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He st
illed, holding the sponge at the top of her arm. “No. Remember, I was engaged to be married. Anyone who jeopardised that would have garnered the same reaction.”
She bit down on her lip and nodded. “How could you do that?”
“Ours was not a normal engagement,” he said softly. “I felt I owed my betrothed my faithfulness only once we pledged our marital vows.”
“I don’t mean to her.” Sarah swallowed. “How could you be with me and not tell me who you were? Or tell me about this woman – what is her name?”
“Charlotte,” he said quietly. “At first I presumed you knew. In my country, and certainly in more cosmopolitan cities, I am recognisable. By the time I realised you didn’t know me, I had become addicted to you. I thought the truth would ruin it.”
The smile that brushed across her lips was pained. “I wish you weren’t royal,” she said, the words half-swallowed by the water, so that he had to ask her to repeat them.
“I wish you weren’t royal,” she said again, with more intention. “I wish you had been free to stay. To be with me.”
He ran the sponge over her arm and then brought it around her front, to wash the flesh beneath her breasts slowly. “I did too, at the time.”
It was something. A small admittance that hinted at a reticence to end what they’d been.
“My mother’s death splintered our family. I could not do so further.”
She nodded. But the pain was still there. Pain at having loved him and found him gone one day. Pain at the discovery that he was a Prince, and that she’d never really known the man she thought she’d loved. Pain at knowing how impossible their relationship was, even when it was all she wanted.
Sarah remembered his pain, though. The way he had been so broken, despite the fact it had been a long illness and she had felt much pain at the end. I was her favourite, he’d said one night, smiling fondly. I look like my father, you see, and she told me once that she’d fallen in love at first sight only twice. Once with him, and again with me.
“I wish you’d come back sooner,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulders. “Or that you were back for longer.” It was a tired admission. One she wouldn’t have made if she hadn’t spent an evening and night being ravaged by this man.
He studied her in the reflection and shifted a little in the bath. She was exhausted. Despite his earlier promise, a desire to see her sleep – to take care of her – filled him. He reached for the tap and pressed the dial to turn it off, then held her against his chest. Her eyes were heavy. Though she was trying, valiantly, to keep them open, he saw the moment they dropped and did not lift.
He held her sleeping form against his body, watching her in the window and feeling her breaths on his chest. He couldn’t have said how long he watched her for, only that the water began to cool and her flesh did likewise, so that he stood and lifted her in one movement, stepping carefully from the enormous tub and holding her tight to his chest. She shifted a little against him, murmuring something he didn’t quite catch.
Covered in droplets of water, he laid her down on his bed before retrieving a towel. “I’m okay,” she murmured, pushing up to sitting. But her eyes were so heavy, he made a noise low in his throat and continued to dry her, rubbing gently, all over. Then, he lifted her once more, carrying her to a guest room and placing her in an enormous bed. He stared at her long and hard then walked from the room.
*
The morning broke in a dazzling array of gold and peach, but Sarah couldn’t appreciate it. Her body felt different. Sore, but in the best possible way. She stretched her toes, pointing them downwards, and froze as they connected with a warm, hair-roughened calf. Her stomach swirled and she jerked her head to face Syed.
He was still asleep, his handsome face in a repose.
What the hell had she done?
A small moan of anguish escaped her lips as she remembered all of the ways they’d made love the night before. The way he’d kissed her all over. Washed her as though he loved her, dried her gently.
Would it take her another five years to get over him?
God, she was an idiot. Why had she come?
Not for money. Never for money.
She’d come because she hadn’t been able to refuse. She’d been weak, and the pain of never having him again was going to wound her more than she could have imagined.
She had to leave, and she had to do it before they made love again. Slowly, carefully, she pushed her feet out of the bed, placing them on the thick carpet just as his hand reached out and snaked around her wrist.
“Good morning.”
His voice was so sexy first thing in the day, still roughened by sleep. She forced a tight smile to her face. “Hi.”
He sat up, the sheet falling low across his hips, his torso tanned and sculpted by muscles and ridges. Her eyes dipped to his narrow waist and then she looked away quickly.
