An ideal that had come crashing down when she had declared to all and sundry that she had never loved him. Never.
He was that young man again.
History was repeating itself. His world had once again been split apart. Cruelly. Savagely.
By a woman who didn’t deserve his love.
There was a reason you learned from your mistakes, he told himself after he had spun blindly away towards the shell-lined steps to the palace. It was so you wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He’d always been proud of his record on that score, always been proud of his ability to learn from his mistakes.
And yet he’d just blown that record, in spectacular style, by begging Sera to marry him—the same woman who had rejected him publicly more than a decade before, the same woman who had just rejected him and his love out of hand once again.
So much for learning from his mistakes.
The sand beneath his feet was too soft, too accommodating to the pounding of his feet. He needed something he could smash, something he could crush under his feet, something he could slam into pieces with his fists.
How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so blind?
But even as he climbed the stone steps back to the palace, even as the setting sun reflected bright off the shell-rich stone, something sat uneasily with him. For ten years ago she had loved him—hadn’t he learned as much? And she had said what she had because she’d been forced to marry Hussein and forced to make it look like she actually wanted to.
So why was she saying she couldn’t marry him now?
His right foot wavered over a step, the gears crunching in his mind. They were good together—they both knew it—and this time they had more than proved it. And he’d been her first lover, as he’d always intended. Didn’t that prove something? That they were meant for each other?
That it was fate that had brought them together again, not fate that was forcing them apart?
Damn it all! Whatever she said, whatever she claimed, this time he wasn’t just walking away bitter and twisted and waiting another decade before he found out why. There were enough wasted years between them. There would be no more.
Maybe he had learned from his mistake after all.
He spun around and launched himself down the stairs, sprinting across the sand to where she sat slumped with her head in her hands.
‘Sera!’ he cried, and before she could respond he had pulled her to her feet and into his arms. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks awash with tears and encrusted with grains of sand, but without a doubt she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But just one look was enough to make him sure. Enough to let him know he was right.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘There is no father this time to intimidate you, no other man you need be afraid of. This time there is only me. So tell me, truthfully this time, why you say you cannot marry me.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SERA collapsed into his arms, her sobs tearing his heart apart, her tears seeping into the cloth of his robe, wetting his skin.
‘Oh, Rafiq, I’m so sorry. I…I love you so much!’
They were the words he most needed to hear—so much so that he wanted to roar with victory as he spun her around, his lips on hers a celebration of love shared and hard earned. But he knew there were other words that needed to be said, that he needed to hear, before the way would be clear between them. But it would be clear, of that he was sure. He would make damn well sure of it.
‘Sera, you must tell me what has been troubling you. I will not leave you another time without knowing. I could not bear it.’ His hands stroked her back, soothing, gentling. ‘Tell me what’s troubling you, and then I can make it right.’
She shook her head. ‘There is no righting this. You will want to have nothing to do with me when you know. You will not be able to afford to.’
And he felt a frisson of fear in his gut. How bad was it? ‘You have to tell me. Everything. Come, sit with me. Explain.’ He drew her gently down to the sand, settling her across his lap so he could hold her like a child and kiss her tears away while she spoke.
‘Hussein found a use for me,’ she began, and Rafiq’s blood ran cold. ‘He thought if I was good for nothing else I could help “persuade” visiting delegates to see his point of view. He made me dress like some kind of courtesan, and all the time he was negotiating he would make lewd innuendoes about sex, and how he liked to share what was his.’ She stopped, and Rafiq hugged her tight to his chest, wanting to murder the man who had done this to her, who had treated her with such little respect.
‘Most of the men were as embarrassed as me. They were family men, they said. They loved their wives. They would leave, barely able to look at me, and Hussein would later say it was because I was not good enough, not pretty enough, that nobody found me attractive enough to sleep with. That I deserved to remain untouched, barren, when I could not even arouse my own husband. And then he would make me try…’