A mystery around every corner. History in every step. And wherever she turned, the people who smiled at her and called out their support of Tarek. Making her foolish heart swell every time she heard it.
They were not the only ones who adored him.
She didn’t think she fell asleep, but one moment she was gazing out at the city and the next, he was there. As if she’d conjured him from the spires and lights that spread out behind him.
Anya smiled, then studied that face of his, sensual and harsh at once. “What’s the matter?”
She was learning how to read him now, this man she would marry in seven days. He was always fierce. He was always, without question, the King. But there were different levels of ferocity in him, and tonight it seemed...darker.
Something inside her curled up tight in a kind of warning. The knot inside her grew three sizes.
But she kept her gaze on Tarek, and ignored them both.
“Nothing is the matter,” he told her, standing there at the foot of the chaise where she was curled up. In a voice that was little more than a growl. “Save my own weakness.”
“You have a weakness?” Anya asked lightly. “Quick, tell me what it is, so I might exploit it.”
Tarek didn’t laugh at that. His hard mouth did not betray the faintest curve. Anya ordered herself not to panic, or note that it felt too much like loss.
Or worse, ask herself how she could feel the things she felt after so little time.
“I spent the night in tense negotiations,” Tarek said, staring down at her as if he couldn’t quite make sense of her. Or as if Anya had done something to him. “It is the kind of diplomacy that I abhor. Snide remarks masquerading as communication. All employed by men who would never last a moment on any kind of real battlefield. Still, these things are part of what I am called to do. As such, they deserve my full attention.”
“I’m sure you give everything your full attention.”
As it happened, Anya had become something like obsessed with the force of Tarek’s full attention. With the sorts of things he could do with all that focus. Her body shivered into readiness at once, her nipples forming hard peaks, her belly tightening, and the soft, yearning place where she wanted him most like fire.
The ways she hungered for this man never ceased to surprise her. But the way he looked at her now did. As if she’d betrayed him in some way.
“The only thing I could think about was you,” he told her, his voice a rough scrape against the dark.
It was not a declaration of feelings. It was an accusation.
An outrage.
For a moment, Anya froze, feeling as if he’d kicked her. That terrible knot grew teeth. But in the next moment, she breathed out. And again, as she had the night he showed her his scars, Anya understood that this was not something she could laugh away. She couldn’t show him her first reaction. Once again, it was not softness or emotion he needed.
Maybe, something in her whispered, all that medical training was not to keep your cool in an emergency room. Maybe it was so you could stare down a king no matter his mood, and be what he needs. Whether or not he knows how to ask for it.
Not because she was losing herself in him, as one article she’d read about herself tonight had suggested. But because he wasn’t simply a man, who a woman might argue with about domestic arrangements or respect or any number of things.
His people needed him to rule above all else. They had told her so themselves, out in the winding streets of this age-old city. And if she wanted to marry him, to be his Queen as well as his woman, she needed to support the King first.
Only once the ruler was handled could she tend to the man.
Because she was the only one who got both.
“You’re welcome,” Anya said, neither gently nor particularly apologetically.
He blinked at that, a slow show of arrogant disbelief that made her pulse pick up. “I beg your pardon?”
She didn’t quite shrug. “Tedious negotiations with terrible people, you say? How lucky you must feel to know that I’ll be waiting for you at the end of it.” Anya nodded regally toward the foot of her chaise. “And you are even more lucky that I find myself in the mood for a king.”
“Are you suggesting that it is possible that you might ever not be in the mood for your King?” Tarek was gazing down at her as if thunderstruck. Far better than the look that had been in his eyes before, by any reckoning. “An impossibility, surely. Or treason. You may take your pick.”
“I am the Queen of this land,” she told him grandly, and only just kept herself from waving an imaginary scepter in the air between them.
Tarek’s dark eyes gleamed with the fire she knew best. “Not yet, Anya. Not quite yet.”
“I will be the Queen in a week, and you are trying my patience.” She sniffed haughtily. “Daring to come before me and speak to me of petty concerns when you could be pleasuring me, even now.”
She was sure she could see him waver there. He looked torn between the sort of erotic outrage she was going for or more of whatever temper had brought him here, too much like a storm cloud for her liking.
Anya held her breath. She waited. And she could see exactly when that hunger that never seemed to wane between them won.
“You may not like the way I worship you, my Queen,” Tarek told her then, his voice deep, suggestive, and a kind of dark threat that made her shiver, happily. “But I will.”
Then he fell upon her. Both of them ravenous, both of them wild.
And when he held her before him, on her hands and knees so he could take her as he liked, Anya gloried in it, in him. The impossible iron length of him was a wildfire inside her. A gorgeous catastrophe of sensation and need. She was bared entirely to his gaze and to the desert sky, vulnerable and invulnerable at once, while he surged deep inside of her and made her scream.
It was quickly becoming her favorite melody.
A song she wanted to sing out, heedless and loud, for the rest of her days.
But Tarek wasn’t done. And as he pounded them both sweet again, until they were them again, Anya gave herself over to the only form of wedding vow she thought she’d ever need.
Again and again and again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE WEDDING GUESTS began to pour in the day after their announcement.
From near and far they came. Tarek welcomed in men who had fought with him, relatives and business allies, foreign heads of state and an inevitable selection of celebrities. He pretended he did not know which of his guests had spoken against him over the course of the last year and which had given him nothing but their quiet support.
But he knew. And they knew. And there was a power in the invitation to his would-be enemies, to permit them to witness how wrong they’d been about him up close. It was the logical extension of the press junket he and Anya had undertaken and Tarek could not pretend he didn’t enjoy it.
There was a grand party that night to kick off the traditional week of celebrations. It was also the first opportunity for Anya to prove to the international crowd that she was not under duress. And for the people of Alzalam, that she was worthy of the role she was to assume at the end of the week.
“No pressure, then,” she’d said earlier in the flippant manner only she dared employ in his presence.
Tarek had found he had to have her, in a slick rush of need, even if it meant that her aides would have to reapply all the beauty enhancements—to his mind, wholly unnecessary—that they’d used on her to prepare her for the evening.
“You will be a natural.”
“Because you say so?” She had been slumped in a delicious sort of ruin where he’d left her, bonelessly draped over an ottoman in her bedchamber.
“Yes, because I say so,” he’d replied. “Am I not the King?”
Anya had smiled at him, the way he liked be
st. Dreamy and sweet. Private.
The Anya who appeared in public never looked that soft. That was for him alone.
And as he stood in the middle of the grand party in one of the palace’s ballrooms that night, Tarek found himself thinking about that smile more than he should.
Just as he thought about her more than he should, when he knew better.
Because while it turned out that the former prisoner he was marrying for purely practical reasons was remarkably good at distracting him from the things he brooded about, that didn’t change the truth of them.
Like the fact he was obsessed with this woman.
Tarek knew better than that. The history of his kingdom was filled with examples of why romantic obsession was a scourge. Nothing but a curse. Many of his ancestors had been endlessly derailed by theatrics in the harem. Favorite wives seemed to lead inevitably to catastrophes—witness his former betrothed and the shame she had brought to her family. Tarek had always vowed he would never succumb to such pettiness.
He had already paid dearly for the affection he’d held for his younger brother. He could not afford a far worse blindness. He would never forgive himself.
“Imagine my surprise,” Anya had said at dinner one day after she’d finally got a comprehensive tour of the Royal Palace. “I thought the dungeon was the scariest place in this building. But you actually have a harem.”
Tarek had been feeling expansive and relaxed. He had eaten, then spread his woman out on the table. He had eaten his dessert from her skin—sweets from the sweet—before burying himself inside her to the hilt. Then they’d gone out to the tiled tub on her balcony and sunk into the hot water. He had smiled at Anya’s wide eyes and scandalized tone.
“I was raised in the harem,” he told her. “My mother was only the first of my father’s many wives.”
And he was not a nice man, and nothing like a good one, because he had greatly enjoyed Anya’s look of horror.
“The only words we’ve discussed were wife and queen,” she’d said then. Her shoulders had straightened with a sharp jerk, enough to make the water slosh around them. “Wife was never plural. And neither was queen.”
“I enjoyed my childhood,” Tarek had told her, reaching over to pull her to him, settling her before him, her back to his front. “My brother and I were doted upon and when our half siblings arrived, they were, too. We all grew up together. We had maternal attention from all sides, and therefore felt that any attention we received from our father was a gift.”
He had not wanted to think about those years. When he and Rafiq had been so close. When it would have seemed laughable to him that anything could ever change that.
Even now, he sometimes forgot what had happened and thought to call his brother. Only to remember it all over again, with a sickening sort of lurch.
Anya’s shoulders were no longer braced for an attack. She’d softened against him, and he liked that better.
“It’s so hard to imagine that he could grow up and...do what he did,” she said quietly.
Tarek tensed, and hated that she could feel it. “When it comes to my brother, I do not imagine anything but his prison sentence.”
And his voice was so forbidding he could actually watch her respond to it. Her shoulders had risen all over again. Her breath went shallow.
He told himself he did not, could not mind it. His brother had no place here. Childhood memories were one thing, but he would have no...imagining.
“I think you would love the harem,” he had continued after a moment. He’d tried to sound relaxed again, looking over her head toward the city before them. The sky above, the lights below. And Anya between. It made something in him...settle. “It would certainly be one way to make friends in the kingdom.”
He’d wondered if she would nurse her upset. If she would act as if he’d bruised her—
But this was Anya.
All she did was twist around to glare at him as if his brother had never been mentioned.
“That, right there, is why I have no intention of filling my harem with all the wives I can support, though I certainly could. It is not worth all the fighting. The jealousy, the petty attacks, the attempts at power grabs.” He’d shaken his head, thinking of those years. Thinking of his father’s wives, not Rafiq. “My father always acted as if he was unaware of such things, but I’ve never seen greater personal viciousness than I did then. It was never directed at me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t see it.”
“Thank you for this lesson on the historical use of harems here,” Anya had said darkly. “I have no desire to be in one, thank you. I would rather become a neurosurgeon.”
“The same accuracy and skill is needed to rise to power within one, I assure you.” He’d laughed. It had been a shade more hollow a laugh than it might have been otherwise, but it had still been a laugh. “I might assemble one for the sheer pleasure of forcing your hand. I suspect you would rule with an iron fist.”
She had sniffed. She had not mentioned his brother again. “You can try.”
Tarek had a different way of trying. He’d pulled her astride him, pushing his way inside her again. Then he’d watched as she wriggled to accommodate him. It was his favorite show and no matter how many times he watched, it never grew old. Her indrawn breath, especially when she was already faintly swollen from before. The way she bit down on her lower lip. Her marvelous hips and how they moved against his as she adjusted to his length, his girth. The way she rocked slightly until it felt good.
And all the while she softened around him, drenching him with her fire.
Until there were no memories left to haunt him.
Until there was only Anya.
There was no way around it, he thought now, only half attending to the deeply boring world leaders standing around him. He was obsessed.
And he couldn’t be any such thing. He was the King.
The country was the only obsession he allowed himself. The only memories he permitted. How else could he have fought off Rafiq? How else would he rule?
Against his will, he found Anya in the crowd. He didn’t know what he wanted. To assure himself he was not obsessed or to feed that obsession? But whatever dark thoughts he might have had in either direction, when he located her he was instantly struck by the way she was holding herself.
Anya was wearing a glorious gown in a Western style for this first celebration of the week. It was a sweeping number that left her collarbone bare, a perfect place for the jewels he’d placed there himself when he’d finished wringing them both dry earlier. The rest of the dress was a glorious fall to the floor in a deep aubergine shade that made her glow. Her glossy hair was swept up so the whole world might see the elegance of her neck, the delicate sweep of her jaw, and all of that was nothing next to the sophistication she seemed to carry in her bones.
She looked like a queen. His Queen.
But she was staring at the woman before her in a manner Tarek recognized all too well. Her shoulders were tight and her chin was tilted up at a belligerent angle that Tarek knew was a tell. It was outward evidence of her ferocity.
It should not have been happening at a party in her honor.
And certainly not in the presence of so many cameras. Though that particular consideration was an afterthought—another indication that Tarek was not in his right mind where this woman was concerned. Surely, with the international press present at this party, his only thoughts should have been on their joint performance instead of her feelings.
You are a king, he reminded himself icily. Perhaps act like one.
He excused himself and crossed to her, moving swiftly through the great hall. The crowd of guests parted before him as he moved, and he did not waste his time nodding greetings or allowing anyone to catch his eye. He bore down upon his betrothed.
And Anya alone did not instinctively move out of his way. She s
tayed where she was, only glancing his way—with a frown—when he appeared beside her.
“I do not care for the look on your face, habibti,” Tarek told her. In his language, because the froth of a blonde woman before her and the older man beside her who looked as if he smelled something rank were clearly American.
Anya’s gaze softened. Her frown smoothed out, and Tarek thought he saw something like relief there. He took his time shifting to gaze directly at the people who dared upset her. Here in the royal palace, right beneath his nose.
“Your Excellency,” Anya murmured in formal greeting. She smiled at the couple. “Dad, Charisma, I would like to introduce you to Tarek bin Alzalam, the King of this country and my fiancé.” Then she looked at him again. “Tarek, this is my father, Dr. Preston Turner, and his wife, Charisma Turner.”
“Ah, yes.” Tarek neither smiled nor offered his hand, as was his right as sovereign. That it also made the man before him tut in outrage was merely a bonus. “The doctor, yes?”
It was possible he made doctor sound a great deal like snake.
But then, Anya’s father did not look sufficiently honored to find himself in the presence of a king. Nor particularly pleased to reunite with his only child after such a long separation—that had included said child’s incarceration. Tarek did not expect or want an emotional display, certainly, but surely there should have been something other than the haughty expression on the older man’s face.
“I was telling my daughter that I was forced to reschedule several surgeries,” the man said, as if relaying an outrage. “In order to fly across the world at a moment’s notice.”
Then he waited, as if he expected Tarek to react to that.
And Tarek did. He gazed down at the man the way he imagined he might look at an insect, should it dare to begin buzzing at him. Right before he squashed it.
Beside him, Anya made a soft sound that he thought was a suppressed laugh.
“My father is referring to his schedule at the hospital,” she said quickly. “He is...distressed that he had to alter it to come here for these celebrations. I explained to him that he could have come in later in the week, of course.”
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