Forbidden: The Sheikh's Virgin (4 page)

Body and soul.

A wedding night he had wanted and planned and longed for with all his heart. A wedding night they had never had.

Because she’d given herself to someone else first.

God, what kind of madness had made him think he was ready to face again the woman who’d done that to him?

He brought his head back down on an exhale, opened his eyes and saw her watching him, her dark eyes so filled with concern that his fingers stalled in his hair.
Damn it, he didn’t want her sympathy!
He let his hands drop into his lap.

Her eyes followed the movement, a frown marring her perfect brow. ‘Are you all right?’

And it took him a breath or two until he was sure he was back in control, until he’d clamped down on the memories of heated kisses and shared laughter, of silken skin and promises of for ever that had come surging back in such a tidal force of emotion, the feelings that had lain buried for so long under a concrete-thick layer of hatred.

‘Jetlag,’ he lied, his voice coarse and thick, and designed to close off all conversation as he turned away to stare unseeingly out of his window.

T
WO
hours out of Shafar the cars turned off the highway, heading along a sandy track through the desert. They would meet up with the narrow coast road much further on, where the track met the coastline, and where their camp should be ready for them if they needed to stop.

The going was tougher here, and the cars ground their way over the uneven and sometimes deeply rutted track, their passengers bouncing upon the upholstery as the car jolted them around. Far ahead they could just make out the smudge on the horizon that marked the beginning of the red mountains, where they were headed—a smudge that slowly grew until their jagged peaks rose high in the windscreen as they made progress over the bumpy and desolate terrain.

They stopped further on for a break at a welcome oasis, the cars pulling under the shade of a stand of date palms, the passengers more than ready to rest their jolted bones. A short break now and they would still make Marrash tonight, leaving enough time tomorrow for the necessary inspections and at least the preliminary negotiations. If all went well they would be back in Shafar no later than tomorrow evening.

Sera climbed from the car, happy to stretch her legs, but even happier to escape the hothouse atmosphere in the back seat for
a few minutes. Her temples and neck promised the onset of a tension headache. Even the fiery ball of the sun and the super-heated air was some kind of relief. She knew it would only be a matter of time before he’d find another angle of attack, another means to criticise her and find fault, but for now she’d had enough of the brooding silence and the constant anticipation of yet another volley.

The drivers were busy pulling things from the backs of the vehicles, organising refreshments and checking the vehicles, their conversation like music on the air. Rafiq was there too, she noticed, wanting to help even over their protests that they should be serving him.

She walked towards the inviting pool, breathing a sigh of relief, certain he wouldn’t listen—not if it meant the alternative was spending more time with her. Which meant that at least for a few blessed minutes she had some space to herself.

The oasis was small, no more than a scattering of assorted palms clustered around a bubbling spring that spilled into a wide pool, with an ancient stone shelter to protect travellers caught in the sandstorms that rolled from time to time over the desert that surrounded them on all sides. A tiny slice of life in the midst of nothingness. And there
was
life. Tiny birds darted from bush to bush, and brightly coloured butterflies looked like flowers against the dark green foliage. Immediately Sera felt more relaxed, felt the peace of the oasis infuse her veins.

Rafiq had sat like a thundercloud beside her, silent and threatening, ever since that moment in the car. Sera had recognised the change—as if something unseen had shifted in the space between them, as if he too was remembering a time that both of them would rather forget. Whatever it was, Rafiq hadn’t welcomed it. She’d witnessed the turmoil that had turned his cool eyes to the troubled blue of a stormy sky; she’d felt the torment she’d seen there as if it were her own. She’d recognised it.

The water in the pool beckoned, crystal-clear and inviting. She knelt down in the long reedy grass at the water’s edge, trailing her fingers through the refreshingly clear water, pouring some over her wrists to cool herself down, patting some to her throbbing temples. She sighed with relief.

It was too much to expect that it would last—they couldn’t stop long—but right now, it was bliss.

A plume of sand rising from the desert drew Rafiq’s attention. He shaded his eyes from the sun and peered into the distance, where the mountains now loomed in jagged red peaks. The billowing sand drew closer. It was too early to hear the car, but no doubt they would soon have company.

He swung his eyes around, to the place he’d been studiously avoiding up till now, to the place where Sera sat serenely at the water’s edge, eyes closed, her face turned up towards the sky in profile, her features for once at peace. Without thinking his feet took him a step closer. She’d loosened the scarf around her head and her glossy black hair flowed down her back, shining blue in the same dappled light that moved shadows across her satin skin and showed off the silken curve of her throat.

And something shifted deep inside him. She was still so beautiful. Dark lashes kissed her cheeks, and the curtain of black hair hung in a silken stream over her shoulders and beyond, and her generous mouth held the promise of a kiss. In the dry heat, his blood started fizzing. Eleven years after she’d married someone else, he still thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

And under the robe? Would she still be as perfect as he remembered? Would she still feel as satin-skinned in his hands? Would she still melt into his touch as if she was part of him?

He took another step closer before he heard the car, before the sound filtered into his brain and he realised what he was doing. He looked back at the source of his confusion. What the hell was wrong with him? The sun must be getting to him.

But Sera had heard the sound too, her head swinging around, but her dark eyes’ mission forgotten when they found him watching her. She swallowed. He followed the upward movement of her chin, followed the movement in her throat, knew the instant she’d taken her next breath.

Even across the space between them he was aware of every tiny movement, every minute change in her eyes, in the flare of her nostrils. And as he watched her, and as she watched him, the dry air crackled between them like fireworks.

Until above it all he heard voices and the sounds of an engine, brakes squealing in protest, and he spun away, his mind and his senses in disarray.

It was a relief to see that some things still made sense. A four-wheel drive had pulled up at the oasis in a cloud of sand. A distraction. Thank God.

The driver emerged, cursing and gesticulating wildly, while a woman climbed wearily out of the other side, reaching into the passenger seat behind and removing first two dark-haired toddlers and then a tiny baby from their seats in the back. She herded the small children before her towards the pond, her voice a slice of calm over motherly panic as she clutched the baby, even as the man opened the hood and let loose with a new string of invective.

Steam poured up from the engine. The man flapped his hands uselessly, then clutched at the side of his white robe with one hand and simultaneously reached for the radiator cap.

It was Rafiq who stopped him, Sera saw. Rafiq who was there first, stopping his hand, urging him to wait. Their drivers followed, reiterating his advice, and she looked back as the woman neared, her toddlers stumbling before her, the crying baby clutched tight in her arms.

‘Be careful!’ the mother called out, following as fast as she could. ‘Stop before you reach the water.’

Sera was only too happy to assist, stretching out her arms to form a barrier that the twin girls collapsed into at the last moment, laughing and shrieking, thinking it was a game. The mother breathed a sigh and thanked her, before settling with her brood at the water’s edge, taking the time to make the traditional greetings even as she settled her baby to feed now that she knew her other children were safe.

Sera smiled, her spirits lifting at meeting Aamina and her children. A visitor was a welcome distraction—especially a young mother with such a young and energetic family. The woman had a beautiful round face, and a generous smile that persisted patiently, even when the children got too excited and jostled the feeding infant impatiently in her arms. Only the shadows under her eyes betrayed how much she yearned for sleep. Sera was plagued with shadows under her eyes too, she knew, but she could only wish they were for the same reason. But this woman was so young, and yet already with three children…

That could have been her
, she thought, in a sudden and selfish moment of madness that had no place or no relevance in her real world, and yet which still refused to give way to sanity.

That could have been her if she’d followed her heart and not her head.

If she’d ignored her family’s demands and the threats made against them.

That could have been her if she’d married Rafiq
.

Sera clamped down on the unwelcome thoughts. Because that was all in the past, and marrying Rafiq had never been an option, not really, no matter how much she had wanted it, and she couldn’t blame her family alone.

It was pointless even thinking about it, no matter how much Rafiq’s return to Qusay had made her wonder how things might have been if she’d made a different decision all those years ago.

Instead she tried to focus on the young woman’s story, and
why she was here now, travelling across the desert with such a tiny infant. It was not ideal, the woman acknowledged, but necessary, as her husband’s mother was seriously ill in hospital in Shafar, and they had promised to take their new baby, named Maisha in her honour, to meet her. But her husband was impatient, and had been pushing their aging vehicle too hard. It was lucky they had made it as far as the oasis before the radiator had blown completely.

The toddlers, no more than eighteen months old, had been content to wait at their mother’s side while she fed the baby, but now demanded more of their mother’s attention. They wanted to paddle in the shallows, and they wanted their mother to take them. Both of them.

Their mother looked lost, though the babe at her breast had thankfully finished feeding and was now sleeping, and Sera could see the woman was trying to work out how to juggle them all.

‘Mama, plee-ease,’ the toddlers insisted, and their mother looked more conflicted than ever.

‘I could hold the baby,’ Sera suggested, ‘if it might help?’

And the mother looked at her briefly, taking less than a second to decide whether to entrust this stranger with her tiny baby before making up her mind. She smiled, propping the baby up on her shoulder and patting its back. ‘Bless you,’ she said.

The baby joined in with a loud burp that set the girls off with a fresh round of giggles. The girls’ laughter was infectious, and Sera found herself joining in the glee before the mother passed the baby over to her waiting arms. The infant squirmed as it settled into the crook of her arm, nestled into her lap, while the mother swooped her robe over one arm and kicked off her sandals, her own smile broadening. She held a twin’s hand securely in each of her own, and the trio ventured gingerly into the water, the girls shrieking with delight as they splashed in the shallows.

In her arms the baby stirred and sighed a sigh, blowing milky bubbles before settling down into sleep, one little arm raised, the hand curled into a tiny fist. So tiny. So perfect. Sera touched the pad of one finger to its downy cheek. So soft.

She smiled in spite of the sadness that shrouded her own heart—sadness for the missed opportunities, the children she’d never borne and maybe now never would, and ran her fingers over the baby’s already thick black hair, drinking in the child’s perfect features, the sooty lashes resting on her cheeks, the tiny nose, the delicate cupid’s bow mouth squeezed amidst the plump cheeks.

So utterly defenceless. So innocent. And then her mind made sense of it all. Maybe it was better that she’d never had children. After all, she’d proved incapable of even taking care of her own tiny kittens.

The children laughed and splashed and squealed in the shallows, and the baby slept on, safe in Sera’s arms.

When one of the drivers laid out a blanket with refreshments for them, and the children whooped and fell on the picnic, their hunger now paramount, Sera told the mother to look after the girls first. Once again the mother smiled her thanks as she helped her hungry toddlers feast.

Not long after, with the radiator cooled and refilled, their car was pronounced fit to go and the mother thanked Sera as she scooped her sleeping infant back into her arms. ‘But you haven’t had anything to eat yourself yet,’ she protested, as the remains of their quick repast were already being cleared away.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sera replied honestly, for the woman had given her a greater gift—the feel of a newborn in her arms and the sweet scent of baby breath.

Although that gift had come with a cost, she realised, as she waved the mother and her children goodbye, smiling as she wished them well in spite of the tears in her eyes. She’d almost
forgotten in the past few years how much she’d wanted children. She’d almost come to terms with the fact she might never have them.

And right now that reawakened pain was almost more than she could bear.

She turned and walked slowly towards the pool again, the sadness squeezing her heart until she was sure it would bleed tears.

She sniffed down on her disappointment, willing it back into the box where she’d kept it locked away until now. They would be resuming their journey shortly; the drivers were already making their final checks of the vehicles and re-stowing their gear. Rafiq had thankfully kept his distance while the woman and her children were here, but soon she would have to put up with his thundercloud-dark presence again. She needed to get herself under control before then.

Rafiq looked at the map one more time, trying to focus, trying to assimilate what the father of the small family, a local, had informed them—that the mountain track up to Marrash had suffered in recent landslips and that progress could be slower than they expected.

It was news Rafiq hadn’t wanted to hear, for it meant that there was a chance they mightn’t make Marrash tonight. The local man had advised that it would be madness to try to negotiate the treacherous mountain road in the dark. Both drivers had agreed, suggesting that perhaps they should make use of the camp at the coast. The truck that had set out earlier would have prepared for their arrival, and the camp was even now being readied for them.

But he didn’t want this trip taking any longer than one night, and if they stopped tonight and negotiations in Marrash took too much time they might well have to spend a second night at the camp, so he’d argued that if they cut their break short and pressed on now they could still be in Marrash by nightfall.