“When I did, she was both amazed and a little horrified, I think.”
“Not all men strut around claiming that their...” A dark flush claimed his cheeks. “Whatever it is you said. I didn’t strut.”
“Well, you’re not really the strutting kind.”
“No?” His mouth twitched now. “I feel as though my machismo has been reduced. What kind am I?”
“Please. Like you don’t know.”
It was his turn to shrug now. “I would like to hear it in your words.”
“Blatant sexuality oozes out of every pore in your body, Zafir.” Warmth pooled below her skin at her own words. “Six years of sexual drought and it took you three days. You made me feel as if I was the most attractive woman in the world. As if I was the only one to have shredded that tight control of yours. Hell of a trick that,” she said, aware of how powerless her attraction to him always left her.
“It was not a trick. Whatever you felt, multiply it by ten times and you’ll understand how I felt.”
The divan shifted as Zafir’s weight sank into it and every cell in her froze.
Golden eyes stared back at her. His elbows on his legs, he was leaning forward.
“So are you going to want help with night feedings and such when the baby comes? Is there a class we should be attending together to learn about these things?”
It was the cruelest thing he could have asked her. Like a mirage in the desert that could tempt and warp one’s sense of reality. That promised to quench your unbearable thirst when there was not a drop.
He had no right to ask such things of her when they were anything but a married couple absolutely in love with each other.
Donning a smile that threatened to crack her face with its brittleness, she went for playfulness. No way would she ever betray how dismayed she felt. “There’s going to be an army of maids and nannies at my command, right?” Her neck hurt at how stiffly she held herself.
She took his silence as a yes.
“Then you’ll be excused. I’m sure you’ll be super busy with state affairs to...” She shrugged the rest of her answer away.
The tent reverberated with something unsaid, yet Lauren didn’t know what. Unless it was her brittle smile cracking into pieces.
Zafir stood to leave. Pausing at the entrance to the tent, he looked back at her. “I will send a maid. You can wash in the oasis and rest. Is there anything you need?”
The moment she shook her head, he was gone.
* * *
Zafir heard the splash around the oasis while he walked the perimeter, like he had done since Rashid had brought him here a long time ago.
Once he had discovered his father’s duplicity, he had not come here again. Loathed to mar this place with bitter reality, he realized now.
He had always felt great pride when he had visited here, pride that the High Sheikh had seen something in him to educate him alongside his son, that he trusted him, an orphan, with state affairs.
He felt no such pride today and thanks to the woman splashing in the pool, no peace either. All he needed to do was close his eyes and he could imagine her slender shoulders dipping into the cool waters, could imagine her hands pushing away that inky dark hair, could imagine her lithe legs kicking through the water.
A moment’s fear stilled him at the deceptive depth of the oasis on one side. Did she know how to swim?
Cocking his head to a side, he listened but only heard the smooth swish of water and her clean strokes.
The sand shifted under him, but he pressed on, knowing the path very well. The sky was lit orange with the setting sun, but until the orange orb set, the heat would not relent.
Neither would the knot in his stomach.
He’d had the perfect moment to ensnare her earlier. There had been such desperate longing, such a raw need in her gaze before she had shied it away from him.
It was a vulnerability he had never seen in Lauren, not after that first day in the situation room. He realized he preferred her glaring at him, questioning him, rather than that shattered light in those eyes.
Because, somehow, it had made him feel responsible for her. And not just her physical well-being. He had wanted to crush her in his arms, he had wanted to tell her that he would do everything and more that Bashir had done for Salma. That he couldn’t wait to see his child suckle at her breast.
Anything, he would have done anything to bring back the smile to her mouth.
And it was the very force of that need that had stayed his hand.
When he knew he couldn’t have her as his wife, it was all he’d been able to think about.
And now, now that marriage to her offered him the reins of Behraat, the advantage he needed over the High Council, now he was hesitating.
Why?
He withdrew his sat phone from his jeans pocket and made a call, leaving himself no room to back out.