Chapter Nine
HANA’S HEART THUMPED wildly in her chest. She had seen Malik in many different ways, but nothing like this.
His long hair brushed his shoulders, drawing her eyes to the naked torso that she had touched, moulded with her hands and wanted so desperately to touch again.
She knew the flesh and blood of this man.
She knew the heat of him under her palms, but she wanted to know that heat against her entire body.
The black material of the izaar clung to a lean waist and encased powerful thighs.
She had seen his body before, she had seen more before, but this was different.
He was her husband now. And while he had rejected her on their wedding night, she hoped that might have changed.
That he might finally want her as a woman… the way that she wanted him as a man.
It was more than just physical, because as incredibly handsome as he was, she would never feel this way if she didn’t like the man he was, respect him and the choices that he made and continued to make for his country, his people, his family.
His cheeks flushed as she continued her perusal of him, the dark hair that dusted the centre of his abdomen and dipped beneath the black material.
Her gaze ran over the scar tissue that started at his shoulder and poured down his bicep, seeing not the emblem of the childhood condition that had cursed him, but the strength and power that he’d had to overcome the cruelty he’d received because of it.
And they just stood there. On opposite sides of the aquamarine bath, with the sun streaming through the carved wooden screens over large open glassless windows that offered as much privacy as they did light.
Lush green foliage grew from enormous planters positioned around the edges of the several different pools that filled the jigsaw-puzzle design of the baths.
There were steps leading from pool to pool that reminded her of an Escher painting and candles and scented oils that threw them right back to the night they had first met in the spa back in Omrhain.
But she saw so little of that, because she was utterly consumed by the sight of him. It filled her heart and flooded her body with every beat, occupying her mind with only one thought.
Want.
But she saw the tension in him. Saw the warring. He wanted her, but didn’t want to want her. She tried not to let that hurt, but it was hard. And knew that if she went to him now, he would turn and leave. She didn’t know how she knew that. Just that it was as true as the sky was blue.
So it was Hana who broke the strange connection between them.
The thing that had held them locked in that taut tableau.
She made her way towards the steps that led into the pool between them.
Gathering the silk robe a little at her thighs, she dipped her toes into the warm soft waters that instantly soothed the heat and the exhaustion from her body.
Had he not been here, she would have stripped the robe from her body and sunk into the welcome heat of the water.
Had he not been her husband, she might have been offered a bathing suit.
Yet when she had entered the changing area, all she had been given was this robe.
She had intended to tell him that he could use the baths first, but now that she’d had felt the luxury of it, the succour, she wanted more.
She didn’t know if the gasp that echoed from the tiles was hers or his.
Hana bit her lip. He was a grown man. Her husband.
And he would either see her eventually or never see her at all, and there was little she could do about that.
So throwing all sense to the wind, she stepped down the steps, one by one, letting the water soak into the silk that stuck to her body and refusing to worry about what he would see. Because she wanted him to see.
She wanted so much for him to see all of her.
When the steps ended and the water pressed against her ribs, Hana dropped down so that she was completely submerged.
For a blissful moment she let the muffled silence make her feel less alone.
She held her breath, letting it fill her chest, surrounded by the pale blue of the water coloured by the mother-of-pearl tiles that covered the interior of the pool.
She waited. Not quite sure what for, but still she waited, her breath beginning to burn in her chest, her pulse beginning to pound.
She could lie and say it wasn’t for him, that it was the need to breathe, but for her the two were vastly becoming one and the same.
Unable to take it any more, she emerged from the water on a gasped inhale. Her chest filled with the rush of oxygen, eyes closed, as if not quite ready to see whether he had left her or not. Whether he had chosen to leave her.
That thought sent a sliver of sadness deep into her chest, her breath turning into a sob, caught in her heart.
Jaw clenched, she prised her eyes open to the spot where he had been standing and…
He was gone.
Her heart began to fracture and her throat thickened and just when she would have broken, she heard her name on his tongue from behind her, felt the displacement of water brushing against her thighs and stomach as he came towards her.
‘Hana.’
It was a whisper. A prayer. A plea.
She held her breath until she felt the warmth of his strong body from where he came to stand behind her.
She couldn’t turn, couldn’t have this be a mirage that disappeared, couldn’t bear for him to change his mind.
And when his chest pressed against her back, she was glad that he couldn’t see the tear that escaped, falling to the water beneath them.
She surrendered to him, to her feelings, to the moment, and let her head fall back against his shoulder as his hands came around her waist and pulled her back against him, knowing that she would take whatever this man could give. Knowing that her heart was already his.
Malik was convinced she’d cast a spell over him.
Her name, the only word in his mind and on his lips, her body the only one he wanted to touch.
His heart jackhammered in his chest as he was consumed by a desire the like of which he’d never known.
This was his wife. His to protect, to care for.
And if he had any sense, he’d send her running.
But the moment he’d seen her emerge from the water, the burgundy silk pressed against every inch of her skin, he’d been taken over by a madness that only she could cure.
His hands encased her ribcage, holding her against him, and there was no mistake as to his desire for her. She would be able to feel it and even innocent, she would understand.
A shiver wracked her body but before he could release her, he heard her low whisper.
‘Please don’t deny me,’ she begged.
He frowned, confused by the spike in his conscience. He was not so obtuse to refuse to recognise that she was talking about their wedding night. About how he’d worked so damn hard to keep his distance from her since that night.
‘Hana, you deserve—’
She spun in his hands to face him, the glint in her eye, the storm in that beautiful brown gaze glittering with gold flecks like sand.
‘You don’t get to tell me what I deserve. I am a Princess of Omrhain. I am Queen Regent of Al Surrahin. And I am your wife,’ she said.
Even though her lips wobbled and her voice trembled as she’d said it, he heard the strength it had taken to say those words to him. Understood what it meant about what she wanted. And respected her all the more. But still…
‘If not you,’ she said, as if sensing his retreat, ‘then who? I would never dishonour myself or you. So, would I forever be…untouched?’
Unloved?
He removed the unspoken word from his thoughts, focusing instead on the way that the loneliness in her question cut him to the core.
She deserved so much more than the little he could give.
But if he was what she wanted, then he could no more deny her that than air.
He would give her all that he could give, and hope that it would be enough.
He took her cheek in his hand, brushing his thumb over lips he’d dreamed about.
His gaze flicked up to hers, and back to the lips that he wanted to take with his own.
‘Can I kiss you?’ he asked.
‘Where?’ she whispered, a puff of breath against his skin.
‘Here,’ he said, irresistibly drawn closer to her mouth as his thumb traced the clear curve of her bottom lip.
‘Yes,’ she replied on an exhale.
He took one last look, reading the want in her gaze, and then cast aside his conscience, determined to take whatever punishment the consequences would be.
This wasn’t a swift capture. It wasn’t the kind of consuming plunder that everything in him urged him towards.
Some hedonistic taking. Instead, leashing the baseness of his desires, he relished every second, every millimetre, every throb of her pulse fluttering wildly beneath his palm, the jagged inhalation pressing her chest against his, the slightest tremble of her lips, the heat of expectation sending him dizzy with need.
Breaths mingled on the air between them, Hana’s lips opening just a fraction, as if in surprise, and finally, finally, he met her mouth with his.
Home.
He teased gently at her lips, his mind roaring so loud that it drowned out the strange thought, driven half out of his mind by the moan that fell into his mouth from hers.
He held her so delicately, worried that if he did what he wanted to, he could hurt her.
But she simply opened for him, pressed herself against him, surrendered to him in a way that humbled and half terrified him.
The tentative touch of her tongue sent shivers across his body despite the heat of the baths around them, and he pulled back to bite his own lip, only so that he didn’t bite hers. Her gaze zeroed in on the action and her cheeks flushed.
Water clung to the naked V on her chest where the robe cut down low, and he traced a droplet as it travelled from her jaw, down her neck, over her collarbone.