AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She said you…exploited her, then threw her aside when you had enough of her.”
His eyes narrowed to azure lasers. “By exploited, she meant…sexually?” She nodded, and he gave a spectacular snort, a drench of cold sarcasm underscoring his affront. “Would you believe that I never slept with her?”
“Last I heard, ‘sleeping’ with someone wasn’t a prerequisite of being intimate.”
“All right, I did try to be a gentleman and spare you the R-rated language. But since being euphemistic doesn’t work in criminal cases, let me be explicit. I never had sex with her. In any form. She did instigate a few instances of heavy petting—which I didn’t reciprocate and put an end to when she tried to offer me…sexual favors. Bottom line…beyond a few unenthusiastic-on-my-part kisses, I never breached her ‘purity.’ And I wasn’t even holding back. I just never felt the least temptation. And when I started seeing her true colors and realized what she really wanted from me, I even became repulsed.”
Every word had spiked her temperature higher. To her ears, her every instinct, each had possessed the unmistakable texture of truth. But sanctioning them as the new basis for her belief, her view of the past and his character was still difficult. Mainly because it went against everything she’d believed for so long, about him, about men in general.
Feeling her head would burst on fire, she mumbled, “You’re telling me you could be so totally immune to a woman as beautiful as Maysoon when she was so very willing, too? I never heard that mental aversion ever interfered with a man’s…drive. Maybe you are not human after all.”
“Then get this news flash. There are men who don’t find a beautiful, willing woman irresistible.”
“Yes. Those men are called gay. Are you? Did you maybe discover that you were when you failed to respond to Maysoon?”
She knew she was being childish and that there was no way he was gay. But she was floundering.
“I ‘failed to respond’ to Maysoon because I’m one of those men who recognizes black widows and instinctively recoils from said intimacies out of self-preservation. Feeling you’re being set up for long-term use and abuse is far more effective than an ice-cold shower. Of course, in hindsight, the fact that I was not attracted to her from the start should have been the danger bell that sent me running. But as I said, I was stupid, thinking that marriage didn’t have to include sexual compatibility as a necessary ingredi
ent, that beggars shouldn’t be choosers.”
He shook his head on a huff of deep disgust. “Lord, now I know why everyone treated me as if I was a sexual predator. Even knowing what she’s capable of, I never dreamed she’d go as far as slandering herself in a conservative kingdom where a woman’s ‘honor’ is her sexual purity, in order to paint me a darker shade of black.”
That was the main reason Kanza had been forced to believe her half sister. She hadn’t been able to imagine even Maysoon would harm herself this way if it hadn’t been true. And once she’d believed her in this regard, everything else had been swallowed and digested without any thought of scrutiny. But now she couldn’t even consider not believing him. This was the truth.
This meant that everything she’d assumed about him was a lie. Which left her…where?
Nowhere. Nowhere but in the wrong and not too happy about being forced to readjust her view of him.
Which didn’t actually amount to anything. Her opinion had never mattered to anyone—especially not to Aram. All this new information would do now was torment her with guilt over the way she’d treated him. She’d always prided herself on her sense of justice, yet she’d somehow allowed prejudice to override her common sense where he’d been concerned.
The other damage would be to have her rekindled fascination with him unopposed by that buffering detestation. Although it wouldn’t make any difference to him how she changed her opinion of him, she couldn’t even chart the ramifications to herself. There was no way this wouldn’t be a bad thing to her. Very bad.
Snapping out of her reverie, she realized he wasn’t even done “testifying” yet. “Now I come to my deposition about your other accusation—of enlisting the Aal Shalaan Brotherhood’s help in ‘soaring so high.’”
She waved him off, not up to hearing more. “Don’t bother.”
“Oh, I bother. Am bothered. Very much so.”
“Well, that’s your problem. I’ve heard enough.”
“But I haven’t said enough.” He frowned as a shudder shook her. “For a hurricane, it seems you’re not impervious to fellow weather conditions. Let’s get inside, and I’ll field all the curiosity and jealousy you dragged us out here to avoid.”
She shuddered again—and not with cold. She was on the verge of combusting with mortification. “It’s not the cold that’s bothering me.”
He gave her one of those patient looks that said he’d withstand any amount of resistance and debate…until he got his way. Then he suddenly advanced on her.
Trapped with the terrace railings at her back, she couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. She was unable to do anything but stand there helplessly watching him as he neared her in that tranquil prowl, shrugging off his jacket. Then, without touching her, he draped her in it. In what it held of his heat, his scent, his…essence.
For paralyzed moments, feeling as if she was completely enveloped in him, she gazed way up into those preternatural eyes, that slight, spellbinding smile, a quake that originated from a fault line at her very core threatening to break out and engulf her whole.
Before it did, he stepped away, resumed the position she’d told him to maintain as her windshield.
“Now that you’re warm, I don’t have to feel guilty about rambling on. To explain what happened, I have to outline what happened after that showdown at the ball. I basically found myself a pariah in Zohayd, and I very soon was forced to take the decision to leave. I was preparing to when the Aal Shalaan Brotherhood came to me—all but Amjad, of course. They attempted to dissuade me from leaving, assured me they knew me too well to believe Maysoon’s accusations, that they’d resolve everything with their family and Zohaydan society at large if I stayed. They did offer to help me set up my business, to be my partners or to finance me until it took off. But I declined their offer.”
She again tried to interject with her insistence that she didn’t need him to explain. She believed that had been another of Maysoon’s lies. “Aram, I—”
He held up a hand. “Don’t take my word for it. Go ask them. I wanted no handouts, but even more, I wanted nothing to maintain any ties to Zohayd after I decided to sever them all forever. I’d remained in Zohayd in the first place for my father, but I felt I hadn’t done him any good staying, and after Maysoon’s stunt, I knew my presence would cause him nothing but grief.” He paused before letting out his breath on a deep sigh. “I had also given up on Shaheen coming back. It was clear that the reconciliation I’d thought being in Zohayd would facilitate wouldn’t come to pass.”
