Page 48 of The Innocent Carrying His Legacy

‘But, sir—’ someone began.

Nazir turned around, surveying the gathering of his highest-ranking officers with intense distaste. He didn’t want these men here. He didn’t want this army. He didn’t want the heat of the desert or the hardness of the stones. He’d had nothing but rock and stone all his life and he was tired of it.

He wanted to hear the delicate sound of the fountain and the snick of those shears. He wanted to look at the green shrubs and flowers. He wanted...

You want her.

‘Get out,’ he repeated without raising his voice. ‘All of you, get out. Now.’

His men didn’t need to be told twice. Within seconds he was alone, the music of the fountain filling the silence of the room.

It should have eased him, but it didn’t. It only reminded him ofher.

Ivy in her transparent red robe. Ivy beneath him, crying out her pleasure. Ivy standing toe to toe with him, fighting him.

Ivy with tears falling down her cheeks telling him that she loved him.

Nazir paced to the meeting table in the middle of the room and put his palms flat on the surface, staring down at the dark grain of the wood.

Why was he constantly thinking of her? He could have understood if they had just been thoughts about her in his bed, her hot mouth and the slick feel of her body around his. But they weren’t. He thought about her fighting spirit, the shy way she teased him, the insightful way she viewed things, the excitement when she talked about something that interested her, and the grief that had filled her voice when she’d talked about her friend. The warmth that had suffused every word as she’d spoken about the baby.

Theirbaby.

His heart felt as if there were an arrow piercing it, a raw, painful wound that he’d spent the past month telling himself he didn’t feel. But of course he was wrong. He did feel it.

And it was agony. It was a rent in his soul miles deep.

This is about fear, Ivy had told him.Your fear.

Nazir stared at the table, unable to get the image of her out of his head, standing tall and strong and so very beautiful in front of him.

This is your choice, Nazir, not mine. And I would have chosen you if you’d let me.

But he hadn’t let her. He’d made his own choice, telling himself it was about protecting her and their child, about not wanting the stain of his existence to bleed into theirs and ruin them the way he’d ruined his parents.

Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it had been about fear. Yet it wasn’t only that.

It was about shame, too.

He was the bastard son of the Sultana, a mistake that had to be kept secret, and he’d been made to feel like that all his life. He’d never been allowed to show his feelings openly, had always had to keep them to himself lest he betray her and his father and their liaison.

And the day he’d forgotten, the day he’d lost control, he’d been punished for it. And so had everyone around him.

His father had always viewed the intensity of his son’s emotions as a failure, and so he’d never forgiven Nazir for that final slip, especially when it had lost him the woman he loved. And so the shame had wound its way into Nazir’s heart. He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of his feelings, and so he’d got rid of them, purged them like an illness from his body.

And it hit him all of a sudden that that shame was still there, sitting inside him like a canker.

That was why he was here in his iron fortress, skulking in the desert and refusing to leave. Making sure his country was safe but doing it from the shadows, keeping himself a secret, never declaring himself openly.

He never did anything openly.

But she did.

She had. She’d told him she loved him. She’d given away that piece of herself without hesitation, leaving herself so vulnerable. Leaving herself open.

Love has made me strong, she’d said, and at the time he hadn’t been able to conceive how love could be a strength, not when he could see the agony burning in her eyes. Yet...now he could see, now it was so very clear.

There was strength in vulnerability, so much strength. Because it took both strength and courage to be vulnerable to someone else, to open yourself up and risk being rejected, risk being hurt.

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