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But he had felt that before and because she had been promised to someone else his honour had kept him from acting on it. Now she was no longer forbidden, they were both free...
Free to do what?
Free to do what they wanted. She knew that this—the heated passion they had just shared—was what Karim had wanted all along. He had never offered her anything else. But she had longed for more. If he had nothing more to give her then she would have to find the strength to be content with what he offered.
Uncomfortable and restless, she eased her chin free of Karim’s grasp and wriggled upright, pulling one of the blankets with her and clutching it to her breasts as she stared into the glowing embers of the fire. The heat scorched her eyes but the burn was nothing compared with the sting of unshed tears that pushed at the back of them.
‘Clemmie...?’
She felt Karim move behind her, the sudden rush of cooler air as he eased away from her, propping himself up against the arm of the settee.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
It was just a mutter, low and gruff, and she wouldn’t have believed herself either, so she wasn’t surprised when she heard Karim’s response.
‘Liar!’
There was a touch of laughter in the half-amused reproach. But it was the other half of his tone that stabbed and twisted deep in her soul. A blunt fingertip touched at the back of her neck then slid gently down her spine. The gentle caress made her shiver as it stirred once again the hungry physical responses she might have thought were at least dormant for a while. But it seemed they were still there, just below the surface, waking at just a touch, and threatening to swamp her mind.
And she needed to think.
‘Don’t!’
She flinched away from his touch rather more violently than she had intended. The gentle touch was like the scrape of thorns with her nerves so very near the surface. She knew the mistake she had made when she sensed the tension in the powerful body behind her, the freezing of the movement of his hand.
‘What is it?’ Karim asked, his tone putting an edge on the question. ‘Did I hurt you? Is that it?’
‘No. Of course you didn’t hurt me.’
At least, not in the way he meant. He had been a wonderful lover, careful, considerate, gentle when she had needed him to be so, and responsive enough to recognise when gentleness was the last thing she wanted.
‘I mean—well, of course it was bound to be a little—difficult at first—but that was all. I wanted you. I wanted this.’
There was silence behind her as he absorbed that. He would not be satisfied, she knew, and the nerves in her stomach twisted into painful knots as she waited for what would come next.
‘Then what is it? What is it you are not telling me...? Look at me!’
It was a command she didn’t dare to disobey. If she turned she feared that he would see the truth that must be written on her face. But if she didn’t then he would know something was up—and he wouldn’t give her any peace until he found out what it was. Five days ago, in despair, she had told him that she loved him and had had to watch as he turned his back and walked away from her. She didn’t think she could cope with risking that happening again.
‘I’m sorry...’ Dragging up the strength from somewhere deep inside, she turned to face him, flashing a smile that she hoped was convincing. ‘I was just—trying to absorb all that has happened.’
If she looked into his eyes she would be unable to go on so she forced herself to focus on the dark hairs on his chest, watching them rise and fall with each breath he took. His breathing was deep and regular, quite unlike her own tight, shallow gasps.
‘After all, it’s not even a fortnight since I was here, packing, knowing that my birthday—and my wedding—was just days away. And then you appeared at my door.’
Had there been a tiny jolt in the regular, even beat of his heart? She could have sworn that just for a second something had made him react.
‘And then you disappeared out of the window—to see that little boy?’
When he had first arrived, Karim recalled, the small boy had been hugging her tight. As soon as he had appeared, her friend had bundled the child into his coat and left with him hastily. But not before he had caught sight of the small sturdy body, the dark hair, the face that had been an almost mirror image of the one that was now in front of him. The shock that was clear on Clemmie’s face told him he was right.
‘She called him Harry,’ he said quietly. ‘And the first day you tried to get extra time—to go and see someone—you began to say his name then cut it off.’
He didn’t need her to give any response. It was there in her eyes, in the film of tears that caught the firelight and multiplied it.
‘He is your brother?’
Clemmie’s head moved slowly in a nod of acknowledgement.
‘My mother ran from my father when she realised she was pregnant.’ Her voice was low and hesitant, but it grew in confidence as she told her story. ‘She was terrified that this child would be taken and—sold—into marriage as I had been, and she was determined that nothing like that would happen to this new baby. She knew she was already ill, so she gave him up for adoption and sadly she died very soon after he was born.’
‘So this is why you came here, to look for him?’
She’d come to trace her one other family member not, as her reputation had declared, just to have some time of freedom, some fun, before she married.
‘Yes. I found out about him when I learned that Mother had come here, to Nan’s cottage, before she died. She left me a note that told me who had adopted Harry and I just had to see him, if only once. But I couldn’t tell anyone about him.’
Karim felt the shudder that shook her slender body as a reproach without words. Intent on fulfilling his duty, locked into that code of honour, he hadn’t spared enough thought for the effect it had had on her, the prospect of her life being taken away from her. Arranged marriages were so common in his world. It was only when he had come up against this one that he had been made to reconsider.
‘If my father had known, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take him back—to use him for his own ends.’
‘He will never learn of him from me.’ Karim reached out and covered her shaking hands with his own, looking deep into her eyes. ‘You are under my protection now. Your father will never touch you again.’
Her laughter was shaken, right to the core. There wasn’t even a trace of humour left in it.
‘He wouldn’t want me. He’ll be happy if he never sees me again. Nabil has discarded me and now, as far as my father is concerned, my reputation is ruined. I bring the shadow of that scandal with me.’
Black cold fury sliced through Karim like a blade of ice and he reached out to pull her close, her head resting against his chest where his heart thudded in anger. As soon as skin touched skin he felt the bite of sexual need as it flooded his body, but he had to clamp down hard on it, fighting a brutal battle with the desire that threatened to destroy his ability to think.
For now he had to think. He had to know.
‘If I had realised that Ankhara’s man had known about our night together...’
The dark head that rested over his heart stirred slightly, and he felt the new tension in her body.
‘We weren’t together.’
Not for her want of trying. And now, with the scent of her skin around him, the softness of her flesh against his hands, he didn’t know how he had managed to hold back, how he had ever been able to deny himself this pleasure, this satisfaction. But could it ever be more than that?
‘Why didn’t you tell Nabil that you were still innocent? That nothing had happened?’
‘And he’d have believed that?’
She hadn’t been mistaken then, Clemmie realised. The steady pulse under her cheek had definitely missed a beat. Held this close, this tight, she couldn’t be unaware that he was as hot and hard and ready for her as if they had never made love at all that night. Her own senses were responding to that knowledge, her body softening, moisture dewing the folds between her legs as an answering beat set up in her blood in response to the pound of Karim’s heart.
All she would have to do was to turn closer in to him. To lift her face and press her mouth against his, smooth her hands down over the powerful ribcage, towards the thrust of his erection under the blankets. She could entice him into lovemaking and this awkward, difficult conversation would never have to be. She would never have to risk hearing him say that she had done it all for nothing. That she had played hazard with her future, her reputation, to get out of the contract that bound her to Nabil for only a few nights of heated passion. A blazing sexual affair that was going nowhere.
‘How could I tell him that when it would have been a lie? When he had only to look into my face—into my eyes—to know.’
Because something had happened. Something that had changed her life, changed her entirely. After that one night with Karim she could never be the same woman ever again. And it hadn’t been sex that had changed it, though it might just as well have been. If he had made love to her then he couldn’t have changed her any more than he had just by being himself.
