“How delightfully medieval.”
And he enjoyed this, Rihad realized with a thud. He liked her sharp tone, her icy wit, even if it was at his expense. Because Sterling was the only person he’d ever met who dared speak to him this way.
Perhaps there was something wrong with him after all, that he should enjoy it—her—so much.
“Your body is fine, Sterling,” he told her, as much to see her draw herself up in outrage as anything else. He made a show of drinking from his coffee cup, then setting it down, for the sheer pleasure of watching temper crack through those blue eyes of hers like lightning. “You’re not a model any longer. You certainly don’t need to keep yourself so drawn and skeletal.” He smiled again, and he could feel the wolf in it. “If you want to dissuade me from making advances on you, you’ll have to come up with something better than that.”
Her lips quivered and her gaze flashed dark, with something he didn’t understand. He was fascinated all the same.
“How about this.” Her voice was fierce, almost aggressive, but that only deepened his fascination. “Don’t make advances on me at all. I don’t want you.”
He watched her for a moment. He waited, and sure enough, she flushed again, brighter and delightfully redder than before.
“Now, that’s just an outright lie,” he murmured.
And she looked away, because he was right. And she hated it. And he loved that he could read that as easily as the text on his tablet.
“Is this where you force me again?” she asked tightly, her eyes on the pool nearest the table while her body shouted out all the ways she was a liar, again and again, as if it was in collusion with Rihad. “Because that was so much fun when you called it a wedding.”
He laughed then and saw her jolt with surprise. She turned back to him, her gaze unreadable again, but he’d come to a decision. The friendship angle had been fine these past months. It had been appropriate. The woman had just had another man’s child—and lost that man to a tragic accident besides. But it was time to move on.
Rihad stood, aware of the way her eyes clung to him as he moved, very much as if she was finding his body as much a temptation as he found hers.
“We’ll have a honeymoon, I think,” he said, and watched her shift restlessly in her chair, the truth in the pink bloom on her cheeks. “You and me for two weeks in the desert, with a thousand opportunities for intimacy.”
“What?” She sounded panicked, and he was not a civilized creature, he realized. Not at all, because he liked that. “Intimacy? Why would you want that?”
“Perception.” He shrugged. “Of course, it will be widely assumed that you’re merely pandering to my base, animal instincts with that famously lush body of yours. Men are beasts, are they not? And I am no better than my brother when it comes to your seductive powers.”
“Yes, you are!” Sterling looked alarmed. “You live to resist me! Or you should.”
“I am unfamiliar with weakness,” he told her, and he didn’t care if that truth hit her as arrogance. It didn’t make it any less true. “But in this case, succumbing to the practiced charms of a known seductress is a weakness I am prepared to allow the world to dissect at their leisure.” He eyed her aghast expression. “Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful story for your tabloid-loving friends to sell far and wide?”
Her voice was scratchy when she answered, and her eyes were much too bright with a heat he wanted to bathe himself in. “It sounds heinous. And completely unbelievable anyway.”
“Why don’t you ask me the question?” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, because he doubted she’d appreciate it if he put them on her. Yet.
“Why are you so awful?” Sterling asked at once, her voice sharp but with that storm in her blue eyes. “But I already know the answer, of course. Because you can be.”
“That’s not the question you want to ask.”
Sterling stared back at him. He heard the summer breeze high above them, dancing through the plants and the trees, and the running water all around them, like songs. He saw her pulse hammer against the delicate skin of her neck and wanted nothing more than to press his mouth to it, as if he could taste her excitement. He saw her hands open and then bunch into fists again, as if she couldn’t control them.
She sat up straighter. Squared her shoulders. Tilted up her chin.
“So we’ll simply go out to the desert for a little while. Spend the time out there so people think...whatever they want to think. Call it a honeymoon so the whole world leaps to the same conclusion. That we’re together in more ways than one. A unit.”