Читать книгу The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 12

Aliyah froze.

That voice. The rough-velvet caress, the hypnotic spell that had once sent her spiraling into a realm of extremes.

It was coming from behind her. From the room she’d decided not to enter. Tranquil, indolent. A laser drilling into her from back to front, passing dead-center through her heart.

Somehow, her heart kept beating. More like rattling like a half-empty piggy bank in her chest. Her nerves kept discharging. Not that having a heartbeat and nervous transmission meant she could move. She couldn’t.

The split second she could, she’d continue on her way out, show that overbearing lout how things worked. Surely not his way.

The spike of outrage thawed the grip of paralysis, freeing her legs, fueling three long strides on her charted path out of his trap. On the fourth she faltered.

What was she doing, walking away? She was here to see about one overripe head. She should go harvest it.

She turned around, walked back. The hardwood floor beneath her feet felt like soggy sand, and her legs felt powered by someone else’s will.

As long as it wasn’t his, she was fine with it.

She crossed the threshold this time, scanned the dimly lit room. For the first dozen heartbeats, she saw nothing.

Then he seemed to materialize out of nowhere, registering on her retinas, facing her in a high-backed black leather armchair at the far end of the room, framed by French windows that opened to the terrace leading down to the gardens. His body was relaxed, silhouetted in the golden light of a side lamp. His face was in darkness.

Her heart jangled into a higher gear. He was so still, looked so…sinister crouching there like a supernatural creature, half here, half in another realm, his face, his intentions obscured…

What a load of spectacular stupidity. There was nothing supernatural about Kamal. Except his supernatural ability to piss her off, playing all mysterious and lordly and…bored.

She moved, one foot in front of the other, each one a triumph of steadiness, advancing into the field of light cast by another tall lamp, her eyes fixed where his eyes should be, trying to discern whether he was looking at her, or if, as in the past, he was pretending she didn’t exist.

One thing she did know—he was baiting her.

Expecting her to lose her cool? Or her nerve, as she had done so dependably in the past? Well, he was in for a surprise.

Meet the new Aliyah Morgan, buster. Or as it had turned out, Aliyah Aal Shalaan.

He was moving now, sitting forward as if her every step nearer was tugging at him, light creeping across his face like the sun at dawn.

She almost squeezed her eyes shut, dreading the moment his eyes would be illuminated. Then they were, striking a flare that knocked the breath from her lungs as he’d once knocked sanity from her mind.

It was his expression that jogged sanity back into place now.

Stunned? How could he be, when he’d been ready for her? When he had no human components to stun?

Now he was getting up, slowly, eyes narrowing to slits below the intimidating brows, a dark, towering force inundating her with emanations she felt would knock her off her feet if she didn’t watch it.

Had he always been this way? Or had she forgotten?

With her photographic memory, was that even a question? While it had helped her forge a career for herself as an artist, the inability to forget had always been her curse.

She’d forgotten nothing. Not an inch, not a hair. He had changed. And infuriatingly, not for the worse as she’d been hoping on the way here. The twenty-eight-year-old sleek panther of a man who’d ruled her emotions for six months then abandoned her to the most chaotic, traumatic time of her life had been upgraded. And how.

But one thing was the same. His clothes. He was dressed the same way he had been the night she’d first laid eyes on him.

Had he done that on purpose? Could he even remember what he’d worn then? He’d once told her that he, too, forgot nothing.

But if he had remembered, had done it on purpose, why? To mock her? To goad her? To rewind to the beginning and start over?

Heh. Sure. As if.

He could start over in hell, where he belonged.

Still, it was the sameness of the sans-tie, formal charcoal suit with its unbuttoned silk shirt that echoed the color of his whiskey eyes that made the change so obvious, that detailed how the leanly muscled, broad-shouldered six-foot-six frame she regretfully remembered in distressing detail had bulked up with premium maturity to reach a new zenith of virility.

Problem was, the upgrade didn’t stop there. The same magic had taken a chisel to his incredible face, turning his singular features from arresting to overwhelming. Worse still, the jet-black satin that was his hair and that he’d always cropped close to his awesome head now lay in luxurious layers down to his collar.

Worst of all was the addition of a trimmed beard and mustache. Those betrayed his true nature, showed him for what he really was. One of nature’s most menacing entities. Not to mention one of its grossest examples of injustice.

No two ways about it. The years had been criminally kind to him. Seemed infinite wealth and power agreed with him. He’d no doubt improve exponentially the longer he had them, the older he got. And judging by his notorious reputation as a womanizer—the double-standard pig had dared call her depraved—every female with a brainwave agreed. And wanted a part of him.

And they could have him, could pick his bones clean, preferably. He no longer affected her…Liar.

Fine. So she’d be dead and buried before a male of this caliber didn’t access her hormonal controls. What did it matter that he was the most magnificent male to walk the earth, a species of one? It changed nothing. Out of the few billion men alive, he was the one who she knew from mutilating personal experience was a soulless bastard. She wouldn’t come near him with a ten-foot pole. Unless it was to poke out his eyes with it.

But none of that mattered now. Now she hoped only that she hadn’t gawked at him too long. Not with her mouth hanging open, at least. What mattered now was that she regained the composure he always seemed to rob her of just by training those eyes on her. For once she needed to stand with him on equal ground.

She inhaled, cocked her head, forced her gaze to sweep him, down then back up to his eyes, smearing him with disdain.

“These sure are desperate times we live in.”

For a moment she was stunned to hear her own voice.

So it was a husky wisp of sound, but at least she got it to work. Encouraged, enraged further by the way he remained staring at her as if at an unsavory species, she elaborated.

“They have to be, if your countrymen are scraping the bottom of the barrel to find themselves a king.”

Kamal almost lurched. At the satin lash of the voice he’d just discovered had never stopped echoing in his mind. At the slap her condescension had landed on his stunned senses.

He would have if he could.

He couldn’t even blink, couldn’t access one voluntary action or thought. And the loss of control only spiked his outrage.

Was he doomed to react this way whenever he laid eyes on her? What was it about this woman that deactivated his rational centers? And activated his incoherent ones?

And she wasn’t even the same woman. She’d changed, almost beyond recognition. Contrary to his every projection. And, e’lal jaheem…to hell with it, for the best.

His senses soaked in the changes, making feverish comparisons with her past self.

Gone were the wild clothes, the reed-thinness and crackling energy. In their place was a superbly dressed woman with a measured grace, a steady gaze and a body that had filled with a femininity so distressing it had everything male in him overriding all. His mind might be averse, but his body roared for its mate….

She isn’t your mate, ya moghaffal. She’s anybody’s.

But his body was oblivious, was fighting all connections with his mind, bucking off its reins, struggling to break its control and claim the body that had stopped him from finding anything beyond frustration with others.

It was merciful that she contributed her own deterrent as she now made a dismissive, derisive gesture in his direction.

“That they’ve stooped to settling on you is the loudest possible statement that this world is going to hell in a handbasket. Judarians must be mourning not only their king’s death, but their once-great nation’s future.”

There they came again. The insults. White-hot pokers designed to prod him into an uncalculated response.

He bit into the surge of tingling in his lower lip, into the urge to retaliate, to override.

So, that had changed, too. Her methods. Her approach. There’d clearly be no more breathless adulation spilling from those deep rose lips. Instead she seemed bent on bombarding him with condescension and contempt. And she was letting him know right off the bat, in lieu of the greeting they didn’t owe each other. She had even before she’d laid eyes on him, coming all the way here only to turn around and hurl his parting words back at him, and through his men, too, just to make sure the slap landed effectively.

He’d bet she’d calculated, even counted on that to ratchet up his interest. That had remained the same, then. The masterful manipulation. In the past, her machinations had worn the guise of erratic spontaneity and had wrung the same response from him. She’d just changed her strategy to suit their tarnished status quo and the new poised creature she was now projecting.

And b’Ellahi—it was working. Spectacularly. When it shouldn’t. When he shouldn’t let it.

He could do nothing else. She’d walked in here training those fathomless eyes on him, her gaze familiar yet someone else’s, throwing his own choice of cruelty back in his face and taking the wind out of his sails. Worse, she’d knocked him off course.

He’d intended to railroad her, unilaterally charting the rest of their regretfully unavoidable union. He’d summoned her here to inform her of his plans, and her role in them: to abide by them.

But she’d thrown down the gauntlet. And he could no more not pick it up than he could stop breathing.

It was beyond him not to engage her.

Shaking off the last of his paralysis, realizing he was about to hand her a measure of control, he twisted his lips, let his gaze run in enraged delight down her new ripeness.

“I agree. It did take desperate times to make me recant my decree of never laying eyes on you again.”

Those strong, supple shoulders jerked with an incredulous huff, bringing thick, undulating locks of the gleaming mahogany that had grown to a waist-length waterfall splashing over breasts snug and full in her cream jacket. “Recant your decree? Better watch it. You’re a breath away from having a hyperpretentious crisis and falling into a pompous coma.”

He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

But it was no good resisting. Amusement surged to his lips, tugging them into a painfully grudging smile. But it didn’t stop there, burst forth in a guffaw.

Ya Ullah, she was yanking at his humor, as well as his hormones. The witch was still the only one who knew what to say and how to say it to appeal to his demanding sense of the absurd.

The one thing that cooled the heat of his chagrin at his helpless response was its effect on her. Her gaze wavered, her body language losing its confrontational edge. A laugh had been the last thing she’d expected, too. So what had she expected?

In answer to his unvoiced question, confusion flooded her eyes, her stance, spreading something too akin to mortification in his chest. And he knew what she’d expected. What she’d been trying to initiate. A fight. Dirty and damaging.

She’d expected him to tear back into her, more vicious than she’d been, to give her carte blanche to go all-out in turn. She’d expected this to spiral into another confrontation echoing the savagery with which he’d severed their liaison. But she’d intended to be an equal opponent this time, had drawn first blood, had intended to leave the battleground bloody yet victorious.

He should oblige her. Should let her show him what she had. Then he would show her, once and for all, who had the upper hand, that this was no democracy, that he’d settle for nothing less than total and blind obedience and that he would get it. He should let her know she had no say, no choice, could only save herself the indignity of being cowed by giving in first.

What he should do, and what he wanted to, were poles apart.

Without volition, he found himself moving toward her, in what thankfully must look like measured, tranquil steps when in reality they were impeded by the upheaval she’d kicked up inside him.

Her eyes widened as he approached her, and he almost groaned as her every detail came into sharper focus, the incredible mix of her Middle Eastern and Caucasian genes conspiring to form a beauty like no other.

The heart-shaped oval of her face still boasted that masterpiece bone structure, if it looked far less chiseled now that flesh softened contours that had been more skin over bone in the past. Her nose seemed less sharp, its slightly turned-up end even more overpoweringly elegant. Her lips, which had once spread so easily in eager smiles, looked even fuller, more ripe. But it was her eyes, as always, that struck him most and held his focus. Those mesmerizing eyes of hers, fringed by an abundance of black silk, their shape unique, their color even more so, chocolate fueled by the sun. Brand names had paid fortunes to have those eyes look out at the camera in dozens of high-profile ads. But they were far more hard-hitting now that they’d lost that intense, hungry look they’d been famous for.

He wouldn’t even look below her neck. His general look from afar had caused enough damage.

He found himself two steps away from her, looking down the inches between them. In two-inch heels, she stood a glorious six feet high. A rush of pleasure filled him at not having to stoop to look into someone’s eyes, into a woman’s.

Aih, lie to yourself. You’ve only missed this—her height, her presence, her eyes looking back at you. Her.

It was better to acknowledge his weakness, to deal with it, rather than fight it and lose more to its dominion. This encounter wasn’t going as he’d intended, so he’d better go with it wherever it intended to go and improvise along the way.

He cocked his head at her. “Got whatever baggage you have against me off your chest? Or do you need a few more minutes of uninterrupted abuse?”

She raised her eyebrows, now dark, dense wings when once they’d been plucked to about one third of their true exquisite shape. “Baggage? Try a load of justified antipathy. And statement of fact can’t be categorized as abuse.”

His lips twitched again. “Watch it. You’re on that slippery slope to pompous coma yourself.”

Her lips twitched in answer, twisting his guts with the need to crush them beneath his. “I’m not the one who slipped and fell on a throne and had its fumes of grandeur go to his head.”

His smile widened, fatalism setting in this time. There was no point resisting the inevitable. “I assume the grandeur dig is about sending royal guards to fetch you?”

“Actually it started a bit earlier than that. With a subjectless e-mail graced with another of those decrees of yours. You’re one of a few living men who can literally be called a royal pain.”

He huffed a chuckle. His brothers shared that opinion, but even they hadn’t put it so succinctly. “You’re a royal, too—and a pain among other things—even if you choose to disregard the fact. So you still object to the royal treatment?”

Her gaze ran over him again, sweeping aside another portion of his restraint. “Once upon a time I thought you did, too. But I was a space cadet back then. I would have believed anything. I’ve long since landed on terra firma.”

He stared at her. Into her eyes. And realized what was so different about them. Their pupils. Those used to expand and constrict almost constantly, turning their every glance into a live wire that electrocuted him whenever they fell on him. He’d realized too late that had been a sign of her chemical dependencies. Those pupils were unwavering now.

Other signs of her addiction—the malnourished tinge to her complexion, the fragility of her flesh and bones, the fluctuating energy that used to emanate from her—were also gone. She was now the picture of health. And stability.

He’d first attributed the changes in her to the weight gain that had followed quitting her modeling career. But now…could it be? Had she somehow overcome her addiction?

If she had, it was a miracle. And he’d believed there were no miracles in addiction. But even if she was in rehab, she must have been clean for years. This level of stability and health wasn’t reached in less than that. He knew, only too well.

So had she been trying to beat her addiction all along? And with the clear evidence that she’d succeeded, shouldn’t he have stuck by her, as he’d intended to do before he’d found out about the rest of her vices?

B’Ellahi, he’d just answered himself, stating the irrefutable reason he’d owed no support to the faithless wretch she’d been.

No. He couldn’t have acted differently in the past.

But this was the present where it was no longer personal, where everything had changed, starting with her. Fate had decreed she was no longer a disgrace but the solution to a huge mess. And she seemed to have realized how damaging her earlier excesses had been. Now she should understand the need to heed the expectations that came with her new status.

Not that she did. Seemed this new stability didn’t extend to responsible behavior.

He pursed his lips on the too-welcome surge of animosity. “It doesn’t seem you’ve landed anywhere firm. I am told you’re still as erratic and as irrational as you ever were.”

She gave him a bored look. “You are told? By little royal tweeties, no doubt. Erratic and irrational, huh? According to whose rulebook of stability and rationality?”

“According to the one universally accepted by our species.”

“That’ll be the day, when the whole species agrees on anything, let alone the rules of rationality.”

“Maybe that was too generalized. It was doomed to be false.”

Before she could revel in his concession, he moved, clamped a hand on her elbow. She jerked in surprise. And response. He knew it. That same response was jolting through him, lodging in an erection that was developing the consistency of rock. And all he’d done was touch her through her jacket and blouse. But then, he’d been semihard just thinking of her, had been fully aroused since he’d heard her voice. He could only liken his condition now to a seizure.

Why wasn’t life simpler? Why did he have to heed logic and pride and duty? Why couldn’t he just drag her to the floor and feast on her, with no past, present or future considerations?

Before he was tempted to do just that, he gave her a tug in the direction of the terrace before releasing her elbow as if it burned him. “Hurl whatever insults you like at me over dinner. In my e-mail, I did promise a meal.”

She darted a step away, taking her eyes into shadow. He couldn’t read her reaction. Then her lips twisted. “You sure? Food will only give me more energy and make the invectives come easier.”

Shaking his head at the exhilaration her every word caused to rev inside his chest, his lips widened again. “They can come easier? This I have to hear.” Then, tamping down on the clamoring urge to snatch her into his arms, he gestured for her to precede him.

With a last considering tilt of her head, she turned and headed to the terrace. He walked behind her, devouring her every nuance and move, hormones a scalding stream in his arteries.

They stepped out onto the terrace where the waxing moon had just turned gibbous, illuminating the sky, dimming the stars and casting rippling silver over the infinity of the ocean.

She took in the view, her arms hugging her midriff. Her scent, free of artificiality, unchanged, unforgotten, the very distillation of sensuality, rode the gusts of gentle summer breeze, enveloping him. He ground his teeth on another surge of lust, bypassed her, walked to the table laid out with the meal kept hot over gentle flames. His hands tingled over the back of a chair, then with an inaudible curse, he pulled it back for her.

She arched one eyebrow at his gesture, then pointedly walked to the other chair and sat herself down.

Aiw’Ullah, that was what he deserved for succumbing to his moronic, chivalrous programming around her.

He sat down in the chair he’d pulled back, realized it had been a good thing she’d refused to sit in it. He had the lights coming from the room at his back. This way he’d remain in relative shadow as he wallowed in the infuriating pleasure of poring over her beauty, which was bathed in both artificial and natural light.

He watched her as she sampled what he’d ordered of appetizers, food unique to Judar. Her evident appetite and enjoyment boosted his viewing pleasure. Here was another thing about her that had changed diametrically. She used to be almost anorexic, a state he’d later realized had been induced by the drugs she’d taken for just that end, the ones she’d become dependent on.

He found himself teasing her. “Don’t let consideration for your table partner stop you from wiping it clean.”

She chewed on without looking at him, spoke only when her mouth was empty and she was uncovering one of the simmering dishes. “Don’t worry. I don’t consider you at all.”

Like its predecessors, that comment flowed with the bad blood he’d established. This time he realized what the spasm that shot through him was. Regret. If only…

But he of all people had no time for if-onlys. He wasn’t just a man with his own emotions and convictions at stake, he was a monarch whose actions controlled the reins of peace in a whole region.

“You don’t consider anyone at all,” he bit off.

“By that you mean I’m not bowing to everyone’s wishes without a word, don’t you? What did you all expect me to do? To feel? To say? Oh, two more parents? Cool! The old ones aren’t my real ones? Bummer. They lied to me all my life? Shame. All those hunky cousins are really my half brothers? Phew. Good thing I haven’t lusted after any of them. I have to give up my life to get bartered in a political game to a boor? Whatever. Can I have a latte now?”

This was no laughing matter. But the way she’d delivered her parody, her choice of words, her sheer cheekiness, was irresistible. His chuckle overpowered him.

She sighed. “Glad you see the black humor in this ‘situation.’ It is what sharr el baleyah ma yodhek was coined for, a plight big enough that only hysterical laughter can do it justice.”

He gave a grudging nod. “The revelations must have been a shock, I grant you that….”

She clapped in mock delight. “Ooh, can I frame your grant?”

He fisted his hands against the urge to lunge across the table and drag her over to him and willingly rose to her bait. “You can. I can even issue you a royal declaration for a more frame-worthy concession.”

“Wow. You’ve grown generous in your old age. Don’t splurge on those decrees and declarations, though. They might dry up on you.”

“Can you by any stretch of your admittedly wildly fertile imagination see that happening?”

“Nah, this here Pacific would dry up first.”

“This here Pacific has to take care of its own abundance. I have that of my decrees and declarations taken care of. As for you—” he leaned closer, his gaze sweeping resigned appreciation over her “—it’s abundantly clear your own old age has been good to you.” He raised one eyebrow. “If not to your tongue. I don’t remember it being anywhere near this…forked.”

That tongue came out to glaze those perfect lips, sending his hunger roaring to sample the moisture, drain it. “No? Are you sure your memory, once so reliable, isn’t going?”

“My memory will be the last thing that dims in me, around the time I turn a hundred and twenty.”

“You intend to deteriorate that soon?”

“Just being realistic here.”

“Heh. You probably are, too. But one word of advice. In this constant gloating state over your superiority, don’t drive while anywhere outside of Judar. You’d be apprehended for driving under the influence of a mind-altering high.”

“What and whose purpose do I serve if I don’t act on my superiority? You don’t see a lion hiding his just so that other animals won’t think him full of himself.”

“A lion, huh? You’re really stretching to fit the job description, aren’t you? Lord-of-all-you-survey galore.”

“You mean you don’t think the shoe fits?”

“You mean you think any shoe exists to fit your figurative foot?”

“One must never give up hope.”

“You mean you don’t give hope decrees?”

“I don’t currently have it on my subjects’ roster, no.”

“That must be why there’s still hope.”

“I’m working on acquiring its controlling shares. Enjoy wild, unregulated hope while you can…” He paused when her eyes stilled on him with a new intensity until he groaned. “What?”

“I’m watching for the moment you slip into that coma. I’m also debating seeking help or leaving you passed out on the floor.”

Another laugh took him by surprise. Just as this whole meeting had. This tug-of-war of wills and wits had dragged him into its rapids, was so fluent, so unlike anything he’d had with her, yet somehow the same. Their conversations in the past had been about mutual pleasure, not one-upping each other with witty salvos, but they’d been perfectly matched, totally on the same wavelength, kindred in tastes and views and perceptions. And how he’d missed that.

But the mind that had housed all those qualities he’d craved had also been infested by vices that had appalled him…

Her voice brought him out of his unsavory musings. “But all macabre comedy aside, that’s how you all wanted me to react, right? So you could move on with your plans without the inconvenience of pausing for a few minutes to think about how I’m grappling with my identity and past, plus your proposal to completely mess with my future?”

“I am pausing for a whole evening.”

“Yeah, sure. You want to hear about how I’m coping. Your memory isn’t going but gone if you expect me to believe that.”

He pursed his lips. “We must leave the past in the past.”

She imitated his expression. “How very convenient for you.”

“It’s convenient for both of us. For our future together.”

She jerked as if he’d slapped her, flooding his mind with the emory of her similar reaction when he’d revealed to her the ugliness of his agony and madness seven years ago.

After a long, frozen moment, she rasped, “This was all fun and reminiscent of the sordid past. But let me set one thing straight. We don’t have a future together. Our kingdoms will have to come up with another way to secure whatever they’re hatching together. I’ll never marry you, not for politics, not to save my life.”

It was his turn to stiffen as the mind-warping disillusionment of the past crashed into him, blasting away all softness and the spell she’d been weaving—that he’d let her weave—on him.

She’d changed, all right. Not for the better, as he’d been fooling himself up till now. But into a vindictive harpy who’d send a whole region to hell to have her revenge on him.

He sat forward in his chair slowly, slammed her with his own rage and animosity. “This was my mistake, as it was in the past—being so civil and accommodating that I give you illusions about your importance. But in reality, you always served only one purpose. The difference now is that it’s a worthwhile purpose for a change. And you will serve it. As for what you think or feel, it’s time you realized that your emotions and identity, your past and future, you, don’t matter. Not at all.”