The Sheikh's Contract Bride: Theirs was an ancient debt, and the time had come to settle it... (The Sheikhs' Brides Book 1)

by Clare Connelly

  “What is it?” She snapped, pulling at her hand and easing it back into the water.

  He frowned. “I was walking past. I heard you arguing. I wanted to be sure you were okay.”

  “No, Zahir, I’m not okay,” she answered seriously, moving further into the water, away from him. She stayed standing though, and kept her gaze fixed to his face. “I’m angry. Very, very angry. So if you don’t want to listen to some home truths, that I’ll undoubtedly regret saying later, I suggest you just go away.”

  The outburst was the last thing he’d expected. He stood, his eyes holding hers, and Violet was certain he was about to leave. She told herself she was glad. But then, to her surprise, he reached into his robe and pulled at the rope so that it it loosened and fell from his body. A second later, he had dived into the pool, his body lean and long as he swum, beneath the surface, to her. He emerged right in front of Violet, his dark hair a pelt against his head.

  She had seconds to compose herself; it wasn’t enough.

  “I mean it,” she said waspishly. “I’ve had just about enough of everyone today.”

  “What were you and Lilly arguing about?”

  She blinked, carefully trying to mute her reaction. “It’s … personal.”

  “I am your husband,” he pointed out. “Does this not entitle me to know?”

  “It’s not my place to share this,” she clarified. “It’s Lilly’s. And I think she’d rather I didn’t.”

  He was thoughtful for a moment. “Why don’t you give me an idea?”

  Violet moved through the water, stepping easily, until she reached the side of the pool. She went to pull herself out of it, but Zahir was there, his hands on her waist, pulling her back towards him. “Don’t run away from me,” he challenged softly.

  “Isn’t that what you did this morning?”

  His eyes widened and then he nodded. “Yes. But I’m here now.” His hands on the side of her hips was rhythmic. She couldn’t help but relax into the feelings he was stirring. Something about the water amplified her desires.

  “Lilly had fallen into a bad group of friends at school. The day you came to see me, in London, I’d just met with her principal. She’d been expelled.”

  His eyes roamed her face. “You don’t want to tell me what for?”

  “It’s not important. Suffice it to say, her behaviour is the reason I am so hard on her.”

  Zahir’s face wore a mask of mocking disbelief. “I suspect you’re not nearly as hard on her as she deserves.”

  “She’s had it tough, you know? No real stability in her life. I feel like maybe I failed her.”

  “How?”

  “I’m her guardian. I’m the closest thing to a parent she has, but I’m also her sister. I can’t be both. I can’t be her sister and friend, the girl she wants to watch movies with and tell her secrets to, at the same time I’m grounding her and giving her curfews and talking to her about her behaviour.” She shook her head sadly. “But I don’t know if I do either well. I’m not her parent. I’m not her friend. I’m … ineffectual.”

  Zahir pulled Violet closer, and her body went to his willingly. But her mind was lagging behind, still smarting from his reaction this morning. “What are you doing?”

  “Distracting you.”

  He dropped his head until his lips were within reach of hers, and then he brushed them lightly. It was barely a kiss – a suggestion of what they’d once been to each other. But her whole body exploded like a tightly wound spring being let go. She lifted her legs, wrapping them around his waist underwater and holding on for dear life. She crushed her mouth to his, chasing it, and when he might have pulled back, she tangled her fingers in his hair, so that Zahir Al’Eba had no choice but to submit to his wife.

  And submit he did, but only for a moment. The kiss was Violet’s need, to say nothing of his. Zahir though was a man who sought control. His hands on her body were desperate; his tongue pried her mouth open and invaded her space, tangling with hers. His body pushed hers backwards until she was hard against the coping of the pool, and she tilted her head backwards so that he could drop kisses along her neck to the swell of cleavage that was so beautifully displayed by her bathers.

  His fingertips moved over her arms until they found the straps of her bathers. He pushed at them, lowering them, until his mouth was free to taste her skin, to wrap around her nipples and torment them with his tongue. Her moans were loud and insistent and he understood. He knew what she wanted – something he could not easily give her. Not in the way he wanted to, anyway.

  He pushed at her bathers until they were floating in the pool and she was naked in his arms, and then he took his fingers and pressed them against her womanhood, gently at first, tentatively. She was his pregnant wife and he would never risk hurting her.

  But Violet was begging, an incantation of ‘please, please’ leaving her lips in a way that made patience impossible. He slid a finger inside of her warm, feminine core and she bucked instantly and hard, her body trembling at the sweet invasion. He kissed her mouth, his tongue plundering her as his finger moved, a perfectly timed seduction that reduced her to a whimpering mess in his arms.

  He watched as she became frantic, as her face crinkled and her eyes squeezed shut, as her crying out became louder and louder until she finally dipped her head forward, pressing it against his head and sobbed at the intensity of her orgasm.

  “Zahir,” she whispered, her body still trembling. “I want you.”

  But Zahir was staring at his wife with a sense of complete confusion. He held her, and once her breathing returned to a slower pace, he moved away from her. “I’m sorry,” he shook his head. “I had no intention of letting that happen.”

  “Why not?” She asked, moving after him.

  “Please,” he shook his head. “Get dressed.”

  “Damn it, Zahir. I am your wife. Do you really intend to ignore me?”

  “I am not ignoring you,” he promised darkly.

  “I want to make love to you,” she murmured.

  “I won’t allow that to happen again.”

  The words were so definitive, so loaded with certainty, that she lost her train of thought. It slipped out of her fingers. All she could do was stare at him with bewilderment.

  “Put your swimming suit back on, Violet. I’ll see you for dinner.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You were telling me about Lilly earlier,” he observed, his intelligent eyes pinned to Violet’s face. The sky had dipped low in the sky, casting them in its beautiful dusky warmth, and the lights from the city were beginning to take over. It was a beautiful city. No matter how often Violet caught a glimpse of it from the palace, she felt a tremble of admiration for the modern construction. She knew the old city to be just beyond it, and out of nowhere she recalled Syed’s offer to take her for a tour. She would have to arrange that.

  “Was I?” She gave her husband her full attention once more. It was a mistake. Her gut instantly squeezed with remembered pleasure and she felt heat pool between her legs. She imagined making love to him as they’d used to and almost groaned audibly.

  “I gather it hasn’t been easy parenting her.”

  “That’s an understatement.” Violet lifted a piece of flat bread to her lips and bit down on the corner, chewing the oily, fennel seeded mix without really tasting it. “She’s a good person. Kind, intelligent, sensitive – so sensitive! But …”

  “She’s very different from you,” he interpreted gently.

  Violet’s eyes widened and she nodded. “Yes. At our hearts, we’re different people. I have never been interested in breaking rules and pushing boundaries. You give Lil an inch and she takes a mile. A couple of years ago, she begged and begged and begged me for an iPhone. I gave her one as a Christmas gift, and the next day she was asking for an iPad. It’s never about what she’s asking for, with Lilly, it’s about knowing that you’re listening.”

  Saying the words aloud made Violet pause. She placed the fl
atbread onto her plate and stared at Zahir, her expression hollow. “And I have been a terrible listener lately,” she groaned softly, shaking her head. Her hair, fair like sunshine, moved with her, reminding him of the day he’d offered to renew their marriage contract. It had fluffed around her face then too, and he’d wanted to reach over and run his fingers through its silky ends.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “I’ve been so angry with her,” Violet spoke without taking his comment on board. “I’ve been so focussed on what she’s done wrong that I never stopped to look at why.” She ran her finger down the jewelled handle of her fork, then lifted her eyes to Zahir’s. “I’ll talk to her in the morning. I owe her an apology.”

  He was quiet, trying to comprehend his wife’s statement. “I cannot see that you do,” he said finally.

  Violet’s smile was half-hearted. “That’s because of who you are,” she said with a small shrug.

  “And who am I?”

  “A powerful man who believes in his own superiority at all times.”

  His laugh was a harsh bark. “That is not true. Not when it comes to you, certainly. I will freely admit that you are superior to me in many ways.”

  The compliment trickled sweet pleasure down Violet’s spine. Her cheeks glowed. “I’m glad you see it my way,” she couldn’t resist teasing, but the words came out a little halting, as her breath was being tormented inside of her lungs.

  “Who wouldn’t?” He responded with an answering smile. “I have many faults, you appear to have none.” He let the praise swim between them, observing the effect it had on Violet, and then added, “Except two, that I can think of.”

  “Oh?”

  “You are too malleable, qalil. And you exhibit extremely poor judgement.”

  She laughed at the unexpected cataloguing of her faults. “Meaning?”

  “You chose to marry me when you had no obligation to do so. And I have been thinking about this lately, trying to understand what could have motivated you to make this decision.”

  Her eyes met his, but her stomach churned. To tell the truth? Or dissemble? To face her fears or hide from them?

  “We’ve talked about this,” she chose the middle line. “I trusted Efani’s judgement.”

  “But enough to marry a stranger?”

  The truth pulled at her. She carried his baby; they were husband and wife. And she loved him. She thought back to her first meeting with Zahir and couldn’t help but smile. When she spoke, it was obvious that she had one foot in the past, her mind alive with memories as though she were watching a film.

  “Have you ever seen The Godfather?”

  The question caught him off guard, as though it were a red-herring. He answered distractedly. “Yes. Years ago.”

  “Do you remember the scene where Michael meets Apollonia?”

  He shook his head, reaching for his crystal water glass. “Remind me.”

  “You know, he goes to Sicily and he’s out walking with his bodyguards and he sees that beautiful girl and she sees him and it’s as though they’ve been struck by …”

  “A lightning bolt,” he prompts, remembering the scene. “As far as I recall, she would have done better not to have married him.”

  Violet covered her smile. “A thunder bolt,” she corrected. “And that’s not the point I’m making.”

  “No?”

  Be brave, she whispered inwardly. Be honest. “I felt like that when I met you.”

  His eyes narrowed; he studied her for a long silent moment. She had no idea what he felt, or what he was going to say. After he hadn’t spoken in at least a minute, she pushed on. “I wanted to like you. And I wanted Efani to be proud. But you arrived at our home and you were so much more than I had ever been able to imagine --,”

  “A teenage fantasy,” he dismissed uneasily.

  “It was so much more than that.” She leaned across the table, pressing her hand over his. “Didn’t you feel it?”

  He straightened in his chair and turned his face away, staring out at the view over the city. He was a study in calm control, but his chest moved rapidly, as though he too was struggling to control his emotions. “I felt surprised by your intelligence and maturity,” he said at length. “But that meeting only served to prove why I would not marry you.”

  “Why? Why were you so determined we wouldn’t marry? Did I offend you in some way?”

  “Yes,” he snapped angrily. And then shook his head. “Rather your willingness to go along with the plan offended me. Your desire to subjugate your own wishes to everyone else’s. Your youth offended me.”

  Tears sparked in her eyes. She twisted her fingers around the stem of her glass. “You’re lying.” A bold challenge to a man like Zahir Al’Eba, but one she was certain was correct.

  “Don’t you understand, qalil? I left that meeting knowing I could never stick to our agreement. Everything about the matter filled me with disgust.”

  The words hurt but she didn’t believe them. Not at their core. There was more going on and she needed to understand it. “Did you love Anna?”

  He startled visibly, his eyes clashing with hers. He wanted to ignore the question; she could see that he was fighting within himself. “I cared for her,” he said finally.

  It was a strange answer. “Does that mean ‘no’?”

  His lips twisted but not in a smile; in more of a grimace. “I married her. What do you think?”

  She shrugged. “You married me, too. I think you do what suits you at the time.”

  The accusation was hurtful to a man like Zahir but he didn’t challenge it. How could he?

  “You are right,” he said finally. And his face was calm but his voice was thick with emotion. “I married Anna because it suited me. It was the only way to be free of my obligation to you and your grandfather.” He looked at Violet but he didn’t really see her.

  “I married a woman who loved me. I used her to break the promise I had made to Efani. And because I still thought my father might dissolve the marriage, I made sure she fell pregnant on our honeymoon.” He was completely still, his eyes locked to Violet’s, his body unmoving. “I made sure my wife fell pregnant so that I would never have to marry you. And she died. Because of that decision.” There was such an aching hollowness to his words that Violet longed to comfort him, despite the hurt he was ripping open in her chest.

  She pushed aside her own pains momentarily. There would be time to process them later. “If she had survived, and the baby had survived, you would have stayed married to her? You would still be married to her?”

  His nod was slow and emphatic.

  “And you say she loved you?”

  His laugh was a derisive sound of anger. “Yes, she loved me.”

  “So you made her happy. You married her. You gave her a baby. You gave her what she wanted.”

  “Are you happy?” He responded with slow, thoughtful intent.

  Violet froze, her eyes trapped by his. She was powerless to look anywhere but at him. Her throat pulsed and she tried to draw in breath. “I’m … what do you mean?”

  “You believe that you love me. I married you. You are carrying my baby. Has that made you happy?”

  Her face drained of colour completely. “I … What are you talking about?”

  His laugh lacked humour. “Am I mistaken, Violet? Don’t you believe yourself in love with me?”

  “I … that’s an arrogant assumption,” she said haltingly.

  “Based on your behaviour and actions, I believe it is a correct assumption.”

  “What behaviour?” She asked, but inside her heart was racing and her head was beginning to throb. Panic was stirring a metallic taste into her mouth.

  “You are inexperienced,” he said with a shake of his head. “I am not. I have had many women believe themselves in love with me, and I recognise the hallmarks. You have all of them.”

  Mortification spread through her. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “We’re not talk
ing about how I feel.” It was a breathy plea to be put out of her misery.

  “We are now.”

  She swallowed, her nerves at breaking point. “I thought I loved you, when I was younger,” she said seriously.

  “And now?” He pushed with a determination that made her stomach sink.

  “Can we just let this go?”

  “It is a simple question,” he insisted, his voice showing no emotion. “You love me or you do not.”

  Every single cell in her body was quivering with anticipation. She put her hands in her lap and met his gaze with the appearance of fearlessness. “Yes. I love you. I’m in love with you.”

  He stared at her and the words seemed to swirl around them, like little ghosts that neither could escape. He sat still, letting them sink in, and then he nodded. “And are you happy?”

  It was so far from the response that she had been hoping for that she laughed, but it was a deranged sound of disbelief. “Not right now I’m not.”

  He nodded. “Anna was. You were right. She thought she had everything she wanted in life.”

  But Violet didn’t want to talk about Anna for a moment longer. She was done trying to offer him a reprieve from his guilt and pain. “Damn it, Zahir, you’re not going to give me a thing, are you?”

  His expression was impenetrable. “What do you want from me?”

  “I might not have as much experience as you do, but I think you’re in love with me too. You’re just doo damned stubborn and messed up to admit it.”

  He laughed now, with true amusement. “Messed up? You are the first person on earth to accuse me of not knowing my own mind.”

  “Perhaps I’m the first person to have reason to.”

  “What reasons? Why do you suppose me to have fallen in love with my contract bride?”