Pushing away his resisting arms, she burrowed into his warmth. So many regrets and not a single one that she could explain. “You have no idea how much I regretted it.”
“What did you regret?”
She looked up at him, knowing that, once again, she was going to disappoint him. “Not making love with you. There were so many nights that I dreamed you were next to me, kissing me, touching me, so many moments when I wished…” She moved out of his reach, bitterness swiftly adding a chill to the air. “And in the morning, I would see another article about you with a new woman. The Prince of Dahaar sowing his wild oats in Monaco, leaving every single party with a new woman. What had they called you, the insatiable prince?” But still, she hadn’t been able to help herself, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from dreaming about him.
He frowned, his gaze drilling into her. “You walked away. I offered you everything.”
“So, of course, that means you can sleep with countless women, doesn’t it?” The words slipped out on a wave of bitter jealousy that scoured through her. She had no right to ask these questions. There was no need to add more bitterness to this fire between them. But she couldn’t stop. “Tell me, Azeez. Was it so easy to forget me, to wipe every thought of me from your mind, from your life?”
And the moment the words spilled out, she wanted to pull them back. Shivering at the slow dawning of anger in his eyes, she clasped her hand over his mouth.
He pulled her hand from his mouth slowly. “Afraid to hear the answer, ya habeebiti? Would you prefer it if I lie?”
There was no point in asking him to lie. Because he would not. The Prince of Dahaar never lied, not for his sake, not for hers.
“You think it was about hurting you, about proving that you were nothing to me?” His soft words landed on her like fiery lashes, burning into her skin.
“Every woman I slept with, I was only cheapening myself. Their faces faded one after the other, the pleasure I found with them transient and shameful…I would wake up in the middle of the night, tangled in bare limbs, sick to my stomach.” The set of his mouth matching the blazing disgust in his eyes, he shuddered. “In my eyes, what you didn’t want was worth nothing to me. I went on a rampage, wondering how I would fill the void, becoming reckless in pursuit of relief, raining down destruction on myself and…”
The shiver in his hands as he ran them through his hair, the utter loathing in his eyes, it was like a slap to Nikhat. How selfish and destructive was she to ask that question?
He slipped out of the bed and walked away. At the door, he turned back. “Let Princess Zohra know if you continue to be unwell. She should be able to arrange anything you need.”
The silence of the suite bore down upon her as Azeez closed the door behind him. Nikhat pulled the sheets toward herself and they bore the scent of him. She clutched it to herself.
What you didn’t want was worth nothing to me.
Those words lanced through her, leaving invisible, permanent marks on her. She had asked for it and he had given it to her, shredding the last thread of lies she had held on to all these years.
Telling herself that he had instantly cast her out of his mind after she left Dahaar, reading about his exploits almost greedily during that first year, she had found a kind of solace in the fact that he had moved on, fooled herself that she had been nothing but a novelty at a distance.
All of them delusions she had set in place to protect herself.
Now his words left her nothing to hide behind.
He had loved her, by his own confession, he had plunged himself into a reckless lifestyle to fill the void she had left…She hugged her knees, the pain of her body paling in comparison to the pain his words had unleashed.
Guilt tightened like an iron chain around her throat, choking her.
Staying here after learning that he was alive—what had she been thinking? How had she forgotten what it had cost her last time to walk away? How had she forgotten how strong this pull between them was?
Throwing the existence of her relationship, even a failed one, in his face, challenging him with her presence every step of the way, giving in to the urge to kiss him, to touch him, playing with his emotions and her own, there was no excuse for her behavior. When had she become so reckless as to tempt fate again, so selfish as to satisfy her own twisted sense of self?
She needed to remember why she was here, and what Azeez had already been through.
Learning that she might never conceive, accepting her inability to be the woman he needed her to be had wrecked her. For months, she had thought herself less than a woman, her entire identity as a woman fracturing because she might not be able to give the man she loved the heirs he needed. And in the end, her love for him had asked for a sacrifice of her own happiness.