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“They kill women, Tally.”
Tally bit her tongue, waited for whatever else it was that Tair had to say. But what she thought he’d say and what he did say were two different things.
“This isn’t working.” His voice was hard and sharp. It was the voice of a stranger. “It’s time for you to return to America.”
Blood surged to her cheeks—hurt, shock, humiliation but she didn’t flinch, not outwardly. “I don’t understand.”
His dark gaze was eerily cold, hard, ice in the desert as he stared into her eyes. “Then listen to me. I’m telling you. I don’t want you here.”
“Here.”She pounced on the word as if it were the rope that Tair had thrown her the day she was sinking in the sand pit. “You don’t want me here. But you do want me.”
“No.” His expression grew harder if it were possible, the dark eyes crackling with ice and storm. “I don’t want you. I’ve—” and he took a quick fast breath “—tired of you.”
Tally’s upper lip twitched, an involuntary reflex. Pain. Panic. Disbelief. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. She was his.She was his. She’d been his since that first day in the desert…“Tair.” Her voice was but a whisper, husky, pleading.
“I will see you to Atiq. Make sure you board the correct flight. We go today.”
“Today?” Her head was spinning. She couldn’t follow him, couldn’t see how she’d gone from a night in his bed, an endless night of endless exquisite lovemaking. A night without words, a night of just touch, a night where the caress of his fingers and lips meant more than words ever could and yet now…now…
“Tair.” Tally couldn’t even look at him, couldn’t bear to see so much ice and disdain in his eyes, not in those beautiful eyes she loved, not in that fierce face of his that had always gentled when he looked at her. But it wasn’t gentling now. There was nothing gentle about him anymore.
But Tally wasn’t ready to quit. She didn’t know how to quit, hadn’t perfected giving up. “I don’t believe you. I don’t. You’re just mad about something. I must have done something—”
“No, Tally, it’s not something you’ve done. It’s me. This is about me. I’m…bored.”
Bored.
Tally nearly choked, air strangling in her throat. Her face felt strange. Her skin hot, so hot it was going to peel off her face. “I’ve never bored you,” she retorted fiercely. “Never.”
“Well, I’m bored now.”
“You’re not. Maybe you realized you couldn’t handle me. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling, but it’s not boredom.”
He stared at her with cold, dead eyes. “You can protest all you want, but I know what I want, know what I feel—”
“You, feel? When did you start to feel?”
“—and I’m done. Finished. I need something else. Something you can’t give.”
It was like a knife in her chest, plunging through her breastbone into her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get air, couldn’t get anything in or out of her chest. It felt like he was killing her, destroying her. Acid tears sprung to her eyes and her throat ached, as she took a step backward and then another. “You were the one that insisted we marry. You were the one that pushed. You—”
“I was impulsive. Wrong. The marriage will be annulled.”
“Annulled.”
“It will take some paperwork, maybe some money changing hands, but within a few weeks you will be single again.”
She reached for the ornate trunk in Tair’s room to steady herself, needing something to give her courage. Strength. “You can say that, but we made vows. Promises. Promises I fully intend to keep.”
“You’re not in America. This isn’t Hollywood,” he continued coldly, ruthlessly, “this doesn’t have a happy ending. This is life. Reality. I was wrong to think you could live here, be here. I was wrong to think you were the right woman for me. You’re too different. Too—” and he broke off, searching for the right word, “Difficult.”
Tally just looked at him, unable to find words or her voice.
“I don’t want everything to be a fight,” he continued mercilessly. “I have men to fight with. You don’t behave like a woman. Instead of letting me be the master, you’re always trying to take over, take charge and I’m tired of it. Bored. Better to end it now before things get complicated.” He nodded at her flat belly, knowing she’d just had her period, knowing she wasn’t pregnant and obviously not wanting to take another chance. “Pack whatever you need. Your cameras and memory cards will of course be returned to you.”
