He nodded slowly, his eyes still tracing her lips as though they held the secrets he sought. “It is too late to travel back to the city.”
“I don’t care,” she said stiffly. She made a weak attempt to move away from him but he held her still. “I can’t stay here.”
He was losing his mind. He was losing his senses. He dropped his mouth close to hers and whispered into it, “Yes, you can.”
“Ki,” she groaned, lifting her hands to his chest and holding him where he was. “You’re getting married.”
“Yes,” he shrugged, hating himself but understanding himself completely too. He’d been strong for too long. He had denied himself his need for her and he could do it no longer. “And when I am married, I will be faithful to my wife. But I am no one’s husband yet.”
It was, possibly, the most hurtful and hateful thing he could have said. Abi felt the pain of the past all over again. What had she been expecting? A declaration of love? An admittance that he’d made a mistake? “Yeah, well, I’m not interested in being a place-holder for your wife,” she snapped caustically.
“You are not interested to know if it is still the same between us?” He prompted, running his hands down her arms and then curving one behind her waist to bring her hard against his body.
“No,” she shook her head wistfully. “I know it would be.”
Her honesty thrilled him.
“When it came to sex, we made complete sense. Obviously that attraction is still there,” she said, swallowing her fury at her body’s betrayal. “I’m not interested in sleeping with you. Not now I know who you are and what you’re capable of.”
“What I’m … what exactly am I capable of, Abigail?” He prompted, his fingers moving gently down her spine, undoing the tension and winding her up in a wholly different way.
She shuddered from the sensation. “You lied to me,” she said on a sigh. Her eyes fluttered shut and her body bowed towards his. His smile was tight. “You lied from the beginning. I fell in love with you and you always knew … you always knew we’d never be more than we were.”
He wanted to feel her skin. The dress she’d chosen, perfectly modest in accordance with his culture, was now infuriating him. He gently moved his hand higher, seeking a zip. “I was always honest with you in the ways that mattered most. I told you I was only temporarily in New York. You knew I would not be around for long.”
“I thought you might change your mind. I thought … I still thought we might have a chance. I loved you.” She sunk her head forward. “And you must have laughed behind my back, knowing I had no clue about all this.”
“All this?”
“Your palace. Your royalty.”
There was no zip at the back. He tamped down on his impatience and moved his hands to the sides. There! Beneath her arm. “On the contrary,” he assured her. “I very much enjoyed your ignorance of my position.” He began to slide the zip down and, while she startled, she made no attempt to stop him. It was a long zip and he was able to slip his fingers between the fabric pieces to touch the soft warmth of her back. He groaned at the contact.
“You should have told me. Before you did, I mean. Before it was too late,” she finished unevenly. Her heart was pounding in her chest. This was so wrong! She’d come here for the most crucial reason, and yet all she wanted now was to enjoy this contact. To touch and be touched.
“It would not have made a difference.”
“It would have to me,” she promised.
“And would you have been as you were if you’d known that I have a Kingdom beneath me?”
His other hand was pushing at the dress now. It was not enough to sneak the contact. He needed so much more. It was a desire that went beyond him, beyond her, beyond even what he owed to his country and betrothed. It was a matter of survival.
“No,” she whispered, when his hands began to lower the dress. “I didn’t come here for that.”
The frustration made his whole body reverberate with archaic desperation. She had the same power over him that she’d always flexed. He might have found it fascinating if he weren’t using every inch of his will-power to control his burdensome lust.
“You expect me to believe you came to Delani so close to my marriage to another woman only by coincidence? Your being here has nothing, you claim, to do with wanting me to cancel my wedding?”
“To cancel your wedding?” She stared at him stricken. “That was never an option. You told me so yourself. I have never entertained any hope of that.”
“No,” he nodded. “I wasn’t offering it as a suggestion, merely as an explanation for the timing of your arrival.”
“I see.” She compressed her lips. The little courage she’d had was withering. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” He pressed a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. “Am I so wrong to think you want me still?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Whether I want you or not is irrelevant. I had no right to be with you then. Those three weeks were a stupid, idiotic mistake.”
He hated her in that moment. Not Abi, but his future wife Melania. She who had agreed to this union out of a desire to serve her people as well as his, and who had made Abi feel like this. Only it wasn’t Melania’s fault. It was his. All his.
“I did not plan to meet you and feel for you as I did.”
“If you’d met me before you agreed to marry her, would it have been different?”
He dragged a hand through his hair. In the distance, the bells of the sacred temple began to chime. It must have been coming up on the hour. “I cannot possibly say.”
Abi squeezed her eyes shut. Even then he couldn’t make the promise she longed to hear.
“In Delani, the royal family has an obligation to marry well. To marry young. To produce children.” She stiffened at the mention of his marriage and future offspring; he noted the involuntary gesture and he didn’t like that he was wounding her. “I have already pushed the faith of my people too far. My father was married ten years younger than I will be.”
“Why does it matter?” She demanded, spinning around. “Surely you are a competent ruler. Why must you marry young? Why must you marry at all?”
He laughed, a harsh sound that broke the silence of the night. “I will not, in the end, be marrying young.”
“You’re thirty one,” she said with a shrug.
“Yes. As I said, my father …”
“And did marrying your mother make him a better ruler?”
He understood her frustration. “It is not so simple as that. It is an ancient story amongst my people. It dates back to The First Sheikh.”
She rolled her eyes. “Lots of cultures have ancient customs that no longer serve a purpose. You’re living out an anachronism.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw. Whether he agreed with her or not was immaterial. “It is the way of my people,” he said simply. “The story of The First Sheikh is one of our most sacred texts. I must honour it.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I didn’t come here to talk about your damned marriage,” she pointedly brought the conversation to a close. There was no purpose in going around in circles. “I came to ask for your help.”
“Yes, I know.” He was angry now. It was no good trying to conceal it. The negative emotion fired his blood as lava might a volcano. “For money.” He was almost crazy with longing, desire, need and frustration. What other explanation could there be for his next statement? “And what would I get for my two hundred thousand dollars?” He demanded, his expression unforgiving. For the first time, Abi saw him as a hard ruler; a man used to getting everything he wanted. The visage was intimidating.
She swallowed nervously. “More than you know,” she whispered the words and he spoke as though she hadn’t.
“Do I get you, Abi? Would two hundred thousand dollars buy me your company?”
“My company?” She spat with harsh disbelief, her heart pounding so hard against her ribcage that she thought her
chest may rupture. “Is that a clever euphemism for sex?”
He dipped his head in silent agreement.
She swore under her breath. Grief was lancing through her. Grief for their son. Grief for what they’d once been — what she’d mistakenly believed them to have been. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” He shrugged, though he completely understood her reaction. “You said you were desperate. I’m asking how desperate?”
Blood was gushing through her body. Abi had kept a child from this man. She had done it because she’d lived in a constant state of fear that he would insist on having their son brought up in his palace. That he would want their son to be raised by him, and now his wife. The woman he was destined to marry.
Only worry over Michael’s health had brought her to his door. She’d arrived prepared to tell him the truth no matter the consequence. In the back of her mind, she’d held the fear that he would insist on taking Michael from her in exchange for his help. That he would insist on Michael coming to this faraway country. And Abigail had made her peace with that. She could live with almost anything, but never the death of her sweet boy.
A sob tore from her chest and she turned away from him to mute it. Could she sleep with him for money? Ordinarily, no. But for her son? To save her son’s life? It would mean she could keep her secret! She could keep Michael’s very existence from the man who would otherwise claim him. She could live as she had been – with Michael by her side. And she’d get one last beautiful night with the only man she’d ever loved. It was a horrifying, terrifying conundrum to be faced with.
Nausea bit through her stomach but Abigail felt her head nod.
“Yes, Ki. I’m that desperate.” She fidgeted her fingers in front of her, aware that this decision would forever ink grief into her soul. Yet it was the right decision. A Hail Mary pass at the moment when she thought she had none left. “I’ll sleep with you if that’s what it will take.”
She had surprised him entirely.
Abi – his Abi – would never have agreed to such a preposterous suggestion. It should have sparked his curiosity and his compassion but it did not. Instead, he felt the most tremendous burst of relief. The future without Abi loomed like a bleak wave of obligation. But he had this night.
This one night, filled with magic, copper bells, birdsong and now the promise of possessing the only woman he’d ever loved — one last time.
It was wrong. Wrong, on so many levels, but when she turned to him and began to pull her dress down he was incapable of doing anything to intervene. He watched as she stepped out of it.
Her skin was perfect. Soft and golden, emphasised by the lace of her bra and pants.
She wore her hair in a bun, but beneath his watchful gaze she began to pull the pins loose; it tumbled over her shoulders like copper and golden fountains.
“You always liked my hair out,” she said, her voice shaking and her eyes misted with tears.
“True.” His expression was speculative as he walked towards her. He crouched down and lifted her dress back over her body. For one second, Abi hoped against hope that he might be balking at this madness; and yet part of her despaired that he might change his mind, too.
“This is not a private room,” he said without emotion in his words.
“Oh.” She nodded jerkily. “Of course.”
“Follow me.” He stared at her for a moment longer than was necessary and then turned. As an afterthought, he put his hand out to guide her but she ignored it.
“I can walk by myself, thanks,” she said acerbically, her chin stubbornly tilted.
He turned to conceal the smile that played about his lips. There she was! A hint of the woman he’d known, a long time before.
“What’s she like, anyway?”
“Who?” He turned out of the stateroom and began to move down the corridor. The guards flanking the corridor stood to attention, their guns held as a salute to his power.
Abi flinched as they walked past the first man. He understood. She’d probably never been so close to a weapon such as that.
“Your wife.”
“She is not yet my wife,” he clarified, throwing her a look of sardonic amusement. “Are you trying to remind me of my obligations to her?”
Her cheeks flushed and he felt sadness burst in his chest. He’d forgotten how easily she blushed.
“Are you hoping I will change my mind?”
Her blush deepened. He stopped walking. “Abigail,” he addressed her clearly, his eyes locked to hers so that she would understand his sincerity. “What we are about to do is wrong on every level, and yet I cannot help myself. It was wrong then. That is the power you have, and always will have, over me.”
“You make that sound like an insult.”
His lip lifted. “It’s just a fact.”
“I don’t like it,” she said coldly.
“Nor do I.”
Anguish ripped through her. “Where are we going?”
“This way.” He spun on his heel and moved, faster now, through the corridor, until they reached a set of carved golden doors.
“Is this your room?”
“No,” he said, and he tried not to care about how Abigail was feeling. She had come to him as an angel from a dream, and he was not strong enough to resist the temptation she offered.
The doors opened to a darkened room with velvet on the walls. “What is this place?”
He didn’t answer, but he did capture her hand and pull her behind him towards yet another set of doors. These ones were locked, but he flicked a small piece of plastic off a silver pad and pressed his thumb to it. The doors made a clicking sound.
“That’s pretty high-tech for a room that looks about five hundred years old,” she mumbled.
“The room is eight hundred years old actually; it’s part of the original palace,” he explained matter-of-factly as he backed into the door so that he could face her. “It is the Lafinyada.”
“What’s that?” Her eyes bore into his, and then slowly, she flicked her gaze around the space. There were no windows; it was very dark. A large, ornate bed was set against the wall. It appeared to be made of gold with sparkling jewels encrusted in the swirling pattern of the frame. The covers were black with golden thread running through them. The furniture was dark, but as she looked more closely she could see there were paintings of women – nude women – and evidence that the room had been used for so much more than sleeping.
“What is the Lafinyada?” She demanded, her throat stinging with unshed tears.
He showed little amusement nor emotion as he pulled on her hand to bring her hard against his chest. “What do you think?”
She sobbed. “I don’t know.”
“It is a room built for the purpose of what we are about to become.”
“Like a … where a harem thing would be?” She flushed at her own inexperience and awkwardness.
“No.” The light was patchy, casting patches of gold over her anguished face. Her beauty made his heart twist. “It has traditionally been reserved for the Sheikh’s mistress.”
“I see.” She blinked. “Have you used it …”
“No.” He ran a finger over her cheek. “I don’t have a mistress.”
Yeah, sure. He only had lovers strewn across the globe, she was sure.
Another sob. “Ki …”
“No.” He shook his head as he unzipped her dress and pushed her clothing away. “Not here. We are not that now. You have agreed to sleep with me for money. You cannot still be trying to bring emotion into this.”
“I …” She gaped, and squeezed her eyes shut. His fingers were sliding her bra straps down, and she was almost completely naked before him. His thumb and forefinger took a nipple in their grip and began to twirl it, sending sharp spasms of pleasure and pain vibrating through her.
“You?” He prompted, enjoying the way colour spread through her. “You what?”
“You’re the one who’s getting married! Did you ever e
ven care for me?” She demanded, as his free hand disposed easily of her underwear. She was naked, and shivering.
“I cared for you a great deal,” he promised. “You almost made me want to renege on my marriage contract.”
“Almost?” She challenged, though thought was becoming almost impossible. He was tormenting both breasts, making her belly sway forward, her intimate heart pressed close to him in silent invitation.
“It was not possible,” he said seriously.
It should have been. When he’d told her, in the same sentence that he revealed he had to leave her and New York far behind, that he was also a powerful ruler of a foreign country, she had thought the world could be theirs. Abi had believed he could do what he wanted, and that surely he’d wanted her.
But he hadn’t. Not enough to stay. Not enough to think of her again, once he’d left the hotel. What was she hoping for now? A declaration of love lost? Did she want him to realise that they had been perfect for one another?
It was all too far in the past. There was so much water under the bridge. All Abigail could hope for was to escape Delani unscathed with the money that would save their son’s life. Oh, and a few new memories of their glorious connection to sustain her for the rest of her life.
She sucked in a deep breath and forced a smile to her mouth. But her body was numbed by grief. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“No.” He lifted her around the waist and carried her easily to the bed. “Nor do I.”
He braced himself on either side of her head and stared down at her, his eyes searching her face for any sign that she was regretting her decision. But her hands were toying with his hair, and then of their own accord, they were pushing at the shirt he wore. She was as desperate for skin contact as he had been.
He kissed her hard on the lips; she tasted just the same. He groaned into her mouth as he drove his lips lower, tasting both of her breasts and wishing he could do nothing more all night – all his life. He just wanted more of her; he would always want more of her. He pushed at his pants and freed his arousal with relief.
The Sheikh's Secret Baby: Nothing stays hidden forever ... Page 3
