crescendo, as he came so close she could smell the scent of his skin, could feel his breath on her face.
His fingers snaked along her jaw, so lightly she might have imagined it. His eyes were hooded, his expression unreadable. She fought the desire to close her eyes, to tilt her face up to his. To feel his lips on hers once more.
She was not that desperate. Not that stupid.
She’d learned. She might have been blindly, ignorantly in love with him once—but she knew better now.
His voice was a deep rumble, an exotic siren call. “You still want me, Sydney.”
“I don’t.” She said it firmly, coldly. Her legs trembled beneath her, her nerve endings shivering with anticipation. Her heart would beat right out of her chest if he kept touching her.
But she would not tell him to stop. Because she would not admit she was affected.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
And then his head dipped, his mouth fitting over hers. For a moment she softened; for a moment she let his lips press against hers. For a moment, she was lost in time, flung back to another day, another house, another kiss.
An arrow of pain shot through her breastbone, lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her heart. Was she always destined to hurt because of him?
Sydney pressed her hands against the expensive fabric of his jacket, clenched her fingers in his lapels—and then pushed hard.
Malik stepped back, breaking the brief kiss. His nostrils flared. His face was a set of sharp angles and chiseled features, the waning light from the sunset hollowing out his cheeks, making him seem harder and harsher than she remembered.
Sadder, in a way.
Except that Malik wasn’t sad. How could he be? He didn’t care about her. Never had. She’d been convenient, a means to an end. Impressionable and fresh in a way his usual women had not been.
The slow burn of embarrassment was still a hot fire inside, even after a year. She’d been so thoroughly duped by his charm.
“You never used to push me away,” he said bemusedly.
“I never thought I needed to,” she responded.
“And now you do.”
“Don’t I? What’s the point, Malik? Do you wish to prove your mastery over me one last time? Prove that you’re still irresistible?”
He tilted his head to one side. “Am I irresistible?”
“Hardly.”
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“Not for me, it isn’t.” Her head was beginning to throb from too much adrenaline, too much anger.
He pushed a hand through his hair. “It changes nothing,” he said. “Though it might make it more difficult.”
Sydney blinked. “Make what more difficult?”
“Our marriage, habibti.”
He was a cruel, cruel man. “There is no marriage, Malik. Sign the papers and it’s done.”
His smile was not quite a smile. “Ah, but it’s not so easy as that. I am a Jahfaran prince. There is a protocol to follow.”
Sydney reached for the door frame to steady herself. A bad feeling settled into her stomach, making the tension in her body spool tighter and tighter. Her knees felt weak, making her suddenly unstable on her tall designer pumps. “What protocol?”
He speared her with a long look. A pitying look?
By the time he spoke, her nerves were at the snapping point.
“We must go to Jahfar—”
“What?”
“And we must live as man and wife for a period of forty days …”
Dying. She was dying inside. And he was so controlled, as always. “No,” she whispered, but he didn’t hear—or he didn’t care. His eyes were flat, unfeeling.
“Only then can we apply to my brother the king for a divorce.”
CHAPTER TWO
SYDNEY slipped out the door and sank heavily onto a nearby deck chair. Beyond, the Pacific Ocean rolled relentlessly to shore. The surf roiled and foamed, the sound a muted roar as the power of the water hit the beach.
That was Malik’s power, she thought wildly. The power to rush over her, to drag her with him, to obliterate what she wanted. That had been part of the reason she’d left, because she’d somehow let her sense of self be pulled under the wave that was Malik. It had frightened her.
That and hearing what his true feelings for her had been. Sydney shuddered.
Finally, she pulled her gaze from the water, which was now turning orange with the sun’s setting rays. Malik stood beside her chair. His jaw seemed hard in the waning light, as if he, too, were trapped and trying to make the best of it.
“Tell me it’s a joke,” she finally said, squeezing her hands together over her stomach.
His gaze flickered to her. His handsome face was so serious, so stark. Even now she felt a twinge of something, some deep feeling, as she looked at him. She refused to examine what that feeling might be; she simply didn’t want to know. She wanted to be done with him, finished.
Forever.
“It is not a joke. I am bound by Jahfaran law.”
“But we weren’t married there!” She laughed wildly. “I’ve never even seen Jahfar, except on a map. How can I possibly be bound by some crazy foreign law?”
He stiffened, but she didn’t really care if she’d insulted him. How dare he show up here after all this time and tell her they would remain married until she lived with him for forty days—in the desert, no less! It was like something only Hollywood could think up.
The irony made her laugh. Malik looked at her curiously, but didn’t seem to mistake the laugh for real humor. At least he could tell that much. Maybe forty days wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Who was she kidding?
“I won’t do it,” she said, drawing in a deep breath heavy with salt and sea. “I’m not bound by Jahfaran law. Sign the papers and as far as I’m concerned, we’re through.”
He shifted beside her chair. “You might think it’s that easy, but I assure you it is not. You married a foreign prince, habibti.”
“We were married in Paris.” Quickly, by an official at the Jahfaran embassy. As if Malik were afraid he might change his mind if it didn’t happen fast. Bitterness ate at her.
That was precisely what he’d been thinking.
“Where
