Page 22 of Out of Office Nights (Royals of Cartana #2)
She heard his sharp intake of breath but didn’t glance at him. If he was offended by the truth, she wasn’t here to spare his blushes.
‘He left her at the altar, pregnant and alone. Then had the gall to make an appearance years later with a proposition for her to live in luxury…as his mistress. She cut off all contact with him and moved to this house with my mother. Then she felt like she was reliving her worst nightmare when my mother fell into a similar trap.’ She ventured a glance at him, saw his tight jaw, the incensed expression and told herself she didn’t…
couldn’t care whether it was on behalf of the women she’d cared deeply about or not.
Redirecting her gaze to the moonlit sea, she continued.
‘Do you see where I’m going with this, Teo? ’
‘The tapestry is becoming clear, sí ,’ he drawled. ‘Where’s your mother?’
The vice tightened around her heart. ‘She emigrated to India a decade ago. We talk often, but I don’t see her as much as I’d like.’
He nodded then waited, silently compelling her for more.
‘I think she moved away to escape the judgement of falling short of my grandmother’s expectations of her.’
‘Which were?’
Feeling too agitated to remain still, she moved to the far side of the low stone wall and leaned her arms over it. The sun-warmed stone offered temporary comfort and a reprieve, but Sabeen was acutely aware he watched her every move.
The short sundress she’d put on after her shower was entirely see-through, and her body was on show.
It was a good thing, then, that physical nudity wasn’t what bothered her.
It was the inability to stop baring her soul that disturbed her the most. Yet she stifled the urge to run and hide.
Or better yet, to boldly state that she had no intention of further exposing herself to his idle curiosity.
She did none of those things in the end.
Because it seemed no amount of jaw-clenching or internal stern talking-to was enough to stop the words from spilling out, independent of her will.
‘Which were that she was never to put her trust in a man. Never hand over control of her emotions in the belief that she’d fallen in love.
And, at all costs, never hand over her agency for the sake of pleasing a man.
My mother failed on all those counts. She returned home with me, broken.
She loved me, but I grew up watching their love-hate relationship turn increasingly sour because my grandmother, despite loving her daughter, was reliving the worst period of her life, while my mother blamed her for what she believed was an emotional flaw passed on by genes and beauty, compounded by my jida ’s threat of withdrawal of support if she so much as looked at my father ever again.
A father who also happened to be a Lothario himself. ’
When she was done, she turned, leaned her hip against the cool wall to see him better. Just in time to see a curious expression being wiped off his face. Her belly clenched. Surely that hadn’t been…hurt?
She attempted to probe deeper, chasing after the expression, only to watch him lift his molten silver gaze, as if almost daring her to believe such an emotion would floor him.
‘So she judged your mother for making the same mistakes she did?’ Sharp slivers of bitterness coated his question.
‘You think she had no right to do that after doing everything in her power to warn my mother of the risks?’
He spiked her with a censorious look. ‘You presume your grandmother held the golden key to happiness. A path that only involved your mother not repeating her mistakes. What if your father had proved to be both a playboy and the man who granted your mother the greatest happiness, given the chance to reconnect that he apparently wasn’t allowed to have? ’
She frowned. ‘Do you hear yourself? That’s a contradiction in terms.’
‘Is it? You think your mother would’ve only been happy with a staid, excitement-averse nobody who would flog himself for so much as accidentally smiling at another woman?’
Memories of rows and tears after her grandmother had attempted to force just such a procession of supposedly safe suitors on her mother reeled through her mind.
Her mother had hated every one of them, pleaded with her grandmother to stop.
It’d reinforced the acrimonious belief that the El-Maleh women were doomed to love only one type of man.
She refocused on Teo to find him looking at her. Daring her to admit the truth. She licked her suddenly dry lips then cursed herself when he followed the action with blazing eyes. ‘So you’re saying she should’ve chased playboy after playboy until she found one willing to reform just for her?’
‘I’m saying no one has the right to inflict their expectations—or lack thereof—on others, even if they themselves have failed in their own endeavours.’
Layers of bitterness in his tone made her heart lurch for him, tugging her close to the dangerous flame of their shared sense of misery loving company.
She watched intently, spellbound as he went over to the table, picked up the wine he’d brought with him and two wine glasses and returned to where she stood. It was another bottle of the exquisite Chateau Latour she’d so enjoyed last night.
His gaze still on her, he slowly filled the glass, set the bottle down on the wall and held the glass against her lips.
Despite the way she looked and the constant barrage of sex-centricity generated because of it, she’d never considered herself an especially sexual person.
She suspected years of watching and hearing what beauty had done to her family had diminished any desire to explore her sexuality until it’d receded to the back of her mind, buried—but apparently not dead.
In her innermost thoughts, she’d often wondered whether it was that lack of exposure which had made her gravitate, naive and oblivious, towards Nathan’s overtly carnal existence. The charm he’d exuded so freely.
And whether it was why she was so fearful of being caught in Teo’s erotic vortex.
Of losing herself so entirely in it that she wouldn’t be able to see top from bottom.
And while knowing Nathan’s other deplorable characteristics had been what had eventually devastated and soured her emotions, she didn’t feel the same danger when she was with Teo.
No, his was a different sort of peril. With him she sensed a deeper entanglement, a fathomless yearning she’d never once felt with Nathan. A certainty that emotional annihilation with Teo would be apocalyptic.
‘Isn’t that the very definition of learning from one’s mistakes?’ she asked, unable to stem the river of sensual delight flowing through her veins. Thick and heavy as she took a large, indelicate gulp of wine, spilling a drop that dripped to her chin and landed on her collarbone.
Her breath strangled completely as he followed the red trail, his eyes turning hot and mercurial.
‘But it wasn’t your mistake. And taking on literal generations of tribulation and carrying it on your back, no matter how much you love your family, won’t get you very far if you’re so weighed down.’
She swallowed, resisting that pull he so effectively lassoed around her. ‘You wouldn’t be asking me about Nathan if you didn’t know that it’s not just others’ mistakes that have affected me, Teo.’
His nostrils flared in a visible, primal act of temper and slivers of jealousy. It shouldn’t have thrilled her so much. ‘You know I despise rumours. Tell me what happened with him,’ he breathed the order.
She resisted. The humiliation might not burn as searingly, but it was lead at the bottom of her soul, weighing it down.
Maybe it’s time to let it go, then…?
She jolted, that internal voice sounding so distinctly like Teo’s it was disarming. She set her glass down with a sharp clink. ‘God, get out of my head,’ she blurted before she could stop herself. ‘I don’t need anything from you,’ she forced out, more in hope than belief.
A trace of his displeasure receded, replaced by a bleakness that signalled she’d touched a sensitive nerve.
He raised his glass and sipped his wine then set it on the wall next to hers. ‘If you insist, then so be it, tesoro . To hell with everyone else. It’s time to be your own muse—’
She launched herself at him, threw her arms around his neck. ‘Stop talking! Every time you do I feel… I feel…’
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure whether to slap you or thank you. It’s driving me insane.’ Her fingers dug in, her reaction matching his primal one a minute ago.
A tremor charged through him, and a jagged sound left her throat.
‘If it helps, you drive me insane too,’ he replied, eyes raking over her face to settle on her mouth, another fine tremor transmitting through her. ‘And you’re welcome to do either. Both even,’ he added hoarsely.
It was the most alive she’d ever felt. And like yesterday and all the days before…she wanted more. So when the words fell from her lips, they felt like the most natural, seismic phenomenon in the world. ‘Make love to me, Teo. Let’s shake the crazy loose and be done with it, yes?’
Her defiant hunger and hope intensified the free fall he’d been in since he made that knee-jerk decision to move closer to her house.
Hell, Teo suspected it’d been in existence before then too.
This confounding instinct to plough ahead, the intangible certainty that within her renaissance was the key he needed to succeed with his own goal—that, for the first time in his life, he was discovering he needed someone else—was awakening feelings Teo didn’t know what to do with.
Now, given the option of shedding the galling lust that came with this unwanted emotional discovery?
He’d be a fool to refuse, sí ? Particularly when, after tasting her again, having her in his arms far too briefly yesterday had driven him out of his mind for the rest of the night, even as he’d revelled in her blooming by throwing away her shackles?