by Dani Collins
She turned and folded her arms, now in a strapless gown bedecked with a band of silver and diamonds beneath the extravagant necklace that had been his wedding gift to her. She pressed her lips together, conveying wary uncertainty.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said a little too quickly, shoulders coming up in a shrug and staying in a defensive hunch.
He moved closer and had to tilt her chin up, then wait for her gaze to come to his. A tiny flinch plucked at her brows and her gaze swept away, anxious to avoid his.
“Galila,” he murmured. “Are you being shy?” It seemed impossible, considering the intimacies they’d shared, but her mouth twitched.
She hitched a shoulder, nodding a little, lashes dropping to hide her gaze again.
“There’s no rush,” he assured her, even though it felt like a lie. Standing this close to her, feeling the softness of her cheek under the caress of his thumb, he didn’t know how he had managed to wait this long. The starving beast inside him was waking and stretching, prowling in readiness to go on the hunt.
When he started to lower his mouth to hers, she stiffened with subtle resistance.
He drew back, experiencing something like alarm. Was she teasing him on purpose?
“I’m nervous, it’s fine,” she insisted, but she was still avoiding his gaze.
Her crown had been fitted with a silver and blue veil that draped over the rich, loose waves of her hair. She reached to remove it.
“I’ll do it.” He searched out the pins that secured it, distantly thinking he should have delegated this task to the one who’d put them in. It was an intricate process and she winced a couple of times, even though he was as gentle as he could be.
He persevered and finally was able to leave the crown and veil on a table. She ran her fingers through her hair—an erotic gesture at the best of times. Tonight, she was especially entrancing. The smooth swells of her breasts lifted against the blue velvet. Her heavily decorated ivory skirt shimmered, merely hinting at the lissome limbs it hid.
“You’re so beautiful, it almost hurts the eyes.” The words came from a place he barely acknowledged within himself, one where his desire for her was a craven thing that he could barely contain.
She dropped her hands in front of her. “I can’t help the way I look.”
“It’s not a drawback,” he said drily, moving to take up her hands and set them on his shoulders. His own then went to her rib cage, finding her supple as a dancer. Her heels put her at exactly the most comfortable height to dip his head and capture her mouth with his own.
A jolt of electricity seemed to jump between them, reassuring him even as his mouth stung and she made a sound of near pain. He quickly assuaged the sensation with a full, openmouthed kiss. The kind he’d been starving for. The kind that should have slaked something in him, but only stoked his hunger.
She began to melt into him and he felt mindlessness begin to overtake him, the same loss of control that had pinned him in place while she stole every last shred of his discipline that day in his library.
He tightened his hands on her and started to set her back a step, needing to keep a clear head.
She made a noise of hurt and the heels of her hands exerted pressure, urging him to release her altogether.
His reflexes very nearly yanked her back in close. Some primitive refusal to be denied was that close to overwhelming him.
The push-pull was startling enough to freeze him with his hands still keeping her before him, so he could read her face.
“Do you not want—?” He had to look away, not ready to hear that she was rejecting him.
“I do, but—”
She did break from his hold then, brushing his hands off her and pacing away a few steps. The action raked something cold across him.
She turned back to hold out a beseeching hand. “I can’t bear the games, Karim.”
She looked stricken enough to cause a sharp sensation to pierce his heart.
“Make love to me if you want to. But don’t... Don’t tell me I’m beautiful, then act like you can’t stand how I look. Don’t kiss me like you can’t get enough, then push me away as though I’m someone you dislike. Don’t tell a roomful of people that you think I’m wonderful when you clearly think I’m not. I can’t go through those ups and downs again. I can’t.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about? I don’t dislike you.”
She closed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter how you feel, just be honest about it. And consistent. Please. It’s fine that you only want me a little, the way any man might respond to any available woman. Don’t pander to me and act like...”
“What?” he prompted, bracing because he was afraid that he might have betrayed too much somewhere along the line. Definitely when she’d taken him in her mouth.
“I don’t know,” she said with a break in her voice. “I don’t know how you feel. That’s the issue. Sometimes you act as though you like me, but then...you don’t.”
“Of course, I like you, Galila.” He swallowed, thinking he understood the issue here. In a gentler tone, he added, “But I told you in the beginning not to expect love from me.”
“I’m not talking about love, Karim! I’m talking about basic regard. You’ve barely spoken to me since the day in your office. You act like it didn’t even happen! Then you think saying a few nice things tonight—that I’m so beautiful you can’t stand to look at me—and think that makes me want to...” She waved at the bed, then her arm dropped in defeat.
His heart skewed in his chest. “That’s not the way I meant it, Galila.”
“The worst part is, I still want to have sex with you. But be honest about how it will be afterward. If you’re only going to ignore me until the next time an urge strikes, then don’t arrange rose petals and candles and act like you want me to feel something tonight. Don’t act like this is a special moment for either one of us. Not when you’re only going to pretend I don’t exist afterward.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. This was special. It was her first time. Did she think he didn’t have some nerves about that? The responsibility to make it special?
“I wanted you to relax.”
“Well, I can’t.” She shook off whatever melancholy was in her expression and reached to remove her earrings. “Let’s just get it done so you can lock yourself back in your room.”
“Get it done?” he repeated as a sick knot tightened in his gut. “I want our lovemaking to be a pleasure for you, Galila. Not a chore.”
“I’m not like you! When we...do things, I feel it. Emotionally.” She pressed her curled hand between her breasts. “And you’re manipulating me with that. Maybe not on purpose. Maybe you don’t even realize how badly you’re knocking my feelings around, but you are. I can’t do that for a night, Karim, let alone a lifetime. I accept that this is an arranged marriage, not one based on love. But don’t act like you care and then prove that you don’t. I can’t bear that. Not again.”
If she had plunged a knife into his lung, she wouldn’t have winded him this badly. Her accusations were bad enough, but suddenly he was wondering if she had given her heart to another and been rejected. And if she had, why was he taking that far worse than he would have if she’d had other lovers physically?
“Who else did that to you?” He needed to know.
“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, turning away to work bangles off her wrists.
“It’s affecting our marriage. Our relationship.” What the hell did he care about such things? She was handing him a free pass to make love to her and withhold any investment of deeper feelings. He ought to rejoice. Instead, he was aggrieved by the idea of her coming to their marriage bed withholding anything from him, especially the genuine excitement and delight she had seemed to take in their congress before.
Running a h
and over his head, he demanded, “Who?”
She sighed and stayed silent a long time, while her jewelry went into a dish with soft clinks.
“In light of what we’ve learned about my mother recently,” she began in a subdued voice, “I understand better why she was so ambivalent with my brothers. Why she pushed them away. She had given away a child she wanted to keep. That has to break something in you. Maybe that’s even why she eventually pushed me away, but it wasn’t always like that. For years...”
Her shoulders slumped under an invisible weight.
“None of this really matters, Karim,” she said faintly.
His ardor was well and truly doused. Short of an invasion that required him to protect his country, he could not imagine anything more important to him than what she was telling him right now.
“Continue,” he commanded.
“It makes me sound very pathetic. As superficial as you think I am.” She kept her back to him and spoke to her feet. “When I was a child, I felt very special. It was obvious to me that I was the one Mother loved. Father worshipped her and she gave him nothing. The boys learned to live without affection from her, but she adored me. She brushed my hair and dressed me so we looked alike. She took me everywhere with her and was always so proud and happy when people said I was pretty and looked like her.”
“That makes you sound more like a pet than her child.”
“I was. A living doll, maybe. If only I had stayed that way.”
“What way? Young?”
“Preadolescent, yes. Once I started to become a woman, it stopped.”
“What did?”
“Her love.”
She clutched her elbows in clawlike fingers, manicured nails threatening to cut into the skin of her bare arms. He moved across to touch her, drawing her attention to it so she would stop hurting herself.
She gave a little shiver and flashed a distressed glance up to him, then stepped away, averting her face.
“How do you know she stopped loving you? What happened?”
“Instead of saying, You’re so beautiful, she would say, ‘Your perfume has soured.’ Instead of saying, I love how your smile is exactly like mine, she would say, ‘Your laugh is too high-pitched. That lipstick is not your color.’”
“Did you do something to anger her?”
“If I did, she never said outright what it was.” Her tone grew bitter.
“Then why do you think—? Ah. You told me before that she didn’t want to be called Grandmother,” he recalled.
“She said those exact words one time when my father was telling me over a family dinner that I ought to marry.”
“So she was jealous of your youth.”
“Maybe even that my life was ahead of me. I’ve been thinking about her all day today, thinking she would have died rather than attend my wedding. She hated it when I was the center of attention and would always say, ‘You’re acting like Malak.’ She really did hate him and wasn’t afraid to show it.”
Galila had never acknowledged that out loud, but it felt weirdly good to do so. Like lancing a wound so it could begin to heal.
“And now you have no opportunity to ask her about it. I do understand that frustration, you know.”
She sent him a helpless look, one palm coming up.
“You see? You’re doing it again. Making it seem like we have something in common, that you care what I might have been through. What happens in ten minutes, though? In an hour? In the morning? Will my feelings become inconsequential again?”
He looked away from her, uncomfortable as he viewed his behavior in a fresh light. He had been protecting himself—his whole country, he could argue—since Zyria had been impacted when his father threw his life away over a broken heart. But he hadn’t seen that in protecting himself, he had been injuring her.
“Is it me, Karim?” she asked in a voice thick with dread. “I had nearly convinced myself that my mother’s hurtful behavior was her own issue, but if you’re doing the same thing, then there must be a flaw in me.” Her voice cracked as she pointed at her breastbone. “Something that makes me impossible to love. What is it?”
* * *
Galila stood in a vice of agony while her husband stood unmoving, as a man made from marble. She didn’t even think he breathed. Was he trying to spare her? Because he was alleviating none of her fears with that stoic expression.
Finally, he blinked and muttered, “There’s nothing wrong with you. That’s absurd.”
“There you go. I’m absurd!” She felt exactly as she had in those first dark years when her mother had begun to pull away. “I know I’m a ridiculous person. My brothers told me all the time that I shouldn’t be so needy and want to feel loved. I know that with some people, like you, there’s no getting into their good graces, even when you once were loved by them. But I don’t understand how I lose it. Is it things that I say? Am I supposed to stand in silence and allow myself to be admired? But why would anyone want to look at me? I’m not beautiful enough. My neck is too long and I have my mother’s thighs. Is it because my nose is too pointy? Help me understand, Karim! I can’t fix it if I don’t know what the problem is.”
“There is no problem,” he said so firmly she could only take it as a knife in the heart because he clearly wasn’t going to tell her.
She threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine. Let’s just—” She waved at the bed, but tears came into her eyes. She didn’t know if she could go through with it. All she could do was stand there, crushed by anguish, fighting not to break down.
“Galila. There is nothing wrong with you,” he insisted, coming across to take her hands. “Look at me.” He dipped his head and waited until she was looking into his eyes. “You’re very engaging. Very easy to...”
His mouth tightened and she could see him pulling himself back behind some invisible wall.
She tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip on her hands.
“Listen. I find myself letting down my guard with you. That’s not something I ever do. Not with anyone except perhaps my mother. Even then...it’s not comfortable for me.”
“Well, it’s not comfortable for me to let down my guard only to be shut out afterward. That’s why I’m still a virgin. That sort of intimacy isn’t easy for me, either. Not unless I’m convinced my heart will be safe.” She pulled her hands free and quarter-turned away. “Maybe that’s what all relationships are, though? Maybe I am a fool, thinking there’s some way to feel safe in one.” She spun back. “But your mother and father were in love. It’s possible, Karim.”
He was the one to walk away this time, hand drawing down his face as he let out a harsh breath.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said with despair frosting her insides. “That I’m ruining our honeymoon night. I don’t mean to set ridiculous standards. I just...” Find it all very disappointing. Heartbreakingly empty. “I don’t know how I’ll live in this state of hurt for the rest of my life. How do you not care, then? Teach me that, Karim.”
His shoulders flexed as though her words had struck like a whip across them. He shook his head, voice disembodied when he spoke.
“I have trained myself not to care, Galila. To keep my thoughts to myself and control my desires. A man in my position can’t give in to urges and open up doorways to vulnerability. I can’t, Galila. The kingdom depends on my strength.” He turned to deliver that bad news in a voice that was calm and factual but kind, at least.
Her mouth trembled and she nodded. “I know. Look at my father, abdicating because he was so devastated by losing my mother, even after what she had done. I just don’t know how to be like you, Karim, instead of like him.”
“I don’t want you to be like me,” he said in a voice that was low and quiet, but carried an impact that seemed to go through her as a shock wave, shivering all her pieces into new alignments. “I lik
e who you are, Galila.”
“You don’t even know me, Karim.” Her eyes were hot, and she wanted so badly to believe him.
“Untrue. Look at this party tonight. It was a ridiculous expense, one where you could have made it all about yourself. Instead, you gave it meaning. You are beautiful, so beautiful you trick the mind into thinking that’s all you are. Then you display intelligence and kindness and you navigate all aspects of my life—a life I fight to control every minute of every day—you walk through that obstacle course with a graceful lack of effort. It’s astonishing to me how well you fit in.”
“My mother should get the credit for preparing me for this life, not me,” she pointed out, throat abraded by emotion.
“And humble on top of the rest.”
“Karim, it’s very nice of you to say these things, but—”
“I don’t do platitudes, Galila,” he cut in flatly. “I’m telling you what I have learned of you during our short union. You have qualities I didn’t expect, but I never expected to have a partner at all. A wife, yes, but not someone who is a genuine support. It’s the strangest thing to me. Do you understand that? I don’t want to grow accustomed to your presence at my side. I never needed you before. Why should I need you now? But there it is. You make it easier to carry out my duties, even as I feel weak for allowing you to lift any of the load. It’s a paradox I haven’t worked out how to solve.”
She was soaking up the mud with the rainwater, feeling the contradiction inside her while watching the dismay battle with resignation in his brutally handsome features.
“Do you understand that it’s your reluctance to allow me to share in your life that is killing me? Every time you push me away and act like I’m more annoyance than necessity, I hurt. How do I relax and give myself to you tonight, then face your withdrawal tomorrow? When you’ve decided I’ve seen too much of you?”
His cheek ticked.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, shaking her head in defeat. “I don’t think I can—”
“I won’t,” he cut in, tone thin and sharp as a dagger, one corner of his mouth pulling down into the deadly curve of a jambiya blade. He was tensile steel, pupils expanding and contracting with inner conflict—a warrior on the defensive, but ready and willing to attack.