by Nalini Singh
“…You’ll never again allow me close to your heart?”
“Yes. I will not be such an easy target a second time.”
The memory of his implacable expression and his determination to never again fall prey to love haunted her. How could she fight her warrior’s pride and his distrust in her loyalty at the same time?
JASMINE WOKE TO FIND Tariq gone. She missed him. Missed his smile, his morning caresses, his body sliding into hers, completing her in a way that she’d never known was possible between a man and a woman. When their bodies were one, it was as if she could see into his soul for one blinding instant. But only sometimes. Last night he’d shut her out, loving her body with exquisite care but giving her nothing more than his physical passion.
She stood up and quickly ran through her toilette when her musings threatened to make her teary. Then she pulled on a long skirt in a soft peach fabric over her naked skin. She felt exposed even in the confines of the tent and wanted to get covered before she worried about underwear. In her rush to dress, she forgot that they were traveling today and she would need to be in pants.
Her fear was justified. She was reaching for a bra when the tent flap opened behind her and a warm breeze touched her back. Apprehensive, she glanced over her bare shoulder.
“Oh.” Relief flowed through her.
Tariq raised a dark eyebrow. “You were expecting someone else?” The flap closed behind him, hiding the incipient brightness of the day.
She blushed. No one would dare enter without his express permission. “I just can’t get used to the openness of these tents.” With a shake of her head, she turned and picked up the bra.
“Leave it.” Husky and rough, Tariq’s unexpected command startled her into dropping the piece of lace and satin.
The feel of his naked chest against her back startled her even more. He’d been fully dressed when he’d entered, and she’d turned her back on him only a few seconds before. Unlike last night, this morning his hands were impatient, cupping her breasts and teasing her nipples with more heat than expertise, while he kept her trapped in front of him. He was a little rough and most possessive.
She felt a hot rush of liquid heat between her thighs. It was as if Tariq knew. He slipped one hand under her skirt. Continuing to caress her breast with the other hand, he slid a single finger through her curls.
“You are ready.” His husky voice held a note of satisfaction, as if he was pleased at her responsiveness.
Before she knew what was happening, he pushed her skirt up her back and bared her buttocks to him. Too needy to be embarrassed, she gripped his thighs when he put both hands around her hips and pulled her onto him, sliding her down so slowly she thought she would go mad.
“Tariq, please, please,” she moaned. “Oh, please.”
From the way he growled in approval and gave her what she wanted, she knew that he liked her obvious need, liked the way she wriggled on him and urged him to go faster. Out of nowhere, an image of what Tariq had to be seeing as their bodies joined in wild surrender burst into her mind. It was the final erotic stroke. Her climax was thunder and lightning. She knew that she took him with her, his throaty cry mixing with her scream of release.
Afterward, he held her in his lap, their bodies still joined. She tilted her head back against his firm shoulder and tried to get her racing heart to calm down. A long time later, she swallowed and wet her dry lips. “Wow.”
Tariq chuckled against her ear and nibbled on the soft flesh of her earlobe. “Not too fast? I hear women like it slow.” His tone was pure provocation, daring her to deny the way she’d burned like wildfire in his arms.
She nudged him with an elbow. “You’re a horrible tease, but I’m too sated to argue with you.”
She heard his smile in his reply. “So this is what I must do to get your complete cooperation. It could become exhausting.”
Jasmine laughed. Tariq closed his hands over her breasts in a final sweet caress before he reluctantly pulled away. “We must prepare to leave, my Jasmine. It is time to go home.”
Just before they left the tent, she took a deep breath and put her hand on his muscular forearm. Under the white material of his shirt, skin and muscle moved over bone, seducing her with their effortless flow.
He gave her an indulgent smile, still enjoying the aftereffects of their wild mating. “What is it? I promise you we can play when we get home.”
His sensually teasing response made her blush. It was as if last night had never happened. She had her husband back. The shields had dropped, but only as far as they had been before her declaration. It wasn’t enough. If she let him deny her love, then this half-life would be all she ever had. And she was tired of never being good enough. Tired of never being loved. Perhaps her flaws made her unworthy of love, but until there was no hope, she would try. This time, she wouldn’t let anyone, even Tariq, keep her from fighting for their love.
“Your eyes are getting bigger and bigger.” He raised one finger and ran it across her lips.
“I meant it. I love you.”
His face underwent a sudden change, from open and teasing to totally reserved. “We must go.” He turned away without another word and preceded her outside.
She sucked in a breath of air that felt like a knife blade slicing across her heart. Oh, it hurt so much to have her love not even acknowledged. But her struggle would be worth it if she succeeded in getting back what she’d lost so carelessly in her naïveté.
TARIQ WAITED FOR JASMINE outside their tent, careful to keep his emotions from showing on his face. It would not do for his people to see their leader in turmoil.
Why did she do this?
Did she truly believe that she could control him with a declaration of love? Words so easily said…promises so easily broken. He’d offered her his very soul four years ago, and she’d thrown it back at him as if it were a worthless token, after promising him forever. Though he would never let her know it, he still hurt from that emotional blow.
Part of him wanted to believe her, whispering that she was no longer the scared girl who’d crumbled under the slightest pressure, but a woman strong enough to fight him at his angriest. However, Tariq refused to listen to that voice. His heart was still raw from her rejection, not yet convinced of the depth of her commitment.
More than once, when she’d thought him occupied, he’d glimpsed shadows in his wife’s blue eyes. His pride had stopped him from hounding her, as he had in the desert, but the knowledge ate away at him. Even now, even after he’d told her so much, she kept her secrets, and that he could not forgive. Women’s secrets had always caused him pain.
By force of will, he buried that part of him that had become entranced by her. It shocked him just how close he’d come to laying his heart at her feet once again, even when it was clear that she didn’t trust him. He wouldn’t make that mistake twice. He couldn’t. Not when his vulnerability to her ran so deep it had become his greatest weakness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE NEXT FEW DAYS FELT AS if they’d sprung fully fledged from Jasmine’s worst nightmares. Tariq had withdrawn so completely from her that it scared her. No matter what she tried—humor, anger, pleas, protestations of love—none of it reached him. The strength of will implied by such total emotional excision was a huge blow to her fragile confidence. Tariq could apparently cut her out without a thought.
“Tariq, please,” she said, in the car on the way back to Zulheina, “talk to me.” She was frantic to make him respond.
“What do you wish to talk about?” He looked up from his papers, his eyes holding the mild interest of a stranger.
“Anything! Stop shutting me out!” She was close to tears, which horrified her.
“I do not know what you mean.” He bent his head again, dismissing her.
With a cry torn from deep inside, she pulled away the papers and threw them aside. “I won’t let you do this to me!”
His eyes flashed green fire as his hand snaked out and gri
pped her chin. “You have forgotten the rules. I no longer follow your demands.” No anger, no fury, only calm control. Even his touch gentled and then he let her go.
“I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?” she asked in a broken whisper.
“Thank you for your love.” He picked up the papers she’d hurled aside, and sorted them. “I am sure its worth is the same as it was four years ago.”
The subtle, sardonic barb delivered in that smooth, aristocratic voice hit home. “We’re not the same people as we were then. Give us a chance!” she begged.
He met her gaze with eyes so neutral they were unrecognizable as her panther’s. “I need to read these.”
He’d beaten her. Tariq’s anger she could deal with, but she had no defense against this cold, inaccessible stranger. It was clear that he regretted the indulgences he’d allowed her in Zeina, the small things that had caused her guard to slip. She could imagine his thought processes. He probably thought that she believed she could control him now, because he’d allowed her so much, been so open.
Despite that knowledge, she didn’t buckle. Tariq was stubborn, but she’d realized that when it came to loving him, she was obstinate beyond belief.
Their first night back, she was tempted to sleep in her own room, hurting and unsure of her welcome. Instead, she brushed her hair in front of Tariq’s mirror and lay down in his bed. And when he reached for her, she went to him. In this place, they connected. Their loving was always wild, always passionate. It gave her hope, because how could he touch her like that, how could he whisper, “You’re mine, Mina. Mine!” as he moved inside her, if only lust was involved?
A WEEK LATER, JASMINE pinned some silver cloth in place and picked up her scissors.
“I wish to talk to you, my wife.”
Startled by the deep rumble of Tariq’s voice, she dropped the pins she’d been holding in her mouth. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She put one hand on her T-shirt, above her heart. “And stop looming.”
He frowned, and she knew he was about to remind her that he gave the orders around here. Since their return from Zeina, he’d been more autocratic than usual, and colder. It was hard to battle this warrior every day, but his anger strengthened her resolve. Anger this powerful had to spring from deep emotion.
And, she realized, she was willing to fight the warrior because he was a part of the man she loved. The ice that tempered the fire.
Mentally rolling her eyes, she raised her arms and smiled in invitation. Loving him was the only way she knew to prove that she’d changed. For a moment, she thought that he would refuse, and her heart clenched in anticipation of another bruise. But then he came down on his haunches beside her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He let her be the aggressor, remaining quiescent in her arms, but Jasmine couldn’t forget the power humming just under the surface. He could have taken over at any second, but he let her control the kiss, seemingly content to taste her.
When she drew back, he removed her hands and clasped them between his own. “I am going to Paris for the week.” Any fire that her kiss might have aroused was carefully hidden, if it existed at all.
“What?” She couldn’t conceal her surprise. Her hands curled into fists in his grasp. “When?”
“Within the hour.”
She blinked. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
His jaw firmed. “I have no need to tell you such things.”
“I’m your wife!”
“Yes. And you will stay in your place.”
The unexpected verbal reprimand hit her like a slap. She bent her head and took a deep breath. “You know some of the French designers are putting on shows this week. If you’d told me earlier, I could’ve gone with you.” She’d come to expect his need for control, could even understand it, but he’d never treated her so harshly, as if he cared nothing for her feelings. She hadn’t known that he regretted what had happened in Zeina that much.
He released her hands and gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to face him. “No, Jasmine. You cannot leave Zulheil.”
She frowned. “You don’t trust me, do you? What do you expect me to do—run away at the first available opportunity?”
“I may have been a fool once, but you will not make me one twice,” he nearly growled.
“I came and stayed of my own free will. I won’t run.”
“You did not know what you faced when you came.” His features were expressionless as he brushed aside her words. “I am not wrapped around your little finger, as you no doubt expected, and I do not intend to be. Because you know this, you will wish to escape. I do not intend to lose you.”
She shook her head in denial, but he didn’t release her. “I love you,” she repeated firmly. “Don’t you know what that means?”
“It means that you can turn your back and walk away at any time.” Rapier sharp, his jabs made her bleed. But she still wasn’t beaten.
“How long are you going to act this way?” she asked him in desperation. “How long are you going to punish me? When is your revenge going to be complete?”
His green eyes had darkened to the color of the deepest sea. “I do not do this to punish you. To want to take revenge, I would have to feel something for you beyond lust, which I do not. You are a possession, prized but not irreplaceable.”
She felt the color leave her face. She couldn’t speak. Her heart felt as if it was bleeding. In a desperate attempt to hide her grief, she bit the insides of her cheeks hard enough to taste blood, and waited for him to finish.
“I will be involved in matters of state. Hiraz knows how to get in touch with me.”
She remained silent, barely able to hear him through the painful buzzing in her ears. When he bent his head and placed a possessive kiss on her lips, she accepted it dully, too stunned to respond. Tariq seemed to take her reaction as subtle defiance because he moved his hand to her hair and tangled his fingers in the long ponytail, gripping her head.
“You will not deny me,” he growled against her lips. Because he knew her every sensual weakness, he was right. She couldn’t deny him. Not when she’d been starving for him for so long.
When he drew back, cold satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. “I can make you pant for me anytime I wish, Jasmine, so do not try and manipulate me with your body.”
The sensual fires he’d aroused were doused instantly by his taunt. Thankfully, he didn’t continue the lesson.
“I will be leaving in forty minutes.” With that, he rose and strode out the door of her workroom.
Jasmine didn’t know how long she sat there, unable to function. She felt as if he’d ripped out her heart and then laughed at her agony. She hurt too much to feel the pain. When she finally rose and made her way to the wide glass doors that led out to a balcony overlooking the main gardens, it was to see Tariq walking to a royal limousine.
He was dressed in a black suit, his tie the vivid green of his eyes, his beautiful hair brushed back. She saw him stop and look up at the balcony. Quickly, she stumbled back into the room. From this far, she couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but she knew he hadn’t seen her. Then he stepped inside and the car drove off.
It was as if his departure released the paralysis that had protected her from her own anguished emotions. Suddenly close to an emotional breakdown, she scurried through the corridors, praying she wouldn’t meet anyone along the way. Once safely behind the locked doors of the exquisite room that was her own, she walked out into the private garden and hid under the spreading tree with the blue-white flowers. The branches were so heavy with blooms that they almost touched the ground, providing her with a scented cave of darkness in which to let go of her torment.
Her sobs came from somewhere deep inside, wrenched out of her body with such force that she didn’t have breath enough to make a sound. She was destroyed by the sudden insight that she’d been fooling herself. She’d believed that she could love Tariq enough
to make him love her, a girl who’d never been loved. She had allowed him every liberty, going so far as to tie herself to him for life. She’d given him her body and her soul, keeping nothing back.
And now he’d rejected her gift in the cruelest of ways. She was nothing but a possession to him, prized but not irreplaceable. He felt nothing but lust for her. Lust! Her illusions of time healing the wounds of the past shattered under the realization that his actions weren’t born out of pain. He just didn’t care if he hurt her.
Had he married her only to humble her? Crush her?
She curled into a ball at the base of the tree and wrapped her arms around her shaking body, trying to breathe through the pain that lay like a rock in her throat. Dusk fell outside but she didn’t notice. She’d cried all the tears she had inside, but her pain was so great she couldn’t move.
Freed, the demons that she’d drowned in tears descended upon her, wanting their pound of flesh. In Tariq’s land, in Tariq’s arms, she’d almost managed to forget the lack in her. The missing part that made her incapable of being loved. Suddenly, the memories of that terrible day in her childhood when she’d understood the truth flooded over her.
“DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT you demanded half of Mary’s inheritance before you’d adopt Jasmine?” Aunt Ella had asked the woman Jasmine had thought was her mother. “After all, Mary is our baby sister.”
“No. She should’ve known better than to get pregnant by some stranger in a bar. I don’t know what possessed her to have the child.” The sound of ice cubes hitting crystal had penetrated the library door. “We aren’t some charity. How else were Jasmine’s expenses going to be covered?”
“You got a lot more than that,” Ella had persisted. “Mary’s inheritance from Grandpa was twice the size of ours.”
“I think of it as adequate compensation for having to accept bad blood into my family. Lord only knows what kind of a loser Jasmine’s father was. Mary was so drunk, she couldn’t even remember his name.”
