by Abby Green
He cast a look at his watch and gave a low whistle. ‘Not bad. It only took twenty-four hours. I was convinced it would take at least two days. Was it my concern for the boy’s distress that melted your soft-hearted resistance, or was it the impressive way I wielded the gun?’
Jamilah’s hand came up then, and she did slap him. Hard enough to make his head turn. Her hand tingled and burned. Shakily she said, ‘You deserved that—and not for what you just said, but for what you did to me six years ago.’
She turned and walked to the door, and Salman said softly from behind her, ‘Make no mistake, Jamilah, I do want you. But if we sleep together I won’t and can’t offer you anything more than I offered last time.’ Bitterness rang in his voice. ‘At least you can’t say that I’m not warning you up-front.’
Jamilah turned back. ‘Go to hell, Salman.’
As she turned again and walked away she heard him say quietly, ‘I’ve already been there for a long time.’
Something stopped her in her tracks at that. She turned again, despite all the screaming voices and warning bells going off in her head. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
CHAPTER SIX
SALMAN heard Jamilah’s words, and his whole body contracted as if from a physical blow. Damn the woman, why wouldn’t she just leave? A voice mocked him. Like the way you forced her to leave six years ago?
A wave of weariness nearly knocked Salman sideways then. He’d been so rigid, so controlled, so angry for so long. And this woman was taking a sledgehammer to all of that and smashing it aside without even knowing what she was doing.
Grimly he turned to face her, his face still stinging from her slap. He welcomed it.
When Jamilah saw the lurid print of her hand on Salman’s cheek in the shadows she felt huge remorse. She came forward on stiff legs, and in a rush made a stilted apology for hitting him. She’d never hit another human being in her life, and was genuinely mortified at her behaviour.
But he just said grimly, ‘I’m not sorry you hit me. I deserved it. And I probably deserve more.’
Jamilah shook her head. ‘I don’t get it, Salman. It’s almost as if you want to be punished.’
He cracked a tight smile. ‘Don’t I?’
Jamilah was silent. She suspected he wasn’t referring to his behaviour six years ago with her—or he was, but it was only a small part of a much bigger thing. ‘What really happened with that boy tonight? Why did it affect you like that?’
Salman looked at her for a long moment, his dark gaze blistering her for her question, but as he did so she felt more and more defiant. She wasn’t going to back down.
And then he said tightly, ‘I don’t think you really want to know why.’
Sudden anger flared that he should shut her out like this. She sensed that this was at the very core of who he was. ‘Don’t patronise me, Salman. I’m sure there’s nothing you could tell me that would unduly shock me.’
That bleakness flashed across his face again before it was masked. He smiled grimly. ‘Nevertheless, it’s not something I want to discuss right now.’
Without even really thinking about what she was saying Jamilah asked, ‘When will it be the right time, Salman?’
His mouth tightened. ‘For you? Never. I would never do that to you.’
‘You already did, Salman.’
She knew they were talking about two different things now, and yet it was all inextricably bound up together—Salman’s dark secrets and the way he’d treated her, the way he still didn’t trust her enough to reveal himself. And never would.
A sense of futility made her turn as if to go, but to her shock and surprise Salman grabbed her wrist and said tightly, ‘Are you sure you really want to know, Jamilah?’
She faced him slowly and could see the intense glitter of his eyes, the way a muscle pulsed in his jaw. The moment was huge, and she knew that much of their history and this present madness was bound up in it.
Slowly, as if she might scare him off, she nodded her head. ‘Yes, I want to know, Salman.’
Salman looked into Jamilah’s huge blue eyes. He had the most bizarre sensation of drowning while at the same time clinging onto a life-raft. He couldn’t believe he’d stopped her from leaving—couldn’t believe he’d just said what he had. Did he really think he was about to divulge to her what no one else knew? His deepest, darkest shame? And yet in that instant he knew an overwhelming need to unburden himself here, with her. It could never have been with anyone else. He saw that now, as clear as day.
That little boy had had a more profound effect on him than he’d expected. He’d acted completely on instinct to go and comfort him, and when he’d seen what he could do to make him feel better he’d done it. It had only been afterwards, walking away, when the full impact of taking that shot had hit him.
His past had rushed upwards to slap him in the face far harder than Jamilah ever could. For a few moments in that fairground with Jamilah he’d been seduced by her all over again. Seduced into a lighter way of being. Seduced into thinking that he didn’t carry around an awful legacy and a dark secret which pervaded his being like a poison.
The bravery he’d witnessed from others mocked him now—was he afraid to do this? For the first time he knew he wasn’t. What he was afraid of, right here and now, was how Jamilah would react to what he was about to tell her…for if anything could drive her away for good this could. Perhaps this was the sum total of his actions—to be brought to his knees by her only to watch her walk away for good.
Jamilah watched as Salman clearly struggled with something, but then his face became expressionless. The light spilling in from the sitting room illuminated its stark lines and he’d never looked so bleak. He dropped her wrist, and it tingled where he had held it. He walked over to a chair in the corner and sat down heavily, and Jamilah, not taking her eyes off him, perched on the end of the bed. Her throat had gone dry.
His head was downbent, and then he lifted it, that black gaze spearing her. ‘What I said to you that day in Paris…about how there had never been anything between us, about you following me around like a puppy dog…it was a lie.’
For a second a buzzing sounded in Jamilah’s ears. She thought she might faint. As much as she wanted to deny that she remembered his cruel words, she said instead, ‘Why? Why did you say it?’ Relief was a giddy surge through her body.
‘I said it because you’d told me you loved me, and I knew that if I didn’t make you hate me you might not stay away. You might hope you could change me.’
He smiled then, and it was grim. ‘But then, as you’ve said yourself, what you felt was merely a crush, so perhaps I needn’t have been so cruel.’
Jamilah would have laughed if she’d had the wherewithal at this understatement of the year. She hoped the pain she felt wasn’t evident in her voice. ‘You wanted me gone that badly?’
‘Yes. Because I couldn’t take the responsibility of your love. Because I couldn’t return it. Because I can’t.’ He was warning her even now not to expect too much.
Suddenly Jamilah wanted them off this topic. ‘Tell me what you’re going to tell me, Salman.’
As bleak as she’d ever seen him, he said now, his eyes intent on her, ‘I know that I have to tell you. I owe you that much now.’
Jamilah nodded, and wondered why on earth she felt an awful foreboding.
Salman looked down at his hands for a long moment, and then began to speak in an emotionless voice—as if to try and distance himself from what he said. ‘The week after my eighth birthday Merkazad was invaded. We’d had no warning. We had no reason to believe that we were in any danger. But unbeknownst to us the Sultan of Al-Omar had long wanted to reclaim Merkazad as part of his country. He resented our independence.’
Jamilah knew all this—and about how the current Sultan’s father had been the one to launch an invasion with his most ruthless men. She nodded, even though Salman wasn’t looking at her.
‘We were sent to the dungeons while th
ey ransacked and looted all around the castle. It took time for the rest of their men to arrive, thanks to our belated Bedouin defence kicking in, which held them off, but we were effectively trapped in the castle with the soldiers and any kind of rules of war went out of the window. These were men hardened by their experiences—the elite soldiers of the army.’
He looked up and smiled at Jamilah, but it was so cold that she shivered.
‘They got bored. And so they wanted to amuse themselves. They decided to take me on as a pet project of sorts. To see how long it would take to turn a pampered son of the Sheikh into something else…something more malleable.’
A slow trickling of horror started to snake through Jamilah. She went very still.
‘Every day they would come…and take me out of the gaol they’d made out of our old dungeon. At first I bragged to Nadim. I told him that it was because they favoured me. He’d always been the strong one, the one everyone looked up to, and now I was the one being singled out. I couldn’t understand my mother and father’s terror, and if they spoke up too much they were beaten. For the first few days they let me be the cocky little spoilt boy I was—precocious and undoubtedly annoying. We played games…football. They fed me well, made sure I had enough to drink.’
Salman’s mouth thinned, his jaw clenched.
‘And then it started. The breaking down. The food and drinks were denied me. They started beating me with fists and feet, belts and whips, for the smallest thing. I was bewildered at first. I’d thought they’d been my friends and suddenly they weren’t. When I was brought back to the gaol in the evenings I wasn’t so cocky. I was confused. How could I explain to Nadim what was going on? I couldn’t understand it myself. And yet I couldn’t ask for his help. I was too proud, even then. But he suspected what they were doing, and he begged them to take him instead. They ignored him and took me. And they told me that if I didn’t go with them every day they would kill Nadim and my parents.’
Jamilah already had a lump in her throat. She wanted to ask Salman to stop, but knew she couldn’t. If there was ever to be any hope of closure between them then she had to endure this.
Salman shook his head as if to dislodge a memory. ‘The days morphed into one long day… There’s a lot I don’t remember, but eventually the beatings stopped. By then I was no longer confident, cocky or spoilt. They’d broken me. I had become their tea boy—their servant. They made me polish their boots, make them their lunch.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But then they got bored again, and decided to train me to be just like them—ruthless soldiers. So they gave me a gun and took me down to the stables for some target practice.’
‘Salman…’ Jamilah let out a low, horrified breath, shaking her head in denial of what was to come.
He smiled grimly. ‘After it was over—when we were free—the thing that upset my father the most was the fact that they’d shot all the horses. Except they hadn’t…it was me. I was forced to use the horses as target practice, and I got very good very quickly once they told me I had only one shot per horse. If I didn’t succeed first time they would let the horse die in agony.’
Jamilah closed her eyes. That was why he knew how to use a gun. And that was why he never went near horses or the stables. She opened her eyes. She felt as if a cold wind was blowing over her soul. She was numb, and knew it was the protection of shock. ‘Abdul defended you one day at the stables…I couldn’t understand why…’
A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘That first day Abdul tried to stop them, and they offered me a choice. Either start killing the horses or kill him. It wasn’t a choice. Worse than anything, though, was that they made me into one of them. I had to start thinking like them just to survive. I had to become wily. The day the Bedouin came and rescued us they found me up on the roof of the castle with a gun. I’d somehow got away from the rebels and was going to try and shoot them…’ His mouth twisted. ‘I was wild, feral… I was about to kill another human being because they had desensitised me so much that I believed it not only possible but acceptable.’
She felt sick. ‘How can you even bear to go to Al-Omar after that?’
Salman shook his head. ‘Sultan Sadiq is not his father. He and Nadim made a peace agreement years ago. And he personally oversaw the arrest and imprisonment of all the rebel elements of his father’s army.’
Without even thinking about what she was doing Jamilah kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot over to where Salman sat. She knelt at his feet, took one of his hands in hers, and looked up at him, an unbelievable ache in her chest. ‘I had no idea that such terror was visited upon you. Why does no one know this?’ She felt the tension in his frame.
‘Because I blamed myself for a long time. I believed that I’d been responsible on some level—that I’d invited their attention. How could I tell my father what I’d done? He’d never forgive me…or at least that was what I thought. I had nightmares for years of being pursued by a herd of wild avenging horses until I was so exhausted that I would fall and they would trample me to death.’
Jamilah shook her head, gripping his hand. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
Salman quirked a weary smile. ‘It’s one thing to know that on an intellectual level, and another entirely to believe it with all your being.’
Abruptly he stood up, forcing her to stand, too. He took his hand from hers and tipped his head back, his features suddenly stern. ‘So now you know. I hope the lurid tale was worth the wait…’
Jamilah shook her head. ‘Salman, don’t…’
Salman was reacting to how exposed and naked he felt in that moment—alternately drawn to and wanting to escape from Jamilah’s huge eyes, which swirled with emotions he couldn’t bear to acknowledge. ‘Salman, don’t what? I told you I was twisted and dark inside, and now you know why. Nothing else has changed, Jamilah. I still want you.’ His mouth thinned. ‘But I won’t be surprised if you find your desire suddenly diminished. Not many people relish a battle-scarred lover. Perhaps I should take your advice and go and slake my lust elsewhere.’
The stoic pride on his face, mixed with a vulnerability she’d never seen before, made her want to weep. Jamilah fought not to contradict him vociferously. How could he think that? She remained silent, stunned by his awful revelations. She was reeling, in shock and numb all over, but she finally managed to get out, ‘What you’ve told me hasn’t disgusted me at all…you were a victim, and shouldn’t have had to go through that alone.’
Jamilah sensed Salman’s volatility, sensed his anger that he’d revealed what he had. She knew it must have cost him, and he wouldn’t welcome the fact that she’d all but bludgeoned him into it. She had to walk away now or he might see how badly she wanted to step up to him, pull his head down and comfort him. She tore her gaze from his and turned and walked away.
At the door she stopped, but didn’t turn back. All she said was, ‘I’m glad you told me, Salman.’ And she left.
For long moments after Jamilah had left the room Salman just stood there, in shock at how easily he’d let his darkness spill out, and at Jamilah’s sweetly accepting response. He’d seen pity, yes, but it hadn’t made him feel as constricted as he might have imagined. He’d always dreaded the reaction he might get. That was why he found it so easy to listen to others tell their tales.
There was an intense battle raging within him: to take Jamilah and slake his lust, drown himself in the sanctuary that he suspected with grim certainty only she could give him, or to push her away so far and so fast that she would be protected from him. Again.
And yet just now she hadn’t run from him in horrified terror at the images that had haunted him all his life. He’d seen the compassion in her eyes and had recoiled from it, even as he’d wanted to bury his head in her breast and beg her to never let him go. He who’d never sought comfort from anyone! Even in the darkest moments, when he’d felt he was going mad with all the nightmares and memories.
The parameters of their relationship had just shifted, and Salman wasn’t su
re where they stopped and started any more. All he knew was that he wanted her—now more than ever. Even while he felt that need he acknowledged that after tonight she would have to come to him, but the question was, would she?
Jamilah lay in bed, wide awake, her stomach roiling at the thought of what Salman had gone through. Her head was whirling with all the information. So much made sense now: that terrible darkness that was like a cloak around him, his frosty relationship with Nadim and Merkazad, his fear of horses… And yet he also seemed to be even more of an enigma. She now knew his inner demons, but she’d never felt further from knowing him.
Jamilah turned over onto her side and looked out onto the empty square that housed the iconic hotel. Moonlight lit up the monument in the middle, throwing it into stark relief. Despite everything Salman had told her, what was at the forefront of her mind was the fact that he’d lied about their bond being non-existent. That he’d said it purely to drive her away. And it had worked—admirably.
She had to concede now that if he had been nicer about rejecting her perhaps a doubt always would have lingered, torturing her even more? Perhaps she wouldn’t have left and got on with her life and career?
Eventually she fell into an uneasy sleep, full of dark dreams and scary faces with no features, and when she woke in the morning, nearly late for her first meeting, she was relieved to see that Salman had already left the suite.
In the cold light of day what he’d endured seemed to be so much starker and worse. She sensed that he was waiting for her to make the next move, and in all honesty she didn’t know if she had the strength to resist him any more…not with this new knowledge in her head and, worse, this desire to comfort him, heal him in some way. She was very much afraid that his cataclysmic confession had torn what remained of her defences to pieces, and now she’d have nothing to hide behind. Not even anger.
