Forbidden: The Sheikh's Virgin (14 page)

Rafiq allowed himself a smile as he slung his overnight bag over his shoulder, waving away the offers of assistance.

Given Kareef was away, once his meeting with Akmal was finished there was little other choice left to him but to visit his mother. And if visiting his mother meant that he might also run into Sera, all the better.

An hour later, the Sheikha greeted him with a smile and a song in her voice. ‘My son, you are home. And how did it go in Marrash? You must tell me everything.’

Not a chance. He had no doubt she had already extracted what relevant details she could from Sera, and now it was his turn, so she could see if the pieces matched. It was a game they were playing, and who was he to throw the board into the air? At least until he knew exactly how much she knew…

‘It went well, Mother,’ he said, trying to deflect any underlying questions with an easygoing answer meant to show he had nothing to hide. The last thing he needed his mother knowing was that he had slept with Sera.
Several times.
And intended to sleep with her again.
Several times.

‘And you have your contract?’

‘We made a deal, yes.’

She clapped her freshly hennaed hands together in delight. ‘You did? How wonderful! This calls for a celebration.’ The ubiquitous coffee pot made another appearance, and while his mother was busy pouring, Rafiq was busy checking out the doors. Which one led to Sera? Where was she?

He was about to take his cup when he remembered the small package he had brought. ‘I brought you a gift from Marrash,’
he said, handing it over. ‘Actually from Abizah, an old woman who refused to take payment. A gift for you, she said.’

‘For me? Thank you.’ His mother took the package, as delighted as a schoolgirl. ‘And thanks to Abizah.’

‘It’s just a trinket,’ he warned.

‘It’s beautiful,’ his mother exclaimed, holding the tiny lamp up high, letting the encrusted gems catch the light. ‘It’s perfect! Thank you.’

‘Sera chose it. She said you would like it.’ He looked around. ‘Where
is
Sera?’

His mother put the gift down, took a sip of her coffee, and looked nowhere in particular in the process. ‘I thought you might be more comfortable without her presence here. The last two days must have been difficult for you both.’

‘Most considerate,’ he replied, hooded-eyed, and sipped from his own cup. ‘But unnecessary. As it happens, Sera and I have come to an—amicable arrangement. In fact…’ he coughed ‘…Sera is the one who negotiated the deal.’

‘Sera did that? Well, didn’t I tell you that you would need a guide?’

‘You did, and you were right. I couldn’t have done it without her. She won the contract all by herself.’

‘Did she now?’ the Sheikha asked, clearly more delighted than surprised, and Rafiq could see she was already settling against her cushions for a long Q&A session. ‘She didn’t tell me that. How exactly did she do it?’

Rafiq coughed again. ‘Just as you said might be the case, Sera was asked to negotiate with the women, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said his mother with an I-told-you-so shrug. ‘So what did she do to ensure you the deal? I told you there were others interested. I’m surprised the tribespeople made up their minds so quickly.’

He hesitated, wondering if he wanted to reveal everything,
but then it was a contract, the terms would soon be known far and wide, and then his mother would wonder why he hadn’t just come clean and told her in the first place. It wasn’t as if he had anything to hide.

‘Sera picked up on their being disappointed about it being too late to use the fabric they had sent down in the coronation. To sweeten the offer I was prepared to make, she suggested that at my wedding my bride will wear a gown made of their best golden fabric, for the eyes of the world to see.’

His mother’s blue-grey eyes grew wide as she drew herself up straighter, and Rafiq was in no doubt that Sera had chosen not to share this particular snippet of news with her. To protect him from his mother’s over-active imagination? Or herself?

‘But you’re never getting married. At least, that’s what you told me. Have you changed your mind?’

He had said that. He’d meant it. And he hadn’t changed his mind—although right now he just couldn’t summon the same level of absolute certainty. ‘I’ll have the lawyers look over the terms, see if there’s something else we can’t offer them instead. It’s too late for the coronation, but no doubt Kareef will have to marry soon…’

But even as he said the words, a vision formed unbidden in his mind, of a black-haired, kohl-rimmed dark-eyed woman in a robe spun with gold and laced with emeralds, and he wondered where the image had come from—because there was no way
that
woman was marrying Kareef. So why…?

He barely heard the door open, and his mother’s exclamation was just a spike in his thoughts until he caught her sudden movement as she uncharacteristically jumped to her feet. He glanced around to see what the problem was—only to see Sera standing inside the door, her eyes wild and wet, her skin an unnatural shade of grey.

D
ESPITE
his mother’s head start, Rafiq had swooped her into his arms in a heartbeat. ‘Sera, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’

His mother looked on, asking the same questions herself, but with more than a tinge of curiosity mingled with the concern. He couldn’t care less about his mother’s curiosity right now. All he knew was that Sera was hurting.

‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Tell me. Let me make it right.’

‘You can’t,’ Sera replied, her head rocking from side to side in his swaying arms. ‘No one can fix it. She hates me.’ And then, in a hollow breath, ‘She will always hate me.’

And from his mother came the unfamiliar sound of air sucking over teeth. ‘Cerak has had the nerve to show her face here, at the palace?’

‘She has an invitation, she claims,’ Sera assured her, the colour returning to her cheeks, though she was still clinging to Rafiq’s arms. ‘There is no way she would miss the social event of the decade.’

‘Who is this woman and what did she do to you?’ Rafiq demanded, impatient with his own lack of knowledge, feeling excluded from the conversation. His voice growled with his dissatisfaction. ‘What did she say?’

And Sera’s beautiful dark eyes shut down, her face as bleak
as the deepest, coldest winter’s night. ‘She said that I had poisoned her son. That he would not be dead but for me, a barren woman with a poisoned womb, who had been like poison to his very soul.’ And her tears came, at first silently, her body buckling against his with the pain, but then giving way to sound as her sobs found voice.

And even as he held her, even as he comforted her, his anger boiled and raged inside him.
Hussein’s mother.
He turned to his own mother then, his desire to find this woman and ram home a few home truths about her precious son paramount. ‘Where will I find this witch?’

‘No, Rafiq,’ said his mother, putting one hand to his forearm and one to Sera’s hair. ‘I will find Akmal and ensure the woman leaves immediately. You are needed here, with Sera.’

She was at the door, almost gone, when he called to her. ‘Make sure she is told, when they find her, that there is recorded in history just the one virgin birth, and that if she dared to look more closely she would find that any poison was the product of her own fetid womb.’

His mother did not blink. She looked from Rafiq to the woman nestled against his chest and nodded, before slipping silently from the room.

‘You told her,’ Sera said much later, after he had carried her to his room and laid her down on his wide bed, after he had kissed her hurt away with a thousand tiny kisses as he stripped her bare, after making slow, deliberate love to her. ‘With that message for Cerak you told your mother about us.’

And he shrugged as he ran one finger down her arm, relishing the way she shivered into his touch, her glorious dusky nipples peaking once more. ‘She would have found out soon enough. She was already wondering when you didn’t reel from my arms.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He leaned over, unable to resist, his tongue circling that budded temptation, ‘Besides, even if that hug had never happened she would have put two and two together when she found out I was planning on staying a few extra days and spending them and the nights that followed in your company.’

A pause. ‘You’re staying longer?’

He heard the delighted note in her voice, how it rose at the end, her words delivered just a fraction faster, and it pleased him. ‘I was thinking about it.’ He targeted the second nipple, feeling spoiled for choice, loving the way she gasped as he suckled, drawing her in tight. ‘But I changed my mind.’

‘Oh.’ Exit delighted note.

He slid first one leg between hers and then the other, pressing his lips to her softly curved belly and then lower, his hand sliding down, parting her, circling that tight bundle of nerve-endings that knew only his touch and which was guaranteed to have her arching her spine.

‘I had a better idea.’

He dipped his head, working his teeth around a nipple, gnawing, nipping, laving with his tongue while his hand worked his magic below. She was panting now, her breath coming in ragged, frantic breaths as her fingers clutched at his hair, his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin. But some part of her brain must have still been functioning.

‘Which was?’ she asked. And he had to switch gears in his mind to work out what he’d said before.

Although his first priority right now was not with words but with actions. She was ready for him, and he could not wait. He sheathed himself in an instant and waited at her very cusp, his muscles bunched and readied as he sought her eyes. Only when he had them did he answer. ‘I want you to come back to Sydney with me.’

Her eyes opened wide. With pleasure? Or shock? But the
time for conversation was long gone, his ability to converse gone the same way, his focus required elsewhere.

He lunged into her, filling her in that heated way he did, and her mind swirled to get hold of the words he’d uttered, battling to hold onto them even as he lunged again, deeper this time, faster, more ferocious. And then his mouth was on hers, his slick body bucking into hers again and again, and she was lost. She spun away, or so it seemed, wild and out of control and weightless, his cry of triumph her trophy.

‘Come back with me,’ he urged through breath still uneven, after they’d collapsed together, heavy-limbed and exhausted.

‘I can’t,’ she replied, confused and unsure, and not knowing what it was he actually was asking of her, what it meant. ‘Your mother—’

‘You cannot stay now. Everyone will know the truth—that you have been with me. In Australia it would not matter, but here in Qusay…’

She put a hand to her head. He didn’t have to finish the sentence. He was right. Here she would pay for her recklessness, in sly looks and whispered innuendo. Hussein’s mother alone would guarantee there was a steady stream of gossip about her failed daughter-in-law after the humiliation of her ejection from the palace. But Australia?

‘Besides,’ he continued, pushing himself up on one arm, using the other to emphasise his points, ‘there is nothing for you here. Nothing but the ghosts of your past. And you will love Australia, Sera. There are deserts and endless skies, like here, but there are snow-capped mountains and tropical islands, and rainforests and cities that sprawl along the coast.’

It sounded wonderful, and she longed to see it all, especially at Rafiq’s side, but still she didn’t understand, didn’t want to read too much into his offer. It didn’t mean what her heart wanted it to mean. It couldn’t. Not given this was the man who
had so recently professed his hatred for her. But maybe he didn’t hate her so much any more—at least not when they were in bed. Or maybe that was how he’d redirected all that energy…

‘You mean, like a holiday?’

‘Live with me! I have a house in Sydney that overlooks the cliffs and the sea. You should see the surf when it storms, Sera, it is spectacular—like the passion unleashed in you when you come apart in my arms.’

‘But I don’t understand what you’re saying. I thought… You said before that you would never marry me. Yet now you are asking me to live with you?’

He raked a hand through his hair. He was struggling to make sense of it too, she could tell.

‘How could I ever contemplate marriage after what happened?’ His eyes appealed to hers, the pain of her betrayal laid bare in their blue depths, and then he reached out and laced her fingers in his. ‘But I didn’t understand. I thought you wanted to marry him. I thought you wanted a rich husband and the lavish lifestyle to go with it. But I was wrong. I couldn’t see past my pain. I understand now why you acted as you did back then. I understand you had no choice. I want you, Sera, and if having you in my bed has shown me anything, it’s that whatever this attraction is between us isn’t going away any time soon. A few nights longer here won’t be enough. I want you in my bed at home.’

His words swirled and eddied in her mind. She was scared she was imagining it all. She was almost too scared to breathe.

‘Anyway,’ he continued with a shrug, his thumb making lazy circles on the back of her hand, ‘when it all boils down to it, live with me or marry me—what’s the real difference? Maybe we
should
get married. Then you can make a start on those six children you always wanted.’

‘What are you talking about? You said you’d never marry me.
Never!
’

‘That was before. Before I knew the truth. My father treated you abysmally—everyone treated you abysmally—and I was so wrong. Why not marry me and let me make up for the wrongs of the past?’

It was too much to take in, and her mind was spinning with the possibilities.
Marriage to Rafiq. Bearing his children.
Her heart thudded against her ribs, echoed loud in her veins, his words her every fantasy come true. Did he understand what he was offering? What an unbelievable gift he was holding out to her?

Could it mean the impossible?

Was there a chance his love for her had been revived after the crushing weight of years of hatred?

It was crazy, just crazy to imagine it. Crazy to think that after all this time they could be together, could wipe away those painful years and start over. But if he loved her…? Maybe it could work. But he hadn’t said he loved her, had he? He’d given her no inkling that love was any part of this crazy plan. No inkling at all.

‘It doesn’t work like that, Rafiq. You don’t just marry someone and have their babies because you enjoy the sex. What if you change your mind in a week or a month? What if you’ve had enough by then and we’re stuck together? It doesn’t make sense.’

He didn’t understand it either. He only knew that he wasn’t about to let Sera go. Ever. And if the best way to do that was to marry her, he’d do it. Gladly. And then he hit on the perfect way to convince her.

‘Don’t you see?’ he added, his eyes suddenly alive with excitement as he sprang up on the bed. ‘It makes perfect sense. The Marrashis want a royal marriage. We’ll provide them with one. Save all the legal hassles of renegotiating the contract terms. It’s the sensible thing to do.’

The contract.
Sera felt her fledgling hopes take a dive. Rafiq was nothing if not a consummate businessman. Of course it would all be about the contract. Of course he didn’t love her.

The Marrashis had tied his hands. He could marry or face some kind of renegotiation and possibly risk the entire contract in the process. Marrying her was clearly the lesser of two evils.
Sensible.

‘Sera, what do you think? Isn’t it perfect?’

Perfect?
Nowhere near.

‘Aren’t you taking a lot for granted?’ She had to say something. She could not just let him steamroller her into this—not when it was for the wrong reasons. ‘You seem to assume I’d be happy to marry you.’

He frowned. ‘Would it be such a chore…?’ He ran his hand down her side, a featherlight touch all the way from her shoulder to one knee that made her quiver. ‘Putting up with me every night?’

‘But it’s not just about sex, surely?’

And his eyes took on a glacial hue, as if he was annoyed she was not falling in easily with his ever so
sensible
plan. ‘Who was it who came up with that condition, Sera? Who was it who led the Marrashis to believe there would be a wedding and that it would be mine? Who had those women believing that you would be that bride?’

She swallowed and looked away. ‘I didn’t tell them that—’

‘You might as well have, because that’s what they expect. You owe me, Sera. Marry me. It’s the least you can do. Say yes, before I am forced to command you.’

He was serious. He was actually serious. The concept of merely living together was forgotten. Now he was demanding she marry him as if he was calling in a debt. She swallowed down on her disappointment.

Maybe it wasn’t all bad. Okay, so he might not love her—she could hardly expect that from a man who had so recently expressed his hatred of her—but he did want her. Of that she had no doubt. Could she settle for marriage with Rafiq, bearing his children, loving him, even knowing he didn’t love her?

And she looked up into the waiting eyes, the beautiful blue eyes in the beautiful chiselled face of the man who had a place in her heart and her soul for ever, whether or not he loved her, now or ever, and she knew her answer.

‘You don’t have to command me. I’ll do it. I’ll marry you.’

Coronation morning dawned bright and beautiful. Rafiq knew this because he’d been awake and had watched the silvery-grey morning light spear through the drapes and turn Sera’s gold-tinged skin to satin. He’d lain there, watching her sleep on a pillow of her own black hair, the curve of her long lashes resting on her cheek, her lush mouth an invitation, her lips, slightly parted.

When would he get sick of looking at her? When would he get sick of making love to her? Never, if the hunger he felt for her even now was any indication. Never, if she remained so responsive to his touch.

Sleep had confirmed last night’s brainwave. Marriage would solve everything. Sera would be safe away from here. She would be free from the ghosts of her past, able to make a new future.

But most of all she would be his.

And nothing and nobody was ever going to steal her away from him again
.

He pressed his lips to hers, unable to resist their silent invitation any longer, and she stirred and stretched into sleepy wakefulness so deliciously that he could not resist kissing her again, finally groaning as he pulled away, knowing there was no time for them to make love this morning.

‘I’m having breakfast with Kareef before the coronation, and from there we’ll go to the ceremony together. I will have Akmal assign you a seat next to mine, and I will join you there after the official entrance.’

Sleep slid from her eyes like a coverlet slipping from a bed,
exposing emotion so naked he almost flinched. ‘But I wasn’t planning on going to the coronation.’

He sat back. ‘Of course you are. It’s Kareef’s coronation. Why wouldn’t you be there?’

She was shaking her head, clutching her bedclothes in front of her like a shield. ‘There’s no need. Or…I can stand at the back. Because you’ll be right up at the front with your family. I don’t need—’