LITMIR.BIZ

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was all she would be left with when their affair was over. Some token of his. It wasn’t even affection, was it? Appreciation? For the orgasms she’d given him?

      And this affair would end. She had managed to ignore that reality these past few weeks of meeting him in hotel rooms across Europe.

      He was marrying. Sooner than later. And his chosen wife would be at the wedding.

      It was absolutely true that she couldn’t meet that woman then carry on with Kasim until… When? The day his engagement was announced? Days before he married? Her heart was pulsing like a raw wound just thinking of it.

      Each breath she drew felt like a conscious effort and burned both directions. In and out. Her throat closed and her eyes swam. Her voice came out strained with insult.

      “I’m not a woman you buy off, Kasim.”

      She looked up in time to see him flinch and avert his gaze.

      “I know you’re disappointed,” he began. “That is not—”

      She cut him off with a hoot of disbelief. “Is that what I am? Disappointed?” Her chest was caving in on itself. “Are you?”

      “It’s one day.”

      “It’s you turning me into your mistress, then letting your father call me a whore who’s not good enough to be seen in his palace. One who is paid well, I admit, but no thanks. I’m not interested.” She gave the velvet box a thrust of rejection so it tipped off the table onto the floor.

      “You’re overreacting,” he bit out, trying to catch the necklace.

      “No, you should have told me this could happen before you took me to your bed! That is information I needed because you know what Sadiq means to us.”

      “And what? You would have passed on all of this so you could attend one damned wedding?”

      “All of what?” she charged, waving at the necklace he now held. “You’ve just reduced our relationship to an exchange of sex for jewelry. Do you know what I’ve given up so I could be with you? The sacrifices I’ve made? I’ve pushed Trella away so I could be close to you. What have you given up? Nothing. And now I know why. Because I mean nothing to you. So, yes, the wedding is a deal breaker. Tell your father your mistress won’t be there because you no longer have one.”

      She turned toward her coat.

      He caught her arm. “Angelique—”

      “Don’t,” she said in the deadly, assertive voice she’d been trained to use, free hand snatching up her pendant in warning.

      His mouth tightened and he lifted his hand to splay it in the air, like she’d turned a gun on him.

      “Really? You’ll call in your guards rather than have a civilized conversation about this?”

      “How do you see this conversation ending? In your bed? Yes, I will call in my guards rather than let you seduce me into accepting this kind of treatment. You had chances to end this before my—” Don’t say “heart.” “Before my emotions were involved.” Her voice shook. “Did you really think, after all that I’ve shared with you, that I was only here for a necklace?”

      The control that she had cultivated through a lifetime of having to buck up and be strong was never harder to find. She shot her arms into her coat and picked up her purse.

      “You’re as emotionally tone-deaf as your father.”

      * * *

      If she had been trying to stab him in the heart, she had picked up the most efficient knife with which to do the job, then snapped it off against the bone for good measure.

      As he gathered the necklace from the floor, he thought of Jamal showing it to him a decade ago. It was one of his brother’s first efforts at a big piece, not perfect, designed with more passion than attention to the finer details, but it was genuinely beautiful. Jamal had been rightfully proud and Kasim sincerely impressed.

      Kasim had bought it, wanting to be his brother’s first patron, declaring, Someday it will be worn by a queen, as it should be.

      But lately, as he regularly saw green and gold tones in the eyes of his lover when she woke beside him, he had decided to give it to Angelique. He had known she wouldn’t like what he had to say today, but he had hoped to soften the blow by giving her something that was genuinely precious to him, that was hard to give up because it was one of the few remnants of his brother he had.

      Of course she wasn’t aware of that. There had been no point in trying to explain. He had let the door slam and the quiet set like concrete around him.

      Because they had no future. His father was choosing him a wife. The goal today had been to keep her from attending the wedding and that task was definitely accomplished.

      Sometimes hard choices had to be made. Jamal had been one of them and Angelique another.

      It made him furious and sick, but it was done.

      * * *

      Angelique heard the door, but didn’t get out of bed. She was too devastated. Her eyes were swollen and gritty, her throat raw, her nose congested and her heart sitting in a line of jagged pieces behind her breastbone.

      She had tried to brave it out on her own, but sometime in the darkest hours of the night, when her sister had texted, asking if she was all right, her willpower had collapsed.

      Please come, she had texted.

      Trella hadn’t asked why. She had only texted back that she would leave as soon as the family jet could be cleared for takeoff. Now her sister’s shoulders fell as she walked into the bedroom and took in the shipwreck that was her twin.

      “What happened?” Trella asked gently.

      “We broke up,” Angelique said in a voice rasped by hours of crying. “I’ve been so stupid.”

      “No.” Trella came to the bed and swept away the crumpled tissues to lie down in front of her. “You fell in love. That’s not stupid.” She stroked Angelique’s hair back from where it was stuck to her wet cheek.

      “I didn’t mean to.” Fresh tears flooded her eyes. “I never let anyone in. You know I don’t. It’s too painful.”

      “You were always so full of my suffering there was no room for anyone else.”

      “No.”

      “Yes, Gili.” Trella stroked her hair, petting and soothing. “I tried not to put it on you, but you carry it because that’s who you are. I’m not surprised you fell for him when he was the first person who didn’t lean on you emotionally. When you finally felt like I didn’t need you every minute. That must have felt like such a relief.”

      “He didn’t lean on me because he didn’t love me!” Angelique pushed a fresh tissue under her nose and sniffed. “And I feel so pathetic, crying like this when a bruised heart is nothing compared to—”

      “Shh…” Trella said, stroking her hair. “Don’t ever compare, bebé angel.”

      Angelique closed her eyes and tried to level out her breathing. “I thought I had learned how to be strong and I’m so…” Sad. Scorned. Heartbroken.

      “Do you know how I get through my worst moments?” Trella’s fingers gently wove in and picked up Angelique’s hair, combing to the ends. Her voice was pitched into the tone they had used as children, when telling each other secrets in the night. “Every time I’ve wanted to give up, I’ve always thought to myself, I have to be there when she needs me. You gave me a gift, asking me to come. You’re telling me I’m strong enough to be your support. It was worth fighting through all that I have so I could be with you here, in your hour.”

      Angelique had seen her begging Trella to come as pure weakness, but wondered now if she had failed to see what a comeback her sister was really making—because she’d been so wrapped

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