For the first time in his life, Tamir was afraid. Afraid of losing something he hadn’t even realised he needed. His marriage had arisen out of necessity, and then, his marriage had become necessary.
He could not let it go.
Saf looked at his friend closely. “You’re not well.”
Tamir was surprised by the observation. He ran a hand through his hair without removing his eyes from the view of his golf course. “Nonsense. When am I ever ill?”
“Fine then. You’re preoccupied.”
Tamir let out a rueful sigh. “You know me well, brother.”
“Dare I ask? Marriage troubles?”
Tamir’s eyes flashed with anger. “Not of the sort your wife gleefully anticipates.”
“She was your sister before she was my wife,” Saf interjected with a shrug of his shoulders. He lifted his iced tea and sipped it thoughtfully. “And she will come around, eventually.”
Tamir didn’t react at first. His eyes were drawn to a piece of white linen, flapping in the breeze. “I don’t much care if she does, or does not. Olivia is…” He had been about to say ‘my wife’. But he pulled himself up short. For she was not. He had intended her to be, and yet Kalil had defied him. “Olivia is not the problem,” he finished grimly.
“You have been married a week. You are not regretting the hasty decision?”
“Only certain aspects of it,” Tamir responded with a shake of his head. “Not my choice of bride.”
“And Olivia?” Saf asked, watching his friend curiously. “She has forgiven you?”
“Forgiven me?” Tamir dragged his eyes to Saf’s face in surprise. “You think she is angry with me?”
Saf laughed. “Your sister has me well trained in the ways of a woman’s emotions. Yes. I would say she is very angry with you.” He softened his voice. “I would also say she’s partly in love with you, so you must have handled something well.”
“I didn’t,” Tamir groaned, turning his dark eyes back to the golf course. The piece of fabric was stuck on something. A flag, perhaps. Or a tree. He squinted, and watched as yet another desert wind caught its edge and lifted it high over the concourse. It flapped desperately and wildly but still it was trapped.
“It is not like you to express regrets or remorse. Certainly, it is not your way to doubt your own actions.”
Tamir nodded, without looking at Saf. “I acted in haste because I was afraid to lose her.” His mouth filled with the flavour of bitterness. “I met her and just knew that she was too rare to let go.” He closed his eyes, remembering that first moment. When he’d seen her and felt every fibre of his being lock into place.
“Of course. She is the spitting image of Marni. You must have felt like you’d been given a second chance.”
Tamir looked at his friend sharply. He hadn’t thought of his ex-girlfriend in years. In five years, to be precise. Since she’d ended her life with the drug that had been slowly taking her away from all those who loved her. True, both women had long blonde hair and a tall elegance. Both had wide-set green eyes, and a smile that lit up their faces. But those were passing similarities, nothing more.
“Marrying Olivia had nothing to do with Marni.”
Saf didn’t say anything, but his silence spoke volumes. The woman could have passed as Marni’s twin. Of course it explained the hasty nature of their union. But the Sultan obviously did not wish to discuss it.
Saf shrugged, willing to let the conversation die. “If you are not happy, and she is not happy, you can end it. You made a quick decision, and it can be unmade.”
The thought was repulsive to Tamir. “I have always acted on the weight of my instinct, and that has always done well for me. But Olivia is different. She is gentle and she is sweet, and I cannot help but storm all over her.”
Saf frowned. “You will learn.”
“No,” Tamir shook his head. “By our very nature, we are incompatible. She is water; I am oil. She’s the serene, still stream and I am the waterfall, gushing over rocks and breaking the water’s surface. It is what I do. I am fast and I am strong.” He shrugged. “I was selfish to take her from her life, simply because I thought her to be what I needed.”
Saf had known Tamir since they were boys. This side of him was entirely new. “If you care for her, then you’ll change. You’ll become less like a waterfall around her, and more like a drop in the ocean.”
“No!” Tamir’s laugh was ironic. “No amount of water metaphors will change who I am, Saf. I was born to rule, and I rule with an iron fist. I cannot just switch that off because it is hurtful to my… to Olivia.”
“So? What does that mean? You do regret the marriage after all?”
The white fabric was tenacious. It found another blast of desert wind and, this time, was successful in convincing it to drag her to safety. It pulled and tugged until the fabric was free, shooting through the sky, towards the heavens.
“I know I should let her go.” He remarked grimly, keeping his eyes on the floating linen. “Only I know I won’t. That I can’t.” He turned to lance Saf with his gaze, his eyes unknowingly pained. “Unless she asks it of me, I will keep trying to be what Olivia needs. Because I suspect she is everything I’ve ever needed.”
Chapter Nine
“What is this place?” Olivia asked breathlessly, staring out at the expanse of bright green water.
Three hours in the jeep, and all he could do was stare at the woman who was not his wife.
“It is the Liana dri Skino.”
Olivia repeated the beautiful sounding name. “What does it mean?”
His dark eyes were resting on her captivated expression. “Bay of Kings. It is a private cove. My army keeps watch and maintains it for my private use.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “There is no risk here of Kalil charging you with anything.”
At the mention of the severe security chief’s name, Olivia shuddered. The involuntary gesture did not escape Tamir’s attention. He pulled her closer, running a hand down her back. Her body had given him such pleasure, and yet it was not simply that which had him hooked.
“Would you like to go swimming?”
Her eyes widened, as she turned to face him. Her smile was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He realised it was almost as bright as the night he’d met her. And the realisation hit him, like a sledge hammer, that he hadn’t seen her smile properly since that night. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes, if it will keep you looking like that,” he promised darkly, linking his hands behind her back and holding her close. “We will swim every afternoon until your smile becomes locked to your face.”
His words were so beautifully sweet. She couldn’t help but soften against him. A voice in the back of her mind was warning her to remember his domineering nature. But in that perfect moment, she simply couldn’t recall why she had ever felt anger towards him. She was one being, made up entirely of bliss.
But Tamir couldn’t forget. He stared out at the ocean and sighed. “No one has any right to make you feel as Kalil did. I will never forgive myself for having allowed you to be in that position.”
Olivia swallowed past the lump in her throat. “He hates me.”
“Yes,” Tamil agreed quietly.
“But why?”
Tamir shook his head. “He does not matter. He is no longer a part of my service. He will never bother you again.”
She stared at him, her surprise obvious in her features. “You fired him?”
“I dispensed with him,” Tamir corrected with a nonchalant shrug. “I require only those I can trust. He is not such a man as I thought.” He lifted her arm, and gently touched the bruised flesh of her elbow. “He hurt you. Do you not understand? In doing so, he also hurt me. I cannot forgive him for his treatment of you. I will not.”
She shivered. “He was so angry.”
“I know.” He pulled her closer. “He didn’t understand. About us.”
Olivia’s heart turned over in her che
st. Brazenly, she forced herself to look at him. “I don’t think even I understand about us.”
Tamir wasn’t sure what to say. Truth warred with sense; logic battled instinct. His voice was thick with emotion when he spoke. “Then don’t think about understanding. Come swimming.”
“In there?”
He nodded.
“In what?”
He grinned. “I have swimwear for you in the jeep.”
She arched a brow. “You mean I can actually wear bathers?”
He nodded. “At my private beach, certainly.”
The swimwear was, in fact, reasonably modest. A simple black one piece, it barely hinted at her cleavage. But nothing could disguise the slender length of her tanned legs. A tent had been erected on the sand dunes, and Olivia emerged from it feeling strangely self-conscious, given that she was virtually alone, with her husband.
“Definitely only at my beach,” Tamir muttered, when Olivia stepped out onto the hot white sand of the beach. He had thought the suit perfectly acceptable, until he saw for himself the way it caressed her body. It displayed her curves to anyone who cared to look. He glowered as she approached, until Olivia laughed.
“It is really very modest, Tamir. Stop looking at me as though I’m about to perform a striptease in front of a thousand men.”
The very imagery had his spine straightening. He pulled at her waist, crushing her body to his. It startled Olivia, so that her green eyes flew to his face. “The only man you will ever be naked for again is me.”
Her heart turned over in her chest, and she forced herself to say what she’d been thinking for days. The fear that had lodged in her chest. “This isn’t a real marriage, Tamir.” As the words left her mouth, she wished she could recall them.
Tamir’s expression was like stone, but his chest was rising rapidly, in time with his heartbeat. He forced himself to speak calmly. “Meaning?”
She looked away, her mouth dry. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you married me, but I know it can’t last.” She bit down on her lip. “You’ll get tired of me eventually… and I’ll go back to my life. This will all just be a dream. And one day,” she dredged a smile up from the depths of her unhappiness, “when I’m old and very grey, I’ll wonder if it really happened. The time I became a princess of a beautiful, mysterious country, for a while.”
He almost groaned, for the image she was painting. It spoke of a time when this would all be in the past. An inevitable conclusion to what they now shared. His voice was deep with desire when he spoke. “I have never married before. Why are you so certain this is not going to last?”
She shook her head wistfully. “Because we have sex in common, and that’s it.” She lifted her hands to his chest. “Sex is why you approached me at the theatre, and sex is why I came to the embassy. We’re no different to any other couple who got caught up in that first infatuation of physical connection.”
“What if I don’t let you go,” he whispered in her ear, running his hands down her back.
She laughed shakily, pushing him away. “You will.”
“You’re so certain?”
“Yes.” She took a shaky step towards the water.
“How can you be?”
“Simple.” She turned to face him challengingly. “Do you love me?”
He froze, his dark face impossible to read. He stared at her in a complete panic. Her blonde hair whipped around her face, reminding him of the fabric he’d seen on the golf course. Her face was silhouetted by the sun, pale and luminous with magical green eyes. He stared at her, but did not speak.
“See?” She shrugged her shoulders, refusing to show how his lack of feeling had hurt her. “That’s why you’ll let me go.”
He frowned. “Why, Olivia?”
“Because I could never be in a marriage without love.” She lifted a hand to forestall his next statement. “You were raised to see this as normal. I wasn’t. You don’t love me, but I think you like me. And I think you respect me. And eventually you’ll realise that keeping me in this marriage would hurt me far more than anything someone like Kalil could ever say or do.” She squared her shoulders, refusing to back away from her point. Refusing to seem emotional or sad. “So one day you’ll kiss me goodbye for the last time, and we’ll be a precious memory and nothing more.”
Angry curses were shrieking through his mind with such intensity that he could barely contain them. He was a prisoner of everything he’d been raised to expect and everything he was expected to want. He wanted to sprint the length of the beach, until his lungs burned from exertion. He wanted to make love to her against the shining white sand. He wanted to say anything she needed to hear, to put a close to this talk of ending their marriage.
And then he remembered. There was no marriage.
She was his lover.
And she didn’t want to be his wife. He swallowed past the lump of anxiety in his throat. Tamir had never willingly conceded defeat, but he could feel it biting at his ankles now.
“Let us swim,” he changed the subject with a tone that was far more moderate than his thoughts.
Olivia nodded, but inside, her heart was cracking like an eggshell. Had she really expected a declaration of love? She wasn’t even sure she loved him. At least, she wasn’t sure she could put her feelings for him into words. What her heart and soul wanted made no sense. Not when faced with what he’d put her through. And yet… he’d been so perfect, in so many ways. She reached out and linked her fingers through his, pulling him towards the ocean. This would be a memory one day, but only if she first created it.
“Let’s not think about the future, okay?” She squeezed his hand. “Whatever else happens, this moment is glorious.”
And it was. Because she was.
The water was cool against her skin, but her blood pounded like a boiling torrent through her body. “Do you like it?” He asked quietly, wrapping his arms around her beneath the ocean. She was standing on the sand, staring back at the shoreline, and the water came up to her breasts. He looked over her shoulder, appreciating the view as she might be. As someone unfamiliar with the coastline of Talidar.
“It’s… beautiful.” She swept her green eyes over the cliff-edged land. They were so white they glowed in the afternoon sunshine, and at the top, there were spiky green and purple bushes that looked almost alien like.
“I’m glad you like it.”
“It’s just a shame it’s three hours from the palace, or I would come here every day.”
He nodded. “You can come here by helicopter,” he promised. “It is a much shorter journey.”
She nodded. “I imagine it would be. Why did you drive today then?”
Because he’d wanted the time with her. He shrugged. “I had nothing more pressing to do.”
Her heart turned over. Every time she felt like he just might say something she needed to hear, he didn’t. She turned to face him, encircled by his strong arms. “Mir, who is Marni?”
His pleasure at the fact that she’d used the shortened version of his name was short lived. “Why do you ask?”
“I keep thinking about what Selena said. That you married me because of Marni.”
He ran his hands down her spine, distracting her with the contact. “You’ve asked me about this already.”
She nodded thickly.
“And what was my answer, when you asked me before?”
She looked up into his eyes, her own a mesmerising oceanic shade of green. “That Selena is wrong.”
His smile spread slowly across his face, seductive and enticing. “And nothing has changed. She is still wrong.”
It didn’t matter. If she thought their marriage was real; that it would last forever, she might have tried to understand him better. But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t. So she let it go. Instead of asking what she knew she should, she let her body feel what it wanted to. A deep, soul-stirring pleasure in the closeness to his.
“You know,” she whispered, her hands around his
back. “This is the first time we’ve been this close in the daylight.”
He laughed, surprised by her observation. “Is it?”
She looked at him with mock sternness. “You know it is.”
“I have been busy.” He hadn’t. But he didn’t yet know how to handle Olivia. And the surety that he was alienating her time and time again had kept him at a distance in every way but one. “Has life in Talidar been hard for you?”
She lowered her gaze, staring at the glistening water. “No.” It was the truth. “I mean, I miss my mother, and I worry for her. And I need to let my work know when I’ll be coming back. But other than those worries, I’ve found it… fine… to be here.”
His anger was unwarranted, but nonetheless, it flashed through him. She did not need to worry. Not about work, and not about her mother. He wanted her by his side, forever more, without any sadness intruding on that. He wanted to protect her. Hell, he wanted to protect her as he had not been able to Marni. For the first time in years, he allowed himself to see the other woman’s face, and he groaned. He’d wounded her, and now he was wounding Olivia.
He kissed her with the full force of his emotion. His need to reassure her, as well as himself, was an indomitable force. Somewhere, on the edge of the cliff, members of his security team would be waiting for them. Tamir wanted Olivia, desperately, but he could not expose her to the eyes of those men. He lifted her from the water, carrying her against his chest, to the tent that had been built in preparation for their arrival. He reached it as quickly as he could, pounding the soft white sand of the beach with the woman he had married in his arms. He lay her down gently on the large carpeted floor, pressing himself against her before she could move. He kissed her again, this time, with all his desire and longing. His mouth moved over hers with possessive heat, while his hands worked to strip her wet bathers from her body. He flung them aside, uncaring that they landed in the sand at the far corner of the tent. Naked beneath him, finally, he let out a sound of relief. She would soon be his. Soon. He kissed her salty, wet skin, smiling as goosebumps ran the length of her body. The mark he’d made on her neck had faded. He pressed his lips to it again, and this time, as he sucked her flesh, she smiled.
Sheikhs: Rich, powerful desert kings and the women who bring them to their knees... Page 43
