Spice of Love - Completed

Chapter 17

Divorce.

It was that chilling thought that woke her the next morning. The sun was already up, and the room was clad in brightness, but it was the man sleeping beside her that drew her gaze. He was truly beautiful. Glancing at him, she could see a delightful future of his handsome face and form in her bed forever. But it was only that she would be getting. He was not made to be lived with. Their bold personalities would continue to clash terribly. She could never be what he needed her to be.

With Sadiq came his royalty, his religion, and the restrictions his culture through him would hold her to. She couldn't bear being confined to the strictures of society. That would be beneath her and all she was meant to be. Walking away was the only way forward. Sadiq may not realise it yet, but his father did him a great favour in ensuring he wed a woman who could be his wife. Something Cat, herself, could never be.

Cat moved to crawl out from beneath him. Untangling her limbs from his, she clasped the hand Sadiq held over her baby bump, even in his sleep marking his possession, and padded naked over to the walk-in-robe, she emerged later, wrapped up in a kaftan. Cat paused before a mirror to take herself in. The makeup was all still mostly intact. Her eyes brightened by a dark kohl rim around it, making them look wider and more vulnerable because of it. Cat frowned. Then she glanced up and frowned some more. While her face remained mostly untouched right down to the fire-engine red kiss-proof lipstick she apparently had on, her hair had suffered a catastrophe. An unexpected giggle escaped her lips as she took in the dishevel. The tumbled-down locks brought to mind Sadiq's careless treatment of them last night. How his fingers had raked through them, tugging out pins as he went. Cat reached out to tug free a few that still hung off strands.

The morning prayers from the nearby mosque echoed through the palace walls, something she hadn't delved over much before, but with this day being her last in Sadiq's homeland, Cat was sensitive to the differences she would be leaving behind. Given any other circumstance, she would have loved her time here in Saudi Arabia. She would have loved learning about all the cultural differences, the geological differences, heck even the shopping differences of this country. But the past few days had warped her thinking and biased her thinking around the need for escape. Taking a person against their will did that to their normally objective perspective.

Even knowing she had been taken by the one she loved and who loved her in return, it didn't make the entrapment any easier to bear.

The peal of the doorbell was followed by a rude pounding. Cat jerked to a halt on her way back to the bed. Reaching down to tighten the sash to her kaftan, she looked up to the sound of the front door crashing impatiently open and all but stifled a yelp when the king himself came striding angrily in.

"Sadiq!" Cat yelped out then, afraid. But the Sultan was not there after her. He barely even spared her a glance.

"Sadiq!" Called out the king at that same time.

Only Sadiq was not as moved by his booming tone as was Cat. With an obvious expletive, even if uttered in the language of his native tongue, Sadiq leisurely rose from the bed to stand before his father, feet apart, naked and unembarrassed. Cat tugged her kaftan about her tighter and moved back several steps undetected while watching the two heads of this country trash it out. Her eyes remained fixed on Sadiq, unthinkingly mesmerised by the sensuality of his body language, brusque words, erotic accents and tone still husky from a night of unimaginable passions. She didn't have to understand the language to know it was about last night.

Sadiq had come to her bed.

When he should have gone to bed his first wife.

It wasn't long before the heated exchange blew out of proportion. With an explicit oath and without a backwards glance in Cat's direction, Sadiq went storming off out of her room, pausing only long enough to shrug into his clothes and then he was gone. No doubt to fulfil the duty he missed last night.