Never Seduce a Sheikh(45)

They stared at each other, Lily’s heart thumping hard in her chest, the moment lengthening, the tension stretching tighter and tighter.

His blue eyes glittered in the light, taking her in, making her so very aware that all she wore was a towel.

“What are you doing here?” she asked hoarsely, breaking the unbearable silence.

“You left. Zayed told me you were unwell.”

So he had noticed and he’d followed. She tried not to let that mean anything. “No. I’m fine.” She crossed her arms across her chest, holding her towel a little more firmly. “Just tired.”

“Perhaps we should have that discussion now that we are in private, Lily.”

A strange defensiveness crept through her. The urge to protect herself. Armor herself against him once again. “What’s to discuss? I know you’re going to tell me you don’t want a repeat of last night.”

He stared at her for a moment. Then he turned, pacing over to the small desk where her laptop was set up, toying with the pen that sat beside it. “I do not say it to hurt you.”

She wanted to say she wasn’t hurt. But that would be a lie and she was through with denial. “Why do you say it, then?”

He turned the pen over in his fingers, staring at her. “You are hurt.”

“Of course I’m hurt. Last night meant something to me. I . . . ” She stopped, swallowing back the sudden intense feeling that stuck in her throat. “I suppose I hoped for more.”

“I cannot give you more.”

“Why not?”

He looked away. “It is not you.”

“Oh, right. And then you’ll end with it ‘it’s me.’ Because that’s what people say to each other when they can’t think of a good excuse.” The hurt bled into her voice and she couldn’t seem to stop it. So much for her armor. Perhaps it was wrong to wear her emotions so openly. Perhaps the thing done after sex was to pretend it didn’t matter. But she couldn’t pretend, not anymore. That’s all she’d been doing since the day Dan left her with a torn dress and bloody mouth, and she wasn’t doing it anymore. She was hurt. Why shouldn’t he know that?

The pen dropped back onto the desk. “It is not an excuse.”

“Isn’t it?” She took a step towards him. “I bared everything to you, Isma’il. My secrets. My shame. My body. My soul. No one else knows those things about me. I don’t trust anyone else to know. But I trusted you.” An intense feeling expanded inside her chest, forcing out her breath. “Don’t you think I deserve better than ‘it’s not you, it’s me’? Don’t you think I deserve a little trust in return?”

The look on his face changed, a raw, savage thing in his eyes. A dark passion in the harsh beauty of his face. “What you deserve is a man who will love you, cherish you, protect you, not a man who forces you down onto the mattress and takes you from behind like an animal.”

“I wanted you to force me,” she said fiercely. “Everything that happened last night I wanted.”

“But I didn’t.” The words hung in the air, sharp as knives.

She took a shuddering breath. “What do you mean you didn’t?”

The look on his face became edged with hunger, the skin pulled too tight over the stark bone structure beneath it. “Do you understand what’s it like to be the son of a man who beat his own wife? Who picked up a riding crop and used it against her? So to be asked to hold you, force you—”

“Isma’il—”

“Let me finish. To be asked to do that was bad enough, but do you know the worst part?”

Cold began to creep through her veins. “No,” she whispered.

“The worst part was enjoying what I did to you. The worst part was wanting to do it to you again.” He stood by the desk, his whole body taut with anger. “You are dangerous, Lily. You push me. You test me. You get under my skin. I cannot control what I feel for you and I have to.” His voice dropped. “I must!”

“Why must you?” She took another step towards him, desperate to know. Desperate to understand. “I don’t want you to control your feelings. I don’t want you to hold back. If you’re afraid of being like your father, Isma’il, you shouldn’t be. You’re not going to pick up a riding crop and beat me with it. God, if I thought you were that type of man, I would never have gone anywhere near you.”

Something changed suddenly in his face. Pure green blazed in his eyes, drowning the blue, a savage anger written all over his features. This was the danger she’d sensed. This was the darkness laid bare.