‘Y-yes,’ whispered Sorrel, but there was something fierce—almost savage—about his dark features which made him look almost like a stranger.
‘I think you’re wearing too much,’ he murmured. ‘I think we both are. Ah, the sweet pleasures of disrobing! Shall I take this off?’ His finger brushed over the diaphanous material of her nightgown.
‘Y-yes,’ she said again—and wondered where that über-confident Sorrel had gone—the one who had seduced him with such panache. Had the magnitude of their wedding day somehow inhibited her?
Laying her on the bed, he peeled her nightgown off and then began to remove his ceremonial robes. He had seen most of her body before—though never completely bare, always insisting on some wispy little thong or a pair of French knickers being worn, as if to conform to some ancient idea of decorum. But—apart from that night in Paris—there had only ever been one occasion when Sorrel had seen Malik partially unclothed.
It had been when she was still a teenager, and she’d come across him sword-fighting in the courtyard, with one of the grooms. The sight of his bare, hard torso—sheened with sweat and grimy with dust—had imprinted itself on her mind and fuelled her fantasies for years to follow.
But now, as he removed his robes, nothing could have prepared her for the magnificence of his naked body—with all its daunting strength and latent power.
In the candlelight his honed flesh gleamed, all golden and shadow, and Sorrel’s fears multiplied. She wanted to tell him that she had been acting out when she’d said she wanted a lover—and that the last thing she had expected was for him to call her bluff. She wanted to say something as corny as Please be gentle with me—but she didn’t even know whether he’d hear. Because now his face looked as if it was a tight, hard mask—it was if he wasn’t really there with her, or maybe that he just didn’t see her.
‘Malik!’ she gasped, as he climbed onto the bed and their warm flesh met.
‘Sorrel.’ He began to stroke her body, holding himself in check as his fingers began to tiptoe over her soft flesh. ‘Sorrel,’ he said again, more fiercely this time.
As a lover he was textbook perfect. He knew when to incite and when to retreat. The first thrust hurt—but that seemed to please him, for he gave a low laugh of almost indulgent pleasure. And afterwards it didn’t hurt at all—he made sure of that. How perfectly he built the wall of desire, brick by brick, his lips in her hair and over her breast and in her mouth. She felt his body hardening inside hers, and suddenly she could bear it no longer and tumbled over the edge, her body convulsing over and over again.
‘Malik, oh, Malik,’ she groaned.
Sorrel was no stranger to orgasm—Malik had made sure of that too—but this time was different. This time it felt as though she would never be the same person again afterwards. Perhaps because his own sharp release came almost immediately, and she heard the ragged groan which sounded as if it had been ripped from the very core of his being.
Afterwards he withdrew, and kissed her hair and stroked her damp brow, but it was the same kind of perfunctory kiss with which he’d sealed their engagement, and which told her his thoughts were elsewhere. As if he were elsewhere. He rolled away from her and onto his back. Suddenly the space between them on the divan might have been a million miles. Was this what happened afterwards? thought Sorrel with a newly rising tide of panic. Did the joining of their bodies cease once they had been greedily fed with satisfaction—and why had it left her feeling empty inside?
Because he doesn’t love you as you long to be loved, as you love him. And being Malik—hard, precise and perfectionist Malik—he wouldn’t go through the pantomime of saying the words unless he really meant them.
Sharply, Sorrel bit her lip—tasting the sudden salt taste of blood and blinking rapidly in an attempt to keep her tears at bay, wondering if he could hear the tiny shuttering sound her eyes made.
Malik lay staring up at the ceiling, but he saw nothing of the dancing light show provided by the guttering candle flames. He thought of the long road which had carried him to where he found himself now. Brought to the palace by a white-faced midwife who had heard rumours of his progeny, taken in by the Sheikh but brought up by servants, never acknowledged as his heir until soon before his death.
For Malik, life had been a series of tests, of hoops to jump through. For most he had been guided by example—on others he’d relied on instinct. But relationships were the most tricky of all—and never more so than with Sorrel. Yet just for now all those minutes and months and years which had ticked by to bring him to just this point culminated in a perfect moment of peace. And he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
She lay, frozen with disbelief, until the soft and steady breathing of the man who lay beside her told her that she was not mistaken.
Malik was asleep!
The emotions which had been simmering away inside her for so long finally bubbled up to the surface and she felt tears beginning to slip from the corners of her closed eyes. She swallowed them down, but she could feel them rising again—like a rock pool when the tide started to pour in. In a minute she would wake him—and could she bear to have Malik find her crying on her wedding night, demanding to know why?
Sliding from the bed, she shivered a little as her bare feet touched the marble floor. Unaccustomed to her nakedness, nonetheless she did not dare risk pulling her discarded nightdress from the mattress and waking him.
But at least the night air was warm, and she blew out a couple of candles along the way, before going over to stand by the long windows. Their shutters were open to the beautiful palace gardens, and the moon was big and fat and full in the sky—but then, the wedding had been planned around the glory of its cycle, since a full moon was considered an auspicious omen in the Kharastani culture.
Honeymoon.
Oh, how the word mocked her! The tears rose in the back of her throat and she choked them back, but it was too late—for the dark figure on the bed stirred.
For a moment Malik experienced the split-second of disorientation which came between waking and sleeping. His senses were keen and ever-alert—he had spent long nights of vigil in the desert as part of his passage from boy to man. But snakes and scorpions and the crackle of a larger predator in the distance were threats he could deal with.
His new wife crying on her wedding night was not.
In the half-light, he frowned before he spoke. ‘I believe that many women cry after the first time. They say that orgasm is a little death.’
Sorrel didn’t turn, just nodded her head so violently that her hair fell all over her face. Her shoulders were shaking. ‘Yes, that must be it!’ she sobbed. ‘It must be a reaction to sex! Because that’s what’s important—isn’t it, Malik?’
Malik was outraged. ‘That is rich, coming from you!’ He sat up, the rumpled sheet falling around his hips, to see Sorrel carved in moonlight, her womanly curves like a silvered violin and her hair streaming down her back like white gold. But he hardened his heart against the dip in her back, the way her bottom curved into such perfect symmetry.
He spoke quickly and asked the question—before she could turn round and bewitch him with those big blue eyes. Even though the room was dimly lit there seemed to be no known antidote to her particular brand of enchantment.
‘You are unhappy?’ he grated.
‘Yes!’
‘Perhaps you regret having married me?’
‘Yes, Malik!’ she cried again, and the words broke loose from the dam inside her. ‘Yes, I do!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOR minutes there was silence—broken only by the fading sounds of Sorrel’s crying, gradually becoming more muffled as her sobs grew less. She could hear the flick of a match and see a sudden increase of light as he must have lit a candle behind her. And because she couldn’t keep standing with her back to him she turned round, expecting the fury on his face but still recoiling from its dark ferocity.
‘Wouldn’t it have made more sense to have thoug
ht about this before the wedding?’ he snapped.
Now Sorrel felt even more vulnerable—naked, and facing the contempt which radiated from the powerful frame in waves so strong that she could almost see them. Sucking in a breath which still shuddered from her tears, she walked over to one of the low divans, where the golden lace veil she had worn for her wedding lay, and she picked it up and tied it around herself, knotting it like a sarong.
‘I thought…I thought…’
‘No—that’s just it!’ he stormed. ‘You didn’t think! If you had these kind of…doubts—’ he fixed on the word exasperatedly, wanting to bang his fists in frustration against the wall ‘—then you should have shared them with me!’
She wanted to say that it had been difficult to share anything with him when they had been living on opposite sides of the palace and kept apart by convention. But even if they had been together would she have had the nerve to tell him how she really felt? Since when had Malik ever invited her confidences?
Malik’s mind was racing. He had chosen Sorrel as his bride despite the fact that she was not native to his land—because part of him admired her adaptable character which her unique upbringing had helped forge. But when it came to the crunch she was not a Kharastani—and she was not constrained by the deeply-engrained values of that land.
Whereas a Kharastani would sooner walk barefoot over the burning desert sands than give up on her marriage—why, a Western woman would terminate such a sacred union as ruthlessly as the falcon swooped down to seize its bait.
As Sheikh—and as a relatively new and untested sheikh—it was his role to lead by example. What a fool he would look if his marriage was dissolved before the rose petals had been swept from the palace courtyard.
But Malik knew better than anyone that the only way to defeat fear was to confront it. Face your own worst nightmare and come through it and what else could possibly hurt you? At least, that was the theory.
‘So you want to end the marriage?’ he demanded.
Sorrel gasped. Was that how disposable an asset he saw her? ‘Do you?’
‘Of course I don’t want to end the marriage!’ he raged. ‘My reputation will be in complete tatters if I do!’
The hope which had flared in her heart died a spectacular death, and Sorrel bit her lip. ‘Well, we can’t have that, can we?’
His instinct was to lash back at her verbally, to hide his hurt and his outrage that she should speak to him in such a way. But behind her sarcasm he heard the tremor of her own pain, and he stared at her—feeling as out of his depth as a non-swimmer who had just been hurled into the watery stew of the Balsora Sea in winter time.
Because Malik knew little about women—save for the very obvious stuff about how to please them in bed. The servants who had tended him during his growing up years at the palace had wanted to adore him, but the proud little boy had always kept himself apart—had held something back. Perhaps it was being the product of a union about which there had always been whispers and rumours that had made Malik always feel as if he were floundering around in the dark. And when your mother died in childbirth people tended to pity you—and pity had been the last thing he’d wanted. Sorrel hadn’t pitied him. She had been kind and she had been sweet—but somewhere along the way that sweetness and kindness had fled. He had taken them away, and left her with only hurt and anger.
His voice was sombre. ‘What is it that you want, Sorrel?’
She could tell him that she wanted his love—but that would be like a child demanding a golden coach to travel around in, like the one Cinderella had. You should only ask for the achievable—and no one ever guaranteed that your heart’s desire would be achievable.
‘I’m afraid that we’re going to have a marriage like your father’s,’ she admitted, giving voice to a concern she hadn’t even known existed until now. ‘With you travelling the world and making love to different women and siring babies by them.’
Had she alighted on that to wound him? Because wound him it did—but it was the pain of having a long-neglected and deep wound being hacked open before being cleansed by something harsh and antiseptic, allowing it the conditions in which to heal.
‘My father did what his people wanted of him at the time,’ he said simply. ‘His wife, the Queen, was barren—and the country desperately needed an heir.’
‘It still does.’
He didn’t say But we might have children of our own, because somehow it seemed inappropriate—like a vision of a future that you might never have. ‘Xavier is carrying on the next generation,’ he said firmly.
‘I thought that rivalry over that was one of the reasons you asked me to marry you.’
From anyone else this might have sounded like a criticism—but then, no one else would have said it, especially at a time like this, when their brand-new marriage hung precariously in the balance. This was Sorrel as he knew her best. Reminding him of what was real and what was not.
‘It was,’ he admitted. ‘But maybe it wasn’t enough. Like your virginity wasn’t enough.’
And now Sorrel was properly scared. It was one thing for her to express her doubts—but quite another when Malik did it back to her. Because women verbalised while men acted, and it sounded as if…. as if he really did want to finish it. A tight, cold dread clamped its way around her heart. ‘What do you mean—it wasn’t enough?’
For the first time in his life he felt helpless. Even when his suspicions about being the Sheikh’s son had crystallised into fact he had not felt like this. As though he was being swept down a fast-raging torrent which used to be the trickle of a stream.
‘I just wish we could have back what we used to have,’ he said simply.
Sorrel stared at him. ‘And what was that?’ she whispered.
‘It used to be so easy between us,’ he said. ‘I liked knowing you were there—only I didn’t realise that until you’d gone.’ He shrugged, like the little boy who had never been allowed to be just that. Who had always been told to behave like a man. It was the earliest lesson he had learnt—that men didn’t show emotion—and there had been no loving mother around to tell him that they could.
‘Maybe it was the sex that complicated our relationship,’ he said slowly, when still she didn’t speak, just continued to look at him with those big blue eyes, and in them an expression he didn’t know. ‘But I wanted you so much, Sorrel. When I walked into your flat and saw you looking like a tramp…’ His voice was husky, his eyes opaque with remembered lust. ‘I suddenly realised how much I wanted you.’
‘Malik,’ she said urgently—because she knew that she couldn’t carry on holding back in case she got hurt. Because half-truths could hurt just as much. He might not feel the same way about her, but he needed to know what she felt for him—because surely it was churlish and unkind to hold back on emotions simply because you wanted something for yourself?
‘I was crying because I love you,’ she said quietly. ‘Just the way I’ve always loved you. That’s why I went away—because you seemed to look right through me and because I was projecting into an unbearable future, when you would take another woman as your wife. And I couldn’t take it. I was crying because you will never love me back in the same way—and because I would never be able to tell you how I feel about you.’
His eyes narrowed suspiciously—like a wild horse the first time it was offered food from the bowl. ‘So you don’t want to leave me?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ she whispered. How could he honestly believe that? she wondered. But in the same moment she recognised that Malik didn’t know how to receive love—probably because he’d never had any experience of it before. ‘Never, never, never,’ she affirmed ardently.
A sigh escaped his lips and she touched her fingertips to them, her eyes searching his face. And written there she could see the glimmer of something she dared not put a name to—but it set off the distant clamour of hope deep in her heart. In a way they were very similar: two outsiders, who blended in wherever t
hey needed to but had never made a place of their own.
She loved Malik, and she wanted him to love her back, but one wasn’t dependent on the other. She suspected that most of the ingredients were in place—he just needed to work out his own particular recipe.
But in the meantime she could show him hers. Show him with all her heart how love could be. She would be his partner in every way that counted—if he would let her.
‘I love you, my darling Malik,’ she said. ‘I love you so very much.’
And Malik felt the sting of tears as he recognised that she had humbled herself before him—had not been afraid to put her feelings on the line. It was as if a veil had been lifted from before his eyes, and everything suddenly became clear.
There was a word to describe the way he’d missed her, the way he’d wanted her, and the way he’d felt as if his heart would break into tiny pieces if she ever went away again.
The lump in his throat made speaking difficult, but the word seemed determined to be spoken. ‘I love you too, Sorrel,’ he said, and then he repeated it. ‘I love you.’
There was wonder in his voice as he let this brand-new emotion of love flood in—like sunlight streaming into a room which had always been dark before—and other emotions quickly came following in its wake. Joy. Comfort. Belonging. And longing. Oh, yes—there was longing.
But even the longing felt different as he cupped her face gently in the palms of his hands and looked down at her. ‘Sorrel?’ he said, almost brokenly.
‘Malik?’ she questioned, and the wonder she’d heard in his voice was now echoed in her own one word question.
He bent his head so that their lips were almost brushing—their warm breath mingling, their gazes locked—and just in that moment before he kissed her his eyes gleamed with sheer delight, even as his body hardened as never before.
‘I love you,’ he said again. ‘And now I’m going to show you just how much.’
He carried her over to the bed, and for the first time in his life he paid homage to a woman—his mouth deliciously brushing every centimetre of her soft, scented body. Suddenly, an act that he had performed countless times in his life—with predictable and pleasurable outcome—became something completely outside his experience. It felt as if he’d been catapulted into a brand-new dimension—like stepping into a place where colours were brighter and more intense, and everything somehow felt more real.
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