The Sultan's Choice

Sadiq moved fast enough to shock Samia. He was right in front of her, saying harshly, ‘You’ve certainly shown me intriguing facets to your personality that weren’t in evidence when we first met.’ His eyes were bright with a feral glitter as they dropped down and took in where her cleavage was revealed in the silk of the simple dress. ‘And there’s plenty we could discuss, Samia.’

She took a step back, railing against the evidence that he resented the aspects of her that had started to emerge as if from a long hibernation, and fought the dismayingly familiar lure to merge with this man. ‘I’m not talking about sex, Sadiq. I’m talking about the fact that you want an identikit wife and that’s not what I am.’

Her voice was bitter. ‘Obviously you’d prefer it if I’d stayed shy and gauche, but you’re the one who has been encouraging me to overcome that shyness. You can’t have it both ways, Sadiq. Perhaps there’s no point to this marriage if you can’t see that?’

He went very still. ‘What are you saying? That you want out?’

Samia blinked. It felt as if they had jumped about three levels up from where she’d thought they were. For the first time in years she stuttered. ‘N-no. I mean, I d-don’t know. I didn’t mean that. I just mean that we don’t seem to have anything—’ she blushed ‘—but the sex.’

The stutter got him right in the gut. That glaring sign of vulnerability underneath the thin veneer of bravado made something break inside Sadiq. His anger was defused and he saw in an instant how hard she was trying. He also recognised that she was all of the things she’d been that first day she’d met him and yet was also the emerging strong woman who had been repressed for so long.

She was the woman who still clung on to his hand with a death grip for the first few minutes in a crowded room until she was comfortable enough to leave his side. She was the woman with the tattoo above her buttocks, who could dune-drive and throw herself into the building of a crèche with so much enthusiasm that only last week he’d found her in dusty overalls, making sweet tea for the workers and laughing with them.

And she was the only woman he’d ever wanted to take deep into the desert and seduce in a bedouin tent erected just for her.

Panic and a feeling of constriction so strong that Sadiq had to stop himself undoing his bowtie forced him to speak the words that had just formed in his head from somewhere deep and dark inside him. ‘If you want to leave this marriage, I’ll give you a divorce.’

Samia looked at Sadiq, shock numbing her from the inside out. ‘If I want to leave, you’ll give me a divorce?’

He nodded, his face once again a mask of inscrutability.

Samia had the urge to slap him—hard. Feeling slightly desperate, she said, ‘But I’ve committed to this marriage, to you. I’m learning to find my feet … I’m happy here.’

A voice mocked her. Really? You’re happy to be in this relationship with a man who doesn’t love you and never will?

Suddenly insecure in a way she hadn’t felt for some weeks now, Samia looked at Sadiq, even though it was hard. ‘You want to divorce me.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I’m offering you the choice. I’d be quite happy to stay married, but I don’t think you’re happy.’ Liar, a voice mocked him. You’re going slowly insane.

Samia wanted to sit down. ‘Why?’ she asked.

Sadiq sighed deeply and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it dishevelled. The muted chink of glasses and the hum of conversation from outside went unnoticed. ‘Because you never wanted this marriage, and because I all but railroaded you into it. I don’t relish the prospect of a wife who is going to feel she’s in a situation she can’t leave and grow to resent the feeling of being trapped. I watched my mother go through that and I won’t be responsible for the same thing. I don’t want to bring a child into that environment. Needless to say, if you do want to leave it won’t affect my relationship with Burquat.’

‘You’ve thought about this,’ Samia said dully, the pain of that making her want to curl up somewhere.

Sadiq curbed the urge to contradict her. It seemed to be a very simple equation in his head—hand Samia every tool or reason she might need to leave and she would leave. And he would feel sane again.

‘What if I don’t want to leave?’

There was something slightly defiant in her tone, and it made Sadiq alternately panicked and euphoric. Angry at the fact that she was once again confounding his expectations, he said, ‘You’ll have to come to terms with what this marriage is, Samia. Unless things have changed for you this is still an arranged marriage, and we are together for many reasons—none of which is about love. So I can’t guarantee to be more invested than I already am.’

Every word landed on Samia like a little bomb. It was as if she’d asked silently for him to really spell it out, because she wasn’t quite sure what he meant. To save herself from the final humiliation, she said coolly, ‘I know what the parameters of this marriage are, Sadiq, but I’d hoped that within that we could find some balance where we at least communicated beyond the bedroom.’

Sadiq gritted out, ‘We’re communicating now.’

‘Yes, and it’s very clear. Can I have some time to think about this?’

Sadiq felt unsteady for a moment, unsettled by Samia’s composure. ‘Of course. This isn’t something that has to be decided any time soon.’

‘It’s good to know there’s no pressure.’

Sadiq heard the sarcasm dripping from her voice, and watched as his wife walked straight-backed to the door, turned the key and went back outside. He felt all at once light-headed, panicky and as if something incredibly precious was slipping away.

When he got back to the main ballroom, though, and saw Samia standing talking to the same man he’d seen her with before, Sadiq cursed himself for giving her an option to leave at all. He should be divorcing her point-blank—because that was the only solution to this madness.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SADIQ paced impatiently in his office and checked his watch again. Where the hell was she? Samia had told him that morning that she would come and talk to him this afternoon. As the days had passed during the past week, and Samia had gone about her business as serenely as if nothing had happened, his control had become more and more frayed. Nerves wound to breaking point.