Chapter Ten #2
He didn’t want it. He couldn’t bear it. The decision to take his brother off life support would surely make him the monster that everyone believed him to be.
Would make him as bad as his own father.
And what would Hana think of him then? Would she wonder whether he’d done it to take the throne for himself?
Would she fear he’d done it from jealousy?
How could he possibly even begin to explain how impossible this decision was for him?
How he couldn’t bear to think of the world without Ishmail in it.
How he couldn’t bear the thought that if he waited, just a little longer, Ishmail might come back to them.
What if the doctors could cure what ailed him?
What if he moved too soon when his brother could have been saved?
Hana and Aayan returned just then, Aayan’s excited chatter filling the painful space that had been there before.
And rather than moving to the cold formality of the state dining room for their evening meal, Hana suggested that remain here.
Aayan seemed especially pleased and the two of them sat side by side, laughing and bickering over the food.
Their lightness soon smoothed over the hurt from the earlier conversation.
He wasn’t ready to do what Yara asked of him.
He might have bought himself some time, but he could almost see it in the middle distance, like a shimmering mirage that his body told him he needed to reach, even as his mind veered away.
He felt Hana’s concerned gaze flick between him and Yara. She masked her concern whenever she turned to his nephew, who she continued to entertain until it was time for Yara and Aayan to depart.
Yara smiled and shook her fingers through Ayan’s hair as his arms squeezed around Hana in a tight hug, after making her promise to visit him soon.
But when Yara turned her gaze on him, he saw the weight of everything she’d been holding back.
He saw the pleas and the grief and the hope and the desperate sadness.
‘Please. Think about it.’
He clenched his jaw and nodded once before turning his back on them and stalking back into the palace.
Hana smoothed her fingers over her cheeks and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, telling herself not to be silly.
Of course Malik would be subdued after meeting with his sister-in-law, especially given his brother’s condition, which must have been a part of their conversations.
Aayan was a sweet boy who was doing his best to stay strong but had been unable to hide the deep, ongoing hurt of a grief that couldn’t yet be felt or freed.
But she feared that Malik was beginning to withdraw and a part of her was more scared of that than she’d care to admit.
She came out into the bedroom they shared here in the Summer Palace and found him by the open window—the large wooden shutters pulled back to reveal the night sky blanketing the desert in stars.
The wind ruffled the long tendrils of his hair, back from his shoulders and the izaar hanging tight but low on his hips.
He looked so alone in that moment. As if he were standing against the weight of the world.
And whether it scared her or not, she went to him and put her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek against his back.
For a moment she wasn’t sure whether he’d even acknowledge her, but finally he turned in her embrace to look at her with so much in his eyes she knew he wanted to shut out the world.
As he claimed her mouth with his, a kiss almost brutal in its passion, she told herself that she didn’t mind that he wasn’t able to share his thoughts with her. His touch was enough. His presence. Especially when it was as incredible as this.
His fingers threaded in her long hair, angling her head back to give him even more access.
This wasn’t the careful restraint of their first coming together, nor the easy delight of the second or third.
This, this, was what she had sensed in him the first time she’d seen him beneath the powerful jets of the water in the spa.
This was who had raced across the desert, had led armies and talked with world leaders as an equal.
This was the man who fiercely guarded his people and his country.
This was who she had wanted from the very first time she’d laid eyes on him.
And while she didn’t think that she knew exactly what would happen now between them, she was ready. Ready and so much more than willing. He drew her to him and she surrendered to everything he wanted.
Her body ached with want as the hard ridge of his arousal pressed through the thin cloth of the izaar. Her hands, not his, went to slip the material free from where it had been secured, and within seconds he was naked while she was still in her silken robe.
He looked down at her, a storm in his gaze. ‘Hana—’
‘It’s okay,’ she offered him. He didn’t need to explain. She knew what he needed. That it was her, was enough. ‘Take it. Take me,’ she whispered.
He lifted her from the floor into his arms, but instead of going to the bed, he spun her around and walked her until her back met the wall.
His hands held her in places as his mouth ravished her, his lips on her neck, her breasts, the moans of delight falling from her mouth almost unrecognisable.
She fisted his hair in her hands, pulling him back only so that she could claim his mouth with hers.
The near feral growl that rose in his throat sent shivers of desire across her skin, and it became a power play, one that she wouldn’t back down from.
His hand slid beneath the open silk of her robe, and slipped between her legs, his thumb playing with the little nub of delicate flesh that sent her hips rolling and her breath gasping.
The desperate need building inside of her shocked her with its speed and intensity, and she reached between them to angle him to exactly where she wanted him and she whimpered when he teased her at her entrance.
But instead of entering her in one powerful thrust like he had done several times over the last few nights, he took his time, slowly, so, so, so slowly that she felt the very moment the orgasm began, rising from the ground up, a realisation so clear, so loud, that it was love.
Love she felt for this man. Love that made her want to give him everything of herself.
Not just her body, but her comfort, her support, her hope and her trust.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he claimed her mouth with his, cutting off what she might have confessed, his tongue mirroring the thrusts of his body, until she felt she felt utterly and irrevocably claimed.
Again and again and again, she was ravished by this man and loved every second of it. The tremors that cut through his body into hers built her own, as he fiercely pushed them towards the abyss of an orgasm so intense she knew that she’d never be the same.
His hands gripped her arms and hips, and even as the powerful thrusts pushed her to the brink, his forehead pressed against her chest as if he could hide with her, hide in her, and all she could say was ‘I’m with you. I’m with you.’
His powerful orgasm poured into her just as her muscles clamped around him and the cry that was torn from her mouth was drowned out by the roar that came from the husband she had fallen in love with.
His heart pounded in his chest as if he’d run the length of the desert and it had nothing to do with the orgasm that had felt as if it might have changed something fundamental in him.
He’d just taken Hana against a wall. He’d taken what he’d needed from her without being able to stop himself. How could he have done that?
She was still cradled between him and the wall, their bodies sweat soaked and breathless. He dropped his forehead to her chest, wishing he could tell her all the things in his head, but he could barely understand his thoughts himself.