The Scandalous Collection

Chapter Seven

Angelina pulled her thin robe more tightly around herself and stepped out into the gardens, the cobblestones, cooled by the night air, felt good on her feet. Calming. Soothing.

She followed one of the paths that led into the center of the lavishly kept landscape, her thoughts turning over that afternoon’s conversation with Taj. Taj didn’t know how to love. He hadn’t learned how.

A shame since she loved him.

She was certain of that now. That she loved him. That she had loved for him for years, and that no matter how bad their first parting had been, the good memories would always be stronger.

“What brings you out here?”

Angelina whirled around to find the voice in the darkness and nearly ran into Taj. “What are you doing out here?”

“I asked first. Come now, I am sheikh and I am accustomed to being answered.” He said it with no irony. Nothing but the absolute certainty of a man who only knew how to get his way.

She shifted her weight to one leg and put her hand on her hip. “You’ll have to be disappointed then, sugar.”

He narrowed his eyes, clearly annoyed. Good. “Then I’ll settle for giving you my reasons. I couldn’t sleep.”

She shrugged. “Oh, funny. I could. That’s why I’m out here. You’re just seeing my astral projection. I’m sound asleep in the house.”

“You have such a mouth on you,” he said. “I am not complaining. I’ve benefitted hugely from your use of that mouth.”

It was her turn to be annoyed. “A gentleman wouldn’t bring such things up.”

“I’m not a gentleman,” he said, his tone rough.

“Ah…no of course not. You’re a sheikh.”

“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the fountain.

She crossed her arms and tilted her head. “Come on now, Taj, you should know me better than that.”

He kept his dark eyes trained on her, his face shadowed in the dim light of the garden. He moved to the edge of the fountain and sat down, then touched the place beside him. “Please, sit with me.”

The change was so abrupt, so unlike him, that it made her chest feel tight. It made her feel like maybe he did know her. Like he might at least try to be the right man for her, instead of just asking her to be the right woman for him.

She turned and sat down beside him, her hands in her lap. “What is it, Taj?”

“I might ask you the same question since you’re wandering the gardens at night.”

“And so are you.”

“I thought…” He frowned. “I was certain I heard you, but I know that isn’t possible. My rooms are on the other end of the palace. But…I was certain I did.” His brow was furrowed, his forehead lined with concentration.

His admission made her stomach tighten, made her chest feel full. “I’m all right, I just…”

“You aren’t,” he said, turning and cupping her cheek, his thumb sliding lightly over her cheekbone, the movement sending a shiver through her body.

“I will be,” she said, not sure if that was the truth or not. “Your family has ruled Rahat for…for generations, right?”

“A thousand years.”

“You believe in…in fate and destiny, I’ll bet.” She looked down at her hands, still folded in her lap.

“Yes.”

“So tell me, did I ever have a chance of escaping this?” She looked up, around the courtyard. “Or was I always meant to be Queen of Rahat, the mother of your heirs, no matter what? Is our fate written in stone or do we have…do we have any control?”

He frowned. “Angelina…” He looked away from her, appearing to change tactic. “We both had a choice that night in Santina. We chose to follow our desire.”

He touched her again, his fingers sifting through her hair. And she could feel the unsteadiness in his hand. “But did we have a choice in that?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

He slid his hand down to her face and she looked at him. She saw heat in his eyes, lust, but there was something deeper. A longing that went further than the need for physical satisfaction. She knew that longing. It went so deep, felt so essential, it was painful. She wondered if he truly felt it. For her, as she did for him.

“There is always a choice, Angel,” he said, leaning in, firm, hot lips touching hers, shocking in the cool night air. “What choice will you make now?”

“I…” Her lower lip trembled and she caught it between her teeth, the tremor working its way through her body. She released her lip. “I choose you,” she said.

His breath rushed from his body, a low growl behind it. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. He kissed her and she nearly sighed with relief. It had been too long.

Everything. All of it had gone on far too long. Taj was the only man she’d ever loved. Being away from him had been like functioning with a piece of herself missing. She’d done it, she’d done what she had to do to try to be strong. But she would be lying if she didn’t admit to herself that being in his arms felt so much better than keeping her pride ever had.

And that was frightening.

“Wait,” she said, pulling away from him, her heart thundering. Pride would have a place here, and she would see it had a victory.

“What?” he asked, pressing his forehead against hers, his breath sporadic.

“How do you see me?”

“What does that mean, Angel?”

“What am I to you? Am I the woman you are chained to? Am I the woman who got away that you seized the chance to capture again? A salve for your wounded ego?” She put her hands on either side of his face. “What am I to you?”

He hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, she saw the man she’d known first. The man who had romanced her in Texas, rather than the autocratic ruler. “You are…the woman who has haunted my dreams these past years. When I saw you at Alessandro’s engagement party I thought you were a mirage. I didn’t trust myself. I had seen you too many times before, only to get close and discover it wasn’t really you. You are my most hated delusion and my deepest desire.” The words sounded pulled from him, as though each one carried a heavy weight. A high price. “Does that answer your question?”

She felt a tear slide down her cheek and she brushed it away. “I…I imagined you never thought about me again after I left.”

He laughed, a short, bitter sound. “There was a time when I thought of little else.”

“That surprises me.”

“Why? Did you forget?”

She didn’t want to give him honesty, but there was no way around it. Not when his words were so naked and raw, so obviously true. “Of course I didn’t forget. I uprooted my whole life. I left my country. The money, the lifestyle I was used to having, to try to escape the situation I found myself in.”

“To escape me.”

“To escape marrying a man who saw me as nothing more than a possession. To escape a father who saw me as a bargaining chip. To find out who I was away from the manipulation of others. Don’t flatter yourself by making it so personal.”

He tightened his hold on her, his gaze intense. “You think it’s not?”

She shook her head.

“You are a liar,” he said, leaning in, his lips skimming her cheek. “I think the things you feel toward me are very personal.”

Why did he do this to her? Why did she have such a hard time resisting him? She didn’t even want to resist. She tilted her head and kissed him, her eyes closed tight. She pulled her head back, her breathing shallow.

“What am I to you, Angelina Carpenter?” he asked, tracing the line of her lips with his finger.

“You are—” she cleared her throat and tried to disguise the quiver in her voice “—you are a mystery to me, as is my attraction to you. That’s why I keep coming back to fate.”

For a moment, he looked stunned. Then in one fluid movement he picked her up from her position on the fountain and stood, striding across the courtyard. She looped her arms around his neck and held on.

“That’s a good enough answer for me,” he said, stopping in front of a divan that was shrouded in palms. He set her down on the velvet surface and pulled his shirt over his head, coming to sit down beside her. “Is it enough for you?”

She nodded, unsure she could make her voice work.

“Good,” he whispered, lowering his head and kissing her.

She slid her hands to his chest, reveled in the feeling of his muscles beneath her palms. He was everything she’d ever fantasized about. He was…Taj. And even though so much of what she wanted from him was going unmet, she knew that for now, for this moment, she would give everything.

One moment to lay herself bare, in a physical sense, to hold nothing back, before she retreated behind her emotional protection. She couldn’t love him for their whole marriage, not without his love. It would destroy her.

But she would do it right now. Unreservedly.

While his guard was down. While he was unprotected, too.

He pulled off her robe, then her flimsy top. The cold air hit her bare breasts and she gasped. Taj laughed and bent his head, drawing a tightened nipple into his mouth. She clutched his shoulders, his name on her lips, her body on fire with need for him. All of him.

She pushed her pants down her thighs and kicked them off while Taj worked to free himself of his own clothes. When his skin pressed against hers, she sighed in relief. How did he feel so essential? How did being with him make her feel like something that had been missing all her life was present in a profound way?

He lowered his head and kissed her neck as he settled between her thighs, sliding into her slowly. A short sigh of pleasure escaped her lips and he caught it with his, the kiss deep and sensual, working with his thrusts.

She kept her eyes open, locked with his as she rocked against him, driving them both higher until they reached the peak together. He held her against him, his heart thundering, his skin slicked with sweat.

She felt empowered by it. By the fact that she’d affected him. By the fact that she wasn’t in it alone. She’d wondered if it had all been in her head. For so long she’d wondered that. If she’d been the only one who’d felt anything. If he’d had to close his eyes and think of Rahat when he kissed her back in Texas.

But she knew now, knew it with even greater certainty than she had that night in Santina. She knew that while he might not love her, he desired her. That it was the kind of desire that went beyond simple lust and set out to drive a person crazy.

She knew, because she felt it, too. Because she recognized that what she felt lived in him, too.

She could hold on to that. She could forget about the love thing and pretend that lust was all that mattered. She closed her eyes tight and tried to cling to the lie.

Chapter Eight

“The wedding will take place in two weeks.” Taj walked into Angelina’s quarters and a hard slug of arousal hit him in the gut.

They’d stayed out in the garden until the sky had started turning pink at the horizon line, bleeding up into the inky blackness, washing it clean. He’d held her until he was certain they would be missed, and possibly discovered, naked on the divan, covered only in her robe.

Then he’d sent her back to her room, and he’d gone back to his. And his body had burned. He’d ended up in an ice cold shower, gritting his teeth as the water hit his skin like a thousand needles and his erection ached, finding absolutely no relief.

He’d ended up shivering and horny.

What was it about her? How was it she’d managed to burrow her way under his skin all those years ago? It was as though she lived in him. A strange thought. A foolish thought, and yet it seemed the only explanation for what he felt when he was around her.

Angelina looked at him, her lush lips shaped into a perfect O. “What? Why so soon?”

He looked pointedly at her stomach.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I won’t start showing for a while. I mean, I knew you wanted to marry quickly but…two weeks? In the States I would have a hard time getting a wedding cake on two weeks’ notice!”

“You underestimate the power of money.”

“No. I don’t. Trust me. My family is practically made of money.”

“Then you underestimate the power of the sheikh of Rahat. I will have my staff see to the wedding feast. The ceremony will be held here at the palace. Small by royal standards but it cannot be helped.”

Her smooth brow crinkled as she drew her eyebrows together. “Oh, yes. It can’t be helped because I’m disgraced. Can’t have people thinking I’m pregnant, it would reflect badly on me. Not on you, of course, but then, isn’t that the way of it?”

Anger curled his stomach. Anger at whom…Angelina, his country and its traditions, or himself, he wasn’t sure. Possibly all three. “If you had married me three years ago you could have had the finest wedding imaginable,” he said through clenched teeth. “A parade through the city. A handmade wedding gown. Thousands of attendants ready to pay homage to the new queen.”

If she had married him three years ago he would have spared so many sleepless nights, so much longing.

At least he had her now. She would have to stay with him. She would be his wife and the mother of his child. She could not leave him now. That brought a slight sense of a relief, took away some of the pressure in his chest.

“Oh, yes, that’s what I need, Taj. A bigger wedding. That’s the problem. It simply won’t be grand enough if I’m not brought into the church on…on…camel back.” She stood, her pale cheeks flushing a dark rose. “How did you know that was the most essential thing to me? I should have married you three years ago, if not for the wedding, so my wardrobe would be more current.”

He stepped back, the heat in his stomach spreading now, a blaze of anger streaking along his veins. “Is that what you want? More gowns? I will give them to you. I can give you anything. Everything. I am Sheikh. I can provide you with things no other man can.”

“Oh, is that so,” she said, hands on her shapely hips. “Well, I believe that, sugar, I do. But there are men who could provide me with things you will never be able to give me.”

“I think not,” he said, striding forward and wrapping his arms around her, pulling her against him. Her eyes widened and he gentled his hold, his heart hammering. “I think not,” he said again, his voice softer.

He moved his thumb over her bottom lip and a shiver of desire racked his body. “The need I feel for you is as much a part of me as my blood,” he said. “And I am certain you feel the same.”

She pulled back. “That’s sex. So maybe we have good sex, and maybe we both want more of it. But sex isn’t everything.”

“You say that, but you are wrong. You have some…misconstrued idea that marriage is about love, I imagine. A modern concept that I have no patience for. Suitability, chemistry, that is what matters. Not some vague idea of a feeling that has no guarantee of existing let alone lasting. This,” he said, putting his hand on her chest, feeling her heart beating rapidly beneath his palm, “this is real. What I make you feel.”

“Go away, Taj.”

Dismissed. No one dismissed him. No one left him. And Angelina seemed to do both of those things freely.

“For now,” he said, taking a step back, ignoring the ugly twisting in his chest that was threatening to cut off his air supply. “But remember this, Angelina. You are pregnant with my heir, and you will be my wife. There is no running from this.”

He said it as much to remind him as her. She couldn’t leave him. Not now.

A good thing. Because if she did…he did not know how he would live with himself.

Chapter Nine

“She is getting sicker, Sheikh.” Hana, one of the maids trusted with Angelina’s care, stood before him, wringing her hands. “She is not keeping any food down. Not all day.”

“Do you think she needs a doctor?” he asked.

Hana shrugged. “The doctor has been. He says as long as she does not lose too much weight…he says her sickness is normal. Bad, but to be expected.”

Hana was one of the few on staff who was aware of the fact that Angelina was pregnant, but as she was attending her, Taj had felt it important.

“There is nothing that can be done?”

“She was given medication for motion sickness, which helps some women. Though she’s reluctant to take it. It makes her nervous.”

“Stubborn woman,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “Is she asleep now?”

“Yes.”

“I will go to her. Keep everyone away from her end of the palace. I do not want her disturbed. Today, she is in my care.”

He stalked across the palace, his footsteps echoing on the marble floor, staff scurrying aside when they saw him coming.

His heart was pounding heavily by the time he reached the entrance to her quarters. He moved through her rooms, the elegant seating area, her sunroom, to her sleeping chamber. He paused at the door, a strange unease filling him.

He’d never cared for anyone in his life. Not on a personal level. On a grand scale, he cared for his people. But he sent others to do his bidding. He signed papers, he waved from vehicles. It was his administrative staff who assigned the execution of tasks.

He was aware, for the first time, of how different ordering care and giving it were.

He pushed the gilded door open and saw Angelina. She was in bed, the covers drawn up beneath her chin, her hair damp, sticking to her forehead.

“You are too hot,” he said, striding across the room, sitting on the edge of the bed and putting his hand on her forehead.

She stirred, opened her eyes, the expression in them confused and sleepy. “I…I’m not. I just…I threw up again and it makes me sweaty. What are you doing here?”

A good question. He felt completely and totally out of his depth. A foreign experience. “I heard you were unwell.”

“I’m morning sick,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“It is three in the afternoon.”

“Morning sickness isn’t always confined to morning, I’ve discovered. But other than feeling like death warmed over, the doctor says I’m fine. The baby is fine.”

“You do not look fine,” he said. “You look like a ghost.”

“I’m not one, though. Promise.” She put her hand on his cheek, his skin warm against his.

“What do you need?”

“What?”

He stood. “What do you need? I will order…I will get it for you.” He didn’t know why, but it seemed important. There were other things he had planned on doing today, but this seemed essential. It seemed like the most essential thing he could do with his time.

“I don’t…I don’t know. I…”

He looked around the room and saw a bowl sitting on the vanity with a white washcloth draped over the side. The bowl was filled with water. He touched his fingers to the surface and found it cold.

“One moment,” he said. He went into her opulent bathroom and refilled the bowl with warm water, bringing it back into her room.

He dipped the cloth in the water, wringing out the excess before returning to her bed.

He pushed her damp hair from her forehead, resting his palm against her skin for a moment before replacing it with the cloth.

She sighed, her eyes meeting his. “Thank you. I felt disgusting.”

“Did you?”

“Sweaty.” She arched slightly. “My shirt is sticking to me.”

He frowned. “Do you need a bath?”

“I wanted one. I was afraid I would pass out.”

He hesitated to ask the next question, because intimacy between them, even the basest intimacy of greeting one another in the corridors, had been cut off since their argument two days earlier. But he had to ask. “Can I stay with you? Can…can I help you?”

“I…yes.”

Angelina watched Taj disappear into the bathroom. She had no idea what had caused his sudden desire to take care of her. Concern for her? For the baby?

Of course he was worried about the baby. It was his heir.

She bit the inside of her cheek. That wasn’t really a fair thought. Taj wasn’t a terrible person, and he’d never acted cold and detached in regards to the baby. It was her he seemed to feel nothing for.

Well, nothing beyond lust and possession. He wanted her, but that wasn’t the same as caring. A man could want riches, but it came from greed. From the need to possess. Not from caring.

She was nothing more than an acquisition to him. Like a new car. A lucrative business deal.

He returned a moment later. He had taken his shirt off, his muscular torso bare and beautiful to her, even in her current state. He bent and scooped her from the bed. She looped her arms around his neck and allowed him to carry her into the bathroom, where he set her gently in front of the newly filled tub.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

“With…with my clothes?” Her heart beat unevenly. “No.”

He turned his back, the muscles shifting, enticing. Somehow, her appreciation of his body transcending her nausea. Almost.

She wobbled slightly as she stepped out of her pajama pants then pulled her top over her head. She got into the tub, the water coming over her breasts, the bubbles helping preserve her modesty. As if she really cared. As if Taj hadn’t already seen it all.

“I’m in,” she said.

He turned, the tension in his body obvious, his jaw tight. He knelt down on the floor beside the tub and she rested her head against the back of the tub. She felt Taj’s hand on her neck, his strong fingers slowly kneading away the ache in her muscles. She hadn’t realized how tense she’d gotten.

But then, heartbreak and constant vomiting could do that to a girl.

He put his other hand on her shoulder, working at the knots there. She released a breath, trying to ignore the other kind of tension that was flooding through her while the muscle tension receded.

This was what she craved from him. This caring. This touch that went beyond a need for sex and satisfaction. A touch that gave.

She wanted to stay with him like this forever. And she also wished he’d never shown her this part of himself. Never shown her this fleeting glimpse of how it could be if he loved her.

If only things could be different.

She closed her eyes, and felt a tear roll down her cheek. “I wish things were different.”