The Innocent Carrying His Legacy by Jackie Ashenden

CHAPTER TEN

HERMOUTHWASlike a flame lighting dry touchpaper and Nazir felt the moment he ignited, knew the second he went up like a torch, and he was powerless to stop it.

All the need in him, the possession, the hunger, the desperate desire he’d been holding back for years flooded out of him, tossing aside his precious self-control and drowning him.

Letting go of her wrist, he thrust one hand into her hair and closed his fingers into a fist, dragging her head back and taking her mouth like the conqueror he was.

She didn’t protest, didn’t cry out, simply surged against him, meeting his kiss as if she’d been waiting for it her entire life.

Foolish, reckless woman. She had no idea what she’d unleashed in him, but it was too late to stop. Too late to hold back. If she wanted him to be an animal then he’d be one and all those things she’d said, about him being compassionate and empathetic, well, she’d soon see those were lies.

He was destruction and he would destroy her.

Her mouth was hot and sweet beneath his and he ravaged it, plunging his tongue deep inside and taking all that sweetness for himself. Still kissing her, he grabbed a handful of her silky robe and pulled hard. The sound of tearing fabric filled the room, but she didn’t make a sound. Simply wriggled out of it as he tore it from her then pressed her body against his, all warm, silky female heat.

Everything inside him pulled taut and then snapped, all his hard-earned control, every lesson his father had ever taught him, all his cool logic. They disappeared, drowned under a flood of the most intense lust.

Without thought, he tore his mouth from hers, turned her around in his arms then pushed her face down onto the polished wooden floor of the gym. She gasped, but not in protest, coming up onto her hands and knees, then throwing him the sultriest look over one bare shoulder. It was a dare and a challenge to the predator inside him.

He dropped to his knees behind her, put one hand on the back of her neck, easing her head down onto the floor and holding it there so her cheek rested against the wood, her lovely, heart-shaped rear presented to him. He slipped his free hand between her thighs from behind, stroking through her wet heat to ease a finger inside her, and then, when she jerked and gasped, he eased in another.

She gave the most delicious cry, her back arching, her hips lifting, so he drew his fingers back out then in again, giving her some friction and making her writhe. The feel of her sex clenching around his fingers made him growl in satisfaction and he wanted to keep going, wanted to make her scream with just the movement of his hand. But the ache in his groin was becoming far too intense.

Taking his hand away, he reached for the buttons on his trousers and ripped them open, freeing himself. Then, keeping the pressure on the back of her neck, he thrust hard inside her from behind.

Ivy cried out, twisting on the floor beneath him. She was still up on her knees and he wanted to push her down and cover her entirely like the animal he was, but he had enough presence of mind to know that probably wasn’t a good idea considering where their child lay, and so he stayed where he was, satisfying himself with every hard, deep thrust.

He watched her as he moved, as the pleasure gripped him tight. Her face was turned to one side on the floor, her cheeks deeply flushed, thick dark lashes resting on her cheeks. Her mouth was slightly open, deep moans of pleasure escaping her.

She didn’t seem to care that she was down on the hard wood, that he had his hand on the back of her neck, that his thrusts were hard, brutal, and savage almost. In fact, if he wasn’t much mistaken, she was trying to shove herself back on him, giving him back as good as she got.

Little savage. Little fury.

Little warrior woman.

She is yours. She’ll be yours for ever. You will never, ever let her go.

Possessiveness flooded through him and he didn’t fight it this time; he let it soak into him, become part of him. He ‘d resisted it and resisted it, but there was no resisting any more. She’d unleashed him and here were the consequences.

He drove deeper inside her, feeling her clench around him, stamping his claim on her, making her his in every way there was until the room was full of the sound of her cries and gasps, the sounds of her pleasure and his, until her skin was as slick with sweat as his and she was clawing at the wooden floorboards as if they could give her what she needed.

But they couldn’t. Only he could.

He reached around and under her, sliding his hand possessively over the hard roundness of her stomach and down between her thighs, finding the small, hard bud that gave her the most pleasure and he stroked it, teased it.

She shivered and shook, but he kept her pinned, kept pushing deep and hard, kept teasing her with his fingers until he felt her tighten around him, her body convulsing, her scream of pleasure echoing around the room.

It wasn’t enough though, so he did it again, pushing her harder, pushing her the way she’d pushed him until she shattered for a second time, and only then did he let himself go, abandoning himself utterly to pleasure as he moved inside her, letting it break him, rip him apart completely then scatter him to the winds.

He lost his grip on himself for some time afterwards and when his awareness returned, he found he’d collapsed on top of her, pinning her curvy little body beneath him. A heavy satiation pulsed through him and he didn’t want to move, content to lie there with her beneath him, the scent of feminine musk and jasmine surrounding him. And for a few blissful seconds, he felt nothing but peace.

Then, gradually, he became conscious of what had happened between them, that he’d let his need for her overwhelm him, that he’d let his hunger take control.

You’ve become everything your father warned you against.

Beneath the sated aftermath of pleasure, the same icy thread that had choked him out on the terrace tightened again, reminding him of what he was, what he’d always be. Not only the by-product of his father’s failure to control himself, but also a child full of the same weaknesses. The same needs, the same intense desires. And the same failures too.

Failures that he already knew had had terrible consequences and yet here he was with another failure to add to the list.

Had he learned nothing from his mother’s banishment? From how he’d ruined her life and his father’s? Had he learned nothing from all the years of perfecting his self-control?

Apparently all it took was one lovely woman to touch him and all those lessons were for nothing.

You can’t have her. You don’t deserve it.

His heart felt raw and bruised inside his chest, the scent and feel of her flooding his senses, the warmth of her body permeating every part of him. She was a beautiful, strong, vital woman, who matched him in every way possible. And that was the worst part of all.

She was perfect for him, she was everything he’d ever wanted, yet he couldn’t have her. Because it was true. He didn’t deserve her. His very existence was a mistake, something that shouldn’t have happened. His life had brought nothing but sorrow and ruin to both his parents, and he would bring sorrow and ruin to her, too.

In fact, he already had. She was pregnant with his child, a pregnancy she’d only undertaken on behalf of her friend. It wasn’t his fault that her friend had died, no, but it was his fault he was keeping Ivy here. It was his fault that he’d demanded she marry him.

She hadn’t wanted to; he’d forced her into it.

She never chose you, just as your mother never chose you.

The icy thread, the heavy weight of a shame he couldn’t escape, constricted, the beat of his heart loud in his ears.

He should at least have followed the rules his father had tried to instil in him. No children. No wife. No family. No ties to test the weaknesses inside himself. Nothing but cold earth and hard rock, that was his lot in life and he should have accepted it.

He should never have wanted more.

It’s not too late. You can save this situation.

Nazir closed his eyes a moment, the knowledge of what he had to do settling down inside him, even as every part of his soul clenched in instinctive denial.

But it had to be done. He must impose distance between them. He had to find his control again somehow and this was the only way.

Carefully, because after all he didn’t want to hurt her, he untangled himself and got to his feet. Moving over to where the red robe he’d ripped off her had been discarded, he picked it up and brought it back to her. She’d risen to her feet and so he wrapped the robe gently around her, covering up all that delicious, pale nakedness.

He wished he could savour it a little longer, because he wouldn’t see her like this again, but it was better that he didn’t. No point in making this any harder than it already was, for him at least.

She smiled at him, her copper gaze full of light and heat, and his heart stumbled in his chest. He hoped this wouldn’t hurt her. It might a little, but surely not too greatly. She wasn’t here because she wanted to be, after all, but because he’d made her stay.

‘I’ve decided something,’ he said, keeping his voice very measured. ‘After our marriage, I think you should live here rather than at the fortress.’

She shook her hair back as she adjusted the robe over her shoulders. ‘Oh? Why is that?’

‘It’s quieter, cooler. And the desert is no place for a child.’

She lifted a brow. ‘Won’t that be too far for you to be from your men?’

‘No.’ He paused, holding her gaze. ‘I won’t be living here with you.’

It was the only thing he could do. He had to marry her, had to have his name protecting her and their child, but he couldn’t allow himself to stay near her. She was a vulnerability he couldn’t allow. Already, it was too much, his control falling by the wayside at one touch of her hand. What would it be like having her around constantly? At his side every minute of the day?

Impossible. His self-control would be dust before the week was out.

Ivy frowned. ‘What do you mean you won’t be living here with me?’

‘I’ll live at the fortress where my men are.’

‘But—’

‘That’s my final decision,’ he interrupted, because he wasn’t going to argue with her about it. ‘I have to be where my men are.’

She blinked. ‘Oh. Oh, all right, then I’ll live there, too. The courtyard is lovely and we can always come here for holidays. The baby will be—’

‘No.’ He made the word heavy as an iron bar.

‘No? What do you mean no?’

‘I mean, you and the child will stay here. You’ll live here.’

Surprise moved over her delicate features. Then abruptly her gaze narrowed. ‘Without you, is that what you’re saying?’

He fought the passionate part of himself, turned it to stone, giving her back the commander of armies, not the man. ‘I can’t live with you, Ivy.’

‘What?’ Shock glittered in her eyes. ‘Why ever not?’

You have hurt her.

His chest ached, another reminder of how she was getting to him and how severely his control had been compromised. It shouldn’t matter that he’d hurt her, it really shouldn’t, not when this was better for both of them. Because it would be better for her too, and for their child. That compassion and empathy she’d sensed inside him, that she’d drawn out of him, couldn’t be allowed to exist. It compromised him, made him vulnerable. Made him want things he was never meant to have.

And he didn’t want to be a father like his own, so cold and hard and emotionally barren. Which meant it was better that he not be anywhere near them.

‘Because I’m not going to be the kind of husband you want.’ He had nothing else to give her but honesty. ‘And I’m not going to be the kind of father our child needs either.’

She looked bewildered. ‘I...don’t understand. We’ve been talking for the past week about what our lives are going to look like and how we’d live with you at the fortress and—’

‘I know, but I’ve changed my mind.’ He bit out the words, tasting the bitterness in them. Ignoring it. ‘It’s better for you and for the child to be apart from me.’

She stared at him for a long moment and he could see the hurt glittering in her eyes, a deep and very real hurt that made him ache. ‘Why, Nazir? How is it better for our child not to have his father?’

Ourchild. His father. The words caught at his heart like a hook catching on a rock, tugging at him, tearing at him.

He ignored the sensation, shoving it down with all the rest of the weak, shameful emotions he wasn’t going to permit himself.

Ivy needed more than an absent husband, especially after the childhood she’d had with the endless rejections and the loneliness. She deserved someone who could give her what she really needed, which wasn’t just physical passion, but emotional passion too.

And he couldn’t give her that. He’d never be able to give her that.

‘Because you both will want something from me that I cannot give you,’ he said harshly. ‘And since I don’t want to hurt you or the child, it’s better if I keep my distance.’

A fierce light had begun to glow in her eyes, making him feel a kind of boundless despair. Because of course she wouldn’t go without a fight. Of course she wouldn’t do what he told her. When had she ever done that?

She was going to make things as hard for them both as she possibly could. She was going to fight him every step of the way, which meant if he was going to protect both of them, he would need to be hard as rock. Obdurate as a granite wall. There could be no weakness in him, no vulnerability, none at all.

Then he would have to deal her a death blow to ensure that she never fought him again.

‘So?’ Ivy said, staring at him, small and indomitable in her red robe, the light of battle in her eyes. ‘What about if I did want something? What if I wanted everything?’

Ivy’s heart felt as if it had grown spikes in her chest and they were stabbing into her. Nazir stood in front of her, his powerful body still gleaming with sweat from his workout and then from the intensity of their lovemaking, his features gone hard and impassive as the cliffs outside the villa. His gaze was ice, glittering like a snowfield in the harsh lights of the gym. This was the face of the Commander, cold and implacable, not the hungry desire of the man who’d pushed her to the ground and held her down as he’d taken her rough and hard.

This wasn’t the man who’d lost control, who’d been magnificent in his desire, who’d thrilled her right down to her bones with his need for her. She’d loved every minute of it, gloried in every second of how she’d pushed him right to the edge and then over it.

But she should have known there would be consequences, that he wouldn’t see his loss of control as an acceptance of their intense chemistry, but as a failure in himself. And that she was something he needed to protect himself from, because of course it wasn’t about protecting her and their baby. It was about keeping himself safe.

His set expression didn’t change. ‘Then you’re going to be disappointed, aren’t you? Because there’s nothing I can give you.’

A part of her shivered at the indifference in his voice, and it made her want to retreat into her no-nonsense armour. It made her want to put her chin up, draw her robe around her, and tell him she didn’t care one way or the other. But that felt like a repudiation of the feeling in her heart, the love that beat strong and sure. Love for the baby inside her and for the man in front of her. Love she couldn’t deny or lie about, not any more. Because it was important, too important.

So she didn’t retreat, because at heart she was a warrior and always had been, stepping forward instead, coming close to him, inches away from the hot, gleaming bronze of his body. ‘And if I told you that I’m in love with you? What would you say then?’

A bright flame flickered in his eyes then died, a fire crushed beneath an avalanche of snow. ‘I’m sorry, Ivy. But that won’t make the slightest bit of difference.’

She could feel something in her soul tear, an old wound reopening, a wound that had never fully healed and now never would. But she ignored it. This wasn’t just about her. It was about the baby she carried too, the baby that needed both parents, not only one.

‘And your child?’ she demanded. ‘What about them?’

The expression on his face became even harder. ‘The child is why it’s even more important that you both live away from me. If you stay I’ll ruin you and I’ll ruin the child too, and that I can’t allow.’

Pain rippled out inside her, but she ignored it, trying to focus on what he was saying. ‘What do you mean you’ll ruin us?’

‘I’m a bastard, Ivy. Evidence of my father’s failure to control himself. Evidence of my mother’s weakness. I ruined their lives by my very existence.’

‘But how is that your fault?’

Fury passed over his granite features, the ice in his eyes shifting a second, allowing her to catch a glimpse of the raw pain that lived beneath the surface. ‘If I’d followed the rules, if I’d stayed in control, things might have been different. I could have helped them be together, not driven them apart. But I didn’t follow the rules and I didn’t stay in control. And in the end, I ensured that they never saw each other again.’

He truly believed that; she could see it in his face. And it made her heart shrivel up in her chest like a flower exposed to frost. ‘No,’ she said hoarsely. ‘You can’t take the blame for what happened. That wasn’t your fault.’

His expression shut down, the pain gone, leaving only a flat expanse of ice. ‘Of course it was my fault. I was the one who lost control of my temper. I was the one who attacked my half-brother. And I was the one who gave away their secret. No one else.’

‘But you—’

‘Which means that for the rest of my life, I need to live according to the principles my father taught me. To have no children. No wife. No family. No emotional ties whatsoever.’

Her eyes prickled with tears, a deep well of hurt for him opening up inside her. ‘That’s not a life, Nazir. That’s just...nothing. And I know, because that’s what I had until you came along.’

‘Then you must be grateful for what you have. You will have our baby and that will surely be enough.’

Her throat closed up, pain like a vice around her heart. ‘But it’s not and it never will be. You child needs you, Nazir.’ She took a breath, then offered up the last piece of her soul. ‘I need you.’

Yet he only gave her back the same expressionless stare. ‘A soldier’s job is to protect and defend, and that’s what I’m going to do. Even if what I have to protect you from is myself.’

Anger bloomed suddenly in the depths of her pain, wrapping around her in a cleansing fire. ‘You really think this is about protecting me? Protecting our son?’ Her voice cracked, fury laced through it. ‘No, I don’t accept that. This is about fear. Your fear.’

Finally, heat flickered in his frosty gaze as the barb hit home. ‘I’m not afraid.’

‘Yes, you are,’ she insisted. ‘You’re terrified. Your mother broke your heart and your father broke your will, and now you can’t risk either ever again.’ She took a step towards him, now just bare inches away. ‘Well? Tell me that isn’t true.’

His gaze raked over her, cold, indifferent. ‘My heart I cut out years ago and as for my will, my father didn’t break it. He created it. He taught me how to keep it strong. I forgot his lessons for a time, but I seem to have remembered them now.’

Tears blurred her vision, her anger receding as quickly as it had come. ‘You keep thinking of love as a vulnerability, Nazir,’ she said hoarsely. ‘But it isn’t. I love you and I love our child and I don’t feel vulnerable. I feel strong. I feel like I could climb mountains and conquer the world.’

There were no flickers of heat now, no glimpses of anger or pain. His expression was wiped clean. ‘That has not been my experience,’ he said without any emphasis at all.

He wasn’t going to change his mind, that was obvious. If he wouldn’t change it for his child, then he wasn’t going to change for her, and she knew it.

Which made her decision very clear.

Ivy swallowed down her agony, grabbed the brightness that had flickered to life inside her, the love for the baby she carried, the love for her best friend who now wasn’t here, but who’d been the only person to choose her, and she held onto it tightly.

‘In that case,’ she said, lifting her chin, ‘I can’t marry you, Nazir. And we can’t live here, exiled to the mountains the way your mother was exiled from Inaris.’

He stared at her, giving her nothing, his gaze darkening, the ice thickening, taking all her rage, all her passion, all her love, and giving her nothing but a cold, black void.

‘You’re right,’ he said without any discernible expression. ‘In which case, it’s best that you return to England. I will of course provide money for the child and protection for you.’

There were bitter words she wanted to say to him. Hot, angry words. Words aimed like weapons that would cut him and hurt him the way he was hurting her.

But suddenly she’d lost her taste for a fight. He’d made his decision and, as he’d already told her once before, fighting him would only waste her energy and she was going to need all that energy to care for their baby.

And she would care for it, she knew that deep in her heart. She had all this love inside her and she was desperate to give it to someone, and so she would give it to her baby. She would shower him with so much love he’d never know that his father hadn’t wanted him.

‘Okay,’ she said quietly. ‘If that’s the way you want it, I’m not going to argue. And I’m not going to fight, not this time.’ She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. ‘This is your choice, Nazir, not mine. I would have chosen you if you’d let me.’

Nazir’s eyes glittered, his face a mask. ‘But I don’t want to be chosen, Ivy.’ His voice was as cold as the north wind. ‘I’m sorry.’

There was nothing to say to that. She’d opened herself up to him, given herself to him and he didn’t want her. What could she do about that?

There’s nothing you could do. Nobody ever wanted you, remember?

No, but Connie had. And her child would. And even if the man she wanted more than her next breath didn’t, she wouldn’t be alone.

Ivy swallowed back her tears, swallowed back her pain. She gave him one nod, then she turned on her heel and walked out.