The Inherited Bride (16 page)

No matter who she was conversing with she gave them
all of her focus, all of her attention, and she did it with such an air of interest that whoever she was speaking to felt at the center of her universe. She was an asset that most politicians would dream of.

She leaned against the doorframe, exhaustion evident on her face. She looked so beautiful there, the light from the palace making a halo around her dark hair from behind, the moon casting a silver glow on her golden skin. There was still a lingering warmth in the night air, the scent of sun on sand not yet faded.

“Where did you learn to work a room like that?” he asked.

She shrugged, not looking at him, keeping her eyes fixed on a distant point out in the desert; that unusual reserve that she seemed to be showing only to him was back. “We held many diplomatic events in Turan, and traveled to several outside of the country. I told you, I speak many languages and I often conversed with dignitaries in attendance. I was trained to be a royal wife.”

“And you were trained well.”

“Yes. I was. I enjoy that part of it, really. I like people. I like hearing about their lives, their dreams and struggles. One thing I’ve found is that people usually want the same things, no matter how different they are.”

“I have never spent a lot of time getting to know people,” he said, realizing how true it was.

Other than Hassan, he didn’t count anyone as his friend. He’d had affairs with women over the years—nothing permanent, nothing serious. And he hadn’t wanted those connections. Hadn’t wanted to be close to anyone. Yet Isabella seemed to want to know anyone and everyone. She was so open, so exposed to anyone who might try and hurt her.

“I don’t know that I’ve really gotten to know very
many people. Being royalty, it seems like you’re always … separate. But I’ve gotten to be a small part of a lot of people’s lives. I like that.”

“I thought you were very selfish when we first met,” he said, remembering how he had assumed she was a spoiled little rich girl, whining about moving from one palace to the next. “But that was the only moment in your life you’ve ever spared for yourself, wasn’t it?”

She laughed softly, a small amount of warmth returning to her face. “I did sneak out shopping with my sister-in-law once. She didn’t know we were sneaking, poor thing. That turned out to be a bad idea too.”

“You think now that your time in Paris was a bad idea?”

“I don’t know, Adham. I learned to want a lot more than I did before I left. Different things than I thought I wanted.”

“Freedom from the an arranged marriage?”

She pushed away from the doorframe, her eyes, which had been avoiding him, locked onto him now. “No. I learned to want things I had ignored—things I had never thought I would truly desire. How could I when my husband had been chosen for me? There was never a reason to look at another man, never a reason to want to know about … sex.”

She touched his arm, the brush of her skin sending a shock of kinetic energy through him, straight to his groin, making him totally hard in an instant.

“Being with you … that was when I learned what it was to want.” She licked her lips and lust kicked him. Hard. “That was the other moment in my life when I was selfish,” she finished on a whisper.

He gripped her wrist, backed her against the door, his mouth finding the sensitive curve of her neck, pressing
a kiss to her flesh, damp from the heat, tasting the salt of her skin, the essence of Isabella. His Bella.
His.

A small moan escaped her lips and he caught it with his mouth, kissing her hard, devouring her. And she met him, her tongue thrusting into his mouth, her body moving against him, the restrictive fit of her red gown keeping her movements slight.

She tried to spread her legs wider, tried to move that sensitive part of her body against his hardened erection, to give them both the release they so desperately craved. Desire burned in him, wild, uncontrolled.

He gripped her hip, running his hand around to the curve of her bottom and down to her thigh, taking hold of the intricate beaded design on the gossamer fabric and tugging hard, tearing the material so that she was able to move with more freedom. She bent her knee and he lifted her leg, wrapping it around his calf as she leaned back against the doorframe, moving her body sensually against him.

He was ready to come then and there—from her delighted moans of pleasure, from the slick of her tongue against his, from the heat that radiated at the apex of her thighs, a heat that he knew signaled her readiness for him. One more decisive tear of that demure dress and he could sweep it aside and thrust into her.

“Apologies.” A nervous voice brought him out of his sensual haze and he moved away from Isabella, turning to see a young man standing in the corridor, his eyes downcast. “Sheikh Hassan is on the phone and wishes to speak to you.”

He looked at Isabella, who had pressed herself tightly to the doorframe, her eyes squeezed shut, her cheeks flushed pink, her breasts rising and falling with each heavy breath she took. Her dress was torn from her thigh
down past her knee, revealing smooth golden skin—skin he’d had his hands on only moments ago, that he wanted to have his hands on again. Even now, with a servant standing there looking on, he wanted to finish what they had started. What they had started in a public place in the palace while they were still unmarried.

The Umarahn people would expect a certain code of conduct from their High Sheikh and his Sheikha, and while most of the modern people would assume they were not abstaining, they would still find it distasteful to know that he had nearly taken Isabella against the palace wall, with doors opened to the desert.

No more distasteful than they would find it that he had taken her virginity on the floor of a tent in the middle of the desert while she’d been engaged to their beloved Hassan.

“Goodnight, Isabella,” he said, turning away from her.

He heard a sharp catch in her breathing, knew she was holding back a sob, but he kept walking. He could not afford to let her control him—could not afford to let his need for her get so out of hand that he forgot everything for the pursuit of the pleasure he could find in her body. He could not afford to lose focus even for a moment.

He had seen the damage it could cause. And he wanted no part of something that could be that destructive.

“A
GAIN
you do not have your ring on.” Adham’s deep voice was full of censure.

Isabella looked away from the scenery, flying by in a red blur out the window of the Hummer, and down at her bare hand. “What does it matter?”

“It matters a great deal. You are my fiancée. It is expected for you to wear my ring.”

She took a deep breath, pain lancing her. “But it isn’t your ring. It’s Hassan’s. And it isn’t
my
ring. There’s nothing about it that has any personal meaning or value to me.”

“You’re being petulant.”

“Maybe.” She wasn’t, though. He was just being too obtuse to see it. Because the engagement meant nothing to him. It meant nothing to him that her ring had been a part of an entirely different engagement, that it had been given to her by a delivery man.

It mattered to her, though. It would matter to any woman. It wasn’t as though Adham hadn’t had relationships before. He should know enough about women to figure that out. Or maybe his affairs had been so detached that he really didn’t have a clue what something like a ring could really mean to a woman.

That thought made her feel both relief and heartrending
sadness. Relief because she didn’t like the idea of Adham’s heart having belonged to any other woman, but sadness because the thought of him involving himself in such a soulless, purely physical affair made her almost sick. He was worth so much more than that.

He took one hand off the steering wheel and gripped her wrist, holding her arm up as if he was examining it. “You aren’t putting it on.”

“I left it back at the palace. I took it off when things were ended with Hassan.”

“The engagement, the original arrangement, is still in place.”

“Only the fiancé has changed. An incidental, I guess?”

He didn’t respond to that. He set her hand gently in her lap, the touch sending a shockwave through her as it always did, and turned his focus back to the road.

“The people at the Bedouin encampment might wonder,” he said tightly.

“Then they can wonder. I think it’s safe to say that everyone in Umarah knows we have an unusual situation. They know I was promised to Hassan, and they know he’s now chosen someone else and that I am marrying his brother. I highly doubt anyone expects our relationship to appear conventional.”

“The faster we can erase the scandal from the minds of the people, the better. I see no point in drawing it out. It will all be forgotten eventually. The more we are seen together, the more natural all of this will seem. Then there will be the wedding, and children. None of this will matter.”

“So we’re putting on a show for the nation? Hoping they’ll forget the truth?”

“What does it benefit our people to see tension between
us? We’re building an alliance between nations through our marriage. Our union must appear strong, so that they will believe the alliance is strong.”

“Much easier that it appear strong than actually have it
be
strong,” she muttered, turning her focus back to the arid desert.

“The situation is what it is, Bella. It is not ideal, but we must make the best of it.”

Pain shot through her. Not ideal. Well, maybe that was true for him. She
knew
it was true for him. But what did he think it was like for her? Did he really think she would rather be with Hassan? Did he believe that she had given herself to him that night in the desert out of rebellion? How could he be dense enough to miss how much she felt for him?

It came back to the way he saw relationships. The way he saw sex. Sex was recreation for him, affairs a simple diversion in between assignments or work in the oil fields. While for her … it had been life-altering. Being with him like that. Even now it sent a thrill through her body and caused tears to form in her eyes.

Shimmering waves of heat parted in the distance, and Isabella could see oil rigs against the backdrop of the faded blue sky.

Adham gestured to the right, to a mountainous stretch beyond the flat portion where the rigs were stationed. “The encampment is back there. Many of the men work on the fields, adding new joints, checking core samples, measuring depth.”

“And the drilling projects were your doing?”

“We were already drilling, but I made the move to invest more in the operation. It’s provided good jobs for our people, and a very valuable export. The benefits for the economy have been exponential.”

“Really, Adham, is there anything you can’t do?”

She turned to look at him, saw his jaw clench, his shoulders roll forward slightly as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “I don’t know that I have you figured out.”

It was such an honest, frustrated admission, one that shocked her. “I can’t wear Hassan’s ring,” she blurted.

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s a beautiful ring. It’s not my style, but it
is
beautiful. I can’t wear it because I’m not marrying Hassan. It’s linked to him, not to you, and as long as I wear it I feel … I feel like I’m still engaged to him.”

“Why couldn’t you just say that?” He sounded even more exasperated now.

“Because if I say it, it doesn’t mean as much as if you just … figure it out.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It isn’t,” she insisted. “It’s like having to ask for flowers.”

“Which isn’t good either?”

“No. You want the other person to think of it, otherwise it has no meaning.”

They were getting close to the rigs now. The sound of drilling filled the air, overpowering the sound of the car’s motor, the scent of the crude oil coming through the air vents. The road they were on wound around the rigs, taking them behind the mountains, which did a good job of absorbing the bulk of the noise.

“Life would be simpler if you would just ask for things,” he muttered.

“That’s very male of you,” she said stiffly. The pragmatic side of him reminded her of her brother, and her brother’s pragmatic side irritated her.

“Well,
amira,
I am very male.” That last comment hung between them as silence filled up the car.

She swallowed, her throat dry. “Yes.” She knew that. She knew that so very well.

That one time together, though … had it only been two days ago? … hadn’t been enough. She hadn’t gotten to see enough of his body, hadn’t had enough opportunity to simply admire his physique, to enjoy the feel of his hot skin against hers.

Her face flamed.

It was strange to think she’d actually slept with him. She’d imagined, when she’d even let herself think about it, that sex would bring people closer together, not make everything so … complicated.

Maybe it wasn’t really complicated. She knew how she felt about him, and he’d made it clear how he felt about her. So it was just sad, then.

A row of low, dark tents came into view, and Isabella could see smoke rising from campfires, children running around with their mothers close behind them. Out here in the middle of the desert, with all of the sand so still, there was life.

“I can’t believe they live out here. There’s nothing for so many miles.”

“It’s their way of life. They’ve lived this way for centuries. We do the best we can to provide mobile medical service.”

“What about emergencies?” she asked, looking at the children.

“We do the best we can. Many of the Bedouin encampments have satellite phones and generators now that enable them to call, and we can have helicopters sent if necessary.”

“And schools?”

“Something that hasn’t been handled to my satisfaction yet,” he said, bringing the car to a halt on the outskirts of the camp.

She unbuckled quickly and let herself out of the vehicle, meeting him halfway around the other side. “Do you have any ideas? “

“Not any that are feasible at the moment, but it’s something that Hassan was working on, and I’m happy to continue that work and see it through.”