‘And you would have seen me run out to be sick, but you had already gone!’ Her voice was but a whisper, a thin thread that sounded as if at any moment it might snap. ‘Hussein liked you watching. He revelled in the jealousy he saw in your expression.’
‘Why did you do it? How could you do it?’
‘He threatened me. Said if you kept coming after me he would hurt you. Not enough to enrage your father, but enough to teach you a lesson.’ Her head sagged further towards her lap. ‘I couldn’t let that happen. I had to convince you that we were over. If you wouldn’t believe my declaration that I’d never loved you, there was no other way but to do as he said.’
Mechanically he left his chair, crossed to her side, all without consciously thinking about what he was doing. He knelt at her side, took her wrists in his hands, and peeled her hands away. Moisture clung to her closed lashes; her lips were jammed together.
‘You did that to protect me?’
Her eyelids parted on dark eyes filled with pain. ‘I was afraid—too afraid of what might happen if I did otherwise. He scared me.’ She shuddered where she sat, her teeth biting her bottom lip white, the involuntary action telling him more than any words could.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, taking her by the shoulders, coaxing her to her feet. ‘It’s all right.’
But she was shaking her head. ‘It’s not okay. You were supposed to be away for a year. I thought you might forget about me in that time. I thought it might not be so bad. When you turned up unexpectedly at the ceremony I had to do something to make you hate me. Something to make you accept what had happened. And so I lied. I acted like I loved him, like I wanted to be with him. But I never did, I swear.’
Her liquid eyes looked too huge for her face, the misery they contained too much for any one person to have to bear. ‘And so you did love me. All along.’
Slowly she nodded, her lips tightly clenched between her teeth, tears once more flooding her eyes.
And he wanted to roar with possession, howl at the moon. For she had always been his. He had known it. She had been his from the very first moment they had laid eyes on each other.
And tonight he would take what had been rightfully his—would take what he had been denied, so long ago.
CHAPTER TEN
HE TOUCHED two fingers to her lips, smoothing away their tightness, taking her chin in his hand and guiding it higher. She was afraid, he could tell, her dark eyes filled with trepidation, her breathing jerky.
And her fear was no doubt his fault too, because every time she had tried to explain, to make amends, he had been blinded to her words and had refuted her every argument. He was the reason she had fled into the desert. It had been his words that had put her very life at risk.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, and her fear turned to confusion as he slid both hands over her slim shoulders into her thick black hair. ‘I would not listen to you yesterday when you tried to explain. I made no attempt to understand. And it was from me you felt you needed to escape. It was me who put you in danger. Is there any chance you might forgive me?’
Her eyes wavered with uncertainty, colour rising like a tide in her cheeks, and her lips parted, closed, parted again, as if she were searching for words. ‘I might,’ she managed tentatively, pausing for air. ‘If you… Do you think there is any chance you might still want to…kiss me again?’
And his lips turned into a smile as his eyes were drawn to her mouth, to her lips, lush and ripe, just as his body was drawn to hers, as it had been every single moment since they’d passed each other outside his mother’s suite. ‘You know that I want you,’ he whispered, his mouth hovering scant millimetres above hers.
This time when her eyes widened, their dark depths stirred with something other than fear. ‘I know.’
‘And you want me.’
A pause, a blink, and then came the halting response, ‘It’s…true.’
‘Because, like I said before, the next time I kiss you I won’t stop.’
A hitch in her breath, a flare of her nostrils. ‘I know. I’m scared, Rafiq. I’m scared I can’t do this.’
He had her in his arms before his blood had stopped its tidal surge through his veins, his lips on hers before the crashing had stopped in his ears.
And this time it was neither a kiss of anger, wrenched from her, nor a kiss of spontaneous relief, but a deliciously anticipated act that spoke of mutual need and mutual pleasure, a journey of rediscovery and shared desires and ten long years. His lips moved over hers in an unchoreographed dance that she somehow knew, matching him move for move. Fitting him perfectly. Suiting him perfectly. Hot breath and the sweet taste of Sera filled his senses and he could not get enough, could not think straight beyond wanting her. Except for knowing they could not stay here.