“NOT THAT I expect you to love me,” Fern hurried to add, afraid to turn and see how he was taking what she’d accidentally blurted.
But it was hard to say those words when it might be true that she didn’t expect his love, but she yearned for it. As she’d turned his grandmother’s ring on her finger in the car on the way here, taking in the way her own life had revolved into something completely unexpected, she’d realized there was only one reason she would allow it to: love.
She loved him so much. It wasn’t a surprise. She’d known she did, but somehow she’d convinced herself it wouldn’t sustain. Like such an intense feeling could wear off. It hadn’t. She was carrying his baby and had held him right in the space between her heart and their child’s the entire time she’d been apart from him. Her love had grown with each passing day, just as their baby did.
“Fern.”
She could hardly bear the careful way he said it, like he was treading into very delicate territory.
“It’s okay,” she insisted, telling herself it was. “We barely know each other. When have we had time to really talk?” They’d been too busy trying to bite back their cries of pleasure. She covered where her cheeks ached, they went so ruddy and hot. “And we’re married now, so it’s not really a sin to feel this animal attraction, but is it enough? Was it enough for you and your wife?”
“You are my wife,” he said forcefully. Then his chest expanded as he drew in a long, deep inhale, his expression closing her out. He indicated the door and the stairs that began right outside them.
Fern deflated as she climbed alongside him, sorry she’d brought up his first wife when it was so obviously a sore subject. Warm feelings would never grow between them if she alienated him.
Rather than open the door to the passage to his bedroom, however, he touched her elbow to draw her into the quarters closest to it.
“This is where Sadira should have slept if not with me.”
Fern had glanced in here when she began her explore. She’d been taken with the round bed and its red quilted headboard and silk canopy that reminded her of their tent in the oasis. The suite had a beautiful modern bathroom along with a sitting room of Ottoman furniture and a private balcony. It was screened even though it only looked over Zafir’s private courtyard and pool. She supposed the small room off the side would have been used for a nursery.
“I said the other day that because she gave me Tariq, I would never speak a bad word about Sadira. I meant that.” He glanced sideways at her while he stood in the door and looked diagonally across the harem to Sadira’s old rooms.
Despite his thobe and gutra and constant air of command, she sensed a kind of despondency in him. Powerlessness.
“She allowed her father to talk her into marrying me for the good of the country. I thought she felt as I did. That it was an advantageous match and that we had enough respect and liking to form the foundation of a strong relationship.”
“I feel like you and I have that,” she felt compelled to say, instantly concerned. “Don’t you?”
His expression flickered across to her with fierce pride. “We have a hell of a lot more than she and I did. One of those things...” His gaze fell to the floor before he turned to face her. His gaze brooked no hesitations or prevarications. “Fern, does it bother you that I’m only half-English?”
Taken aback, she could only say, “No! Of course not. I barely give it any thought.” He was Zafir, so sexy and striking she walked around dumbfounded that he’d ever looked twice at her. “It’s only something I worry about from the side of, you know, the politics. Those things your mother worries about. Obviously it would be nice if the whole world could get over bias and never exclude someone for skin color or other superficial reasons. I kind of wish I wasn’t English. If I was Arab, I could help you instead of being a problem.”
“Don’t wish yourself something you’re not,” he commanded with a twitch of cynicism. “Especially when you can’t change the circumstances of your birth any more than I can. I couldn’t remove the English part of me and Sadira had no use for it. In fact, I have come to believe, she felt soiled by having anything to do with me.”
“What? No!” Fern denied.
He cast her a look that was both disparaging of her naiveté and deeply shadowed by old hurt.
“You really think so?” she asked softly. Cautiously.
He ran a hand down his face. His reluctance to confide was plain in the time it took him to form a response.
“She refused to sleep with me. Barely spoke to me. After she gave me Tariq, she kept to her wing of the palace and, I have come to fear, left her cancer undiagnosed because she saw it as her only escape.”
“That’s— No! But you have divorce here. Don’t you?”
“She wouldn’t have asked. Divorced women are looked down on as having done something wrong. And she’d already lowered herself by marrying me.”
“How could she think like that?!” Fern couldn’t even comprehend such a thing.
“Because of what I was. Illegitimate with tainted blood. Birthing Tariq was her duty and she fulfilled it, but when I say she gave him to me, I mean it. It was like he had contaminated her. She didn’t breastfeed him, didn’t care for him. I changed him and gave him his bottles along with the nanny.”
She found herself shaking her head, the new mother in her feeling the cleave in her heart at the thought of anyone rejecting a helpless infant. “Amineh said you always talk about her like you loved her—”
“Amineh has no idea. No one does,” he said with a snap of impatience. “Do you think I want Tariq to know his mother felt nothing toward him? Reviled him as much as she was repulsed by me?”
Fern’s heart broke for the boy and the man. “Oh, Zafir. I’ll never breathe a word to him, I swear.” She would, in fact, do everything in her power to be the mother Tariq should have had. “But I can’t believe anyone would look down on either of you for anything, especially something you couldn’t help!”
He said nothing, only stared back into the harem, jaw pulsing with tension, brooding.
“So you didn’t even try for more children? You love Tariq so much. I can’t imagine you not wanting more.”
He choked out a laugh, following it with a pained pinch of the bridge of his nose.
“I couldn’t bring myself to try. Our wedding night— It was awkward, obviously. We didn’t know each other. She was a virgin. I thought she was just bashful. I did everything I could to make it nice for her. I stopped more than once, aware she wasn’t responding, but she insisted...”
He dropped his hands to his sides and closed them into fists, swallowed, his mouth a line of disgust. “I thought the second time might be better, but I felt like some kind of monster. It was just wrong. I wound up leaving before we were even naked. I couldn’t work out where I’d gone wrong. I carried that. I agonized for weeks. Just when I found the nerve to talk to her about it, she turned up pregnant and made it clear there was no need for me to touch her again. She delivered a boy and, aside from one night when Tariq went into hospital with a bad fever, never offered herself to me again.”
“What do you mean. She actually came to you...? What did you say?”
“I asked her if she wanted another child. She said no, and I said I hoped he would be fine. He was.”
“She sounds so mean,” Fern breathed, hurting for him. Here were the shades of suffering she’d seen in Amineh that she’d thought Zafir too strong to feel, but of course he felt it. He was just better at hiding it.
“I don’t think she was capable of sexual feelings for me. There is a lot of prejudice in this world and I was subjected to it from both sides of my life. I know what it looks like and that’s what it was. She was pressured to marry me for my position and her father’s political gain. She saw herself as a martyr.”
“Zafir, I’m so sorry.” She went across to him, setting a light hand on his arm. “I can’t believe anyone would not see what a remarkable man you are and feel privileged to be near you.”
His face spasmed with emotion. Hooking his arm around her, he pulled her in close, one hand crushing into her hair as he pressed his mouth to her temple for a long moment.
She closed her eyes, overcome at the poignant sweetness of his embrace, for once not sexual, but emotional. It felt healing. Loving.
But the effects of his proximity were there, too. She was aware of his torso beneath the familiar, thin fabric of his thobe, the scent of cotton and man, the humid air and the musical tinkle of the water below. It all pulled her into the sensual spell that was Zafir. Her blood began to heat and her skin prickled into receptiveness.
Self-conscious at her instant response, she started to draw away.
“Don’t,” he murmured and made her tilt her head to look up at him. “Given everything I’ve just told you, you must realize how important it is to me that you feel physical desire for me. Don’t hide it from me. Even if all you feel is lust, Fern, I’m glad it’s there.”
She struggled to hold his gaze, certain her true feelings were painted all over her face. He was too astute and experienced not to see the signs.
“It’s love,” she whispered, feeling worse than naked. Like her soul was exposed. The agony of having no defenses left against him at all twined through her voice. “I think it happened at the oasis. That’s why I was so afraid to tell you about the baby. I couldn’t bear for you to hate me when you’d seemed to like me a little—”
“A lot,” he amended, cupping her face in two hands. “Ah, Fern.” His face spasmed with great pain. “I fell in love, too. And I couldn’t admit it even to myself. Not when it made me just like my father.”
“I’m s—”
He set his thumb across her lips, stilling them. “I’m sorry that I wasted months when we could have been together. I thought I should be able to control my feelings, especially if it was only lust, but I couldn’t. I can’t. You’re everything I want, the only woman I think about.”
“Oh, Zafir...” She went up on tiptoes, trying to kiss him.
He groaned, hands closing into her hair as his mouth landed on hers, rough and hot.
He gentled immediately, groaning again, but didn’t release her. With a growl of apology and frustration, he tenderly ravaged her mouth.
She closed her eyes, falling apart at the sweetness of having his kiss again. His arm came around her back to haul her in. Her hands closed on his thobe, grasping and trying to pull him into her. She couldn’t get close enough. Silly bump in the way!
He moved them deeper into the room, kicking the door shut with a slam. As he pivoted to sit on the padded love seat, he dragged her onto his lap, knees on either sides of his thighs.
“Okay?” he murmured between consuming bites of her mouth, his hands riding her skirt up her thighs and then cupping her bottom proprietarily, fingering under the lacy edges of her undies.
She braced her forearms on his shoulders, kissing and kissing him. Running fingers up the back of his neck into his hair. Knocking his gutra askew. Reuniting. “I’m too heavy on you,” she gasped, but couldn’t make herself pull away. His hands wouldn’t let her.
He laughed, using his nose to nudge her chin up so he could kiss her neck. He’d done that sort of thing in the tent at the oasis, told her without words what he wanted. Her throat, her collarbone, her breast. She scraped her hair back and away, offering. She told him with the angle of her body where she wanted his nibbling kisses, and sighed when he found the exact spot that melted her into heaven.
She ignited in his arms. Absolutely burst with the thrill of feeling him, smelling him, returning to this amazing place where touching and kissing and caressing was perfect and right and necessary. Where it was an expression of more than sexual attraction. Love.
Trying to wriggle closer, she scraped at his back, demanding the thobe come off, but he was sitting on it. He tried to set her on her feet and lift her dress at the same time.
“No, I’ll be too self-conscious,” she protested. “The lights...I just wanted to see and kiss you...” She slid to her knees on the area rug and pushed at his thobe, exposing his legs, running her hands up the rough hairs on his thighs.
With a savage noise, he stood long enough to pull it off and away, then sat and tried to bring her back up onto him, but she stayed on the floor and ran her fingers to the tops of his thighs, staring.
“I’ve never seen you,” she murmured, sending him a shy look before letting her enraptured gaze fall back onto his naked, aroused flesh. He felt so familiar in her hands yet looked darker and more imposing than she’d pictured.
He swore, but let his hand fall to the armrest. The other one gripped the backrest behind him. “Look then. But I’ll want to do the same and then are we really doing this? Because I love you and I want to show you how much.”
She stroked him, coming up on her knees to lean forward and breathe across his taut skin. She looked up, almost asking for permission.
His eyes narrowed, intense as the blue-green at the center of a flame.
Smiling with a woman’s wicked delight at having mastery over her man, she drew him into her mouth
He hissed and threw back his head, arched to press deeper against the swirling caress of her tongue. “I won’t last,” he said through his teeth.
She gave him an approving hum.
He held out, though, making sounds of deep torture while he grew harder than titanium under her ministrations. Her inner being soared with confidence at knowing he liked this, but more than that, she loved knowing it meant something to him that she wanted to give him pleasure. She expressed her love this way, openly and without reserve.
“I’m watching you,” he told her in a voice that tightened her skin. “I’ve only felt you do that in the dark, but you’re loving this, aren’t you?”
She let her smiling eyes meet his, allowing him to see how much she enjoyed giving him physical pleasure.
He was flushed and fierce, his possessive gaze barbaric, but his caress on her cheek was tender as he made her stop. “Are you comfortable? Kneeling there like that?”
“I...yes,” she said dazedly. “I don’t want to stop.”
His mouth widened in a feral smile. “Good. Neither do I. Stay where you are.”
He rose, but set a hand on her shoulder when she would have pushed up on her knees.
“No, keep your elbows on the cushion.” He lowered behind her and ran his hands under her skirt, bunching it until it sat under her breasts. Then he slid her knickers down her thighs.
“You want... Like this?” she asked, staring with scandalized eyes at the impression he’d left on the cushion between her clenching hands. “Maybe if the lights were off—” she protested.
“Lift your knee, ya amar.” Her underpants were whisked away. His hand stroked her naked thigh and smoothed over the curve of her buttock. “Freckles everywhere,” he chuckled softly. “I feared I would never know for sure. Are you as aroused as I am?”
They both gasped as he caressed between her thighs where she was slippery and aching. She dropped her face into the cushion, stifling her moan of yearning.
“No.” He continued to stroke her while he tangled his free hand in her hair, tugging just hard enough to pick up her head. “Let me hear you. We don’t have to bite our lips anymore.”
“Someone will come.”
“We both will,” he assured her smokily.
“It’s too much,” she whispered, growing taut all over as her climax approached.
“I never told you how good it was that night,” he said as he shifted to lean over her. His naked body brushed the exposed skin at the backs of her legs, her bottom and the small of her back. He rubbed his shaft against her sex in a way that was deliciously familiar and not enough. Not anymore. Not now she knew how it felt to have that thick pressure inside her. “You took me apart with your heat and tightness. You’re so wet for me again. You make me insane with desire, Fern.”
“Don’t tease, Zafir,” she begged. “Please.”
He was shaking as he entered her, passion barely restrained.
She cried out, pressing back to make it happen faster. Deeper. She was shattering and he was barely touching her, sliding his hand around to caress her as he made gentle, shallow thrusts.
He pinned her right on the cusp of climax and held her there. She arched, letting her moans of enjoyment fill the room, clutched in a storm of such magnificence she could only shudder and release ragged cries of joy. It was intense, her orgasm so close that when he decided they were ready, it arrived, swift and powerful. She feared she wouldn’t survive it, but didn’t care, crying out with abandoned ecstasy.
Dimly she was aware of him holding himself tight and deep, biting through her dress at her shoulder. His fist covered hers on the cushion and crushed her hand as he convulsed, bathing her in heat, inside and out. They were like a star exploding, so perfectly attuned they were one being melded soul to soul as the waves of climax overtook and drowned them, taking a long time to recede and let them come up for air.
His body branded her where his damp skin adhered to hers. She became aware of him braced over her, still shaking. His heart was pounding against her back. Her own pulse was trying to find a resting level along with her lungs. She remembered what they’d sounded like, how guttural his shout had been over her abundance of ragged cries.
She blushed.
He chuckled and kissed the back of her neck, then stroked her hair off the side of her face with a trembling hand. He touched his lips to the side of her face. “Okay?”
“Just trying not to die of embarrassment. That was rather...” She didn’t have words.
“It was,” he agreed with a nuzzle of her ear. “Worth waiting for.”
She turned her hand under his, wanting to link her fingers with his, but he picked up her hand and kissed the backs of her knuckles before carefully withdrawing.
She settled onto her hip, still trembling, not sure where to look as she attempted to regain her modesty, trying to tug her dress into place and not reveal that as satisfied as she was, she was also still aroused and responsive.
He leaned back on his hand, his other wrist propped on his bent knee. He ran his gaze over her, possessive and impenitent. He was gorgeous. Sexy and comfortable in his nudity. The light gilded his skin to warm polished oak. The way his mouth relaxed in a smile of smugness and his eyelids blinked with heavy satisfaction sent a ripple of warm delight through her.
“You look like a sultan who just enjoyed his concubine,” she teased, pleased that she felt confident enough to say it, even though she couldn’t help primly tugging her dress into place under her bum and down her thighs.
“Someday I’ll be a duke,” he said, leaning forward to run his hand up her leg and under her skirt. “One who compromised the governess. I’m starting to think I’ll have a harem after all, full of intriguing women who all look like you.”
She leaned forward to steal a kiss, but wrinkled her nose at him. “Don’t remind me. Your abundance of titles intimidates me.”
“Anytime you’re daunted by me or any part of this life I’ve dragged you into, I want you to remember what you do to me. I’m utterly at your mercy. In lust and so deeply in love...” They kissed, tenderly and lingeringly.
“And it’s not sinful.”
“Not in the least. We’re blessed...”