“I’m all right with that,” she would reply serenely.
Miles, on the other hand, was thriving.
He loved the palace. He loved that he finally had a father. He loved his father heedlessly and wholeheartedly, in fact, and much as Shona might have hated her circumstances, she couldn’t hate that. Miles loved his many nannies and teachers, all of whom doted on him as if he was truly the most delightful child alive—which he was, of course. In Shona’s own, personal opinion. He loved all the new and exciting things he got to see and talk about every day. He loved that he had a grandfather, too, the sad old man who moved about the palace like a ghost in the wake of his wife’s death and who barely replied to polite greetings.
Miles was fine. Happy, even.
It was Shona who couldn’t fit in. Shona who was...wrong.
Like every foster home she’d ever found herself in, she reminded herself darkly. She’d survived them all. She would survive this, too.
“When will this defiance end?” Malak asked her one night.
He’d made their dinners even more painful. He’d decreed that they would all eat together as a family. Again, it was that word that had never meant anything to her and yet resonated inside of her in ways she couldn’t entirely understand. She worried that it was a word that meant so much she couldn’t look at it directly—and so Shona was forced to bite the bullet and pretend everything was fine as long as Miles was there. And it almost was. Miles would chatter away happily while Shona glared at Malak across gold plates and heaping platters of food.
And the moment Miles’s beloved nannies came to spirit him away, Shona would stand up and resume her stubborn refusal to take part in anything that didn’t directly benefit her child.
“When will you stop pretending I’ll ever be your queen?” Shona asked in return that night. “That’s when you can expect my defiance to stop. Not before.”
“I’m only interested in learning if there’s a timetable.” Malak sat back on his usual pile of pillows, looking entirely too at ease. “Because, Shona, I don’t mind telling you, this is all quite boring.”
“Heaven forbid. I wouldn’t want to bore you.” She rolled her eyes. “What could be worse than that?”
“I can think of a great many things that are worse than that,” he said, much too softly.
She wasn’t a fool. She could hear the warning in his voice.
But she ignored it.
“I can’t,” she said. Unwisely.
Because Malak smiled at her.
And then rose to his feet in a single, simple movement that did nothing but highlight his masculine grace in ways she could feel inside of her.
She could feel it. Inside her.
Her heart leaped toward her throat. Her stomach dropped toward her feet.
Run, something inside urged her—but her feet seemed nailed to the floor.
“What are you doing?” she asked, though she hardly sounded like herself. She was only grateful she’d managed not to stammer.
But that seemed like a small and insubstantial victory indeed when that smile of his deepened. And turned something like fierce.
“It occurs to me that I’ve been going about this all wrong,” Malak said with a quiet ferocity she could feel in her bones.
And everywhere else.
“I don’t know what that means, but—”
“What is that saying?” he asked, but she knew he wasn’t really asking. The look in his eyes was hot. And hard. And it made her want to do nothing at all but melt. “You get more flies with honey than with vinegar, is that not so?”
But he didn’t wait for her to come up with an answer.
He simply started toward her.
CHAPTER FIVE
MALAK WAS AT the end of his patience.
Until now, he hadn’t actually known whether or not he was the sort of man who had patience in the first place. Much less if he could handle his patience being tested. Repeatedly. There had simply never been the opportunity to experiment, because for all that he’d been the largely ignored second son of the Khalian king, he had still always been a prince in his own right. Who would dare try his patience?
Since he’d arrived back in Khalia with Shona in tow, however, Malak had found numerous opportunities to experiment with his own ability to practice patience, for the first time in his life. And had subsequently discovered that there was not one part of self-restraint that he enjoyed.
Tonight was yet another night in this kingdom his forefathers had built out of the desert, now his to rule. He should have been deeply concerned about his people. Or his upcoming coronation, the formal ceremony to cement the transfer of power that had already occurred. He should have been worrying about the future in this land of his that could not rely on its oil exports forever.
And yet all he had on his mind, it seemed, was Shona.
Shona five years ago, when she’d walked into that hotel bar and stolen his breath. Shona in that gold dress that he could remember with shocking clarity—and especially when he’d taken it off her, inch by delectable inch. Shona beneath him in that wide bed in that hotel suite in New Orleans, her legs wrapped around his back.
Shona in a thousand carnal images from long ago.
But the real Shona was here, in front of him, every night.
And Malak found he didn’t have it in him to wait any longer to get his hands on her. It had already been long enough.
It had been forever.
“What are you doing?” she asked again, with far more alarm in her tone.
He had stood, finally. Because he’d had enough of this foolhardy protest of hers—this absurd stubborn streak she seemed capable of indulging forever. He’d had no intention of letting it go on as long as it had, but part of him had wondered if she would really continue to push it. Part of him had wanted to see how long she could possibly maintain her commitment to something so obviously destined to fail.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have doubted her. Because there was something about that belligerent chin of hers, forever tipped up as if to dare him to do something about it there and then. There was something about the way she looked at him, her brown eyes lit with challenge when most women—most people—in his life averted their gaze from his automatically, in deference to his exalted position.
He rather thought that if he let her, Shona would stand there forever, glaring at him for eternity.
At the end of the day, Malak was the one who couldn’t take it.
He advanced on her now, aware that every part of him seemed to shift into a new kind of alertness when she backed away.
She had already taught him so much. That he was not a patient man, in any respect. That he disliked waiting for anything and was not a particular fan of rebellions, either. And he realized as he stalked toward her that it turned out he liked the chase, too.
Something he had never had occasion to discover before now.
Malak had never been given the opportunity to chase a woman. They were too busy flinging themselves at him and begging for the scraps of his attention.
But not Shona.
Never Shona.
She backed away, all the way across the room, and kept right on going onto the balcony that curved around this part of his private rooms, out into the soft desert night. He followed her, his movements unhurried. Easy.
Almost lazy, when he felt anything but.
Inside him, his heart was a drum. And there was something stirring in his blood, running through his veins, making him feel...lit up. Exhilarated, almost. In his chest and his greedy body alike.
“I have let this go on long enough,” he told her, making no attempt to hide the satisfaction in his voice as she backed herself up against the stone balustrade and finally came to a stop. “And I must tell you, I admire your commitment. I do.”
“I appreciate your admiration,” Shona replied, and he took a little too much pleasure in that breathlessness he could hear in her voice. The wild sort of panic he could see on her fa
ce. “But I would appreciate it more from a distance.”
“I have given you your distance.” She had nowhere to go, and so he slowed his pace. But he didn’t stop. He moved closer and closer, until he was caging her there, with nothing behind her but the great, gleaming canopy of his city. His kingdom. “I have allowed you your disrespect. No one else would dare behave the way you have, but I have permitted it. You may thank me for my magnanimity, if you wish.”
He was fascinated by the way her chest rose and fell. Even in the tunic she wore like swaddling clothes, he could see how his proximity affected her. But he tested the theory, leaning ever closer, so she had to lean back and grip the stone beneath her to keep from toppling off into nothing.
Not that he would let her fall. But she didn’t need to know that. A little fear and uncertainty would do her good.
“You’re going to make me topple to my death,” she gritted at him, which was in no way a sweet thank-you for the consideration he’d shown her. “Is that what you want?”
“Why would I want your death?” he asked, his voice lower than before. It was suggestive, being this close to her. When he could have leaned only the slightest bit forward to taste her, had he wished. “Unless it is a little death you mean. In the French sense of the term.”
He could feel the heat that moved over her then, so bright and intense it singed them both. As if they were both imagining the way she’d come apart beneath his hands in that hotel bed, when Malak had taught her how very much her body thirsted for a man’s touch.
For his touch.
“I would prefer not to die,” she said, and her voice was tighter than before. As if she was fighting not just Malak, but herself. “In a big or little way, thank you very much.”
“Explain to me what you hope to gain with these displays.” Malak stayed where he was, so close to her that his mouth was very nearly touching the satiny expanse of her neck. “Will you stand at attention forever when we are alone in a room? Will you refuse to wear clothes appropriate to your station, preferring to shuffle around the palace in these strange costumes that make the servants imagine you are mad? Where does it end?”
Her breath came raggedly, but when she spoke, her voice was cool. On some level, Malak admired it.
“It ends when I get to go home. Back to my actual life and away from all this...nonsense.”
“You must know that will never happen,” he said, and he didn’t attempt to sugarcoat it. He stated it baldly. Without apology. And moved his head back as he did, so he could look her in the face.
She breathed in hard then, as if he’d hit her.
“I would very much like to blame you for concealing my son from me for all these years,” Malak continued in the same stark way, there in the sweet dark with only a scant centimeter between their bodies. “But I find I cannot. I cannot pretend that I would have returned to find you under any other circumstances than these.” He inclined his head. “I forgive it.”
If he expected her to collapse into gratitude, he was in for a surprise. Because this was Shona. And she only glared at him in a kind of fury.
“How kind.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. Another thing he had never heard directed at him, not before this moment. Not until tonight. He hardly knew how to take it. “How lucky I am, indeed, to have been strong-armed into abandoning my entire life and everything I’ve ever known by a man so...understanding.”
Malak laughed. “You do not seem to comprehend the situation you find yourself in, Shona. If I were less understanding, less kind, I would see that you were punished forever for this sin.”
“I assumed this was the punishment.” She sniffed. “A prison is a prison no matter how many clothes your minions fling across my bed every morning, Malak. You’re holding me hostage no matter how you dress it up. No matter how you dress me up.”
Malak was finished holding himself back. He’d had more than enough of holding himself in check and pretending her defiance did not prick at him, when all he wanted to do was get his hands on her. And reacquaint himself with that impossibly lush mouth and the lithe, curvy body that haunted him.
He needed to teach her how foolish she was to test him in such a blatant manner, as any woman from Khalia would have known full well. Malak had never understood Western women and their inability to understand these intimate battles. Or how best to fight them. Why confront a man head-on and lose when there were so many softer, more devastating ways to fight?
But the truth was, he wanted more than just another hot night with this woman who was now inextricably linked to him for as long as they both drew breath. He wanted more than sex.
Malak wanted nothing short of her total surrender.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t touch you,” he murmured, there on the balcony with his body so close to hers at last. She shivered, and he smiled. “Tell me why I should keep my hands to myself, Shona. When neither one of us wants it.”
“I don’t—”
“Tell me one thing that is not a lie, and who knows? I might let you go. Tonight.”
Her dark eyes found his and held, and he was the one who had to repress a rolling sensation that was entirely too close to a shiver of his own. “I think you’re the one who’s lying.”
Malak smiled at that and then he bent his head, pressing his mouth against the elegant ridge of her collarbone, there where the collar of her tunic exposed it. She jolted, but she didn’t shove at him. She didn’t push him away.
And she tasted better than he had remembered. Better than he’d dreamed. Rich, dark cream, sugar and need.
Heaven, he thought.
“Tell me,” he urged her, with his lips against her skin at last. “Tell me what you need, Shona. And you might just get it.”
“I want...” Her hands gripped the stone she leaned against, but as she spoke, her head tipped back to give him better access. “I want...”
“I know what you want,” he told her, low and gravelly and no longer entirely in control.
And then he stopped playing and set his mouth to hers.
Everything went electric. Wild lightning and mad thunder.
She tasted like the kind of magic Malak had never believed in. White-hot. Lush and sweet. Her taste rolled through him, making him ache as if he’d never kissed a woman before. As if he never would again.
As if hers was the only taste he had ever known or could ever want.
He remembered this. The kick of her. The impossible sweetness. He remembered it, but now that she was right here again he couldn’t understand how he had ever walked away from her in the first place.
Because Shona was addictive. She was perfect.
Malak angled his head, taking the kiss deeper, wilder, and making it far more intense. He fit his hands to the fine line of her jaw, and held her where he wanted her. He was suddenly, fiercely glad that she’d refused to wear the clothes he’d gotten for her because it meant he could feel her against him without the bother of all that extra fabric. He was hard and she was soft, and he fit himself against her as if they’d been made to be pieces of the same puzzle—
And that thought should have stopped him. It should have horrified him because he was a king, this was not a child’s game and he did not believe in the kind of connection he felt with this woman. He had been raised by a man so heedlessly, hopelessly, sickeningly in love with his wife he’d failed entirely to notice either her indiscretions or his own children. Love had turned to grief and had ended his father’s reign after his mother’s death. Love had taken his brother, Zufar, from the throne shortly thereafter. Love was chaos and ruin, as far as Malak could tell. He had never wanted any part of that kind of sickness. Not even the faintest hint.
He had vowed that he would not allow love or any other foolish emotion to threaten his throne. Not him. He was the ignored son. The forgotten spare. He’d been the only one in his family who’d been capable of seeing just how terrible it had all become—even before his mother’s death and the abdications that had followe
d.
Malak had vowed that he, the least likely king alive, would be the ruler his people deserved.
He should stop this. Now.
But he was too busy drowning in Shona’s taste. The slick friction of her tongue against his.
She was like a drug.
And he wanted more and more, no matter what it cost him—
Shona pulled her mouth away from his then, bracing her hands against his chest as she gasped for breath.
And Malak forgot that he had taken the throne. That he was the king—or even that there was a kingdom to rule, out there somewhere in the dark.
Because all he cared about was Shona. And the dark, sweet joy of her taste.
He wanted more. He wanted everything.
“Malak...” she began, and her voice was different now. Hushed. Something like reverent, which should have been enough.
It almost was.
Because he knew that she was as shaken as he was that this thing between them was still so bold. So intense.
That it hadn’t been the alcohol after all, all those years ago. The way he’d told himself when he’d left that morning, leaving her warm and naked in his bed and forcing himself not to look back. Not to linger. Not to test their connection one more time...
Malak didn’t want to think about that. He just wanted more of her. That impossible taste of hers that licked through him like fire and made him feel like a stranger to himself.
He didn’t wait to hear what she might say. What new, ridiculous barriers she might throw between them in her endless attempts to hold back the inevitable.
Malak sank down to his knees and heard the way her breath left her in a rush. He slid his hands up the length of her gorgeous legs, marveling in the feel of her. The play of lean muscle and soft curves. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her foolish trousers. And he could feel, as well as hear, the harsh, intense way she was breathing, as if she was running somewhere—though she didn’t move.
He paused, waiting for her to object, possibly. Or at the very least, question him.
But she didn’t say a word. She didn’t move. She only gazed down at him, her dark eyes gleaming.
Sheikh’s Secret Love-Child Page 6
