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He didn’t react because he didn’t see her. Her glance moved from the tiny waxy-faced figure in the bed, so slight that her arm seemed too fragile to hold all the tubes that protruded from it, to the tall man standing by the window looking blindly out at the city below.
She saw the moisture on his cheeks and empathy so acute it hurt swelled in her chest.
Her heart aching for his grief, she moved towards him, her hand outstretched. ‘I’m so sorry, Karim.’
At the sound of her voice he turned his head. ‘Eva?’
She saw then that it was not grief and pain that shone in his eyes, but joy and relief.
Her hand fell away self-consciously. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude but—’
‘It is working,’ he said, his eyes on the figure in the bed. ‘She’s going to be all right.’
The expression on his face as he looked at his daughter brought a lump to her throat. ‘I’m so glad, Karim,’ she said softly.
‘You’re here?’ he said as if just registering her presence.
Feeling like an intruder, she absently rubbed her fingers across the ring on her left hand and nodded. ‘I just thought I might be able to do something to help, but I can see—’
‘You want to help?’ he said, his voice low and gravelly.
Unable to read his expression as he advanced with panther-like grace towards her, Eva shook her head. ‘It was just a thought.’
He stopped just in front of her. The tension she could feel rolling off him in waves made her senses spin. His deep-set eyes glittered as he looked down at her. ‘You can help.’
‘I …’
He hooked a finger under her chin, growling, ‘Don’t talk.’ And brought his mouth down hard on hers.
Her shocked gasp was lost in his mouth as her lips parted under the sensuous pressure. She had not known a kiss could be like this: raw, possessive, passionate and hungry. Molten heat seared her nerve endings as she melted into him with a sigh and kissed him back, sliding her fingers deep into his hair and groaning at the first stabbing intrusion of his tongue inside her mouth.
When he finally lifted his head they were both breathing hard. ‘Oh!’ She sighed, unpeeling her arms from his neck as he placed her back on her feet.
‘Indeed!’
‘Did that help?’ she whispered, staring at him with starry stunned eyes. She could still taste him in her mouth.
The voice in her head warned she was wildly overreacting to a kiss that had obviously been an outward release of his tension, but she couldn’t help it.
If that was him using her, she couldn’t wait for him to do it again.
‘It hurt.’ Dragging his mouth from hers had been one of the hardest things he had ever done. ‘It hurt to stop …’ he clarified in response to her bewildered expression.
‘Oh!’
He studied her flushed face. ‘You look like a girl who has never been kissed before.’
Never like that, she thought, unable to think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t come out as, Please do it again.
Eva cleared her throat. ‘It was unexpected.’ She wanted him so badly her bones ached with it. The intensity of what she was feeling simultaneously shocked and excited her. ‘Like getting married,’ she observed with a nervous laugh. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of a cup of tea or a sandwich.’
‘You taste better than a sandwich.’
The smouldering heat in his eyes sent a fresh pulse of longing through her body. ‘So do you.’
‘I think it might be a good idea if you went with Tariq now.’
She felt a stab of hurt that fell away as he added, ‘This is not the place or time for us to continue this … conversation.’
The frustrated glow in his eyes was a soothing balm to her ego. ‘You’re staying?’
‘Amira wakes in the night and the nurses struggle to settle her.’ Karim pulled a chair across to his daughter’s bedside and lowered himself into it. ‘Love for a child is something that tears your heart out.’ He slid a sideways glance towards Eva as he added softly, ‘When you have children of your own you will understand.’
Eva blinked at the comment. ‘I hadn’t thought about children.’
His frown made her realise it might have been an idea to censor her response. ‘Well, think about it now, Princess, because I am duty-bound to provide an heir.’
Eva tensed as the word duty sent a chill through her body. She shivered; it sounded so clinical.
‘An heir?’ she echoed.
‘There has been impatience in some quarters. The news I am married will be greeted with a sigh of relief.’
‘You expect me to have your children?’ She looked at him in horror.
A nerve clenched along his jaw. ‘Whose children did you expect to have?’ he asked, seeing the handsome blond academic.
‘No one’s … that is, children are meant to be the result of love, not …’
‘Empty sex?’ he suggested, not quite sure why her reaction made him so angry, but totally sure she was in the wrong. ‘Are you looking for love, Eva?’
She flushed and bit her quivering lip. ‘No, I’m not.’
Liar, he thought, looking at her face and not wanting to stop. ‘Let it stay that way. I don’t want you falling for me,’ he warned. ‘I’m not into needy women.’
He could be very cruel. She wondered about the first wife who had given him the daughter he clearly adored, presumably he had loved her. Maybe he still did?
She lowered her eyes and struggled to lower the emotional temperature.
It hardly boded well—married literally five minutes and they were already fighting. And she had no idea how or why—it had just sort of exploded like the sexual chemistry that had preceded it. ‘Like you said, this isn’t the right time for this conversation.’
Karim scowled. He knew that this was not the right time but all he could see was the horror on her face at the suggestion she have his children. ‘Contrary to your belief, empty sex produces children just as efficiently as true love, which is as well for us.
‘And don’t act as though it would be a hardship, because I just kissed you and you didn’t want me to stop. For some people empty sex is all there is and so far we’ve both been enjoying it with other people. The only change is we start enjoying it with each other.’
Eva went paper white. ‘I don’t want sex with you, empty or otherwise, and if I were you I’d invest in a good self-help book. They probably have an entire chapter on men who have to precede sex with empty!’
Karim gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘You want it so badly you can taste it …’ His voice trailed off as he looked at her and felt need flood through his body. He had never needed a woman before … wanted but not needed.
It was suddenly very important to Karim to prove this had not changed, that what he was feeling now was a reaction to the weeks of stress and the sudden release of tension.
‘You want me so badly that you’ll beg me to take you.’ At what point in this exchange had the connection between his brain and vocal cords become severed? Or had he regressed to his teenage years? wondered a deeply embarrassed Karim.
The words brought a rosy flush of outrage to Eva’s cheeks, but she was too mortified to register the thin strips of hot colour along his cheekbones. ‘Never!’ she choked.
‘You’ll—’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’ The nurse standing in the doorway gave an apologetic smile. ‘I can come back.’
Eva shook her head and forced a stiff smile. ‘No, it’s fine. I’m just going.’
The nurse glanced towards Karim and, in response to the almost imperceptible movement of his head, vanished in a swirl of efficient white.
Eva, who had watched the interplay, felt her temper spike. ‘Lovely!’ She flashed him a smile of fake sincerity and added grimly, ‘I can look forward to a life of total invisibility.’ She flashed the child in the bed a sideways look and struggled to contain her emotions as she began to back towards the door. Karim was right about one thing: this was not the place or time.
‘I spoke in the heat of the moment …’ Karim could hardly believe the childish taunt had come from his lips, but this woman somehow had the ability to goad him into rash actions and unconsidered words.
Eva stopped backing and stared, her breathing gradually slowing, as astonishment replaced anger. ‘Did you just apologise?’
He gave a non-committal shrug that Eva interpreted as assent. ‘So I don’t have to beg?’ Her eyes fell from his. It suddenly felt as if that was exactly what she was doing.
‘You …’ This time it was Karim’s eyelashes that swept downwards, concealing his expression from a frustrated Eva.
‘Well?’ she prompted.
‘You have been forced by circumstances to accept me as your husband, but it is clear you have not thought through the implications.’
Eva stared. ‘When would I have been doing this deep thinking—on the way up in the lift?’
‘Well, now I am giving you the time. You consider yourself sexually experienced …’
He raised a brow at the squeak that escaped her lips, but Eva shook her head and said in a choked whisper, ‘Go on, this is fascinating.’
‘If you come to my bed it will not be for one night or even two … there will be no other men.’
‘So you’re giving me the option of sleeping with you or taking lovers?’
‘No!’
The violent explosive negative made Eva take an involuntary step backwards and the sleeping child in the bed mumbled and tossed restlessly.
His guilty glance swivelling towards his daughter, Karim clenched his jaw.
He struggled to compose his thoughts into some semblance of logic and order. One thing an arranged marriage had going for it was it made for a peaceful life—sterile but peaceful. No strong emotions, no jealousies and no passion to distract a man who had a country and people who needed him.
So what had gone wrong?
Amira’s mother had taken lovers and he had not lost a moment’s sleep over her discreet infidelities, so why did the thought of Eva’s hypothetical lovers drive him close to losing control?
His angry eyes swept her upturned features. The impulse to tangle his fingers in her hair and draw her face to his was so strong that for the space of several seconds he could not breathe.
He did not need her. He wanted her.
The subtle differentiation made the torrent of emotions that had surfaced in him—emotions that he saw no reason to name—easier to file under ‘unusual but not important’.
‘There will be no lovers, and if you come to my bed you must accept that we will have children.’ He spoke with a calm he was struggling to claim.
He had survived his disastrous first marriage emotionally intact because his first bride had awoken nothing that approached the primal hunger that tied his stomach into a frustrated knot, but it was just sex and he could and would stay in control.
A man who gave anything more than his body to a woman was asking to be stabbed in the back.
‘So if I don’t want a baby … I can’t have you? No middle ground?’
His reply was about as uncompromising as his expression. ‘No. You have to accept this is not an affair. This is marriage. I need to provide my country with an heir—therefore once you come to my bed there must be no one else.’
‘You mean, when I get bored with sex with you I’ll have to close my eyes and pretend you’re …’ Eva’s comeback faltered when she failed miserably to think of any man who did not look like a pale imitation when compared to the man she found herself married to.
She expected her belated silly addition of, ‘Luke!’ to produce a scornful laugh, but it didn’t.
The lick of pure molten white outrage she glimpsed in his eyes before he pointedly turned his back on her made her realise that the only predictable thing about Karim was her ability to make him furious.
As she left the room his body language suggested he would not be following her any time soon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HER grandfather stayed three days and during that time Eva was literally never alone with Karim.
He spent his days at the hospital, returned in the evening and dined with her grandfather. She was there but she might as well have been invisible for all the notice the men took of her.
The marriage seemed to have appeased her grandfather and the initial tension between the two men had rapidly thawed.
The same could not be said of the tension between Karim and her, but then it wasn’t the same type of tension! Since that night in Amira’s hospital room Karim had not attempted to touch her … but it was the almost occasions that were driving her slowly out of her mind.
Such as when he almost brushed her fingers with his when he passed her something, she got light-headed just anticipating the next time.
Sometimes even thinking about him touching her sent electrical thrills of sensation through her hopelessly receptive body.
The thought of what would happen when he did touch her for real scared her witless. He had put the ball in her court when he had spelt out what coming into his bed meant … it really was a ‘burning the bridges’ moment.
There was no mistaking that there was chemistry, and Eva, while still finding it amazing Karim was attracted to her, found it almost as amazing that she could want a man in this all-consuming way and not be in love with him.
The two had always been inextricably linked in her stubbornly romantic mind.
So now he wanted her, but Eva was under no illusion that this would last, and what about when his visits to her bed were made from a sense of duty? Her blood turned to ice at the thought of passion turning to something clinical and cold.
The whole thing seemed horribly inevitable.
It was on the last night of her grandfather’s visit that it was announced that it had been decided she journey back with him and stay at the Palace in Azharim until Amira was fit enough to travel home with Karim.
