“See?” She shrugged her shoulders, refusing to show how his lack of feeling had hurt her. “That’s why you’ll let me go.”
He frowned. “Why, Olivia?”
“Because I could never be in a marriage without love.” She lifted a hand to forestall his next statement. “You were raised to see this as normal. I wasn’t. You don’t love me, but I think you like me. And I think you respect me. And eventually you’ll realise that keeping me in this marriage would hurt me far more than anything someone like Kalil could ever say or do.” She squared her shoulders, refusing to back away from her point. Refusing to seem emotional or sad. “So one day you’ll kiss me goodbye for the last time, and we’ll be a precious memory and nothing more.”
Angry curses were shrieking through his mind with such intensity that he could barely contain them. He was a prisoner of everything he’d been raised to expect and everything he was expected to want. He wanted to sprint the length of the beach, until his lungs burned from exertion. He wanted to make love to her against the shining white sand. He wanted to say anything she needed to hear, to put a close to this talk of ending their marriage.
And then he remembered. There was no marriage.
She was his lover.
And she didn’t want to be his wife. He swallowed past the lump of anxiety in his throat. Tamir had never willingly conceded defeat, but he could feel it biting at his ankles now.
“Let us swim,” he changed the subject with a tone that was far more moderate than his thoughts.
Olivia nodded, but inside, her heart was cracking like an eggshell. Had she really expected a declaration of love? She wasn’t even sure she loved him. At least, she wasn’t sure she could put her feelings for him into words. What her heart and soul wanted made no sense. Not when faced with what he’d put her through. And yet… he’d been so perfect, in so many ways. She reached out and linked her fingers through his, pulling him towards the ocean. This would be a memory one day, but only if she first created it.
“Let’s not think about the future, okay?” She squeezed his hand. “Whatever else happens, this moment is glorious.”
And it was. Because she was.
The water was cool against her skin, but her blood pounded like a boiling torrent through her body. “Do you like it?” He asked quietly, wrapping his arms around her beneath the ocean. She was standing on the sand, staring back at the shoreline, and the water came up to her breasts. He looked over her shoulder, appreciating the view as she might be. As someone unfamiliar with the coastline of Talidar.
“It’s… beautiful.” She swept her green eyes over the cliff-edged land. They were so white they glowed in the afternoon sunshine, and at the top, there were spiky green and purple bushes that looked almost alien like.
“I’m glad you like it.”
“It’s just a shame it’s three hours from the palace, or I would come here every day.”
He nodded. “You can come here by helicopter,” he promised. “It is a much shorter journey.”
She nodded. “I imagine it would be. Why did you drive today then?”
Because he’d wanted the time with her. He shrugged. “I had nothing more pressing to do.”
Her heart turned over. Every time she felt like he just might say something she needed to hear, he didn’t. She turned to face him, encircled by his strong arms. “Mir, who is Marni?”
His pleasure at the fact that she’d used the shortened version of his name was short lived. “Why do you ask?”
“I keep thinking about what Selena said. That you married me because of Marni.”
He ran h
is hands down her spine, distracting her with the contact. “You’ve asked me about this already.”
She nodded thickly.
“And what was my answer, when you asked me before?”
She looked up into his eyes, her own a mesmerising oceanic shade of green. “That Selena is wrong.”
His smile spread slowly across his face, seductive and enticing. “And nothing has changed. She is still wrong.”
It didn’t matter. If she thought their marriage was real; that it would last forever, she might have tried to understand him better. But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t. So she let it go. Instead of asking what she knew she should, she let her body feel what it wanted to. A deep, soul-stirring pleasure in the closeness to his.
“You know,” she whispered, her hands around his back. “This is the first time we’ve been this close in the daylight.”
He laughed, surprised by her observation. “Is it?”