“Where are these people now?” Rihad asked softly. Dangerously, as if, were he to speak in his usual voice, he would raze whole cities to the ground with the force of his fury.
And it made something long frozen deep within her unfurl in a little blast of warmth.
“They’re behind me, that’s where they are.” She smiled at him, a real smile that time, and when he slid his hand along her cheek, she leaned into it. “But after that I knew how evil people were, once they thought they had all the power. How vicious and cruel. So I made myself into an Ice Princess who didn’t like to be touched and was always much too sober to have any fun anyway, so everyone left me alone. And then Omar came along, and I didn’t have to worry about that stuff anymore, because everyone believed I was with him. And that’s how I accidentally ended up a virgin.”
Rihad didn’t speak for a long time, and she would have given anything to know what he was thinking. What was happening behind that austere, ruthless face of his and that disconcertingly sensual mouth. She wanted to lick him until neither one of them could think anymore. She wanted to bury her face in the crook of his neck, as if he could keep her safe from all the things that swirled around her that she couldn’t even identify. He would, she thought. He really would.
And God help her, the things she wanted then, that she was too afraid to name.
“But you let me take you.” His gaze was even more golden than usual then, and it set her alight. “Twice.”
“Yes.” Her throat was so dry that it hurt when she swallowed. “I did.”
“Why?” He traced a line from the tender place beneath her ear, down and around to stroke the line of her collarbone, as if he was trying to smooth the ridge of it back beneath her skin. “Why me?”
“We’re already married, Rihad,” she said, as primly as if she was lunching at some terribly dignified country club. “Your name is on my daughter’s birth certificate.”
And she saw that smile of his again, watched it light up his eyes. It filled her with the same light.
“Why, Sterling. That makes you sound traditional and old-fashioned, not modern and scandalous at all.”
“It seemed safe enough,” she told him, caught in that glittering gaze of his. Lost in the way he was touching her, so casually intimate, as if this was only the beginning. As if there was so much further yet to go—but she didn’t dare let herself think that. “And also, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d notice.”
He didn’t seem to move, but everything changed. Got way more intense, so fast it made her stomach drop. “I noticed.”
She froze. “Oh. Was I...? Was I not...?”
Rihad laughed then and rolled, coming up over her and holding her there beneath him, that stunning body of his stretched out above her, so gorgeously male it hurt.
“You were exquisite,” he told her quietly, sincerity in every syllable. “You are a marvel. But I am old-fashioned myself, Sterling, as you’ve pointed out to me many times. Deeply traditional in every possible way.”
She was shaking, and it wasn’t fear. It was him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that you were far safer when I thought you were a whore,” he said bluntly, his dark gaze seeming to burn through her, kicking up new flames and changing everything. Changing her. “Now I know that you are only mine. Only and ever mine. And I, my little one, am a very, very selfish man.”
And then he set about proving it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE HEADLINE A MONTH LATER was like a slap—the hit, perhaps, that Sterling had been expecting all along. She sat frozen solid on the balcony outside Rihad’s suite, staring down at the tablet computer Rihad had left sitting there when he’d stepped inside to take a phone call. She felt sick.
Black Widow Sterling Lures King Rihad into Her Web! the worst of the European tabloids shrieked. And the article beneath it was even worse.
Sex-symbol Sterling flaunts postbaby bod and enslaves the desert king! Starry-eyed King Rihad can’t keep his eyes—or his hands!—off his late brother’s lover. “But Sterling left a trail of broken hearts behind her in New York,” say concerned friends. Will the formidable king be one more of heartbreaker Sterling’s conquests?
It was beautifully done, really. Killer Whore. Vain Whore. Married Whore. Omar’s Whore. New York Whore. So many clever ways of calling Sterling a whore without ever actually uttering the word.