How comfortably domestic it sounded, thought Sorrel, unable to suppress a brief pang of envy—but she saw Malik give the faintest of frowns, and wondered if it was Xavier’s easy familiarity with him which had caused such disquiet. Did his sheikhdom and the icy barrier he had erected around himself mean that he wouldn’t even let himself get close to his brother? At least it isn’t just around me that he keeps at an emotional distance, she thought bitterly.
Malik shrugged apologetically. ‘That would have been wonderful,’ he said smoothly. ‘But unfortunately my security vetoed it in favour of this place.’
‘Only because it justifies their salary and they love the whole red carpet bit whenever you go out anywhere in public,’ said Sorrel, flashing her blue eyes at him. Because she knew and he knew that he could have overridden their objections any time he’d wanted.
There was the tiniest of silences, and Malik saw a look being exchanged between Xavier and his wife. Were they surprised that the Sheikh should allow one of his aides to be so familiar with him? He certainly couldn’t blame them if they were.
How dared Sorrel offer an implied criticism like that—against him and also against his staff? Who the hell did she think she was? Was that why she had outrageously seduced him earlier, against his better judgement—thinking that sex gave a woman power over a man like Delilah chopping off Samson’s hair? Well, she was going to get a short, sharp lesson in just who was master!
They glared at one another as the wine waiter approached.
‘So, what’s it like accompanying Malik on his trip, Sorrel?’ asked Laura, breaking the rather awkward silence and shaking her head as a bottle of chilled champagne was held towards her glass. ‘No, thanks. Just water for me. Is he an easy man to work for?’
Sorrel’s lips twitched as the two women’s eyes met in a moment of perfect understanding. ‘Protocol dictates that I cannot answer that truthfully in front of the man in question,’ she replied demurely, and Xavier and Laura both laughed.
Malik, on the other hand, did not. He just sat back in his chair, surveying her with a quietly brooding look that was making her feel more uncomfortable by the minute. Well, if he’d wanted her to sit there mutely he should have told her so at the beginning!
‘And how is life in Kharastan?’ asked Xavier, after they had eaten oysters with raspberry vinegar and then creamy scrambled eggs topped with shaved truffles, which was a speciality of the famous restaurant.
Malik smiled. ‘The country continues to develop—culturally as well as financially,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Everyone is naturally jubilant about the new oil-field—but there is an archaeological expedition over from the States which I’m particularly excited about. They’ve brought up some exquisite pots and bowls. We’re hoping to open a new museum at the entrance to the site—but first, of course, we need to improve the access road.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been working hard,’ said Laura. ‘And what’s it like for women now? Any big changes since I was last there?’
Malik’s gaze came to rest on Sorrel’s pink and white face, and he felt a terrible jerk of sheer excitement as he remembered just where it had been positioned earlier. It was, he realised with a start, the only time in his life that he had ever been out on an occasion like this—with family, and also accompanied by a woman he was being intimate with. Or nearly intimate with.
Usually he compartmentalised. Women were for sex and relaxation. They were diversionary. He tried and failed to think of any other he would have brought along to an occasion like this.
‘Sorrel would be better qualified to answer that than me,’ he conceded.
Sorrel met his eyes, knowing that—despite the tensions between them which lay simmering beneath the surface—as ruler of his country, she admired him utterly and absolutely.
‘We are introducing the driving test for women,’ she said softly. ‘Which is long overdue. Malik…well, Malik fought hard for that.’ His black eyes mocked her stumbled compliment, but she meant every word of it—and she had to bite back a great wave of sadness as she watched Xavier place his hand over Laura’s. They were so in love, she thought—and not afraid to show it.
Whereas they…
No. Stop it, she corrected herself—because that was all fantasy. There was no they with her and Malik—it was all her. She. She was in love with him and always had been, and she was the one who had walked arrogantly and gleefully into a situation which was now threatening to self-destruct. Like a tiny kitten challenging a fierce lion she had told him she wanted a lover, and he had called her bluff—but none of it had worked out. Why, they weren’t even lovers!
She suspected that Malik had been holding back from full sex in order to give her time to retract her agreement and change her mind—because there was a part of him that always wanted her to remain sweet and pure Sorrel in his eyes.
He had held back with the kind of iron-hard restraint that she couldn’t imagine in anyone else. But now she had probably blown it by seducing him. Such a proud and virile man would now surely take what he must consider to be his by rights. She could read it from the edgy and restless look in his black eyes when he looked at her—tonight he intended to finally take up her challenge and make love to her in the fullest sense.
But instead of feeling excited, and eager for it to happen, inside Sorrel was eaten up with nerves. Because deep down she suspected that the final intimacy would spell the end for them—once she had given him that, there would be nothing left to give. Her virginity would be signed, sealed and delivered, and her relationship with Malik—such as it was—would be over. Her mystique would be no more and she would become just another in the long line of his lovers.
‘Sorrel?’ A voice broke into her thoughts
‘Mmm? Oh, sorry, Laura—I was miles away.’
‘So are les toilettes!’ Laura gave her a searching smile. ‘Shall we go and find them together, and leave these men with an opportunity to talk to one another?’
Sorrel nodded, rising to her feet—aware of Malik’s gaze burning into her and wondering if the simple sheath of black silk she wore which fell like a dark waterfall to the ground met with his approval.
Eyes followed the two women as they made their way across the restaurant, and Malik’s were among them as he watched her go. In a room full of beautiful and expensively dressed women Sorrel stood out like the natural beauty she was—though he didn’t like her dressed in that sombre colour.
He turned back to find Xavier watching him intently, and suddenly he felt stricken with a pang of guilt, recognising that Sorrel had been right—his preferred option had been to try and get out of this meeting. To act as if he had no family at all. Yet a part of him bitterly regretted that he hadn’t got to know his father until the last days of years of his life. Wouldn’t he regret it even more if he didn’t attempt to forge a better relationship with his two brothers? And the fact that he was here at all was Sorrel’s doing, he reminded himself. She had battled to get him here.
He raised his glass. ‘It is good to see you again, Xavier.’ And to his surprise he found that he meant it.
‘Et toi aussi, mon frère.’ His half-brother sat back in his chair, his eyes full of question. ‘How I long to ask you a question that protocol would frown on,’ he murmured.
‘Ask me what you will,’ said Malik gruffly. ‘For are we not brothers?’
For a split-second their eyes met in a moment of pure kinship, and Xavier nodded in silent and grateful acknowledgement of the bond. ‘Is it serious?’ he asked softly. ‘With Sorrel?’
‘Serious?’ Malik was taken aback. ‘How the hell can it be serious?’
Xavier shrugged. ‘I just felt that there was something…between you.’
‘But we’ve been snapping at each other all evening,’ objected Malik.
‘Precisely,’ said Xavier dryly. He glanced towards the direction of the restroom and hesitated. ‘You are lovers, perhaps?’
Malik sighed and shook his dark head. That depend
ed on your definition of the word. ‘No. For she is a virgin,’ he said slowly, almost as if he had forgotten Xavier were there.
Xavier’s black eyes narrowed as he looked at his half-brother. ‘Ah! I see. Yes, I see,’ he said slowly. He stared down at his hands for a moment—and when he looked up again his black eyes were clear and candid. ‘Then you must leave her now,’ he said. ‘Or marry her.’
‘I know that,’ said Malik fiercely. ‘Don’t you think I don’t know that?’
The women came back in time for dessert and coffee—though Laura refused the restaurant’s famous chocolate mousse and just sipped at a cup of fruit tea instead.
In the lobby they said their farewells, and Malik agreed to visit them in Kardal, when their beach-house was completed. Amid the chatter of future plans Sorrel stood to one side—feeling left out and not knowing whether, if ever, she would see the couple again.
It didn’t get any better once they were inside the limousine, because Malik seemed preoccupied and Sorrel sensed that some sea-change had occurred over the course of the evening. He did not touch her, nor even look at her—and there was none of the flirtation she had come to expect from him. Without knowing how—or why—she suspected that it was going to be over between them before it had even started.
But you do know why, she thought unhappily. You have crossed over an invisible line. By seducing himyou have discarded your pure and virginal identity and he will have lost respect for you. And even though she tried to tell herself that she had been acting like an equal, instead of a submissive little yes-woman, it still hurt—and she still wished she could rewind the clock for it never to have happened.
Malik turned his head to stare out of the window, where tourists wandered the streets as happily as if it was daylight. The car sped down the Champs-Elysées and skated the edge of the Trocadero—all floodlit, like a giant film set, with the watchful frame of the Arc de Triomphe in the background—but Malik saw nothing of these.
His head was full of conflicting thoughts as he balanced dreams against reality, desire against morality. By playing sexual games with Sorrel he now found himself in deep and dark swirling waters—not knowing which way the land ahead lay. If he took her virginity, then he would have to marry her. He hadn’t needed Xavier to voice it for in his heart he had always known this. And yet now—as then—the same question reared its head. Was the price too high?
Wouldn’t it be better for all concerned if he did what most men in his position would do? If he forgot all about Sorrel? If he played the field for a few more years and then settled down with a meek Kharastani wife who would allow him rightful dominance in his home as well as in his country? Not a woman he knew almost too well to be comfortable with, who was in turn feisty and manipulative and, with her English boarding-school education sometimes just too independent for her own good.
She chose just that moment to cross one leg over the other—so that he could see its long and shapely definition through the silky caress of the black gown she wore. He wondered if she was wearing stockings underneath, and swallowed down the sudden thickness in his throat. Could he bear never to penetrate her? Never to know that unbearably sweet sensation of completion with her—their contrasting rhythms finding sweet communion in the coming together of their bodies? His tongue snaked out over suddenly dry lips.
‘Laura’s pregnant, you know,’ she said, searching around desperately to fill in the yawning silence.
Malik stilled, erotic thoughts swept away like leaves from a path. He frowned. ‘She told you that?’
‘She didn’t need to—not at first. Because I guessed—didn’t you? She wouldn’t drink wine, and she looked so tired. I asked her if she was okay when we were in the loo and she told me.’ She wasn’t going to tell him that she’d almost broken down and told Laura that she was in love with the Sheikh. ‘They haven’t said anything about the baby yet because they’re terrified of jinxing it—she had a miscarriage last year. Did you know that?’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘But she’s past three months, so it looks fine,’ she added, then saw the dawning of a new burden which shadowed his dark face and wondered how she could have been so dense. Because for Malik it was not just cheery news that his half-brother was about to become a father. When you were royal the repercussions of a new life were even more significant than usual.
Xavier’s baby would become the first of a new generation of the Ak Atyn family. He—or she—was its future, and would continue its line even if Malik were never to produce a child of his own. Would that make him feel threatened, she wondered, or under some kind of subtle pressure to lay the foundation for creating his own dynasty?
She stole a glance at the hard and rugged profile, but he sat silently, as if carved from some dark and immutable stone, seemingly oblivious to her presence.
Malik’s head was buzzing—his mind filled with all the repercussions of his half-brother producing an heir. Was this the wake-up call he had needed to stop avoiding the issue which had been hanging over him ever since the golden crown of Kharastan had been placed on his head at his coronation?
As they let themselves into the suite, leaving the bodyguard standing on guard outside the heavy-duty door, Malik thought how quickly the focus of what troubled you could change. Earlier this evening he had been caught up with nothing more far-reaching than a tussle with his pride and a battle with his conscience. Whether or not he would take Sorrel to his bed for the night had been the question looming large.
But now—with the news that his half-brother was to become a father—his own very existence had been brought into the equation. Malik took his Sheikhdom very seriously—he had not been born to power and did not wear its mantle lightly. He was aware of its honour, and all its responsibilities, and these were what absorbed him now.
Should his first consideration not be to his people, rather than to himself? Were they troubled by the fact that he had shown no signs of settling down—when in fact most of his energies had been spent adapting to his new role and bringing Kharastan into the twenty-first Century.
Sorrel turned to look at him, and as she did so he was aware of the contrast between hair and gown—moon-pale and sky-dark—both gleaming as softly as stars. Her eyes were large and blue and very beautiful, and the curve of her hips spoke instinctively of the dual role at the heart of every woman: lover and mother.
Suddenly he forgot all thoughts of home as his other dilemma took shape in his mind. Because Sorrel had become a problem, and he was a fool not to have anticipated that this would happen.
He wanted Sorrel more than he had ever wanted any other woman in his life, but if he took her virginity he would have to marry her.
Yet he needed a wife!
As never before—he needed a wife!
Was this fate, interceding as it had done so many times before? he wondered. Was practicality enough reason to align their futures?
Yet if he didn’t act, then he would lose her. Someone else would swoop in and take her—for she was ripe and ready for love. Could he bear the thought that another man should know her intimately?
Seized with a certainty that this was the path he was meant to take, he caught her in the crossfire of his black gaze. ‘Sorrel?’
She frowned, sensing something momentous shimmering in the air around them. ‘Yes, Malik?’
There was a pause before he spoke. One of those pauses which seemed to go on for ever, like the moments before birth, or death. Life-changing moments. ‘Will you marry me?’
It was the last thing in the world she had expected, and Sorrel was confused. She met his eyes, her own candid with question. ‘Why?’
In a way he knew her too well to tell her anything but the truth. ‘I need a wife.’
‘Because of Laura’s baby?’ she questioned dully, wondering if the ache in her heart showed on her face.
‘That’s one of the reasons, yes.’
‘And because of my virginity, pres
umably?’ she asked him painfully.
He felt his body tense. ‘That’s another reason, yes. I cannot take it without offering you something in return—and I cannot contemplate the thought of another man being intimate with you.’
‘Gosh, what a lot of reasons!’ she said sarcastically. Jealousy, possession and expediency—they were what lay behind his proposal. He hadn’t said a word about the way he felt—but maybe that shouldn’t have surprised her. To Malik, she was a woman who had been prepared to barter her virginity—all he had done was offer the highest price.
Malik saw the cloud which had crossed over her delicate features, but now that the idea had taken shape in his mind he pursued it with the single-mindedness that he brought to everything. ‘You told me how much you missed Kharastan, Sorrel—how did you describe it? Like there was a hole in your heart.’
Oh, the stupid man—didn’t he realise that she had been missing him as much as her adopted homeland? ‘I don’t remember saying anything like that,’ she said coolly.
‘But you do miss Kharastan,’ he said silkily. ‘I can see it in your face whenever you talk about it. The dreamy look in your eyes.’ His mouth hardened with resolve. ‘I cannot think of a woman better qualified to help me rule—and just think what your father would say if he knew what I was asking you today, Sorrel, can you imagine?’
How clever and calculating he could be, she thought—he knew that those particular words would affect her in a way that few others could. Her father and mother’s happiest years had been spent serving the country they had grown to love with a passion—a passion they had passed on to their only child. Malik had witnessed the close bond which had existed between her and her parents—indeed, at times he had seemed almost wistful about it, and Sorrel had said as much to her mother.
‘That’s because Malik has never known what it is to have a family,’ her mother had said. Had that been another reason why Sorrel had always hung around him? Always delighted when she could manage to put a smile on that stern, handsome face of his? Was that the reason why her father had taken the extraordinary step of making Malik her guardian? Had such an unusual union been one of his own dreams?
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