They would never be unsaid.
‘Safe, Diana, in my love for you.’
They were said! The words that had come to him now, burning through all the doubts and fears, all the turbulent emotions that possessed him, burning through like the desert sun burning over the golden dunes.
Love—bright love.
Love that blazed in the heavens.
Blazed in him.
Now and for ever.
He folded her to him, releasing her hands, and as his strong arms came around her he felt the sweet softness of her body against his, felt her clutch at him, heard the choking sob in her throat.
He let her weep against him, holding her all the while, smoothing her hair, his cheek against hers, wet with her tears.
‘Do you mean it? Oh, Nikos, do you mean it?’ Her voice was muffled, her words a cry.
‘Yes!’
His answer was instant, his hugging of her fierce. That wondrous emotion was blazing through his whole being now, illuminating the truth. The truth that had started to form out in the desert, under the stars with Diana—so beautiful, so passionate, so precious to him!—whose rejection of him had caused him so much pain.
Pain he had masked in anger. Pain that he no longer had to mask. No longer had to feel. Because now he knew the emotion blazing in him by its true name.
‘I love you, Diana. I love you. And with all my heart I hope and pray that you will accept my love. That you do not fear it or flee it! The love,’ his heart was in his voice now, heaved up to her, ‘I hope that you can share with me, together. ‘
She pulled away from him, leaning back into the strength of his hands at her spine, her tear-stained face working. At last she was free to say what she had so feared to say—even to herself. What she had kept locked within her, terrified that she had brought about the very fate she had guarded herself against for so long. The tormented and tormenting truth she had admitted to no one—least of all herself—denying it and rejecting it until that fateful day when, with a simple question, it had been prised from her.
One simple question from the Princess—‘What is wrong?’
And Diana had told her. The truth pouring from her. As she was telling Nikos now, the words choking her.
‘I do! Oh, Nikos, I fell in love with you out in the desert. I could not stop myself—could not protect myself. You swept away every defence, every caution. But I knew that I’d condemned myself to heartbreak!’ Her eyes were anguished, her voice desolate. ‘Because when our marriage ended—as end it must, just as we’d agreed it would—you would move on and then I would become like my father, mourning the loss of a love I should never have let myself feel, but which it was far too late to stop.’
Sudden fear smote her, ravaging her.
‘And you will move on, Nikos! Whatever you say now, you’ll move on. One day you’ll be done with me—’
An oath broke from him and all self-control left him. He hauled her back into his arms.
‘I will love you always Diana.’ His voice changed and he cradled her face between his hands. ‘I have never known what love is—never experienced it in all my life. Until I found my mother’s love for me, learnt the truth about her, about how I had misjudged her. And I feared then that I had misjudged you, too. And I recognised at the very moment you were demanding a divorce what it was I felt for you—what I feared you did not feel, could not feel, were incapable of feeling.’
She silenced him. With a smothered cry she pressed her mouth to his. Sealing his lips with hers, her love with his. Only drawing back to say, her eyes full, tears still shimmering on her lashes, ‘Oh, Nikos, we both bear scars from wounds that nearly parted us, but love has healed them and that is all we need!’
Joy, and a relief so profound it made her weak, was flooding through her. She hugged him close against her, letting her cheek rest on his chest, feeling his strength, his arms fastening around her again. How much she loved him—oh, how much! And she was safe to love him—always.
She gave a sigh of absolute contentment. Felt his lips graze her hair, heard him murmuring soft words of love. Then
he was drawing a little apart from her, smiling down at her. She met his gaze, reeling from the love-light blazing in his eyes. She felt her heart turn over, joy searing through her more fiercely yet.
And then the expression in his eyes was changing, and she felt her pulse give a sudden quickening, her breath catching, lips parting, breathless with what she saw in his face. She felt her body flush with heat.
‘How fortunate,’ he was murmuring, ‘my most beautiful beloved, that we are already man and wife. For now I do believe a second wedding night must fast be approaching.’
She gave a laugh of tremulous, sensuous delight, and it was a sound he had not heard for so many long, bitter months. Not since they had found their paradise in the deserts of Arabia—a paradise that now would be in their hearts for ever.
‘It’s only midday!’ she exclaimed, her hands looping around his neck, her fingertips splaying in the feathered softness of his hair. Glorying in the touch of her palms at his nape.