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‘The agreement between our countries—my official marriage to Nabil—is only legal when I am twenty-three.’
The flashing glare he turned on her warned her not to go on but she couldn’t give in. She was fighting for her life.
‘And Nabil doesn’t care! He wasn’t even here to welcome me and I saw him—with another girl.’
It wasn’t really any evidence of anything, but Karim’s reaction was. A faint flicker of something across his set features, in the darkness of his eyes, told her that he knew more about this than he was letting on. And that gave her the strength to carry on.
‘He has to take me as his Queen—to accept me formally. Before then, I’m free—I can be with anyone else—with you. Like I was that night in the cottage.’
The memories were there at the back of his mind; she could read them in the way he veiled his eyes behind those long lashes, the tight set to his mouth. But he was not going to let them into his rational thoughts.
‘You were never mine.’ It was a cold, blank statement.
‘I could have been!’
‘No, you could not. You were not mine. You are Nabil’s.’
‘Nabil didn’t own me. I was not his possession. He still doesn’t.’
‘You were forbidden. I was sent to bring you here because everyone—Nabil—my father—my country—trusted me. I will not betray their trust.’
‘Because you are a man of honour.’
‘You make it sound as if it’s an insult.’
‘Oh, no—’
‘Then we are back where we started, I think.’
Karim pushed both his hands through the black silk of his hair and rubbed his palms over his face, closing his eyes off from her for a moment.
‘Princess...’ There was that word again, driving home what he wanted without anything else needing to be said. ‘I came to say goodbye—that is the only thing that needs to be spoken between us.’
No... Please, no...
She tried to say it; opened her mouth, once, twice, but no sound would come out. Karim would not have listened either. That much was evident from the opaque look in his eyes, expressionless as a carved statue.
‘So—goodbye.’
His bow was just a faint sketch of a movement, no feeling behind it. An inclination of the head, a swift turn and he was heading for the door, taking everything he had brought into her life with him. Surely he would not be able to walk away from her, turn his back on her. But it seemed that Karim was perfectly capable of doing just that.
How did she argue against that? What could she possibly put before him to make him stop, listen...change his mind?
‘But I love you!’
CHAPTER TEN
SILENCE.
Total, shocking, frightening silence. Nothing more. All that had changed was that Karim now stood stock-still, the long line of his back turned against her, his head held high, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Other than that total stillness, he gave no indication of having heard her, so would she have to say those words again?
She would if she needed to. Because as soon as she had spoken them she had known how true they were. How far she had come from their first meeting that had brought her awakening, then knowledge of how it felt to be a woman, to now—to this, when she knew how to love as a woman, with all that a woman’s heart was capable of. And she knew that that woman’s love was strong enough to endure whatever the future held for her if she could just have this one day, one night—one time of loving Karim and creating memories to hold in her heart when the arranged marriage closed round her and imprisoned her for life.
‘I...’
She’d opened her mouth to say it again but at last Karim had moved. Slowly he turned to face her.
‘You love me?’
Did he expect her to deny it? Did he want her to deny it? Was that what was behind that stony expression, the tightly drawn muscles? Whatever he thought, it was impossible to turn back now.
‘Yes, I love you.’
It felt better, more right, every time she said it. This feeling had been growing silently and secretly like a seedling uncurling under the earth, ready to push the little green spike out into the sunshine. That spike was there now, out in the light, and she recognised it for what it was. And she was glad to see it. So grateful to know that at least she had experienced this feeling once in her life. She loved this man and she would never have to live out her days not knowing what this felt like.
‘I love you.’ She said it again because she wanted to and because it made her smile.
A smile that was not mirrored on Karim’s set face.
‘Why do you love me?’
What sort of a question was that? He had knocked her off her feet in the moment he had appeared on her doorstep and nothing had been the same ever since.
‘Isn’t it obvious? I love you for who you are. For your courage in trying to rescue your brother. Your loyalty to your father and your country.’ That had sent him out on this mission when he could have delegated it to someone else. ‘And your sense of honour. You couldn’t even cheat in a game of Snakes and Ladders, for heaven’s sake.’
Her laugh, already brittle, shattered into tiny pieces as she saw the look he gave her.
‘Then you will understand why I do this.’
‘Yes—no—’
Now she saw where he was going and a cruel hand reached out to grip her heart, twist it brutally so that she gasped in pain.
‘But you don’t have to. I don’t want you to!’
Dark brows snapped together in a dangerous frown.
‘It is not what you want—or what I want. It is what must be. You are legally promised to Nabil.’
‘But...’ Clemmie’s protest faded on her tongue as Karim held his hand up to silence her. But it was the look in his eyes that took the sound from her mouth.
‘You say that you love me—so you must love me as I am. All of me.’
He paused, waited a nicely calculated moment to drive the words home.
‘The man I am. My sense of honour.’
Her wounded heart had actually stopped beating. She could no longer breathe, and knew that every trace of blood must have faded from her cheeks, leaving them whiter than the pillows on her bed.
‘No...’ she moaned, so low that he must have had to strain to hear it. But she knew that, hear it or not, he understood what she was trying to say—and would refute it. ‘Please, no...just once.’
Even as she said it, she knew that there was no ‘just once’. Just once would break the moral code he lived by. It would bring them together and destroy them in the very same moment. But the alternative would break her heart.
There was no alternative.
‘When...’ It was all she could manage, knowing with a dreadful sense of inevitability just what the answer would be.
‘Now.’
It would destroy him if he stayed, Karim admitted. He couldn’t remain in her company any longer and not pull her down on to that bed and make love to her. Not do as she asked, as she so obviously wanted. Hell, she had offered herself on a plate. He wanted it too; so much that the hunger was tearing his guts apart, and he didn’t know how he could walk to the door without looking back.
She was so damn gorgeous—temptation personified. But—love?
If anything had convinced him that he was right to do this the way he had to, then that word was right up there. He had no right to stay unless he could offer her love in return. Hellfire, he had no right to stay at all. She had been forbidden to him from the start, and she was forbidden to him now. The repercussions of acting on the carnal hunger he felt would have the equivalent effect of a nuclear explosion. He couldn’t offer her any hope of anything else, so he had no right to stay when doing so would only destroy her future as well.
‘If I don’t do this then I can never be the man you love. I will be someone else entirely.’
She understood that all right. He watched her take it in, absorb it, and realise the deepest truth of what he was saying. She nodded silently, eyes huge in the pallor of her face. Something—pride, defiance, anger?—held the muscles in her jaw and chin tight, but those amber eyes were shadowed with something that it twisted his conscience brutally to see.
He didn’t have the time, or the right to try to make this any gentler. Hard and sharp—and fast—was the only way to do this now.
‘Goodbye, Princess.’
And then, to his horror, he saw that she was doing that thing with her mouth, digging her sharp white teeth into the soft flesh of her lower lip. It was impossible to stand by and watch it this last time. Without fully being aware of having acted, he moved across the room, his hand going under her chin—a chin he only just realised was quivering with the force of control she was imposing on it—as he lifted her face to his.
‘Don’t...’
