by Trish Morey / Caitlin Crews / Nina Harrington / Raye Morgan
And worse, she knew him. Her body knew him—and was reacting exactly as it had then, when she had been so young. She’d spent a long time convincing herself that all that fire had been no more than a young girl’s fantasy. That he could not possibly do these things to her. That she had embellished, exaggerated, as young girls did.
“Thank you for the offer,” she said, as if she was placating him. As if she did not, in fact, remember him. “But I’m afraid I have a personal policy against marrying strange men who approach me in parking lots.”
“I am Adel Qaderi,” he said, in that calm yet implacable voice, his gray eyes on hers, that name sounding within her like a gong. Her breath tangled in her throat. “I am no stranger to you. I am your betrothed, as you know very well.”
It was such an odd, old word. Lara concentrated on that— pushing away the fluttering of her pulse, the constriction in her throat. The onslaught of too many memories she’d thought forgotten long ago.
“I’m sorry,” she said, dismissing him. If she didn’t accept this was happening, it didn’t have to happen, did it? “I’m late for a—”
“You are the Crown Princess of Alakkul,” Adel said in that low, commanding voice, somehow making it impossible for Lara to turn and get into her car as she knew she should. “The last of an ancient bloodline, warriors and kings throughout history. The only child of the great King Azat, may he rest in peace.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees wobbled beneath her.
“May he …?” she echoed. She shook her head, trying to clear it. What could this mean? How could it be true? Her father was the monster under her bed, the nightmare that lay in wait when she closed her eyes. Hadn’t her mother always told her so? “He’s … dead?”
“At least you do not deny your own father,” Adel said, his expression stern. He moved closer to her but then stopped, as if he felt called to an action he chose not to take. Still, somehow, she knew he grieved for her father in all the ways she could not. It made a headache bloom to life in her temples. “Perhaps we can dispense with the rest of this game of pretend now.”
“You approached me in a parking lot, like a vagrant,” Lara hissed. Unwilling to face what he’d just told her. Unwilling to imagine what it might mean. “What did you think my reaction would be?”
“I did so deliberately.” His gaze was cool. Assessing. Dangerous. “I assumed you would feel more at ease in a public place. After all, you have spent most of your life running away at the slightest hint of your homeland.”
Lara shifted the bag in her arms, and wished her head would stop spinning. How was she supposed to act? Feel? She had not heard from her autocratic father directly in twelve years. She had not wanted to hear from him. If asked even five minutes before, she would have announced without a qualm that she hated the man.
But that did not mean she’d wanted him dead.
“I need to inform my mother …” she began, her temples pounding, wondering how fragile, prone-to-hysteria Marlena would be likely to take such news. Wondering, too, what her mother would center her life around now there was no more King Azat to hate and fear and blame. But perhaps that was unkind.
“Your mother is being notified even now,” Adel replied coolly.
Lara found herself staring at the play of muscle in his strong arms, his hard abdomen. She felt her body’s treacherous heat, its instant response to the very sight of him, despite her emotions.
“I am afraid your business is with me, Princess. I cannot allow you the necessary time to grieve.” Was his tone ironic? Or did she only imagine his judgment? Was that guilt she felt, pooling inside of her? “We must wed immediately.”
“You are insane,” she told him, when she could speak. When the red haze of confusion and emotion receded slightly. When she could jerk her attention away from his warrior’s body. “You cannot really believe I’ll marry you!”
Adel smiled again, though this time, there was nothing particularly sympathetic about it. Where was that younger man she remembered, who had been so eager to see her smile?
“I understand that this is a shock,” he said. “But let me be clear. You have only two possible choices before you, and while I am aware neither one is necessarily easy, you must choose one of them.”
“Your attempt at compassion is insulting,” Lara managed to say, her hands clenched tight into the bag she held. Part of her wanted to fling the sack at him as he stood near the trunk of her sensible sedan. And then run. Only the fact that he probably expected that reaction kept her from it.
“Nonetheless, it is real,” he said. His storm-colored eyes moved to hers, and darkened. “It would never have been my choice to confront you in this way, with this news. I regret the necessity. But it does not change anything.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lara said after a moment, her temper kicking in—replacing the wild swirl of far trickier feelings. Anger was better. Anger felt better— more productive. “And more important? I don’t care.”
“Yet you must listen,” he told her. So quiet. So sure. And she could only stare at him. And obey. “I am sorry for that, too, but so it is.”
There was something about the way he looked at her then that … bothered her, in a way she couldn’t quite categorize. As if he could see the buried truths she’d denied existed for years. The old dreams. The yearnings for a life, a family, the kind of things other girls took for granted while she trailed around after Marlena, cleaning up her messes. The way she’d felt about him all those years ago, the things she’d dreamed they’d do together—
Lara blinked, and steeled herself against him—and the surprising swell of something like grief that she would have sworn she’d never feel.
“What, then?” she asked, her voice too rough, as she fought back the unwieldy emotions that shifted and rolled within her. “What is it you think I need to hear?”
“You have a choice to make,” he said again, and the worst part, Lara realized in a sort of horror, was that his voice was kind, his eyes the same. As if he understood exactly what she was going through—as if he knew.
And yet he was continuing anyway, wasn’t he? He was an Alakkulian male. An Alakkulian king. Just like her father, he thought only of himself. That much was blatantly obvious, no matter how kind his eyes might seem. No matter her memories of his smile, of his tenderness.
“The only choice I will be making,” she told him, enunciating clearly, deliberately, with razor-sharp precision, as if sounding tough would make her feel that way, too, “is to get in my car and drive away from here. From you. From this ridiculous conversation. I suggest you get out of the way, unless you’d like me to run you over.”
“You did not merely promise to marry me, as any young girl might,” Adel said in the same calm, commanding tone, as if she had not just threatened him. “You entered into a binding legal contract.”
“I was a teenager,” Lara retorted. “No court in the world would ever hold me to it. It’s absurd you would think otherwise—this is not the Stone Age!”
“You overestimate the progressive nature of the world’s courts, I think,” he replied, something almost like humor flashing briefly across his face. But she did not want to think of him as human, as capable of humor as he’d been before, and ignored it. “But in any case, it does not matter. Your father signed for you when you were too young, as is the custom. When you came of age you did not withdraw your consent from the contract—which, according to the laws of Alakkul, means you thus agreed that you entered into the terms of the contract of your own free will.”
“I will not marry you,” she said. Her shoulders tightened, her chin rose like a fighter’s. “I would rather die.”
“There is no need for such theater,” Adel replied in a faintly reproving tone. Yet his mouth curved slightly—as if he found her amusing. It made her temper kick in again. That, she told herself, was the feeling that pounded through her, shaking her. “You may break the contract, if that is yo
ur wish. But there is a price.”
“Let me guess.” Lara scraped her heavy curls back from her face with an impatient jerk of her hand. “My honor will be smeared? My family name forever muddied? Isn’t that how you people think?”
“By ‘you people,’” he asked, his voice staying even though a cold fire blazed to life in his gaze, “am I to understand you mean your own people? Your countrymen?”
“I’ll live with the dishonor,” Lara told him, not wanting to admit the twist of shame she felt move through her. Much less the odd urge she had to reach over and touch him. “Quite happily.”
“As you wish,” Adel said with that great calm that, for some reason, infuriated her as surely as if he’d openly taunted her. It made her want to scratch at him, poke at him—made her want to see beneath the surface, rip off the mask she was sure he wore, see what lurked beneath. She just wanted to touch him.
She had no idea where that urge came from. Nor why it seemed to move through her like a scalding heat, rippling over her skin and pooling in places it shouldn’t.
The city seemed to mute itself around them, the parking lot fading, the bright sky above and the slight breeze from the Rocky Mountains in the distance disappearing. There was only this dangerous, compelling warrior of a man in place of the boy she had once known, and too many emotions to name. She felt … pulled to him. Drawn. As if he’d cast a spell with that fascinating mouth and that commanding, resolute gaze of his, and she was helpless to resist, no matter how many reasons she had to avoid him and how little she wanted to hear what he might have to say.
But if there was one thing she refused to be, it was helpless.
“Wonderful,” she said, pulling herself back from the brink of disaster. Her tone was acerbic, as much to defend herself against this man as to convince herself he was not getting to her in so many odd, uncomfortable ways. “I’m glad you traveled across the world to tell me all of this. You can consider our absurd betrothal ended.”
“As you wish,” he said again. But he did not move. His gaze seemed to sharpen, as if he was some great predator and she nothing but prey. She fought off an involuntary shiver. “You need only pay me the bride price.”
“The bride price?” she repeated, caught as much by the sudden ferocity in his dark gaze as by the words themselves.
“Your dowry was the throne of Alakkul, Princess,” Adel said quietly, deliberately. “I am afraid that the sum my family paid for you was significant, give or take such things as the exchange rate, the rate of inflation, and so on.”
He named a number that she could not possibly have heard right—a number so astronomically high that it, too, made her laugh. It was as patently absurd as him suddenly appearing in a parking lot and announcing he was going to marry her, just as she’d dreamed when she’d first left Alakkul—and as impossible.
“I have nothing even approaching that amount of money, and never will,” she said flatly. “I am an accountant. I live an entirely normal and ordinary life. That amount of money is a fantasy.”
“Not to the Queen of Alakkul,” he said, and something flared between them, hot and bright, making her breath tangle in her throat, making her ache low in her belly. “Or to me.”
“That is another fantasy, one I have no interest in.”
“I am a compassionate man,” Adel said after a moment, though the expression he wore made her doubt it. “I will release you from your obligations to me, if that is your desire. You need only repay what your mother stole from the palace when she disappeared twelve years ago. It is not so much. A mere nine hundred thousand dollars, and some precious jewels.”
“Nine hundred thousand dollars,” Lara repeated in disbelief. “You must be joking. I don’t have it—and if my mother took it, it is no more than she deserved, after what my father subjected her to!”
Adel merely inclined his head. “I will not argue with you about your mother,” he said. “Nor will I debate your choices with you. They are simple. Marry me, or pay the price.”
He held up an autocratic hand when she started to speak, and she knew deep in her bones that he was every inch a king as well as a warrior. She should hate that—him. And yet her treacherous body, instead of finding him repulsive, yearned.
“There is not much time, Princess,” he said. “I regret the necessity, but you must make your decision. Now.”
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CHAPTER FIVE
THE funeral was an ornate affair, with priests and dignitaries and far too many eyes turned in the direction of the new Queen of Alakkul.
Lara sat in the great cathedral in the position of honor, with Adel close to her side, both of them outfitted in the finest Alakkulian garments. The fabric of her severe black gown felt rich and sumptuous against her skin, despite the fact the occasion was so grim. But she could not let herself think about that, not even as the assembled masses rose to sing an ancient hymn of loss and mourning and faith in the afterlife. She could only bow her head and try to calm herself. Try to breathe—try to stay upright. Beside her, Adel shifted, and briefly squeezed her hand with his.
She dared not look at him directly, no matter how his touch moved her—how it seemed to trickle through her veins, warming and soothing her. A quick glance confirmed he looked too uncompromisingly handsome, too disturbing in his resplendent military regalia, as befitted the highest ranking member of the country, save, she supposed with the still-dazed part of her brain that was capable of thinking of these things, herself. She was afraid that she would stare at him too long and disgrace herself.
As, of course, no small part of her wanted to do. Anything to avoid the reality of her father’s death. Of the fact that this was his funeral, and she had hardly known him. Would, now, never know him. She had hated the man passionately for almost as long as she could remember, she had gone out of her way to do so to better please and placate her mother, so why did she feel this strange hollowness now? Did she believe the things that Adel had said about Marlena? If not, then surely she should feel either some small measure of satisfaction or nothing at all?
The truth was, she did not have the slightest idea what she felt, much less what she should feel. How could she? She had been in this strange place, with its surprisingly fierce kicks of nostalgia and odd flashes of memories, for under forty-eight hours. She had been whisked from the airfield to the palace, her meager possessions placed carefully in a sumptuous suite she only vaguely recalled had once been her mother’s—and soon augmented by the kinds of couture ensembles more appropriate to her brand-new, unwanted position. She had been waited upon by fleets of bowing, eager attendants, who were there to see to needs she was not even aware she ought to have. Her wardrobe. Her appointments. Her new, apparently deeply complicated life.
Her first official duty as the new Queen was this funeral. This sending off of a man who clearly inspired loyalty— devotion—from his people, and from the man who stood beside her now. Lara did not know how to reconcile the man they spoke of here, in hushed and reverent tones, with the monster her mother had conjured for her for so many years.
She did not know how to feel about the disparity. She did not want to believe Adel’s story of her mother’s infidelity—but could not seem to put it out of her head.
She did not know how to feel about anything.
Her orderly, comfortable life in Denver was gone as if it had never existed. The only constant was the man at her side, and the only thing she knew she felt about him was a deep and abiding confusion. Her body still longed for him, in deep, consuming ways that startled her. Her mind rebelled against everything he stood for and his own designs upon her. And yet her heart seemed to hurt inside her chest when she pictured him as a child, forced to play war games in the royal palace, torn from his own family when he’d been hardly more than a toddler. It seemed to beat faster when she rememb
ered their first kiss, her very first kiss ever, so sweet and forbidden, in a hidden corner of the castle ballroom when she had been just sixteen.
She did not have to examine these things more closely to know that she was undeniably, and disastrously, consumed with the man who had an intolerable level of control over this new life of hers.
The question, she asked herself as the service ended and the procession began, and he was still the only thing that she could seem to focus on, was what, if anything, did she plan to do about it?
Much later, after King Azat had been interred in his final resting place beneath the stones of the ancient mausoleum and all the polite words had been spoken to all the correct people, Lara found herself still in her new, stiff black gown, standing awkwardly in one of the palace’s smaller private salons.
Across from her, framed by the gilt and gold that graced every spare inch of the walls and floors and ceilings of this fairy-tale place, looking every inch the new King, Adel poured himself a drink. He did so with his customary masculine grace, and Lara could not understand why even something so simple, so mundane, as this man splashing amber-colored liquor into a crystal tumbler should cause her blood to heat. He turned to look at her as if he’d felt the weight of her gaze, his expression that same watchful, careful calmness that she knew all too well by now.
Knew, but could not quite read. Why should that make her heart speed up in her chest?
Lara felt as awkward and as stiff as the fussy room they stood in, as the elegant gown she still wore when she longed for something more casual, more comfortable. Her hands moved restlessly before her, plucking at the fabric of her long skirt. She could not seem to keep still. She wandered the edges of the small salon, stopping before the great windows that looked out over the ancient city, all the spires and rooftops gleaming white and blue as the sun dipped toward the western mountains. It looked indescribably foreign to her eyes, and yet some part of her thrilled to the sight, as if she was as much a part of the landscape as he was. As if it was in her blood.
