Chapter One #2
Without pausing in his stride, he tore the towel from his waist and dropped it to the floor, and this time nothing would stop the strange sound that fell from Hana’s mouth at the sight.
Her hungry gaze all but consumed the sight of powerfully honed muscles across his firm backside and torso even as a blush rose to her cheeks.
Her heart pounded in her chest as he reached the shower directly opposite her at the end of the corridor and seconds later, powerful jets of water rained down on his naked body.
She’d never, never, seen a man’s naked form. At twenty-three years old, that might be unusual, but she was the youngest princess of an aging father who had firm ideas about propriety and duty, and she had never wanted to cross him or those ideas.
Until now.
Hana bit her lip. Her eyes followed the rivulets of water up and down the smooth dark skin of the man in front of her and suddenly the thought of tomorrow filled her with excitement, until she remembered the rumours that had brought her here.
She frowned, peering through the darkness to see what could possibly have caused such harsh critique, until…
there in the shadows she saw the raised scarred flesh that looked like lightning forking down over his shoulder and upper arm.
This? This was what people had teased and taunted him for?
She took a step closer, wondering if she was missing something when the Regent of Al Surrahin turned, and Hana knew if she didn’t move, right now, he would catch her. Staring at him. Naked.
She spun on her heel and pushed her way into a room off the corridor, collapsing back against the door.
Her heart pounded as her mind’s eye flashed with sculpted muscles, the breadth of his shoulders, the way he braced himself against the tile.
Please. You cannot be caught.
Not for Jehan and not for herself. But in her fear, she had fallen into one of the treatment rooms where there was only one way in and one way out—the door she had just come through.
Never mind. She’d wait here until she was sure that he’d gone.
She inhaled slowly and prised her eyes open and away from the memory of the incredible sight of her fiancé to the treatment room she was in. It was one of the massage suites, with flickering yellow candles and gentle music soothing her frantic pulse.
She tore herself away from the door and crossed the room, realising that the oils were being heated and candles had been lit as if they were ready to be used. But Jehan had told her that the spa would be closed to all other guests, so why was…? Why was…?
Oh no!
After giving him a fresh towel, a staff member showed Malik to the treatment room where he would get his massage.
Of all the things offered by the spa that he could possibly look forward to, this had been the one he’d least wanted.
He might have come to terms with his body, but that didn’t mean he’d ever been comfortable with someone else’s hands on his skin.
Malik could have refused the massage, but wouldn’t risk causing offense to his future father-in-law.
He probably should have taken the private jet like his assistant had wanted, distressed by the idea that Malik would arrive in Omrhain looking like ‘some marauding traveller’. Malik had smiled, with teeth, and the assistant had taken a step back and not asked him about it again.
But the ride had given him time to think.
To acclimatise to the way his future would change.
Tomorrow he would meet his fiancée, a princess that the people of his own country were familiar with.
And if she could tolerate him, then perhaps they would too.
Then there would be a wedding ceremony here in Omrhain and they would return to Al Surrahin, where they would be welcomed with a countrywide celebration to make the start of the twelve-day wedding tour, which he would, he told himself, survive.
Malik would remain married until he was able to step down from the throne on which he never should have sat, freeing himself from the shackle of matrimony with a discreet divorce.
Yara had spoken to him just before he left, wanting to make sure that Malik was doing this for the right reasons.
Malik scoffed, still not ready to see any reason to marry—good or bad.
But his sister-in-law had once again told him that he needed to rule his way.
Not his brother’s way or his father’s way.
And he’d replied that that was what he was doing. This marriage would secure the future of Al Surrahin either for Ishmail’s recovered return…or for Ishmail’s son, Aayan, when he came of age.
A muscle across his chest jerked painfully just as he opened the door to the massage suite, so he wore an expression of pure frustration and resentment, which was probably why he startled the small woman waiting for him in the room.
He waved her away when she began to apologise and lay face down on the padded table, holding back the groan of pain as his shoulder pinched beneath the scarred skin. He probably should have taken the helicopter after all.
‘Is there…is there anything…particular you’d like paid…special attention to?’ she half stuttered after an interminably long pause.
Maybe she was worried about his scar, or the reputation of his temper, but if this was any indication of how the massage was going to go, he was going to be bitterly disappointed.
The doctors who had been paid handsomely for their silence on the condition that had led to the burn mark had told him that massages would be good for the burn scar, but Malik had always been uncomfortable with the anyone touching it.
The area no longer physically painful, but emotionally it was a different matter.
But at least this woman was a professional, one that he’d never see again after today.
‘No,’ he said with a wave of his hand, hoping to dismiss further conversation. His hopes of physical relief from his aches were diminishing by the second.
‘I’ll just—’ she tried.
‘Please don’t feel the need to speak,’ he commanded.
It was curt, he knew that, but he had enough on his plate. He didn’t need some inept—
His thoughts were cut off by the hot drip of scented massage oil in the middle of his spine and then, Oh my…
The first touch of her fingers thrust him almost instantly into a state of bliss. A groan emerged from somewhere deep within him but he wouldn’t let it escape.
The pressure was perfect, and impressive, given her small stature. He could hardly credit her with having had enough strength to perform the minor miracle that she was currently working. And it was a minor miracle.
Beneath her hands his body melted and Malik was most certainly not the kind of man who melted. But that was his last thought as he gave in to the pleasure that she was pouring into his tired, sore muscles.
She delved into the muscles up and down his spine, reaching his neck and spending a near-indulgent amount of time there.
He wondered whether she was using her elbows as well as her deceptively strong fingers.
And unusually for him, he forgot to prepare himself for the moment she reached his left shoulder, which was why he jerked out of bliss and straight into tension when she started to manipulate the joint and muscles around it.
Her hands paused, clearly registering the sudden change in his body.
‘Should I stop?’ the masseuse half whispered, her dusky intonation sending goosebumps across his skin.
‘No,’ he replied, bracing himself for the usual pain of the tight mess of knots that had lived permanently under the scarred skin covering his shoulder since the tonic-clonic seizure that had caused him to black out beside the bonfire he and his brother had built in the palace garden back when they’d been young boys.
When he’d come around in the hospital, Malik had begged for his mother. But she had left the palace long before then—sent away by a husband who wouldn’t touch her in case she bore him another ‘flawed’ child.
To Malik’s surprise, instead digging into the knot of muscles, the masseuse’s fingers moved slowly, gently over and around the area in a way that frustrated him.
‘What are you doing?’ he forced out through his teeth.
‘Shh,’ came the woman’s response. One that had him almost blinking his eyes open in shock.
He couldn’t remember the last person who had told him to ‘shh’.
Probably his brother. The painful pang hit low in his gut and the woman’s fingers stuttered a little as if she had read his body as easily as the words she’d cut off.
Once again, he was about to complain when he realised that the slow gentle movements were warming his thickened skin and the muscles beneath, gently easing the tension in ways that had him relaxing once more, and he forgot all about being told off for the first time in what must have been at least ten years.
Hana had long since stopped wondering when the real masseuse would turn up.
She’d planned to capitalise on the confusion, slip out and run as if her life—or at least her marriage—depended on it.
But instead, she’d become fascinated by the complex interconnection of skin, tendons and muscle locked tight just beneath his shoulder blade that must cause the regent considerable daily pain.
She could almost see the tension radiating up the left-hand side of his body and into his neck.
It was strikingly similar to the problems Hana’s nursemaid had had. Amara had looked after Hana from the day she was born—the same day her mother had died—and was the only maternal figure Hana had ever known.