Undone by the Sultan's Touch

And she still didn’t know when this had happened. She’d thought leaving him would set her free and instead she’d discovered that she’d left her heart behind in his keeping. It made her angry—and anger was good, she told herself. It hid all the pain and uncertainty beneath. It felt like action.

“Come on, Khaled.” She hardly recognized her own voice, it was so mocking. As if she was someone else—someone as implacably fierce as he was. “Say your usual horrible things about what a disappointment I am and how I could never measure up to your exalted standards and impeccable breeding, or how will I recognize you?”

She was sure she only imagined that flicker of something darker in his gaze, something shockingly like regret.

“It is your reckless disregard for your own safety that concerns me.”

“I was perfectly safe,” she informed him. “Until now.”

“I am a danger to you, that is certain,” he agreed, all of that dark heat and hunger, temper and control in that low voice of his, and it made goose bumps prickle down the length of her arms. “But you are a beloved icon, whether you like it or not. Do you know what it would do to my people to lose you?”

“Your people.” Of course. This wasn’t about him, her, them. It never was. “I didn’t ask to be an icon, Khaled.”

“Didn’t you?” Silken threat, and something agonized beneath it that she didn’t want to acknowledge. “But this is about responsibilities, Cleo. Not our little fantasies of the lives we might have had were we different people.” He let out a sound that was not quite a laugh, and he never shifted that dark gaze from hers. “You wanted something bigger, did you not? You wanted something other than your small life. Guess what? Bigger lives go hand in hand with far bigger consequences.”

For a moment, Cleo couldn’t breathe. She remembered sitting in that parlor with him, so long ago, but it was like remembering a movie. Of a very silly girl who should have known better than to think that the lion perched in the chair beside her would do anything but eat her whole.

“I can see the virtue in a tiny little life these days,” she threw at him, her voice rougher than she would have liked, because it gave away too much. “I want one.”

“And yet you have not returned to the one you left behind in Ohio,” he pointed out, the words like a series of blows she had to fight not to crumble beneath. “The one you told me was such a good life. Why not, Cleo? Why spend six weeks in purgatory instead? You could have the entire life you walked away from. You must know this. And yet you are here.”

“You don’t know anything about my life in Ohio. I doubt you’ve ever been to Ohio.” She sounded too fast, too furious, as though he’d ripped her wide open—but of course he hadn’t. He didn’t know anything about a small, boring life. How could he? “And I’m not going back to Jhurat with you.”

“You seem certain of that, as you are certain of so many things.” His gaze was hard and nearly silver in the darkness, and she still wanted to reach over and touch him. So much so, her hands ached with the struggle to keep them to herself. She was horrified with herself. “I am less certain.”

“I want a divorce.”

That corner of his mouth twitched, but only slightly. “You can’t have one.”

“I wasn’t asking your permission,” she snapped at him. “I was announcing a plan of action that has nothing to do with you.”

“And yet I regret to remind you that you require my permission to dissolve our marriage, Cleo,” he said as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. It burned in her like acid that she had no idea if it did. “We were married under the laws of the Sultanate of Jhurat. And guess who makes those laws?”

Jessie had cautioned her that this might happen. That Khaled was the kind of man who didn’t like to lose. That there would be loopholes within loopholes, and none in her favor.

“Then I hope you’re prepared for a very lengthy, very public, no doubt supremely embarrassing separation,” Cleo said. “Which will include me walking wherever I damn please. And without the assistance of one of your PR harpies like that Margery.”

Khaled blew out a breath, turning his head away and then shoving his hands into his pockets. Hard, as though he’d wanted to do something else with them entirely. He said something she had to strain to hear—but then the thick, seductive darkness was split open by the bright clamor of a jazz trombone and an accompanying trumpet in the nearby intersection, the jaunty notes breaking through the night and echoing off the walls around them as the musicians whirled by in a cloud of vibrant noise.