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It was only then that she felt it: just the softest hint of a vibration beneath the soles of her feet that told of smooth and silently running engines. This truly was an abduction, she finally accepted, and turned slowly back round to face him.
‘Why?’ she breathed.
It was like a replay of what had already gone before, only this time it was serious—more serious than Leona had even begun to imagine. For she knew this man—knew he was not given to flights of impulse just for the hell of it. Everything he did had to have a reason, and was always preceded by meticulous planning which took time he would not waste, and effort he would not move unless he felt he absolutely had to do.
Hassan’s small sigh conveyed that he too knew that this was where the prevarication ended. ‘There are problems at home,’ he informed her soberly. ‘My father’s health is failing.’
His father…Anger swiftly converted itself into anxious concern for her father-in-law. Sheikh Khalifa had been frail in health for as long as she had known him. Hassan doted on him and devoted most of his energy to relieving his father of the burdens of rule, making sure he had the best medical attention available and refusing to believe that one day his father would not be there. So, if Hassan was using words like ‘failing’, then the old man’s health must indeed be grave.
‘What happened?’ She began to walk towards him. ‘I thought the last treatment was—’
‘Your interest is a little too late in coming,’ Hassan cut in, and with a flick of a hand halted her steps. ‘For I don’t recall you showing any concern about what it would do to his health when you left a year ago.’
That wasn’t fair, and Leona blinked as his words pricked a tender part of her. Sheikh Khalifa was a good man—a kind man. They had become strong, close friends while she had lived at the palace. ‘He understood why I felt I needed to leave,’ she responded painfully.
You think so? Hassan’s cynical expression derided. ‘Well, I did not,’ he said out loud. ‘But, since you decided it was the right thing for you to do, I now have a serious problem on my hands. For I am, in effect, deemed weak for allowing my wife to walk away from me, and my critics are making rumbling noises about the stability of the country if I do not display some leadership.’
‘So you decided to show that leadership by abducting me, then dragging me back to Rahman?’ Her thick laugh poured scorn over that suggestion, because they both knew taking her back home had to be the worst thing Hassan could possibly do to prove that particular point.
‘You would prefer that I take this second wife who makes you flee in pain when the subject appears in front of you?’
‘She is what you need, not me.’ It almost choked her to say the words. But they were dealing with the truth here, painful though that truth may be. And the truth was that she was no longer the right wife for the heir to a sheikhdom.
‘I have the wife I want,’ he answered grimly.
‘But not the wife you need, Hassan!’ she countered wretchedly.
His eyes flicked up to clash with her eyes. ‘Is that your way of telling me that you no longer love me?’ he challenged.
Oh, dear God. Lifting a trembling hand up to cover her eyes, Leona gave a shake of her head in refusal to answer. Without warning Hassan was suddenly moving at speed down the length of the room.
‘Answer me!’ he insisted when he came to a stop in front of her.
Swallowing on a lump of tears, Leona turned her face away. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
His sudden grip on her hand dragged it from her eyes. ‘To my face,’ he instructed, ‘You will tell me this to my face!’
Her head whipped up, tear darkened eyes fixing painfully on burning black. ‘Don’t—’ she pleaded.
But he was not going to give in. He was pale and he was hurt and he was furiously angry. ‘I want to hear you state that you feel no love for me,’ he persisted. ‘I want you to tell that wicked lie to my face. And then I want to hear you beg forgiveness when I prove to you otherwise! Do you understand, Leona?’
‘All right! So, I love you! Does that make it all okay?’ she cried out. ‘I love you but I will not stay married to you! I will not watch you ruin your life because of me!’
There—it was out. The bitter truth. On voicing it, she broke free and reeled away, hurting so much it was almost impossible to breathe. ‘And your life?’ he persisted relentlessly. ‘What happens to it while you play the sacrificial lamb for mine?’
‘I’ll get by,’ she said, trying to walk on legs that were shaking so badly she wasn’t sure if she was going to fall down.
‘You’ll marry again?’
She shuddered and didn’t reply.
‘Take lovers in an attempt to supplant me?’
Harsh and cruel though he sounded, she could hear his anguish. ‘I need no one,’ she whispered.
‘Then you mean to spend the rest of your life watching me produce progeny with this second wife I am to take?’
‘Oh, dear heaven.’ She swung around. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ she choked out tormentedly.
‘Make you see,’ he gritted. ‘Make you open your eyes and see what it is you are condemning us both to.’
‘But I’m not condemning you to anything! I am giving you my blessing to do what you want with your life!’
If she’d offered to give him a whole harem he could not have been more infuriated. His face became a map of hard angles. ‘Then I will take what I want!’ It was a declaration of intent that propelled him across the space between them. Before Leona knew what was coming she was locked in his arms and being lifted until their eyes were level. Startled green irises locked with burning black passion. He gave her one small second to read their message before he was kissing her furiously. Shocked out of one kind of torment, she found herself flung into the middle of another—because once again she had no will to fight. She even released a protesting groan when her feet found solid ground again and he broke the urgent kiss.
Her lips felt hot, and pulsed with such a telling fullness that she had to lick them to try and cool them down. His breath left his body on a hiss that brought her eyes flickering dazedly up to his. Thick dark lashes rested over ebony eyes that were fixed on the moist pink tip of her tongue. A slither of excitement skittered right down the front of her. Her breasts grew tight, her abdomen warming at the prospect of what all of this meant.
Making love. Feeling him deep inside her. No excuses, no drawing back this time. She only had to look at Hassan to know this was it. He was about to stake his claim on what belonged to him.
‘You will regret this later,’ she warned unsteadily, because she knew how his passions and his conscience did not always walk in tandem—especially not where she was concerned.
‘Are you denying me?’ he threw back in a voice that said he was interested in the answer, but only out of curiosity.
Well, Leona asked herself, are you?
The answer was no, she was not denying him anything he wanted to take from her tonight. Tomorrow was another day, another war, another set of agonising conflicts. Reaching up, she touched a gentle finger to his mouth, drew its shape, softened the tension out of it, then sighed, went up on tiptoe and gently joined their mouths.
His hands found the slender frame of her hips and drew her against him; her hands lifted higher to link around his neck so her fingers could slide sensually into his silk dark hair. It was an embrace that sank them into a long deep loving. Her dress fell away, slithering down her body on a pleasurable whisper of silk against flesh. Beneath she wore a dark gold lace bra, matching high-leg briefs and lace-topped stockings. Hassan discovered all of this with the sensual stroke of long fingers. He knew each pleasure point, the quality of each little gasp she breathed into his mouth. When her bra fell away, she sighed and pressed herself against him; when his fingers slid beneath the briefs to cup her bottom she allowed him to ease her into closer contact. They knew each other, loved each other—cared so very deeply about each other. Fight they might do—often. They might have insurmountable problems. But nothing took away the love and caring. It was there, as much part of them as the life-giving oxygen they took into their lungs.
‘You want me,’ he declared.
‘I’ve always wanted you,’ she sadly replied.
‘I am your other half.’
And I am your broken one, Leona thought, releasing an achingly melancholy sigh.
Maybe he knew what she was thinking, because his mouth took burning possession that gave no more room to think at all. It came as an unwelcome break when he lowered her down onto the bed then straightened, taking her briefs with him. Her love-flooded eyes watched his eyes roam over her. He was no longer being driven by his inner devils, she realised as she watched him removing his own clothing. Her compliance had neutralised the compelling need to stake his claim.
So she watched him follow her every movement as she made a sensual love-play out of removing her stockings from her long slender legs. His dark robe landed on the floor on top of her clothing; the tunic eventually went the same way. Beneath waited a desert-bronzed silk-smooth torso, with a muscled structure that set her green eyes glowing with pleasure and made her fingers itch to touch. Those muscles rippled and flexed as he reached down to grasp the only piece of clothing he had left to remove. The black shorts trailed away from a sexual force that set her feminine counterpart pulsing with anticipation.
He knew what was happening, smiled a half-smile, then came to lean over her, lowering his raven head to place a kiss there that was really a claim of ownership. She breathed out a shivering breath of pleasure and he was there to claim that also. Then she had all of him covering her. It was the sweetest feeling she had ever experienced. He was her Arabian lover. The man she had seen across a crowded room long years ago. And she had never seen another man clearly since.
He seduced her mouth, he seduced her body, he seduced her into seducing him. When it all became too much without deeper contact, he eased himself between her thighs and slowly joined them.
Her responsive groan made him pause. ‘What?’ he questioned anxiously.
‘I’ve missed you so much.’ She sighed the words out helplessly.
It was a catalyst that sent him toppling. He staked his claim on those few emotive words with every driving thrust. She died a little. It was strange how she did that, she found herself thinking as the pleasure began to run like liquid fire. They came as one, within the grip of hard, gasping shudders and afterwards lay still, locked together, as their bodies went through the pleasurable throes of settling back down again.
Then nothing moved, not their bodies nor even their quiet breathing. The silence came—pure, numbing, unbreakable silence.
Why?
Because it had all been so beautiful but also so very empty. And nothing was ever going to change that.
Hassan moved first, levering himself away to land on his feet by the bed. He didn’t even spare her a glance as he walked away. Sensational naked, smooth and sleek, he touched a finger to the wall and a cleverly concealed door sprung open. As he stepped through it Leona caught a glimpse of white tiling and realised it was a bathroom. Then the door closed, shutting him in and her completely out.
Closing her eyes, she lifted an arm up to cover them, and pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling on the tears she was having to fight. For this was not a new situation she was dealing with here. It had happened before—often—and was just one of the many reasons why she had left him in the end. The pain had been too great to go on taking it time after time. His pain, her pain—she had never been able to distinguish where one ended and the other began. The only difference here tonight was that she’d somehow managed to let herself forget that, until this cold, solitary moment.
Hassan stood beneath the pulsing jet of the power shower and wanted to hit something so badly that he had to brace his hands against the tiles and lock every muscle to keep the murderous feeling in. His body was replete but his heart was grinding against his ribcage with a frustration that nothing could cure.
Silence. He hated that silence. He hated knowing he had nothing worth saying with which to fill it in. And he still had to go back in there and face it. Face the dragging sense of his own helplessness and—worse—he had to face hers.
His wife. His woman. The other half of him. Head lowered so the water sluiced onto his shoulders and down his back, he tried to predict what her next move was going to be, and came up with only one grim answer. She was not going to stay. He could bully her as much as he liked, but in the end she was still going to walk away from him unless he could come up with something important enough to make her stay.
Maybe he should have used more of his father’s illness, he told himself. A man she loved, a man she’d used to spend hours of every day with, talking, playing board games or just quietly reading to him when he was too weak to enjoy anything else.
But his father had not been enough to make her want to stay the last time. The old fool had given her his blessing, had missed her terribly, yet even on the day he’d gone to see him before he left the palace he had still maintained that Leona had had to do what she’d believed was right.
So who was in the wrong here? Him for wanting to spend his life with one particular woman, or Leona for wanting to do what was right?
He hated that phrase, doing what was right. It reeked of duty at the expense of everything: duty to his family, duty to his country, duty to produce the next Al-Qadim son and heir.
Well, I don’t need a son. I don’t need a second wife to produce one for me like some specially selected brood mare! I need a beautiful red-haired creature who makes my heart ache each time I look at her. I don’t need to see that glazed look of emptiness she wears after we make love!
On a sigh he turned round, swapped braced hands for braced shoulders against the shower wall. The water hit his face and stopped him breathing. He didn’t care if he never breathed again—until instinct took over from grim stubbornness and forced him to move again.
Coming out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he had to scan the room before he spotted her sitting curled up in one of the chairs. She had opened the curtains and was just sitting there staring out, with her wonderful hair gleaming hot against the pale damask upholstery. She had wrapped herself in a swathe of white and a glance at the tumbled bed told him she had dragged free the sheet of Egyptian cotton to wear.
His gaze dropped to the floor by the bed, where their clothes still lay in an intimate huddle that was a lot more honest than the two of them were with each other.
‘Find out how Ethan is.’
The sound of her voice brought his attention back to her. She hadn’t moved, had not turned to look at him, and the demand spoke volumes as to what was really being said. Barter and exchange. She had given him more of herself than she had intended to do; now she wanted something back by return.
Without a word he crossed to the internal telephone and found out what she wanted to know, ordered some food to be sent in to them, then strode across the room to sit down in the chair next to hers. ‘He caught an accidental blow to the jaw which knocked him out for a minute or two, but he is fine now,’ he assured her. ‘And is dining with Rafiq as we speak.’
‘So he wasn’t part of this great plan of abduction you plotted with my father.’ It wasn’t a question, it was a sign of relief.
‘I am devious and underhand on occasion but not quite that devious and underhand,’ he countered dryly.
Her chin was resting on her bent knees, but she turned her head to look at him through dark, dark eyes. Her hair flowed across her white-swathed shoulders, and her soft mouth looked vulnerable enough to conquer in one smooth swoop. His body quickened, temptation clawing across flesh hidden beneath his short robe of sand-coloured silk.
‘Convincing my own father to plot against me wasn’t devious or underhand?’ she questioned.
‘He was relieved I was ready to break the deadlock,’ he informed her. ‘He wished me well, then offered me all the help he could give.’
Her lack of comment was one in itself. Her following sigh punctuated it. She was seeing betrayal from her own father, but it just was not true. ‘You knew he worried about you,’ he inserted huskily. ‘Yet you didn’t tell him why you left me, did you?’
The remark lost him contact with her eyes as she turned them frontward again, and the way she stared out into the inky blackness beyond the window closed up his throat, because he knew what she was really seeing as she looked out there.
‘Coming to terms with being a failure is not something I wanted to share with anyone,’ she murmured dully.
‘You are not a failure,’ he denied.
‘I am infertile!’ She flashed out the one word neither of them wanted to hear.
It launched Hassan to his feet on a surge of anger. ‘You are not infertile!’ he ground out harshly. ‘That is not what the doctors said, and you know it is not!’
‘Will you stop hiding from it?’ she cried, scrambling to her feet to stand facing him, with her face as white as the sheet she clutched around her and her eyes as black as the darkness outside. ‘I have one defunct ovary and the other one ovulates only when it feels like it!’ She spelt it out for him.
‘Which does not add up to infertility,’ he countered forcefully.
‘After all of these years of nothing, you can still bring yourself to say that?’
She was staring up at him as if he was deliberately trying to hurt her. And, because he had no answer to that final charge, he had to ask himself if that had been his subconscious intention. The last year had been hell to live through and the year preceding only marginally better. Married life had become a place in which they’d walked with the darkness of disappointment shadowing their past and future. In the end, Leona had not been able to take it any more so she’d left him. If she wanted to know what failure really felt like then she should have trodden in his shoes as he’d battled with his own failure to relieve this woman he loved of the heavy burden she was forced to carry.
‘We will try other methods of conception,’ he stated grimly.
If it was possible her face went even whiter. ‘My eggs harvested like grains of wheat and your son conceived in a test tube? Your people would never forgive me for putting you through such an indignity, and those who keep the Al-Qadim family in power will view the whole process with deep suspicion.’
Her voice had begun to wobble. His own throat closed on the need to swallow, because she was right, though he did not want her to be. For she was talking about the old ones, those tribal leaders of the desert who really maintained the balance of power in Rahman. They lived by the old ways and regarded anything remotely modern as necessary evil to be embraced only if all other sources had been exhausted. Hassan had taken a big risk when he’d married a western woman. The old ones had surprised him by deciding to see his decision to do so as a sign of strength. But that had been the only concession they had offered him with regard to his choice of wife. For why go to such extremes to father a son he could conceive as easily by taking a second wife?
Which was why this subject had always been so sensitive, and why Leona suddenly shook her head and said, ‘Oh, why did you have to bring me back here?’ Then she turned and walked quickly away from him, making unerringly for the bathroom he had so recently used for the same purpose—to be alone with her pain.
CHAPTER FOUR
TWO hours, Leona noticed, as she removed her slender gold watch from her wrist with badly trembling fingers and laid it on the marble surface along with the diamonds from her ears and throat. Two hours together and already they were tearing each other to pieces.
On a sigh she swivelled round to sink down onto the toilet seat and stare dully at her surroundings. White. Everything was white. White-tiled walls and floor, white ceramics—even the sheet she had discarded lay in a soft white heap on the floor. The room needed a bit of colour to add some—
She stopped herself right there, closing her eyes on the knowledge that she had slipped into professional mode and knowing she had done it to escape from what she should really be thinking about.
This situation, this mad, foolish, heart-flaying situation, which was also so bitter-sweet and special. She didn’t know whether to laugh at Hassan’s outrageous method of bringing them together, or sob at the unnecessary agony he was causing the both of them.
In the end she did both, released a laugh that turned into a sob and buried the sound in her hands. Each look, each touch, was an act of love that bound them together. Each word, each thought, was an act of pain that tore them apart at the seams.
Then she remembered his face when he had made the ultimate sacrifice. Chin up, face carved, mouth so flat it was hardly a mouth any more. When the man had had to turn himself into a prince before he could utter the words, ‘We will try other methods of conception,’ she had known they had nothing left to fight for.
What was she supposed to have done? Made the reciprocal sacrifice to their love and offered to remain his first wife while he took a second? She just could not do it, could not live with the agony of knowing that when he wasn’t in her bed he would be lying in another. The very idea was enough to set her insides curling up in pained dismay while her covered eyes caught nightmare visions of him trying to be fair, trying to pretend it wasn’t really happening, that he wasn’t over the moon when the new wife conceived his first child. How long after that before his love began to shift from her to this other woman with whom he could relax—enjoy her without feeling pain every time he looked at her?
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Stop it.’ She began to shiver. It just wasn’t even an option, so she must stop thinking about it! He knew that—he knew it! It was why he had taunted her with the suggestion earlier. He had been angry and had gone for the jugular and had enjoyed watching her die in front of him! It had always been like this: exploding flashes of anger and frustration, followed by wild leaps into sensual forgetfulness, followed by the low-of-low moments when neither could even look at the other because the empty truth was always still waiting there for them to re-emerge.
Empty.
On a groan she stood up, and groaned again as tiny muscles all over her body protested at being forced into movement. The fall, the lovemaking, or just the sheer stress of it all? she wondered, then wearily supposed it was a combination of all three.
