She shook her head, feeling numb. “No. I don’t believe that.”
“Because of this?” He indicated the bed. “Any beast can rut. That does not indicate the ability to love.”
“So now you’re going to reduce this? Now you’re going to make it nothing more than animals mating?”
“This was all about producing in heir, was it not?”
“Was it?” she asked, pain making her lash out. “If so, I hate to be the one to tell you, using your mouth on me, no matter how much fun it might be, will never produce an heir.” Talking about a baby like this, a child, their child was suddenly a new, sharp pain. A sliver shoved beneath her skin, adding to the rest.
An heir was no longer a detached title, a strange, hazy goal. But a baby. Part her. Part Tarek.
A dream she hadn’t realized she’d wanted so badly. One that was sifting through her fingers like sand with each angry word, each passing second.
His dark brows locked together. “I will not deny I derived enjoyment from it. But that is not an indication of finer feelings.”
“What are you afraid of? What are you hiding from?”
“Hiding seems to be your game, my queen, not mine.”
His words hit her with the full force of a slap. Because they were true. She was an expert at hiding. She preferred to hide among people, smiling, feigning connection, because it was a wonderful way to disguise the yawning ache of loneliness inside her. To pretend it was being satisfied. But she had admitted it to herself, so his words held no power. “Says the man who spent years hunkered down in this empty shell of a building?”
“I cannot keep my eyes on you and on my country. I have to remain focused.”
“Life isn’t that simple, Tarek.”
“It got me this far.”
“But there’s more. Don’t you want more? I want more. I’m tired of just getting by. I was protecting myself for so long. Accepting the blandest drop of human emotion because it meant I wouldn’t have to give anything back. It meant I wouldn’t have to risk anything. But when you don’t risk anything, you get no reward. I ran all the way to Tahar from Alansund to avoid being alone. To avoid having to deal with the emptiness inside myself. I was willing to marry a stranger in order to keep from dealing with the fact that I just... My parents could never show that they loved me as much as they love Emily. And rather than admitting I needed it, that I missed anything I just kind of closed in on myself, made myself strong. I asked for more and found they were unwilling to give it, and so I stopped. I was married to a man I could barely go beyond small talk with because I would rather have a shell than lose the pretense we had. But it’s not enough. I’m not going to let you get away with that. I’m going to ask for more than you think you can give. I’m going to demand it. If you were anyone else, I wouldn’t care if you ever said that you loved me. If this were me two years ago, I would never demand it. But this isn’t me two years ago. This is me now. This is me, being the woman that you helped me discover I am. So now you have to deal with it.”
“And I am the stranger that you chose to marry. I am not now a man you can fashion into the image you would like to see. I am all you see before you. I am what I was made to be.”
She got out of the bed, took a step toward him, bracketed his face with her hands. “Be more. You can be more than a goal. More than an ideal. Just because your brother was twisted, and evil, and completely beholden to all of his vices doesn’t mean you have to be.”
“You say that, and yet you know nothing of what I have seen. He killed my parents. Our parents. Our blood. He stopped just short of killing me because he thought I might be of some use, or perhaps because in his twisted mind he had power so he didn’t need to destroy me completely. I will never know for certain. He said that he loved me. As he tortured me, he said that he loved me. That is love to me. Love is nothing more than pain.”
She closed the distance between them, kissing him hard, not pausing to think her actions through. When she parted from him, they were both breathing hard. “Is that pain? Do you think I would cause you pain?”
“I think between the two of us we would cause nothing more than pain if we went down that road.”
“It’s too late. I’m down that road.”
“Then, understand I will never meet you there.”
His words sent a stab of pain straight through her, the kind of pain she had spent her life avoiding. She had laid herself bare to him, opened herself up, and he had rejected her. It was her deepest fear, and she was standing here in a hot, empty room, living it.