Читать книгу Modern Romance May 2017 Books 5 – 8 - Bella Frances, Louise Fuller - Страница 25
ОглавлениеGABI WALKED OVER to a dresser and took some paper and wrote down three little words.
No, thank you.
She placed them by the stone that Alim had left out for her.
Gabi would not be kept.
She would not be another Fleur, paid for in diamonds, rich in everything save respect.
Then she undressed and, naked, walked to the closed doors of the bedroom.
She would not cry and she would not be a martyr as she took those final steps, for Gabi wanted this.
Gabi stepped into darkness. The air was fragrant and sweet but there was the now familiar musky note of Alim and the pull of arousal as she came to the side of the bed.
‘What kept you?’ Alim asked.
‘My thoughts.’
‘And they are?’
‘That I’ll never be your mistress.’
‘Then why are you here?’ Alim asked as his hands roamed her naked body.
‘I shall be your lover,’ Gabi told him, and she knelt on the bed and kissed his salty chest. ‘I will be your lover in the desert at times and at others I will be your lover in Rome.’
And when once she had been demure, she was not so much now, for she wanted to intimately taste every inch of him. Gabi kissed down his stomach and between hot kisses she told him how it would be.
‘I don’t want your diamonds, I owe you nothing.’
And in the dark she could not see his smile, for he loved it that she stood up to him.
‘But I do want the contract for your wedding,’ Gabi said, and she blew onto his wet skin as his fingers dug into her thigh. ‘I’m going to stand there and you can damn well watch what you’re saying goodbye to, because your mistress I shall never be.’
His scent was her addiction and her undoing; she could feel him against her cheek and so she took him in her hand and tasted him.
She took him deep; his hands went into her hair and his hips rose at the bliss of unskilled but willing lips and to the heat of her tongue.
And then he pulled her up before he came, yet still she told him how it would be.
‘The day your bride is chosen I’ll cease to be your lover.’
Gabi had not finished school, neither was she versed in the rules, yet she, Alim knew, was as clever and as powerful as he.
He pulled her up to his kiss and as their tongues touched he lowered Gabi onto him.
The relief of him inside her was unrivalled.
A future she could now see.
He held her hips and they found their rhythm. She danced as if free, for that was how she felt when they were together.
She wanted the light on, she ached to see him, but as she leant and reached for the bedside lamp his hand grabbed at hers. Gabi lost her stride and toppled forward. There was a tussle and he flipped her and then entered her again, and she lay in the dark, being taken.
Gabi did not bring him to his knees but to his forearms.
‘Yes,’ Alim said as he thrust into her. ‘You shall be at my wedding.’
‘Alim...’ Gabi sobbed, for she had meant it as a threat yet it seemed to turn him on.
It was the way she said his name that called to him. Like a plea from the soul. And when Gabi said it again he came hard into her. She fought not to, Gabi really did—fought not to cave to the flood of warmth and want and the orbit of them.
She lost.
Near spent, Alim had the pleasure of the full clutch of her passion and his body pinned her as she writhed, and when she wanted to breathe it was the only need his body denied her, for he then took the air from the room.
‘You shall be at my wedding...as my bride.’
She was always a little dizzy when Alim was close—for Gabi it was a constant state of affairs. Held in his arms, breathing his scent, and her body still coming down from the high he so readily gave, she told herself she had misheard him.
And then light invaded for Alim reached over and turned on the bedside lamp and his bedroom was not as she recalled it.
There were flowers.
Sweet peas.
Ten thousand of them, she was sure, and the flowers in the foyer had, in fact, been for her.
But that was not all.
A stunning portrait had been blown up and set on an easel beside the bed.
It was the image of them.
Alim had moved more than mountains, he had turned back the hands of time. For days he had pored over the rules he had studied for years, searching, discounting and trying to find a way to make it work for them.
‘You and Lucia are the most wonderful things that have ever happened to me,’ Alim told her.
‘According to your land, we never happened.’
‘No.’ Alim shook his head. ‘When the Sultan offers a commitment it is to be taken seriously...’ He took her in his arms. ‘I committed to you that night.’
‘You offered a year.’
‘I vowed fidelity.’
He had.
‘And unless it has been broken, you are still mine.’
‘Alim?’
‘There has been no one else,’ Alim said. ‘There could be no one else. Had you not spoken of other men you would have walked into this room and I would have got down on my knees and asked you to be my wife.’
Gabi laughed.
Still dizzy, still confused, she laughed, because even if he had planned the perfect proposal she would not change how it had transpired.
There was nothing about them she would change.
Even now, could she go back to their first night and be on the Pill, she would not. There was nothing she would change save for the cruel rules of his land, and now her laughter died.
‘Your father will never agree.’
‘Reluctantly, very reluctantly, he already has.’ Now it was Alim who smiled. ‘I am more stubborn than he. I went through the rules and the diktat and then I showed him this image. I told my father that there had been no one else and that that would remain the case, for the rest of my life if need be.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My father caved in to the Sultan of Sultans’ demands when Fleur would not come to the desert. I told him that I would not.’
And still she did not understand.
‘We think the same, Gabi. For the decision you reached was mine too. We would have more than made it as lovers. I would have come to Italy regularly, and brought you on occasion to the desert, and you would have remained the one and only woman in my life.’
And she stared back at him as he told her just how deep his love was.
‘I told my father that if he did not choose you as my bride, then I would never marry. Kaleb is next in line, Yasmin after that, and they will one day have children. The country is not short of heirs...’
‘You told him that you’d give up your throne?’
‘No.’ Alim shook his head. ‘I would still rule, but they would be my heirs.’
He had thought every detail through and he had presented it to his father, just as he would in any business meeting.
Only this one involved his heart.
‘He knows I am strong, and he knows his own regrets. He agreed.’
‘And Lucia...’ Gabi asked. ‘What will your people think?’
‘My father has been unwell, that is enough reason to have refrained from announcements and celebrations. This photo, of the night I made a commitment to you, is enough testimony of our love.’
It was love.
She had never truly thought she would know it.
Not fully.
An unrequited version perhaps, if she remained with Alim. Or a diluted version if she attempted to move on and meet someone else.
Yet the man she loved had changed his world for a chance for them. And he told her now why he had.
‘Gabi, I never considered love important. I grew up in a loveless, albeit privileged home. I saw first-hand the pain love caused for my father and Fleur...’
He thought back to when love had first started to arrive in his heart.
‘When I came to buy the Grande Lucia you were setting up for a wedding. It was the first time I saw you.’
Gabi thought back.
‘No, the first time we saw each other was the day after a wedding. You had come back for a second viewing of the hotel...’
‘No.’
And Gabi realised then that he had memories of her that she did not know, that the days she had felt so invisible had been days when she had, in fact, been noticed.
‘Marry me?’ he said, and she nodded.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘There is only one problem.’
And here it came, Gabi thought, the downside, for she could not remain on this cloud for ever. She braced herself for impact.
‘It has to be now.’
Gabi frowned. ‘Now?’
‘We’re already late for our own wedding.’
‘You mean now!’
‘The Sultan of Sultans has chosen. I was lucky to buy us even a few days. I have my family gathered, and I went and spoke with your mother; she has given her blessing if you say yes.’
‘When did you speak with my mother?’
‘That is why I was late to meet Lucia.’
Gabi was lying in bed on her wedding day when surely there was so much to be done.
‘Alim...’ She sat up. ‘I haven’t...’
There was panic, because she was a wedding planner after all and this wedding was her very own.
‘There is nothing for you to do. I know you would have dreamed of this day and that it might not be quite what you had planned...’
‘No.’ Gabi shook her head. ‘I never thought of my own.’
‘There will be a bigger celebration in Zethlehan but for today everything is under control.’
Except the bride!
For instead of answering her million questions Alim got dressed and then, having read her note with a smile, he left.
Gabi sat in the unmade bed, unsure what she was supposed to do, so she called her mum.
‘I am so happy for you,’ Carmel said. ‘It meant everything that he came and spoke with me...’
‘You’ll be there?’
‘Of course,’ her mother said. ‘I’m at the hotel now with Lucia and we’re both being very spoiled. I shall see you at the wedding.’
It seemed everyone knew what was happening except Gabi and just when she was starting to think she must have misunderstood the bedside phone rang.
‘Gabi...’
Gabi rolled her eyes at the familiar voice.
‘I can’t work today,’ Gabi started, but then realised that Bernadetta wasn’t calling her to ask her to work.
‘If you’d like to put on a robe, the bridal suite is ready for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Gabi, I haven’t been avoiding your calls. Well perhaps a bit, but I’ve been very busy arranging a royal wedding in Rome, with only five days’ notice. Thank goodness I’m good at my job!’
Gabi had always resented that Alim seemed one step ahead of her.
She didn’t today.
Yes, Bernadetta was a right royal pain, but she was the best in the business.
Gabi almost felt sorry for Bernadetta for the panic she must have had to arrange such a rapid wedding.
Almost!
