“Stop,” she moaned, but her hands were lifting, aching to touch him. She was tentative at first, feeling the strength of his muscles slowly. She ran her fingers down his body, until they encountered the waistband of his pants. She moved inside, wondering at her daring, but at the same time accepting the fatalism of what she was doing.
When her hands met his length she made a sound of relief. Or was it him? Wetness slicked her insides. A hunger that had never been quenched burned her whole.
“But talking is all we can do,” he said softly, pulling away from her and marking their separation with a full stride. “I will not have a married woman in my bed, no matter how I want her.”
He can never know. Malakhi disapproves of divorce. He’s very old-fashioned. He would see your divorce as a shame to our entire family. I would be tainted by association. You know I support you completely but Mal is just different.
“I …”
“You wear his ring and touch my cock? How dare you?”
Evie wanted, so badly, to tell him the truth. The words were fully formed in her mouth. She was close to issuing them: I am not married. I was never his. Please. Please, take me.
But the sound of a shrill ringing interrupted them and he spun, as though completely unaffected by their conversation.
The conversation was completed in Malakhi’s language and, try as she might, Evie had learned only simple phrases so far.
“He is fine. It is teething pains. Nothing more.”
Relief, stupidity and regret mingled in her gut. All of this had been for nothing.
Should she tell him still? Would he welcome the news? Or had Sabra been right?
“Thank you,” she said stiffly and walked towards the door.
“Evelyn?” She stopped walking, her back ramrod straight, but she didn’t turn to face him.
“Make an appointment to see me tomorrow. We need to speak.”
“We can speak now …”
“No. Not now.” His words were thick with an emotion she didn’t comprehend. But there was a darkness there too. “Nothing I would say to you now would be particularly constructive.”
“Mal …” She spun to face him. It was a mistake. His eyes were glittering with fury.
“Do not call me this. Only Sabra had that right, and she is dead.” Evie sucked in a breath as though he’d thrown a cement brick at her. “And do not ever touch me again without invitation.”
Evie’s eyes blinked in her expressive face. “Isn’t that what you did? Didn’t you invite me to touch you, Your Highness?”
“You are a married woman,” he responded coldly. “If you want to screw someone to satisfy your hormones, get your husband to visit. You are his problem. Not mine.”
CHAPTER TWO
“This has nothing to do with our history.”
Dressed in traditional royal robes, seated behind an imposing marble desk, framed by a window that showed the city and beyond it the glistening ocean, His Royal Highness Sheikh Malakhi al-Sitar looked every bit the imposing ruler.
“We dealt with our history last night.” Evie, in comparison, felt small and exhausted. Despite the doctor’s assurances, she had slept in Kalem’s room, waking and comforting him every time he stirred.
“Do you think so?” His smile was laced with dangerous cynicism. “Fine. For now, let us leave it.”
Their eyes were locked in a fierce battle of the wills which Evie broke first. She shifted her gaze sideways, eyeing a large stack of boxes in the corner. She had never been in his office before, but she knew instinctively they didn’t belong. They were clutter and disarray when he was a man of precision and order.
“Condolences,” he said gruffly, following her gaze. “A great many arrived. I must … deal with them.”
Sympathy flooded her for the different pressures they faced in the aftermath of tragedy. “Can I help?”
“No,” he said shortly. Too shortly. He softened it with a curt smile. “Most of them are in languages you do not speak.”
“Still,” she murmured. “It doesn’t seem fair that you have to handle all of those…”
“Did you ever really believe life to be fair? Now. We have more important matters to discuss.”
“Such as?” She prompted, walking towards the window to the right of his desk and looking out. The landscape by day was completely different. Trees that were spiky and black against the inky sky were pale green and magical-seeming when kissed by the bright sunshine.
“My nephew.”
“Our nephew,” she corrected on auto-pilot. “Yes. We do need to talk about him. I’m not happy with that woman calling all the shots …”
“It’s not your place,” he interrupted, “to question the arrangements I have made.”
She spun around, her brows arched with curiousity. “Oh?”
“It is time for you to go home, Evelyn. You do not belong here.” His expression was blanked of any emotion, though she doubted that was by design. It was far easier to believe he truly felt nothing in that moment.
The words sank into her mind and she nodded slowly. “Fine. Yes. Kalem and I will return to Brisbane. That’s a much better idea. His home is there. He’s familiar with it. He will be happier in the room his parents decorated for him …”
“No.” He shook his head curtly. “You alone will return to Australia.”
Breath was impossible to draw. “How can you suggest such a thing?”
His eyes met hers fiercely. “It is time. Life must resume. They are dead. He lives. This is our reality.”
“I’m not leaving him,” she murmured. “If you think I would go to the other side of the world then you are absolutely deranged.”
“What choice is there? You cannot stay in the palace indefinitely.”
“Why? Are you afraid I’ll bankrupt the place?” She mocked angrily.
His palm slapped the top of the desk; a loud noise emanated through the office. “Damn it! Do not speak to me like this. You came to my room in the middle of the night. You exposed us both to gossip that I do not want.”
“What?” Her face paled. “You’re kidding, right?”
“You were seen coming and going. You were wearing practically nothing. You are a married woman. This is unacceptable.”
“Oh my God. I wouldn’t have thought you’d care about what people think…”
“Then you do not understand the esteem I put on my peoples’ opinion.” He stood up sharply. “You are as dangerous to me now as you were then.”
“I’m not dangerous,” she scoffed. “What you want from me is.”
“Yes,” he agreed readily, making no effort to pretend to misunderstand. “Absolutely. But you are also different. You do not understand me, or my country. It is time for you to leave.”
“Not without him.”
“He is my heir …”
“He’s my nephew. And Sabra and Dave would want me to be with him.”
“He is not leaving Ishala.”
Her breath was burning the fibres of her lungs. “Who the hell do you think you are to make that statement?”
“I am the king of this country. My word is law.”
“But you are not the king of Kalem.”
“On the contrary. He is my heir, my responsibility and my subject.”
Her lower lip dropped, so that her mouth was gaping completely. Beyond the opulent room a bird squawked noisily, its distinctive call reverberating past her sadness. “But he’s … lived his whole life in Australia.”
Malakhi shrugged his broad shoulders so that the white and gold robes he wore shifted a little. “A life he will barely recall. Already it must seem like a dream to him. Something he remembers fragments of, perhaps.”
“You’re wrong.”
His lips lifted in an arrogant smile. “I am never wrong.”
Indignation stole colour into her cheeks. “Yes, you are. You’re wrong right now.”
“The child stays,” he responded, his eyes straying to her plump, pink li
ps. Lips that he had kissed when he had no right to do so.
“I’ll fight you.”
His laugh was a harsh invective of derision. “Do you not realise how precarious your place is here?”
“You don’t scare me.” She drew herself up to her full height, admittedly a not very impressive five and a half feet, and fixed him with a glare of ice-cold determination.
“I care very little as to what effect I have on you. You are here in the palace as a sign of my goodwill. I could easily have you sent away.”
Evie felt her temperature spike as a fever of anxiety curdled her blood. “You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can. Give me a reason not to and I will consider it.” She was dressed in a simple black dress. It was linen, or some other natural fabric. It was modest and neat, but something about the way her swan-like neck dipped forward to reveal a hint of her smooth back, and the dress cinched about her waist, reminded him dangerously of her dainty proportions.
“A reason not to?” Her face was pale, her eyes sparking with anger. “Other than the fact I have been as much as parent to him as David and Sabra?”
“So you have said. But he is only little. He has nannies now, and he seems to be coping as well as could be expected with the adjustment.”
Evie stalked across the room, no longer able to keep a dignified distance. She slammed her palms down on the desk that lay between them, a surge of determination erupting through her. “He needs me.”
“What he needs is to get on with his life.”
Her fingers ached to slap him. That arrogant, handsome face, with its all-knowing declarations. “His parents have just died.”
“Two months ago,” he corrected sharply. “It is time for us all to move on.”
She was running hot and cold, her whole body quivering with disbelief. “That might be possible for a heartless automaton like you, but Kalem and I are still dealing with this …”
He might have felt sympathy for her, were he anyone else. But Malakhi was growing impatient. He needed a resolution to this conversation so that he could continue with his day’s obligations. “You should go.”
“Are you dismissing me?”
His dark eyes bore into hers and the frisson of awareness that danced along her spine whenever she so much as thought of Malakhi breathed goosebumps across her skin.
When he spoke, his voice was forcibly softened and slower, as though he could fool her into believing they weren’t at logger-heads. “You are so melodramatic. I have no interest in dismissing you. It’s only that the conversation is at an end.”
“Not by a long shot, it isn’t.”
Malakhi had an unnervingly direct stare that was capable of filling a person with self-doubt and regret. Evie felt both now.
“Sabra knew the value Kalem held for the country.”
“Sabra valued Kalem as her son …”
“Yes, of course,” he interrupted impatiently. “But my sister was a realist. She knew the price she would eventually pay for her freedoms.”
“What price?” Evie demanded. “What freedoms?”
“The freedom to be with your brother. To marry and remain abroad and anonymous. To have a child and raise him away from the palace …”
“She was a woman first, a princess second. Of course she had those freedoms.”
“Wrong,” he was scathing. “You’re as naïve as you are beautiful.” He moved towards the window, his eyes taking little relief from the stunning view in that moment. The ocean was glistening like a turquoise jewel and the sun blistered high in the azure sky, sending golden warmth over his kingdom. The town far beneath him on the hill that ran gently towards the sea was marked with small white buildings and colourful laundry was strung between the windows.
“Then explain it to me,” she hissed sarcastically, following just behind him. He was at least a foot taller than she, and broad, too. His shoulders looked capable of bearing the weight of the world.
He angled his head towards her and Evie jerked her gaze away; awareness was searing her.
“I allowed Sabra to stay in Australia, but there were always conditions.”
“You think that as her brother you had any right to dictate conditions to her?”
“Not as her brother. As her ruler.”
“That’s disgusting,” Evie shuddered. “And barbaric.”
“It is simply foreign to you. You cannot understand the way people in my kingdom feel beholden to their prince.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t.”
“And your thoughts, though interesting, have little impact on the facts here,” he said with unconcern. “My sister knew where her obligations lay.”
“To her family.”
“To me, above all else.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “Maybe you didn’t know Sabra as well as you thought.”
“Don’t.” The single word cut through her anger like a diamond on glass. His eyes clashed with hers, battling them angrily. “My sister and I understood each other.”
Evie might have argued the point were she not aware that he too was grieving. “Fine. So what do you think she felt obliged to do?”
“By Kalem’s tenth birthday, Sabra and your brother were to move to Ishala.”
Evie’s body seemed to thud to almost a complete stop. “I don’t believe … they never said that to me.”
His shrug was the epitome of carelessness. “I don’t know why they would have kept it a secret. It was something they knew to be necessary.”
“I don’t think you understand. I had dinner with them every week and babysat often. If they’d been planning to move halfway around the world they would have told me.”
“I cannot speak to that.”
“Oh. I thought you knew everything,” she snapped angrily.
His eyes were glittering his face. He lifted a hand imperiously. “I have no more time to indulge your thirst for a confrontation. The child will stay here in the palace.”
Losing Sabra and Dave had been a nightmare, but everything that had happened since then? She was gradually losing her grip on those things that mattered most to her. Panic fired her determination. “What if he comes to Australia with me until he’s ten? I’ll keep whatever agreement you had with Sabra.”
“With your husband? Do you truly think I would allow this?” He scoffed angrily. “Besides, you are not my sister,” he said with a decisive shake of his head. “You would not be able to raise him in accordance with our traditions.”
“I will raise him how Sabra wanted him raised.”
“No.” He curled his fingers around her upper arm. It had been intended as a gesture of comfort but something far more urgent lodged between them. Memories of the night before swarmed them. Her enormous dark eyes blinked up at him, lost and confused. “He stays.”
“Please don’t take him away from me,” she whispered, closing her eyes to hide her shame at having to beg.
Malakhi exhaled impatiently. Such emotional scenes were anathema to him. “He is not yours to take.”
“Yes he is,” she said, and now the tears that she contained with such effort sparkled on her eye lashes. She lifted her phone from a pocket in her dress and loaded the camera roll. “Look.” She leaned closer towards him so that he could make out the images on her screen. “How can you say he isn’t mine? He’s not my child, but he’s my little love. He’s not just some … some pawn. Some heir that you want to lay claim to, like staking a piece of land with a flag.”
There were hundreds and hundreds of photographs and they were all so happy. He spread his long, strong fingers around her phone and took it easily, flicking over the images. On autopilot, he opened one of Sabra and Kalem, laughing. His heart shifted as though it had been stabbed. She was so happy and full of life. Now that happiness was reduced to a pile of useless memories and her vitality had been squashed into ash and death. The next picture was just of Kalem, his face covered in mashed banana and yoghurt.
Malakhi passed the p
hone back, his mouth a grim line in his face. “You may visit.”
“No.” She lifted her hand and pressed it to her chest. “That’s not good enough. I want to be
“What do you suggest, Evelyn? Do you wish to remain here in this foreign country?”
“And your husband?”
Tell him the truth!
“If this is where Kalem is, then I’m here too.”
Panic wretched his body. “You don’t belong here.”
“I belong with him. And despite whatever agreement you had with Sabra and Dave, I know Sabra would want me to be with him. Especially now. Do you know how many times I’ve sung him his favourite songs? How many episodes of Thomas we’ve watched together? Do you know which are his favourite books? Which teddies comfort what nightmares? How to encourage him to wear socks with his shoes?” Tears were slipping unbidden from her eyes, marking tracks of grief all over her face. “Will you tickle him until his laughs fill the air? Will you watch him eat and wonder at the food that is making him bigger and stronger day by day? Will you love him, Malakhi? Will you love him how he deserves to be loved?”
The words barely registered. She was so angry; her face was filled with colour, her eyes shifting with emotion and her body was tense.
“Love is irrelevant,” he disputed gruffly. “He will grow within these palace walls as I did. He is destined to be a ruler, as I am.”
“Perhaps one day. But he is still a boy,” she pleaded miserably. “A beautiful, sweet, sad little boy.”
Malakhi spun away from her, furious at his own weakness where this woman was concerned. “I will think about it.” He turned once more and pinned her with a gaze that was determinedly cold.
“What does that mean?” She begged, no longer too proud to show her desperation.
“You are … not someone I would generally welcome as a palace guest, and you know why.”
“Am I really so offensive to you?”
“You know you do not offend me,” he said thickly. “You worry me.”
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