it, but he’d never treated her so harshly, as if he cared nothing for her feelings. She hadn’t known that he regretted what had happened in Zeina that much.
He released her hands and gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to face him. “No, Jasmine. You cannot leave Zulheil.”
She frowned. “You don’t trust me, do you? What do you expect me to do—run away at the first available opportunity?”
“I may have been a fool once, but you will not make me one twice,” he nearly growled.
“I came and stayed of my own free will. I won’t run.”
“You did not know what you faced when you came.” His features were expressionless as he brushed aside her words. “I am not wrapped around your little finger, as you no doubt expected, and I do not intend to be. Because you know this, you will wish to escape. I do not intend to lose you.”
She shook her head in denial, but he didn’t release her. “I love you,” she repeated firmly. “Don’t you know what that means?”
“It means that you can turn your back and walk away at any time.” Rapier sharp, his jabs made her bleed. But she still wasn’t beaten.
“How long are you going to act this way?” she asked him in desperation. “How long are you going to punish me? When is your revenge going to be complete?”
His green eyes had darkened to the color of the deepest sea. “I do not do this to punish you. To want to take revenge, I would have to feel something for you beyond lust, which I do not. You are a possession, prized but not irreplaceable.”
She felt the color leave her face. She couldn’t speak. Her heart felt as if it was bleeding. In a desperate attempt to hide her grief, she bit the insides of her cheeks hard enough to taste blood, and waited for him to finish.
“I will be involved in matters of state. Hiraz knows how to get in touch with me.”
She remained silent, barely able to hear him through the painful buzzing in her ears. When he bent his head and placed a possessive kiss on her lips, she accepted it dully, too stunned to respond. Tariq seemed to take her reaction as subtle defiance because he moved his hand to her hair and tangled his fingers in the long ponytail, gripping her head.
“You will not deny me,” he growled against her lips. Because he knew her every sensual weakness, he was right. She couldn’t deny him. Not when she’d been starving for him for so long.
When he drew back, cold satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. “I can make you pant for me anytime I wish, Jasmine, so do not try and manipulate me with your body.”
The sensual fires he’d aroused were doused instantly by his taunt. Thankfully, he didn’t continue the lesson.
“I will be leaving in forty minutes.” With that, he rose and strode out the door of her workroom.
Jasmine didn’t know how long she sat there, unable to function. She felt as if he’d ripped out her heart and then laughed at her agony. She hurt too much to feel the pain. When she finally rose and made her way to the wide glass doors that led out to a balcony overlooking the main gardens, it was to see Tariq walking to a royal limousine.
He was dressed in a black suit, his tie the vivid green of his eyes, his beautiful hair brushed back. She saw him stop and look up at the balcony. Quickly, she stumbled back into the room. From this far, she couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but she knew he hadn’t seen her. Then he stepped inside and the car drove off.
It was as if his departure released the paralysis that had protected her from her own anguished emotions. Suddenly close to an emotional breakdown, she scurried through the corridors, praying she wouldn’t meet anyone along the way. Once safely behind the locked doors of the exquisite room that was her own, she walked out into the private garden and hid under the spreading tree with the blue-white flowers. The branches were so heavy with blooms that they almost touched the ground, providing her with a scented cave of darkness in which to let go of her torment.
Her sobs came from somewhere deep inside, wrenched out of her body with such force that she didn’t have breath enough to make a sound. She was destroyed by the sudden insight that she’d been fooling herself. She’d believed that she could love Tariq enough to make him love her, a girl who’d never been loved. She had allowed him every liberty, going so far as to tie herself to him for life. She’d given him her body and her soul, keeping nothing back.
And now he’d rejected her gift in the cruelest of ways. She was nothing but a possession to him, prized but not irreplaceable. He felt nothing but lust for her. Lust! Her illusions of time healing the wounds of the past shattered under the realization that his actions weren’t born out of pain. He just didn’t care if he hurt her.
Had he married her only to humble her? Crush her?
She curled into a ball at the base of the tree and wrapped her arms around her shaking body, trying to breathe through the pain that lay like a rock in her throat. Dusk fell outside but she didn’t notice. She’d cried all the tears she had inside, but her pain was so great she couldn’t move.
Freed, the demons that she’d drowned in tears descended upon her, wanting their pound of flesh. In Tariq’s land, in Tariq’s arms, she’d almost managed to forget the lack in her. The missing part that made her incapable of being loved. Suddenly, the memories of that terrible day in her childhood when she’d understood the truth flooded over her.
“Does it bother you that you demanded half of Mary’s inheritance before you’d adopt Jasmine?” Aunt Ella had asked the woman Jasmine had thought was her mother. “After all, Mary is our baby sister.”
“No. She should’ve known better than to get pregnant by some stranger in a bar. I don’t know what possessed her to have the child.” The sound of ice cubes hitting crystal had penetrated the library door. “We aren’t some charity. How else were Jasmine’s expenses going to be covered?”
“You got a lot more than that,” Ella had persisted. “Mary’s inheritance from Grandpa was twice the size of ours.”
“I think of it as adequate compensation for having to accept bad blood into my family. Lord only knows what kind of a loser Jasmine’s father was. Mary was so drunk, she couldn’t even remember his name.”
Later, when Jasmine had forced herself to ask, Aunt Ella had taken pity on her and told her about Mary. Apparently, in order to avoid any hint of scandal, Mary had moved to America after Jasmine’s birth. She’d never returned. The people who’d raised Jasmine, Mary’s older sister, Lucille, and her husband, James, had already had two children, Michael and Sarah, and had been unwilling to take on another, until they’d been given a financial incentive. Yet they’d gone on to have another child of their own—a beloved younger son named Mathew.
That day, Jasmine had been slapped in the face with the fact that any care she’d ever known had been bought and paid for. Searching for someone to love her, she’d written to Mary, saying hello. The response had arrived on her thirteenth birthday, a cool request to make no further contact because Mary had no wish to be associated with a past “indiscretion.”
An indiscretion. That’s all Jasmine was to her birth mother. And to her adoptive mother she was bad blood. Neither Mary nor Lucille had been able to love her. Today, she was forced to accept that the lack hadn’t
