In Defiance of Duty

by Caitlin Crews

  She ran her hands up over his perfect chest, tilted her head back to look at him, and felt the first real smile she’d had in ages move over her mouth. She did not want to think of her endless lessons in etiquette from the disapproving collective of his sisters, all of whom had made it clear that she could never be the queen he needed. She did not want to think about how cold he had become, how distant. How far away. She did not want to think of chess, either. She wanted to love him, as simple as that. That was all she’d ever wanted.

  “The next time we are alone,” she said softly, “you will be the king.”

  She did not say my king.

  “I will be your husband,” he replied, pressing a last kiss to her temple, soft and sweet, making her ache for him. For them. For their perfect past and their uncertain future. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

  And she wanted, so desperately, to believe him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SOME two months after his grand coronation, Azrin escorted his queen with great fanfare and a pervasive sense of relief into a glittering ballroom in Washington, D.C.

  Other couples took honeymoons, but the brand-new King and Queen of Khatan had traveled purely to allow Azrin to have long-overdue state visits and hold Other couples took honeymoons, but the brand-new King and Queen of Khatan had traveled purely to allow Azrin to have long-overdue state visits and hold talks with Khatan’s allies around the globe. He had spent a few hours in the Oval Office this afternoon discussing his plans to transition his kingdom toward a constitutional monarchy, and now it was time to make nice with the diplomats. This was the final stop on this particular political tour, and tomorrow they could finally go back home to Khatan.

  He could hardly wait.

  “You look beautiful,” he murmured in Kiara’s ear, and she smiled, though she didn’t turn into him as she might have once. He felt his eyes narrow.

  He was impatient for some kind of real privacy, finally. He wanted to be alone with her, rather than surrounded on all sides by too many people wanting too much of him, day and night. He wanted to lose himself in her without worrying if the walls were thin and the Royal Guard too close—or if he would be called away to some crisis, some call, some piece of news that could not wait for morning.

  She looked impossibly regal tonight as she greeted the assembled dignitaries before them in a gown of rich burgundy, her hair piled high on the top of her head in a complicated arrangement and surrounded with sparkling diamonds that caught the light with her every movement. She laughed politely at something one of the portly, tuxedoed men said to her and he realized, suddenly, that he couldn’t recall the last time he’d heard her real laughter—that gorgeous laugh of hers that made him feel as if he basked in the sunshine of it. Of her.

  One more thing that needed to change, he thought. One more thing these long, grueling months had taken from them both.

  Once through the receiving line, Azrin led her out onto the dance floor and pulled her into his arms. She swayed toward him gracefully, her posture achingly perfect as he led her in the steps of the dance. He gazed down into her face and saw, he thought with a pang, his queen. Smooth, gracious. Perfect. But not his Kiara.

  “Do you remember that weekend in Barcelona?” he asked suddenly. Without thought—only the need to reach her, somehow.

  She blinked in that way that he was beginning to recognize as a stalling tactic—one that he suspected kept that irreverent tongue of hers under control. He knew he should have been pleased that she’d learned discretion. Hadn’t that been why she’d spent all those weeks with his sisters? But instead he felt something entirely too much like loss.

  “Which weekend?” she asked lightly. Far too politely, as if he was one of the dignitaries she’d just charmed with so little effort and even less of the real her he knew lurked in there somewhere. It had to. “We’ve been there any number of times over the years.”

  “You know which one.” He could not pull her close the way he wanted to, and he could not have said why her reticence irritated him so much, so suddenly. He ordered himself to relax. “But I will remind you. We drank far too much sangria and danced for hours. We were the youngest couple in the place by several decades.” He moved closer than he should. “And I know you remember it as well as I do.” He remembered her laughter most of all—the way it had poured over them both like water, bathing them both in the joy of it. He remembered the insistent pulse of the music and the fact that they had been soundly out danced by local couples old enough to be his own grandparents. And he remembered walking back to their hotel in the small hours, holding her hand in his and her impractical shoes in the other, as if the streets were theirs alone. He smiled at the memory.

  And then she met his gaze, her brown eyes so serious, and his smile faded.

  “I remember,” she said.

  An odd note in her voice made everything go very still inside him.

  “Something is the matter.” It was more a statement of fact than a question. His hand tightened a fraction around hers. “What is it?” She shook her head slightly.

  “This is hardly the time or the place to talk about anything serious,” she said. She indicated the Washington elite surrounding them on all sides, all polite chatter and sharp speculation, with a tilt of her head.

  “If that is meant to make me believe that something is not wrong,” he pointed out, his gaze narrow on hers, “it has failed. Miserably.” She only shook her head again, and smiled that perfect, empty smile. And what could Azrin do? He was the King of Khatan. There was no scenario in which he could have any kind of intimate conversation with his wife in the middle of a dance floor. He couldn’t even kiss her the way he wanted to without causing the sort of commotion he preferred to avoid.

  He found he hated it.

  But he waited.

  And as he waited, he watched her, feeling as if he somehow hadn’t seen her in a long time, though they had traveled all over the world together in these past weeks, with the whole of their necessary entourage. She was pale beneath her expertly applied cosmetics. And there was a certain kind of brittleness about the way she moved.

  “Are you ill?” he asked abruptly when they were finally alone in a suite set aside for visiting heads of state in an exclusive Georgetown hotel, all rich, old wood and faint gestures toward something more art deco.

  Kiara stopped walking away from him—toward the master bedroom at the far end of the suite and the sumptuous bath, presumably—her gown whispering around her as she turned back to face him. He watched her for a moment from his position at the top of the steps that led down from the formal foyer into the long, elegant room, trying to see behind that smooth mask he realized she’d been wearing for weeks now.

  Trying to understand how she could feel so far away when she was right there, within reach. The tension between them pulled taut, making the vast room seem to contract around them. He hated that, too.

  “Of course I’m not ill,” she said, her forehead allowing the slightest frown.

  “Pregnant?” He didn’t know why he’d asked that. To poke at her?

  He could see her swallow almost convulsively as he walked down the steps, closing the distance between them. Her mouth flattened. Her eyes flashed with what he took to be temper, but at least it was better than that mask.

  “No. Still not pregnant, should you care to alert the media.”

  “If there is something wrong—” he began, hearing the impatience in his own voice and unable, somehow, to curtail it.

  “What could be wrong?” Her eyes were too bright. She turned her head as if she wanted to hide it, looking out toward the brick terrace that stretched the length of the suite on the other side of the glass windows, the rooftops of Georgetown spread out before them. Deceptively inviting, Azrin thought darkly, in such a of the suite on the other side of the glass windows, the rooftops of Georgetown spread out before them. Deceptively inviting, Azrin thought darkly, in such a deceitful city. “You are a success by any measure. You
have been hailed as an innovative and modernizing force for good in a troubled region. A worthy successor to your father in every respect. Surely all of this has turned out exactly as you wanted. As you planned.”

  “Kiara.”

  He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t feel like any kind of success, not when she looked away from him, when she seemed so closed off, so far away. He didn’t know what moved inside of him, tearing at him. He only knew he couldn’t stand this. Whatever this was.

  “What else can you possibly want?” she asked him, her voice the faintest whisper. From me, he thought she added, but he couldn’t be sure. And he didn’t know he meant to move until his hands were on her shoulders and his mouth was hard against hers.

  “I want you,” he growled. He tasted salt and something else, something bitter, but beyond that was simply Kiara, and it took so very little of her to make him drunk. “I always want you.”

  He dragged his hands through her hair, scattering the diamonds that had nestled there, digging his fingers into the long tresses, holding her still as he took. Tasted.

  And took some more.

  He was desperate then, and she met him with her own heat, turning his own mad desire back on him—sending them both higher. Hotter. She tugged his coat from his shoulders, his shirt from his trousers. He unhooked her from her gown with more determination than finesse, and then she was pushing him down on the nearest sofa. He twisted her beneath him, settling himself between her thighs as they wrestled off what remained of their clothing and then he found his way into the molten core of her, thrusting hard. Deep.

  She gasped, arching up against him, locking her long, smooth legs tight around his hips. He exulted in the heat of her, the lush softness. The perfect fit. The way her hips rose to meet his, then rolled in that particular way that was all Kiara. All his.

  He slowed, brushing her hair back from her face and waiting for her eyes to open, to focus on him.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

  But she only moved her hips against him, her ankles locked in the small of his back. He leaned down and pulled one of her tight, hard nipples into his mouth, making her laugh and then moan.

  “Tell me,” he said again, and then began to move, his strokes measured and deep, making her shudder against him.

  “I’ve told you in a thousand ways,” she said, her voice uneven, her body arching to meet his thrusts. “You need to learn how to listen.” So he listened. He took her other nipple in his mouth, reached down between them to the place where they were joined, and with a single sure touch, threw her right over the edge.

  And then he did it all over again.

  And again.

  Until, he was sure, nothing at all could ever matter but this.

  When he woke, it was morning.

  He pulled on the nearest thing he could find and made his way out into the long living area of the suite. He found her fully dressed in one of her elegant day dresses and standing by the windows in the great room. She held her morning cup of coffee between her hands, her eyes fixed out the window again, as if the rooftops opposite held secrets she was determined to solve.

  “We will not fly out for another few hours,” he said, his voice still raspy from sleep. And the lack of it. He was happier than he perhaps should be that the tour was finally over, that he could revel in this morning, empty of his aides and his responsibilities, for now. He leaned down to press a kiss to the back of her neck.

  “Come back to bed.”

  “I can’t,” she said. Then a small sound, as if she sucked in a breath. “I’m not going back to Khatan with you.”

  “Where are you going?” He felt lazy. Indulgent.

  He helped himself to her coffee, pulling the heavy ceramic mug from her hand and taking a pull of it before handing it back to her. She set it down on a nearby accent table and then looked at him, her gaze unreadable.

  “Australia.”

  He nodded absently and turned back toward the bedroom, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He was thinking of the shower, and how good the hot water would feel against his skin. He was wondering how long he could keep any outside thoughts at bay this morning, after such a long and satisfying night—how long he could pretend he was nothing more than a man. Not a king at all today. Not yet.

  “Are you planning to visit your mother?” he asked over his shoulder. “When will you return?” She didn’t respond. He turned again, to find her watching him with an expression he didn’t recognize on her pretty face. Resigned, perhaps. Some mix of sadness and something else, something like defiance.

  “What is it?” he asked, on alert again.

  “That’s just it, Azrin,” she said. “I don’t know that I will return.”

  If it had not been for that terrible, arrested look on his face, the sudden stillness in his powerful body, Kiara might have thought she hadn’t spoken out loud.

  “I need some time,” she said.

  She wasn’t sure, now, if it was some newfound strength or simple desperation that had chased her from their bed this morning, got her to stop her silent, pointless sobbing in the shower, and wait for him here. Much less actually say what she’d wanted to say for weeks now. She wasn’t sure it mattered either way.

  She let out the breath she’d been holding, closed her eyes and finished it. “I want a separation.” There was a beat. Then another. Her heart pounded so hard inside her chest that it actually hurt.

  “What did you say to me?”

  Her eyes snapped to his. They glittered dangerously. He looked particularly wild this morning, his dark hair mussed from sleep, his jaw unshaven, and only those trousers low on his narrow hips. His voice was the iciest she’d ever heard it, a frigid sort of growl that sliced into her like a blade. She had the panicked thought that trousers low on his narrow hips. His voice was the iciest she’d ever heard it, a frigid sort of growl that sliced into her like a blade. She had the panicked thought that if she looked down, she would see her own blood.

  But she didn’t look. She didn’t dare. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from his. She couldn’t do anything but stand there, frozen solid while he seemed to expand to fill the room and she was forced to remember that he was a dangerous, impossibly lethal man.

  He only pretended to be tame, she reminded herself, feeling breathless and faintly ill, because it suited him to do so.

  “I can’t possibly have heard you correctly,” he said, his voice that same cold lash.

  He didn’t move closer to her, but then, he didn’t have to. She could see every long, hard line of his big body, so dangerously still, all of that uncompromising male power coiled in him. Ready. Sex and command. It was so heady, so intoxicating, that she understood with no little despair that she would always want it—

  want him—no matter how miserable it might make her.

  But this was what men like Azrin did. They commanded. They ruled. They blocked out the whole world. They took. What had ever made her think she could stand strong and independent, her own person, next to this much power and force? She’d been lucky he’d let her play around in the fantasy of it all this time.

  Lucky, she repeated to herself, and it almost made her cry.

  “Are you planning to say something else?” he asked, in that dark, impatient tone that made her stomach turn over, hard, even as she felt too hot, too cold. “Am I to draw my own conclusions about this time you need? This separation? Or, let me guess, you are laboring under the delusion that I’ll just let you run back to Australia without a fight?”

  “I am not happy,” Kiara said then, finally, simply, and the words seemed to crack something open inside of her. As if she’d been afraid to say them, afraid to admit that she felt them, afraid of what would happen once she did …

  This, she thought then, wishing she could feel numb. Wishing this could simply be over somehow. Wishing that she had never sat down at that café table all those years ago. This was exactly what she was afraid of.

  “Are you sur
e?” His voice was so dark, with such a vicious kick beneath. “You seemed happy enough every time you came in my arms last night. I lost count, Kiara. How many times was it?”

  Some sickening mix of temper and desperation swirled in her belly and then pulled tight, giving her just enough false courage to lift her chin, square her shoulders and figure out some way to push the necessary words out of her mouth.

  “Yes, Azrin,” she said. “You’re very good in bed. Congratulations. But that isn’t the point, is it?” He spread his hands out as if in surrender, and she had the despairing thought that he’d never looked less like a supplicant. Even a gesture like this made him look like what he was—a bloody king, indulging her. Patronizing her, on some level, whether he knew it or not.

  “Why don’t you tell me what the point is,” he suggested, and there was less ice in his voice now and more of that deliberate, measured calmness that she found she hated. It smacked of that same indulgence. “You are the one who wants to separate.” He said that last word as if it was a vile curse.

  “I have done nothing for the past three months but trail around after you,” Kiara said, evenly. Rationally. The way she delivered reports in business meetings.

  “First there was the pre-coronation finishing school with your sisters. Then the months of appearances. Always smiling. Always dignified and silent and polite, entirely without opinions on anything except the flowers. The decor. The weather. That is not what I want from my life.”

  “That is your job,” he said, shrugging, though his eyes remained hard on hers.

  “It is your job,” she retorted, still fighting to keep her voice as calm as she knew it needed to be. “I have an entirely different job, as you know very well. It does not involve acting as if I am nothing more than a repository for opinions you have already vetted. A figure, nothing more. Or, even better, a currently empty uterus that your whole country gets a say in filling, apparently. My actual job involves my brain.” His eyes were so dark now, too dark, and seemed to bore into her, seeing all kinds of things she was sure she’d rather keep private. Hidden. But she didn’t look away. She knew this was a fight for her life. She knew it with a certainty that should have scared her—that had scared her so much that she’d gone almost entirely mute these last weeks rather than risk these words slipping out at some state dinner and shaming them both in front of the whole world.