by Abby Green
She took it, absurdly grateful that their fingers didn’t touch. Bending her head, she took a sniff of the drink and then a quick sip, to disguise the flush she could feel rising when the smell precipitated a memory of drinking it with Kaden one magical night in his family’s summer palace by the coast. It was the night they’d slept together for the first time.
For a second the full intensity of how much she’d loved him threatened to overwhelm her. And he’d casually poisoned those feelings and in one fell swoop destroyed her innocent idealism. Feeling tormented, and wondering if this avalanche of memories would ever go back into its box, she moved away from Kaden’s tall, lean body, her eyes darting anywhere but to him.
She sensed him move behind her, and then he appeared in her peripheral vision.
“Please, won’t you sit?”
So polite. As if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t given him her body, heart and soul.
Slamming another painful door in her mind, Julia said quickly, nervously, “Thank you.”
She followed him, and when he sat on a plush couch, easily dominating it, she chose an armchair to the side, putting her shoes down beside her. She was as far away from him as she could get, legs together primly. She glanced at him to see a mocking look cross his face. She didn’t care. This new Kaden intimidated her. There was nothing of the boy she’d known. They’d both just been teenagers after all … until he’d had to grow up overnight, after the death of his father.
Now he was a man—infinitely more commanding. She’d seen a glimpse of this more formidable Kaden the last time they’d spoken in Burquat, but that had been a mere precursor of the powerful man opposite her now.
Julia felt exposed in her bare feet and the flimsy shirt. It was too silky against her bare flesh. Her nipples were hard, tingling. She hadn’t felt this effortlessly aroused once during her marriage, or since she’d been with Kaden, and the realisation made her feel even more exposed. She struggled to hang on to the fact that she was a successful and relatively sophisticated woman. She’d been married and divorced. She was no naïve virgin any more. She could handle this. She had to remember that, while he had devastated her, he’d been untouched after their relationship ended. She’d never forget how emotionless he’d been when they said goodbye. It was carved into her soul.
Remembering who the clothes belonged to gave her a moment of divine inspiration. With forced brightness she asked, “How is Samia? She must be at least twenty-four by now?”
Kaden observed Julia from under hooded lids. He was in no hurry to answer her question or engage in small talk. It was more than disconcerting how right it felt to have her here. And even more so to acknowledge that the vaguely unsettled feeling he’d been experiencing for what felt like years was dissipating.
She intrigued him more than he cared to admit. He might have imagined that by now she would be far more polished, would have cultivated the hard veneer he was used to in the kind of women he socialised with.
Curbing the urge to stand and pace out the intense conflict inside him as her vulnerability tugged at his jaded emotions, Kaden struggled to remain sitting and remember what she’d asked.
“Samia? She’s twenty-five, and she’s getting married at the end of this week. To the Sultan of Al-Omar. She’s in B’harani for the preparations right now.”
Julia’s eyes widened, increasing Kaden’s levels of inner tension and desire. He cursed silently. He couldn’t stand up now even if he wanted to— not if he didn’t want her to see exactly the effect she had on him. He vacillated between intense anger at himself for bringing her here at all, and the assertion that she would not be walking out through his front door any time soon.
Kaden was used to clear, concise thinking—not this churning maelstrom. It was too reminiscent of what had happened before. And yet even as he thought that the tantalising prospect came into his mind: why not take her again? Tonight? Why not exorcise this desire which mocked him with its presence?
“The Sultan of Al-Omar?” Julia shook her head, not liking the speculative gleam in Kaden’s eyes. Blonde hair slipped over her shoulders. She tried to focus on stringing a sentence together. “Samia was so painfully shy. It must be difficult for her to take on such a public role?”
An irrational burst of guilt rushed through Kaden. He’d seen Samia recently, here in London before she’d left, and had felt somewhat reassured by her stoic calm in the face of her impending nuptials. But Julia was reminding him what a challenge this would be for his naturally introverted sister. And he was surprised that Julia remembered such a detail.
It made his voice harsh. “Samia is a woman now, with responsibilities to her country and her people. A marriage with Sultan Sadiq benefits both our countries.”
“So it is an arranged marriage, then?”
Kaden nodded his head, not sure where the defensiveness he was feeling stemmed from. “Of course—just as my own marriage was arranged and just as my next marriage will be arranged.” He quirked a brow. “I presume your marriage was a love match, and yet you did not fare any better if you too are divorced?”
Julia hid the dart of emotion at hearing him say he would marry again and avoided his eye. Had her marriage been a love match? In general terms, yes—it had. After all, she and John had married willingly, with no pressure on either side. But she knew in her heart of hearts that she hadn’t truly loved John. And he’d known it too.
Something curdled in her belly at having to justify herself to this man who had haunted her for so long. She looked back at him as steadily as she could. “No, we didn’t fare any better. However, I know plenty of arranged marriages work out very well, so I wish Samia all the best.”
“Children?”
For a moment Julia didn’t catch what Kaden had said it had been uttered so curtly. “Children?” she repeated, and he nodded.
Julia felt another kind of pain lance her. The memory of the look of shame on her husband’s face, the way he had closed in on himself and started to retreat, which had marked the beginning of the end of their marriage.
She shook her head and said, a little defiantly, “Of course not. Do you think I would be here if I had?” And then she cursed herself inwardly. She didn’t want Kaden analysing why she had come. “My husband—ex-husband—couldn’t … We had difficulties … And you? Did you have children?”
That slightly mocking look crossed his face again, because she must know well that his status as a childless divorcee was common knowledge. But he just shook his head. “No, no children.”
His mouth had become a bitter line, and Julia shivered minutely because it reminded her of how he’d morphed within days from an ardent lover into a cold stranger.
“My ex-wife’s mother suffered a horrific and near-fatal childbirth and stuffed my wife’s head with tales of horror and pain. As a result Amira developed a phobia about childbirth. It was so strong that when she did discover she was pregnant she went without my knowledge to get a termination. Soon afterwards I started proceedings to divorce.”
Julia gave an audible gasp and Kaden saw her eyes grow wide. He knew how it sounded—so stark. His jaw was tight with tension. How on earth had he let those words spill so blithely from his mouth? He’d just told Julia something that only a handful of people knew. The secret of his ex-wife’s actions was something he discussed with nobody. As were the painstaking efforts he’d made to help her overcome that fear after the abortion. But to no avail. Eventually it had been his wife who had insisted they divorce, knowing that she could never give him an heir. She hadn’t been prepared to confront her fears.
Kaden’s somewhat brutal dismissal of a wife who hadn’t been able to perform her duty made a shiver run through Julia. The man she’d known had been compassionate, idealistic.
To divert attention away from the dismay she felt at recognising just how much he’d changed, she said quickly, “I thought divorce was illegal in Burquat?”
Kaden took a measured sip of his amber-coloured drink. �
�It used to be. Things have changed a lot since you were there. It’s been slow but steady reform, undoing the more conservative laws of my father and his forebears.”
A rush of tenderness took Julia by surprise, coming so soon after her feeling repelled by his treatment of his wife. Kaden had always been so passionate about reform for his country, and now he was doing it.
Terrified that he would see something of that emotion rising up within her, Julia stood up jerkily and walked over to the window, clutching her glass in her hand.
She took in the view. Kaden had told her about this apartment, right in the centre of London. Pain, bittersweet, rushed through her. He had once mentioned that she should move in here when she returned to college in London—so that he could make sure she was protected, and so she would be waiting for him when he came over. But those words had all been part of his seductive patter. Meaningless. A wave of sadness gripped her.
She didn’t hear Kaden move, and jumped when his deep voice came from her right, far too close. “Why did you divorce your husband, Julia?”
Because I never loved him the way I loved you. The words reverberated around her head. Never in a million years had she imagined she would be standing in a room listening to Kaden ask her that question.
Eventually, when she felt as if she had some measure of control, she glanced at him. He was standing with one shoulder propped nonchalantly against the wall, looking at her from under hooded lids. With one hand in his pocket, the glass held loosely in the other, he could have stepped straight out of a fashion magazine.
He looked dark and dangerous, and Julia gulped—because she felt that sense of danger reverberate within her and ignite a fire. She tried to ignore the sensation, telling herself it was overactive hormones mixed in with too many evocative memories and the loaded situation they were now in. She looked back out of the window with an effort. She felt hot and tingly all over, her belly heavy with desire.
“I … we just grew apart.” She shook her head. “It seemed like a good idea, but it never really worked. And our difficulty with having children was the last straw. There wasn’t enough to keep us together. I’m glad there were no children. It wouldn’t have been the right environment to bring them into.”
Julia had never told Kaden that she was adopted, or about her own visceral feelings on the subject of having children. She’d never told anyone. It was too bound up in painful emotions for her. And perhaps she hadn’t told him for a reason—because on some level she’d been afraid of his judgement, and that what they shared hadn’t been real. She’d been right to be afraid.
She was aware of tension emanating from Kaden and didn’t want to look at him, afraid he might see the emotion she felt she couldn’t hide. Her face always gave her away. He was the one who had told her that as he’d held her face in his hands one day …
Suddenly from out of the still ominously cloudy sky came a jagged flash of lightning. Julia jumped so violently that liquid sloshed out of her glass. Immediately shocked and embarrassed by her overreaction, she stepped back. “I’m sorry …”
Kaden was there in an instant. He took the glass out of her hand, placing it down on the table alongside his own. He was back in front of her before she could steel herself not to react. His dark eyes looked her up and down and then rested on her chest. As if mesmerised, Julia followed his gaze to see where some of the drink had landed on her shirt, right over one breast, and now the material was clinging to the rounded slope.
Panicky, Julia stepped back, “I’ll get a cloth … I don’t want Samia’s shirt to get ruined.”
A big hand snaked out and caught her upper arm. “Leave it.”
Kaden’s voice was unbearably harsh, and in that instant the air between became even heavier and more charged. As if the tension and atmosphere between them was directly affecting the weather, a huge booming roll of thunder sounded outside.
Julia flinched, eyes glued to Kaden’s with some kind of sick fascination. Faintly she said, “I thought the storm was over.”
With a move so smooth she didn’t even feel it happening Kaden put his hands on her arms and pulled her closer. Their bodies were almost touching.
“I think the storm is just beginning.”
For a second confusion made Julia’s head foggy. She didn’t seem to be able to separate out his words, or even understand what Kaden was saying. And then she realised, when she saw how hot his gaze had become and how it moved down to her mouth. Desire was stamped onto the stark lines of his face and Julia’s heart beat fast in response. Because it was a look that had haunted her dreams for ever.
Desperately trying to fight the urge to succumb to the waves of need beating through her veins, she shook her head and tensed, trying to pull back out of Kaden’s grip. His hands just tightened.
“Kaden, no. I shouldn’t be here … we shouldn’t have met again.”
“But we did meet. And you’re here now.”
Julia asserted stiff ly, “I didn’t agree to come here for this.”
Kaden shook his head, and a tiny harsh smile touched his mouth. “From the moment we stood in front of each other in that room earlier the possibility of this has existed.”
Bitterness rang in Julia’s voice. “Even when you pretended not to know me?”
More lightning flashed outside, quickly followed by the roll of thunder. The unmistakable sound of torrential rain started to lash against the window.
“Even then.”
Nothing seemed to be throwing Kaden off. Had he somehow magically dimmed the lights in the room? Julia wondered frantically, feeling as though reality was slipping out of her grasp. The past was meshing into the present, and the future was fast becoming irrelevant.
Julia tried again. “The possibility of this stopped existing twelve years ago in Burquat—or have you forgotten when you informed me our affair was past its sell-by date?” Bitterness laced her voice, but she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there, much as she would have loved to feign insouciance. The rawness of that day was vivid.
Kaden’s hands were steady. “I don’t wish to discuss the past, Julia. The past bears no relationship to this moment.”
“How can you say that? The past is the reason I’m standing here now.”
Kaden shook his head, eyes glowing with dark embers, effortlessly stoking Julia’s desire higher and higher, despite what her head might be saying.
“I would have wanted you even if tonight was the first time we’d met.”
His flattery did nothing for Julia’s ego. The evidence of how unmoved he was by the past broke something apart inside her. Of course it had no effect on him now. Because he felt nothing for her—just as he’d never really felt anything for her.
Julia tensed as much as she could. She had to get out of there. Things were spiralling out of all control. “Well, the past might not be relevant to you, but it is to me, and I think this is a very bad idea.”
Kaden’s eyes flashed, showing Julia a glimpse of the emotion that thickened the atmosphere between them, no matter how he might deny it. “This is desire, pure and simple. We’re two single consenting adults and I want you.”
Julia looked up, helpless to pull away or articulate any kind of sane response. Which should be no. How was it possible that this desire hadn’t abated one bit? That if anything it felt stronger? There were so many layers of meaning here, and Kaden wanted to ignore all of that. As if they had never met before.
He lifted a hand and slid it around the back of her neck, under the fall of her hair, and pulled her even closer. Huskily he said, “I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect that if I ever saw you again I would feel this way. Perhaps this was meant to be … a chance encounter to burn ourselves free of this insatiable desire.”
Insatiable desire. That was exactly how it felt—how it had always felt between them. Moments after making love Julia had always been ashamed of how quickly she’d craved Kaden’s touch again, and only the fact that it had been mutual had stopped her shame fro
m overwhelming her.
As he said, he hadn’t expected to see her again. And she could well believe that he’d not expected to desire her again. But he did, and obviously resented it. Why wouldn’t he? He’d turned his back on her, and he’d bedded plenty of women far more beautiful than Julia since then. It must be galling to meet your first lover and realise you still wanted her. That made Julia feel acutely vulnerable. But it was too late.
Kaden had pulled her even closer, and now her soft belly touched his hard-muscled form—far harder than she remembered—and his head was lowering to hers. She tried to stiffen, to register her rejection, but everything was blocked out when she felt the explosive touch of Kaden’s mouth to hers. Did it coincide with another clap of thunder outside or was that in her head?
Her heart spasmed in her chest, as if given an electric shock, and as his mouth moved and fitted to hers like a missing jigsaw piece she fell down into a dark vortex of desire so intense that it obliterated any kind of rational thought. Her hands had gone automatically to his chest, but instead of pushing him away they clung. The feel of powerful muscles under his shirt was intoxicating.
Time stood still. Everything stood still except for their two hearts, beating fast. Blood was rushing through veins and arteries, pumping to parts of Julia’s body that hadn’t been stimulated in a long, long time.
Kaden was seduction incarnate. His hands moved over and down her back, cupping her bottom in the tight jeans, floating sensuously over the silk shirt. With an easy expertise he certainly hadn’t displayed when she’d known him before he coaxed her mouth open and his tongue stroked along hers, making a faint mewl come from the back of her throat.
Through the heat haze in her head and her body Julia felt something urgent trying to get through to her. Kaden’s touch was all at once achingly familiar, and yet so different from how she remembered. They’d been so young, and their passion had been raw and untutored. The man who held her in his arms now was not raw and untutored. He was a consummate seducer, well-practised in the art. His body was different too. Muscles were filled out and harder.