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Adham could only gape at her as she continued her furious tirade.

“As for you, the only thing I ever wanted from you was caring and respect. But those are alien concepts to you and the only thing I now need from you is an uncontested divorce!”

With each word from her trembling lips, realization and heart-bursting delight dawned on Adham.

She’d never wanted the things he’d thought she’d married him for. She hadn’t been in on her father’s deal, and had always thought their marriage was real. She’d wanted to marry him. Because she wanted him. Because she loved him!

So why did she want to leave him now?

“Arjooki, ya habibati, I don’t understand. I love you—”

“Stop it!” she screamed. “Stop acting. I heard you, Adham. Today, with Sebastian. Your only concern is to allay doubts about our marriage so your enemies won’t undermine your family’s power. I understand it’s a noble cause but count me out. Go acquire some other woman to do this job. I want—I deserve someone who doesn’t have to pretend to want me.”

And everything fell into place.

He surged toward her. “Habibati, I beg you, listen to me—”

She beat his hands away. “Oh, I did. I’ve done nothing but listen to you and your lies since the day I met you. But I’ve listened to the truth today, and nothing you say can change that.”

He still vibrated with the elation of discovering her reciprocated emotions. But now, as her anguish flayed him, anxiety rose to supplant it as the extent of her misapprehension registered. He rushed to explain.

“But you misunderstood. I was discussing with Sebastian my predicament in retrospect, answering his questions about what my enemies had hoped to gain by approaching him.”

“Oh, please. Last night was about bringing me back under your spell, to be your worshipping fool and provide your enemies with photographic evidence of my enslavement. You must have also deemed it necessary to sleep with me again, to get working on the heir you need.”

His aching hands clenched on the need to drag her against him, make her listen to him, make her believe him. His heart stampeded with the rising dread that she might not, might close her heart to him, that he’d done it too much damage to fix. But he couldn’t accept that, never would. He’d make her believe him.

“No, Sabrina, that isn’t how—”

She cut him off. “That is exactly how it was. But don’t worry. There won’t be any repercussions from divorcing me. You were lucky—the two times you slept with me happened to be at the exact wrong time.”

“I don’t care if you never get pregnant,” he protested.

“Save it, Adham. And look at it this way. Our divorce will bring in even more business for the club. More people will be rabidly curious to see you next season with a new acquisition.”

He stared at her. Sabrina as he’d never seen her. A spirit that needed nothing and no one, that could not be tamed or bought, but would give her all willingly, endlessly only in the name of love. A tigress capable of slashing anyone who trespassed against her to shreds.

He knew he was fighting for his life here—for she was his life—but he couldn’t control the thrill that took him over at discovering these new facets of her. The knowledge of the barbed steel beneath the silk and surrender would make him revel in them more. He couldn’t wait to unearth more complexities, which he was now certain she possessed. But none of that would happen, his very life would be over, if he didn’t convince her of his sincerity. As he must.

Ready now to take her bitterness, welcoming its pain in atonement for the pain he’d caused her, determined to wipe it away, he closed the distance she’d put between them.

“It was Sebastian who said what happened between us last night was good for business. But he was only right about one thing—I had nothing on my mind but you. I’d come to claim you, thinking that if desire was all you felt for me, that I was a fool not to let you have me. But you turned away and I lost all sense of place and purpose. All sense, period. I had to get you back, make you succumb