In Too Deep_ Husband Material & the Sheikh's Bargained Bride - Brenda Jackson [61]
It felt like the distance between them widened instead of narrowed with each step. It was too much.
He bellowed with it. “Sabrina!”
His shout seemed to freeze her and everything else, as if all existence had been paused. He felt as if his feet barely touched ground as he closed the distance separating them.
He came to an abrupt halt a foot away, vibrating with emotion. Her scent flayed him. He could discern every hair in the gleaming mahogany waves that cascaded down her back, feel each tremor her heart sent through her flesh. And he knew.
He was damned to love her, even without hope of reciprocation. What she evoked in him was the only thing he would ever want or need. And she didn’t feel the same.
He could do nothing but accept it, and take whatever he could from her.
Feeling defeated for the first time in his life, he declared his surrender.
“So now you realize your power over me,” he rasped. “You’re raising the stakes. Go ahead, Sabrina. If you want to make a new deal with new terms, then make it.”
She turned to him then, her face and voice inanimate. “I want one thing. To never see you again.”
He advanced on her. She tried to retreat. He wouldn’t let her, grabbing her arm, shoving the dossier he’d brought at her.
Her fingers closed around it instinctively, her eyes blank, making him feel as if she didn’t even see him.
But he had to try to make her see, try to make her respond to him. “I thought this would show me if you felt anything real for me, but it’s no longer a test. I can no longer afford it. You can consider all of this an incentive. And you can ask for anything at all in addition. Just stay with me, give us a chance. I know we started badly, but we can make this work. I know we can.”
She wrenched away as if his hand burned her. “This act will never work.”
So she’d been acting all the time?
The thought swamped him with a despondence so profound, it made him realize one thing. The most important thing.
Even if he found the right price to make her stay, it would kill him knowing she felt nothing for him.
He had to let her go, no matter the damages to himself, his heart, or his kingdom. No matter if she were already pregnant with his child. He’d rather be exiled from his homeland than live knowing he had her in every way but was forever exiled from her heart.
Unable to face her or bear the agony, he turned away.
“What is this?”
Her exclamation hit him between the shoulder blades, making him turn against his will, against his better judgment.
He found her flipping through the dossier, her frown deepening. The shuffling sounds chafed his nerves, snapping them one by one. He waited with thorns in his heart for delight to invade her eyes, once she realized all she wanted was hers for the taking, with nothing required on her part.
But it wasn’t delight that filled her eyes. It was rage.
His confusion turned to stupefaction as she threw the dossier to the ground and proceeded to shred the contracts and deeds for everything he’d promised her once she fulfilled her part of the deal.
“See this, Adham?” she shouted. “This is what I think of the deal you and my father made! You can take your land and assets and terms and shove them! You think I want to inherit my father’s land and business? I want them gone. I want them to have never existed. They’ve been the cause of all the alienation I’ve felt my whole life. Everyone who’s ever come within five feet of me had their eyes on them, including you. So if you no longer want the land, you can give it to charity or let the wild reclaim it for all I care. “I never wanted any of this. The only thing I ever wanted from my father was love, the only thing I wanted to do was help him. I chose my fields of study so I’d be the right hand he’d always implied a son would have been. I’m good for more than being married off and making babies like he—and you—thought. I certainly don’t need either of you to ‘provide’ for me. I am a professional any winemaking business in the world