In Defiance of Duty

by Caitlin Crews

  And because she hadn’t wanted this, she admitted to herself. She hadn’t wanted to believe that this was happening, even as every day she saw less and less of herself in the mirror.

  “I can’t believe that you honestly think the Queen of Khatan should—or could—be the vice president of a foreign corporation in her spare time.” Azrin’s voice was dark and curt.

  He shook his head, an impatient expression moving over that ruthless face and telling her quite clearly that he was not taking her seriously. That he had already relegated her to just one more of those daily fires of his, just one more problem to solve. She told herself she shouldn’t let it hurt as much as it did. That this—

  exactly this—was precisely why she had to take this step.

  “I don’t think you truly think so, either,” he continued in the same tone. “I think your feelings are hurt. My attention has been on my responsibilities and you feel ignored. Hence this tantrum.”

  “This isn’t what I signed up for,” she said, though it cost her to keep so calm. “And it isn’t a tantrum to say so. Pretending that this is a childish display of temper so you don’t have to deal with what I’m saying, however, very well might be.”

  “When you met me I was the Crown Prince of Khatan,” Azrin said, the chill back in his voice, that terrible steel in his eyes. “This is, in fact, exactly what you signed up for.” He laughed slightly, though there was no humor in it. “Sooner than we planned, perhaps, but that’s life. Plans change. Sometimes you simply have to do your duty.”

  “You’re talking about your life,” she said through the constriction in her chest, which she was deathly afraid were the tears she refused to cry. Not in front of him.

  Not when it was so important he take her seriously. That he listen. “Your duty. What about mine?”

  “What about it?” he asked, every inch of him so arrogant. So incredulous. “This is your life, Kiara. Whatever games we played over the past five years, this is reality. The sooner you accept it, the happier you’ll be.”

  And there it was, she thought dully. Painfully. Had she known all along that it would come to this? Had she felt it somehow? Was that why all the pressure to have a baby had rubbed her the wrong way—because she knew this was only a game to him after all?

  “Were you playing games all this time?” she asked, unable to keep the catch from her voice. “Because I wasn’t. I have my own responsibilities. My own duties.

  There are people depending on me, too—”

  There are people depending on me, too—”

  “I am talking about a kingdom,” Azrin said, that impatient edge in his voice again, that cold fury in his gaze. “A government. A country. A whole population.

  You are talking about grapes.”

  She felt as if he’d hit her. That dismissive tone in his voice. That look in his eyes. The proof that he had never supported her the way he’d pretended to—that their relationship was nothing but a lie. She felt empty. Hollowed out.

  Or, if she was brutally honest, she only wished she did.

  How she wished she did.

  “No,” she said, astonished that she could even speak. Much less manage to sound so calm. So unmoved and unbothered. As if none of this was breaking her heart. “You’re talking about your family—and I’m talking about mine.”

  The silence stretched out between them, ripe with all the things he had to prevent himself from saying. That deliberately even tone of hers slapped at him, infuriated him. Azrin had to fight to keep his temper under control.

  “What do you want, Kiara?” he asked when he was certain he could speak without shouting. “How do you see this working out? I am the King of Khatan. You are the Queen. That can’t be changed, no matter where you choose to hide.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice still so frustratingly even, despite the edge in his. It made him feel wild inside. He saw her hands had balled into fists at her sides, and comforted himself with the knowledge that she was not nearly as cold nor calm as she appeared.

  “Do you really think the people will support their queen’s sudden residency in Australia?” He eyed her as if she was a stranger instead of the woman who had bewitched him for years, who he still wanted, even when he was this furious with her, even when he had no idea what to do with all this hopeless rage. “Or is that what you want—that kind of scandal?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  Her head jerked up, and her brown eyes looked very nearly black. He could sense her temper more than see it, and he didn’t know what was wrong with him that he should want to goad her into exploding. Into showing him what was beneath all of these impossible, terrible things she was saying, none of which he could believe. Much less accept.

  “But by all means, you should keep pushing me about it in that aggressive tone of voice,” she said. “I’m sure that will clear everything up.” He realized he was gritting his teeth when his jaw began to ache.

  “I will never divorce you,” he said softly. Deliberately. “Just so we understand each other.”

  “You don’t get to decide that, Azrin,” she retorted, frustration bleeding into the even tone of her voice then. She reached up to massage her temples, as if he was a headache she wanted to rub away. “If I want to end this marriage, I will.”

  “I see.” He moved closer to her without meaning to move, until he was near enough that her scent teased at him, that he could hear the catch in her breath as she eyed him warily. Too warily. And still, none of it was enough. None of this made sense. “So you feel that the promises you made, your vows, are only something you have to keep if and when it’s convenient for you. Is that what this is?”

  “I have done nothing but keep my promises!” she snapped at him, and he saw a hectic color bloom across her cheekbones. He should not have been so small a man as to feel that like a victory. “You can’t say the same. You married me, not some Khatanian paragon, crafted from the cradle to serve your every need. You married me knowing exactly who I was—”

  “So did you,” he retorted. He shook his head as if that might clear it. “What is this? You’ve hardly spoken to me in weeks—”

  “You made it perfectly clear that there was no discussion to be had!” She threw the words at him, cutting him off, a bright fury in her brown eyes.

  “Are you referring to the many conversations we’ve had about your unhappiness?” he gritted out. “Of course not, because you’ve never mentioned it until now.

  Yet somehow I am to blame because it was never discussed?”

  For a moment, they only stared at each other. He could hear the harsh way she breathed, could see the bright heat on her cheeks and the pallor beneath. He wanted to touch her, to soothe her, to remind her—but something in the way she looked at him stopped him.

  “You should have known better,” she said after a long moment, and the rich, deep pain in her voice nearly undid him. A toxic cocktail of shame and blame and anger ripped through him, too much like weakness. “You knew what kind of wife you needed. You should never have pretended it could be me.” He heard the layers of agony in her words. He felt it in the way she looked at him, in the tears that spilled from her dark eyes that she jabbed at with her hands.

  And he had no idea what to do to fix this, to change it.

  “It is you,” he said. He let out a hollow sort of laugh. “It is only you.”

  She shook her head then, looking, if possible, even more miserable.

  “Maybe that’s the solution,” she said. She lifted her chin as if bracing herself. “Maybe you should stop fighting your heritage and your traditions and simply take a more appropriate wife in addition to me. Or two, just like your father.”

  For a moment it was as if some white-hot kind of electric charge seared through him, so furious did that remark make him. But he reined it in. He shoved it down.

  Somehow.

  “You want a harem, Kiara?” he asked through his teeth. “I will be more than happy to provide you with
one. But let’s make sure you’re clear on how it works. I get to have as many wives as I want. You get to obey me.”

  “Or, alternatively, I could divorce you and marry Harry Thompson the way my mother always wanted me to,” she snapped back, wholly uncowed by him. “He’s never been so appealing, frankly.”

  “Try it,” Azrin suggested, his tone nothing short of murderous. “I dare you. See what happens.” Her brown eyes flashed. “Don’t threaten me.”

  And something seemed to crack inside him. He couldn’t control the temper that crashed through him, over him. Not anymore. Not when she was so determined to break him into pieces. Not when he no longer seemed to care if she did.

  “Don’t threaten me, Kiara!” He only realized he was shouting when he heard his own voice, so very loud was it. So raw. Her face paled, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “Harems? Divorce? Harry Thompson? Will you say anything at all to hurt me?”

  stop. “Harems? Divorce? Harry Thompson? Will you say anything at all to hurt me?”

  She had never heard Azrin raise his voice. Ever.

  His temper, she would have said, was a cold thing. Layers of ice and that cutting edge in his voice. Not this wild, pulsing fury that still echoed from the walls.

  That shook her, hard and deep, from the inside out. She had to fight to keep a terrified sort of sob inside, and the worst part was, he had no idea how badly she wanted to take it all back. To fall into bed with him, to smile on command when they were out of bed, and pretend that this wasn’t killing her, bit by inexorable bit.

  He had no idea how much it cost her to do this. He never would.

  “I need to think,” she said, no longer caring if her voice was uneven. If the tears fell. “I can’t do it in Khatan. I can’t do it near you. I need to clear my head.” She didn’t realize how hard she was crying until she heard her own voice, thick and distorted with her own sobs.

  “Kiara …” He looked at her, his eyes so dark and so raw, and she hated that she’d done this to him. That she hadn’t been able to simply handle all of these changes, what they meant, no matter how difficult. That she couldn’t love him enough to justify losing herself.

  But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

  Did that mean she’d never really loved him as she should have? What else could it mean? And that, she thought dimly, was entirely on her. It was exactly what she had to figure out.

  “Space,” she managed to say, though the room was full of darkness and damage and she wasn’t sure she could survive this. “You need to give me space.”

  “What will that accomplish?” His voice was little more than a growl. “We’ve hardly spoken in weeks and this is the conclusion you’ve drawn. What will space do but confirm it?” His troubled gaze met hers. “Unless, of course, that’s what you want.”

  “You never gave me any space at all, did you?” She shook her head, stepping away from him as if to underscore it. “You argued me into dating you. You talked me into sleeping with you. You convinced me to marry you—”

  “Spare me the revisionist history, please,” he interrupted, his voice little more than a dangerous rasp. “You are no malleable little puppet. You wanted me then.

  You want me now.” His gaze raked over her, into her. “You’re standing three feet away from me with your arms crossed in front of you because you can’t trust yourself. You know that if I moved any closer—if I touched you—I’d be inside you and space would be the very last thing on your mind.” Kiara didn’t realize he’d backed her across the room until she felt one of the sofas behind her. She reached out and held on to it, because she was afraid of what she would do if she didn’t—because he was right. She wanted to touch him. She always did.

  And look where it had got them.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “We have sex. Maybe that’s all we have.”

  He let out a breath then, jagged and coarse. He moved closer, and it was too much, as it was always too much. She could feel the power and the anger in him, and worse, all of the pain. And still, he was so beautiful. So fierce, so powerful. Her impossible, addictive attraction to him moved in her like some kind of fever.

  Even now.

  He leaned in, holding her hands in his, and then angled his big body down to rest his forehead against hers. Kiara closed her eyes, and it was as if he surrounded her. Completely.

  This was killing her.

  “You are the only woman I have ever loved,” he said quietly.

  And she wanted to die.

  But even in that moment, even as her mind spun with a thousand ways she could try to stay and make this work, she knew she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t disappear any further, or she’d disappear for good. She knew it.

  She could feel that intoxicating heat of his, like some kind of fire that burned forever beneath his skin. Enveloping her. Encouraging her to simply lean forward and lose herself in him. She tilted her head back to look up at him, but they were still so close. Close enough to kiss. Close enough that it felt as if they already were.

  “If you love me, Azrin,” she whispered, because she was desperate. Because she didn’t know how else to do this. “Let me go.” He looked at her for a very long time. Kiara wasn’t sure either one of them breathed. He took her hands in his, and for a moment she thought he would simply ignore her—simply take her mouth with his and make them both forget. They both knew he could. Some part of her even wanted him to do it, to take this decision out of her hands altogether.

  She remembered how she’d loved it once, that he’d made her feel so weak, so overwhelmed, so utterly lost in him. So fascinated. It had been such a contrast to the rest of her life. And she wasn’t sure she loved it anymore, but she could feel that same fascination, that same invitation to lose herself in him, as much a part of her now as her own flesh, her own bones. The threat of him as much within her as without.

  She understood in that moment that if he did not let her go, she would not be able to make herself leave him. It made her feel hollow inside, that betrayal of herself, but she knew it was true.

  And it was amazing how much that part of her wanted him to do it. To make her stay.

  “Leave, then,” he said, in a voice she hardly recognized, though it broke what was left of her heart into dust.

  And then he opened up his hands and let her go.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS shaping up to be a good grape-harvesting season, Kiara told herself with forced cheer as she walked down to breakfast. Despite the fact she’d missed so much of it while she’d been off playing queen of the castle, as her mother called it. But it was not even remotely soothing to think about Diana, so Kiara thought about the grapes instead.

  When she’d arrived home nearly a month before, they’d been picking the Tempranillo. The grapes were in barrels now, on their way to becoming another excellent Frederick Winery vintage, while the winery turned its attention to the picking of what promised to be a particularly complex and alluring Shiraz.

  This was what she was good at, she reminded herself. Grapes and wine. Color, nose and palate. She was home, finally. She was where she belonged. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as she’d wanted it.

  So why did she feel like a zombie?

  She walked, she talked. Kiara was still the vice president of Frederick Winery, but her commitments and tasks had been farmed out to her coworkers when she’d left for Khatan, and there was no way to reclaim her duties without coming clean about the state of her marriage. Luckily, as she’d discovered in her months as queen, she was very good at pretending. She smiled, she laughed, she acted as if everything was fine. As if she was on holiday, perhaps.

  But inside… Inside she was deathly afraid that there was nothing left of her at all.

  Every day, she thought it would be better. Even the littlest bit. She thought she would wake up and feel all that pressure, all that pain, ease. Or at least shift, somehow. She thought she would start to go, say, even five minutes without replaying every word Az
rin had said to her in Washington, without seeing that utterly bleak, destroyed look in his stormy eyes. If she could make it through a night without dreaming of him—his breathtaking touch, the sensual thrill of his voice, that approving light in his nearly blue gaze when he looked at her and smiled… But it never happened.

  She was beginning to wonder if it ever would.

  Through the high, graceful windows that arched along the stairway toward the lower floors of the chateau, Kiara caught the familiar sight of the landscape that had always dominated her life. The lush Frederick vineyards stretched off toward the hills, everything green and gold, in the height of a perfect Barossa Valley summer. This was home, she told herself again. This was not an ancient palace in a foreign city, ripe with ineffable traditions and too many arcane roles she was destined to fail at fulfilling. This was precisely where she belonged. She should be happy—and if not happy, at the very least, content.

  And yet she still felt nothing but empty.

  Diana was in the kitchen when Kiara entered, looking as casually elegant as ever as she sipped her morning coffee and read the morning paper at the long, wooden table that was the focal point of the bright, cheery room. Kiara’s grandmother had made the serviceable kitchen over into the warm center of the great house it was now, and Kiara’s girlhood had involved long hours sitting at the table while her gran puttered about at the stove. Diana had made the chateau into a showpiece—somehow unpretentious and luxurious at once, just as she was—but she’d left the kitchen as it was.