Traded to the Desert Sheikh

Kavian didn’t stop until he was upon her, right there, looming over her until she stepped back and came up hard against the doorjamb.

“Do you want me to apologize, azizty?” It was a growl from the deepest part of him. “In this fantasy of yours, do I beg your forgiveness?”

“You wouldn’t mean a word of it even if it was a fantasy.”

He stroked the tender skin of her elegant neck, trailing his fingers over her satiny flesh and the tumult of her pulse. He felt the way she trembled, and he saw arousal edge into that darkness in her gaze, whether she wanted it—him—or not.

“No,” he agreed, despite those too-dark things that still moved in him. “I would not.”

“Kavian.”

He knew what she was going to say. He could see the words form on her lips, see them scroll across her face.

“My mother—”

“I will have that snake of a woman removed from the palace within the hour. She—”

“She is my mother.” Her voice was a shocked whisper.

“Do you think I cannot tell a bad mother when I see one? Can you have forgotten mine? Your mother is a viper. I want her and her poison gone from here.”

“No.” Amaya’s voice was flat. Incredibly bold, for someone so much smaller than he was, so much more fragile, but she stared back at him as if she was unaware of those things. As if she was his equal in every way. As if she had every intention of engaging him in hand-to-hand combat if he didn’t do as she asked.

As she commanded.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.” Her chin rose fractionally. “You cannot throw my mother out because you don’t like her. I don’t care if you don’t like her.”

“You do not like her.”

She frowned at him. “I love her.”

“I cannot abide her.” He felt that stone in him, dragging down, threatening his ability to stand before her. Threatening far more than that. “She is envious of you. She whispers poison into your ears. You fear her.”

“I feel sorry for her.” Her voice was even. Her chest rose and fell too quickly, he thought, and still she smelled of honey and rain and he wanted nothing as much as he wanted her. Nothing at all. “She was hurt a very long time ago, and hurt is what she knows. She can’t help the way she lashes out.”

He shifted, feeling his mouth flatten as he traced unknowable symbols along the elegant line of her neck, feeling the way she shuddered at his touch. “She is a grown woman who has spent the bulk of her life manipulating others to do her bidding. I do not dance to the tune of fools. Why should I suffer her presence here?”

He saw too many emotions chase each other across her face then, one after the next, and he felt them all like blows.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “Because I asked you to.”

Kavian shook his head, a harsh negation that had more to do with the memory of Elizaveta’s cold gaze, so much like the photographs he’d seen of his weak, vain, treacherous mother.

“Then you can’t give me what I want. You can’t give at all.” She raised one shoulder, then dropped it, and he understood that she was not in the least afraid of him. Was that what roared in him, so much like desire? Like greedy admiration? “Don’t claim you want a queen to stand beside you, Kavian, when what you really want is your own way in all things.”

“I want exactly what I claimed from the start.” His voice was practically a growl. “I am exactly who I have always been. More than that, azizty, I am exactly who you need.”

“Then prove that. I’ve told you what I need.” Her dark eyes searched his face. “I don’t need you to understand, Kavian. I need to you listen to me for once.”

He didn’t recognize the thing that swelled in him then. He didn’t understand why he felt as if he’d staggered blindly into a sandstorm and was being tossed this way and that. He only saw something unbreakable in her gaze. Tempered steel, forged in flames.

“If it is what you want,” he said stiffly, because words of acquiescence were foreign to him and came slowly, thickly, “she can remain. She is your mother, as you say.”

Amaya’s eyes glittered. He felt that like another blow, and then her hand came up and slid over his jaw. He felt that touch everywhere. His toes. His sex. His throat.

“Thank you,” she whispered, as if he’d given her a kingdom. All the jewels in his possession. “Thank you, Kavian.”