life, the four of us. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to me.’
She heard some odd, metallic quality enter his tone. ‘But something happened?’ she guessed.
‘Something most certainly did,’ he agreed, his voice bitter. ‘My mother went home to visit her sister in Bakamurat, leaving Kamal and me behind. She was gone longer than my father had anticipated, and when she returned, she was … different.’
‘How do you mean, different?’
For a moment he didn’t speak. He had buried this as deeply as he could, but even now he could vividly recall the distracted air which had made it seem as if his mother barely noticed him. The way she’d looked right through him and Kamal as if they hadn’t been there. She’d gone off her food, so that the weight had dropped away from her and her beautiful face had seemed to be all large, confused dark eyes. In a way, she had never looked more lovely, and yet even at that early age, Hassan had sensed his father’s increasing concern. He remembered the sound of their raised voices when he and Kamal lay in bed at night and the terrible silences at breakfast in the mornings.
‘She had fallen in love with a nobleman from Bakamurat.’ He heard the distorted sound of his own voice. ‘She said she could not live without him. That he was the only man she’d ever loved. My father was as patient as I had ever seen him but eventually his patience wore thin. He told her she must choose between them.’
Ella broke the awful silence with a question she already knew the answer to. ‘And she chose him?’
‘Yes. She chose her lover over her husband and she left behind her two little boys while she went off to find what she described as the only man who had ever really understood her.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘My father.’
Ella nodded, her heart going out to him, cursing the loose tongues of broken-hearted adults. ‘Sometimes parents tell their children too much,’ she said falteringly. ‘I remember my own mother sobbing and telling me things about my father I wish she hadn’t said. I think she forgot who was the parent and who was the child. Sometimes people act inappropriately when their emotions get the better of them.’
‘Exactly! Which is why I don’t do emotion—or “love.”’ His lips curved into a cynical half-smile, thinking that she couldn’t have given him a better platform for the truth if she’d tried. ‘Why embrace something which makes people act shamefully?’ he demanded. ‘Which eats into what is good and what is true. And it changes—that’s the truth of it. Love is as inconstant as the wind. My mother vowed to spend her life with my father and she broke that vow. So how can anyone ever put their trust in it?’
Ella put the charcoal down, afraid that he would see the sudden trembling of her fingers. The warning in his voice was implicit; she heard it loud and clear. But she wanted to know the ending. Whether any happiness had been squeezed from the sour story he was telling her.
‘What happened to your mother?’ she questioned softly.
He shook his head, because the supposed retribution which had been heaped upon the woman who had given birth to him had brought him no comfort. ‘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