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She turned to face him fully, the flickering torchlights bringing his face in and out of focus. Light and shadow. “I was just berating myself on what might have happened if you didn’t use a condom.”
“Any self-recrimination is totally unnecessary. I always use protection.”
She blew out a breath. “I just didn’t want to end up like my mother.”
“Oh?”
She swallowed at his intensity, like he knew her muttered attempt at an explanation was vitally important. She couldn’t exactly back out now. Her eyes holding his she said quietly, “Stuck with a violent alcoholic.”
Chapter Six
Hamid could have been struck with a sledgehammer in the gut and it still wouldn’t have hurt half as much as what Holly admitted to him.
What the actual fuck?Yes, he might like his liquor, but it would never make him violent toward anyone, least of all a woman he cared about.
What sort of a life had she lived to believe every male would have cause to become violent when they drank?
“I promise you right now I would never lay a hand on you in violence.”
Though he couldn’t promise she wouldn’t enjoy a stinging smack on the ass when they made love. He had plenty of floggers, amongst other things, where they could experiment and see how far she could be pushed. There was a wildness inside her that begged for something more than vanilla sex.
His dick stirred at the thought and he withheld a groan. He’d always loved sex but being with Holly was taking that to a whole new level. Having her beneath him, on top, sideward, and taking her from behind seemed to take up everyone one of his brain cells lately.
She sighed softly. “Promises are just meaningless words. It’s actions that count.”
“Then give me a chance to prove I’m a good guy.” Hamid ignored his erection and held her stare. “I feel terrible knowing what your mother—whatyou—must have went through. Just please don’t tar all men with the same brush as your father. Yes, I enjoy a drop of arrack. But it doesn’t make me a bad man.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I’m not sure it makes you a good man, either.”
“I can live without arrack.” The truth was an epiphany. An incredible realization he couldn’t deny. He could live without arrak. But he couldn’t live without Holly. Not right now.
She blinked. “You believe that, don’t you?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“Well…I’ll believe it when I see it.”
It was odd the tenderness filling him from the inside out. If it was the last thing he did it would be to prove to her that he was a man of his word. Someone trusting who she could count on.
Unlike her father.
He lifted a hand and stroked one side of her face, being mindful of her sunburn. “What do your parents think of you traveling the Middle East by yourself?”
She closed her eyes momentarily. “They would probably be shocked if they were alive. My mom died of cancer, my dad of a heart attack a few months later. But I believe my mother would have been proud of me and my independence.” Her smile quivered. “She was a broken woman in the end, a shell of the woman I imagine she once was.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, little wonder she had issues. Her parents might be dead but her memories of them were very much alive. He had no doubt those memories were sharper because her mom and dad weren’t around. There was nothing quite like clarity of recall when that was all one had to hold onto.
He should know.
He still remembered his older brother’s charismatic energy like he was standing in the tent right now looking down at them, a sneer on his lips. Ardon had never forgiven Hamid for their mother’s death after she’d died from complications giving birth to him.
A part of Hamid had believed him. It wasn’t like their dad negated it. He’d been as cold to Hamid as he’d been warm to Ardon. The golden child who could do no wrong. Not even Hamid’s various nannies had been able to comfort him in that regard.
At least, not until he’d been somewhere between a man and a teenager, and one young, pretty nanny in particular had shown him a comfort he’d never soon forgotten. Sex had become his buffer against the guilt that plagued him. It hadn’t taken long for him to discover that liquor dissolved the guilt even more, at least for a short time.
Waking up was the worst. Because then all the self-disgust and guilt he carried became ten times worse, and he’d have to go through the whole scenario again of sex and drinking just to forget and numb the mental pain.
But though he’d been tempted a time or two, he’d never touched drugs to alleviate his anguish. He might be known as the life of the party, but he’d never be known as a drug addict.
