He had told her she’d done well and that gave her the courage to speak the words that were burning on her tongue, put there by the loneliness, the isolation, she had seen in him just moments before.
‘I am your wife and if I can be of any help at all...’
She’d started out bravely but faltered to a halt under the impact of his polished jet stare. Was that approval or the exact opposite? At last Nabil nodded his head slowly.
‘Perhaps...’ But then abruptly his mood changed as he frowned sharply. ‘What’s that on your neck?’
He followed up the harsh demand by grabbing a large hand mirror, ornately backed in gold, and holding it up so that she could see her own reflection.
‘That?’ Aziza’s hands went to her throat, touching the red marks there and on her cheeks lightly. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It certainly wasn’t there last night.’
‘It wasn’t,’ Aziza admitted, a rush of blood along her skin making more of her face colour red. ‘Because it was last night—and this afternoon—that put it there...It was your beard that marked my skin.’
She watched his long fingers rub up against his beard, brush through the crisp black hair.
‘I’m sorry.’ He sounded it. ‘I never meant to harm you.’
‘No harm,’ she assured him. ‘It’s not your fault that I have such appallingly sensitive skin. But don’t worry.’ Encouraged by this new approachable mood, she took a couple of steps forward to reach up and touch his face. ‘I know why you grew that beard—to conceal this.’
Gently she smoothed soft fingers over the long line of the scar then jumped as he reacted fast and unexpectedly, capturing her hand and bringing it down sharply.
‘Don’t!’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it still hurts.’
‘Not hurts’ was his growling response. ‘At least, not in that way.’
* * *
The physical pain had healed long ago, Nabil thought, rubbing his scar, as the first red fingers of the dawn warmed the balcony where he had spent half the night. Other scars were not so easy to deal with. Least of all the fact that the mark on his face was only there because Sharmila had had him wrapped around her delicate fingers. Led by the lethal combination of loneliness and the adolescent sexual hunger she’d been able to create in him, he had lost all ability to think straight. She had persuaded him to do exactly as she wanted and it was only when the truth had dawned cold and dark that he’d had to face how blind he had been.
It wasn’t like that with Aziza. He had chosen her, married her, because he had been looking for peace and calm after the years of tension that had followed from his mistakes where Sharmila was concerned. He’d spent the ten years making up to his country for the errors of his wild, selfish youth and had believed that the younger, gentler sister of the El Afarim family would help him do that.
And give him children. The heir he needed.
Instead he had found himself on a roller-coaster ride where nothing was as he had imagined it. Where he had expected to be a dutiful king, a respectful husband, he had never anticipated the brutal punch of suspicion that was the toxic legacy Sharmila had left behind. But even as he had doubted, suspected, wanted to reject, he had known that he could not do any of those things.
The one clear, unquestioning thought had been that he wanted Aziza in his bed. He had done from the start, from that moment when he had seen her on the balcony and, now he knew the reality of the passion they shared, he wanted her more than ever. The nights they had enjoyed here in the mountain palace had only added to that hunger. The one-night stands he had indulged in had done little to truly satisfy; he wanted so much more than that. And he had found it in Aziza’s arms, Aziza’s bed, Aziza’s body. Each night he spent with her gave him all he had been looking for physically—and more. But it was nothing like the temporary oblivion he had once sought. Instead he was left with a sense of completion and fulfilment that, when it ebbed away, left him hungrier than ever before. Wanting more, needing her in a way that he could see no hope of ever satisfying.
No sooner had he left her bed than he wanted to be back in it. Back in her arms, deep inside her welcoming body. It was a hunger that swirled and boiled inside him now as he pushed himself away from the balcony wall, knowing he had to go and find her once again. He came back to the bedroom, chilled and stiff after the long time he had spent staring out into the darkness of the night. Back to the warmth and softness of her bed. The warmth and softness of her.