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When he awoke it was to see Sienna lying propped on one elbow watching him, her hair spilling down all over the rosy flush of her breasts, and in that hazy moment between sleep and waking he gave an instinctive smile—for this was the place in which he most liked to find himself.
She thought that he looked like a lion who had temporarily sated his huge appetite. A fleeting look of contentment before the relentless and ruthless search for sustenance once more. He drove himself, she had realized, more than most men would even be capable of doing. And, whilst he had a huge capacity for hard work and long hours, she had never seen that weary tinge to his smile before.
She touched his lips with a gentle finger. ‘So, is it jet-lag?’
‘Maybe.’ He kissed the finger. She was so easy. So perceptive. Sometimes it was hard not to tell her the things on his mind, but he rarely gave voice to his innermost thoughts. For a ruler it was preferable to keep your own counsel, but sometimes—in the aftermath of making love to Sienna—he found himself wanting to offload his problems, as other men apparently did. He wondered what had changed, and when it had happened.
Something had crept up on him unawares. Maybe it was like the shadow on your jaw. You didn’t notice it—and it wasn’t until your chin was grazed with the dark rasp of stubble that you remembered it was well on its way to becoming a beard.
Sienna brushed away a lock of the dark hair which had tumbled onto his forehead. Against the white sheets his body looked so golden and erotically dark—like a rich oil painting brought into vibrant and glowing life before her eyes. ‘You don’t usually suffer from jet-lag,’ she observed quietly. ‘No.’
There was silence for a moment, and Sienna knew that she could do one of two things: she could get up and go into the plush kitchen of the hotel suite and make them both a cup of the iced jasmine tea he so loved and which she had learned to love, too. She could put on soft and soothing music and run him a deep, deep bath and then join him in it. And later they would make love again. And again. That was what a mistress would and should do.
Or she could venture onto the always precarious path of finding out just what was going on in that clever, quick mind of his. Six months ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of contemplating it—but hadn’t Hashim been softer of late? Didn’t the enigmatic and formidable side of his nature sometimes seem less dominant, so that sometimes he seemed much more accessible?
‘So, do you want to tell me what’s wrong, or do you want me to run away and do womanly things?’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, you know…tea, a bath, music.’
A smile edged the hardness away from his mouth. ‘No, don’t go. Stay here. You’ve just done the most important thing a woman can do for a man.’
There was another silence, and Sienna tried hard not to read too much into his words. Just because he had sounded uncharacteristically tender it did not mean anything. He was basically applauding her rapidly improving skills as a lover and thus his own skills as an expert tutor—that was all. Or he was being slightly more affectionate because they hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks. There were any number of reasons.
But the shadows were still beneath his eyes; the weariness still outlined his mouth. She thought about what he had taught her, and about her refusal to just jump when he snapped his fingers. Hashim respected that, she knew. What he would not countenance was fear or timidity.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’
He shifted position a little, so that he was lying gazing into the huge green glitter of her almond-shaped eyes. The breasts he had once been so obsessed with now seemed just a part of the beautiful whole of her, but still their pert rosiness reminded him of how she had used them, how that could never be undone—at least not for him.
‘Just tired. It’s nothing,’ he murmured—which was true, though only part of the story. There was growing opposition in Qudamah to his Western lifestyle—a demand from some factions that he settle down and embrace completely the culture of his ancestors. There had been views expressed that his trips abroad should be curtailed, with all his energies focused on his homeland.
And didn’t Sienna herself exemplify everything that the more traditional elements in his country loathed about the West? Hadn’t Abdul-Aziz increasingly been hinting that the liaison was damaging his credibility? That things would blow up if some resolution were not reached? And Hashim knew what that resolution should be.
‘It’s nothing,’ he repeated firmly.
Sienna did her best not to let her face crumple with disappointment. She had asked him and he had closed up—she could tell from the shuttering of his face. Well, that was up to him. It had been her choice to ask and his not to tell her. Asking was one thing, and perfectly acceptable. Prying was something completely different.
