Читать книгу In Defiance of Duty - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 6

“LOVELY view.”

Kiara didn’t turn toward the deep, commanding voice, even as it washed over her and somehow into her blood, her bones, making her very nearly shiver. She’d sensed his approach before he’d helped himself to the chair next to hers—there had been a certain expectant stillness in the air around her, a kind of palpable, electrically charged quiet, as if all of Sydney fell silent before him. She’d pictured that easy, confident walk of his, the way his dark, powerful masculinity turned heads wherever he went, the way he’d no doubt been watching her with that intense, consuming focus as he drew near.

But then, she’d been expecting him.

“That’s a terrible pickup line,” she pointed out, a shade too close to flippant. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. She decided she wouldn’t look at him unless he earned it. She would pretend to be enchanted by the water of the harbor, the coming sunset. Not by a man like him, no matter how tall, dark and dangerous he might be, even in her peripheral vision. “Especially here. This particular view is famous, I think you’ll find. Renowned the world over.”

“That should make it all the more lovely, then,” he replied, a thread of amusement beneath the steel-and-velvet seduction of his voice. She felt it like heat, pressing into her skin. “Or are you the dreary sort who finds a view is spoiled forever if too many others look upon it?”

Kiara sat at a small outdoor table tucked in on the lower concourse beneath Sydney’s glorious, soaring Opera House and the sky above, with full and unfettered access to the famous and beautiful arch of the Harbor Bridge opposite. The setting sun above had just settled into rich and tempting golds, sending the mellow light dancing over the sparkling water of the harbor itself, as if taunting the jutting skyscrapers of the city—as if daring them to look away from the spectacular evening show.

She certainly knew the feeling. And she wasn’t even looking at the man who lounged next to her as if he owned the table, the chair, and her, too, though she was aware of him in every possible way. In every part of her skin and blood and bones.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” she said mildly, as if wholly unaffected by him and the great tractor beam of power and charisma that seemed to emanate from him. He was lethal. So compelling it almost hurt not to turn and let herself look at him, drink him in. “You’re the one who trotted out a tired old line. I only pointed it out. I don’t think that makes me dreary.”

She knew intuitively that his particular brand of dark male beauty—so fierce and breathtaking, laced through with all that dizzying masculine power—would be equally dazzling if she dared turn her head and look at it. She could feel it. In the way her stomach clenched and, below, ached around a deep, feminine pulse. The way the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood at attention, almost making her shiver. The way the whole world seemed to shrink to just this table, this chair.

Him.

Instead, she fiddled with the coffee cup she’d drunk dry a while ago, even toyed with the ends of the wavy light brown hair she’d swept back into a high ponytail, her hands betraying her even as she sat there with such studied carelessness, pretending she was unaware of the great strength of him next to her. The imposing fact of him—ink-black hair against oddly light eyes, the stamp of his Arab ancestry in his fierce features, and that mouthwatering fantasy of a body—that she could grasp even with only the briefest glance from the corner of her eye. The impact on not only her, but the whole of the Opera House Bar around them.

She could see the group of older women at the next table—the way they turned to look at him, then widened their eyes at each other before dissolving into besotted giggles better suited to the girls Kiara imagined they’d been some thirty years before.

“Tell me how to play this game,” he said after a moment that seemed overripe with the gold sinking against the water, the murmur of the crowd of tourists all around them, his own dark magnetism spread over them like an umbrella. “Will I woo you with my wit? My appreciation of the local beauty? Perhaps I will tell you a series of pretty lies and convince you to come back to my hotel with me. Just for the night. Anonymous and furtive. Do you think that would work?”

“You won’t know until you try,” she said, biting back a grin, even as carnal images chased through her head—none of them either anonymous or furtive. All of them spellbinding. Wild with passion. “Though I hardly think laying out your options like that, so coldblooded and matter-of-fact, will do you any favors. You should think in terms of seduction, not spreadsheets.” She found she was grinning despite herself then, but still kept from looking at him, staring resolutely ahead at the delicate arch of the bridge as if unable to tear herself away. “If you don’t mind a word of advice.”

“I relish it, of course.” His low voice was cool, ironic, and still managed to kick up fires all along her skin. And deeper. She shifted in her seat, crossing and then recrossing her legs, wishing he did not take up quite so much space. He did not seem to move at all, and yet, somehow, she was even more aware of him.

“So far,” she continued, her own voice confiding, pitched for his ears alone, “I must tell you that I’m completely unimpressed.”

“With the view?” Now his amusement wasn’t hidden at all. It moved through his voice even as it moved through her, teasing her with hints of something else beneath his crisp British public school vowels, something that indicated English was only one of his languages. The faintest suggestion that he was nothing simple or easily categorized. “I hope you’re not one of those terminally bored socialite types, so shallow and endlessly fatigued by everything the world has to offer.”

“And if I am?”

“That would be a great disappointment.”

“Luckily,” she said drily, “you can hardly have been too invested in something that could only have ended in lies and a furtive hotel visit, could you? I imagine the disappointment will be minor.”

“But I am captivated,” he protested in an insultingly mild way that made her laugh despite herself.

“By my profile?” She smiled at the bridge, imagined the man, and shook her head. “It’s all you’ve seen of me.”

“Perhaps it is your profile superimposed on such a famous view,” he suggested. “I’m as awestruck as any run-of-the-mill tourist. If only I’d remembered my camera.”

She forgot she didn’t mean to look at him and turned her head.

It was looking into the sun. Searing. Dizzying.

He was beautiful—there was no other word for it—but there was nothing in the least bit pretty about him. He was a study in controlled ferocity. He was all sleek muscle and hard, strong lines. His rich black hair, his dark skin, the gleam in his unusual, near-blue eyes. The merciless thrust of his cheekbones, his belligerent jaw. He lounged beside her with seeming nonchalance, but she wasn’t fooled.

He was all focus and menace, his rangy, athletic body showcased to perfection in a dark suit and a snow-white shirt that he wore open against his neck, as if he was attempting a casual gesture when everything else about him shouted out the formidable force he wore the way another man might wear a jacket. He looked as if there was nothing at all he couldn’t do with his disconcertingly elegant hands—and nothing he hadn’t already done with them. She could think of several possibilities, and had to swallow against the shocking surge of heat that swept through her then, wild and out of control.

She was sure he could feel the very same flames.

“Hello,” he said quietly as their eyes met. Held. His sensual mouth curved into a knowing smile. “I like this view, too.”

Kiara forced a jaded sigh. “You really aren’t very good at this, are you?”

“Apparently not.” His impossible eyes, somewhere between blue and green, or possibly gray, gleamed. “By all means, teach me. I live to serve.”

She didn’t laugh at that. She didn’t need to. His own mouth quirked up in the corner, supremely arrogant and male, as if he was as unable to imagine himself serving anyone or anything as she was.

“For all you know, I could be meeting someone.” She forgot about the view; he was far more mesmerizing, especially when his gaze turned darker and something like stormy. She smiled then. “My very jealous lover, for example, who might find you here and take out his aggression all over you. With his fists.”

“A risk I feel prepared to take, somehow.”

There was no denying the edge of confident menace in his smile then, and she wondered what sort of woman she was to find that as appealing as she did. Surely she ought to be ashamed. She wasn’t.

“Is that a threat of violence?” she asked tartly. And then lied. “That’s incredibly unattractive.”

“That is exactly how you look,” he said, the knowing quirk of his hard mouth deepening, his storm-tossed eyes too hot, too sure. “Unattracted.”

“Or perhaps I’m simply a single woman out on the town, looking for a date,” she continued in the same nonchalant, careless tone. “You seem to want to talk only about the view. Or make depressing remarks about the furtiveness of a night of wild, uncontrollable passion. Neither is likely to make me want to date you, is it?”

“Are we talking about a date?” His mouth curved again, as if he was trying not to laugh, and very nearly failing. His almost-blue eyes reminded her of the winter sea, and were as compelling. “I thought this was a negotiation about sex. Endlessly inventive sex, I believe. Or hope, in any case. Not a tedious date, all manners and flowers and gentlemanlike behavior.”

It took her a moment to breathe through the way he said sex, like some kind of incantation. Much less the images he conjured up, and their immediate effect on her body. How could one man be this dangerous? And why was she wholly unable to offer up any kind of defense against him?

“The way this works is that you pretend to be interested only in a date,” she told him as if she was this close to exasperation but only the kindness of her heart kept her from it. “You pretend that you want to get to know me as a person. The more you do that, the more romantic it will all feel. To me, I mean. And that, of course, is the quickest route toward rampant sex in a hotel room.” She shrugged her shoulders as if she felt she shouldn’t have to be the one to share this with him. As if every other person in Sydney was well aware of this, and she wondered why he wasn’t.

“I can’t simply ask for rampant sex?” he asked, as if baffled. Possibly even shocked. Though that lazy, indulgent gleam in his eyes said otherwise. “Are you sure?”

“Only if you are planning to purchase it.” She eyed him, and the hint of a smile that toyed with that mouth of his, and made her wish all sorts of undignified things. “Which is, of course, perfectly legal here. And no, buying me a drink is not the same thing.”

“Your country has so many rules,” he said softly, the amusement leaving his gaze as something far hotter took its place. “Mine is far more…direct.”

She felt the way he looked at her, the fire in it moving over her like a caress, making her wish that she was dressed far more provocatively. Making her wish she could bare her skin to his gaze, to the night falling all around them. The black blazer she wore over a decadently soft black jumper and the dark blue jeans she’d tucked into her favorite black suede books felt confining, suddenly, instead of the casually chic look she’d been going for. She wished she could peel it all off and throw it all in the harbor. She wondered what it was about this man that made such an uncharacteristic urge seem so appealing in the first place.

But she knew.

“Direct?” she echoed, feeling the pull of that hard face, those unholy eyes. She wanted to move closer to that wicked mouth of his. She wanted it more than was wise. More than she should, out in public like this, where anyone could see. For a moment she forgot the game—herself—entirely.

“If I want it,” he said quietly, so quietly, but she felt it flood into her as if he’d shouted it, as if he’d licked it into her skin, “I take it.”

Kiara felt that hum in her, electric and something like overwhelming. For a moment she could only stare back at him, caught in that knowing gaze of his, as surely as if he’d caged her somehow. Trapped her as surely as if he’d used manacles and heavy iron bars. She shouldn’t feel that like a thrill, twisting through her, but she did.

“Then I suppose I should count myself lucky that we are not in your country,” she said after a moment, not sure until she spoke that she would be able to at all. She was surprised that her voice sounded so steady. Almost tart. “This is Australia. I’m afraid we’re quite civilized.”

“All of you in your new, young countries are the same,” he said in that low tone, his voice its own dark spell, weaving its way over her, inside of her, as inexorable as the setting sun. “So brash, forever carrying on about your purported civility. But you are all so close, still, to your disreputable pasts, aren’t you? All of it welling up from beneath, making a lie of these carefully cultivated facades.”

Kiara realized two things simultaneously. One, that she could listen to him talk forever—about countries, about pasts, about whatever he liked. That voice of his triggered something deep inside her, something helpless and wanton, that made her breathless and so wrapped up in him that the world could fall to pieces around her and she wouldn’t notice. Or, as now, the sun could disappear entirely beneath the horizon without her registering it, ushering in the inky sweetness of the Sydney night, and she would still see nothing but him.

And two, and more important, that she would die if she didn’t touch him. Now.

“As fascinating as your thoughts on young countries and disreputable pasts may be,” she said then, keeping her voice a low murmur, her eyes hot on his, “I think that I’d rather dispense with all this meaningless chatter and just get naked. What do you think?”

He smiled again, and she felt it shiver through her and curl her toes. He reached over and took her hand in his, carrying it to his mouth. It was the faintest hint of a kiss, a timeless gesture of chivalry for the benefit of the people all around them, but she felt it like a hard kick. Like a promise.

“There is nothing I would rather do,” he said, that gleam of amusement in his eyes turning them something near silver. “But I’m afraid I’m meeting my wife for dinner. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand.” Kiara played with his strong fingers in hers. “Who would want to stand in the way of acrobatic, inventive sex, after all?”

“She’s terribly jealous.” He shook his head almost sadly. “It’s like a sickness—ouch.” His gaze turned baleful, and a silver heat gleamed there, while something almost too warm to bear echoed in a kind of sizzle low in Kiara’s belly. “Did you just bite me?”

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.” It was a dare.

He let go of her hand, but shifted closer, reaching over to pull gently on the end of her ponytail, tilting her head up slightly to meet his searing gaze.

“Perhaps I can risk my wife’s jealous rages after all,” he said musingly. He moved still closer, until their faces were a mere breath apart, his delectable mouth just there, just out of reach.

Her breath came out ragged, then, as if she’d broken into a run. She felt as if she had. His smile licked over her, into her.

“You look as if you can take it,” Kiara agreed, and then she closed the distance between them and kissed him.

His wife, Sheikh Azrin bin Zayed Al Din, Crown Prince of Khatan, reflected with no little amusement, was endlessly delightful to him.

Her lips were soft and sweet against his, hinting at the passion that neither of them could succumb to out in the public eye like this. It was as frustrating as it was delicious. He wanted more than this hint of her, after two weeks apart. He wanted to taste her—take her—with a ferocity that might have surprised him, five years after marrying her, had he not been well used to this relentless thirst for her.

A thirst he could not indulge. Not here. Not now.

He pulled away, controlling himself with the ruthlessness that was second nature to him, particularly where his wife was concerned, and smiled again at the dazed look she wore, as if she had forgotten where they were. Azrin could look at her forever. Her pretty oval face with its delicate nose and brows, and her wide, decadent mouth that had been the first thing he’d noticed about her. Her hair was a mix of browns and golds, tumbling down past her shoulders in light waves unless, like tonight, she’d opted to put the heavy weight of it up in one of her sleek, deceptively casual styles. She looked taller than she was, her body firm and toned from her years of athletics and hard work, and she tended to dress conservatively as suited her position, yet with a quiet little flair that was hers alone.

That deep current of wickedness was all for him.

“If you had spoken to me like that when we met,” he said lazily, taunting her, “I doubt I would ever have pursued you at all. So disrespectful and challenging.”

She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would. “I did speak to you like that,” she replied. Her generous mouth widened into a smile. “You loved it.”

“So I did.”

He got to his feet then and took her hand to help her rise. She held on for a moment too long, as if she wanted to cling to even that much contact. He felt the kick of it, of her, deep inside of him. He craved her. He wanted to lick his way over every inch of her skin, relearning her as if the two weeks he’d been without her might have changed her. He wanted to find out for himself. With his mouth, his hands.

She curved into his side as they began to walk back along the concourse toward Sydney’s impressive, glittering array of skyscrapers, and the penthouse he kept there that was as much a primary residence as anything could be for two people who traveled as much as they did. He slid his arm around her slender shoulders and contented himself as best he could with a light kiss on the top of her head that barely reached his chin. Her hair smelled of sunshine and flowers, and he could not touch her the way he wanted to.

Not here. Not now. Not yet, he thought.

No unrestrained public displays of affection for the Crown Prince of Khatan and his non-Khatanian, scandalous-merely-by-virtue-of-her-foreign-birth princess. Well did Azrin know the rules. The public—particularly in his country—might fight for any possible glimpse of what they called his modern Cinderella romance, but that didn’t mean they wanted to see anything that wouldn’t have suited the family-friendly film of the same name.

There could be nothing that suggested that Azrin was compromised in any way by what many in his country took to be the lax moral code of anyone not from their own part of the world. There could certainly be no hint that the passion between Azrin and his princess was still so intense, so all-encompassing, that some days they did not even get out of bed, even after all this time. He was hoping that this night might lead directly into one of those lost days, even though he knew there was so much to do now, so many details to take care of and so little time to do it all in…

He should tell her now. Immediately. He knew that he should—that there was no real excuse for waiting. There was only his curious inability to speak up as he should. There was only that part of him that didn’t want to accept this was happening.

He wanted this one night, that was all. This last, perfect night of the life they’d both enjoyed so much for so long that had let him pretend he was someone else. What was one night more?

“I missed you, Azrin,” Kiara whispered, her supple body flush against his, her arm around his waist as they walked. “Two weeks is much too long.”

“It was unavoidable.” He heard the dark note in his voice and smiled down at her to dispel it. “I didn’t care for it, either.”

He would be happy when this part of their life was behind them, he thought as they made their way through the usual crowds flocking to Sydney’s pretty jewel of a harbor to enjoy the mild evening, the restaurants, the view. He would be more than pleased to do without these weeks of separations that they tried valiantly to keep to ten days or less. The endless grind of international travel to this or that city, in every corner of the globe, to steal a day, a night, even an afternoon together. Meeting up with his wife in hotels that became interchangeable in the cities where they did not have a residence, and hardly noticing which residence was which when they were in one of them. New York, Singapore, Tokyo, Paris, the capital city of his own country, Arjat an-Nahr, on an endlessly repeating cycle. Always having to plan to see his wife around the demands of their calendars, never simply seeing her. Never really able to simply be with her.

He would not miss this part of their life at all. He told himself that having this part end would be worth the rest of it. At least they would be together. Surely that was the important thing.

“You should not have stayed so long in Arjat an-Nahr,” she was saying, that teasing note in her voice, the one that normally made him smile automatically. “I’m tempted to think that you care more for your country and its demands on your time than your poor, neglected wife.”

He knew she was kidding. Of course she was. But still—tonight, it pricked at him. It seemed to suggest things about their future that he knew he didn’t want to hear. That he could not accept, not even as an offhanded joke. It cut too deep tonight.

“I will be king one day,” he reminded her, keeping his voice light, because he knew—he did—that she was only teasing, the way she often did. The way she always had. Wasn’t her very irreverence why he had been so drawn to her in the first place? “Everything will come second to my country then, Kiara. Even you.”

And him, of course. Especially him.

She looked up at him, those marvelous brown eyes of hers moving over his face in the dark. He knew that she could read him, and wondered what she saw. Not the truth, of course. He knew even she could not know that, not from a single searching look, no matter how well she could read what she saw. No one knew the truth yet save his father’s doctors, his mother and Azrin himself.

“I know who I married,” she told him softly, though Azrin did not think she could when he felt so unsure of it himself. “Do you doubt it?” She smiled; soothing, somehow, what felt so raw in him that easily. As if she could sense it without his having to tell her. And then her voice took on that teasing lilt again, encouraging him to follow her back into lighter, shallower waters. “You always take such pains to remind me, after all.”

It was only change, he told himself. Everything changed. Even them. Even this. It was neither good nor bad—it was simply the natural order of things.

And more than that, he had always known this day was coming. Why had he imagined otherwise, these past five years? Who had he been trying to fool?

“Do you mean when I request that you keep your voice down while you are pretending that I am merely some overconfident stranger picking you up in a bar, lest the papers feel the need to share this game of yours with the whole world?” He couldn’t quite make his voice sound reproving, especially not when her brown eyes were so warm, so challenging, and seemed to connect directly with his sex. And his heart. “Does that count as taking pains, Kiara? Or is it simply a more highly developed sense of self-preservation?”

“Yes, my liege,” she murmured in feigned obeisance, laughter thrumming in her voice, just below the surface. She even bowed her head in a mock sign of respect. “Whatever you say, my liege.”

His almost equally feigned look of exasperation made her laugh, and the bright, musical sound of it seemed to roll through him like light.

He couldn’t regret the past five years. He didn’t.

He had always taken his duties as Crown Prince as seriously as he’d taken his position as the managing director of the Khatan Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Kiara had always been wholly dedicated to her own role as vice president of her family’s famous winery in South Australia’s renowned Barossa Valley, a career that took her all over the world and kept her as busy as he was. Theirs had always been a modern marriage, the only one like it in the whole of his family’s history.

But then, he had long been his country’s emblem of the future, whether he wanted to be or not—and no one had ever asked him his feelings on the subject. His feelings were irrelevant, Azrin knew. While his father was very much and very proudly wedded to the old ways, Azrin was supposed to represent the modern age come to life in the midst of old-world Khatan, his small, oil-rich island nation in the Persian Gulf.

He knew—had always known—that once he took the throne he was expected to usher in the new era of Khatan that his father either could not or did not want to. He was expected to lead his people into a freer, more independent future, without the bloodshed and turmoil some of their neighboring countries had experienced.

And Kiara had been his first step in that direction, little as he might have thought of her in those terms when he’d met her. She was a twenty-first century Western woman in every respect, independent and ambitious, a fourth generation Australian winemaker and wholly impressive in her own right. Marrying her had been a commitment to a very different kind of future than the one his old school father, with his traditional three wives, offered their people.

Together, Azrin and Kiara were considered the new face of a new Khatan. That wouldn’t change now—it would only become more analyzed and critiqued. More speculated about. More observed and remarked upon. Their marriage would cease to be theirs; it would become his people’s, just as the rest of his life would. It was inevitable.

Azrin had always known this day would come. He just hadn’t expected it would come now. So soon. And perhaps because he’d thought he would have so many more years left before it happened, he certainly hadn’t understood until now how very much he’d dreaded it.

He didn’t want to admit that, not even to himself.

“Where have you gone?” she asked now, stopping, and thereby making him stop, too. The busy Sydney Pier bristled with ferries and commuters headed home for the evening, tourist groups and restaurant patrons on their way to an evening out. Her clever eyes met his as her palm curved against his jaw. “You’re miles away.”

“I am still in Khatan,” he said, which was true enough. He took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together, and tugged her along with him as he started to walk again, guiding her around the usual cluster of stalls and street performers making the most of the evening rush and the ever-present tourists. “But I would much rather be in you. Naked, I think you said?”

“I did say that.” Her voice was so proper, so demure. Only because he knew her well could he hear the mischief beneath the surface, that touch of wickedness that made him harden in response. “I thought you might have forgotten. My liege.”

“I never forget anything that has to do with your naked body, Kiara,” he said in a low voice. “Believe me.”

He wasn’t ready, he thought—and yet he must be. What he wanted, what he felt—none of that mattered any longer. What mattered was who he was, and therefore who he was about to become. He simply had to learn to keep his own desires, his own feelings, in reserve, just as he’d done for years before he’d met Kiara. In truth, it had been nothing but selfishness that had allowed him to spend the past five years pretending it could ever be otherwise.

He handed Kiara into the long black car that idled at the curb once they reached the street and climbed in after her.

Despite the fact that they were a prince and a princess, a royal sheikh and his chosen bride, they had spent years behaving as if they were like any other high-powered couple anywhere else in the world. They’d believed it themselves, Azrin thought. He certainly had.

The Prince and Princess of Khatan were relatable, accessible. Normal. They worked hard and didn’t get to see as much of each other as they’d like. Theirs was not a story of harems and exoticism, royal excesses and the bizarre lifestyles of the absurdly privileged. They were your everyday, run-of-the-mill power couple, just trying to excel at what they did. Just like you.

And yet they were not those couples, and never would be.

They were not normal. They had only been pretending. He told himself it was not a kind of grief that gripped him then—that it was simply reality.

He would be king. She would be his queen. There were greater expectations of those roles than of the ones they’d been playing at all this time. There were different, more complicated considerations. He knew with the kick of something like foreboding, deep in his gut, that there were great sacrifices that both of them would have to make.

It was only change, he told himself again. Everything and everyone changed.

But not tonight.