‘You can’t leave.’
‘Sorry?’ Samira gaped up into blazing eyes that captured hers with their searing intensity.
‘You have to stay.’
‘I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’
‘This.’ With a lift of the chin he indicated the presidential suite and the city of Paris beyond. ‘I can’t let you go. I need you with me.’
Samira watched his eyes darken to a shadowed moss green, felt the sizzle of response deep inside as he claimed her for himself and couldn’t repress a spark of triumph.
How masochistic could she get? It wasn’t her he wanted, just what she represented—a hostess, a consort, a mother for his children. A chattel.
‘Tariq?’ Her voice was a thin stretch of sound as she struggled to contain her emotions. Suddenly she was shaking all over, her hands palsied in his hold, her chin wobbling.
* * *
Appalled, Tariq saw the change in Samira. He’d wanted for so long to smash through her barriers, to see again some life and emotion in her. Now he did, but she looked like she was breaking under the strain.
Yet he hung on tight. He wasn’t releasing her again.
It was selfish of him.
It was needy.
And he wasn’t budging.
‘You’re mine, Samira. You belong with me.’ Her hands lay limp in his. ‘Samira! Say something.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ She sounded impossibly weary. ‘You don’t deserve the scandal that would come if I walked out on you.’ His heart all but stopped at her admission she’d thought of deserting him permanently. ‘But I can’t live under the same roof with you again.’
There. She’d said it. His worst nightmare had come to pass.
Terror grabbed greedily at him, digging its talons right down to the bone. Pain eviscerated him.
He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came. After what seemed a lifetime he found his voice. It was brittle with self-mockery. ‘And I once believed you loved me.’
Samira’s indrawn breath hissed in the silence. ‘Neither of us wanted love, remember?’
Tariq nodded, the irony of his situation hitting full-force. ‘We don’t always get what we want, though, do we?’
‘Tariq?’ She leaned forward. ‘What are you saying?’
He could have drowned in those serious, honey-brown eyes. He owed her the truth, the whole truth.
‘I married you believing I could have everything and give little in return. I could have the sexiest, most beautiful woman as my wife, in my bed. I could have your smiles and gentle charm and your passion. All I had to do was sit back and take advantage of my good fortune, no emotional strings attached.’
He drew a shaky breath. ‘Until I realised I had it all completely wrong.’ He grimaced at his blind stupidity. ‘Thinking you’d fallen in love scared the life out of me.’ His blood had run cold at the idea of another one-sided love affair. ‘I told myself I did the right thing, withdrawing from you.’
Her eyes were huge. ‘That’s why you gave me the cold shoulder? Because you thought I was in love with you? That’s why you didn’t come to my bed?’ Samira’s voice sounded unfamiliar, sharp with pain. Shame filled him.
Tariq looked down at their linked hands, hers so small in his, yet he was under no illusion that he was the stronger of the pair. He was a hollow sham of the man he’d thought himself.
He forced himself to meet her frowning stare. ‘At first it was to protect you and the baby. I couldn’t let anything happen to you. I needed to keep you safe and sex...’ He shrugged. ‘You’d already had one miscarriage and I knew how suddenly things could go wrong.’
To Tariq’s surprise, Samira’s hands tightened on his. ‘You were thinking of Jasmin?’
‘How could I not? She was fine through her pregnancy, but at the end...’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t take any chances. And then, when you told me you wanted more, you wanted us together, I panicked.’
‘Because you didn’t want me falling in love.’ Her voice was flat and barren. He hated the way it sounded and that he was the reason for that.
‘Because I didn’t know any better.’ He lifted her hands and pressed his lips to first one, then the other, drawing in the sweet taste of her, sucking her delicious cinnamon scent deep into his lungs.
He had to find a way to keep her. Even if it meant baring his imperfect soul.
‘I didn’t know any better then. I thought love was a curse. Until it hit me.’