Forbidden: The Sheikh's Virgin (15 page)

He took her shrouded hands in his. ‘Sera, what’s wrong?’

‘There’s just no point. I don’t need to be there, to take someone else’s seat.’

‘Sera, Cerak will not be there. She cannot hurt you now. She has been banished.’

But still Sera’s eyes looked panicked and turbulent. ‘I will go with you to Australia. Didn’t I agree to that? I’ll go today, if necessary. Oh, Rafiq,’ she said, clutching at his shoulder, ‘could we not go today? Why not leave right after the ceremony? Just slip away in all the commotion? Your plane is still here. It would be easy.’

His patience was wearing thin. Last night she’d made it seem as if marrying him would be some kind of imposition, and now she was suggesting they leave today—before the crown was barely warm on Kareef’s head, before the event he’d specifically flown all the way from Australia to attend had barely concluded?

‘Now you’re being ridiculous. It’s not as if you don’t have anything to wear.’ He headed for the bathroom. He’d wasted enough time on this meaningless discussion. If she’d played her cards right, they could have used their time much more productively. He turned at the door. ‘This is my brother’s coronation. You are going to be my wife. There will be no standing at the back. You
are
family now, and I expect you by my side. Is that understood?’

The conversation troubled him, even as he breakfasted with Kareef, even as he should have been focusing on his brother’s words and his needs. But Kareef seemed strangely at odds with himself too, and uninterested in Rafiq’s half-hearted talk of contracts with the tribespeople of Marrash. Or was that just because he found it hard to regain the enthusiasm for his own success after this morning’s strange conversation with Sera? It was certainly not the way he intended waking up with Sera again.

News of their impending marriage would have snagged Kareef’s attention, he was sure. But today was Kareef’s day, and there was nothing he would do to deflect attention from that. There would be time for that announcement later. Not that Kareef didn’t look as if he could do with some cheering up. Maybe if Tahir had managed to make it in time, as he’d promised? But their younger brother was nothing if not scrupulously unreliable, and, sadly, there seemed scant possibility he’d show up now.

An onshore breeze caught them as they crossed the courtyard, whipping at his robes as he walked side by side with his brother, and the cries of the crowd outside the gates interfered with his tangled thoughts. Once again he’d made the decision to don the robes of his countrymen. It was not so much to ask, he’d decided. Not so much of a stretch as he’d imagined. Maybe there were some parts of Qusay he didn’t need to forget.

Sera had turned out to be one of them.

He frowned. Would she be waiting for him inside the ancient ruin? Or had whatever had been troubling her this morning swung her mind, and she was hiding somewhere in the cloistered shadows, as she’d clearly been intending?

It didn’t make sense. Cerak had been taken care of. So what was her problem?

Today Sera had reluctantly chosen the peacock-blue gown from Marrash to wear. She had fingered her black
abayas
lovingly, wishing she could hide under one of those, and hopefully go unnoticed and unrecognised, but Rafiq would be upset, she knew, and already today she had angered him. And now there was colour all around her, a multitude of guests dressed in finery from one hundred nations, and still she felt achingly conspicuous as she sat in the seat Akmal had arranged for her, so close to the front that she could feel a thousand eyes at her back, a butterfly for each pair flitting inside her. She kept her own eyes to the front, not wanting to meet any of them, managing an awkward smile only when the Sheikha caught her eye. Her lover’s mother! What must she think? She wished Rafiq would get here, so that she could at least hide herself against him. He had defended her against Cerak, made sure she could not hurt her again. He made her feel safe.

She took a deep breath, tried to settle her jittery stomach and cool her damp palms. Soon he would take her away from here. Far away from Qusay and the palace and any chance of running into someone from her past. She could hardly wait.

The sound of trumpets filled the air and the crowd hushed, heads swivelling around to where the official party gathered at the back. Relief quelled her flighty stomach. Rafiq would be among them. Soon he would be here. But for now she resisted the temptation of turning her head, waiting until the party had made their way almost to the front before she dared glance behind her.

Her gaze never made it to the official party. He was staring at her, the ambassador from Karakhistar, his burgundy sash stretched across a white dress shirt that looked a size too small for his spreading paunch. But it was the sneering look of contempt on his face that turned her stomach. The nervous butterflies were now massive moths, writhing in their death throes
inside her. And she remembered the night when Hussein had ordered her to sit alongside the ambassador, her breasts practically spilling from the near-transparent top Hussein had insisted she wear, and how he had reached for her greedily, with pudgy fingers, thinking she was the entertainment, before Hussein had bundled him unceremoniously out—only to make her watch while he had tried and failed to achieve the same level of arousal as his guest, cursing her for her failure to stimulate him.

She dropped her head, her hand going over her mouth, sweat beading at her brow. She was so glad now that her heaving stomach was empty, that there was nothing to lose, nothing to further humiliate herself with. And suddenly Rafiq was there alongside her, his arm around her back.

‘What’s wrong?’ he whispered, even as the voice of Akmal could be heard as the ceremony began.

‘Take me away,’ she managed. ‘Take me away from Qusay.’

‘I will,’ he promised, his voice thick with questions that she could not answer,
dared not answer
, in case he changed his mind and left her here after all.

There was a stir amongst the guests, a ripple of astonishment that had heads turning once again, and a feeling that things were going off the rails. Even in the depths of her misery, Sera heard Rafiq’s muttered, ‘What the—?’

And she looked up, her mind not believing the picture her eyes were telling her. Jasmine? In Kareef’s arms?
Kissing?

‘What’s happening?’ she said.

But Rafiq only scowled as Akmal uttered the fateful words, ‘Kareef Al’ Ramiz has renounced the throne. Long live King Rafiq!’

‘W
HAT
the hell just happened in there?’ Rafiq wasn’t pacing the room, he was devouring it, with giant purposeful strides that ate up the carpet and spat it out again. ‘Akmal, tell me—what the hell happened? One minute my brother is supposed to be crowned King, the next he is renouncing the throne. He cannot
do
that.’

‘Yes, Akmal,’ his mother added, sitting alongside a sick-looking Sera on a couch, ‘what does it mean?’

Akmal stood, eerily composed, his hands knotted in front of him, the only one in the room who seemed to have recovered from the pandemonium of the last few minutes. ‘Kareef can renounce the crown and has done so. He did that when he decided to marry Jasmine Kouri, a woman unable to bear him children.’

Rafiq was shaking his head, but there was no shutting out the crashing sound of the chains and bars of responsibility clanging shut around him. ‘But I am a businessman. I am flying home to Australia tomorrow. I cannot be Qusay’s king.’

‘You are the second son. The first has abdicated. That makes you first in line to the throne now.’ Akmal’s voice was patient and deliberate as he set out the facts, each one hammering home Rafiq’s fate.

‘But it makes no sense,’ he railed. ‘I know nothing of Qusay’s affairs. I have not lived here for more than a decade.’ He turned
to Sera then, noticed her wide eyes and still ashen skin and felt himself frown. ‘Some might even call me a tourist prince…’

Instead of a smile, as he’d hoped, she winced and shrank back further into the sofa, and he remembered she’d been upset even before the ceremony. Had she known, even then, that her old friend would marry Kareef? Yet the dramatic turn of events had taken everyone by surprise, including Kareef and Jasmine, it seemed. So what was bothering her?

Akmal’s steady voice hauled his attention back. ‘It matters neither what you did before nor what you know. For it is written in your blood. Kareef has stepped aside and it is your place to become King.’

And even though he still shook his head, he knew Akmal was right. He had no choice. His blood had spoken. So much for his fly in, fly out visit—so much for being relaxed about being second in line for the throne, smug in the knowledge that soon Kareef would marry and provide the heirs that would distance him from the throne. Kareef had fairly and squarely dropped him right in it.

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 buckled 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.