“I don’t hate you.”
His thumb was running circles around her nipples. She had always loved that. He had brought her to orgasm easily, again and again, by tormenting her breasts. They’d been bigger then. He’d loved them.
The cry in her throat was primal.
What was she doing? It had taken her years to even think she was over this guy, and the second he reappeared she was laying herself bare for him to take as he pleased?
“I have missed you, Najin,” and the words were almost balm enough to temporarily ease the pain brought on by loving him and not having him.
“Not enough,” she said simply, but bleakness was a storm cloud in her soul.
His laugh was without humour. He lifted his mouth now, so close to hers, and her lips parted, waiting, aching to be kissed. “More than you know.”
Finally, he was there, his tongue duelling with hers, his hands dropping to brace her hips, digging into her flesh, as he answered her needs with his own.
It was a parental instinct, honed through experience rather than biology, that alerted her to Lexi’s wakefulness. A tiny noise. The sound of her bed creaking as she turned. And then a whimper, and finally, a soft, plaintive, “Mommy?”
Quiet enough that Syed didn’t hear it. But it was a beacon in the dark, a light of sense in a black ocean of past sensuality. Feelings she had no right to be indulging.
Her hands lifted to his chest and pushed at him. “Stop.” And this time, she meant it. Her lips were darkened by passion; his stubbled chin had left a graze around her mouth, and her body was trembling. But she was Sarah again. Mommy.
His confusion was further evidence that Lexi’s cry hadn’t penetrated his fog of desire.
“Mommy?” It was louder now and more urgent. Sarah swallowed the bitterness of thwarted desire. Every second that passed brought her closer to common sense.
“You need to go,” she said with cold, detached determination. “You aren’t welcome here.”
She spun and left, her pulse still hammering, her mind aching.
Lexi was covered in sweat. “There was a monster,” she sobbed when Sarah walked into the room.
Sarah couldn’t help silently agreeing. The monster might have been the sexiest man she’d ever seen, but he was a monster alright. To her sanity and her senses.
“There’s no monster,” she whispered reassuringly. She stroked Lexi’s hair, her fingers soft against the blonde curls that tumbled down her back. “Are you cold?”
Lexi nodded and Sarah brought her small body close for a hug. Never had she imagined she could feel such love for a person. But Lexi filled her heart. The heart he had destroyed had been blessed by Lexi.
“Let’s get you into clean jarmies then, hmm?”
The mundane task was a welcome distraction. She pulled out a fresh pair and helped Lexi change, then held her sleepy, heavy body until finally the small girl’s breathing was rhythmic and calm.
“Sleep tight, angel-pie,” she whispered, pressing a kiss against her head. It smelled like their coconut bath soap and made her smile.
*
He was looking for bowls.
But they were no longer stored in the same place. Children’s plates had moved in, bright melamine with animals and alphabets. Cups, too, that matched the bowls and plates. A stark reminder of the life she’d been living in his absence.
She had a child.
A four-year-old daughter.
Another man had lain with her, enjoyed her body, taken what she gave so willingly, and implanted a child in her womb.
It was a jealous rage – unmistakable and fervent – that broke upon him.
Had he expected her to stay celibate? For him?
Of course he hadn’t. But the idea of her having moved on so quickly filled Syed with revulsion and outrage. And determination, too.
He opened various cupboards, and finally, found them in the small spot above the microwave. He pulled two bowls out, marvelling how, for a brief period of his life, this domesticity had been normal.
When she hadn’t known who he was, and he had needed, simply, her.
He placed the bowls beside the microwave, bracing his hands for a moment.
He was taking a gamble.
A huge risk.
One that might not pay off.
His father would never approach this with anything other than disapproval. Did he care?
His eyes landed on a couple of envelopes, stuffed between the microwave, one with an angry red side. With curiosity that a man like Syed would never see as intrusive or wrong, he lifted the envelope from its place and slit the side. The bill inside was a third reminder. Cessation of Service Notice. His frown was understandable. He reached for the next envelope along. It was an overdue notice. The next a bill. And then, a payslip.
He skimmed the amount earned by Sarah and a plan began to form. A way to make her see what they were to each other, even now, five years after he’d made the biggest mistake of his life and walked out on the woman who’d meant so much to him.
*
Had she delayed purposefully? Knowing that each moment made it more likely Syed would have left?
Undoubtedly.
And yet, the second she stepped back into the lounge, and saw him standing at the table, arranging bowls in a row, she felt no surprise.
She did, however, experience renewed impatience and disbelief.
She wrapped her arms around her midsection and stared across at him.
All the fight was gone out of her.
Now, she was simply tired.
Exhausted.
“I told you to go.”
He lifted a glance at her, and her body trembled. Awareness was an electric current bursting through the room.
As it had always been between them.
From the first moment he’d appeared in the bar, like a fish out of water, all elegant tailored suit and understated class. He’d slammed his expensive European car’s keys down on the bar and asked to use the phone. “There is no cell coverage in this… town. Where am I?”
She’d laughed, because she hadn’t known who he was, only that he was handsome as hell and obviously out of sorts. “Iron Oaks; gateway to the South. Can’t you tell?” She had looked down at her plaid shirt and denim cut-offs, her grin contagious.
And when he’d inspected her clothes, per her instructions, his eyes lingering on the generous swell of her too-big breasts, the nipped in waist and rounded bottom, the electricity had arced in a way she’d never known possible. Sarah had sworn she’d been burned.
She hadn’t.
That part came later.
“We have not spoken, yet.”
The smell of dinner assailed her nostrils and her stomach squeezed hopefully, though thankfully not audibly. “God, Syed. What the hell do you want to talk about? Five years is a really long time. This … this … booty call is as offensive as it is unwanted.” She tilted her chin, staring at him through slatted eyes.
His expression was the definition of sardonic rebuke. “Unwanted?” And pointedly, his eyes drifted lower, to the nipples that were still straining against the soft fabric of her sweatshirt.
“Unwanted,” she snapped, crossing her arms.
He chose not to push the point. They both knew that there was no lack of wanting between them. “Sit.” He gestured to the chair opposite him.
“No.”
“Sit and eat,” he said again, moving towards her now, so that her breath hitched in her throat. She scampered around the sofa, keeping distance between them, even though that meant sitting at the table when she wanted to be far, far away from him.
“I’m not hungry,” she lied.
He stared at her, the look cold. “Eat.” He moved to the table and stood over her, his arms crossed, his expression resonating with barely contained fury.
She stared back at him, unflinchingly.
“Are you going to fois gras me?”
It took a moment for the strange turn of phras
e to make sense. He shook his head impatiently. “I do not intend to force feed you.” He moved to the chair opposite her and sat, watching her with displeasure. “But you are too thin.”
Her head reeled as she jerked her attention to his face. “Excuse me?”
“You are too thin,” he repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Are you not eating enough?”
“I eat fine,” she said stiffly. And she did. When she remembered to; when she had time to; when she had enough groceries to. She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m busy.”
“Too busy to eat?” He drawled archly.
“None of this is your business.”
He nodded, rubbing a hand over his chin. “I think it is just that.”
“What?”
“My business.”
On the brink of reaching for the serving spoon, she froze. “I am not going to pretend this is normal. Five years ago we slept together. That might as well have been a lifetime ago.”
“Yes,” he drawled. “You have been… busy.”
That muscle jerked in his cheek again. The one that told her he was unhappy, or deep in thought. And childishly, she liked that.
“Busy raising Lexi,” she murmured, dropping her eyes, unable to see the effect the simple truth had on him.
If she’d watched, she might have noticed the darkening of already night-black eyes. The clenching of his jaw, as though visibly strengthening a waning resolve, a commitment to a plan that even he, Syed Al’Eba, thought might be unforgivably unkind.
“Who was he?”
The question was a tightrope of impossibility.
She wouldn’t speak about Marshall.
Not in this house. Not with Lexi sleeping just upstairs.
“That’s also none of your business,” she pointed out softly.
“She is four, you said.”
Sarah nodded, and now, out of absolute hunger, and to keep herself busy, she pressed the spoon into a serve of fried rice. The fragrance was immediately bursting with memories. It was a meal they’d shared so often she hadn’t dared order from the Thai restaurant since. Not that she could have afforded to.
“You must have met her father very soon afterwards.”
Sarah’s cheeks flushed as she thought of Marshall. Well, that was true. She’d met him about a month after Syed had left. Cameron had come home, so beautifully happy-seeming. How could Sarah have known how different the truth was from appearances?
She nodded.
The lie had been easy to utter at first. Now?
“I see.”
Only how could he? Did he imagine she’d met another man? Fallen in love? Lust? Into his bed? As if Syed could be so easily usurped. Memories of their time together were still burned across her flesh, indenting her life as the winds shaped the sands of the desert.
“And you?” She murmured, her heart twisting with pain. “I guess you went home and buried yourself in your harem?”
Visualising him with another woman had been the worst. At times, when she’d ached for him so badly she’d thought she would weaken and try to make contact, she had imagined him making love to a glamorous consort; a woman of his own country. She’d imagined the way his body would move with another, and it had turned her stomach away from hope, and the magic of what she’d thought they shared.
“Harem?” His smile was genuine. “I have no such thing.”
She rolled her eyes. “And yet this doesn’t mean there was a shortage of women.”
He stared at her for a long minute. “There were other women,” he acknowledged shortly.
Her intake of breath surprised them both. Her, because she had thought her emotions better placed to handle this admittance, and his because she had no right to feel anything. She had laid with another man. Borne him a baby. A miniature version of herself, right down to the eyes that sparkled like stars and the hair that glowed as gold.
“So? What are you doing here then?”
“There have been women in my bed. None like you.”
“Gee, thanks,” she muttered, refusing to let that please her in any way.
“And since your husband died?”
Her eyes were enormous. The truth sat before her like a glistening diamond. Obviously, the simplest path was to tell him the whole sordid mess. But Sarah had protected Lexi from the truth for a long time. There’d be a time for honesty but it wasn’t now, while Lexi was only four years old. And somehow telling Syed, while tempting, felt dangerous and wrong. She kept her answer brief, even when her soul wanted to break down and pour everything out to him. “He wasn’t my husband.”
Syed’s nod was slow and relief, unmistakable, slashed over his face. “Did you love him?”
Sarah rested her fork in her bowl and placed her hands in her lap. “What is this?”
“Rice,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding.
Sarah shook her head. “You’re in the States for business? Pleasure? And you thought, ‘why not see what Sarah’s doing?’. Or maybe you haven’t had sex in a while and you remember me being incredibly easy,” her cheeks flushed beet-red as she thought of how she’d been about to surrender herself to him not half an hour earlier. “Is that it? You were passing and felt like a roll in the hay?”
“I was not passing,” he said slowly. “I came here specifically to see you.”
“Why?” She demanded, her eyes spitting angrily.
He stared back, not standing down from the challenge in her expression. “Because I have a proposition for you,” he said, slowly, clearly, so that her blood had time to gush through her, impatient for answers.
“I’m not interested,” she promised, forking some of the rice into her mouth out of habit.
“Spend the night with me.”
Her fork clattered to the table with an almighty noise. She froze, though, not worrying about Lexi, not worrying about anything except how the hell to process his suggestion.
“What did you say?”
“Just one night,” he said slowly, seeing it as the only night he’d need to convince her of what they had. That even after five years, they were unchanged, their needs unmet unless they were together.
“Why in the world would I do that?” She shook her head. “I’ve barely thought of you these last five years,” a lie that convinced neither of them. “And you show up out of the blue expecting me to just waltz into your bed? No way, Syed. I’ve moved on.”
He didn’t dignify the response with an answer.
“I think you have demonstrated just how untrue that is,” he said with a quiet danger.
She shivered. “How dare you?”
“I dare, because I want you. I have wanted you a long time, and now I am free to pursue you.”
She pounced on the small detail, for all the questions it aroused. “Why? What’s changed?”
He thought of the arranged marriage he had finally freed himself from. “A great deal.”
“Such as?” She demanded.
He thought of the woman he’d been intended to marry and only a desire not to wound Sarah further kept him from admitting the truth. He changed the subject, bringing it back to one of the reasons he’d returned. “You still want me.”
Her cheeks flamed, but she couldn’t – wouldn’t – deny it. “That’s just a physical response,” she muttered. “Looking after a child has hardly left me with a lot of spare time to trawl bars and seduce strangers.”
Relief was giddying. “All the more reason to accept my proposal.”
“And?” She snapped. “What do you want? To come up to my bed now? Have a quickie and then off you go again? No way. No. Never.” Even as she said it, she knew how close she was to submitting to him. To begging him to make love to her. One more time. One more memory for her precious, precious files.
“You have not yet heard the terms.”
“Terms?” She responded, her expression rich with disbelief. “Is it a business proposal now?”
“Of a sort,” he nodded curtly.
; Great. Could anything be worse than this? To be sitting opposite the love of her life discussing sleeping together as though it were a simple matter of contractual understanding?
“But it’s still… you’ve still showed up on my doorstep because you want a … a … quickie?” Her cheeks coloured at the crude term but in that moment she was struggling to think of the right way to give voice to what he was suggesting.
His eyes flicked with the hint of amusement. “There would be nothing quick about it.”
She knew that wasn’t empty bragging. Syed’s stamina had the power to rob her of breath.
He could see the temptation that licked at her heels. But he needed to draw her over the line. Thinking of the pile of demanding bills in her kitchen, he leaned closer. “I would compensate you very, very well for the night.”
CHAPTER THREE
“How dare you?” She was shivering from head to toe. “Did you just suggest you’d pay me for sex?”
His eyes flashed; his jaw clenched but after a long beat he nodded. “That is a very crude interpretation of what I’m suggesting. You need money. I need you. I have money. I do not have you. This equation is, to my mind, incredibly simple.”
“It’s incredibly offensive,” she spat angrily. “And how the hell do you know anything about my finances?”
He didn’t answer that directly, though the demanding red letters were burned into his mind. “Look around you, najin,” He said quietly. “Can you deny it?”
“I…” The very idea of her bank statement filled her with a well of panic. Nausea and despair were swirling through her. How could she work so hard and still barely make ends meet? Her credit card was a black hole she seemed unable to fill.
“I am not talking about a small sum,” he pushed throatily.
Her eyes fluttered closed on what he was suggesting. Offering. But at what cost? “I’m not for sale.”
“But you do want me. True?”
She shook her head, but her body was vibrating, all for him. She groaned softly. “Not like this.”
“So you will sleep with me without money.”
“No!” She stood up, scraping the chair against the floor noisily. “No. Never again.” Even as she said it, her body mourned, her heart stung.
The Sheikh's Million Dollar Bride Page 3
