted with her body would see it.

As he dressed himself and tried to control his insatiable libido, which was responding helplessly to that image, he had to admit to a slight feeling of disorientation. Samia was turning into something of an enigma, and this was something Sadiq had not accounted for. Nor he was even sure he particularly welcomed it.

An hour later they were sitting on an open-air terrace on the level below their bedroom. A table for two had been set with flickering candles. Chilled white wine was in beautiful goblet-style glasses. The discreet staff, dressed in the same white clothes that were a trademark of the Hussein castle, had been flitting to and fro, serving a range of delicious delicacies for them to feast on.

Samia loved the rustic nature of the dinner—the fact that the table was bare and plain, despite obviously being an antique and inlaid with mother of pearl mosaics. The feel of the raw silk of the kaftan against her skin was like an erotic caress, and she had to stop herself squirming in her seat, already wantonly wishing they were back upstairs in that huge bed with nothing between them. She was also desperately hoping that Sadiq wouldn’t remember what he’d said.

But, in that uncanny way he had of honing in on her most private thoughts, he sat back, took his wine glass in his hand and looked at her. ‘So … tell me. Strength. What did you need strength for?’

Samia wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked across the table at Sadiq. She’d been avoiding looking at him because in this flickering light, with a hint of stubble on his jaw, he looked so gorgeous … She sighed. He was waiting for her answer.

Why did it have to be Sadiq who wanted to hone in on the workings of her psyche? She looked down and pleated her napkin nervously. ‘I told you before about my stepmother?’

He nodded. ‘You said you didn’t get on?’

Samia nodded and looked up, took a sip of wine for fortitude. ‘I got the symbol for strength because embarking on that sailing trip I felt as if I was strong—for the first time in my life. After years of feeling weak.’

She flashed a brittle smile at Sadiq, hating how vulnerable this was making her feel.

‘Alesha despised me from the moment she saw me, for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because I looked like my mother. It was common knowledge that my father and mother had shared a great love. He visited her shrine every day religiously until he died.’

She grimaced slightly. ‘Alesha used to tell me from when I was tiny that because I looked like my mother it made it harder for my father to be around me, because I was the reason she died.’

‘Samia—’

She cut him off, pretending not to hear him, not wanting him to think she was looking for sympathy. ‘Her forte was targeting people’s weak spots. She used it to chip away at my self-confidence, constantly pointing out how different I was. Things got worse when she had girl after girl and no precious male heir to counteract Kaden’s supremacy and mine.’

Samia’s voice had become a monotone, as if she could try and hide the emotion she felt. ‘If I found anything I enjoyed doing, she’d stop me. It was a constant war of attrition and I couldn’t fight her.’

Sadiq said dryly, but with a steel tone, ‘She sounds utterly charming.’

Samia looked at him and was relieved not to see pity. Her heart pounded a little at the look in his eyes. ‘She was, you see—to anyone on the outside looking in. She was an arch manipulator, angry and bitter because she knew my father didn’t love her. I was meant to give a piano recital one day in our huge banquet hall, for my father and some important guests—’ Samia stopped. What was she doing, babbling on about mundane childhood incidents?

But Sadiq inclined his head. ‘Go on, Samia. I want to hear this.’

Cursing herself for bringing this up, she continued reluctantly, ‘I’d practised for weeks on my mother’s piano. She’d nearly become a concert pianist before she met my father, and when I played I felt somehow … close to her. Not that I had half her talent.’ She blushed, feeling silly, but Sadiq was still looking at her with something unfathomable yet encouraging in his eyes.

Samia took a deep breath. ‘Alesha took me aside just before I went on. I don’t even remember what she said now, but when I sat down … I froze. I couldn’t remember a note of the music and I couldn’t move. All I can remember is excruciating terror, not knowing how to just get up and leave. Kaden had to come and physically lift me off the stool. I’d let my father down in front of his guests—but, worse than that, I felt I’d let my mother’s memory down. I haven’t touched a piano since.’

She grimaced at herself now. ‘It’s all so mundane really. My childhood was no worse than many others. Alesha was just a bully. Apart from her we had a perfectly stable and secure background.’

Almost harshly, Sadiq cut in. ‘No, it’s not. Nothing is mundane, when you’re a child and your world is threatened. You can have the most secure background and yet within that lies any number of threats.’

Samia looked at him, her eyes growing wide. ‘Why do you say that?’

His jaw clenched. ‘Because it’s true. My world was threatened every day when my father took his anger at my mother out on me—or her. Whoever was closest. I watched my father kick her so hard in the belly once that she lay there bleeding. But he wouldn’t let me help her. I tried to, but he beat me back.’

Samia sucked in a horrified gasp. ‘How could he have done such a thing? And let you watch?’

Sadiq smiled grimly. ‘So that I would know how to deal with a disobedient wife. A wife who wouldn’t give him any more children.’

Samia shook her head, feeling sick. ‘You would never be capable of such a thing. How old were you?’

Sadiq shrugged now. He felt curiously raw at Samia’s easy assertion that he was not like his father. ‘About five.’