Marriage Behind the Fa?ade (7 page)

“You used to care. Very much. I remember that you couldn’t get enough of me.”

“People change, Malik. I’ve changed.”

“Have you?”

“I think we both have.”

“Perhaps these changes will only make it better,” he said, his voice too seductive for comfort.

She
was
mesmerized. Oh, how she
wanted.
But it was a bad, bad idea. Once she stumbled down that path, she wouldn’t be able to turn around again. Because he was addictive.

“I doubt that,” she said firmly, as much to him as to herself.

His smirk told her she’d made a mistake. “Yes, perhaps you are right. It could hardly get better. How many ways did you give yourself to me? How many times?”

“More than enough,” she answered, proud of herself for being able to reply when his words called up a wealth of erotic memories in her mind.

“I’m certain we could think of a few more things to try,” he said.

She shook her head. “It won’t work, Malik. You can’t talk me into going to bed with you.”

“Who said anything about a bed?”

A crash of thunder reverberated off the water and Sydney jumped. Malik caught her as she stumbled into him. He held her close, his heart thundering as fast as her own. His big body was so solid, so comforting. She felt like an ice cube dropped into warm water. She was thawing, melting, losing herself.

It had always been so with him. He had only to touch her, and she responded.

He shifted—and she felt the press of his erection against her body. Without conscious thought, she leaned into him. Malik sucked in a breath.

“Careful,
houri,”
he growled in her ear. “Or you will find yourself in my bed before you know it.”

She wanted to be there. Ached to be there. One more night with Malik, one more night feeling more alive than she’d ever felt in her life, more cherished …

No.
He did not cherish her. He never had.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing away from him. He let her go without protest, his arms dropping to his sides.

Her skin sizzled from the contact with him, her pulse throbbing—in her temples, between her legs.

“I’m sure it would be fabulous, but I’d still regret it in the morning,” she told him. “It won’t change anything between us. And it would make the remaining time together even more difficult.”

“So we cannot be, how do you say, friends with benefits?”

A twinge of sadness curled through her. “We’ve never been friends. I think we skipped that part altogether.”

Malik shoved a hand through his dark hair as he blew out a frustrated breath. “No, perhaps not.”

Sydney bit the inside of her lip. That was not an admission she’d expected from him. “I feel like I know nothing about you.”

“You know the most important things.”

“How can you say that? I know nothing! Until tonight, I didn’t even know you liked Shakespeare.”

“I went to university in England. Shakespeare was inevitable.”

“See, I didn’t even know that much.”

He spread his arms wide in frustration. “Then what do you wish to know? Ask me, and if I can, I will tell you.”

Another peal of thunder sounded over the ocean. It was less violent now, less surprising. What did she want to know about Malik? Everything, and nothing. Everything because she knew nothing, and nothing because she didn’t want to open herself back up to the pain of caring for him in any way.

But curiosity won out over restraint. “I’d like to know why you and your brother are so uncomfortable together.”

He closed his eyes briefly. Pinned her with a hot glare. “Of course you would ask this. And I have no answer for you. We were close as children, but drifted apart later. Our lives were … formal.”

“Formal?”

“You lived in a house with your parents, yes?” When she nodded, he continued, “We had nannies, and we did not always live in the same house. Our mother was … nervous, let us say. Children were too much for her.”

“Too much?” A knot was forming in the pit of her stomach as she imagined the Al Dhakir children growing up without their mother.

She could see tension in the set of his shoulders, the thrust of his jaw.

“We saw her, but we were to be on our best behavior when we did. She preferred socializing with her friends to children. I think it was not quite her fault, really. She was young when she and my father married, and the babies came right away. She didn’t know what to do with us, so she retreated behind the veil of wealth and privilege she was afforded.”

“And your father?”

He looked sad. “A good man. Very busy. And very formal. I think he had little time for my mother, and so she had little time for us.”

Sydney thought of her own parents, of how much they loved one another and how happy her childhood had been. Yes, she felt like the cuckoo in the nest, but she’d always been loved. Even when her parents were slightly alarmed by her tendencies, or disappointed in her inability to be more like Alicia, they loved her.

“But he must have loved her if he married her.”

Malik’s laugh was unexpected. “This is how marriage is supposed to work in
your
culture,
habibti.
Here, one marries for duty. For family alliances. To consolidate power and land. My father married the woman who had been arranged for him. And then he did his duty and got her with child.”

Sydney felt sad. It was all so cold, so unfeeling. And yet it was the Jahfaran way. Who was to say America was any better? People married all the time for love— and love did not always last. You only had to look at the national divorce statistics to realize that.

And she was about to become another one. Odd in a way.

“You have not asked the most obvious question,” Malik said, cutting through her thoughts.

She was still trying to process the idea of marrying someone she did not love in order to ally her family with another. “What is that?”

His gaze glittered. “You have not asked if I had an intended bride,” he said, his soft voice in contrast with the sharp edge in his gaze.

Sydney’s stomach flipped. An arranged marriage for Malik? She’d never thought of it. And yet …

“Did you?” she managed to ask.

His smile was bittersweet. “Of course I did. I am a Jahfaran prince.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHE was looking at him with a wealth of hurt in her rain-grey eyes. Malik cursed inwardly. He’d never intended to cause her pain, and yet he’d failed miserably on that score.

Too many times to count.

“You had a fiancée?” she said.

He shrugged casually, though he felt anything but casual. “Dimah was not my fiancée in the sense that you think of a fiancée.”

She shook her head, her long red hair rippling like silk in the night. The wind wasn’t gusting so badly now and she was no longer shoving hair from her face. The silk of her robe clung to her frame, the breeze contouring the fabric around the peaks of her lush breasts.

His body was painfully hard. Had been since she’d walked onto the terrace, the wind blowing her robe open and exposing her legs. Legs he’d had wrapped around him a lifetime ago.

Legs he wanted wrapped around him again. Now. Tonight.

It had been too long. Far too long.

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” she said, oblivious to his torment. “You were supposed to marry someone. You married me instead. Why?”

Malik drew in a sharp breath as her words sliced through the fog of his thoughts. The hurt was still there, the horror. The guilt.

He hadn’t talked about it with anyone, hadn’t wanted to. It was over and Dimah was dead. Nothing he said or did would bring an innocent girl back.

Lightning flashed again, illuminating Sydney’s face. She looked confused, worried. For him, he realized with a jolt. She was worried
for him.

He did not deserve her sympathy.

“She died,” he said, surprising himself with the words he’d never spoken to another.

Sydney grasped his hand, squeezed. He felt the jolt of sensation down to his toes. What was it about this woman that always, always got to him? He needed nothing, needed no one. Not even her.

But he wanted her. Wanted the way he felt when she was near, when she touched him with her soft hands, smiled at him. When Sydney looked at him, he didn’t feel like he wasn’t worthy of being loved.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“It is not your fault. It happened a long time ago.” He’d been barely twenty at the time. Young and foolish.

“And you did not marry anyone else.”

“I did not have to, no.” He hadn’t wanted to marry Dimah. They’d known each other since they were children, and had always been intended for one another. But Malik hadn’t wanted her. Dimah was like a wraith, following him at a distance, hanging on his every word, looking at him as if he were the only person in the world besides her.

As they’d gotten older, her behavior changed, but only slightly. She became subtler with her adoration, but it was still there. He’d felt as if she were suffocating him, though he rarely saw her and never spent time alone with her.

And then he’d thrown a fit when his father had summoned him and told him it was time for the wedding to take place. He’d been angry, and he’d gone to Dimah, railed against her.

“She killed herself,” Malik said, remembering. “Because I told her I hated her.”

He didn’t miss the sharp intake of breath, the little gasp. She would despise him even more now.

“Oh, Malik.” And then she squeezed his hand again. It was meant to be comforting, but the gesture was somehow more important to him than that. More profound. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He could still see Dimah’s face. The way he’d crushed her dreams. “How could it not be? We were to be married, and I told her I hated her—because without her, I wouldn’t be forced to do this thing.”

“You aren’t responsible for her actions,” Sydney insisted. “No one is. She made a choice.”

Malik could only stare. He wanted to believe, but he would not do so. Because he deserved to feel the pain of what he’d done. “She would not have made this choice if I’d quietly done my duty.”

“You don’t know that.”

Her fingers were threaded through his now. He wondered if she knew it. He raised their clasped hands, turned hers over until he’d bared her pale wrist. Pressed his mouth there because he’d been dying to do so.

He felt the shudder pass through her. But it wasn’t a shudder of revulsion.

“Why are you so willing to forgive me this terrible crime?” he asked. “You of all people should know how selfish I can be.”

“I—” She dropped her gaze from his. He felt … disappointed somehow. Because now she would agree with him. There was no other choice. “Everyone is selfish from time to time. It doesn’t mean you’re at fault for what your fia—What Dimah did.”

A surge of feeling blazed inside. She was wrong, of course, but he loved that she defended him. Was that why he’d gone against everything he’d known was right and married her?

He remembered meeting her, remembered the way her long legs had intrigued him as she’d walked in front of him and talked about the houses she was showing him. And then she would turn from time to time, quite surprisingly, and glare at him. As if she were daring him to say something, anything, that would give her the excuse she needed to end the appointment.

He’d been captivated, not only by her fierceness, but also by the way she dealt with him. As if he weren’t the least bit attractive to her. He’d found that novel, considering the way women usually behaved when they discovered they were dealing with a bachelor prince.

Not that he didn’t enjoy the fawning, the coyness, or even the downright bold ways in which women usually approached him.

But he’d never been treated with thinly veiled hostility. And it had intrigued him.

“How good you are to defend me,” he murmured against the delicate skin of her wrist. “I remember that you did not always feel so charitable toward me.”

Her head came up then, her eyes sharp and blazing with emotion. “I still don’t. But I don’t think you should blame yourself for another’s actions, no matter how dramatic.”

“Is it not my fault that you left me in the middle of the night with hardly an explanation? Is it not my fault that you are here, now? I cannot be blameless in everything,
habibti,
though I appreciate that you would make me so.”

“I—I made my own choices,” she whispered harshly.

Lightning blinked in a chain of succession over the sea. It was like a series of lights being turned on for only a second before flashing out again. Thunder followed, but it was farther away and no longer seemed to frighten Sydney. She was watching him with eyes that were full of emotion. The air crackled with electricity, but he wasn’t sure if it was the storm or the tension between them.

He wanted to pull her into his arms again, wanted to find out. He could lose himself for a few hours.

An impossible wish, however. She hated him. And he probably deserved it.

He let go of her hand, stroked along the skin of her throat with a finger. She swallowed convulsively, but made no move to stop him.

“Ah, but now you see the trap you have set for yourself, yes? In exonerating me of the crime of Dimah’s death, you must also hold me blameless for your flight. For our estrangement. And that you cannot do.”

Her eyes flashed. “Stop putting words in my mouth, Malik.”

He would love to put something else there. He was not so bold as to say so.

“I only speak the truth.”

She blew out a breath, tightened the belt of her robe. The outline of her breasts made his mouth water. “Neither of us is blameless,” she said. “Neither is perfect.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “I could have done things differently. I probably should have. I should have been more direct with you. Instead, I allowed you to control everything.”

His head came up. “I was not aware of this. I remember you challenging me on more than one occasion.”

She snorted. “For little things, Malik. Nothing big. Nothing important. And I should have.”

“Yes, you should. I would have welcomed it.”

Her laugh was soft, surprising. “Would you now? I hardly think so, oh, mighty prince of the desert.”

“You mock me,” he said, and yet he wasn’t bothered by it. On the contrary, he found it amusing. Refreshing.

“No, I’m merely pointing out the truth.”

He clasped her shoulders. His blood rushed from the simple contact. “The thing I liked about you from the beginning was your lack of pretense. You did not pretend to be overwhelmed by me.”

She laughed. “God, no. I think I did everything but insult you to your face. I was a bit, um, hostile.”

“Because you did your homework,” he said, remembering what she’d told him once they’d started to see each other.

She looked down, clasped her hands together in front of her. “You didn’t need yet another woman falling at your feet. Though it didn’t take long for you to make me do just that, did it?”

Something sharp stabbed him in the chest. He remembered her surrender, remembered the sweetness of it. He’d never once believed it to be because she was weak. “I took your indifference as a challenge.”

“Some challenge,” she said bitterly. “It took you less than a week to succeed in making me forget my resolve.”

“You are angry with yourself for this, yes?” Pain throbbed inside him. Filled him.

She regretted her capitulation. Regretted him.

A burning need to possess her, to make her forget every moment of hurt feelings between them, rose up inside him like a wave.

Why now? Why here?
She did not want him any longer, as she’d been only too happy to tell him more than once since her arrival. He should have pursued her when she’d left Paris, should have refused to allow more than a day to go by where they did not speak about her reasons for leaving.

He’d been a fool.

“It would have been better for us both had I shown more restraint. We would not have to endure this time together now.”

Her words stung.
Endure.
He did not like to think too deeply about that word, or the impact it’d had on his life thus far. There were many things in this life to be endured. It was not altogether pleasant to be one of them.

“And yet we shall.” Sudden weariness washed over him. The evening had been a strain, in more ways than one, and Sydney was still looking at him with a kind of wariness that gutted him. He had no more patience for it. If he did not leave her now, he would scoop her up and take her to bed, prove that she could still be mastered by his touch.

And neither of them would gain anything by such a demonstration.

Malik took a step backward, bowed to her. “It is late,
habibti.
You need your rest.”

Then he pivoted and strode away from her. Back to his bedroom. Back to his solitude.

Sydney did not sleep well. There were things she wanted to ask Malik, things she’d meant to say when they’d stood on the terrace together. He’d been so approachable for once, so raw in his feelings. It was a side of him she’d never seen before. She’d been drawn to him—a dangerous feeling—and she’d wanted to know more.

But he’d shut down again. Withdrawn. Left her standing there with the wind and lightning and her tangled emotions.

She’d considered following him, but dismissed the thought as foolhardy. He would be angry if she did so. Not only that, but how could she control what might happen if she followed him to his bedroom?

Because she was so weak where he was concerned. She could still feel his chest where she’d pressed her palms against him. The hard contours, the blazing heat of his skin, the crisp hair. She’d ached with want. With memories of bliss.

And when she finally did fall asleep, she was troubled by dreams of him, by the agony in his voice when he’d told her about Dimah. Why had he never told her before? Why, in the weeks they’d been together, had he never told her?

It was another symptom of everything that had been wrong between them. Everything she’d been too blind to see. They’d barely known one another, subsisting instead on reckless passion and heated lovemaking. That could only last so long before it burned itself out.

After a restless night, she awoke early. The sun was just creeping into the sky when she showered and dressed in a fitted mocha sheath and a pair of gladiator sandals. Then she put her hair in a ponytail and applied the barest of lipstick and mascara before making her way to the dining room.

Her heart thudded in her throat as she paused outside the door. She could hear Malik’s smooth voice as he spoke with one of the staff. Sydney sucked in a deep breath and walked into the room.

Two sets of eyes turned to look at her. Malik’s dark gaze was angry, but it was the woman with him who drew Sydney’s attention. She was slender, elegant, expensively dressed—and livid.

Definitely not a staff member.

She turned back to Malik, spewed a tirade of Arabic at him while gesturing to Sydney.

“Mother,” Malik said at last, his voice harder than she’d ever heard it, “we will speak in English for the benefit of my wife.”

His mother? Oh, God.

The other woman glared at her. “Yes, English. And you say this girl is not unsuitable to be an Al Dhakir? She does not even speak Arabic!”

“Language can be learned. As your command of English proves.”

His mother bristled in outrage. “You should have done your duty, Malik. Your father let you off too easily after Dimah died. Adan found you a suitable bride, at my request, but you would not do what you should.” The rings on the princess’s fingers glittered in the morning light as she took a sip of her coffee.