Special Deliveries: Heir To His Legacy: Heir to a Desert Legacy

Why do you stay with him, Mom?

Because as bad as he makes me feel sometimes… when he makes it feel good, he makes it feel like heaven.

No.

She broke the kiss, gasping for air, shoving at his chest, blinding panic moving through her, taking over the pleasure that had made her behave so foolishly. So much like her mother.

“Stop,” she said, her chest rising and falling quickly, her voice shaking. She was going to cry. She could feel it in the sting of her eyes, the ache in her throat, the sick feeling in her stomach. She didn’t want him to see her tears.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, choosing to embrace anger. Anger was so much better than weakness. So much better than acceptance. “You… you’re trying to dominate me by making me feel good. Trying to exert power over me with sex, but it isn’t going to work.”

“Funny, I thought I was kissing you. I thought I even gave you the chance to leave.”

“You said it, but you were holding me there. You know that.”

“And you could have broken away, like you did just now. You know that. Don’t change it to suit you just because you’re having regrets.”

“Hopefully that’s our marriage confirmed then, because that was quite enough for me,” she said, breezing past him and heading for the stairs.

“Oh, no, habibti, that is not how a marriage is confirmed here. It will not be official until I’m inside of you.”

She whirled around, her heart beating erratically. “Don’t say things like that to me.”

“Why? Because it makes you want it?”

“Because it’s disgusting,” she hissed, a tear escaping now, sliding down her cheek. “You have all the power here, and I won’t let you have this, too.” She turned away from him and went up the stairs, stalking down the hall and to her room. It was empty. Aden had been moved to the nursery for the night.

And she couldn’t go and get him. Not if she hoped to keep up the pretense of being a true wife to Sayid. In reality, she wouldn’t be able to sleep in her room, either. She sat in a chair in front of an ornate vanity.

She wouldn’t sleep, then.

But she wasn’t going to Sayid’s room.

Sayid felt as if a rock had settled in his stomach. He didn’t know what had prompted her reaction to him, but he knew it came from somewhere deep. A place she kept hidden from the world. A place that had been created by pain.

He knew it because he recognized it. In his case, the pain had been so great that every nerve ending had been killed and cauterized. Leaving him healed, but not feeling. Never again.

With Chloe… her wounds were raw. Not enough to stop the pain. Not for the first time, he was grateful that he’d been spared that. That his wounds had been too grave to heal right.

He stood in the corridor for a long time, weighing what he would do.

He would follow her. Because she was in pain. Because she was his wife. And because for the first time in a very long time, he felt the desire to do the right thing, not the right thing in terms of honor or the greater good, but the right thing for a person.

Sayid followed the path Chloe had taken and knocked on her bedroom door. He heard nothing and he realized that she might be afraid he was a palace employee.

“It’s me,” he said.

“Why?” she asked, her voice a long whine.

“Because we have to talk.”

“Well, come in. You don’t want anyone to catch you in the hall.”

He pushed the door open and felt a strange tightening in his chest when he saw her there, sitting at the vanity, her knees pulled up to her chest, her white dress flowing out around her.

“What happened down there?”

“I told you,” she said.

“You gave me that same line you’ve been giving me. It always turns in to what a neanderthal I am. To how I’m trying to dominate you. Let me tell you something, Chloe, if I were trying to dominate you, you would know it. There would be no mistaking it.”

Her cheeks turned red. “It’s just that… you could, Sayid. You have… so much power. I can’t give you any more.”

“Attraction,” he said, not sure why he was doing this, reaching out, but knowing he had to now, “is two sided. And it means you have power over me, as well. The power to make me lose my mind, like I did a few moments ago.”

“I didn’t… I don’t…”

He crossed the room and knelt before her, gripping her chin with his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face up to his. “You did.”

“Sayid, I can’t….”

He tilted his head up and caught her lips with his, the kiss quick, a demonstration of what she made him feel. When they parted, he was breathing hard, his heart beating fast. He couldn’t remember a time before Chloe when a simple kiss had possessed so much power.

Sex had always been easy for him to get. Women liked the combination of looks and power he possessed, and that meant from the time he’d wanted sex he’d been getting it with ease. So that had meant that a kiss had never been anything more to him than a prelude to the act.

But he wanted to savor it with Chloe. To kiss her slowly, deeply. Until she relaxed into him. Until she begged for more.

The fantasy had changed. He had thought of dominating her. Of taking his pleasure in her. Those images were gone now. How could he think of such a thing when she was sitting here like this, so brittle he feared she would break if he handled her too roughly?

Tenderness invaded him, a feeling that was so foreign he might have been experiencing it for the first time. He didn’t know it was possible for him to feel it, not anymore.

Sura was the only woman, the only person, to ever make him feel the emotion before. And not since. Never since. He waited for the reminder of the woman and child he’d lost to kill the feeling, to come to his aid and remind him of why this was impossible for a man like him. Why he must never let himself feel.

It didn’t work. And it made him angry. “Look at me,” he growled. She complied. “Why are you afraid of me?”

“I’m not,” she said, her breasts pitching up sharply with her indrawn breath.

“You are.”

“It’s not you,” she said, her voice a whisper. “It’s men.”

The admission hit him like a physical blow. “All men?”

“Certain types of men. Men with power. Men who like power.”

“What man doesn’t like power? The alternative is to be without, and I don’t think that’s anyone’s preference.”