His Queen by Desert Decree(31)

Furiously shrugging off such irrelevant thoughts, Molly spun back to him, breasts heaving as she dragged in a steadying breath. ‘What do you want from me?’

Mesmerised by the voluptuous shift of rounded flesh below the fabric of her dress, Azrael strode over to the window to focus on something less stimulating. He knew what he wanted from her and just then he knew he had never been further from getting it. ‘I want you to stay here for a few months and behave as if you are truly my wife,’ he admitted in a harsh undertone. ‘Then we would be in a better position to reconsider our situation.’

‘But I can’t stay here!’ Molly exclaimed. ‘I’ve got responsibilities back home and I have to work to help cover my grandfather’s care bills.’

‘You could bring your grandfather out to Djalia,’ Azrael informed her.

Startled, Molly shook her head vehemently. ‘No, that wouldn’t work. Change isn’t good for him in his current condition. He needs familiar faces and surroundings or he loses touch with the world altogether because he gets so confused,’ she explained. ‘Moving him is out of the question. I love him dearly. His comfort and contentment for however long he has left have to come first.’

‘Then I pick up the bills for his care and you make regular visits back to London to spend time with him,’ Azrael suggested.

Molly bristled. ‘You can’t just reorganise my entire life to suit you!’ she condemned.

‘If the reorganisation brings a positive result for many, why not? Is your life in London so much better than it could be here? Is there perhaps...a man involved? Someone you want to return to? I know it was Tahir’s belief that you were unattached but who knows whether you told him the truth on that score?’ Azrael quipped in a raw undertone.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, I’m totally single!’ Molly admitted impatiently. ‘I have friends back home but with the three jobs I had I rarely had time to see them. Now at least two of the jobs are gone. Everything that’s happened here has screwed up my life and my ability to keep myself, so why the heck can’t you just put things back the way they were and fix this problem?’

‘You are a very unreasonable woman. You demand the impossible and then look at me accusingly when I fail to deliver.’

‘So, I’m unreasonable?’ Molly pressed a hand to her chest to emphasise that point. ‘Nobody’s asking you to give up your life and independence!’

‘There is nothing I would not sacrifice for my country,’ Azrael countered fiercely.

‘But you don’t own me, so you can’t sacrifice me without my consent!’ Molly shot back at him tempestuously, green eyes alive with hostility. ‘Oh, no, that’s right, we are currently standing in the most primitive place on earth where women are as much a man’s property as his horse. So maybe you can sacrifice me without my consent!’

The very word ‘primitive’ set Azrael’s blood boiling through his veins. He regularly worked eighteen-hour days in his efforts to pull Djalia out of the past and into the future and in that endeavour he had the full support of his people. Hashem had held fast to barbaric practices and laws that had supported his appetite for helpless women and brutality. He had kept a harem of concubines, young females stolen from their families and literally imprisoned. Azrael had been appalled by the stories he had heard after the palace had fallen, but guiltily relieved that Hashem had died of a massive heart attack before he could be put on trial. His country would not have benefitted from a public washing of that amount of dirty laundry.

‘Stop...shouting...at...me,’ he commanded with lethal quietness.

‘I’m a lot more vocal than a horse would be, aren’t I?’ Molly told him with a certain amount of satisfaction.

‘You are my wife and I will treat you with respect,’ Azrael breathed tautly. ‘But you must treat me with respect too.’

‘Not feeling it right now, Azrael...not feeling it at all,’ Molly confided, trembling with rage. ‘If you marry a woman without her consent, you must roll with the punches when she dares to complain. I am not going to stop shouting because you tell me to!’

Azrael took an almost silent step closer and an ebony brow quirked. ‘No?’ he queried, golden eyes bright as polished ingots between black framing lashes.

‘No!’ Molly shouted emphatically back at him.

And Azrael swooped down on her like a hawk, taking her so much by surprise that she yelped in fright as he snatched her off her feet and up into his arms as if she were a lightweight, which she knew she was not.