Then she remembered his face when he had made the ultimate sacrifice. Chin up, face carved, mouth so flat it was hardly a mouth any more. When the man had had to turn himself into a prince before he could utter the words, ‘We will try other methods of conception,’ she had known they had nothing left to fight for.
What was she supposed to have done? Made the reciprocal sacrifice to their love and offered to remain his first wife while he took a second? She just could not do it, could not live with the agony of knowing that when he wasn’t in her bed he would be lying in another. The very idea was enough to set her insides curling up in pained dismay while her covered eyes caught nightmare visions of him trying to be fair, trying to pretend it wasn’t really happening, that he wasn’t over the moon when the new wife conceived his first child. How long after that before his love began to shift from her to this other woman with whom he could relax—enjoy her without feeling pain every time he looked at her?
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Stop it.’ She began to shiver. It just wasn’t even an option, so she must stop thinking about it! He knew that—he knew it! It was why he had taunted her with the suggestion earlier. He had been angry and had gone for the jugular and had enjoyed watching her die in front of him! It had always been like this: exploding flashes of anger and frustration, followed by wild leaps into sensual forgetfulness, followed by the low-of-low moments when neither could even look at the other because the empty truth was always still waiting there for them to re-emerge.
Empty.
On a groan she stood up, and groaned again as tiny muscles all over her body protested at being forced into movement. The fall, the lovemaking, or just the sheer stress of it all? she wondered, then wearily supposed it was a combination of all three.
So why do it? Why put them both back into a situation they had played so many times before it was wretched? Or was that it? she then thought on a sudden chill that shot down her backbone. Had he needed to play out the scene this one last time before he could finally accept that their marriage was over?
Sick. She felt sick. On trembling legs she headed quickly for the shower cubicle and switched the jet on so water sluiced over her body. Duty. It was all down to duty. His duty to produce an heir, her duty to let him. With any other man the love would be enough; those other methods of conception would be made bearable by the strength of that love. But she’d fallen in love with a prince not a man. And the prince had fallen in love with a barren woman.
Barren. How ugly that word was. How cold and bitter and horribly cheap. For there was nothing barren about the way she was feeling, nor did those feelings come cheap. They cost her a part of herself each time she experienced them. Like now, as they ate away at her insides until it was all she could do to slide down into a pathetic huddle in the corner of the shower cubicle and wait for it all to recede.
Where was she? What was she doing in there? She had been shut inside the bathroom for half an hour, and with a glance at his watch, Hassan continued to pace the floor on the vow that if she didn’t come out in two minutes he was going in there after her.
None of this—none of it—was going the way he had planned it. How had he managed to trick himself into diluting just how deep their emotions ran, how painful the whole thing was going to be? He hit his brow with the palm of his hand, then uttered a few choice curses at his arrogant belief that all he’d needed to do was hook her up and haul her back in for the rest to fall into place around them.
All he’d wanted to do was make sure she was safe, back here where she belonged, no matter what the problems. So instead he’d scared the life out of her, almost lost her to the depths of the ocean, fought like the devil over issues that were so old they did not need raking over! He’d even lied to score points, had watched her run in a flood of tears, watched her fly through the air down a set of stairs he now wished had never been put there. Shocked, winded and dazed by the whole crazy situation, he had then committed his worst sin and had ravished her. Now she had locked herself away behind a bathroom door because she could not deal with him daring to make an offer they both knew was not, and never had been, a real option!
What was left? Did he unsheath his ceremonial scabbard and offer to finish them both off like two tragic lovers?
Oh, may Allah forgive him, he prayed as his blood ran cold and he leapt towards the bathroom door. She wouldn’t. She was made of stronger stuff, he told himself as he lifted a clenched fist to bang on the door just as it came open.
She was wearing only a towel and her hair was wet, slicked to her beautiful head like a ruby satin veil. Momentarily shocked by the unexpected face-to-face confrontation, they both just stared at each other. Then he bit out, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
He had no answer to offer that did not sound insane, so he took another way out and reached for her, pulled her into his arms and kissed her—hard. By the time he let her up for air again she was breathless.
‘Hassan—’
‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘We have talked enough for one night.’
Turning away, he went over to the bed to retrieve the pearl-white silk robe he had laid out ready for her. During her absence the room had been returned to its natural neatness, at his instruction, and a table had been laid for dinner in the centre, with the food waiting for them on a heated trolley standing beside it.
He saw her eyes taking all of this in as he walked back to where she was standing. She also noticed that the lights had been turned down and candles had been lit on the table. She was no fool; she knew he had set the scene with a second seduction in mind and he didn’t bother to deny it.
‘Here,’ he said, and opened the robe up between his hands, inviting her to slip into it.
There was a pause where she kept her eyes hidden beneath the sweep of her dusky lashes. She was trying to decide how to deal with this and he waited in silence, more than willing to let the decision be hers after having spent the previous few minutes listing every other wrong move he had made until now.
‘Just for tonight,’ she said, and lifted those lashes to show him the firmness of that decision. ‘Tomorrow you take me back to San Estéban.’
His mouth flexed as the urge to say, Never, throbbed on the end of his tongue. ‘Tomorrow we—talk about it,’ he offered as his only compromise, though he knew it was no compromise at all and wondered if she knew it too.
He suspected she did, suspected she knew he had not gone to all of this trouble just to snatch a single night with her. But those wonderful
lashes fluttered down again. Her soft mouth, still pulsing from his kiss, closed over words she decided not to say, and with only a nod of her head she lost the towel, stepped forward and turned to allow him to help feed her arms into the kimono-type sleeves of the robe.
It was a concession he knew he did not deserve. A concession he wanted to repay with a kiss of another kind, where bodies met and senses took over. Instead, he turned her to face him, smoothed his fingers down the robe’s silken border from slender shoulders to narrow waist, then reached for the belt and tied it for her.
His gentle ministrations brought a reluctant smile to her lips. ‘The calm before the storm,’ she likened dryly.
‘Better this than what I really want to do,’ he very ruefully replied.
‘You mean this?’ she asked, and lifted her eyes to his to let him see what was running through her head, then reached up and kissed him, before drawing away again with a very mocking smile.