Prologue
“Iknow you think you loved her once.” Zahir’s expression carried a hint of frustration. “But it’s time to move on and forget.”
Syed stared out at the old city without seeing the ancient buildings that were fringed by desert sands. Stars glistened in the night sky and the breeze off the ancient dunes was cold; a coldness that seeped into Syed’s heart. “I have tried.”
Zahir spoke without apology. “Try harder.”
“If I told you to forget about Violet, would you?”
Zahir’s expression flashed with a strong emotion. “It’s completely different. She is my wife.”
“And if Sarah became my wife?
“God, Syed. No. It would kill father! He is close to death, and news of it would surely be the end for him.”
Syed compressed his lips, his eyes hard in his handsome face. “I can’t explain in words how I felt for her; how I feel for her…”
“She is not suitable.” Zahir spoke the words quietly but there was a steely determination in them that Syed knew he ought to heed.
“Oh?” Syed demanded. “And why not?”
“Our country’s emerged from a long and bitter war. We are at peace with Falina, and though you’ve eschewed your marriage to Charlotte, your bride needs to be of a similar standing. Our people won’t accept anyone else. We have talked about this already.”
“Five years ago we talked about it,” Syed was adamant. “And yes, more recently, when I was engaged to another woman. To the princess of a country we want a good relationship with.” He sucked in a deep breath, but his temper would not be contained. “My engagement is over. I’m a free man now.”
“Yes, free… but not to marry Sarah Smith. Never to marry her.”
Syed made a sound of muted anger. “Why not? What’s wrong with her?”
“You ask this question seriously?”
“You haven’t even met her,” Syed snapped.
“I have, however, seen the dossier on her. A waitress in an American bar? Who grew up in a trailer park? She is, quite literally, trailer trash. Can you really expect our Kingdom to accept her as your bride?”
Syed wrapped his fingers around the railing of the balcony until his knuckles glowed white. “She is so much more than that. The dossier makes her sound common. And she’s not. Zahir, she is the most spectacular woman I’ve ever known.” A woman he’d discarded as though she were no better than filth on his
shoe. A woman whose virginity he’d taken, whose love he’d accepted; a woman he’d lied to every time they’d made love.
Regret and shame darkened his voice. “She is a brilliant artist; a photographer who can capture emotion and mood with a single picture. She is kindness and compassion; grace and beauty. Zahir, she is more worthy of royal life than I am.”
Zahir’s lips curled in an amused smile. “And it does not hurt, I suppose, that she has just the kind of figure you go crazy for?”
“It was never just about sex,” Syed said simply. Sarah had brought him back to life again when grief had nearly split his soul asunder.
“Perhaps not.” Zahir turned to face him, propping his hands on his hips. When he spoke, his voice was gravelled by urgency. “But it is all it can ever be again. Go. Sleep with her, if that is what you need to get her out of your mind once and for all. But when you come back to Kalastan, I do not want to hear this woman’s name again. Sarah Smith is not welcome in our kingdom. Understood?”
1
The town was just as he recalled.
Small, old-fashioned and faintly smelling of pine needles. His eyes lifted past the flat rooves of the main street towards the forest beyond.
Strange that the trees had not grown much despite the passage of five years.
A frown pulled at Syed’s face, like a branch being dragged down by too many persimmons.
The trees hadn’t grown but that didn’t mean other things hadn’t changed.
Five years.
Had it really been so long since he’d held Sarah Smith in his arms?
Out of nowhere, his body stirred with the memory of that pleasure. Her soft flesh, her generous curves.
She may not still live in the little house with the green door, of course.
She might have left. Moved to a bigger city. Forgotten all about him.
Was it possible? When she had burned his dreams, night after night?There was only one way to know for sure.
The stenchof liquor was now, she feared, deep inside her organs.
At first, it had just been her shirt. Then her skin, and now, her muscle and deep tissue were saturated by it. Fantasies of a long, hot shower to wash away the double shift at Larry’s were tantalising, but remained just out of reach. She shot a glance at her slim-gold wrist watch.
It was an hour before Lexi’s bed time.
Hardly time to read her a book, give her a bath and share a meal.
She paused two doors down from her own and pressed her finger on the ringer. The scuffle of many little feet sounded from within, bringing, as always, a smile to Sarah’s face.
Caitlyn opened the door. At eleven, she was the self-appointed leader of the gang – the six or so children her mother took in each evening to care for and earn extra money.
“Hi honey,” Sarah smiled, not mentioning the clown-like makeup on Caitlyn’s face.
“We were doing dress-up,” she giggled, explaining anyway. “I was the model.” And she curtseyed, revealing two little bodies behind her own.
“And a very good model, too.”
“Want to come in?”
Sarah adored her neighbours. Caitlyn’s mother, Jenny, was cheap childcare and she truly loved the kids in her care. But she could talk the hind legs off a donkey and Sarah had already suffered through enough banal small talk that day. “I’m late,” she apologised. “Lexi will be exhausted.”
Caitlyn shrugged. “I’ll go get her.”
“Thanks.” Sarah rubbed her hands together as a cold wind rustled past. It was the beginning of Autumn and the season’s change was all around her. She tilted her head towards the sky, admiring the crisp view of the stars, and the heavenly fragrance of the pine plantation.
He’d spotted her as soon as she’d turned the corner. Just as she’d approached her door, he’d gripped the handle of his, readying himself to step from the confines of his luxurious vehicle. But then she’d stopped, two houses before reaching the green door. She was chatting now.
His impatience grew, but the certainty that Sarah was still here, in Iron Oaks, answered at least one of his questions.
The tiny little figure that hurtled out of the door and ran at her jeans-clad legs a moment later answered another. And this one left something like iron in his mouth. She’d had a child? A stone seemed to be dropping through him, perforating his gut, making his body throb with disbelief. Five years was a long time, but the idea of her meeting someone else, marrying them, having a family… no. It couldn’t be possible. He couldn’t believe it.
“Mommy!” Lexi wrapped her chubby arms around Sarah’s legs, her fingers splayed wide across the backs of Sarah’s knees.
Sarah scooped down, lifting Lexi up against her chest. “Hi, baby girl.” She kissed Lexi’s cheeks, smiling when she saw the little girl had green eye shadow and garish pink lipstick.
“She was a model, too,” Caitlyn explained helpfully.
“I can see that. Tell your mom ‘thanks’.”
“Sure thing.” Caitlyn pushed the door closed and Sarah turned back down the street, covering the short distance to her home with Lexi bouncing on her hip.
“You look like you’ve been to the beauty parlour,” she drawled, raking her gaze over her niece’s face with another smile.
“Uh huh. I have.”
“I see.”
“Did you have a good day, mama?”
Sarah’s heart turned over. Mama. Such a beautiful word. A word that should have been filling her sister’s heart and mind. Instead, it was Sarah who got to enjoy the delicious sense of being loved and needed by this adorable little person.
“I had a great day,” Sarah’s voice was thick with emotion. She reached into her bag with one hand and felt around for her keys. “Did you have a good day?”
Lexi tilted her head to one side. “I think so.”
Sarah laughed. “You think so?”
“I didn’t like the lunch.”
Jenny, a committed vegan, often served meals that could be, at best, described as economical, at worst, slosh. “Oh. What was it?”
“There were little seeds in it.”
“Seeds?”
“Like hard circles. Lumps.”
“Lentils?” Sarah guessed, pushing the door inwards and stepping into their small house with relief. The bathroom was immediately to the left.
It beckoned to her from her mind, a warm shower a tantalising talisman. Soon, she promised herself, putting Lexi down inside the door. The little girl sat on the floor immediately and began to unlace her shoes. Though she was only four, she was impressively self-sufficient.
“Good job,” Sarah murmured, stepping around her and sliding her well-worn ballet slippers from her feet before bending down and collecting up the envelopes that had been thrust through the mail slot.
A roll of adrenalin charged her blood as she saw the first two postmarks – electricity company and gas company. She’d have put all the money she didn’t have on the fact the envelopes contained more than just a merry little ‘hi’. Mentally counting her bank balance, including what she’d earned from her double shift, and the tips she had folded into the back pocket of her slim-fit jeans, she figured she might be able to cover at least one of the bigger bills this month.
“Okay, little love,” she forced an over-bright smile to her face. “Let’s get you dinner.”
She padded down the hall and into the kitchen, stuffing the bills between the microwave and the basket of spices, then pulling a packet of pasta from the pantry.
There was a thumping noise before she could split the plastic. The door? She poked her head into the hallway just as Lexi pulled the door inwards, her tiny hand adept and turning the knob.
Sarah cursed inwardly. She’d forgotten to latch the chain across – a precaution she always employed to stop this exact thing from happening. Not that there was much risk of home invasion in Iron Oaks. Most of the townspeople left their doors unlocked by choice. But Sarah had chilling memories that warned her off such a relaxed attitude.
Only the arrival of the dreaded bills had distracted her and she’d forgotten to be careful. A presentiment of alarm ran through her body as she waited to see who was on the other side of the door.
“You’re a big man.” Lexi’s observation was as true as it was shocking.
Sarah couldn’t help the noise of garbled surprise that escaped her mouth as she stared down the hallway and into the past.
Syed.
His Royal Highness Syed Al’Eba, she corrected mentally, the flare of betrayal at how he’d lied to her not even remotely diminished by the years that had passed.
His eyes were boring into her, as though he too was assessing her through the veil of passed-time. Seeing her as she’d been, reconciling and accounting for what she was now.
And she knew how that comparison would end.
Five years ago, she’d been twenty-two and full of hope and aspiration. She’d been on the brink of leaving Iron Oaks.
She’d been tanned, fit, and happy. Vibrant.
She withdrew into the kitchen for a second, closing her eyes and waiting for the mounting tide of panic to subside. Only a second. Long enough to pull herself together and step into the corridor with renewed confidence, or the appearance of it, at least.
“What are you doing here?” She asked, the words pleasingly cold, her manner off-hand. She walked quickly, though, and scooped Lexi into her arms, nestling her back onto her hip.
“He’s a big man, mommy,” Lexi said thoughtfully, her head tilted to the side once more, as she examined him.
And he was big. All over. Tall, like all the men of the powerful royal family, with broad shoulders, and a muscled physique. His eyes were darker than the night, his nose straight and his jaw squared.
But it was his mouth she had loved first.
A mouth that had defied her expectations and recited poetry and philosophy while his body looked built for wars. The contradictions of this man had been never-ending.
Until they had ended.
He’d walked out of the door and that had been the end of it.
Even that had been a contradiction, for he had made her love him, and then he had left. He had been broken by grief until she’d fixed him all up, loved the sadness from his soul… and then he’d left.
Without a word of warning or goodbye.
“I asked what the hell you are doing here?” She repeated, making an effort to keep her voice calm even when her temper was spiralling almost out of control.
It was a damned good question, but he was powerless to answer it when his own questions were tripping over themselves.
In his mind, Sarah hadn’t changed. Not much, anyway.
But the woman in front of him was nothing like he remembered. His eyes narrowed as he catalogued the alterations. The Sarah he had known before had been curvaceous, bordering on plump. All soft and round and perfect to wrap his arms around and hold tight to his body. This woman was reed-thin, beyond even what was considered fashionable. Her hair, once a long, blonde mane that had curled down her back, that he’d curled his fist around to tilt her head back to receive his kisses, had been cropped into an elfin style around her face that only served to emphasise the slash of her cheek bones. Apart from the smattering of freckles over the bridge of her dainty nose, she was almost unrecognisable.
“I came to see…” The words trailed off, as his eyes sought hers, searching them, studying them.
“You came to see what?” She stroked her hand over the child’s back automatically. He could tell it was a gesture she had performed many times, with a mother’s instinct. It rolled something deep inside of him.
Instant revulsion twisted his gut. “I came to talk,” he said, remembering that he was Sheikh Syed Al’Eba, a man born to command and rule. The words rang with confidence-bordering-on-arrogance.
“You can’t be serious?” She murmured, stroking Lexi’s hair now, it’s soft, downy curls springy beneath her touch.
Syed drew himself to his full height. “Do I look like I am joking?”
“I haven’t seen you in years, and you turn up on my doorstep wanting to … talk?”
His lips curled in a derisive smile. “It does not look like you have been pining for me in my absence.” He nodded towards Lexi, his implication clear.
It was on the tip of Sarah’s tongue to correct his error, but something held her back. Instead, she tightened her grip around Lexi. “I have to get my daughter into bed.”
It was hardly a lie. With no living parents, it had been easy to adopt Lexi, and heaven knew Sarah thought of the little girl as her daughter in every way. Besides, she wasn’t about to air her dirty linen for this man. Not after the way he’d deserted her.
“I will wait.”
Sarah’s jaw dropped. “You’ll wait?” She repeated quickly, perplexed and furious at the same time. “You’ll wait?” She repeated, as though saying it might make more sense of his assertion.
“The lounge,” he nodded towards the room behind them.
How many nights they had spent in that small, cosy room? Sarah’s skin prickled with remembered pleasures. Pleasures so long ago relegated to the back of her mind, to the recesses of hope and the graveyard of possibilities. What the hell was he doing in her house?
It was a question that demanded an answer, but not until she’d put Lexi to bed. The start of Lexi’s short life had been marred by conflict and drama, confrontation and anger, and Sarah had sworn, the day she’d adopted the infant, that she’d do better for her. She’d made sure her life was full of only smiles and love. Good things. Her eyes narrowed as she gave her full attention to the man opposite. “There’s a bar around the corner,” she said stiffly. “You can go and wait there, thank you, while I spend time with my daughter.”
Unused to being directed, it brought back a startling revelation.
She hadn’t known of his position in society. When they’d met, he’d been a man, and she’d been a woman, and they had spoken to one another as equals. He had enjoyed seeing her flex her muscles, at one point; watching her dictate her wishes to him.
Then, he had been her equal, and now?
“Fine.” He nodded curtly. “One hour.”
“Two,” she bartered, thinking again of the shower she desperately needed. Especially if she was going to meet this man with anything like her best food forward.
“One,” he said darkly. He flicked a smile at Lexi. “Good night, little star.”
Shivers ran down her spine. Najin. Starlight. That’s what he’d called her. Back then, when she’d loved him and she’d believed he loved her. When she’d thought him a man, not a King.
The words swirled around them even as he left, closing the door behind him. The term of endearment that had made her feel stellar haunted her for all the minutes of his absence.
“I like him,” Lexi pronounced after at least three seconds consideration. “His voice is like magic.”
“Yes,” Sarah agreed, a wry smile twisting her lips, hiding her heart break. “And his words are just as deceptive,” she said to herself.
“Huh?”
Sarah cleared her throat. “Never mind. Let’s get you ready for bed.”
In the end, an hour was barely enough time. Sarah raced through the bedtime rituals, guiltily thinking of the evening she’d had planned. Lexi was fed a hasty dinner of leftovers, bathed in record time, read only three pages of her favourite book and tucked under the covers with a rushed kiss.
Sarah had just stepped out of the shower, thrown on an outfit, and peeked in to check on Lexi when there was a slightly-restrained knock at the door.
She stroked a hand over Lexi’s curls, tucked Mr Bear into the crook of her arm, and then walked out of the bedroom and down the stairs as though her body wasn’t quivering like a feather on the wind.
As she reached the door, she paused, her hand hovering just above the handle. Why was he here?
Five years ago, she had fallen in love with him. Or lust? Either way, he had buried himself inside of her soul. She’d understood his loss and grief, and she had felt powerful beyond belief to see how their chemistry could chase pain from his mind and heart.
He’d arrived in her life broken by death, and she’d patched him back together.
Then he’d left.
He’d used her. He’d prayed on her sympathies for sex. And when he had felt whole again, he’d crept out of her bed, out of her life, with only a single hand-written note cast on the kitchen table. ‘I have to leave.’
Sarah had heard of people feeling nauseous in anxious circumstances, but the way her stomach was flipping and flopping went beyond simple sickness. She half-thought she might pass out.
Flames of the past licked at the soles of her bare feet. She drew the door inwards on a curse of remembered pain.
Everything she had loved about him slammed into her. She stared at him, his face that she knew every single damned line of, his dark hair, his haunted eyes, and her heart leaped through her body.
He was just the same.
Which was all the more reason to stay away from him.
He was the same man who had broken her heart and chosen to leave her without a backwards glance.
She straightened her spine, pouring into it the kind of iron that could only be formed by nights of devastation and emptiness. “Yes?” She stood just inside the door, not moving to allow him inside.
“How are you?”
It was so far from what she’d expected that she let out a short, sharp laugh. Fog drifted from her; the temperature had dropped rapidly in the evening. Was he cold? He who was used to sand-swept desert nights and the sun on his back? She hoped so.
“After five years, that’s what you came here to say?”
“No.”
“So?” She gripped the door more tightly, her fingers seeking strength.
“Who is the child?”
Straight to it, huh? “My daughter.”
A muscle pounded at the base of his jaw. Out of nowhere, she remembered the way it had done that when he’d been tense and searching for the right words. The words to describe how it had felt to have watched his mother die. To have held her hand as life ebbed from her body. And Sarah had listened with no concept that
only six months later his words would become a gruesome reality she understood all too well, for having lived the same loss. Not of a mother, but of a sister.
“Is she mine?”
Something primal twisted in Sarah’s gut. “She could be,” she snapped. “You didn’t stick around to find out. You didn’t call me to check… you didn’t even leave me a way to call you,” she hissed angrily.
“I left you my name,” he said thickly. “Enough to contact me if needed. Is she mine?”
Sarah’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “You are such an arrogant son of a bitch. How did I not see that before?”
He didn’t respond to the question. “She’s not mine?”
“No, she’s not yours, Syed.”
“Her father?” Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. If she said that she’d met and married another man, started a family, something inside of him would die.
“Dead.” A single word. The flat line of hope. She didn’t elaborate. She couldn’t. Not since that hateful day had she been able to contemplate explaining those injuries to another soul.
He nodded again, slowly, his eyes digging through her experiences, reading them as though she were speaking. She looked away. The intrusion was not welcome.
He had learned all of her Tells back then. She was pretty sure he still knew them.
“When?”
November nineteenth. She closed her eyes for a second as the date whispered through her. “When Lexi was a month old.”
He scraped his fingers over his stubbled jaw. “She is how old?”
“Four. She’s four.”
His expression shifted as he did the math. “I see.”
He smelled so good. Just like she remembered. In fact, everything about him was as she’d remembered. His thick hair, strong face, hard body. Inwardly she groaned, recalling the pleasure of loving him, of being needed by him.
Until he had no longer needed her. How easy it had been for him to discard her. And how she had suffered in the wake of that rejection.
“Syed?”
He flinched at her use of his name. He had simply been ‘Sy’ to her back then.
“You can’t just come back like this.” She swallowed convulsively. His eyes dropped to the smooth skin of her exposed shoulder. As if of their own volition, his fingers drew to the fabric of her sweater and lifted the collar, where it had fallen low. They brushed her flesh and the contact sent darts of awareness through her.
That was normal.
He had been her first lover, and he remained her only lover. His ability to stir her to a fever pitch of need was nothing new. Even her dreams of him had done that, making her cry out with an ache of lust low in her abdomen.
She stepped backwards instinctively, moving out of his reach, and he took advantage of that moment of unknowing surrender to crowd inside her front door.
“I beg to differ.”
But he was big and her house small. She hadn’t really noticed that before. Then. Perhaps she’d just been used to him, and to his dominating presence.
Time had dwarfed her. All of her. Those aspirations that had puffed her up, the optimism of youth. Financial freedom. All of that had flooded from her over the years, leaving a woman who felt frail in Syed’s overwhelming presence.
Timid.
And she hated him for that, even more than she hated him for leaving in the first place.
“What do you want?”
His lips twisted, but it wasn’t what she’d call a smile. “I want you to be mine again, azeezi.”
2
The words pounded around the house, reverberating in her ears, hammering inside her fevered blood.
Be mine. He’d said that the night they’d first made love. No, not made love. Had sex. The night she’d surrendered her virginity to a man she’d already handed her heart to.
She turned away from him blindly, her fingertips trailing the wall-papered hallway as she moved deeper into her house, needing a seat before she fell sideways.
The lounge was not as he remembered it.
Her beautiful photographs still hung on the walls, as captivating and haunting now as they had been then. But the shelves, once overflowing with heavy books on art and cameras, were now overtaken with bright children’s books. There were toys too, grouped into baskets that sat lined up by a wall. There was a small table with two chairs where her own dining table had used to sit, and the sofa, once cream with artful black cushions, was covered now in an array of bright throws.
Syed couldn’t immediately put his finger on it, but there was something displeasing about the room.
Something wrong.
He turned to face her, and his displeasure grew. She was like a wraith. So slender, so small, her face pinched, her eyes wary.
What had happened to her? She was a shadow of the woman he had known.
His eyes were raking over her with a clinical detachment. There was nothing heated nor sensual in the appraisal; it was simply a cataloguing of her changes.
And she knew what they were. She imagined what he must be seeing. She saw it, too. She rested her palms on the back of the sofa, realising belatedly that to sit down would only serve to increase the disparity in their sizes. “I don’t understand,” she said finally.
His eyes narrowed. “Have you eaten?”
She’d had Lexi’s leftover beans; a few spoons full. She shook her head. “I was going to make toast.” As soon as she’d said the words, she regretted them. For the look of disdain on his face, and for the fact that she was answering his questions as though he had a right to ask them!
He had no rights! No rights when it came to her life! He had chosen that path for them, and she needed to make him stick to it.
His voice, his language, words she didn’t understand, that she’d only heard him speak once or twice, filled the room. She shifted her attention back to him as he spoke into his cell phone, then disconnected the call in what seemed to be an abrupt manner.
“I have ordered dinner,” he said, his English flavoured with the shadows of his native language.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she replied, exasperated.
“You haven’t eaten. Toast is not suitable for dinner. And I am hungry.”
When was he ever not? The instantaneous thought filled her with barbed annoyance. The memories were so thick in her mind. Shouldn’t they have gone by now? Five years was a very long time.
“Then get your dinner sent somewhere else,” she snapped. “Your highness.” She added the title for good measure. They both knew the betrayal that lurked beneath the innocuous words.
How had she failed to see that he was different? That he wasn’t a mere mortal, a man of flesh and blood? How had she missed all the tell-tale signs that Syed Al’Eba had been raised by Kings. That he was a King from an ancient land, and an ancient bloodline. Call me Si, he’d said, and naively, she’d assumed it was a shortening of something far more pedestrian, like Simon. In the weeks they’d been together, living as a single symbiotic being, she had never once questioned his story. A man who had buried his mother, who was driving across America to find a way to accept the overwhelming loss.
That part might have been true, but he wasn’t just a man. He was a King, driving a five hundred thousand dollar armour-plated Jeep. She should have realised. But she hadn’t. And it was only when he left that she understood the truth, for his royal title had been embossed in the paper he’d written his note on.
“We will eat together.”
Her eyes drew together. “Is that a command?”
He tilted his head forward. “We must speak.”
“Are you kidding me?” She lowered her voice with effort; her heart rate was far more difficult to control. “You don’t just get to appear at my doorstep after five years saying we need to talk.” She sucked in an angry breath.
Five years! Had it really been so long?
“I also said that I want you,” he reminded her silkily, ignoring her objections as though they didn’t matter.
“Sex?” Sarah repeated, her eyes flicking closed, her pulse thready. If only she could! The thought of lying with this man and enjoying his body knowing that it would never happen again… the last time they’d slept together, she hadn’t known that it was the end. She hadn’t realised that it would be the last time she’d feel his weight on top of her, feel him stir passion deep within her.
“Well?” The word was loud. She startled her eyes open and stepped backwards. He was right beside her, and when she moved, he moved with her. She reared her back against the wall. Which was foolish, in hindsight, because it enabled him to trap his hands on either side of her head, holding her captive with his body.
A body she wanted with all of her being.
“I came here because I’ve missed you.”
“And it took you five years to realise that?” She dropped her jaw in disbelief. “You’re out of your mind. I’m not going to just … to just … to sleep with you!”
Her cheeks flushed with colour and speculation flared in his gut. With colour in her face, there was a hint of his Sarah once more.
“You must be crazy. Or desperate.”
His laugh was a sharp retort. “Neither, believe me.”
It was like being punched in the stomach. Of course he wasn’t desperate. While Sarah had found herself in a life of celibacy, Syed Al’Eba had probably been having his every need and urge seen to by a bevy of beautiful women. A harem, even.
She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. “You can’t be here.”
“I am here.” He whispered the words at the same time he brought his body closer, so that it pressed hard against her.
Need, so strong, so fierce, that it sucked all the breath out of her body, weakened her at the knees.
“I am here,” he said again, this time whispering the words right into her ear, so that his breath tickled her and warmed her.
Her skin dimpled with goose bumps and her mind fogged.
“And I want you.”
I want you. Words they’d said to one another freely in the past. It was only after he’d left that she realised he’d never said, I love you. Not like she had. She had been liberal in telling him how she felt because she’d known he felt the same. Or she’d believed he had.
“Tough.” It was a word of defiance weakened by dishonesty.
The challenge was like a matador’s red flag to Syed’s bullish desire. He lifted a finger and stroked it down her cheek, watching her intently. He dragged it across her lips. They were the same, too. Full and pouted. Lower, lower, over her jutted chin, to the sensitive flesh that ran the side of her neck, to the pulse that was hammering wildly at its base, and then, he pushed his hips forward, leaving her in little doubt as to his state of arousal.
Her eyes flew open, piercing him with her swirling confusion. A confusion he understood but didn’t care to indulge. Confusion was good. Confusion showed that she was wavering.
He dropped his dark head, his lips seeking the pulse point at her décolletage as his hands slid beneath her sweater, rising over her flat stomach up to her small breasts. He cupped them, surprised that they were heavier than they looked, more pleasingly full. Had she nursed the little child? Had her breasts swelled with milk? His fingers brushed her nipples and she moaned, a sound that was so like he remembered that pleasure tore through him.
Pleasure and need.
“Stop,” she whimpered, and he did, immediately lifting his head and dropping his hands, his eyes seeking hers. He hadn’t expected that.
And nor had she. Despair saturated her features. “Don’t stop.” Shame made her drop her eyes. He laughed then, a soft sound of understanding.
She needed him.
It was still there.
His relief was palpable.
Almost as acute as Sarah’s embarrassment. “I hate you,” she whispered throatily, the words suspiciously tinged by tears.
“Do you?”
She moaned as his fingers found her breasts again, thumbing across her taut, over-sensitised nipples.
“I hate you,” she whispered, tilting her head back so that he could return his lips to her flesh, teasing her as she’d always loved.
He flicked his tongue against her pulse point and desire radiated through her whole body.
“I don’t hate you.”
His thumb was running circles around her nipples. She had always loved that. He had brought her to orgasm easily, again and again, by tormenting her breasts. They’d been bigger then. He’d loved them.
The cry in her throat was primal.
What was she doing? It had taken her years to even think she was over this guy, and the second he reappeared she was laying herself bare for him to take as he pleased?
“I have missed you, Najin,” and the words were almost balm enough to temporarily ease the pain brought on by loving him and not having him.
“Not enough,” she said simply, but bleakness was a storm cloud in her soul.
His laugh was without humour. He lifted his mouth now, so close to hers, and her lips parted, waiting, aching to be kissed. “More than you know.”
Finally, he was there, his tongue duelling with hers, his hands dropping to brace her hips, digging into her flesh, as he answered her needs with his own.
It was a parental instinct, honed through experience rather than biology, that alerted her to Lexi’s wakefulness. A tiny noise. The sound of her bed creaking as she turned. And then a whimper, and finally, a soft, plaintive, “Mommy?”
Quiet enough that Syed didn’t hear it. But it was a beacon in the dark, a light of sense in a black ocean of past sensuality. Feelings she had no right to be indulging.
Her hands lifted to his chest and pushed at him. “Stop.” And this time, she meant it. Her lips were darkened by passion; his stubbled chin had left a graze around her mouth, and her body was trembling. But she was Sarah again. Mommy.
His confusion was further evidence that Lexi’s cry hadn’t penetrated his fog of desire.
“Mommy?” It was louder now and more urgent. Sarah swallowed the bitterness of thwarted desire. Every second that passed brought her closer to common sense.
“You need to go,” she said with cold, detached determination. “You aren’t welcome here.”
She spun and left, her pulse still hammering, her mind aching.
Lexi was covered in sweat. “There was a monster,” she sobbed when Sarah walked into the room.
Sarah couldn’t help silently agreeing. The monster might have been the sexiest man she’d ever seen, but he was a monster alright. To her sanity and her senses.
“There’s no monster,” she whispered reassuringly. She stroked Lexi’s hair, her fingers soft against the blonde curls that tumbled down her back. “Are you cold?”
Lexi nodded and Sarah brought her small body close for a hug. Never had she imagined she could feel such love for a person. But Lexi filled her heart. The heart he had destroyed had been blessed by Lexi.
“Let’s get you into clean jarmies then, hmm?”
The mundane task was a welcome distraction. She pulled out a fresh pair and helped Lexi change, then held her sleepy, heavy body until finally the small girl’s breathing was rhythmic and calm.
“Sleep tight, angel-pie,” she whispered, pressing a kiss against her head. It smelled like their coconut bath soap and made her smile.
He was looking for bowls.
But they were no longer stored in the same place. Children’s plates had moved in, bright melamine with animals and alphabets. Cups, too, that matched the bowls and plates. A stark reminder of the life she’d been living in his absence.
She had a child.
A four-year-old daughter.
Another man had lain with her, enjoyed her body, taken what she gave so willingly, and implanted a child in her womb.
It was a jealous rage – unmistakable and fervent – that broke upon him.
Had he expected her to stay celibate? For him?
Of course he hadn’t. But the idea of her having moved on so quickly filled Syed with revulsion and outrage. And determination, too.
He tilted his head forward. “We must speak.”
“Are you kidding me?” She lowered her voice with effort; her heart rate was far more difficult to control. “You don’t just get to appear at my doorstep after five years saying we need to talk.” She sucked in an angry breath.
Five years! Had it really been so long?
“I also said that I want you,” he reminded her silkily, ignoring her objections as though they didn’t matter.
“Sex?” Sarah repeated, her eyes flicking closed, her pulse thready. If only she could! The thought of lying with this man and enjoying his body knowing that it would never happen again… the last time they’d slept together, she hadn’t known that it was the end. She hadn’t realised that it would be the last time she’d feel his weight on top of her, feel him stir passion deep within her.
“Well?” The word was loud. She startled her eyes open and stepped backwards. He was right beside her, and when she moved, he moved with her. She reared her back against the wall. Which was foolish, in hindsight, because it enabled him to trap his hands on either side of her head, holding her captive with his body.
A body she wanted with all of her being.
“I came here because I’ve missed you.”
“And it took you five years to realise that?” She dropped her jaw in disbelief. “You’re out of your mind. I’m not going to just … to just … to sleep with you!”
Her cheeks flushed with colour and speculation flared in his gut. With colour in her face, there was a hint of his Sarah once more.
“You must be crazy. Or desperate.”
His laugh was a sharp retort. “Neither, believe me.”
It was like being punched in the stomach. Of course he wasn’t desperate. While Sarah had found herself in a life of celibacy, Syed Al’Eba had probably been having his every need and urge seen to by a bevy of beautiful women. A harem, even.
She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. “You can’t be here.”
“I am here.” He whispered the words at the same time he brought his body closer, so that it pressed hard against her.
Need, so strong, so fierce, that it sucked all the breath out of her body, weakened her at the knees.
“I am here,” he said again, this time whispering the words right into her ear, so that his breath tickled her and warmed her.
Her skin dimpled with goose bumps and her mind fogged.
“And I want you.”
I want you. Words they’d said to one another freely in the past. It was only after he’d left that she realised he’d never said, I love you. Not like she had. She had been liberal in telling him how she felt because she’d known he felt the same. Or she’d believed he had.
“Tough.” It was a word of defiance weakened by dishonesty.
The challenge was like a matador’s red flag to Syed’s bullish desire. He lifted a finger and stroked it down her cheek, watching her intently. He dragged it across her lips. They were the same, too. Full and pouted. Lower, lower, over her jutted chin, to the sensitive flesh that ran the side of her neck, to the pulse that was hammering wildly at its base, and then, he pushed his hips forward, leaving her in little doubt as to his state of arousal.
Her eyes flew open, piercing him with her swirling confusion. A confusion he understood but didn’t care to indulge. Confusion was good. Confusion showed that she was wavering.
He dropped his dark head, his lips seeking the pulse point at her décolletage as his hands slid beneath her sweater, rising over her flat stomach up to her small breasts. He cupped them, surprised that they were heavier than they looked, more pleasingly full. Had she nursed the little child? Had her breasts swelled with milk? His fingers brushed her nipples and she moaned, a sound that was so like he remembered that pleasure tore through him.
Pleasure and need.
“Stop,” she whimpered, and he did, immediately lifting his head and dropping his hands, his eyes seeking hers. He hadn’t expected that.
And nor had she. Despair saturated her features. “Don’t stop.” Shame made her drop her eyes. He laughed then, a soft sound of understanding.
She needed him.
It was still there.
His relief was palpable.
Almost as acute as Sarah’s embarrassment. “I hate you,” she whispered throatily, the words suspiciously tinged by tears.
“Do you?”
She moaned as his fingers found her breasts again, thumbing across her taut, over-sensitised nipples.
“I hate you,” she whispered, tilting her head back so that he could return his lips to her flesh, teasing her as she’d always loved.
He flicked his tongue against her pulse point and desire radiated through her whole body.
“I don’t hate you.”
His thumb was running circles around her nipples. She had always loved that. He had brought her to orgasm easily, again and again, by tormenting her breasts. They’d been bigger then. He’d loved them.
The cry in her throat was primal.
What was she doing? It had taken her years to even think she was over this guy, and the second he reappeared she was laying herself bare for him to take as he pleased?
“I have missed you, Najin,” and the words were almost balm enough to temporarily ease the pain brought on by loving him and not having him.
“Not enough,” she said simply, but bleakness was a storm cloud in her soul.
His laugh was without humour. He lifted his mouth now, so close to hers, and her lips parted, waiting, aching to be kissed. “More than you know.”
Finally, he was there, his tongue duelling with hers, his hands dropping to brace her hips, digging into her flesh, as he answered her needs with his own.
It was a parental instinct, honed through experience rather than biology, that alerted her to Lexi’s wakefulness. A tiny noise. The sound of her bed creaking as she turned. And then a whimper, and finally, a soft, plaintive, “Mommy?”
Quiet enough that Syed didn’t hear it. But it was a beacon in the dark, a light of sense in a black ocean of past sensuality. Feelings she had no right to be indulging.
Her hands lifted to his chest and pushed at him. “Stop.” And this time, she meant it. Her lips were darkened by passion; his stubbled chin had left a graze around her mouth, and her body was trembling. But she was Sarah again. Mommy.
His confusion was further evidence that Lexi’s cry hadn’t penetrated his fog of desire.
“Mommy?” It was louder now and more urgent. Sarah swallowed the bitterness of thwarted desire. Every second that passed brought her closer to common sense.
“You need to go,” she said with cold, detached determination. “You aren’t welcome here.”
She spun and left, her pulse still hammering, her mind aching.
Lexi was covered in sweat. “There was a monster,” she sobbed when Sarah walked into the room.
Sarah couldn’t help silently agreeing. The monster might have been the sexiest man she’d ever seen, but he was a monster alright. To her sanity and her senses.
“There’s no monster,” she whispered reassuringly. She stroked Lexi’s hair, her fingers soft against the blonde curls that tumbled down her back. “Are you cold?”
Lexi nodded and Sarah brought her small body close for a hug. Never had she imagined she could feel such love for a person. But Lexi filled her heart. The heart he had destroyed had been blessed by Lexi.
“Let’s get you into clean jarmies then, hmm?”
The mundane task was a welcome distraction. She pulled out a fresh pair and helped Lexi change, then held her sleepy, heavy body until finally the small girl’s breathing was rhythmic and calm.
“Sleep tight, angel-pie,” she whispered, pressing a kiss against her head. It smelled like their coconut bath soap and made her smile.
* * *
He was looking for bowls.
But they were no longer stored in the same place. Children’s plates had moved in, bright melamine with animals and alphabets. Cups, too, that matched the bowls and plates. A stark reminder of the life she’d been living in his absence.
She had a child.
A four-year-old daughter.
Another man had lain with her, enjoyed her body, taken what she gave so willingly, and implanted a child in her womb.
It was a jealous rage – unmistakable and fervent – that broke upon him.
Had he expected her to stay celibate? For him?
Of course he hadn’t. But the idea of her having moved on so quickly filled Syed with revulsion and outrage. And determination, too.
He opened various cupboards, and finally, found them in the small spot above the microwave. He pulled two bowls out, marvelling how, for a brief period of his life, this domesticity had been normal.
When she hadn’t known who he was, and he had needed, simply, her.
He placed the bowls beside the microwave, bracing his hands for a moment.
He was taking a gamble.
A huge risk.
One that might not pay off.
His father would never approach this with anything other than disapproval. Did he care?
His eyes landed on a couple of envelopes, stuffed between the microwave, one with an angry red side. With curiosity that a man like Syed would never see as intrusive or wrong, he lifted the envelope from its place and slit the side. The bill inside was a third reminder. Cessation of Service Notice. His frown was understandable. He reached for the next envelope along. It was an overdue notice. The next a bill. And then, a payslip.
He skimmed the amount earned by Sarah and a plan began to form. A way to make her see what they were to each other, even now, five years after he’d made the biggest mistake of his life and walked out on the woman who’d meant so much to him.
* * *
Had she delayed purposefully?Knowing that each moment made it more likely Syed would have left?
Undoubtedly.
And yet, the second she stepped back into the lounge, and saw him standing at the table, arranging bowls in a row, she felt no surprise.
She did, however, experience renewed impatience and disbelief.
She wrapped her arms around her midsection and stared across at him.
All the fight was gone out of her.
Now, she was simply tired.
Exhausted.
“I told you to go.”
He lifted a glance at her, and her body trembled. Awareness was an electric current bursting through the room.
As it had always been between them.
From the first moment he’d appeared in the bar, like a fish out of water, all elegant tailored suit and understated class. He’d slammed his expensive European car’s keys down on the bar and asked to use the phone. “There is no cell coverage in this… town. Where am I?”
She’d laughed, because she hadn’t known who he was, only that he was handsome as hell and obviously out of sorts. “Iron Oaks; gateway to the South. Can’t you tell?” She had looked down at her plaid shirt and denim cut-offs, her grin contagious.
And when he’d inspected her clothes, per her instructions, his eyes lingering on the generous swell of her too-big breasts, the nipped in waist and rounded bottom, the electricity had arced in a way she’d never known possible. Sarah had sworn she’d been burned.
She hadn’t.
That part came later.
“We have not spoken, yet.”
The smell of dinner assailed her nostrils and her stomach squeezed hopefully, though thankfully not audibly. “God, Syed. What the hell do you want to talk about? Five years is a really long time. This … this … booty call is as offensive as it is unwanted.” She tilted her chin, staring at him through slatted eyes.
His expression was the definition of sardonic rebuke. “Unwanted?” And pointedly, his eyes drifted lower, to the nipples that were still straining against the soft fabric of her sweatshirt.
“Unwanted,” she snapped, crossing her arms.
He chose not to push the point. They both knew that there was no lack of wanting between them. “Sit.” He gestured to the chair opposite him.
“No.”
“Sit and eat,” he said again, moving towards her now, so that her breath hitched in her throat. She scampered around the sofa, keeping distance between them, even though that meant sitting at the table when she wanted to be far, far away from him.
“I’m not hungry,” she lied.
He stared at her, the look cold. “Eat.” He moved to the table and stood over her, his arms crossed, his expression resonating with barely contained fury.
She stared back at him, unflinchingly.
“Are you going to fois gras me?”
It took a moment for the strange turn of phrase to make sense. He shook his head impatiently. “I do not intend to force feed you.” He moved to the chair opposite her and sat, watching her with displeasure. “But you are too thin.”
Her head reeled as she jerked her attention to his face. “Excuse me?”
“You are too thin,” he repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Are you not eating enough?”
“I eat fine,” she said stiffly. And she did. When she remembered to; when she had time to; when she had enough groceries to. She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m busy.”
“Too busy to eat?” He drawled archly.
“None of this is your business.”
He nodded, rubbing a hand over his chin. “I think it is just that.”
“What?”
“My business.”
On the brink of reaching for the serving spoon, she froze. “I am not going to pretend this is normal. Five years ago we slept together. That might as well have been a lifetime ago.”
“Yes,” he drawled. “You have been… busy.”
