“I can’t go back to Siyaad as a cast-off wife. I can’t spend the rest of my life among those people...not even for Wasim and Saira. Neither can I turn my back on them. Which means...this life with you is the only option left to me. And I am not going to fight it anymore.”
“You have chosen a hell of a time to stop fighting your fate. Except nothing has changed here,” he said, jabbing his temple.
Her gaze was unrelentingly stubborn. The knot in his gut tightened another notch. “I have seen what you think is your weakness and I have not run away. You do not see me as someone tainted. Isn’t that enough of a start?”
Anger roiled through him, turning his very blood into bitter poison. “You want to be my wife and play happy family? You want to lie down next to me at night when I devolve into nothing but an animal scared of its own shadow? You want to bear the children of a man who is a disgrace on the very name of his ancestors?”
He hated her at that moment, hated that she was not a traditional kind of woman who wouldn’t have dared question his actions, hated that she was a constant reminder of everything he couldn’t have, hated that she dared to call him out on his weakness.
“Do you want to strip the last thread of dignity from me?” he shouted, his throat hoarse.
She pushed at his chest, her lithe form shaking from head to toe. Even in her studied indifference toward their relationship, she had been temptation personified. Now she felt like a powerful sandstorm that could bury him beneath the weight of his own needs and desires.
“Is your dignity more precious than living your life? I’m not talking about love and rainbows, Ayaan. In this life, I know that there is no place for anything but duty. And I’m making my peace with that. You came to my rescue, you promised to ruin Karim for what he said to me today. Why can’t I—”
His blood still boiled with remembered rage. “You are my wife. Your honor is my honor. I will ruin any man who looks at you wrong, who dares to insult you.”
“Can’t you see how unique that very statement is in my life? No one has ever looked at me the way you do, as someone worthy of honor, of respect. You are entitled to all that and I’m not? If I can be of help to you, if I can—”
“You think you can save me? That all it takes is for me to open myself to you, to lose myself in your body and I will magically be a whole man?”
“You are a ticking bomb. You barely sleep, you are killing yourself with that physical regimen, you work hours that no sane man does. If you find a minute’s comfort in being with me, in...touching me, I am...”
“You will let me into your bed knowing that I’m just using you?” he asked, making his words as insulting and mocking as he could, falling lower than the scum who had insulted her, “Knowing that you won’t mean anything more than a willing body to me, knowing that I will never love you?”
She met his gaze unflinchingly, the resolve in her eyes unbroken. “I don’t care. I want to have a purpose to my life. I want to...belong in Dahaar.”
He shivered where he stood, ice-cold fingers clamped around his spine. “Forgive me, Princess. But I am not one of the projects you take up to fix.”
“Then don’t touch me ever again. I mean it, Ayaan. No rituals, no gifts, no gestures for the sake of the damned public, I don’t even want to breathe the same air as you.”
He moved closer to her and she stilled, as if she was gathering herself into a tight ball so that not even his shadow touched her.
Desire was a deafening drumbeat in his very veins.
Had she any idea how much she had worsened his torment by making that offer, how much he wanted to let go of the little honor he had and possess her? How every cell in him wanted a taste of the escape she offered, how much he wanted to steal a moment’s pleasure, seek a moment’s peace with her?
Because that’s what her presence gave him. An irresistible combination of pleasure and peace, except it came with a very high price.
“All or nothing, Zohra? And if I don’t agree? If I continue to touch you and kiss you whenever I want without agreeing to your ridiculous proposal?” And he wanted to. He wanted to take the little he needed without guilt cloying him, without regret scouring him. “We both know all it takes is for us to lay eyes on each other to feel it.”
“But you won’t, will you? You’re furious that I dared change the rules on you.” A lone tear trailed down one cheek and she wiped it away roughly. “I might know nothing about traditions and customs. But I know a little about honorable men, about men bound by duty, men like my father and you.” Bitterness poured out of every word she uttered. “You would rather see the people around you suffer than violate your esteemed principles. You will no more let yourself touch me again than you will realize that you are so much more than the memory of a man long gone.”