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He looked at her with a lazy smile. “Beautiful is not a word often applied to me.”
“I’m surprised,” she responded, her breathing heavy, as she pushed at his shirt, needing to see his body.
Sleeping with her husband was something that Phoebe desperately needed, and even her frustration at the limitations of their relationship didn’t rob her of that desire. When he took her, as his wife, and made love to her, something clicked deep in the fiber of her heart. A universal and forever kind of change, as though her biochemistry had been altered, and now, she was permanently assigned to Hakim Al Meshuda, Sheikh of Mehran and King of her heart.
Neither of them slept well that night, though. Phoebe was exhausted, but she couldn’t relax. Her body was satiated, her needs were met, but her mind couldn’t stop throwing questions at her. Questions big enough to keep her from sleeping.
Like: Could she forgive him for not listening to her? Could she find a way to make him understand the truth about Etienne? Could she forgive herself for wanting him, even though he didn’t listen to her? Would she feel happy and whole when they weren’t making love, ever again?
Questions without answers.
She lay perfectly still, staring across his darkened suite, feeling like she’d signed herself up for a strange, parallel kind of existence. One where emotions were kept at bay, and appearances and the appearance of morality mattered most.
Oh, but she loved him.
It was the one troubling point she kept coming back to.
For no matter how frustrated she was by him, she knew that her love was real, and it burned her to accept her own heart’s treacherous choice.
She thumped the pillow and moved to lie on her back.
Hakim rolled over, staring at her profile. “Are you okay?”
Phoebe turned her face, to stare at him in the pale moonlight cast through the window. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He nodded, and closed his eyes. She continued to stare at the ceiling.
Phoebe wasn’t sure what she’d expected. A resolution of sorts. A patching up of their differences. Something. Anything. A brick to break in the dam they’d erected.
But, two months after their beautiful, picture perfect wedding, their marriage was anything but.
She woke up, one morning in early August, with a sense of restlessness. It was the day she had planned to return to London. Before. Before Hakim. Before they’d made love. Before she’d lost her innocence. Before she’d agreed to marry him.
She stretched in the empty bed, absentmindedly reaching out for his pillow. It still had the indent of his dark head. She pulled it towards herself and held it over her face, inhaling his scent.
With a moan of frustration, she threw it clear across the room.
Two months.
Two months of marriage. Two months of soul-destroying sex, and nothing else. Nothing. No more tete a tete as they endeavored to form an actual relationship. Just pure, animalistic possession, in the small hours of the morning, when both were too weakened by sleep and the magic of starlight to resist. And no pregnancy. She had tried not to think about it. But night after night, they’d made love. And yet, no baby had found its way to her belly. She wasn’t sure why she had become so fixated on the fact. After all, a baby was a complication that would forever bind her to Hakim. Even more than their marriage did. But the knowledge that she had not conceived felt like another death knell to their future.
Phoebe’s morning seemed to drag, and by lunch time, she was impatient for a change. She looked down at her day planner with a tight frown on her lips. Her project in London was continuing apace, and soon, very soon, she would need to return to oversee the last few details. But for now, it was more or less building itself. Especially since she’d appointed the CEO of the whole operation.
She lifted her hands above her head and stifled a yawn.
Last night had been wonderful. Another perfect coming together of two hungry bodies. But, once spent, their passion had
evaporated, leaving two virtual strangers on a very expensive and expansive mattress.
“Narina,” she called to one of her attendants. “I would like to go for a ride. Would you phone ahead to the stables?”
How quickly she’d adjusted to a life of command, she thought, moments later, while she zipped up her knee high riding boots. She fastened the small cap to her head and checked her white shirt was tucked into the jodhpurs she wore. Hakim might not approve, but riding was one of the few activities that brought Phoebe pleasure. She was not prepared to surrender it to him.
He had grudgingly given her a horse of her own, a month earlier. Fatima was a beautiful chestnut mare, strong but sedate. It had taken Phoebe some time to break her in, but now, they rode as one.
She grabbed her riding crop from her wardrobe and stalked out of their apartment, moving swiftly through the corridors.
No one looked at her now.
