AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I understand you are fond of swimming. I thought it would make you more comfortable while you are here.”
It was such a thoughtful gesture that she almost didn’t realize he’d admitted to knowing such a detail about her. “How do you know I swim?” She pounced, not allowing herself to feel flattered in the slightest by his attention.
He moved his hand from her back and stepped away, leaving her instantly cold. “I know everything about you, Phoebe. Your class schedule, your friends, your afterhours activities. Everything.”
Phoebe felt a strange trilling in her chest. “That’s incredibly invasive,” she muttered, thinking back to her time at school, and then university. Wondering what details he knew? Did he know everything? Did he understand her? Hope burst in her chest, at the possibility that finally someone might understand what she’d been through. But it was quashed, quickly enough.
Hakim’s eyes narrowed, and from his expression alone, she was left with the impression that he found her comprehension skills to be lacking. “You are a very wealthy young heiress under my protection. Did you think I would send you out in the world without appropriate precautions being taken?”
“What precautions?” She demanded, aghast.
He waved a tanned hand through the air. “Unimportant. Not your concern.”
“Wrong!” She contradicted forcefully. It occurred to her to wonder where her argumentative nature had come from, for certainly she knew better than to bait a man such as Hakim. A man such as Etienne had been. “It is absolutely my concern. Being the step-daughter of a man you happened to know does not give you any right over me.”
He looked at her as though she’d picked up a holy book and lit fire to it with her words. “The man was my godfather, and a friend to me, and to my father. I consider my relationship with Etienne to be a sacred one, and I do not appreciate you speaking of it so flippantly. As for my rights over you, Phoebe, while you are in Mehran, they are absolute.”
“You have an inflated sense of your own power, Hakim. I suppose that comes from being Lord and Master of a country, and raised from birth to know people will fall at your feet. But I am not one of your subjects. I do not do what you say, now or ever.”
Hakim was renowned for his even temperament. He was an intelligent, educated, fair-minded ruler of the desert; but Phoebe Douglas-Cauve managed to bring out the worst in him. With an effort, he reined his anger in, but it cost him. His chest was rising and falling with the effort, his eyes darker than their usual shade of grey. “But you are a guest in my country now, Phoebe, and you will not find it easy to refuse my wishes. I suggest you do not try to question my authority, or you will come to regret it.”
Phoebe gripped the window ledge, her face as pale as the sand beyond the palace. She was no longer listening to Hakim who stood before her. No. She was hearing Etienne, his voice coming to her from the past, with all the intensity as if he was speaking to her now.
The memory that came to her was so sharp and so clear that she could smell the leather of Etienne’s belt as he pulled it from his expensive, tailored pants. He’d been at Parliament that day, though it was a Saturday, he’d had meetings with the prime minister that couldn’t be delayed. The meetings had not gone well. Despite the fact Phoebe was only thirteen, and had nothing to do with the matter he’d been fighting to get introduced to parliament, Etienne had been furious. And Phoebe had been there.
“Get down here now,” he’d bellowed, his words slightly slurred by the vodka he would have consumed on the drive home.
Phoebe had hidden. She’d cowered in her ensuite. Only one week into her summer holidays, and she’d recognized his tempers and violence had increased exponentially.
She’d counted to keep calm. It had taken him seventy three seconds to find her, and when he did, he was almost robotic in his anger. He had closed the door with a lock, and pulled her from the floor.
“Please, Etienne,” she’d begged, knowing what was coming. He’d shoved her face into the glass of the shower, and kept her pinned there with one hand, while he freed his belt with the other and brought it down on her back, again and again; then, her legs, until she was crying out, begging for him to stop.
“You are a guest under my roof, Phoebe. The illegitimate daughter of a slut and a whore, you deserve nothing but to be thrown out onto the street. My authority over you is absolute, do you understand? Without me, you’d turn out just like your mother. A slut. A young slut. Do not question my authority again, Phoebe.”
He turned her around and for good measure, kept her arm behind her back, twisting it so painfully she was sure he might break it. He had only broken her bones on a handful of occasions, usually when he had become so enraged that his control snapped completely. Accidents that could easily be explained by a teenager’s carelessness, leaving no raised eyebrows in the hospitals, but plenty of marks on Phoebe’s soul.
“Please, stop,” she whispered again.
He had, when his strength had run out, his anger spent. He’d lurched from the room, his eyes bloodshot, his hair strangely perfect. The details she recalled were startling in their clarity.
Shaking, she turned to face him. Hakim, though surprised by her pallor, did not visibly react.
“I do not bow to the authority of any man,” she said fiercely. “You may be King of Mehran, but you are not God.” She glared up at him. “As far as I am concerned, we are equals, and I would thank you to remember it while I am here.”
It was a brave speech to make, for she was obviously terrified. The idea of anyone being equal to Hakim would have been amusing, in different circumstances. Though he understood her upbringing had exposed her to the idea of all men being equal, Mehran was a country that thrived on class. And at the very top, stood Hakim, inspiring the awe and obedience and adoration of his entire population. But her stubborn delivery of this notion did not amuse him now. The undercurrent he felt pulsing from Phoebe was serious. Very serious indeed.
Fascinated, he found himself backing away from her. It occurred to him then, that despite his surveillance of Phoebe, and the invisible protection detail he’d sent to tail her, he was missing something vitally important. There was no mistaking the abject terror in her eyes. She looked as though she was about to snap.
“Phoebe,” he said, in the same tone of voice he might use to calm a fretting mare in his stables. “You are upset.”
“Yes!” She spat, running a hand through her silky blonde hair. “I’m tired, and I’m upset, and I’m sick of jumping through hoops for you! I don’t know why you hate me so much! You know nothing about me.”
“I know everything about you,” he reminded her quietly, watching, transfixed, as her pulse seemed to beat like a butterfly at the base of her neck. Though he now doubted his knowledge was absolute, he assured himself he knew the most important parts. And what he did know, he didn’t much care for.
“No, believe me, Hakim, you don’t.” She turned her anguished eyes away from him, looking back down at the pool. “You, of all people, don’t know anything about me. Not really.” She braced herself against the window sill, feeling sensations of fear and grief that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.
“I certainly do not know why you have… what is the expression? Flown off the handle? Like this.” He was used to women who were demure and respectful. Even the Americans he had dated had been awed by his position. Her lack of respect was novel.
