AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Yes, I believe we were fated to meet, fated to be together,’ he told her raggedly. ‘You really do love me?’
‘You’re so very easy to love,’ she murmured, her heart lurching at the longing, the need for reassurance that she could see in his beautiful eyes, this man, who had known neither the love of his mother nor the love of his first wife, who did not even understand or fully believe that hecouldinspire love in any woman.
His essential humility had fooled her into crediting that he was merely staying married to her to preserve the status quo and keep his heirs in Zenara. How much blinder could she have been not to recognise that a man who still held her all night even when there was no prospect of sexual satisfaction had to trulycareabout her?
‘So at the hospital when you said, “There is only one you”—’
‘I was admitting that I loved you and that you are irreplaceable,’ he proffered tautly. ‘I was so scared that something would go wrong, that the staff would automatically prioritise the heir to the throne’s survival over yours...should there have been that horrible choice. We could, conceivably, have other children but I could not replace you, the woman I love, with anyone. I have never known such fear.’
‘Oh, Rafiq,’ she sighed, wrapping both arms around him, rejoicing in the strength of his tall, well-built physique. ‘If only you had told me sooner how you felt.’
‘My mother and Fadith showed me that women don’t appreciate men who get too emotional,’ he confided in a tight undertone. ‘I didn’t want you to think less of me. I didn’t want to appear weak in your eyes. Weakness is not an attractive trait and I was trying to win your love.’
‘And all the time you alreadyhadmy love,’ she whispered with a huge smile bright with happiness. ‘Just as I couldn’t recognise your feelings, you couldn’t recognise mine.’
‘I’ve never been in love before, only in lust, and that only briefly and never with anyone who mattered to me beyond that level. But it was different with you from the start. I began falling for you the minute you told me about the guy who wore eyeliner because nobody ever chats to me about stuff like that,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘I loved how natural you were with me. I didn’t want to tell you who I was. I didn’t want to walk away from you, but I wasn’t free to do what I wanted. I had promised my uncle that I would remarry so that Zayn could have another few years of freedom before being forced to marry and procreate for my benefit. And in the light of that promise, it would have been wrong for me to seek to see you again.’
‘And yet you still went to the trouble of finding out where I lived. How did you find out?’
‘I suspect that someone at the rental agency you worked for was bribed. I didn’t ask for the grubby details. I just wanted the information even though I knew I was only tempting myself with what I couldn’t have, because seeing you again would only have made the idea of marrying some other woman more of a nightmare than it already was.’
Rafiq freed her and strode over to open the safe in the wall, extracting a small box from it. ‘I was saving this for your twenty-second birthday next week but now seems more like the right moment,’ he breathed with a flashing smile as he handed the box to her.
Izzy lifted the lid on a glittering diamond eternity ring, and he removed it from its velvet mount and eased it onto her finger with an air of satisfaction. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered appreciatively. ‘I love you so much.’
‘You fill my heart to overflowing,’ Rafiq breathed, stroking his fingers down the side of her heart-shaped face, making her shiver. ‘You are everything I never dared to dream of in a woman and a wife. You make me amazingly happy and for the first time I am at peace with the future, content to become King when it is the right time, in no hurry to rush ahead and miss or waste a single moment of being with you and my children.’
Izzy gave him an intoxicated smile and watched the sunlight sparkle a rainbow on her ring. ‘You’re really very romantic.’
‘No, I’m not,’ he protested instantly, a tinge of colour scoring his high cheekbones. ‘Not at all.’
‘Nobody but me needs to know what you’re like behind closed doors,’ she pointed out softly.
Rafiq brought his mouth down hungrily on hers. ‘I’m starving for you!’ he groaned, instantly breaking away from her again. ‘But we should wait until the doctor has advised us that—’
‘Well, we still have a few weeks to wait,’ Izzy informed him ruefully, shimmying out of her fancy frock with a tantalising smile to expose curves embellished by silk and lace lingerie. ‘But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do other things,’ she pointed out shamelessly.
Rafiq hovered for a split second as if he couldn’t quite believe that he was allowed to touch her again and then he stalked forward and lifted her into his arms to kiss her with fierce urgency. ‘All those nights we couldn’t.’
‘All those nights,’ she agreed on the back of a sigh of recollection. ‘But you held me close anyway and I really loved that about you. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d shifted me back to my own room.’
‘I like being close to you even if I can’t make love to you,’ he breathed raggedly as he shrugged free of his jacket and tore off his tie with flattering enthusiasm. ‘And by the way, you don’thaveyour own room any longer.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘How don’t I?’
‘Why would you need your own room? We’ll turn it into a dressing room for you. From now on, you will always share my bed. I’ve got used to having company,’ he confided teasingly.
‘I suppose I’ll always have the sofa to escape to when you annoy me,’ Izzy told him playfully.
‘And I’ll snatch you off it again,’ he promised, amusement dancing in his eyes, a new relaxation in his lean, darkly handsome features as he feasted his beautiful eyes on her smiling face. ‘I love you, Izzy. I love you like I never thought I could love anyone...’
Silence crept in, broken only by occasional murmurs as discarded garments fell to the floor and they rediscovered each other and the passion that had first brought them together in a blaze of glory that consumed them until the real world crept back in. Izzy realised that it was feeding time for the twins and she needed to put some clothes on again. The buoyant happiness that had flooded her peaked as Rafiq threw on jeans and watched her with loving admiration brightening his keen gaze.
‘You and our daughters have become the very centre of my world,’ he murmured with satisfaction.
EPILOGUE
TWOYEARSLATER, Izzy hurriedly clasped her son Nazir to her bosom and tugged her playful daughters into the lift with her, one after another.
