In Defiance of Duty

by Caitlin Crews

  Because on the other side of the window, spreading out before her as the tiny canyon widened and sunlight poured down from above, was paradise.

  The narrow little canyon opened up into a wide gorge, where palm trees and other vegetation clustered and beckoned over a series of inexpressibly beautiful aquamarine pools. The glorious waters seemed lit from within, as well as from the sunlight pouring down from high above. Here, inside the protected valley, the sun warmed the rocks— the forbidding chill of the narrow approach an immediate distant memory.

  Kiara hardly knew where to look first, and found herself sitting up and leaning forward like an overawed child.

  The pools lay in a straight line along the floor of the canyon, each one larger than the one before it, seeming to dead-end at what appeared to be the farthest reach of the great hidden valley. And that was when Kiara actually let out a gasp, amazed. What could only be some kind of palace seemed to hang in the very air, as if carved from the rock itself, a five-story fortress garnished with balustrades and terraces, balconies and delicate arches, all of it jutting out over the water of the farthest, largest pool as if it had sprung full-grown from the side of the mountain.

  As if it had always been there.

  “It is called the Palace of the Ten Pools,” Azrin told her, pride and a kind of reverence in his voice. “It was considered a holy place for many ages, and then became the favored summer retreat of my great-grandfather. Very few know of it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Kiara whispered, though she could hardly speak past the sudden lump in her throat.

  It was more than beautiful. The impossible, nearly belligerent thrust of the palace out from the rock cliff made her chest feel tight. It was a fierce, implacable building that shouldn’t exist. It called to mind some warrior’s mixture of gingerbread houses and medieval keeps, all jumbled together into what looked like a series of vertical rock sculptures, piled haphazardly on the side of a dizzyingly sheer cliff.

  Azrin turned toward her, smiling, and it was like sensory overload. She couldn’t tell what her body was doing, what she wanted, she could only tell that it was too much. A secret palace, mysterious pools inside a mountain … how was she supposed to resist something like this? How was she meant to truly analyze what had become of them, of their marriage, if every time she turned her head, the beauty of their surroundings made her want to weep?

  If he did?

  “It hardly seems smart, though,” she pointed out. She sat back and eyed him critically. “Bringing out your big guns so early on.”

  “Afraid you can’t handle it?” he asked, that teasing light in his gaze.

  He appeared perfectly at ease, lounging back against the seat as if he hadn’t a care in the world as the Jeep brought them closer and closer to the impossible rock palace that some part of her still whispered couldn’t possibly be real.

  “I can handle it,” she assured him. She waved her hand, encompassing the beauty of the pools, the fall of sunlight that seemed to bounce off the mountainsides, the dreamlike palace itself. “But what are you going to do for a second date?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE WAITED for her out on the highest of the wide balconies as the afternoon edged toward evening. Up above, the sky was beginning to ease into a darker blue, and the skeleton staff they’d brought along to run the palace had already lit all the lights that hung like lanterns around the stone and iron perimeter.

  Azrin never tired of this place. Of the mysterious echoes against the rocks. Of the way he seemed able to breathe deeper here, the air clear and sweet. Of the enchanted pools themselves, so deep and beautiful, no matter the season. They soothed him, even when he did no more than gaze upon them. He’d swum in them as a child, sat beside them as an adult, allowed them to work their quiet magic on his soul.

  Tonight they made him believe that all of this would work out precisely the way he wanted it to work out. The way it should.

  The way it must, he thought, and pretended he did not notice his own urgency.

  He sensed her before he heard the faint scuff of her foot against the stone, and turned as she walked out onto the balcony, and then, after the slightest, barely perceptible hesitation, toward him. He leaned back against the high iron rail and watched her approach.

  His wife. His queen.

  Kiara wore a flowing magenta tunic over loose fitting trousers, and only thin sandals on her feet. She had a wrap over her shoulders, in deference to the mild winter evening that was already cooling the air around them. Her hair swung free in loose waves that his fingers itched to touch, and when she drifted closer he saw she wore only minimal cosmetics, letting her natural beauty shine forth. Captivating him as he was sure she intended.

  Or perhaps, he thought ruefully, she simply captivated him as she always had, no intention necessary.

  He made no move to reach for her as she walked to the railing and stood next to him but not quite touching him, not quite allowing her thigh to brush against his.

  She gazed out over the rail at the hidden gorge spread out before them. He made no move at all, and it nearly killed him.

  “I count only five pools,” she said after a moment, her voice soft. Almost shy, he would have said, though that didn’t make any sense at all. “Shouldn’t there be ten?”

  “There are ten.”

  She looked at him, her brows raised in query, and he smiled, awash in the simple pleasure of looking at her when she was not frowning back at him, not obviously sad or distant, her eyes that clear, gorgeous brown he’d loved for so long now and not filled with the anguish that he, somehow, always seemed to put there despite his own best intentions.

  “There are two pools in a cave deeper inside the mountain,” he said, nodding toward the sheer cliff that faced him and stretched up toward the desert floor far above them. “They are fed by a hot spring and are accessible only from the second level of the palace.” He waved a hand to his left. “If you were to swim down beneath the waterfall at the end of this pool, you could access the small passage that leads to three further pools. Two small ones that have only rocks and towering cliffs and one that is really more properly a lake, complete with a small, rocky beach.” He wanted to lean in closer. He wanted to capture her face in his hands and taste that wide, compelling mouth. He did neither, and he wasn’t at all certain where the strength for that came from. “In total, ten pools.” She looked away again, and he watched the way her hands clenched at her sides, as if she fought off her demons even as she stood there, looking otherwise She looked away again, and he watched the way her hands clenched at her sides, as if she fought off her demons even as she stood there, looking otherwise relaxed. He understood then that it was a great talent of hers—one he should have recognized as the warning it was much earlier.

  “It doesn’t seem real here,” she said in that same soft voice, with that same curious reticence. “It feels as if a place like this shouldn’t exist.” He gave in to his urges and reached over then, pulling a strand of her brown-and-gold hair between his fingers, feeling the raw silk of it against his skin. She smelled of citrus and spice, a kind of delicate perfume that was only hers, and he knew that whatever she thought was happening here, whatever she believed this game might prove between them, that he would never, could never let her go. He didn’t have it in him. She had always been the one thing he was wholly, unrepentantly selfish about, his one weakness, and he didn’t imagine that anything could change that simple fact.

  No matter how distant they had become these last months. No matter what.

  He supposed that made him as manipulative as she’d accused him of being, after all, and he couldn’t bring himself to regret that as he should have done. As a better man would have done, he was sure.

  “Are we already on our date?” she asked, her voice a shade or two too husky. But at least that hint of shyness was gone. At least she sounded like herself. “If so, you should know that it’s incredibly forward to just grab someone’s hair when you hardly k
now them. In some cultures that could get you killed.”

  “Lucky, then, that I’m the king of this one.”

  He gestured toward the small seating area arranged behind them, jutting out from the wall of the palace. There was a construction of canopies above to shield them from the sun by day and thick, heavy rugs to take the chill from the stones beneath them now, like some majestic, luxurious cabana. Large, colorful pillows were scattered about the floor, circling a wide, low table of inlaid mosaic tiles in shades of blue, green and black.

  Azrin watched as Kiara lowered herself to the pillows with that absentminded, matter-of-fact grace of hers that he found so intoxicating. He threw himself down on the other side, unable to take his eyes from her pretty face. She tucked her hair behind her ears in a gesture that betrayed her nervousness, he thought—with a certain satisfaction that he could still affect her. That he still got under her skin.

  If he was the better man he thought he should have been, he might have had some compunction about enjoying that. But he did not.

  “We should lay down some rules,” she said, her gaze touching his, then skittering away. “Before we begin this dating experiment of yours.”

  “You think we need rules?” He could think of other things they needed, none of which were appropriate for the moment. But they moved in him like heat. Like something narcotic, straight into the bloodstream.

  “I do.” Her brows rose again, but this time in something far more mocking, far less nervous. This was the Kiara he recognized. “Particularly if you are going to lounge about like that, like some kind of dissolute pasha.”

  He vastly preferred her like this, he thought. Despite any marks that sharp mouth of hers might leave on his skin.

  “Were Khatan still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire,” he drawled, “I would indeed be a pasha, as many of my ancestors were before me.” He eyed her across the table. She returned his gaze for a long moment, and he saw faint color spread across her cheekbones. He saw the way she swallowed, long and hard. He wondered for a moment if she would crumble, what it might mean if she did, but her eyes remained clear.

  “Noted,” she said quietly. “Rule number one—no flip-pant references.” She sighed. “And we’ll have to talk about sex, of course.”

  “This is the best date I’ve ever been on,” he replied with silken delight, only partially feigned for effect. “Is that an invitation? My answer is an enthusiastic yes, of course.”

  “I don’t think we should have any,” she said primly, as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “This feels like déjà vu, Kiara.” He felt that dark amusement ignite within him. “We might as well be in Melbourne five years ago. You will put up a token protest, we will fall into bed anyway, and you will marry me all over again. I had no idea we could sort all of this out so easily.”

  “I’m serious,” she said, and he could hear the chill in her voice. The defensiveness. It kindled his banked temper into a bright blaze in an instant, fierce and hot.

  He slammed it back down as best he could.

  “Of course you don’t want to have any sex.” He leaned back against the pillows and regarded her evenly. “You think that I use your body against you, confuse you with our sexual chemistry, control you somehow with it, whatever.”

  He let that sit there for a moment, then raised a brow, daring her. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Speaking of flippant references,” she said, her voice sounding faintly strangled. The color had deepened across her cheeks, making her seem to glow with the strength of her feelings.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I don’t think we should have any, either.”

  “You don’t.” Her voice was patently disbelieving. As if he was a wild animal instead of the man—the husband—who loved her to a distraction five years and incalculable complications into this marriage. It was infuriating. She was infuriating.

  “I don’t,” he said, his voice hardening as he spoke, “because I grow tired of the way I am painted in this fantasy you have of our marriage. I think your sexual appetite is as voracious and encompassing as mine, which you used to admit freely. Revel in, even. But it does not suit you to think of it in those terms any longer.

  You prefer to be the victim, for reasons I’m sure you’d prefer I not speculate about.”

  “I don’t want to be a victim!” Her voice was some mixture of shock and fury, and she sat up straighter, her eyes blazing across the table at him. “I’m not one!”

  “You use sex as a weapon, Kiara,” Azrin said matter-of-factly, propping himself up on an elbow to level a look at her. Her cheeks were wild with color now, and there was a hectic sort of look in her eyes, nearly black now with emotion. Or the burn of her temper. He was happy enough with either, whatever that might make him. “You claim it’s all we have when the truth is, you make sure it’s all we can have. I think it makes you feel safer. More in control.”

  “You use sex in place of conversation, in place of emotion, in place of what should be a real, healthy relationship!” she hurled back at him. There was no doubt she was furious—the air crackled with it, and Azrin thought that now, maybe, they could get somewhere. Now that her mask was off, that polite veneer tossed aside. “You never asked me how I felt about any of the changes that you threw at me—that were thrown at both of us—you just demanded I do as you said and then acted as if sex would fix the rest of it!”

  “Then we agree,” he said smoothly, tamping down his own temper, telling himself that this was neither the place nor the time. It was the rawness of what they still felt that had to matter, not all the analysis of what they’d each done to the other. It had to matter, he thought, or nothing did, and that was something he refused to accept. “No sex, unless it is a gift. Unless it is honest. No hiding from unpleasant truths or uncomfortable realities. And no wielding it as a weapon designed to make the other the villain.”

  make the other the villain.”

  “This is ridiculous,” she snapped. “You might as well simply claim that up is down and day is night.”

  “Have you any other rules, Kiara?” he asked, hearing the edge in his voice despite his best efforts to soften it. “Any other reasons to drag this out?” He stared at her coolly. “It tempts me to wonder if you don’t really want to get to know me, after all, as we agreed. It might contradict all these stories you tell yourself.” She jerked her gaze away from his, and there was nothing but silence for a long while.

  Azrin watched her. He listened to the sounds of the pools all around them—the water lapping against the rocks, the splashing of the waterfall, the breeze that moved through the palm trees and made them rustle as if they, too, were restless. She was breathing too hard, too fast, her gaze directed straight down into her lap, and he suspected that if he could see her hands beneath the table they would be clenched into fists.

  The shadows had lengthened into full dusk by the time she looked at him again, her brown eyes clear once more. Too clear, perhaps. She shifted where she sat, pulling her wrap tighter around her shoulders and smoothing it over her arms. She even smiled, for all that it was one of her meaningless, well-practiced political smiles.

  He didn’t let it get beneath his skin. Not tonight. He was happy enough to see a smile, any smile—and more than happy to take up the challenge that it entailed.

  “So tell me,” she said, her voice light, easy.

  A sharp-edged mockery of first-date conversation, and well did he know it. And enjoy it. She propped her chin up with her hands as she leaned her elbows on the table, and gazed at him with an attention that bordered on the fatuous and almost made him laugh.

  “Do you come here often?” she asked.

  Game on, my love, he thought, and began.

  “I’ve already told you what I do,” Azrin said politely. So politely.

  His voice was intelligent and amused, deep and dark and sexy, and seemed to smooth its way down her spine and then wrap around into the very core of her.

  She�
��d always been entirely too susceptible to that voice. Hadn’t that been one of the reasons she’d sat down at that café table in Melbourne? Any sane person would have walked away, or so she’d often told herself.

  “You are the king,” she said, as if reminding them both. Or herself, anyway. “Lord of all you survey, et cetera. That must be fun. Smiting your enemies, plundering and pillaging.” She waited for his brows to arch in protest and smiled. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

  “It is not fun at all,” he said, his voice lower, then. More serious, suddenly, though he smiled slightly, as if to conceal it. “It is many things, and often rewarding, but no. There is nothing fun about it.”

  He glanced over his shoulder toward the palace then and waved a peremptory hand in the air. Kiara sat back and watched as his staff poured out from the nearby, arched entrance at that regal command, bearing trays piled high with all kinds of Khatanian delicacies.

  There were dishes of rice, platters of grilled fish and a selection of carved meats. Delicate, flaky pastries that Kiara knew would be filled with combinations of meats and cheeses, spices and sugar. There was a plate of the most tender lamb, sliced open to show that it was stuffed with rice, eggs and onions, and was temptingly fragrant with the unusual combination of spices that Kiara knew to be traditionally Khatanian.

  There were tall drinks of thick yogurt that would be flavored with cardamom or pistachio, and would perfectly complement the savory flavors of the rest of the food served. There were dishes filled to near overflowing with the ubiquitous dates and olives and almonds that grew everywhere, handmade hummus and tabbouleh, and plates piled high with the special Khatanian flatbread that shared characteristics with a Mediterranean pita or an Indian naan but was better than either, whether it was plain, roasted with garlic and olive oil, or stuffed full of coconut and dried fruit.

  Kiara’s mouth watered.

  “Come on now,” she said when his staff had bowed their way back indoors, leaving them to an expertly prepared feast to eat surrounded by candles and lanterns and the clear night sky above them, in the most magical place she’d ever seen. Or even dreamed. “You have to think some of this is fun.” Azrin only shot her a dark look she couldn’t quite read as he reached for the flatbread and tore himself a thick piece.