Traded to the Desert Sheikh

“I know you might not understand this,” she said as best she could. “But she loves me, too, in her way.”

The look he gave her should have set her on fire. Amaya felt singed as if it had. She straightened from the terrace and took a step toward him, but stopped when he lifted one of his hard, scarred hands.

“Do not come any closer to me.” Dark and brutal.

“Kavian—”

But she couldn’t finish. His gray eyes were the darkest she’d ever seen them. The night around them was edging into blue, but his gaze stayed much too black. And for the first time since she’d met this man, there was no glimmer in there. No relief.

“You conspired with a woman who is little better than a cobra to run from me, again, after you prevailed upon me to let her stay here when I wanted her removed,” he said, as if he was rendering judgment. “But this time, I was to stand at the Western altar you insisted upon and wait for you. Is this not so?”

“Kavian.”

“I do not know what it is you want that I have not given you.” His voice was a dark throb then, as much inside her as it was in the air between them. “A kingdom. A throne. Me. I do not know what you think you will find out there.”

Amaya didn’t know when her arms had snuck around her own middle, only that she held herself tight as if, were she to let go, she would fall apart. And still she couldn’t look away from him.

“I imagine you must want declarations, poetry. I am not that man. I am brute force poured into an old throne, masquerading as a man. I am not soft. I cannot shine the way others do, perhaps. But I would protect your life before my own. I would worship you all the rest of my days.”

“You would keep me here.”

“You like it here.” He didn’t precisely shout that last. He didn’t have to. “I watched you for days before we picked you up in that lakeside town. You were miserable.”

“I was on the run!” she protested, but she was shaken.

“You were lost and alone,” he gritted out at her. “But then, I have met your mother, Amaya. You always were.”

She sucked in a breath, and it hurt. All of this hurt. It always had.

“I hate it when you do this,” she seethed at him. Maybe at herself. “You don’t know anything about me!”

“I know everything about you,” he threw back at her, harsh but certain. “That is what I have been trying to tell you. I do not know how to date. I am not romantic. But I saw your face, I heard your voice and I altered my world to have you. I have nothing else to give you but that.”

“What if I don’t want it?”

He moved then. He crossed the terrace like lightning and he hauled her against him, his tough hands wrapped around her biceps, yanking her up on her toes. He put his face directly in hers.

“You have never wanted anything more in your life.”

Amaya pushed at him, but he didn’t let her go, and the tears she’d tried to keep at bay poured over and ran down her cheeks. And Kavian was like an avenging angel towering over her, forcing her to face the things she most wanted to pretend she didn’t see.

“I’ve told you from the start what I wanted,” she threw at him, desperate and wild. Because she loved him, and she knew where that led. She knew who it would make her, what she would become. “Let me go, Kavian. Just let me go!”

She saw something rip across his face, too harsh and too dark to bear, and then he opened up his hands. Impossibly, he released her. She staggered back, catching herself against the railing again, unable to look away from him and unable to catch her breath.

Unable to believe he’d done it.

He was breathing as heavily as if he’d been running, and for a taut, electric moment, that was all there was. That and what was left of her heart.

“I will honor my military commitments to your brother,” Kavian said, and for a long beat, then another, Amaya had no idea what he was talking about.

Then she did. And it was as if he’d extinguished the stars that easily.

“Hear me, Amaya,” he said in that same voice, all command. All of him a king who had won his throne with the strength of his own hands. And more, the man who had conquered her with a glance six months ago, no matter what lies she’d told herself since. No matter her contortions. Her desperate pretense. “I will not pursue you. I will not come after you.”

She couldn’t speak. She told herself she should feel relief. She should. She was sure she would start at any moment, once it sank in.