There is no other man, a small voice inside intoned, like words chiseled into stone. Deep into her heart. Not for you.
She knew that was true, too. It didn’t change anything.
“But you’re not the only man alive, Rihad, regardless of how you act,” she told him then, before she could talk herself out of it. Before she could give in to all the things she wanted. “You were merely my first.”
* * *
For a moment Rihad held himself so still he thought he might have turned to stone himself, into one of the pillars that held up this palace of his, smooth and hard and cold all the way through.
Which would have been safer for Sterling by far.
Because what shook in him, rolling and buckling, seismic and intense, was so vast he was surprised the whole cursed palace didn’t crumble down around them where they stood. There was a clutching sensation in his chest, a pounding in his head and a murderous streak lighting him up like a bloody lantern.
“I am your first, yes,” he said, in the voice of the civilized man that he’d always thought he was, before her—a king, for his sins, not this wild, fanged creature within that wanted only to howl. Then stake its claim. “And your last, Sterling. Let us make sure that part is clear.”
“That’s not up to you,” she said, tilting her chin up as if she was expecting a wrestling match to break out.
Rihad could think of few things he’d like more than to put his hands on her, but he wouldn’t do it just then. Not while he was still battling his temper, which was all the more unpredictable because he was so unused to it.
He’d never understood desire. Need. This kind of exquisite weakness. Now he was made of nothing else.
He tried to remain calm. Or at least sound calm. “I think you’ll find it is.”
“There’s no need to get so emotional,” she chided, and he was as astonished as that day back in New York when she’d started issuing orders. She stood, smoothing her hands down the front of the long dress she wore over her bare feet, a combination he found maddeningly erotic. Or was that another emotion? He seemed to be full of them where she was concerned. “I don’t know why you’re not seeing this clearly. The sooner we divorce, the easier it will be to rehabilitate your image.”
“My image is fine.”
Sterling inclined her head toward the table and his tablet and all those snide tabloid articles. “Evidently not.”
She even smiled serenely in his direction as she walked past him into the suite, the long skirt of her dress flowing out and around as she moved, so lithe and pretty on her feet it was as if everything she did was a dance. Even the way she walked away from him.
And this was absurd. He knew that. He knew she was trying to needle him, though he couldn’t have said why. He knew she wanted him as much as he did her—he hadn’t imagined their morning in his shower, the way she’d cried out his name and ground herself against his mouth, and he’d seen that same hectic fever in her gaze now, too. It was always there. Always.
He hadn’t imagined everything that had happened between them over the past month. This woman was his in every conceivable way. He had no intention of divorcing her, or even permitting her to sleep apart from him again. What did it matter if she admitted this or not?
Yet Rihad found it mattered quite a lot.
He stalked after her, catching her while she was still crossing his bedchamber and using her elbow and her momentum to spin her back around to face him.
“Don’t you dare—” she began, but he was already touching her, and that was its own alchemy.
That fire that only burned hotter by the day exploded between them, the way it always did, wild and bright. He saw her pulse accelerate in her neck. He saw that white-hot heat make her eyes go glassy.
“You little fool,” he bit out, but this wasn’t temper, he understood. Not any longer. There was that bittersweet pang of jealousy at the thought of her with other men, but everything else was pure, sensual menace that he had every intention of taking out on her delectable body. Until she took his point to heart. “Do you think this happens every day?”
“I assume it must,” she fired back at him, so busy fighting him she didn’t seem to notice the way he was backing her across the room, to the nearest wall. “Or every popular song I’ve ever heard is a lie.”
She let out a small, surprised noise when her back came up against the nearest brocaded wall, and then another when Rihad merely leaned closer and pressed his forehead to hers, holding her that simply.
“This is the sex you seem to think you can get anywhere,” he told her, and her mouth was a serious temptation, but he ignored it, concentrating on pulling that long skirt of hers up and sliding his hands beneath. “This is the chemistry you imagine is so run-of-the-mill.”
He felt that shudder go through her and then his hands were on her soft thighs, and it was his turn to let out a long breath when he found she was completely bare beneath her dress. There was nothing but the heat of her skin, the touch of her soft curls, and then that molten core of her, all his.
Only and ever his.
“Rihad...” she whispered.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” he told her.
He angled his head back so he could look at her, even as he plunged a finger deep into her heat. He watched a flush spread over her cheeks and knew that was the truth of things between them. The only truth that mattered, and it always would be. That dark, bewitching fire. That endless well of need.
“If you have something to say to me, Sterling, say it. Don’t poke at me. Don’t pretend.”
She stiffened at that. “Pretending is the problem. It’s what we’ve—I’ve—been doing this whole time!”
“I don’t think so.”
He pulled his finger from her depths, then held her gaze as he licked it clean, her taste as intoxicating as ever on his tongue. He felt his mouth curve as her lips parted at that, as if she was finding it difficult to breathe regularly. He reached down between them to handle his robes and his trousers, and then he stepped between her legs as he lifted her up, wrapping her around him and holding her there for a long, hot instant.
This time, he didn’t carry her to a nearby table. This time, as he lowered her against him he slid deep inside of her, so deep they both groaned at the sensation.
Her hands balled into fists at his shoulders and she bit her lip as if she meant to resist him. But then she rolled her hips against his as if she couldn’t help herself, and Rihad smiled.
He took control then. Her ankles were locked tight around his hips and he lifted her up, then brought her down, working her against him slowly. So slowly. Making her shudder and pant. Making it so good she’d forget all this divorce and separation nonsense.
Because she was soft and hot, a revelation around him with every stroke, and she was his.
All his. Always his.
It took him a long while to realize that he was chanting that out loud, like a prayer or a promise, and when he did, he laughed.
“Say it,” he demanded.
But this was Sterling, his Sterling. So even as she writhed against him, even as her hips met his in this wild dance of theirs, she defied him.
And God help him, he loved it. He loved all of this more than he’d ever imagined was possible, more than he’d ever loved anything or anyone. Sterling was his, damn it. All of her. Her body and her heart alike, and he didn’t much care if she thought otherwise. He knew the truth.
He wasn’t giving her up. Ever. Even if his kingdom came down around him. Even if the world followed suit.
For the first time in his life, he didn’t care about his duty. He cared about her.
“Say it,” he told her again. “I can do this all day. And if I can, you will. But you will not come until you admit what we both already know is the truth.”
She let out a sound then, half fury and half need, and Rihad laughed again, because he was as hungry as she was. As greedy for her.
“All yours,” she gritted out, her blue eyes slick and warm on his, and he felt it like a caress. This was who they were. Caress, capitulation, it was all the same thing. It all led to the same place. “Damn you, Rihad, I’m yours.”
He reached down between them and pressed hard against the taut center of her hunger, and she bucked hard against him, arching her back and digging her fingers hard into his shoulders, then screamed as she plummeted over the edge.
But Rihad was only getting started.
CHAPTER TWELVE
STERLING HADN’T MEANT to eavesdrop.
She’d been enjoying the gala, held in the grand art gallery that was one of the jewels of the new Bakri City, a testament to the country’s bright new future. Or so Rihad had said in his speech earlier, in English, for the benefit of the foreign press. She’d allowed the phalanx of docents to lead her through the first great exhibit, on loan from the Louvre, and had honestly enjoyed looking at the collection of world-class, world-famous art.
It had reminded her of her favorite way to spend a day in New York City: wandering aimlessly around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and losing herself in all the marvelous things collected there for the viewing, from paintings to metalwork to Egyptian tombs. Except here in Bakri City there was the sea on one side and the beckoning desert on the other, reminding her that she was across the world from the things she knew.
It had been ten days since she’d realized that she loved Rihad. Ten long days and longer nights since she’d understood that she must leave him and, worse, Leyla, too. Every day, she’d woken up and vowed that it would be her last in Bakri, that she would find a way to leave the two people she loved most. Yet somehow, there was always another reason to stay.
And here she was on yet another night, dressed in beautiful clothes as befit the queen she still had trouble believing was legitimately her. She’d smiled prettily on command, quite as if she couldn’t see the speculation in every gaze that met hers. As if she couldn’t hear the whispers that followed her around the great courtyard.
As if she wasn’t aware that at least half of the people who spoke to her were thinking the word whore as they curtsied and called her Your Majesty.
“Your daughter is the bright jewel of the kingdom,” professed one Bakrian aristocrat whom Sterling had recognized from her wedding. Where this woman and her husband, both possessed of crisp, upper-crust British accents when they spoke in their perfect English, had gazed back at her as if they couldn’t understand a word she’d said.
“I certainly think so,” Sterling had said.
“One can only hope she grows into her mother’s beauty,” said the husband, and Sterling hadn’t much liked that look in his too-knowing eyes when he said it, or the way he’d leaned closer than was strictly appropriate when he’d continued. “What a blessing it is for a daughter to become like her mother in every way.”
It took a moment for Sterling to understand that this person had, in effect, just called her infant daughter a whore. A potential whore.
She was going to ruin Rihad if she stayed. That much was obvious, no matter how he tried to dismiss it.
But aside from worrying over her biological limitations and the genetic propensity for ruining children she might have inherited from her own terrible mother, Sterling hadn’t really given a lot of thought to how her presence in Bakri would destroy Leyla. She’d thought that as Rihad’s daughter in every way but her biology, Leyla would be safe. More than safe.
You should have known better, sneered that internal voice that she knew came from her foster parents, across all those years, as if she was still standing in the middle of that cold kitchen waiting for the next blow to lay her out on the linoleum floor. You taint everything you touch.
She’d ducked into one of the cordoned-off alcoves for a little breather after that unpleasant last encounter. She wanted to take a moment—only a moment—to let her face do whatever it wished. To drop her public smile. To simply not be on display.
Sterling pulled in a deep breath, then let it out. Then again.
And it was as she was preparing to walk back out and face it all again that she heard Rihad’s deep voice from the other side of the pillar that concealed her.
“I have no worries whatsoever about the union between our countries,” he was saying in his crisp, kingly manner. “Nor can I imagine that Kavian has indicated otherwise, to your publication or to anyone else.”
That meant it was one of the reporters, Sterling understood, and that was why she didn’t reveal her presence. She’d had enough of the press earlier, with their sugary smiles and all those jagged claws right underneath, sharpened on her own skin every time they asked her a pointed question.
“Yet your sister remains at large.”
“The Princess Amaya’s schedule remains private for obvious security reasons.” Rihad’s voice was so cold then it made Sterling’s stomach clench tight. “But I can assure you that no member of the royal family is ‘at large.’ Your information is faulty.”
“Neither Kavian nor Amaya have been seen—”
“His Royal Majesty Kavian ibn Zayed al Talaas, ruling sheikh of the desert stronghold Daar Talaas, is certainly not in hiding of any kind, if that is what your impertinent suggestion is meant to imply.” Rihad’s voice held dark warning then. “But he no more clears his schedule with me than I do with him. He certainly does not clear it with you. I would advise you to step away from this subject.”
“Certainly, Sire.” The man’s voice made Sterling feel dirty. Tarnished. “My congratulations on your recent marriage.”
Sterling winced then, at the thunderous silence that told her all she needed to know about the expression Rihad was likely wearing.
“Tread carefully,” Rihad all but growled. “Very carefully.”
“Certainly, Your Majesty, you must be aware that there is mounting concern among your subjects that a woman like that—”
“A woman like that?” Rihad’s voice turned mild, which was her husband at his most volatile, even as that same old phrase knocked around inside of Sterling, leaving marks. New bruises to join the old. “By all means, enlighten me. A woman like what, exactly?”
That was when Sterling moved. She swept out from behind the pillar and hoped it would be assumed she’d simply taken herself off to the powder room.
Rihad stood squared off against a small, toad-like creature Sterling recognized as one of the paparazzi who had followed her every move in New York. She had no doubt that he was responsible for a great many of the horrible narratives that circulated about her to this day, as he’d taken after her as if Sterling was his pet project. He’d always looked at her as if he could see that truth buried deep inside of her. As if he knew how flawed and unwanted and ruined she truly was.
Part of her wanted nothing more than to leave him to Rihad’s scant and rapidly eroding mercy, but she didn’t dare. Not now, after all the recent bad press and a museum filled with more reporters. She was already enough of a stone draped around Rihad’s neck, dragging him down. There was no need to add an assault-and-battery charge on her behalf to the list of her sins against this man.
“Sterling,” the awful little man oozed at her. “We were just talking about you.”
She didn’t know which part of that offended her more—the way the man looked at her, the way he spoke to her with such unearned familiarity or the way he sidled closer to her with his hand extended as if he planned to put it on—
“Ancient Bakrian law states that if another man touches my queen without my permission I am not only permitted to rend him limb from limb with my own hands, but must do so to protect the honor of the crown,” Rihad said conversationally, and the reporter froze. Rihad’s smile
didn’t reach his eyes. “Barbaric, is it not? And yet so many of my subjects find comfort in the old ways.”
He did not say, myself included, but Sterling felt certain she was not the only one who felt as if he’d shouted it from the rooftops.
The little man’s eyes glittered with a sort of impotent fury that Sterling knew—she knew—would translate into yet another revolting piece about her in the morning papers. She could practically read the article now as it scrolled across the man’s dirty mind.
To this man I will never be anything but a woman like that, Sterling thought miserably, but she only smiled at the reporter as she moved past him to take Rihad’s arm. The Queen Whore herself, parading around like so much pollution.
“You shouldn’t antagonize him,” she said softly as Rihad drew her out onto the dance floor, the elegant crowd parting all around them to let them take its center, as if the tense exchange had never happened. “Not him or any of his little cronies.”
“Must I introduce myself to you all over again?” Rihad’s voice was arrogant, and his dark gold eyes still glittered furiously. “I am the King of Bakri. He should not antagonize me.”
“You are the king, yes,” she agreed, trying to keep her smile in place and her voice low, as befitted such genteel and public a place. “And you should not condescend to notice a man like him. That you do at all is my fault.”
Sterling felt one of his hands tighten against the small of her back, and the other where his larger one gripped hers, and her curse was that she felt all of this like light. It was as if he poured straight into her, banishing all the darkness.
But she knew that wasn’t true. She knew nothing could.
“Do not start this again,” he warned her, his voice harsh despite his placid expression. “Not here.”
“As you wish, Your Majesty,” she murmured, so submissively that it startled a laugh out of him. Which in turn made her laugh, too, when she’d have said that was impossible under the circumstances. And still he spun her around and around that dance floor, as if they were nothing but beautiful. As if all of this was.
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