The Santina Crown Collection. Кейт Хьюит

‘The shame of her desertion went with her. Her nobleman would not marry a woman who was tainted in such a way. I don’t think he’d ever intended to marry her in the first place. She’d just built up the fantasy in her head. And of course, my father refused to take her back.’

      ‘Did she want to come back?’ breathed Ella.

      ‘Oh, yes. It seemed that she realised just what she had lost—two little children and a man who loved her. But it was too late and his pride would not countenance it. He had been made a fool of once and would not risk it happening again. She began to neglect herself. She wasn’t eating properly. She went to Switzerland and it was there, in the cold of the winter snows, that she caught pneumonia.’

      Ella didn’t need to hear the words to know that his mother had died; she could read it from the bleak look on his face. ‘And you never … you never saw her again?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Hassan—’

      ‘No!’ he said again, shaking away the soft hand which had reached out towards him. Standing, he moved away from the chair and her tantalising proximity.

      But Ella went after him because the look of bleakness on his ravaged face was more than she could bear. She moved up to his tensed, hunched body and, rising up on tiptoes, she put her arms around him.

      ‘Hassan,’ she breathed into his ear. ‘Darling, darling Hassan.’

      His heart was thumping and he could feel the contrasting softness of her cheek against his. He should have pushed her away, but how could he do that when the hard curve of her baby bump was pressing against him and her welcoming arms were enfolding him. And that was the moment that his long-suppressed emotions ruptured. When anger and hurt and shame and resentment all came swimming darkly to the surface and threatened to swamp him.

      He opened his mouth to groan but her lips were reaching towards his and somehow he was kissing her, kissing her with an urgent kind of hunger he’d never felt before. His hands splayed over her breasts and her muffled little cries urged him on, and as he felt the nipples harden beneath his palms, a primitive hunger began to rise in him.

      With a low moan like the sound of a wounded animal, he pulled away from her before locking the door and, when he turned back, Ella could see from the look of dark intent on his face just what he was going to do.

      His embrace was hard and his lips heated, but she matched him kiss for kiss. Greedily, she scrabbled at the silk of his robes as he slithered hers up over her thighs, his fingers skating over the cool skin there until he found the molten heat which awaited him.

      She did not dare cry out, not even when he thrust deep inside her, taking her from behind because it was more comfortable that way, before beginning his inexorable rhythm. Ella swallowed as he caught hold of her shoulders, his lips on her hair as he whispered to her, strange, fractured words in his native tongue. It had never felt quite like this: with all her senses heightened by the emotion of what he’d told her and the fact that Hassan was breaking his own rules by making love to her in the makeshift studio.

      Her orgasm happened quickly—almost too quickly, it seemed—and it was as if she had given him everything she had to give. She felt his own, final thrust. Heard the little choking sound he made as he clung to her, spilling his seed deep inside her.

      ‘Hassan,’ she whispered.

      For a moment he couldn’t speak as he sucked in gulps of air, sanity returning to cool his ardour like a summer rainstorm. Against the rumpled spill of her hair, Hassan briefly closed his eyes, a wave of guilt washing over him as he realised just what he had done. He had used her, as he used all women. He had taken the sweet comfort she was offering him and had turned it into the only commodity he was familiar with. Sex.

      ‘That should never have happened,’ he said hoarsely.

      ‘But I’m glad it happened!’ came her fierce reply.

      Biting back his remorse, he withdrew from her, adjusting himself before turning her around to cup her face in his hands. ‘So now do you understand why I am the man I am?’ he demanded. ‘Why I can’t love. Do you understand that, Ella?’

      She looked at him, her heart twisting with pain, wanting to tell him that his mother’s rejection didn’t mean that all women were going to do the same. That she would love him and cherish him if only he would give her the chance.

      ‘I understand perfectly,’ she said softly.

      ‘But these things aren’t set in stone, Hassan. There’s no reason why you can’t change.’ I can help you change.

      He saw the hope and understanding written on her face and a bitter wave of recrimination washed over him. She didn’t have a clue, did she? How horrified she would be if she knew how ruthless he had been. If she discovered that he’d brought her out here hoping that she would leave him. And leave their baby too.

      He shook his head as he unlocked the door and wrenched it open. ‘I think we’d better call it a day. This session is over and I have work to do.’

      And he swept from the room. Just like that. Leaving Ella watching him, blinking away the sudden shimmer of tears which had sprung to her eyes.

      She glanced down at the start she’d made on the drawing which now bore the outline of Hassan’s face. But it was strange how a few black lines had somehow managed to capture a true likeness of the man she had married. The hawk-like nose and the shadowed jut of his jaw. The autocratic cheekbones and the empty black eyes.

      A proud man who had told her he could never love.

      Closing the door quietly behind her, Ella left the studio and walked in silence along the scented marble corridor towards her suite.

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      SO THIS was how it was going to be. Everything had changed, yet nothing had changed, and Ella felt as if she was living in a strange kind of limbo. She moved around the beautiful palace feeling like a gatecrasher who the benign host had allowed to remain at the party.

      The stupid thing was that, at first, Hassan’s emotional outpouring had given her hope. She’d thought that once he’d given himself time to reflect on her words that he might come around to her way of thinking. To realise that change was possible. That anything was possible if you wanted it enough.

      And maybe the simple truth of it was that he just didn’t want it. Maybe the thought of allowing himself to feel stuff secretly repulsed him. That his childhood experiences had scarred him too deeply for him ever to contemplate living his life in a different way.

      Because he behaved as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t torn open the blackness which seemed to envelop his heart and allowed her to glimpse the bitter pain which lay beneath.

      Once again, the barriers came crashing down, only this time it was worse than before. Because now she had something with which to compare it. She’d felt a snatch of real closeness when he’d opened up to her about his past. When she’d felt as though they’d discovered a new honesty … and when she’d realised how easy it would be to love this proud and tortured man.

      But that was all now a distant memory; the hot passion which had flared between them now mocked her, because Hassan had told her that sex was no longer on the agenda.

      Her hands had trembled when he’d dropped that particular bombshell. ‘You’re saying that you no longer find me attractive?’

      He had shaken his head, still not quite believing that he had opened up to her. Still dazed by the powerful and very basic sex which had followed, which had left him feeling … what? As if she’d laid him bare on every level. As if she could see right into his soul. ‘I’m saying that your pregnancy is getting too advanced,’ he responded. ‘And I don’t think sex is a good idea.’

      Ella had turned away to hide her distress. And so the pleasure she’d found in his arms became nothing but a taunting series of memories.