And some of the papers the next morning thought so, it was true.
But the others were vile.
There was a list of Sterling’s supposed conquests, spanning the globe and including some countries she’d never visited and many men she’d never met. Another featured a list of her “raciest moments,” which mostly involved skimpy outfits from her more outrageous modeling shoots held up as if she’d paraded around the streets of Manhattan wearing so little.
They didn’t actually call her a whore. But then, they didn’t have to call her anything. The comments section did that for them.
Sterling didn’t mention the articles. Still, she could see the temper crack across Rihad’s face and thought he tried to conceal it from her. Because that was Rihad, she understood now. Duty before all else. And he’d decided she was one of his duties. She cuddled Leyla on her lap and pressed kisses into the sweet crown of her head, and she only smiled when Rihad excused himself.
Because she knew what he refused to accept: this was never going to get better. She was never going to get better, or any less the subject of the repulsive speculation of the public.
And if she stayed here, Rihad and Leyla would rot right along with her.
Sterling might not have known a lot about love, but she knew—deep down she knew—that if she really, truly loved them, she wouldn’t condemn them to that kind of life. Not when it took so little to save them.
So very little.
All she had to do was leave.
* * *
When his chief of security strode into Rihad’s private conference room, scattering the gathered aides and the handful of ambassadors Rihad had been sitting with, he assumed it was about Amaya, at last.
“Has she been found?” he asked when the room was clear.
He thought the feeling that moved in him then was something far closer to regret than relief. But that made no sense. Amaya needed to be found and should have been found months ago. She needed to do her duty, no matter how Rihad might have come to sympathize with her plight. He hadn’t lied to her when he’d told her there were no other options available to them.
But he couldn’t deny the part of him that admired his younger sister for having stayed out of Kavian’s reach all this time. Rihad liked the other man well enough. Respected him, even. But he doubted very much that any other creature on earth had led him on such a merry chase.
“We are tracking her, Your Majesty,” his security chief said, standing at rigid attention, quite as if he expected a reprimand. “We have video of her leaving the palace an hour ago. It looks as if she’s headed for the city limits.”
Rihad digested that statement, and it took him longer than it should have to comprehend that the man was not talking about his sister.
But he couldn’t make sense of what he was hearing.
He was aware that he’d frozen solid where he stood. He heard what his security chief was saying, but he couldn’t seem to move. To react.
She had charmed her way into one of the palace’s fleet of armored vehicles, because she was nothing if not persuasive when she wished. And because she was his queen. Instead of heading for the royal enclosure near the sea, a perfectly reasonable place for her to go without any guards because it was manned with its own, she’d had the driver change direction once they’d left the palace grounds and she’d headed for the far reaches of Bakri City.
There was nothing there, Rihad knew. Nothing save the border.
“My daughter,” he managed to say, over the dark thud that was his heart in his chest. “Where is my daughter?”
His beautiful, perfect little Leyla, who he could not lose, and who, he realized, he’d never called his daughter before. Not out loud. He would not lose Leyla, no matter who her biological father was. She was his.
She and her treacherous mother were entirely his.
His security chief was muttering into his earpiece. Rihad was unnaturally still.
“The princess remains in the palace, Your Majesty. She is with her nurses even now.”
“Excellent,” Rihad bit out, and he started moving then, belting out orders as he went.
If Sterling had left the baby behind that meant he wouldn’t have to temper his reaction when he found her—though he was sure he would have to think about that, at some point. That she’d taken off without her daughter, which was so unlike her as to be something like laughable.
He might have imagined, once, that Sterling was nothing more than a calculating, callous sort of creature. The kind of woman who would have a child for the sole purpose of tying herself to a man and, more to the point, his fortune.
That he didn’t think that of her now, not even for a moment, told him things he was too furious to analyze just then. There was something seismic inside of him, bigger and bolder than anything he’d ever felt before. It was as massive as the desert, expanding in all directions, and he was not entirely certain he would be the same man when he survived it.
If he survived it.
But he had every intention of sharing the effects of it with his wife while he waited to see. Because he wasn’t letting her go.
Not ever.
* * *
The helicopter landed with military precision on the dusty desert road, forcing Sterling’s driver to slam on his brakes to a fishtailing stop—and putting an end to her escape fantasies that easily.
Sterling sat in the backseat and stared at the gleaming metal thing with its powerful rotors as if, were she to concentrate hard enough, she could make it go away again.
But it didn’t. Of course it didn’t.
For a long, shuddering moment, nothing happened.
The helicopter sat there in the middle of the otherwise empty road. Sterling’s driver, having lapsed into what sounded like frantic prayers as it had landed, was now muttering to himself. And that meant she had a lifetime or two to contemplate the leaping somersault her heart kept performing in her chest, no matter how sternly she told herself that hope was inappropriate.
She wasn’t running away this time. She wasn’t desperate or scared. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old kid and she was no longer afraid of her best friend’s big, bad wolf.
This time, she was doing the right thing.
The helicopter’s back door opened and Rihad climbed out, his movements precise and furious, and yet still infused with that lethal, masculine grace that made her mouth water. Maybe it always would.
But if so, it would happen from afar. In magazines or on the news.
She was no good for him. She was even worse for her precious daughter. Nothing else mattered
“Stay here,” she told her driver, not that he’d offered to leap to her defense—the man clearly recognized the royal insignia on the helicopter’s sides if not his king himself.
Sterling slammed her way out of the car into the hot desert sun. Memories assaulted her as the hot wind poured over her. Of facing Rihad much like this on a Manhattan street, in what seemed like a different lifetime. Of the dark look he’d worn then and the far darker and grimmer look he wore now.
Sterling didn’t wait for him to reach her.
“What are you doing?” she threw at him across the hard-packed stretch of sandy road that separated them. “Let me go!”
“Never.”
Short. Harsh. A kingly utterance and infused with all his trademark ruthlessness.
She was as instantly furious at him as she was pointlessly, traitorously moved by that.
“It wasn’t a request.”
“You do not give the King of Bakri orders, Sterling.” He was closer then, and she could feel that edginess that came off him in waves, as if he was his own sun. “Your role is to obey.”
“Stop this.” Her voice was a hiss, and she slashed her hand through the air to emphasize it. �
��You’re not being reasonable.”
He was beyond furious—she could see it in every line of that body of his she knew better than her own now. He was practically vibrating with the force of his temper. And yet he only stared at her for a beat, then another, as if he couldn’t believe she’d said that to him.
And then he tipped back his head and laughed.
He laughed and he laughed.
When he focused on her again, Sterling was shaking, and not from anything like fear. It was need. Longing. Love.
“I am renowned for my reason,” he told her, no trace of laughter remaining in his voice then. “I am considered the most rational of men. My family is filled with emotional creatures who careened through their lives, neglecting their duties and catering to their weaknesses.” He shrugged. “I thought I didn’t have any weaknesses. But the truth is, I hadn’t met you yet.”
Again, she didn’t know how to feel, so she ignored the great, swirling mess inside of her. She balled her hands into fists and scowled at him.
“You’re making my point for me. I’m a weakness and you’re a man who can’t afford any. You need to let me go.”
“Yet when it comes to you, Sterling, I am not the least bit reasonable,” he growled at her. “Why the hell are you running away from me?”
“Why do you think?” she challenged, astonished. “I’m an anchor around your neck, weighing you down. You can’t have this endless scandal and that’s all this is. That’s all I am.”
“You left Leyla behind.”
Sterling couldn’t let herself think about that.
“She’s better off,” she gritted out. She swallowed back the anguished sob that threatened to pour out of her, to tear her open. “Divorced couples share custody all the time. There’s no reason why we can’t. And that means Leyla can grow up here, where she’ll be safe.”
“I can hear the words that come out of your mouth.” His voice set every hair on her body on end. It prickled over her, harsh like sandpaper and a darkness beneath it. “Yet not one of them makes the slightest bit of sense.”
“All I ask is that you find a good woman to help you raise her,” Sterling pushed on, determined, despite the way everything inside of her lurched and rolled as if she was about to capsize herself. She couldn’t let that happen. “Someone who is—”
“What?” Rihad asked brutally. “Not as dirty and ruined as you are?”
There it was.
It was shocking to hear someone else say that out loud after all these years. It was soul-destroying to hear it from him.
But Sterling wasn’t running away from the only man she’d ever loved like this, or ever would, because it was easy. She was doing it because it was right. Which meant she couldn’t collapse at that. She couldn’t let all that wild darkness inside of her take her down to her knees. It was too important that he accept this.
“You know, then.” She couldn’t process it.
He looked furious. Impatient. Darkly focused on her.
“I have an idea what those terrible people must have told you. It doesn’t make it true.”
“If you know,” she managed to say, “then there’s no reason for this to be so dramatic. I’m doing you a favor.”
His expression shifted into something incredulous and arrogant at once.
“I do not want a favor, Sterling,” he threw at her. “I want my family.”
And that easily, he broke her heart.
“You can make yourself a perfect family,” she told him, and she only realized as she spoke that her throat was constricted. That tears were welling up and pouring over, splashing down her face. It was as if he hadn’t simply broken her heart—he’d broken her into a thousand tiny pieces and she couldn’t keep them all together any longer. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to do it again. “You can have more babies and a sweet, biddable wife who follows your commands and never shames you in public. You can—”
“You are my family!” he roared at her, and when she jumped back an inch he followed, taking her arms in those hard, surprisingly gentle hands of his. “You are my wife, my queen. We have a daughter. This is your family, Sterling. I am your family.”
“Rihad—”
But her voice was choked and her words were lost somewhere in a great, wild tangle that swamped her then. Far greater than fear. Far more encompassing.
“And I know that you love me, little one,” he told her then, his voice lower, but still so raw it almost hurt to hear it. Almost. “Do you think I can’t tell? When I do nothing but study you, day after day?”
“I don’t,” she managed to respond, though she couldn’t stop shaking. “I can’t. Nothing good ever comes of my loving something.”
His hands tightened slightly on her arms, but his expression softened. He pulled her even closer. His dark gold eyes searched hers.
“Sterling.” He said her name as if it was as beautiful as she’d thought it was when she’d picked it as a teenager. “I know that love for you means a hit must be forthcoming. I know you expect nothing but pain and misery when you dare to hope.” He moved, rubbing his palms along her arms as if he was trying to warm her. Soothe her. Love her. “But I am a man of honor. My word is law. And no one will ever hit you again as long as you live. Especially not me.”
She shook her head, hard, though shivers chased through her, one after the next as if she really was being torn apart. She could feel the tearing, deep inside of her.
“I’m your duty, nothing more,” she said fiercely. “But your duty is to Bakri, not to me. And they deserve better. You deserve better.”
“And you deserve to believe that you do, too.”
She couldn’t breathe past those words. She whispered his name again then, but she couldn’t seem to stop crying. And then he let go of her, which was worse than a hit. Worse than a kick or two. She reached out a hand despite her intention to make him let her go, but then froze, because he wasn’t walking away from her.
Rihad al Bakri, reigning sheikh, Grand Ruler and King of the Bakrian Empire, sank to his knees on the sand before her, never shifting that proud, stern gaze of his from hers.
He reached over, but he didn’t take her hands. He took her hips in his powerful grip instead, as if he could lift her up if he wished. As if he could carry her forever, if she would only let him.
“I ordered you marry me once,” he said in that low, dark, powerful voice of his. “Now I am asking you to stay with me. To live with me, love me, and who cares what the papers say. There are men watching us right now. Does it look as if that bothers me?”
“Rihad. You can’t.” But she didn’t know what she meant to say and he wasn’t listening to her anyway. His hands gripped her hips.
“I want to make more babies with you and this time, I want to hold them in my own hands as they enter this world. I want to make love to you forever. You are worth a thousand kingdoms, and mine is nothing but a pile of sand without you.” His gaze was part of her, inside of her. “Be my wife in every possible way, Sterling. Not because it is my duty, but because it is my deepest wish. You are my heart. My love. I want you to be mine.”
And she understood that vast, unconquerable thing that slammed down on her then. It wasn’t fear—it was so much bigger. It was love. Real love, without conditions or qualifiers. Without lies. Love that might incorporate pain and darkness, as all life must in its time, but wasn’t made of it.
She’d expected him to hurt her because that was all she knew. She’d assumed she would ruin him the way she ruined everything, because that was what the people who’d hurt her had told her to justify their actions.
Terrible people, he’d called them.
But that was the past.
This man, here and now, on his knees before her in a way she imagined he’d never been before and never would be again, w
as the future.
She had to give herself over to the only thing she’d ever encountered that could beat back the darkness.
Love.
And within that, wrapped up so tightly it was nearly indistinguishable, hope.
“I’m already yours, Rihad,” she whispered, fierce and hopeful at once. “I’ve been yours all along.”
He wrapped his arms around her hips, resting his head against her stomach. She felt the press of his perfect mouth against her flesh and the deep shudder that went with it, as if she was accepting him into her bones.
“I love you,” he told her, dark and imperious against the belly where she would bear his children. She knew she would, and not only because he’d decreed it. “Never doubt that.”
“I love you, too,” she said, her tears falling freely, but this time, they were made of joy. This time, she recognized it for what it was. This time, she believed it really would last forever. That they would, together. “I always will. And always is a very long time, I’m told.”
“It had better be,” he muttered, every inch of him the king.
And then she sank down beside him, and he took her in his arms, and for the first time in her life, Sterling let herself believe in forever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ten years later...
“HE IS VERY annoying, yes,” Rihad told his furious daughter out in the private family garden that morning, and took care to hide his laughter from her. “But if you drown your brother in that pool, Leyla, there will be no party on Saturday and you may, in fact, spend your birthday in the dungeons.”
“There aren’t any dungeons in the palace,” his ten-year-old replied, hotly. “Mama said you made that up.”
He only smiled when she scowled at him. “There are dungeons if I say there are. I make the rules.”
“Brothers are stupid,” Leyla told him with a hint of imperiousness he thought she’d gotten directly from her mother.
Rihad thought of his own brother, lost so long now.
“I cannot forgive myself,” he’d told Sterling on Omar’s last birthday. As they did every year, they’d visited his grave on the palace grounds, together. “I doubt I ever will.”
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