Читать книгу Working With Cinderella - Линн Грэхем, Lynne Graham - Страница 20

‘TOMORROW we leave for the desert.’

Natasha was irritating. She insisted on chatting as if they were old friends. And yet, Emir conceded, he would find any conversation annoying now, for his mind was only on Amy and what had just taken place.

Fool, he said to himself. Fool for not resisting. Fool for being weak.

And fool because tonight he would take her, only to lose her again in the morning.

Only to have her leave.

‘I’m looking forward to it.’ Natasha persisted with their one-way conversation. ‘After all the celebrations and pomp surrounding the birth, it will be nice to get some peace.’

Now Emir did respond—and very deliberately he chose to get things wrong. ‘I’m sure that the Bedouins will take good care of him.’ He saw the flare of horror in Natasha’s eyes.

‘Oh, it’s not for that. It’s way too soon to even think of being parted from him. That doesn’t have to happen until he turns one.’

‘Before he turns one,’ Emir said, enjoying one pleasure in this night.

Two pleasures, he corrected, his mind drifting to Amy again. But he must stay focussed. He must concentrate on the conversation rather than anticipating her arrival, rather then remembering what had just happened. And perhaps it was time to give Natasha a taste of the medicine he had so recently sampled.

‘I handed over the girls last week. Your husband was kind enough to grant a concession that they only stay in the desert for one night, given what happened to their mother.’ He watched Natasha’s lips tighten as he reminded her, none too gently, that her son would be in the desert for several nights—unless, of course, he lost his mother too. Unless he was forced to be weaned early, as Emir’s daughters had been.

‘How did the girls get on?’ Natasha attempted to make it sound like a polite enquiry, as if she were asking after the girls rather than about what she could expect for her own son.

Emir knew that—it was the reason he didn’t mollify her with his response. ‘They screamed, they wept and they begged,’ Emir said, watching as her face grew paler with each passing word. ‘But they are the rules.’ Emir shrugged. ‘My daughters have been forced to be strong by circumstance, and so they survived it.’

He stopped twisting the knife then—not to save her from further distress, but because at that moment it seemed to Emir that everything simply stopped.

He had wondered far too often what Amy might look like out of that robe—he had pictured her not just in her nightdress, or naked beneath him, but dressed as his Queen.

She stepped into that vision now and claimed it, and deep in his gut a knife twisted.

She was dressed in a dark emerald velvet gown, her lips painted red and her eyes skilfully lined with kohl. Her hair was down. But nothing, not even the work of a skilled make-up artist, could temper the glitter in her eyes and the blush of her cheeks that their kiss had evoked. A riot of ringlets framed her face.

The world was cruel, Emir decided, for it taunted him with what he could not have. It showed him exactly how good it could have been, had the rules allowed her to join him, to be at his side.

Little more than a year ago she would have been veiled and hidden. A year ago he would not have had to suffer the tease of her beauty. But there was a new Sheikha Queen in Alizirz and times were changing.

Amy was changing.

Before his eyes, as she chatted with Natasha, he witnessed the effortless seduction of her body. For even as she turned slightly away from him her gestures seemed designed for him. She threw her head back and laughed, and then, as he knew it would, her hand instinctively moved to cover the scar on her throat. She twisted her hair around her fingers and he fought his desire to snake a hand around her waist. He wanted to join in the conversation as he would with a partner, to squeeze her waist just once to remind her that soon it would be over and soon they would be alone.

He put down the glass he was gripping rather than break it.

He turned away, but her laughter filled his ears.

Emir tried to remember the shy woman who had first entered the palace. He had not noticed her—or at least not in that way. His mind had been too consumed with worry for his wife, who had been fading by the day, for him to notice Amy. He wanted that back. He wanted the invisible woman she had been then.

But she wasn’t invisible now.

She was there before his eyes.

And for her he might not be King.

‘Thank you so much for coming down.’ Natasha kissed Amy’s cheek an agonising couple of hours later. ‘It was lovely to talk.’

‘It was my pleasure,’ Amy said. ‘Thank you for the invitation.’

She meant not a word.

And neither did Emir as he too politely thanked Rakhal and headed to the stairs.

She could not do this.

She stepped out into a fragrant garden, breathed in the blossom and begged it to quell the hammering of her mind. She listened to the fountain that should soothe. Except it did not, for she understood now a little of what Emir had meant about being in hell.

To stand apart while their minds were together, to ignore the other while their bodies silently screamed, was a potent taste of what might be to come when he married.

If she stayed.

Her fury was silent as she walked to her room, but she knew what she had to do. Her eyes took in the empty bed, but the scent of him confirmed that he was there. She saw that the doors were open and looked beyond them to where he stood by the pool. His jacket was undone and his eyes met hers. She shook her head, for forbidden lovers they must not be.

‘ No.’

Brave in her decision, she walked towards him, her anger building as she did so, reminding herself of all she did not admire about this man. She tried to dull the passion he triggered, determined that it be over.

‘I’m through with this, Emir.’ She made herself say it. ‘I don’t even like you.’

He simply looked.

His silence let her speak.

‘I could never be with a man willing to ignore his children—despite my health problems, despite the fact I can’t have children. Even without that I’d never have said yes.’ She was lying, she could hear it, but her mind begged for it to be true. ‘How can I love a man who doesn’t care about his children?’

She watched his eyes narrow. Perhaps this was not the conversation he’d been expecting. It was a mistress he wanted, Amy reminded herself, not an argument about his children. But her racing heart surely stopped for a moment when his low voice delivered a response she was not expecting.

‘Never say that.’

She thought he might throw the drink he was holding in her face. He might just as well have, because nothing could have shocked her more than the passion in his voice when his next words were delivered.

‘I love my children.’

Except his actions did not show it, even if his words sounded true.

‘You say that …’

‘Trust that I have my daughters’ best interests at heart.’

And she looked at his pain ravaged face and into eyes that glittered with the flames of hell. Somehow she did trust him. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she did believe him.

What did this man do to her? she begged of herself.

‘Please, Emir, go.’

She could not think when he was around; she lost herself when he was near.

‘Go,’ she said, and walked to the bedroom.

‘Go.’ She sobbed as still by the pool he stood.

And she knew it was hopeless. For to leave he would have to walk past her, and not to touch would be an impossible ask.

‘Go.’ She begged, even as she undressed for him, crying with shame at her own need.

She pulled down the zipper, slipped off the gown as he walked now towards her, her actions opposing her words as she removed her bra. Emir unbuckled his belt while entering the bedroom. Even then she shook her head. Even then she denied it as she took down her panties.

‘No …’ She changed her plea. She was sobbing as he kissed her down onto the bed, but she was grateful for the mattress that met her back for she got the gift of his full weight pressed into her. ‘We mustn’t …’ She pushed at his bare chest but her fingers attempted to grip his skin, her nails wanted to dig in and leave her mark. ‘Emir, you know that we mustn’t …’

He took her hands and captured her wrists, held them over her head and hungrily kissed her. Then with words he fought for what they both needed tonight. ‘We must.’

His words were truthful, and he was fierce. Even naked he ruled her as he told her that he would make it work.

‘We will be together …’

‘There is no way …’

‘I will find a way,’ he told her. ‘I will make this work. I will come to you in the night-time and in later years I will visit you and the girls in London.’

‘Your mistress …?’

‘More than a mistress,’ he said between frantic kisses. ‘You will care for the twins. You will raise them.’

Was it possible to love and hate at the same time?

To be filled with both want and loathing as he bound her to him, but with a life of lies?

He offered her everything, yet gave her nothing.

A life with no voice, Amy realised, and it was then that she found hers.

‘ No.’

His hands released their grip but she did not push him off. Instead she wrapped her arms around his back. ‘This ends tonight.’

Their bodies knew that she lied.

All night he had been wanting her, and all night she had been waiting for him. They met now and their kisses tasted of fury for the future they could not have. She felt his anger as he stabbed inside her—anger at the rules that denied him the woman he wanted by his side. But for now there was an outlet, and he was animal. He bucked inside her and she lifted her hips to him. Their eyes locked in a strange loathing of what they might make the other do so easily. So easily she came to him.

And so deeply he delivered.

He knew she would shout. He felt her lungs fill and the tension in her throat as he shot into her; he felt her scream even as it rose, for his body and his soul knew her.

She came in a way she never had before, tightened in possession as he drove her further. She was grateful for his hand that smothered her mouth, furious that the only restraint he could muster was to stifle her screams with the hand she could never take.

She told herself she hated him.

Reminded herself she did not want to be his wife.

She was relieved it was over, surely?

They lay for a suitable while, waiting for normality to return, for the madness to subside, for him to rise from her bed and head to his own. But as he went to do so Amy’s hand reached out to him and it was then that she cried, for she had proved that she lied.

Her fierce vow that it would end tonight had already been downgraded to the morning.