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8
CONTROL MATTERED TO ELON. Discipline. Ruthless order. The one time he’d let his guard down had been a disaster, and he’d sworn never to repeat that mistake. Falling in love with Laurie had caught him off guard. He hadn’t known what was happening, he hadn’t understood the impact her soft temperament was having on him, so he’d been powerless to shield himself against it.
Not anymore – never again.
He shielded himself as a matter of course, ensuring short, functional relationships, keeping things physical, refusing to get to know the women he slept with beyond the bare minimum.
The fact he was engaged to Ella shouldn’t change his modus operandi. The fact she was sweet and had been badly hurt, the fact he found her words mesmerising and wanted to understand everything about why she felt as she did, only served as a warning to adhere more strictly to his personal code of behaviour.
She heardthe door opening and immediately her body responded, her pulse firing into overdrive, her heart thumping at the prospect of his possession of her body, even as her heart splintered apart. Every night he came to her bedroom late like this. There was no attempt to conceal his purpose. No window-dressing of dinner first, conversation, flattery, romance. It was sex – not perfunctory, but purposeful. Necessary. She lived for this short hour, but she hated it too. She hated it for the very physical reminder of how little she meant to her future husband. She was a body, that was all. A means of begetting an heir.
And once they had their heir?
Once her pregnancy was confirmed?
He’d no longer come to see her, and what would she live for then?
Their child, she consoled herself with, in the rational hours of the day. But at night, she knew it would never be enough to make her whole. Having felt the pleasures of Elon’s touch, having known his possession and heat, she couldn’t imagine a life without. Living in this great palace with him somewhere distant under the same roof, and no idea how he was spending his time, and with whom?
It had been ten days since they’d come to his palace, and every night except one he’d come to her room, made love to her and then left, always with the parting remark to ‘sleep, little one’. Didn’t he know how difficult that was?
She turned reluctantly, never quite able to brace for the sight of him. This was no different. Elon Katabi swept into her room, his black eyes smouldering as they devoured her. There was no other word for it. He looked at her as though he’d been trying to see her all day, his eyes moving from her silky hair to her shoulders to her hips, down to her bare feet, then back up again, and all the while he stalked across the room, so that by the time his gaze returned to her face he was sweeping her into his arms, his mouth seeking hers.
A low groan escaped her as they kissed, her hands lifting to his shoulders, pulling him closer even when she desperately wanted to push him away. She wore only a cotton nightgown and he stripped it from her easily, lifting her and wrapping her legs around his waist, carrying her towards the bed as though she weighed nothing. Seconds after laying her down in the centre, he was naked, his eyes still boring into hers as though he was trying to convey something to her, but it was nothing she understood. His fingers weaved through hers as his knee parted her legs, making room for him.
Many times, after they’d made love, she later wished she’d rejected him. Not because she didn’t want him but because she wanted to hurt him. To show him she wasn’t so completely at his mercy. And yet evidently she was, because she moaned his name and lifted her hips, needing something of him, even this – just a physical sign that in some small way, for this small period of time, he needed her too.
She didn’t realiseshe was crying afterwards, until Elon ran a finger over her cheek, capturing a tear with a frown on his handsome features. Mortified, she brushed his hand away and pressed her palms to her face; they were wet with salty proof of her emotions.
“Azeezi? What is it?”
She didn’t answer him.
“Have I hurt you?” He moved off her as he asked the question, looking over her body with an expression on his face that robbed her of breath. Guilt, anger, disbelief, concern. He stared at her body, the dark emotions in his features only intensifying as his eyes landed on the small abrasions that always accompanied their coming together. Her skin marked easily, that was all. She shook her head, but another tear slid from her eye.
“Damn it, Ella. What the hell is it? Has something happened?”
How could she answer that? Nothing had changed. Nothing would ever change. She’d made this deal and it wasn’t his problem that she saw now the disastrous implications for herself.
“I’m fine,” she lied, businesslike, pulling away from him and standing, moving across the large bedroom, towards the ensuite bathroom. At the door, she turned to face him. “Just tired. I need to rest.”
She spun away before she could see his reaction.
For the tenthtime in half as many minutes, Elon consulted his wristwatch. It was almost midnight. Soon it would be too late to go to her – for only the second night since she’d come to the palace.
His body yearned for hers, he ached to feel her, to kiss her, to touch her. He ached to see her and hear her, to make her smile, to make her cry out with pleasure, to feel her frantic release and slow piecing back together again afterwards, but every time he thought about entering her private suite, he remembered the way tears had fallen silently from her eyes the night before, and something stopped him.
Marrying her was a convenient arrangement. No part of this was meant to hurt her – he needed to slow things down, to give her time to adjust to her new life. He needed to put his own selfish needs aside for a time, in the interest of what was best for Ella. If only he knew what the hell that was.
Three nightswithout Elon had made Ella simultaneously furious and desperate. She’d caught a glimpse of him earlier that day – he’d been walking across one of the many formal courtyards that surrounded this palace, accompanied by several dignitaries, obviously deep in conversation. She’d stayed exactly where she was, frozen to the spot, unable to breathe, the force of seeing him again after nights without him making her body tremble with a sheer physical hunger she couldn’t control.
He’d passed by her though, too deep in his own conversations to recognise that she was there. Thank goodness.
A conversation with her brother later that same day had only added to her sense of frustration. Tasim hadn’t simply called; he’d insisted on FaceTiming her, so she’d had to work so much harder to keep upbeat, to show him how happy she was.
Ella could live with this deep sense of pain, but her brother could never know she wasn’t happy. She wouldn’t put him through yet another form of worry. Worse, she wouldn’t put him in a position of feeling he had to intervene on her behalf, to bring her back to Mosar rather than marry Elon. She knew what their countries had been through, no way could she risk making it worse.
Ella lay in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling, a beast of hope still living within her, until time stretched and it became obvious he wasn’t going to come. Again.
