Forbidden: The Sheikh's Virgin Page 16

  And yet how could he damn his brother for snatching this chance at happiness with the woman he had loved for ever? How could he blame him, when he knew what it was like to find that woman again after so many years—the woman of your very heart and soul?

  The woman you loved.

  And a wave rushed through him, a tidal wave of realisation that felt like pure light coursing through his body, finally illuminating the truth.

  He loved her. Sera. And he would marry her. He looked at her now, huddled into the seat, and he yearned to take her into his arms and soothe away whatever pain was hurting her. Something had upset her and upset her deeply, and he needed to find out what it was.

  He turned back to Akmal, hauled in a deep breath. ‘I understand,’ he said, even when his mind was still reeling from his recent discovery, still connecting the dots. ‘We have a palace full of dignitaries we have already inconvenienced. How long can we wait before this coronation will proceed? There is much I must do beforehand.’

  The vizier nodded, clearly pleased to see that order might once again be restored. ‘No more than a few days, I am sure. Many guests were planning on staying longer to tour the emerald mines. They should not be too inconvenienced.’

  ‘Good. And be sure, when you tell them, to say that they will see a double celebration. For they will also witness my marriage that day to Sera.’

  A wail of distress, a cry of absolute agony, rent the air, and she was on her feet and at the door in a moment, her black hair swinging crazily as she hauled it open and disappeared before anyone knew what was happening.

  ‘Sera!’ he shouted, as he wrenched the door open behind her, but the passageway was empty and she was gone. He turned back to the room, confused, wondering just when it had been that he had started losing control of this day—when his world had tilted sideways and everything he’d known, everything he’d held precious, had somehow slipped out of his grasp.

  ‘I’ll find her,’ his mother assured him, her hand soft on his forearm. ‘You have things to discuss with Akmal.’ And he blindly nodded and let her glide from the room. Let his mother talk to Sera. Let his mother soothe her fears and doubts. Because if he could be King, surely she could be Queen? After being an ambassador’s wife for so many years, how hard could it be?

  ‘Akmal,’ he said, getting back to business, trying to forget Sera’s impassioned cry, the tortured look on her face as she’d fled, ‘have you had any luck with my other request?’

  The older man nodded. ‘The team arrives later today, and the procedure is scheduled for tomorrow morning.’

  Rafiq sighed with relief. At least something in his world was going to plan.

  His mother told him where he would find Sera: down the carved steps that wound their way down from the palace to the small, secluded private beach. ‘Sera will talk to you there,’ his mother had said, ‘away from the palace and prying eyes and ears. ‘She will explain.’

  He didn’t understand what there was to explain. She’d agreed to marry him less than twenty-four hours previously. What was there to explain—unless it was her erratic behaviour of today?

  She stood at the far end of the small cove, looking out to sea as the sun settled low on the horizon, her blue robe fluttering in the breeze, her black hair lifting where the breeze caught it over her shoulders and her breasts imprinted on the fabric by the kiss of the wind. So beautiful, he thought, as he crunched his way through the warm sand of the tiny cove, and yet so very forlorn.

  This beach had seen so much, he thought, wondering if that was a good omen or bad. For it was here that Queen Inas had found Zafir, the Calistan prince, washed up half-dead on the shore. It was in this place that, drunk with grief, she’d taken him for her own dead child, Xavian, and denied Rafiq’s own father the crown.

  This was a beach that had seen a lie perpetrated that would come majorly unstuck some three decades on. And now the unbelievable events of the past weeks had taken a more dramatic turn and the unimaginable had happened. Now, instead of his brother, Kareef, he himself would be King.

  And the woman he wanted for his queen stood looking out to sea, lost and alone.

  She looked around as he neared, and again he was struck by her pallor, and the look of dread that filled her eyes. ‘What is it?’ he asked, wanting to take her in his arms, but she held him away and he had to settle for taking her hand, and even that slipped from his fingers as she turned to walk along the shore. ‘Sera, what’s wrong?’

  She shook her head, turning her black hair alive. ‘Everything’s wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you ever think that we were not meant to be together? That the fates were against us from the very beginning, that destiny was against us?’

  Her words made no more sense than anything else that had happened today. ‘But we have been together—these last nights. We are good together.’

  She smiled a smile that told him she agreed, a bittersweet smile that curled her lips and came nowhere near her eyes. ‘That’s destiny playing tricks again, giving us each other for a few magical hours before twisting the knife in a final, savage act of fate.’

  She went to turn away again, but before she could he grabbed her shoulders, wheeling her around. ‘What are you talking about? Fate? Destiny? We are together now. You are a widow. I am free to marry whoever I choose. And I choose you, Sera, above all others. I want you to be my wife. I want you to be my queen.’

  She pressed her lips together, but he could already see the moisture seeping from her eyes, turning her eyelashes to spikes.

  ‘But I can’t marry you, Rafiq.’

  Her softly spoken words tore at his heart like razor-sharp claws. ‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

  ‘I can’t! And you can’t marry me. Not now. Not ever.’

  ‘This makes no sense! Last night you agreed. Last night you said yes. What is the difference now?’

  ‘Because now you will be King!’

  He wheeled away. ‘This is ridiculous. How do you think I feel about becoming King? Unprepared, raw, inexperienced. Don’t you think I could do with someone by my side who has some experience? You were an ambassador’s wife for a decade. Don’t you think that would help me? God knows I will need help if I am to perform anywhere near what this country needs.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice sounded little more than a squeak, with her head bowed low, her chin jammed against her chest. ‘I could not help you. Not if you married me.’

  The day that had started so badly was getting progressively worse. What could she want? Once upon a time he’d thought her a gold-digger, thought she’d married Hussein for glamour and prestige. He’d accepted that she’d been forced to marry him, and that she’d found a cold marriage bed, but now any lingering thoughts that a rich and opulent lifestyle might somehow still appeal to her died a swift death. Nothing could be more glamorous than the life of a Qusani queen, and yet she was turning that down flat.

  ‘Can you tell me why?’

  But she just shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  He wheeled away, his hands tugging at his hair, relishing the sudden pain of it, wishing he could understand what was happening. What the hell did she want? Hadn’t he offered her everything last night?

  But, no, he hadn’t. He hadn’t offered her everything because he hadn’t realised it then, not until today, when he’d tried to damn Kareef for his actions and found himself justifying them instead. When he’d realised… When he’d realised! And it was not too soon to tell her. She felt something for him, he knew. She melted into his touch, became liquid fire in his arms. She must feel something. He just hoped it was not too late to convince her.

  He slowly turned back, found her clutching her arms across her belly, tendrils of black hair dancing loose across her wild-eyed face.

  ‘But you have to marry me, Sera, because nobody else will ever do. I love you.’

  And her beautiful face crumpled, her keening cry of agony carried away by the wind as she buc
kled onto her knees in the sand.

  ‘Sera!’

  She sobbed without tears into her hand. It was so unfair! He’d spoken of contracts and convenience and sense and sensibilities. He’d made no mention of love when he’d asked her to marry him last night. And she’d agreed, because she wanted him more than anything and it didn’t matter if he didn’t love her because she would be starting fresh, in a place nobody knew her, and she would have him by her side for ever.

  But now to learn he loved her, when she knew she had no choice but to lose him again! There would be no escape, no fresh start, no having Rafiq by her side for ever.

  Her lungs squeezed so tight it was near-impossible to breathe. Could this possibly be any harder to bear?

  ‘You can’t love me,’ she uttered, low and defiant, when the agony in her chest allowed her to continue. ‘You mustn’t. There’s no point.’

  ‘But why?’ he asked at her side. ‘I know you feel the same. I can feel it.’

  And the seeds of escape planted themselves in her mind. Poisoned seeds, perhaps, but not out of character for a woman who was supposed to have poisoned her own husband. Useful in fact, given she had to poison this relationship too. ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ she lied, straightening herself up to stand and dusting off the sand, knowing it would never be so easy to brush memories of this man away. Not after what they’d shared together. ‘It was nice to have sex with a real man, I admit—it was definitely a bonus to be relieved of my virginity at last—but I’m frankly surprised a man like you would confuse sex with romance. Because I don’t love you, Rafiq. Though I have no doubt there are plenty of women who are already lining up for the opportunity to say they do.’

  ‘You’re lying! Tell me you’re lying. I command it!’

  And somehow, above the shame and hurt and despair, she found the strength to laugh. ‘You will make a good king. That much is certain.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I have told you all I need to hear. I don’t love you, Rafiq.’

  ‘Then why did you agree to marry me yesterday?’

  She shrugged, her lies tearing her heart apart even as she forced hardness into her features. ‘Australia sounded fun. But you’ll be stuck here in Qusay now, won’t you? I’d be mad to tie myself to you, and you’d be mad to tie yourself to me—given I don’t love you, that is.’

  Blood crashed in his ears, turned his vision red. It could not be happening again! But he was back there, transported by a thunderbolt through the years, there in that gilded, perfumed hall, a youth with a dream of love for a woman who was his every ideal of perfection.

  An ideal that had come crashing down when she had declared to all and sundry that she had never loved him. Never.

  He was that young man again.

  History was repeating itself. His world had once again been split apart. Cruelly. Savagely.

  By a woman who didn’t deserve his love.

  There was a reason you learned from your mistakes, he told himself after he had spun blindly away towards the shell-lined steps to the palace. It was so you wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He’d always been proud of his record on that score, always been proud of his ability to learn from his mistakes.

  And yet he’d just blown that record, in spectacular style, by begging Sera to marry him—the same woman who had rejected him publicly more than a decade before, the same woman who had just rejected him and his love out of hand once again.

  So much for learning from his mistakes.

  The sand beneath his feet was too soft, too accommodating to the pounding of his feet. He needed something he could smash, something he could crush under his feet, something he could slam into pieces with his fists.

  How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so blind?

  But even as he climbed the stone steps back to the palace, even as the setting sun reflected bright off the shell-rich stone, something sat uneasily with him. For ten years ago she had loved him—hadn’t he learned as much? And she had said what she had because she’d been forced to marry Hussein and forced to make it look like she actually wanted to.

  So why was she saying she couldn’t marry him now?

  His right foot wavered over a step, the gears crunching in his mind. They were good together—they both knew it—and this time they had more than proved it. And he’d been her first lover, as he’d always intended. Didn’t that prove something? That they were meant for each other?

  That it was fate that had brought them together again, not fate that was forcing them apart?

  Damn it all! Whatever she said, whatever she claimed, this time he wasn’t just walking away bitter and twisted and waiting another decade before he found out why. There were enough wasted years between them. There would be no more.

  Maybe he had learned from his mistake after all.

  He spun around and launched himself down the stairs, sprinting across the sand to where she sat slumped with her head in her hands.

  ‘Sera!’ he cried, and before she could respond he had pulled her to her feet and into his arms. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks awash with tears and encrusted with grains of sand, but without a doubt she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But just one look was enough to make him sure. Enough to let him know he was right.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘There is no father this time to intimidate you, no other man you need be afraid of. This time there is only me. So tell me, truthfully this time, why you say you cannot marry me.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SERA collapsed into his arms, her sobs tearing his heart apart, her tears seeping into the cloth of his robe, wetting his skin.

  ‘Oh, Rafiq, I’m so sorry. I…I love you so much!’

  They were the words he most needed to hear—so much so that he wanted to roar with victory as he spun her around, his lips on hers a celebration of love shared and hard earned. But he knew there were other words that needed to be said, that he needed to hear, before the way would be clear between them. But it would be clear, of that he was sure. He would make damn well sure of it.

  ‘Sera, you must tell me what has been troubling you. I will not leave you another time without knowing. I could not bear it.’ His hands stroked her back, soothing, gentling. ‘Tell me what’s troubling you, and then I can make it right.’

  She shook her head. ‘There is no righting this. You will want to have nothing to do with me when you know. You will not be able to afford to.’

  And he felt a frisson of fear in his gut. How bad was it? ‘You have to tell me. Everything. Come, sit with me. Explain.’ He drew her gently down to the sand, settling her across his lap so he could hold her like a child and kiss her tears away while she spoke.

  ‘Hussein found a use for me,’ she began, and Rafiq’s blood ran cold. ‘He thought if I was good for nothing else I could help “persuade” visiting delegates to see his point of view. He made me dress like some kind of courtesan, and all the time he was negotiating he would make lewd innuendoes about sex, and how he liked to share what was his.’ She stopped, and Rafiq hugged her tight to his chest, wanting to murder the man who had done this to her, who had treated her with such little respect.

  ‘Most of the men were as embarrassed as me. They were family men, they said. They loved their wives. They would leave, barely able to look at me, and Hussein would later say it was because I was not good enough, not pretty enough, that nobody found me attractive enough to sleep with. That I deserved to remain untouched, barren, when I could not even arouse my own husband. And then he would make me try…’

  She shuddered, and he sensed her revulsion. ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’

  ‘You need to know. You need to know it all to understand.’ Her voice sounded hollow and empty, as if it was coming from a long, long way away. ‘He made me dance, if you could call it that. He watched me from the bed, where he lay naked, and while he— Oh, God, while he tried and tried, and it was my fault that he couldn’t—my fault t
hat every time he failed.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he soothed, stroking her jet-black hair. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  She blinked up at him, her watery eyes desolate. ‘It’s not okay. Because by the end I wanted so much for him to succeed I tried to make him come. I thought that maybe then he would be happier. Maybe then he would not be so angry all the other times.’

  His hand stilled in her hair, and despite the warmth from the sun a chill descended his spine. ‘What other times?’

  She buried her head in his chest again, as if too ashamed to look at him. ‘There were men who were not such family men, vile men, who believed Hussein was simply being generous, who were only too happy to agree to whatever Hussein wanted for a piece of his wife. But once he had that agreement he would get angry and pretend to take offence, and have them thrown out.’

  She jerked in his arms as she gulped in air.

  ‘The ambassador from Karakhistar was one of them. He tried to touch me, brushing his fat fingers through my hair, breathing his ugly hot breath on me, before Hussein had him ejected. He was there today, at the coronation.’ She shuddered in his arms. ‘I saw him watching me, hating me…’

  Rafiq felt sick to the stomach. The enormity of the wrongs against her was inconceivable, and he hugged her closer, trying to replace the hurt, the humiliation. No wonder she’d looked so stricken when he had arrived to take his seat. And no wonder she’d been a shadow of herself when he’d first seen her outside his mother’s apartments, unsmiling, her whole body leaden with the abuse Hussein had subjected her to.

  Anger simmered in his veins. Because, for all the indignity inflicted upon her, she had remained in the marriage until Hussein had died. ‘Why did you do the things you did? Why did you stay with him?’