A Question of Honor

Chapter SEVEN


‘IF YOU PROMISE to go to sleep...’

‘I promise.’

Surely this was hell, Karim told himself as she scooted over and he eased himself into the small space that she had left for him. Hell was not eternal fire or demons torturing you. Hell was a cosy nest in a too-small bed with a woman he ached to possess but was forbidden to touch. He could only pray that she would go to sleep fast.

‘How am I supposed to sleep with you sitting there like you have a broom handle for a spine?’ Clemmie protested, the warmth of her breath shivering over his skin.

‘There’s not much room...’

‘Then curl up closer...’

She suited actions to the words, her movement building the heat in their little cocoon to boiling point. Damn it, was she really that na?ve or—his heart skipped a beat with a heavy thud—was she doing this deliberately?

‘Sleep!’ he growled roughly, his lips brushing the silky hair on the top of her head, fine strands catching on his skin, on the roughness of his day-old stubble as they did so.

Sleep!

Clemmie barely caught back the word of protest as she let her face rest against his chest. How was she expected to sleep like this? Her whole body was wildly awake, her heart pounding, her breathing suddenly raw and heavy in her lungs. The strength of the arms holding her were at once a source of comfort and dangerous excitement and the hard bones of his ribcage seemed to be made specially to support her head. The heat of his skin had turned the comfort she had been looking for into an inferno of need that pulsed between her legs in a way she had never known before.

This then was desire. This was what it felt like to want a man—this particular man—in the way that a woman was meant to feel.

She wanted—needed—to feel more of him. One hand stroking across the white cotton of his tee shirt, she could feel the thud of his heart under her fingertips, the smoothness of skin, the...


The movement stilled, her head lifting slightly, at the unexpected thickening and roughness where everywhere else there had been smooth skin.

‘What’s this?’

‘Clemmie—’

She caught the note of warning but ignored it. Her fingers brushed against the swollen hardness of his lower body as she pushed at the hem of his tee shirt at his waist. It almost made her pause, the realisation of what it meant sending shockwaves of reaction through every inch of her. But the new and very different tension in the powerful body beside her told her that she was touching on something that mattered, something that came close to the innermost part of this man, and she was not to be put off.

‘What’s wrong?’

She pushed the white cotton aside, bunching it up around his shoulders and then caught her breath in shock at what she had exposed.

‘Damn it, Clemmie...’

With a muttered curse, Karim twisted sharply, catching hold of her wrists and imprisoning them in the strength of his hands. But not before she had registered what was there. Even in the dim light from the fire, the disfiguring ridges and lines were plain to see. The scars that marked one side of his chest, marring the sleek beauty of the bronzed skin, untouched by the haze of crisp black hair that covered so much of his torso.

‘But what happened? When?’

He was only relatively newly healed. The scars were still pink and new, not yet easing into the silvery lines that followed the softening effects of time.

‘How?’

He wasn’t going to answer; she could see it in the set of his face, the way that his beautiful mouth was clamped tight shut, the red burn of the fire throwing shadows on and off the hard planes of his cheeks.

She’d seen that sort of tension once before. When he had spoken of his brother and the fact that he had died. The scars were connected with that incident; she had no doubt of that. Karim didn’t need to say a word; the emotional truth was etched on to his face, no matter how much he might want to dodge away from her seeking eyes.

He didn’t try, though. Instead he met her questioning gaze head-on, the light of challenge flaring in the darkness of his eyes. His grip on her wrists had softened now, letting her ease herself away, and Clemmie let her fingertips drift over the damaged skin, her breath catching as she saw the change in his face, the way his eyelids dropped briefly to shut himself off from her.

‘What happened to your brother? I mean—I know he died in a car crash, but—you were there, weren’t you?’

‘I was in the car behind.’

He sounded as if the words had been dragged out of him. If it hadn’t been for the darkness, the silence of the night, she wouldn’t have caught the words, they were so low, so soft.

‘He wanted to see a woman—not the woman he was betrothed to marry. So he’d dismissed the security detail, but I couldn’t let him go out without any protection. I followed him.’

A long pause, another obvious effort to make himself go on.

‘I made the mistake of letting him see me in the mirror so he drove too fast to get away from me. He took a bend carelessly... By the time I reached them his car was on fire.’

‘And you tried to get him out.’

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. She knew without any sort of doubt that that was how he had been injured, scarred.

‘I...’

Whatever he had been about to say was choked off as she bent her head to press her lips to his wounded skin, acknowledging silently the way he must have tried—the horror of having failed as the fire had driven him back. Softly she kissed her way over the long scar, acknowledging the courage it must have taken to earn it.

‘Clementina...’

Her name hissed in between his teeth but she barely heard it. She was lost, drugged on the taste of him, the scent of his skin. Her tongue slid over the ridges of the scar, tasting the slightly salty tang of his skin, and she heard the beat of his heart quicken and deepen, sounding like thunder in her ears. Her own heart was racing, primitive feelings, sensations she had never known before stirring deep inside her, pulsing between her legs. She wanted to crawl on top of Karim, hold him, lose herself in him.

This was what sexual hunger was all about; why it was spoken of in those tones that had made her feel it could never be as powerful or as intense as it was implied. But the way she was feeling now told her that she had underestimated its force, its potential for wild abandonment. The room had faded into blackness, the faint crackle of the fire barely audible in her ears. There was only her and this man...this man who made her feel what it was really like to be a woman.

‘Clemmie...’

It was raw and rough, a sound of protest or surrender and she couldn’t tell which. But then his hands tangled in her hair, yanking her face up to his.

The mood in the room changed totally in the space of an uneven heartbeat. This wasn’t warm or gentle or even considerate. It was dark and harsh and dangerous. Everything about Karim was hard. His facial features seemed to have been carved from stone. His mouth was clamped into a tight forceful line, his chest and arms were like rocks against her cheeks. And the erection that she was crushed up against was like burning steel, threatening to brand her as his.

‘Damn you, woman!’ he muttered again and the last word came out harshly against her lips as his head swooped and his mouth took hers, crushing her lips back against her teeth as he plundered the softness between them.

His hands were tighter in her hair now, holding her head, twisting it till it was in the perfect position where he wanted it. The perfect position for his kiss. A kiss that was like nothing she had ever known before.

Their mouths fused and everything Clemmie had thought she had known about male and female interaction, about sexual interest or excitement was obliterated from her mind in one explosive moment. This was nothing like the tentative clumsy, or even the pushy secret kisses of the few boys she had met at college. There was nothing boyish about this at all. It was all male, the hunger of a fully grown man, and it roused all that was woman in her. It had such force and power, such heat, that it was like being kissed by a volcano. It was the kiss of a man who knew what he wanted and was determined to take it.

And what he wanted was her.

Clemmie’s mind was spinning, whirling, her ability to think spiralling off into the darkness somewhere so that she could no longer keep track of it. Somewhere under the molten lava in her mind, created by Karim’s kiss, firing her blood, was a warning thought that she should not let this happen; that she should say no and push him away. Push herself away. But that weak protesting thought was drowned out by the stronger, fiercer need that thundered along every nerve, pounding at her temples, driving away any other sort of awareness.

It was wild and carnal, primitive in the extreme, but it was what she wanted now. It was all that she wanted. Karim was all that she wanted. Karim and his kiss, hot and heavy on her mouth. His touch on her skin, searing a path over her legs, her hips, her waist, heading inexorably upwards, towards her aching breasts, the hardened nipples hungry for his caress.

His possession...

Something blew a fuse in Clemmie’s thoughts, forcing her to realise that the modest tee shirt nightie was no longer anything like so modest. It was no barrier at all to those urgently seeking fingers. Her nightdress was rucked up well past her waist, her naked legs were tangled with his, smooth skin against the muscular power of long, hair-covered masculine limbs. The feel of his hot skin under her hands was like bathing in liquid fire. She wanted to touch all of him, kiss all of him, feel all of him, all at one time.


‘Karim...’

She mouthed his name against his skin, taking in the taste of him as she muttered the word. The hair on his chest pricked at her tongue, soft electrical impulses that made her shiver in response. She needed to writhe nearer, pressing herself against the length of his body.

Karim muttered something in a language she didn’t understand, his teeth grazing her neck softly, and with a sudden movement he took possession of the breasts he had exposed to his caresses, making Clemmie gasp aloud and rear up slightly, flinging back her head in a rush of response. But a moment later she regretted the slight break of contact, needing more, so that she dropped her face down to his again, her hair forming a soft curtain around them as she took the kiss she wanted—needed.

The heat of his erection pressed against the moist curls between her legs, but her body hungered for more. She yearned to feel the full heat and power of him without even the barrier of his underwear, fine though it was. With a hungry murmur deep in her throat, she slipped her hands between them, finding the elasticated waistband and tugging at it, wanting to draw it down. She felt the tension in his body in a new and disturbing way; one she wanted to ignore because she was afraid of what it meant.

‘Clemmie! No!’

Karim bucked underneath her, his reaction as violent as if he had been stung. And what she feared was there in his tone, in the warning she didn’t want to hear.

‘Hellfire, lady... I— No! I said no!’

He twisted away, caught her hands again and held them prisoner at the wrist. She could feel his heart thudding against his ribcage and knew that he was every bit as aroused as she was, every bit as hungry. But he was determined to deny it.

‘Karim!’ she protested, her voice thick with need. ‘Don’t do this. I want you—why are you doing this?’

The breath he snatched in was raw and ragged, grating its way into his lungs.

‘We can’t do this. We must not. You know why.’

She knew he was trying to appeal to her sense of reason but it wasn’t going to work. She didn’t want it to work. She didn’t feel at all reasonable. She wanted this. Wanted it with every beat of her heart.

‘Do I?’

Deliberately she wriggled against him, smiling under the cover of her hair as she heard his groan, felt the tension in the long body beside her.

‘I don’t see why. This is almost the last night of my single life—my last night of freedom—surely I can spend it as I want—with who I want.’

‘If you were anyone else, then yes.’

His voice scraped over her nerves, waking restraints and scruples that had never been there before. It was as if someone had lifted away the blankets, doused the fire, and the cold, creeping sense of misery that oozed over her skin was almost overwhelming.

Almost. But underneath the sense of hesitation that chilled the heat of her hunger there was another, more rebellious feeling that flared and burned away her qualms. It throbbed to the beat of the pulse between her legs, impossible to deny.

She had spent her life living according to her father’s calculated rules. Settlements that had been decided for her and about her but without any consent or even knowledge on her part. She hadn’t even lived her life. It had all been dictated for her by her parent’s ambition. But here, tonight, she had one chance—her only chance—to live as other women her age had the freedom to live. The freedom to...

No—her thoughts danced away from the dangerous four-letter word she had almost allowed into her mind. There was no love in this.

She couldn’t fall in love in less than forty-eight hours with a man who had been a stranger until she had opened the door to him—was it really only yesterday? It wasn’t love; it was lust—but lust was a new and exciting feeling. One she had never experienced before. One she was sure she was never likely to feel when she was forced into a diplomatic marriage with a man she didn’t know. No, not a man—a boy—nearly five years younger than her.

She would never experience the joy and excitement of falling in love. But she could experience this. It might be all she would ever have to sustain her in the arid, desolate years that lay ahead.

‘But we are who we are and this can never be. It is forbidden. You are forbidden.’

‘Not tonight.’

Increasing anxiety, the nagging ache of withdrawal as the stinging excitement ebbed painfully, leaving every inch of her burning and hungry, made her voice desperate.

‘Tonight we are just two people, alone in the dark. This cottage is miles from anywhere, and the snow has isolated us even more. There’s no one to see us, no one to know.’

‘We would know.’ His voice sounded as if it was fraying at the edges. ‘I would know.’

‘But we need never...’

Something about his terrible stillness, the way his head was turned away from her, his eyes refusing to meet hers, staring into the fire instead, sent a shaft of ice slicing through her. It froze her into an immobility to match his, her heart quailing deep inside.

‘Is it—’

She couldn’t manage to say it, didn’t want to say it. But it had to be faced. In her naiveté, had she made the most terrible mistake, imagining something that wasn’t there? Had she put her own longings on to the moment, creating a scenario she wanted, but one that had never been there at all?

‘Don’t you want me?’

Karim’s answer was a deep, soul-felt groan.

‘Not want you?’ He was almost laughing when he said it. But it was a laugh that broke in the middle.

‘Not want you? Dear God, lady, but does this...’ he turned so that the heat and hardness of his erection was pressed against her naked stomach ‘...feel like I don’t want you?’

It felt like the exact opposite so that her heart leapt a little then sank back down again as she saw the hard set lines of his face.

‘I want you so much that it’s tearing me apart.’

‘Then why? Why not? Karim—you want me—I want you. So why can’t we...?’

‘No!’

It was a wild explosion of sound, underlined by the violent movement of his long frame, pulling away from her and jack-knifing off the settee in a savage rush.

‘No. Damn you to hell, woman, you are not going to tempt me this way. This ends now. Once and for all. It’s over. Done. It’s never going to happen.’

‘But...’

In spite of herself, she rose up on to her knees on the cushions, letting the blanket slip away from her to pool around her legs as she held a hand out to him, trying to reach him. She saw those dark eyes sear over her exposed naked body and it felt as if he had actually flayed the skin from her flesh, leaving her raw and bleeding.

‘Don’t touch me!’ he commanded. ‘Don’t ever touch me again! I want nothing to do with you—nothing but the job I was sent here to do. I will deliver you to Nabil—to your promised husband.’ Could he have injected the words with any more venom? ‘And then I will never see you again.’

And he would only be happy when that had happened. He didn’t have to say the words. They were there in the darkly savage way he spoke, the burn of violent rejection in his eyes.

Already he was turning away from her, grabbing at the jeans and sweater discarded on a nearby chair, pushing himself into them with rough, angry movements. But when he stamped his feet into his boots and headed for the door, Clemmie couldn’t just keep silent and watch him go.


‘Where are you going?’

‘Outside. In case you haven’t noticed—it’s raining.’

A brusque jerk of his head indicated the windows, where Clemmie now noticed that water rather than snow was lashing against the glass. A slow dawn was starting too, bringing a faint tinge of light to the sky.

‘I will get your car moving—or find a connection for the phone.’

He would do it if it killed him. The declaration was stamped into every line of his face, turning every muscle to stone.

‘And while I’m out you should get dressed and be ready to leave. I want to be out of here as soon as it’s physically possible.’

Out of here and away from her. Or at least on his way to delivering her to Nabil to pay off a debt of honour. He made her sound like a parcel for which someone had paid express delivery. He was not the passionate lover she had dreamed of, nothing but a cold, hard man intent on using her for his own ends, just as her father had done.

Clemmie shivered in the rush of icy air that had flooded into the small room as Karim yanked open the door and she grabbed at the blankets, pulling them up around her, even over her head, huddling into them for protection.

But it wasn’t the cold that he had let into the cottage that made her shudder. Instead the feeling came from deep inside, a terrible sensation of rejection and embarrassment at the way she had behaved. Tossed violently on an unknown sea of physical feelings, she had lost all thought of sanity and self-preservation and had thrown herself at him like some wild creature, driven only by her baser instincts.

The blankets were doing no good. She pulled them closer round her, but they felt rough and uncomfortable against her sensitised skin. Every nerve, every sense that Karim had awoken now stung with an arousal that refused to die down. Even the cotton of her nightdress was uncomfortable against her still peaking nipples and so much of her body was an ache of frustrated hunger that it felt like a bruise over every inch of her. She longed to call Karim back, to beg him to reawaken the excitement that had driven all thought from her mind, left her at the mercy of primal needs that were too strong to be contained.

It was no wonder that she had never needed to fight to resist the sort of temptation that she might have been assailed by. She had never known it. Never experienced anything like real temptation before. But one touch, one kiss from this man and all her defences had been blown apart, leaving her gasping and vulnerable, unable to even form the word No in her mind, let alone speak it.

But she hadn’t needed to say no. Karim had said it for her. Whatever she had felt for him, he had felt nothing of the same. He might have wanted her physically; she was not so na?ve as to be unaware of just what the powerful response of his body meant. But he hadn’t wanted her.

She had thought—had hoped—that she had found a way to ensure that her first time with a man was, if not out of love and truly something special, then at least with someone who made her feel special. Someone who excited her like no man had ever done in her life before. And Karim had made her feel that way. His touch had sent delight through every inch of her body, at least until he had pushed her from him, rejecting her so violently that she still felt the bruises on her soul. And instead of a wonderful, exciting initiation into womanhood, she just felt grubby and limp, like a discarded rag.

Slowly, awkwardly, Clemmie got to her feet. Her ankle still ached, though she realised she had forgotten all about it when she was in Karim’s arms. Her legs didn’t quite feel as if they belonged to her and she swayed where she stood as she tried to gather her strength. She just wanted to go and hide, but she knew that Karim was not going to allow that to happen.

If she needed any reminder then the sound from outside brought her head up sharply, knowing she was already on borrowed time. The hiccup and cough of her old car’s engine finally breaking into life, the rattling roar that told its own tale. Karim had somehow got it started and very soon he would have moved it out of the way, freeing his own vehicle to take to the road and drive them both away from here.

He would expect her to be ready and waiting to go with him when he came back into the house.

Just for a minute Clemmie considered rebelling. She would just sit here and...but as the hooded blanket slid from her head to her shoulders, reminding her that underneath the brown wool she was just about naked, the tee shirt nightdress still rucked up above her waist, all the fight went out of her in a rush. She didn’t want Karim coming back and finding her still as he had left her, discarded and unwanted, in a miserable bundle on the sofa. She would be dressed and on her feet, ready to face him.

Ready to go.

Slowly she looked round at the small shabby room in the cottage that had been her home for the past months. The place that been her haven, her sanctuary from the negotiations that had taken her life away, the promises that her father had made on her behalf. But it was no longer her sanctuary. In a couple of days it had changed completely and all because of Karim.

Karim had invaded her space, he had taken away her privacy, her security—her self-respect—and nothing would ever be the same again.

So she might as well go now and face the future that lay ahead of her. Her brief, foolish dreams of finding anything else to put in their place had shattered, falling at her feet in piles of dust. There was nothing more for her, nothing to look forward to, to hope for. She’d had her short taste of freedom and it was over. She had no possibility of avoiding her future any longer. So she would dress, and collect her last few belongings and when Karim returned he would find her waiting, if not ready, for the marriage that had been planned out for her when she was a child.

It was time to forget about dreams and to accept the future that fate and her father had decided for her.