by the emotion of what he’d told her and the fact that Hassan was breaking his own rules by making love to her in the makeshift studio.
Her orgasm happened quickly—almost too quickly, it seemed—and it was as if she had given him everything she had to give. She felt his own, final thrust. Heard the little choking sound he made as he clung to her, spilling his seed deep inside her.
‘Hassan,’ she whispered.
For a moment he couldn’t speak as he sucked in gulps of air, sanity returning to cool his ardour like a summer rainstorm. Against the rumpled spill of her hair, Hassan briefly closed his eyes, a wave of guilt washing over him as he realised just what he had done. He had used her, as he used all women. He had taken the sweet comfort she was offering him and had turned it into the only commodity he was familiar with. Sex.
‘That should never have happened,’ he said hoarsely.
‘But I’m glad it happened!’ came her fierce reply.
Biting back his remorse, he withdrew from her, adjusting himself before turning her around to cup her face in his hands. ‘So now do you understand why I am the man I am?’ he demanded. ‘Why I can’t love. Do you understand that, Ella?’
She looked at him, her heart twisting with pain, wanting to tell him that his mother’s rejection didn’t mean that all women were going to do the same. That she would love him and cherish him if only he would give her the chance.
‘I understand perfectly,’ she said softly.
‘But these things aren’t set in stone, Hassan. There’s no reason why you can’t change.’ I can help you change.
He saw the hope and understanding written on her face and a bitter wave of recrimination washed over him. She didn’t have a clue, did she? How horrified she would be if she knew how ruthless he had been. If she discovered that he’d brought her out here hoping that she would leave him. And leave their baby too.
He shook his head as he unlocked the door and wrenched it open. ‘I think we’d better call it a day. This session is over and I have work to do.’
And he swept from the room. Just like that. Leaving Ella watching him, blinking away the sudden shimmer of tears which had sprung to her eyes.
She glanced down at the start she’d made on the drawing which now bore the outline of Hassan’s face. But it was strange how a few black lines had somehow managed to capture a true likeness of the man she had married. The hawk-like nose and the shadowed jut of his jaw. The autocratic cheekbones and the empty black eyes.
A proud man who had told her he could never love.
Closing the door quietly behind her, Ella left the studio and walked in silence along the scented marble corridor towards her suite.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SO THIS was how it was going to be. Everything had changed, yet nothing had changed, and Ella felt as if she was living in a strange kind of limbo. She moved around the beautiful palace feeling like a gatecrasher who the benign host had allowed to remain at the party.
The stupid thing was that, at first, Hassan’s emotional outpouring had given her hope. She’d thought that once he’d given himself time to reflect on her words that he might come around to her way of thinking. To realise that change was possible. That anything was possible if you wanted it enough.
And maybe the simple truth of it was that he just didn’t want it. Maybe the thought of allowing himself to feel stuff secretly repulsed him. That his childhood experiences had scarred him too deeply for him ever to contemplate living his life in a different way.
Because he behaved as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t torn open the blackness which seemed to envelop his heart and allowed her to glimpse the bitter pain which lay beneath.
Once again, the barriers came crashing down, only this time it was worse than before. Because now she had something with which to compare it. She’d felt a snatch of real closeness when he’d opened up to her about his past. When she’d felt as though they’d discovered a new honesty … and when she’d realised how easy it would be to love this proud and tortured man.
But that was all now a distant memory; the hot passion which had flared between them now mocked her, because Hassan had told her that sex was no longer on the agenda.
Her hands had trembled when he’d dropped that particular bombshell. ‘You’re saying that you no longer find me attractive?’
He had shaken his head, still not quite believing that he had opened up to her. Still dazed by the powerful and very basic sex which had followed, which had left him feeling … what? As if she’d laid him bare on every level. As if she could see right into his soul. ‘I’m saying that your pregnancy is getting too advanced,’ he responded. ‘And I don’t think sex is a good idea.’
Ella had turned away to hide her distress. And so the pleasure she’d found in his arms became nothing but a taunting series of memories. The nights were nothing but long, lonely hours to be endured. Her enormous bed allowed them both to lie there without touching, and the longer this went on, the more impossible it became to return to what they’d had before.
Ella would hold her breath as she felt the mattress dip beneath Hassan’s weight, and perhaps if she hadn’t been so pregnant, she might have attempted some form of seduction. As it was, even sitting up was a big, lumbering effort. She didn’t even want to think of how clumsy it would look if she tried to launch herself at him. Anyway, such plans were pretty pointless since Hassan would fall asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, while she was left staring at the moon shadows flickering over the ceiling.
One morning she awoke to find him leaning over her, his dark face creased with concern, and for one crazy moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Her lips parted as eagerly as a young chick on the nest, but his face became shuttered as he drew back from her.
‘You look exhausted,’ he observed quietly. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No.’ She waited for him to ask him why and wondered if she dared tell him the reason. Because I miss you. I miss you touching me. Kissing me. Making love to me. Because I’m scared of the future … and I’m only just beginning to realise the heartache which lies ahead if we’re living these separate lives. But she wasn’t going to beg. Or whine. She hadn’t quite sunk to that. She kept her voice light. ‘Nobody ever died from lack of sleep.’
‘No, but it isn’t fair to you or the baby to see you looking so exhausted,’ he said harshly. ‘I will move back into my own rooms and sleep there from now on.’
Her eyes beseeched him to reconsider even if her pride stopped her from asking him outright, but he was true to his word. It didn’t take long for one of his valets to move his few possessions out of her suite, and after that night, Ella slept alone.
As the days passed, so her loneliness increased. With her sickness firmly in the past and without the diversion of long and erotic nights with Hassan, Ella’s life in the palace seemed empty and pointless. Only continuing with her husband’s portrait, into which she poured all her thwarted passion and despair, helped fill the long, waiting days.
But that was her only distraction. The constant heat and lack of seasonal change were having a disorientating
