‘He said I wasn’t beautiful enough or enticing enough. He said it was my fault that we would never have children—that because I was so undesirable my womb would remain forever empty.’
Blood heated in his veins, reached boiling point in the time it took to take his next breath. ‘Hussein told you that? But you didn’t believe him? You couldn’t have believed him?’
She shrugged. It wasn’t just because of Hussein, but there was no reason to tell Rafiq that. He had discovered she was a virgin and she felt she owed him some kind of explanation. But there was no need to tell him anything else. No need to reveal any more humiliating truths.
‘Why else could he not make love to his own wife? His own wife, Rafiq! For ten years. Why else would he say such things if they were not true?’
‘Because he was using you as an excuse for his own inadequacies! I swear that if Hussein weren’t already dead, I would kill him myself.’
‘Rafiq, you mustn’t say that!’
‘Why not? It would not be murder. He was not a man. He was barely a cockroach. So why do you rush to his defence when he fed you nothing but lies, when he brainwashed you into thinking it was you with the problem?’
‘But you were not there. You don’t know—’
‘I know this. That you have no problem, Sera. You are the most desirable woman I have ever met and I have had no trouble wanting you from the moment I saw you outside my mother’s apartments.’
He kissed the last of her tears from her eyes, pushed her hair behind her ear with her fingers and followed the movement down her neck to shoulder and below, cupping one breast in his hand. She trembled, her breast already swelling, her nipple budding hard against his palm.
‘Why is it so hard to believe, Sera? You are a beautiful woman. A desirable woman. Can you not see what you do to me?’
She felt the nudge of him against her belly and looked down, gasping to see him already swelling into life again. A sizzle of anticipation coursed through her. ‘You want to do it again?’
And he smiled. ‘And again, and again, and again.’
His words shocked her, thrilled her, confused her. ‘But I thought you… I thought this was all about revenge. Because of what you thought you’d been cheated out of. You were so angry before. You said you hated me—’
And he pulled her to him, cradling her head against his chest, aching because she was so right, and had just cause for thinking it. ‘I know, and you’re right. It was revenge in the beginning. It was a desire to get even that drove me. I wanted you to accompany me to Marrash to spite you, because I could see you were afraid.’ He paused, retraced his words. ‘It was hate. I’d had more than a decade to do nothing but build a shrine to hatred, and I worshipped there every chance I got. Seeing you again brought the hatred back tenfold. In my own perverse way, making sure you came seemed the perfect way to punish you. I wanted you to suffer in my company if you hated it that much. But I had no idea how much I would suffer in yours, purely because of wanting you.’
She looked up at him with wide eyes. Was it possible he was telling the truth? Was it possible? ‘You really did want me?’
‘I never stopped wanting you,’ he confessed, running his fingers through the thick black weight of her hair to cup her neck and draw her closer into his talking kiss. ‘As you know I want you now. If you feel ready.’
Her lips tingled as she felt his words on her lips, as his teeth nipped at her for an answer. ‘If I feel ready?’
‘I know you might feel too tender.’
Parts of her did feel tender. Deliciously, lusciously tender. But definitely ready. ‘Make love with me, Rafiq.’ Make love with me and blot out the memories of Hussein and his cronies and the men who looked at me as if I was dirt. ‘Make me come apart again.’
Three more times she’d come apart before, utterly exhausted, she’d fallen asleep in his arms. Three more times he’d marvelled at her responsive body, at the way she fitted him so perfectly. She stirred in her sleep and sighed, nestling back into him like a kitten.
But, unusually for Rafiq after a night of sex, sleep eluded him. He lay there in the dark, listening to the sound of her breathing, slow and even, wondering what it was that felt different.
He still wanted her. That felt different. Usually he could discard a woman as easily as he’d picked her up, his desire slaked. But Sera? How many times before his interest waned now that he had had her?
They would be back at the palace tomorrow. He would go back to doing the job he was supposed to be doing—supporting his soon-to-be-crowned brother. Sera would go back to playing companion to his mother.