“Will you stay with me tonight?”
He froze. She had never asked him for anything when he would have given her the world. No matter, she didn’t have the right now, the saner part of him argued back.
“Please, Azeez.”
“You will hate me tomorrow for seeing you like this, Nikhat. You have never liked sharing your pain or grief,” he said, remembering what a stoic little girl she had always been. It was that very strength that he had found endlessly fascinating.
But circumstances had forced her to become like that and she had never complained. He had watched her learn to cook and manage her sisters at a young age, ecstatically happy that she was being allowed to do the one thing she most wanted—to study by Amira’s side. It had taken very little for her to be happy.
She sighed and hugged him tighter. Her chest grazed his, the soft push of her breasts against his muscles was more torture than he could take. His blood sang at the pleasure, but it was seeing her like this—pain-ridden and vulnerable—that tightened his gut.
“I won’t, Azeez.” He heard her sniffle. “The strange thing is, I could never hate you whatever you do or say. You…have this power over me. I’ve always considered myself a strong woman, I am a strong woman. But when it comes to you, I…” She exhaled, and burrowed closer to him.
Eviscerated by her admission, he chanced a look at her. She looked drowsy, her eyelids swollen. “Did you take any painkillers, Nikhat?”
“Hmm…” she whispered, blinking. “Yes. These just take longer to kick in. Will you stay with me?” Her lush mouth curved into a smile. “Can we also pretend that you don’t hate me for a few hours?”
He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her. She was so soft all over, her fragility a complete contrast to the steely core of the woman.
He had never held a woman close like this, never offered comfort. Except with Nikhat, he had only ever wanted and taken only physical release from women.
“You make the most outrageous demands of your Prince, Dr. Zakhari,” he said, holding her that way costing him. “But I will try.”
She melted into him with a sigh. And the satisfaction in that sound, coupled with the way she held him, hard and unrelenting, sent ripples of powerful hunger through him. “I like it when you call me that, even as you shred me to pieces doing it.”
He moved his fingers over her arm in a slow ripple. “I’m the one who paid the price for that degree, ya habeebiti. Of course it sounds special when I say it.”
He felt her smile just before she gripped him hard again.
Her body writhed against his, her hand bunching over her lower belly, as though to fight that pain. She made a long, gasping sound with her throat and stiffened against him.
Ya Allah, what he wouldn’t give to take that pain away from her. Clutching her tightly against him, Azeez held her hard. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from her, couldn’t uncouple himself from her pain, from her strength.
Just as he heard her breath even out, something inside him, something that he had no control over asked the question. “Nikhat, this condition you have, does it have a name?”
“Stage four endometriosis.”
His mind latched onto the word, and Azeez knew it would never leave him alone.