Midnight in Arabia. Trish Morey
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She’d had an affair with a married man who had seduced her from her innocence and now carried the man’s child. She said she was terrified of what her father’s reaction would be if he found out. Claiming to always have a soft spot for Asad, she said she’d learned her lesson and had eagerly accepted his marriage proposal.
She didn’t think she was doing him any true harm, as she’d discovered the babe’s sex was female. He would not reject a daughter simply because she had come to be as the result of her mother’s ignorance and naïveté, would he?
She played to Asad’s view of himself as a modern man who knew how to straddle the old world and the new. And he accepted her explanations and perceptions of him because his pride would not allow him to do otherwise, swallowing her words like a camel at an oasis after five days in the desert.
Though he had not forgotten the contempt she’d held for him at eighteen, he believed she had changed her views. He even accepted the role his own pride had played in the current circumstances. He’d been adamant he would marry this woman and no other. She would not reject him, the lion of his people.
He had put himself forward as her unknowing savior and he could hardly withdraw from the field at this point.
Badra claimed she’d broken it off with the married man when she agreed to become the lady of the Sha’b Al’najid, but he’d had his doubts—unspoken and unacknowledged. However, he’d made his vows just as she had. With that truth firmly in the forefront of his mind, Asad had directed his considerable will toward making his marriage with Badra work.
His doubts had come to fruition a month after Nawar’s birth when Asad’s head of security in the newly created command center had informed him of communications between Badra and her former lover.
But the knowledge of her continued perfidy had come too late. Asad loved his daughter and would not lose her to her mother’s selfishness.
He had not realized until much later, in a discussion with his sister during her first pregnancy, that Badra could not possibly have known the babe in her womb was a girl on their wedding night. Not unless she’d had an amniocentesis, which she had not. Badra had been a consummate liar.
And for the sake of that woman and his own pride, Asad had let go of his friendship with the one woman whose loyalty and integrity had never once come into question.
Unlike Badra with her deceits and machinations, Iris would always put others first. It was in her nature to do so. Knowing more about her past, he found that trait even more worthy of admiration.
FOR the second night in a row, Iris found herself walking with Asad toward her room at bedtime. It was much later this night though, the last of Asad’s guests having just left.
“There is one chamber you have yet to see in my home,” he said as they reached her door.
She’d spent the last hours of the party wrestling with what to do about Asad and had come to a decision.
One thing was certain—he wasn’t giving up. She knew how determined he could be and was under no illusions that this time would be any different. He wanted her. He would do his best to get what he wanted.
She could spend the next few weeks doing her level best to avoid him and stifle her own desire for him, but she was not convinced of her own ultimate success.
If she let herself love him again, she was lost. There was another option though, wasn’t there?
She’d come to believe that sharing his bed again would help heal her heart. Sometimes the only way to rebirth in life was through the fire. Just like a Phoenix. She would be the one to leave this time and because of that she would not spend the next six years seeing his face every time she looked with interest at another man.
She’d come to the conclusion that the way out of the isolated existence her life had become was the same way into it. Through Asad. This time she knew he wasn’t looking for a future with her and she would not allow herself to look for one either … or fall in love with him again.
That would dictate the difference in the outcome. It had to.
“You’re right.” Her voice was husky, but not tentative. One thing her feelings about this man had never been was tentative. “I haven’t seen your room.”
“Would you like to?”
“It will not offend your grandparents?” Iris was not naive enough to believe they would not figure it out, even if she left Asad’s bed in the wee hours as she meant to.
This kind of thing always seemed to get out eventually. Physical intimacy had a way of showing itself, even when those involved did their best to hide it. And Asad was too proud and arrogant to even try.
Iris was no good at hiding her emotions, even if she wanted to. She would show the change in her relationship with the sheikh, even if she did her best not to.
He pulled her around to face him, his expression dark and serious. “I am sheikh now. There is no offense in me doing as I see fit in my own home.”
She took leave to doubt that culturally it was easy as that, but then this man lived by his own rules, no matter how traditionally Bedouin he could be at times.
“Your arrogance is showing again.”
“I am certain of my place.”
She nodded, for the moment equally certain of hers. “Show me.”
His nostrils flared and his eyes burned her. “It will be my pleasure.”
“If I remember right, the pleasure was always very mutual.”
“Yes.”
He led her into his room and she was surprised to discover that the chamber was the same size as hers, but the bed was much bigger. Covered in pillows and a silk quilt embroidered with a roaring male lion in the center, it was easily twice the width of her bed. Between it and the sparse furniture, there was no extra room as in her chamber.
The sound of rustling clothes had her looking back toward him only to discover he was already disrobing, his kuffiya discarded, revealing dark hair that framed his fierce features even better than the head covering had done. He’d also tossed off the ornate robe he’d worn to the feast. Under it he had on the traditional loose trousers and … an Armani shirt?
She grinned.
“What?” he asked, arrested in his movements while looking at her.
“You’re wearing Armani with your traditional garb.”
He shrugged. “I prefer their shirts.” He dropped his trousers. “And their shorts.”
Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of his muscular legs. Darker than they used to be, and rippling with even more muscle she wanted to touch.
There was a time when she had believed that body belonged to her. She knew now that it did not, but she could still revel in the knowledge that as long as she shared his bed, for all intents and purposes, it might as well be hers.
“Nice,” she said, unable to hide the catch in her voice.
His hardness pressed against the black silk of his Armani boxers, letting her know that his desire for her was real. He unbuttoned the shirt, letting it fall open to reveal the sprinkling of black curls that lightly covered his chest and abdomen.
“You used to shave that,” she observed.
He frowned momentarily. “I was trying to be more urbane.”
“But why would you want to? You were always so proud of your heritage.” It was one of many things about him that had impressed her.
Asad had