that he didn’t want into the anger he needed. Like Nasreen, Sophia, too, had deceived him, leaving him to discover a truth that vitally affected their marriage on their wedding night—even if his discovery that she had been a virgin was the complete opposite of Nasreen’s revelations to him. And he was grateful to have that reason to feed his anger because he was afraid that without it he might be in danger of giving in to those feelings he had already had to fight back once. Feelings of tenderness and care, feelings that … Feelings that meant nothing, were nothing, and which he would stifle and destroy, because that was the way it had to be.
Without looking at Sophia he told her coldly, ‘I want an explanation.’
The abrupt coldness of Ash’s voice and demeanour after the sweet hot pleasure of the sensuality they had just shared shocked Sophia back to reality.
What had happened to her? How and why had she reacted to him in the way that she had, given everything she had believed she knew about herself and her desires for her own emotional future? It didn’t make sense that she should have wanted Ash so immediately, so passionately and so intensely, that it seemed as though her body had been waiting for this and for him. At least, it didn’t make sense, of course, unless that was exactly what had happened, and why she had responded to him the way she had. A cold chill of fear trickled down her spine. That was not true. It couldn’t be true. She refused to let it be true. So why had it happened?
She didn’t know. All she could think, all she could allow herself to believe, was that there had been a moment—a handful of several long delicately spun-out golden moments—during which she had felt as though she had touched heaven and held a rainbow of unimaginable delight in her hands. But that had not been reality. That had been a mirage, an imaginary fantasy, that could not and did not exist, and the last dying echoes of the foolish dreams she had once had.
It meant nothing, and for her pride’s sake, for the sake of the future, she must now learn to forget about it.
‘For my virginity?’ she responded in as cool a voice as she could manage. She must not allow herself, never mind Ash, to feel that their coming together had touched her emotions, because it hadn’t. As she had just analysed, for herself that reaction had simply been a long-ago echo of something that no longer existed.
‘Yes, of course for your virginity.’
She still looked slightly dazed, her eyes huge and dark, her mouth flushed a deep rose pink, but for all the signs of her pleasured sensuality, there was also a vulnerability about her, as though she was in need of … Comfort? Tenderness? These were things he could not give her. White teeth snapping together, he pulled on his robe and went across to the table where the maid had left her a bottle of water in a bucket of ice. He removed and opened it, pouring two glasses, one of which he brought over to her. Water, most precious gift of all to those born into a desert race, because it was the gift of life.
Sophia willed her hand not to tremble as she took the glass Ash held out to her. The water slid coolly down her throat, both reviving her and giving her new strength. Ash watched as a drop of condensation on the glass fell onto her chest and ran down the valley between her breasts. He wanted to look away but somehow he couldn’t. He wanted, he discovered, to reach out and stop its descent with his finger and then lick it from her skin with his tongue. He wanted … He wanted nothing other than a marriage of duty and mutual respect through which he could dedicate himself to his people and his responsibility to them.
Sophia pulled the sheet up around her naked body. Ash turned away, an unfamiliar feeling slicing into his gut. She was rejecting him? Why should that bring him such an immediate and intense desire to go to her and hold her, to feel her responding to him again as she had done earlier instead of retreating from him? He didn’t know. But he felt as though he didn’t know anything any more, and for a man who liked being in control of his life that was intolerable.
He turned back to Sophia. The evidence of the intensity of what had happened between them was plain to see. It was there in the tousle of her dark hair, the flush on her cheeks and the sensual exhaustion in her eyes. She looked like a woman who had been made love to and whose body had shared enthusiastically in that experience. Or did he just see that because it was what he wanted to see?
‘It’s a bit too late for that now,’ he told her brusquely, gesturing to the sheet with which she had so modestly covered herself, ‘and I still want an explanation.’
‘It isn’t a crime to be a virgin, is it?’ Sophia shrugged as casually as she could. Despite everything, she recognised that a part of her, that part that still belonged to her sixteen-year-old self, wanted desperately to celebrate the ability of her body to give and receive pleasure, and to know that the wonderment and joy it had given her was shared by the man who had partnered her in it. But of course, to Ash what had happened between them was nothing special. How could it be? She knew that. The euphoria she had felt had gone and all that was left was the chilly reality of what she had lost—not her virginity, but her dreams and her hopes of being truly loved.
‘No,’ Ash agreed, ‘but you have to admit that when a woman goes to as much trouble as you have done to give the world the impression that you are sexually experienced and available, it is bound to raise the question of just why you did so.’ Sophia could hear the anger and the bitterness in Ash’s voice. ‘And I want an answer, Sophia.’
‘You already have that answer,’ she told him proudly. ‘I gave it to you when I told you that I wanted to marry for love. When you rejected me, Ash, I promised myself that I would only give myself to a man who loved me as much as I loved him. That is why I didn’t want my father forcing me into an arranged marriage. I wanted to find a man who would love me for myself, and as myself, not as the daughter of the King of Santina.’ Sophia paused. Just speaking like this was activating so many feelings she desperately wanted to deny. The temptation not to say any more was great, but something deeper and more demanding was driving her on as though seeking a form of catharsis for her.
‘When you reminded me of my responsibility for my actions, for boarding your plane, I realised that I would never reach that goal. But I still have no regrets that I made such a goal my priority. When you rejected me, Ash, when you told me that you didn’t want me because you loved your bride-to-be, I was so very envious of her that I promised myself one day I would meet someone who would love me like that and who I could love like that in return. I promised myself then that I would wait for that person. I promised myself that he would be my first and my only lover.’
Why was he allowing her words to cut so deeply into his conscience? The reality was that he had done the honourable thing in doing what she referred to as ‘rejecting’ her. To have taken her innocence would have been a gross abuse of her and of his own values, even if he had not already been committed to marriage to Nasreen. He had done the right thing, the only thing it had been possible for him to do. He had, in his arrogance, his blind belief that he could order his own emotions and those of Nasreen, given a naive sixteen-year-old the belief that if one waited long enough and believed hard enough that love must appear.
Wasn’t he already carrying a heavy enough burden of guilt? Did he have to force himself to carry even more? Was there never to be any peace for him, or any salvation? All he had done was try to emulate the happiness of his great-grandparents’ marriage.
A surge of something so intense that it physically hurt him to breathe seared through him—a sense of great loss and regret, sharpened with guilt.
Deliberately not looking into his face in case she gave away more than she wanted to, Sophia continued. ‘I knew, though, that if men knew I was a virgin they’d try to get me into bed, as some kind of challenge, so I decided that the best way to hold them at bay was to pretend that I had had loads of lovers. That was why I didn’t want my father to force me into a marriage
