“I’m sorry I took so long.” Embarrassment crawled up her insides. She hadn’t meant to keep the emir from his shower. “You did insist I bathe first.”
“Aaliyah, do you need Yusuf to get supplies for you?” Sayed asked.
“Supplies?” Had she skipped a page in the book?
“For your monthly.”
Make that a whole chapter. Why would he offer such a thing? “No.”
“Do not be embarrassed, Miss Amari,” Yusuf assured her. “It is no trouble to procure what you need.”
“I’m not even due for two more weeks,” she blurted out, extremely uncomfortable.
She didn’t know if Sayed’s other lovers were just really open, or what, but Liyah found it very disconcerting talking about such a personal matter with him, much less in front of a virtual stranger. And she really didn’t understand why it was coming up now.
Sayed made a sound that had her turning her attention to him. “You were a virgin,” he accused, like it was a major crime.
Liyah stumbled back from his inexplicable but palpable anger. She ran into the jamb, her gaze skittering back to Yusuf only to find his scowl had grown darker.
“Why does it matter?” She could understand if he’d been disappointed in the sex, but his reactions last night made that unlikely. “I didn’t lie about anything.”
“You implied you were sexually active.”
“When?” And again, why would it matter?
“When I told you about my fast. You said you hadn’t been on one.”
“You can’t fast from something you’ve never had,” she said with some exasperation.
Things started making sense, though. They were men from Zeena Sahra, the country that had spawned the attitude of Liyah’s Amari relatives and her mother’s own self-castigation.
Well, they could just get over themselves. Liyah wasn’t her mother and her virginity, or current lack thereof, was her business, no one else’s.
She drew herself up, pulling cool dignity into every pore. She would not be bullied. “My choice to give my virginity was and is my business.”
“Are you saying you had plans to lose your virginity?” Sayed demanded.
“Of course not.” What was the matter with him this morning? She was the one with the hangover. “You’re the one who came to the suite while I was drinking,” she reminded him. “I didn’t have some great assignation planned.”
“I came for some time on my own.”
“And you found me.” She challenged him with a look. “You didn’t seem to mind that last night.”
“That is not the issue here,” he said frigidly.
“No? Well, my virginity is off the table of discussion.”
“Miss Amari?” Yusuf asked, sounding slightly thawed.
Maybe he realized policing her morals wasn’t his job.