He lunged for her as if to stop her conclusions in their tracks, his face clenched with denial and dismay. “You’re the only one who ever saw me for what I really am, Maram. Don’t doubt everything about me or what we shared now.”
She stumbled out of reach, groping for the deadness that was descending on her, needing its oblivion. “What did we share? The prerequisite tryst when a male and female are secluded? A sexual adventure starring the paranoid prince and the promiscuous princess he kept maddened with lust by his calculated elusiveness and—”
He cut across her toneless words. “There was nothing calculated about anything I said or did from that goddamn moment you got down from your four-by-four. But are you taking all you said and did back? You’re saying it was only lust that kept you coming after me until you breached my barriers and ended my resistance?”
His air of hurt—the injustice of it, the sheer undetectable fakeness of it, even now—crested, loomed over her like a tsunami.
Then it all crashed on her, pulverizing the numbness that had encapsulated her so far, decimating her, heart and mind.
From the wreckage, a thick whisper bled from her lips. “Believe what you will. As I will. I’m sure the worst I can believe now won’t be as bad as the truth.”
She staggered around and he caught her arm, the agitation in his touch, in his eyes gouging her with misery.
His hoarse words cut deeper. “You want to talk ‘believing the worst’? How about that it wasn’t even lust that drove you, but an insidious plan to make me send everything but you to hell, starting with my plan and Zohayd’s fate? To tie me up in so many knots I’d be unable to move against your father for fear of losing you, leaving him free to plot the downfall of my kingdom?”
The moment the words were out, Amjad lunged as if he would snatch them back before they reached her ears, sank into her mind. He did bite down on them so viciously that he drew blood.
It was too late. She lurched as if he’d slashed her in two, disappointment and distrust welling like dark blood from a wound in the gaze that had adored and idolized him till an hour ago.
He was losing her. He couldn’t lose her.
He dragged her into his arms, buried his face in her hot neck, shuddered with dread. She struggled to get away, when before she had always tried to get closer, to give more.
And he begged. “Forget what I just said. Forget it all.”
“If only I can forget…everything.”
Her struggles intensified into violence, until it was either he let her go or hurt her to curb them. He let her go.
She flung herself against the wall, stood with her arms spread against it as if she’d melt into it to escape him, watched him with the wariness and hatred of a cornered cat.
He groaned his mounting heartache, “You think I dreamed it could go this far? I had this tidy plan where I’d get your fool of a father to stop the catastrophe he’s set in motion without you being the wiser. But you overwhelmed my intentions and everything else inside me and I literally forgot how we got here. I want you so damn much now it’s an agony with every breath I draw.” Her eyes screamed liar. He winced at the shrillness of her mental accusation. “I never lied about what I feel for you.”
“No. That’s the one thing you couldn’t bring yourself to lie about. You felt nothing, so you said nothing.”
He’d been wondering if that would come back to bite him. Now it had. Right through the heart. He could put a thousand names to what he felt for her now and she’d think him an even bigger liar.
He had to take this away from declarations and denials that would only count against him, tackle the cause of this breach.
His breath left him in a shuddering exhalation. “I know this was a big shock, and I would have given anything to—”
She cut across him in that monotone that pushed his desperation higher. “To keep me cooperative in and out of bed until my father hands back the jewels. I realize how inconvenient it is to be exposed this late in the game.”
He opened his mouth to blurt out a protest, closed it.
Anything he said would only pour acid on her too-fresh wounds. He had to let her go now. Give her time to calm down.
Then she’d remember. Every word and laugh and touch they’d shared. She’d see the true extent of his transgression without the exaggeration of shock and hurt, come to rationalize it like she always did. Then she’d forgive him. She’d let him near again.
He couldn’t contemplate any other possibility.
He’d let Maram go.
She’d passed him like an automaton, gone about her bedtime routines and headed to bed. He hadn’t heard a sound inside since.
It was dawn and he’d gone past breaking point a hundred times. That was how many times he’d stormed to the bedroom only to stop short, almost breaking with the effort not to barge inside and beg her to be his Maram again. To shower him with the exultation and imperviousness of her exoneration and belief, what he realized he’d come to depend on, even more than the magic of her emotions and desire.
“Amjad.”
He jolted upright. Maram.
She was standing at the corridor’s opening, dressed for the first time since their first night together. Her face was deadpan.
“All through the night, I’ve been remembering,” she said.
Yes. Please. Remember, he groaned inwardly.
“Every second we shared. Every word and look and touch.”
What he’d sat out here in hell hoping for. His heart slammed against its confines with expectation.
Then she went on and it almost burst. “And the more I remembered the more the truth spread its poison over everything that happened since I so willingly rushed into your trap.”
No. She should be seeing the real truth. Beyond the damning circumstantial evidence. As she always did.
“Now I see everything in its macabre light, turning my joy to pathetic obliviousness, our passion to humiliation and my love to shame.”
He heaved up to his feet, horrified. “Ya Ullah, la…Maram, matgooli hada… don’t say that. That isn’t the truth.”
“The truth is that your abduction plans went wrong, but you adjusted them on the fly, settling for your second-best hostage. You kept me in the dark, not to spare me as an innocent pawn, but so I’d be easier to handle. When I proved only too easy, you decided to have fun, pretending to resist my advances, enjoying making me pant as I offered you everything I had if only you’d take it. I’m not blaming you for that, though. As you say in the region, ‘the law doesn’t protect fools.’”