The Sultan's Reluctant Princess Page 11

  “Yes,” Tamil agreed quietly.

  “But why?”

  Tamir shook his head. “He does not matter. He is no longer a part of my service. He will never bother you again.”

  She stared at him, her surprise obvious in her features. “You fired him?”

  “I dispensed with him,” Tamir corrected with a nonchalant shrug. “I require only those I can trust. He is not such a man as I thought.” He lifted her arm, and gently touched the bruised flesh of her elbow. “He hurt you. Do you not understand? In doing so, he also hurt me. I cannot forgive him for his treatment of you. I will not.”

  She shivered. “He was so angry.”

  “I know.” He pulled her closer. “He didn’t understand. About us.”

  Olivia’s heart turned over in her chest. Brazenly, she forced herself to look at him. “I don’t think even I understand about us.”

  Tamir wasn’t sure what to say. Truth warred with sense; logic battled instinct. His voice was thick with emotion when he spoke. “Then don’t think about understanding. Come swimming.”

  “In there?”

  He nodded.

  “In what?”

  He grinned. “I have swimwear for you in the jeep.”

  She arched a brow. “You mean I can actually wear bathers?”

  He nodded. “At my private beach, certainly.”

  The swimwear was, in fact, reasonably modest. A simple black one piece, it barely hinted at her cleavage. But nothing could disguise the slender length of her tanned legs. A tent had been erected on the sand dunes, and Olivia emerged from it feeling strangely self-conscious, given that she was virtually alone, with her husband.

  “Definitely only at my beach,” Tamir muttered, when Olivia stepped out onto the hot white sand of the beach. He had thought the suit perfectly acceptable, until he saw for himself the way it caressed her body. It displayed her curves to anyone who cared to look. He glowered as she approached, until Olivia laughed.

  “It is really very modest, Tamir. Stop looking at me as though I’m about to perform a striptease in front of a thousand men.”

  The very imagery had his spine straightening. He pulled at her waist, crushing her body to his. It startled Olivia, so that her green eyes flew to his face. “The only man you will ever be naked for again is me.”

  Her heart turned over in her chest, and she forced herself to say what she’d been thinking for days. The fear that had lodged in her chest. “This isn’t a real marriage, Tamir.” As the words left her mouth, she wished she could recall them.

  Tamir’s expression was like stone, but his chest was rising rapidly, in time with his heartbeat. He forced himself to speak calmly. “Meaning?”

  She looked away, her mouth dry. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you married me, but I know it can’t last.” She bit down on her lip. “You’ll get tired of me eventually… and I’ll go back to my life. This will all just be a dream. And one day,” she dredged a smile up from the depths of her unhappiness, “when I’m old and very grey, I’ll wonder if it really happened. The time I became a princess of a beautiful, mysterious country, for a while.”

  He almost groaned, for the image she was painting. It spoke of a time when this would all be in the past. An inevitable conclusion to what they now shared. His voice was deep with desire when he spoke. “I have never married before. Why are you so certain this is not going to last?”

  She shook her head wistfully. “Because we have sex in common, and that’s it.” She lifted her hands to his chest. “Sex is why you approached me at the theatre, and sex is why I came to the embassy. We’re no different to any other couple who got caught up in that first infatuation of physical connection.”

  “What if I don’t let you go,” he whispered in her ear, running his hands down her back.

  She laughed shakily, pushing him away. “You will.”

  “You’re so certain?”

  “Yes.” She took a shaky step towards the water.

  “How can you be?”

  “Simple.” She turned to face him challengingly. “Do you love me?”

  He froze, his dark face impossible to read. He stared at her in a complete panic. Her blonde hair whipped around her face, reminding him of the fabric he’d seen on the golf course. Her face was silhouetted by the sun, pale and luminous with magical green eyes. He stared at her, but did not speak.

  “See?” She shrugged her shoulders, refusing to show how his lack of feeling had hurt her. “That’s why you’ll let me go.”

  He frowned. “Why, Olivia?”

  “Because I could never be in a marriage without love.” She lifted a hand to forestall his next statement. “You were raised to see this as normal. I wasn’t. You don’t love me, but I think you like me. And I think you respect me. And eventually you’ll realise that keeping me in this marriage would hurt me far more than anything someone like Kalil could ever say or do.” She squared her shoulders, refusing to back away from her point. Refusing to seem emotional or sad. “So one day you’ll kiss me goodbye for the last time, and we’ll be a precious memory and nothing more.”

  Angry curses were shrieking through his mind with such intensity that he could barely contain them. He was a prisoner of everything he’d been raised to expect and everything he was expected to want. He wanted to sprint the length of the beach, until his lungs burned from exertion. He wanted to make love to her against the shining white sand. He wanted to say anything she needed to hear, to put a close to this talk of ending their marriage.

  And then he remembered. There was no marriage.

  She was his lover.

  And she didn’t want to be his wife. He swallowed past the lump of anxiety in his throat. Tamir had never willingly conceded defeat, but he could feel it biting at his ankles now.

  “Let us swim,” he changed the subject with a tone that was far more moderate than his thoughts.

  Olivia nodded, but inside, her heart was cracking like an eggshell. Had she really expected a declaration of love? She wasn’t even sure she loved him. At least, she wasn’t sure she could put her feelings for him into words. What her heart and soul wanted made no sense. Not when faced with what he’d put her through. And yet… he’d been so perfect, in so many ways. She reached out and linked her fingers through his, pulling him towards the ocean. This would be a memory one day, but only if she first created it.

  “Let’s not think about the future, okay?” She squeezed his hand. “Whatever else happens, this moment is glorious.”

  And it was. Because she was.

  The water was cool against her skin, but her blood pounded like a boiling torrent through her body. “Do you like it?” He asked quietly, wrapping his arms around her beneath the ocean. She was standing on the sand, staring back at the shoreline, and the water came up to her breasts. He looked over her shoulder, appreciating the view as she might be. As someone unfamiliar with the coastline of Talidar.

  “It’s… beautiful.” She swept her green eyes over the cliff-edged land. They were so white they glowed in the afternoon sunshine, and at the top, there were spiky green and purple bushes that looked almost alien like.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “It’s just a shame it’s three hours from the palace, or I would come here every day.”

  He nodded. “You can come here by helicopter,” he promised. “It is a much shorter journey.”

  She nodded. “I imagine it would be. Why did you drive today then?”

  Because he’d wanted the time with her. He shrugged. “I had nothing more pressing to do.”

  Her heart turned over. Every time she felt like he just might say something she needed to hear, he didn’t. She turned to face him, encircled by his strong arms. “Mir, who is Marni?”

  His pleasure at the fact that she’d used the shortened version of his name was short lived. “Why do you ask?”

  “I keep thinking about what Selena said. That you married me because of Marni.”

  He ran h
is hands down her spine, distracting her with the contact. “You’ve asked me about this already.”

  She nodded thickly.

  “And what was my answer, when you asked me before?”

  She looked up into his eyes, her own a mesmerising oceanic shade of green. “That Selena is wrong.”

  His smile spread slowly across his face, seductive and enticing. “And nothing has changed. She is still wrong.”

  It didn’t matter. If she thought their marriage was real; that it would last forever, she might have tried to understand him better. But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t. So she let it go. Instead of asking what she knew she should, she let her body feel what it wanted to. A deep, soul-stirring pleasure in the closeness to his.

  “You know,” she whispered, her hands around his back. “This is the first time we’ve been this close in the daylight.”

  He laughed, surprised by her observation. “Is it?”

  She looked at him with mock sternness. “You know it is.”

  “I have been busy.” He hadn’t. But he didn’t yet know how to handle Olivia. And the surety that he was alienating her time and time again had kept him at a distance in every way but one. “Has life in Talidar been hard for you?”

  She lowered her gaze, staring at the glistening water. “No.” It was the truth. “I mean, I miss my mother, and I worry for her. And I need to let my work know when I’ll be coming back. But other than those worries, I’ve found it… fine… to be here.”

  His anger was unwarranted, but nonetheless, it flashed through him. She did not need to worry. Not about work, and not about her mother. He wanted her by his side, forever more, without any sadness intruding on that. He wanted to protect her. Hell, he wanted to protect her as he had not been able to Marni. For the first time in years, he allowed himself to see the other woman’s face, and he groaned. He’d wounded her, and now he was wounding Olivia.

  He kissed her with the full force of his emotion. His need to reassure her, as well as himself, was an indomitable force. Somewhere, on the edge of the cliff, members of his security team would be waiting for them. Tamir wanted Olivia, desperately, but he could not expose her to the eyes of those men. He lifted her from the water, carrying her against his chest, to the tent that had been built in preparation for their arrival. He reached it as quickly as he could, pounding the soft white sand of the beach with the woman he had married in his arms. He lay her down gently on the large carpeted floor, pressing himself against her before she could move. He kissed her again, this time, with all his desire and longing. His mouth moved over hers with possessive heat, while his hands worked to strip her wet bathers from her body. He flung them aside, uncaring that they landed in the sand at the far corner of the tent. Naked beneath him, finally, he let out a sound of relief. She would soon be his. Soon. He kissed her salty, wet skin, smiling as goosebumps ran the length of her body. The mark he’d made on her neck had faded. He pressed his lips to it again, and this time, as he sucked her flesh, she smiled.

  Olivia was shocked to realise that she liked the idea of being marked by this man. Of a secret sign that only they knew about, which revealed his possession of her. His hands were demanding on her breasts, pulling at her nipples, while his leg moved between hers, spreading her wide, preparing to take her. She arched her back, begging him wordlessly, needing him.

  He pushed his own swimmers off, and came to hover over her. She was so beautiful. He stared down at her, and saw Olivia. Only Olivia. The woman he had intended to marry. The woman he had taken from her home, and brought to live with him.

  He took her gently now, easing into her carefully, watching the way her expression changed as he moved within her. Theirs was an understanding that defied comprehension.

  His fingers danced across her skin, and his mouth teased hers, while his body moved inside her. It was a warm afternoon, made warmer still by the electrical current that flared between them. He ran his fingers through the curling mass of blonde hair. The way it felt in his fingers was like warm silk.

  When Olivia fell over the cliff into the most pleasurable state on earth, he followed after her, driving into her until he couldn’t control his release.

  “I won’t let you go, Olivia,” he whispered in her ear, as their rapid breathing returned to normal.

  Olivia’s heart turned over. Right sentiment; wrong words. She tilted her head, so that she could stare at the flapping fabric of the tent.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she snatched between breaths.

  “Doesn’t it?” His smile was humourless. “You don’t think everything we just did makes sense?”

  Her cheeks flushed pink. “Maybe.” She looked up at him, her lips a half-smile in her face. “But that will change.” She lifted her finger to his lips, before he could say anything. “Let’s not think about it now.”

  They would have to face the future when it came, but not before. Not in that moment, when everything was so perfect.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Selena was even more beautiful and intimidating than Olivia had remembered. Olivia cast a rueful glance at her own appearance. She was still in a dressing gown, her hair wild and curled about her head, her face free of make up. In her defence, it was still very early, and Tamir had travelled to the North for meetings he couldn’t avoid.

  “Will you need anything else, ma’am?” Eleni asked Selena, her expression guarded as she looked at the Sultan’s glamorous sister.

  Selena waved a dismissive hand in the air, and sent the high-ranked aide away silently.

  Olivia watched her go, a sinking feeling descending on her chest. She had planned on resting, and trying to get her head around her life in Liya. She had now been there a month, and every day had brought her a new level of pleasure and contentment. But in the back of her mind was the certainty that it would not last. That it could not.

  That every day they shared would bring her one day closer to the end of her marriage.

  How would she bear it? When the time came to leave Tamir, how would she be able to walk away, as though her heart weren’t breaking? Tamir said he didn’t want their marriage to end, but he didn’t love her. And she couldn’t stay with him without love.

  “Eleni said you were not busy,” Selena explained shortly. She took the seat opposite Olivia without waiting for an invitation.

  The small balcony overlooked a fruit orchard below, and in the distance, Tamir’s favoured golf course. It was a spectacular outlook, but all the pleasure had been sucked out of it by the emergence of Tamir’s sister.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Olivia offered politely, nodding towards the pot in the centre of the table.

  “Yes.” Selena looked towards one of the servants and spoke in Talidarian. Presumably, she’d ordered the young woman to attend to her needs, for she came flapping over to lift the pot and pour it into a spare cup.

  Olivia compressed her lips to stave off expressing her disapproval. Whatever Olivia might think of Selena, she was Tamir’s sister, and for that reason alone, Olivia owed her courtesy. “What can I do for you, Selena?”

  “Actually, sister, it’s what I can do for you.” Her eyes dropped to Olivia’s wedding ring, then lifted to her young, innocent face. Selena could almost have felt sorry for her. Almost. But not quite.

  “Oh?”

  “I understand my brother had Kalil fired?”

  Olivia placed her own coffee cup down on the table and met Selena’s gaze without flinching. “He didn’t have him fired. He fired him himself.”

  “Because he caught you desecrating one of our sacred sights?”

  Olivia sighed, then lifted her coffee and sipped it. “I did not desecrate a sacred sight. You make it sound as though I took a bottle of paint to the skrina monument.” She smiled to soften her derisive comment. “I wasn’t aware the fountain had special significance. Once Kalil made me aware of my error, I never went near it again.”

  “Yet you let my brother fire him, for simply doing his job.”

>   Olivia glared at the other woman. Her first instinct, to correct Selena’s assertion, was not worthy of her. She didn’t need to explain herself, or Tamir, to Selena. Instead, she lifted her slender shoulders. “You know as well as I do that Tamir is not a man whose mind can be easily changed. Once he decides on a course of action, that’s it.”

  “Yes, I know that all too well.” Selena’s eyes, so like Tamir’s narrowed. “Such as marrying you.”

  Olivia’s happiness was fast disappearing. “Marrying me was his choice, yes. And it has nothing to do with you.” She replaced her cup once more and clasped her hands in her lap, to hide the way they were shaking from the other woman.

  “That is excessively naïve.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Olivia coughed, her surprise apparent.

  Selena seemed to drop any veil of normality, and plunged headlong into hostility. “You’re naïve. Your entire perspective is wrong. My son is in line for the throne of Talidar. It is his birthright.”

  Olivia frowned. Tamir’s nephew was only four years old. “Isn’t he a little young to start planning his future to such a degree?”

  Selena’s laugh was high-pitched. “His future was planned from the moment he was conceived. He was born to be a King. Tamir has no interest in children, you know. Until he met you, he had no interest in an actual relationship with a woman. If Marni was still with us, she could vouch for that.”

  A shiver ran down Olivia’s spine, as the name that had hovered on the edges of her mind for a month came to the front of her consciousness. “Who is Marni?” She heard herself ask, though she knew Tamir would feel betrayed. That he would not approve of this conversation, nor the content.

  “My best friend,” Selena said quietly, her anger apparent.

  “I’m sorry. Tamir doesn’t speak about her.”

  “Because he broke her heart. He slept with her, and made her believe their relationship was heading towards marriage. But when she said that to him, he laughed! He actually laughed! And told her that, when he married, it would be to someone with a better opinion of themselves and their family than she had.”