“No.”
“The doctor tells me you visit Ra’if every day. Why?”
She turned her face so that she could stare out of her window. It hurt too much to look at him. “Why do you think?”
“On the flight over, I ran through many different possibilities. In the end, I could not decide on one only. So you tell me.”
She closed her eyes. “Because.”
“This is not an answer.”
Olivia yawned. “Because you went away.”
He made a scoffing sound. “And so you substituted my brother for me?”
“No.” She forced herself to turn and look at him. “I substituted me for you. I thought he would be lonely. I thought he would find the days impossibly long to pass without your visits. And so I started to fill your shoes.”
Of all the possibilities Zamir had considered, that had not been one of them. His chest was tight, as though a band were wrapped around it. It spoke of kindness and compassion. He knew Olivia had both of those qualities in spades. But was it really her motivation? “You did not know my brother. Why would you care?”
Her smile was so sad that it touched even his heart of ice. “Because I thought I loved you. And that meant I cared for your family, too.” She turned away from him again. “I didn’t really think it through. I just felt like I had to be here.”
Zamir gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles glowed white.
“So you love me, and your relationship with my brother is simply platonic,” he clarified, when he trusted himself to speak.
“No,” the word was wrapped around her yawn.
“No?” Fear plunged through him.
“I thought I loved you. Past tense. But that was stupid. It’s probably perfectly natural to feel that way when you’ve just … slept with someone for the first time. Especially someone like you. I thought I loved you, but I know now that was just a stupid, childish response. By the time I worked that out, I’d become friends with Ra’if. I really care about him. And I like spending time with him. Why I come to visit him now has nothing to do with you, Zamir.”
Zamir swallowed. “My brother is in recovery from a serious and prolonged drug addiction. Did it not occur to you that you might be playing with his emotions at a time when he is vulnerable?”
“No,” she said simply. “Ra’if and I are friends. That’s all.”
Zamir didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Her words and her intoxicating fragrance and her presence beside him were combining to swamp his senses.
They drove in silence for several miles, then Zamir chanced a look in her direction. Her face was angled away from him. Her body was folded against the door, as though she wanted to get away from him within the confines of the car.
His eyes drifted lower, to her legs that were pressed together at the knees. Legs that had wrapped around him and held him to her heart. He groaned softly.
“You look frail.” He muttered, turning his focus back to the road.
Olivia didn’t reply.
She was asleep.
He was torn between letting her sleep and shaking her awake. Only the slight worry that she might have seriously injured her head caused him to reach across and tap her thigh.
“Don’t,” she batted his fingers away, instantly jolted into wakefulness.
He removed his hand; his mouth was a slash in his face. “You have hurt your head. You may have a concussion.”
“I don’t have a concussion,” she muttered. “I’m tired. And I don’t want to talk to you.”
She closed her eyes again and slipped almost immediately back into a solid slumber.
Which was perfect for Zamir, for it gave him a chance to put into motion a plan that would resolve the issue of Olivia Henderson once and for all.
CHAPTER TEN
The car was bumping. Olivia shifted in the seat, keeping her eyes resolutely shut. Fragments of what had happened punctuated her dreamy fog, but she wilfully pushed them away.
Or tried to, at least.
Zamir’s eyes, hauntingly bright like a tiger’s, were boring into her mind from within her thoughts. She shifted again.
More bumping, only it didn’t feel like potholes in the road. This was more like turbulence on board an aeroplane.
An aeroplane!
Her eyes sprung open and scanned her immediate surrounds.
Confusion clouded her. It was like the most luxurious room she’d ever been in, only sure enough, the little portal windows on the wall showed that she was on board a flight.
But why?
She lifted a hand to her head and felt the bump there. Had she concussed herself after all? She certainly felt as though she’d stepped into a vortex of the twilight zone.
She reached down and unclipped her belt, despite the little light in the roof indicating that seatbelts should be worn. She stood and scanned the room.
Zamir.
Comfortable and elegant, and all-too-regal, Zamir was at the other end of the plane. He was perfectly at ease in a large white armchair, with a desk in front of him. Papers were spread haphazardly over it.
Olivia spoke in a halting staccato. “What the hell have you done?”
Zamir lifted his head slowly, and his feelings were impossible to interpret behind his mask of nonchalance.
“We will be landing soon. You should take your seat.”
She stared at him with a growing sense of misunderstanding. “Landing? Landing where? Where am I?”
“You are on one of my jets.”
“One of your … Zamir.” She moved toward him; shock was making her brain spongy. “What are you talking about?”
He returned his attention back to his papers. “I thought you wanted to come to Dashan with me.”
Olivia gaped. His easy distraction was adding fuel to the fire of her bad mood. “That was then. Not now.”
He chose his words with care. “I did not feel it was a good idea then.”
“You’re … unbelievable!” The plane bumped and Olivia lurched sideways. She caught herself on a chair just in time.
With a breath of impatience and the sort of expression a parent might have employed with a recalcitrant toddler, Zamir stood. He put a hand on her upper arms but Olivia pulled forcibly out of his reach. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
His eyes glowed at her harsh warning. “At another time, I would take that as a challenge to demonstrate just how badly you desire my touch,” he responded with a darkly sensual threat in his voice. “But right now, I only need you to sit so that you don’t cause any more damage to yourself.”
She snorted inelegantly. “You speak as though you care for me and yet you’ve kidnapped me?”
“It was the only solution,” he responded seriously, though her words panged guilt through his conscience. He guided her to the chair opposite his and waited patiently for her to sit.
Olivia was almost numb with the revelation that he’d put her in an aeroplane against her will. And where were they going? It couldn’t be far, surely. She’d not been asleep long. Had she?
“How long have I slept?”
“Most of the flight.”
“Which is about as precise as a cloud,” she snapped.
His smile was tight. He reached down to her waist in order to buckle her in but his hands brushed against her legs and Olivia jerked away. “Don’t touch me,” she reminded him forcefully. Only her lower lip trembled and her features were showing fear. More guilt swirled inside of him. Olivia was afraid of him.
He had acted on impulse and out of desperation and now this woman feared him.
He stepped back with a shrug. Years of practice kept his feelings from finding expression. “Fine. Do your seatbelt up, Olivia, so that we may land.”
She gripped the armrest and pushed back in the chair. “You can’t be serious about this.”
“Oh, I am.”
“But why?”
“There are many reasons that make this necessary.”
“You’ve kidna
pped me!” The plane began to bump more fiercely as it crossed through the thick layer of cloud over the capital of Pilati.
“You’re being over-dramatic. You offered to come to Dashan with me.”
“You know that offer expired the minute you walked away.”
He nodded brusquely. “What other option did I have? To leave you in Las Vegas, flirting with my brother?”
“I was not flirting with him.”
He shrugged. “It looked like it to me.”
“Then you looked at it wrong.”
“It is not the only reason.”
Olivia bit down on her lip. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t let him see her weakness. “Good. Given that it’s a pretty shitty reason, I’d like to think you could do better.”
“How is this, then?” He muttered, leaning forward in his chair, so that his face was starkly close to her. His eyes ran from her eyes to her mouth, and there they lingered, tracing the full pinkness of her cupids bow lips. “Leaving you was the biggest mistake I have ever made. I have regretted it every day since. I want you here, in Dashan, with me, and I think you want that too.”
His words made no sense. “So you’ve kidnapped me to make me some kind of sex slave?” She chattered through shivering teeth.
“Well … I wouldn’t call you that.”
Her mind reeled. “You’re delusional.”
“You were very happy with me before, habibi. You will be again.”
“No.” Her eyes flashed with pain. “I don’t know why you’re being like this, but I know you, Zamir. I know this isn’t really you. You don’t want me like this.”
“No,” he agreed softly. His word was a dangerous oath. “I don’t.”
“What we had before … you ended it. And you can’t just un-end it.”
“I can try,” he responded seriously.
“But you can’t.” She looked away from him. “I’m not the same girl who came to work for you.”
And in profile, her face was gaunt. Her delicate cheekbones were highlighted by the weight she had lost.
“Maybe not.”
The plane dipped lower and lower, and Olivia kept her eyes focussed on the view beyond her window. It was dark in Dashan, though early in the evening, she would have guessed. She was too proud to ask for the time, and when the pilot began to speak, it was in Zamir’s language. She gathered, though, from the way the plane was now moving swiftly closer towards the ground that he was announcing the fact that landing was imminent.
Indeed, moments later, while Olivia sat in an almost numb fog of confusion, the plane touched down with a degree of smoothness onto the tarmac. Olivia barely noticed. She was in knots. For weeks she had told herself she would do almost anything to see Zamir again. She had dreamed of him by night and longed for him by day; she’d put paid to any idea she had of being a strong independent woman by wishing, more than anything in the world, that he would come back into Vegas and carry her off into the sunset.
But not like this.
Never like this.
“Come.” He stood and held a hand out to Olivia. She resolutely ignored it.
Her bag was in the seat she’d previously occupied. She picked it up as she passed, her eyes not meeting Zamir’s. How could she? The man she had loved seemed so far from this powerful stranger. Looking at him only intensified her feelings of betrayal and hurt.
A black SUV was waiting on the tarmac, and Marook stood by the door. He showed surprise for the briefest of moments, but quickly replaced it with professional politeness. “Miss Henderson,” he spoke in his slightly accented voice. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”
Olivia opened her mouth to say something, and Zamir understood. She was going to beg Marook for help. While Zamir didn’t doubt the other man’s loyalty, he did resent the necessity of putting him in a difficult position. And so Zamir turned to Olivia and brought his lips crashing down to hers. It was a kiss of fierce ownership and possession; a kiss designed to silence and punish; a kiss that was laced with his frustration and impatience. It was a kiss that sent his pulse firing and his chest heaving.
It was a kiss that sealed their fates.
Olivia, at first surprised, seemed to have no choice but to surrender to his passion completely. Her hands crept up around his neck, as if to say that they understood. He was her body’s master and always would be. She might hate him with her brain and mind, but she also needed him.
“Do not embarrass Marook by dragging him into our mess,” Zamir murmured, finally, when he pulled away slightly. His eyes glinted with a warning.
But Olivia felt like she was going to collapse. The kiss had set her fires burning and she knew from experience that only his total possession would answer the need he’d invoked. And how she hated herself for that! Oh, what weakness to feel such soul-destroying hunger for a man such as this.
Angrily, she shrugged away from him. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes were wet. Her emotions had zipped from desperation to desire in the space of seconds.
“After you.” He waited by the open car door, his eyes not leaving her face.
Olivia glared at him as she moved furiously by, hoping he understood. She would not be intimidated and she would not be subdued. She only hoped she could also resist being seduced. Worse, that she wouldn’t try to seduce him! How could her body be so weak? How could her desire betray her so monumentally?
He stood until she was seated in the back seat of the car and then slipped in beside her.
Once the vehicle was set in motion, she spoke. “Where are we going?”
“To the palace.”
“I thought your people would make my life a misery. I thought your father would feel betrayed by my presence and that your servants would treat me like a whore.”
“I am no longer convinced any of that matters.”
Ouch. His reasons for not bringing her to Dashan had been hurtful enough. But his sudden willingness to disregard her reputation and mindset was chilling. “Gee, thanks.”
Amusement crinkled his mouth despite her obvious state of distress. “You were the one who thought my concerns were unnecessary, once upon a time.”
“That was then. This is now. It might as well have been a lifetime ago.”
“If you didn’t care then, you should not care now.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a bastard.”
He turned away from her without responding and stared broodingly out of his window. The emptiness of the regional outskirts of the city gave way briefly to infrastructure, and then opened up once more to the open highways that would lead all the way to the old palace.
As though they were serenading the royal fleet of vehicles, the stars began to shine overhead as they drove. Twinkle, twinkle, lots of stars, Olivia thought, as the SUV made short work of the distance between the airport and the palace.
Her stomach, when the car slid through the regal golden gates, was in knots. Her anxiety only worsened as the car moved closer to the palace.
It was the most enormous building she’d ever seen. It was grand and yet reassuring at the same time. It had several turrets that were topped with swirls of copper, and the windows were shaped like something out of Rapunzel. It appeared to have been constructed from stone, though several of the turrets were faced in tiles. Some white, some blue, some gold.
Despite the bad mood she was in, Olivia couldn’t help but appreciate the beauty of the details. The ivy and jasmine that tangled across the front; the formally sculpted trees that lined the drive, and the fragrance of citrus that was heavy in the warm night air.
A bird sung and Olivia caught her breath. “A fiestral?” She wondered aloud, surprising Zamir with her knowledge.
“Yes. How did you …”
She didn’t meet his gaze. “Ra’if mentioned them. He told me they’re one of his favourite things about Dashan. And now I understand why.”
Zamir didn’t visibly react, but inside, he flashed with the temptation to punch something.
“It sounds like an actual song.”
“Yes,” his voice had a strained, faraway quality. “Their name means chorister, or something similar.”
She swallowed, and turned her attention back to the palace.
“What do you think?” Zamir realised that he cared a lot more for her good opinion than he wanted to acknowledge.
Were there eighteen or nineteen of those pretty little turrets? Did it matter? It was enormous. “It’s a palace fit for a King,” she said finally. She kept her features carefully neutral. “And his prisoner. How long do you intend to keep me here for?”
His eyes shimmered in his face. “Let us discuss that inside.”
A full set of servants had appeared outside the palace gates. One opened the door of the car, and the rest formed a sort of line.
Olivia startled as she looked at them, and Zamir, long accustomed to such trappings, had to remind himself that this was a whole other level of existence to Olivia.
Yet her awe served him, and so he did very little to ease her worry. “Just walk with me and don’t make eye contact with any of them.”
“I’m not allowed to look at your servants?”
“They’re not allowed to look at you,” he corrected gruffly.
“But why? I’ve looked at them before. They’ve looked at me. When we were in Vegas.”
“Nothing about this will be the same as then,” he muttered.
Her pulse was firing like a mosquito at a campfire. Her blood burned and her legs felt shaky.
The whole walk into the palace, a voice inside of her was shouting at her to stop. To demand to be taken back to the airport. But she didn’t, and she could have easily said why.
Despite everything that had happened, she trusted Zamir. She wasn’t sure she loved him now, or that she ever had. But she knew that deep down he was basically a good person.
If the exterior of the palace was awe-inspiring, then the inside was a whole new level of divine. The ceilings were vaulted and at least three stories high. The floors were marble and they shone like the surface of a beautiful lake. The walls were painted a rich blue, but there were swirls of gold that Olivia just knew to be real.
The Sheikh's Convenient Mistress: What he needed from her went well beyond the call of duty... (The Henderson Sister Series Book 2) Page 11