Читать книгу Royal Families Vs. Historicals - Annie West, Rebecca Winters - Страница 65

STERLING MARRIED SHEIKH RIHAD AL BAKRI, King of Bakri, at his royal palace on a lovely terrace overlooking the gleaming Bakrian Sea a mere two weeks later, surrounded by his assorted loyal subjects and entirely against her will.

Not that anyone appeared to care if the bride was willing. Least of all the groom.

“I don’t want to marry this man,” she told the assembled throng when Rihad walked her through the crowd as the ceremony began. “He is forcing me to marry him!”

She didn’t expect that anyone would spring into action on her behalf, exactly, but she’d expected…something. Some kind of reaction. Some acknowledgment, however small, of what was happening to her. Instead, the collection of Bakrian aristocrats only gazed back at her. Indifferently.

“They don’t speak English,” Rihad murmured lazily from beside her, resplendent in his traditional robes in a way Sterling couldn’t let herself look at too closely. It made her feel faint. Weak. Or maybe that was the way he held her arm as they walked, too strong and somehow too appealing there beside her, despite everything. She didn’t want to marry him. But she didn’t seem to mind him touching her, and that contradiction was making her feel even crazier. “And even if they did, who do you think they would support? Their beloved king or the woman who led my brother down the path of wickedness?”

“Don’t they have a problem with the fact you’re marrying a woman who’s carrying another man’s child?”

But no one seemed particularly moved by that, either, when she knew they could hear her. See her. Least of all Rihad.

“They think I am a great hero, to protect the family honor in this way.” He sounded so at his ease. It made the knot in her belly pulse in response. She told herself that was dismay. “To do my duty, a concept I know escapes you, despite the fact it requires I lower myself to marry a known harlot of no pedigree, less education and inadequate means.”

He’d reduced her entire life into three cruel phrases. And not as if he was trying to slap at her as he did it, but as if he was merely stating the unsavory, unfortunate facts. Sterling’s throat was impossibly dry. She was sure she was shaking. But he still held her arm in his easy grip, giving her the impression she could wrench herself away from him if she wanted. She knew better, somehow, than to test that.

“There’s nothing preventing me from throwing myself over the side of that railing over there to escape you and save you from this great act of charity you’re performing,” she told him then, sounding far away even to her own ears. “What makes you think I won’t?”

They stopped walking and stood before the small, wizened man she understood would marry them here, with the sea spread out before them like the promise of eternity—but it felt as much like a prison as the plane that had brought her here days ago had, or the rooms they’d stashed her in since, no matter how well-appointed. Inside of her, something ached. And she felt more than saw that infuriating, indolent shrug of his from where he stood next to her.

“Jump,” Rihad invited her, low and dark. It shouldn’t have moved in her the way it did, like fire and need, when he was only goading her. “It’s a fifty-foot drop to the rocks below and, in truth, the answer to a thousand prayers for deliverance from you and all you represent.” A small smile played over his mouth when she glared back at him. “Did you imagine I would beg you to reconsider? I am only so good, Sterling.”

He was so certain she wouldn’t do it. She could see it as if it was written across his darkly handsome face in block letters—and he was right. She’d survived too much, come too far, to take herself out now, even if there hadn’t been a baby to consider.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had to grit her teeth to make it through an unpleasant situation, she reminded herself staunchly. With a quick glance at the man taking up too much space beside her, implacable and fierce, Sterling rather doubted it would be the last.

Rihad hadn’t hit her. He didn’t seem violent at all, in fact, merely unimpressed with her. That was a long way from the worst place she’d ever been. She didn’t want this—but it wouldn’t kill her, either. So she trained her eyes on the officiant before them and surrendered.

And when there were no further disruptions from her, the wedding went ahead. Sterling felt it all from a great distance, as if she was watching a movie of that enormously pregnant woman in the billowing dress stand next to that darkly beautiful man with the smug expression on his face that indicated he’d had no doubt at all that she would do exactly as he pleased. Exactly what he wanted, as, apparently, everyone did eventually. It didn’t seem to matter that she didn’t participate in her own wedding ceremony, didn’t speak a single word either way. No one asked her to do anything but stand there. The man marrying them merely waved his hands in her direction, Rihad answered him in impenetrable Arabic and that was that.

The crowd cheered when it was done, as if this was a happy occasion. Or, she supposed, as if it was a real wedding.

“I hate you,” she told him, and bared her teeth at him. She didn’t pretend it was any kind of smile. They stood there in all that distractingly cheerful sunshine, as if there really was some call for celebration in the midst of this disaster. When instead she was married to a man she loathed, trapped here in his world, his palace, his very hands. She told herself that was fury she felt, that low, shivering thing inside her, or the fact she couldn’t seem to take in a full breath. Because she refused to let it be anything else. “I will always hate you.”

“Always is a very long time, Sterling.” Rihad sounded darkly amused. “I find most people lack the attention span for sustained emotion of any kind. Hate, love.” He shrugged. “Passion is always brightest when temporary.”

“You are an expert, of course.”

“My expertise fades next to yours, of course, and all your fabled conquests,” he replied, his tone ripe with bland insult.

“You have yet to marry a woman who actually wants to marry you,” Sterling couldn’t keep herself from railing at him, almost as if his insults got to her. Which she refused to allow. “I doubt you have the slightest idea what passion is.”

Rihad’s smile edged into something lethal, and while he didn’t hurt her in any way when he took her arm, she couldn’t pull out of his firm grasp, either. His smile deepened when she tried.

“You forget that I did not exactly choose you, either,” he said, darkly and too hot and directly into her ear, making her shudder in reaction—and she was all too aware he could feel her do it. That made it worse, like some kind of betrayal. “I executed my duty to this country the first time I was married. Can you truly imagine I wanted to do it again?”

“Then you should have left me in New York.”

“No.” His voice was firm. Matter-of-fact. She saw the harsh intent in his golden gaze, stamped deep into the lines of his dark, gorgeous face. “That child cannot be born out of wedlock and also be recognized as a part of the royal bloodline. It isn’t done.”

“Omar said it would be fine,” Sterling threw back at him as Rihad’s aides corralled the well-heeled courtiers and herded them from their seats, directing them farther down the terrace. “He said it was the only child he planned to present to you and if you wanted it, or him, you could change the law. After all, you’re the king.”

“Of course,” Rihad growled.

A muscle worked in his lean jaw and she felt his fingers press the slightest bit harder into the flesh of her upper arm where he still held her fast, though, still, it didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite—she was astonished at the fact her usual revulsion at the faintest physical contact hadn’t kicked in yet. It was her hatred of him, she told herself resolutely. It was shorting out her usual reactions.

“How typical of my brother,” Rihad was saying. “Rather than adhere to a tradition dating back centuries, why not demand that the tradition itself be altered to suit him instead? I don’t know why I’m at all surprised.”

Sterling opened her mouth to argue, to defend Omar, but the dark look Rihad threw at her stopped her. She shut her mouth with an audible snap. And then he began to move, sweeping her along with him whether she wanted to go or not.

He led her back through the glorious royal palace to the suite of rooms she’d been installed in when she’d arrived, and Sterling was glad he did it in that fulminating, edgy silence of his. She felt utterly off balance. Shaken down deep. She couldn’t tell if it was because the wedding had actually happened precisely as he’d warned her it would. Or because he kept touching her in a thousand little impersonal ways that were nonetheless like licks of fire all over her body and none of it because of fear.

Or because when he leaned down and spoke so close to her ear she’d felt it everywhere. Everywhere. Like the most intimate of caresses.

She still felt it. And she hadn’t the slightest notion what to do about it.

It wasn’t until they reached her door that Sterling realized she had no idea what was going to happen next. That she’d resolutely refused to believe this was happening at all, this mockery of a wedding, and had thus not thought about…the rest of it.

Did he expect…? Would he…? Her mind shied away from it, even as her body burst into a humiliating flash of delirious heat that she was terrified he could see, it felt so bright and scarlet and obvious. She clutched at her belly, as much to remind herself that she was hugely pregnant as to assuage her sudden spike in anxiety.

But Rihad merely deposited her inside the lovely, spacious suite that was the prettiest prison cell she’d ever seen, then turned as if to leave her there without another word—standing in the middle of the suite’s grand foyer in an indisputably gorgeous dress her attendants had insisted she wear today, that had made Sterling feel pretty despite herself. Despite him.

“That’s it?” she blurted out.

She wished she hadn’t said anything when he turned back to her. Slowly. He was particularly beautiful then, in his ceremonial robes with that remote, inscrutable expression on his lean face. Beautiful and terrible, and she had no idea what to make of either.

But she didn’t think it was fear that made her pulse pick up.

“What were you expecting?” he asked, mildly enough, though there was a dark gleam in those gold eyes of his that made her breath catch. “A formal wedding reception, perhaps, so you could insult my guests and my people with your surly Western attitude? Berate our culture and our traditions as you are so fond of doing? Shame this family—and me—even more than you already have?”

“You’re not going to make me feel guilty about a situation all your own doing,” she told him, ignoring the hint of shame that flared inside of her anyway, as if he had a point.

He does not have a point. He hurt Omar, kidnapped you—but she could still feel it inside of her. As if her own body took his side over her own.

“Or perhaps you thought we should address the subject of marital rights. Did you imagine I would insist?” Rihad moved closer and Sterling held her breath, but he only stopped there a breath away from her, his gaze burnished gold on hers, and still too much like a caress. “I hate to disappoint you. But I have far better things to do than force myself on my brother’s—”

Sterling couldn’t hear him call her a whore on the day she’d married him. He’d come close enough out on the terrace. She couldn’t hear him say it explicitly, and she didn’t want to consider why that was. What that could mean.

“Don’t let me keep you, then,” she said quickly before he could say it. “I’ll be right here. Hating you. Married to you. Trapped with you. Doesn’t that sound pleasant?”

“That sounds like normal life led by married couples the world over,” he retorted, and then he laughed. It seemed to roll through her and a smart woman, Sterling knew, would have backed away from him then. Found safer ground no matter if it looked like retreat. But she, of course, stood tall. “And yet there is nothing normal about this, is there?”

And something shifted then. The air. The light that danced in from outside her windows. Or, far more disturbing, that shimmering, electric thing that she worked so hard to pretend she couldn’t feel there between them. It pulled taut. It gleamed there in his fascinating gaze, dark gold and intoxicating.

Maybe that was why she did nothing when he reached out and slid his hand over her jaw to cup her cheek. Nothing but let him, when she’d never let anyone touch her before. She only held that gaze of his and possibly her breath, too, as his hard dark gold eyes bored into her and the heat of his hand changed her, from the inside out, telling her things she’d never wanted to know about herself, because she felt so many things, so many wild and intense sensations, and none of them were revulsion—

“Damn you,” he muttered, as if he was the cursed one. As if he was as lost as she was, as utterly out of control. “Everything about you is wrong.”

Then he bent his head and fit his mouth to hers, claiming her as easily as if he’d done so a thousand times before. As if she’d been his forever.

And everything stopped. Then melted.

Sterling braced herself for the kick of panic, of horror, but it never came. There was only the heat of it, the banked fury, the rolling wildfire that swept through her and altered everything it touched.

It was long and hot, slow and thorough.

Astonishingly carnal. Deliriously perfect.

It was nothing like the kisses she’d imagined, locked safely away in her little world, where she was never at risk of having one. Rihad’s kiss was possessive and devastating at once, storming through her, making her forget everything but him. Everything but this.

She forgot that she was anything but a woman—his woman, however he would have her, whatever it took, to burn in this fire until she was nothing but ash and longing, fire and need.

And his. God help her, she wanted to be his—

Rihad pulled away then and she could feel his breath against hers, harsh and stirring. Uneven, just as hers was.

He dropped his hand from the side of her face and stepped back, and it was as if he’d thrown them both out of vivid color and bright hot light into a cool, gray chill in that same instant. They only stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.

Sterling was aware of everything and nothing at once. The fine tapestries on her walls, in pinks and reds and ancient golds. The gilt and marble statuettes that bristled on every surface and the sparkling crystal that adorned the high chandeliers, every inch of which she’d studied in the long days she’d been here. The endless blue sea outside, putting the world right there in front of her yet always out of reach, so high up on the cliff side was the Bakrian royal palace. The baby inside of her, low and painful today, as if even her unborn child was expressing its disgust at what she’d let happen to her.

And Rihad. The king. Her husband. The man who had just kissed her. He looked every inch the wealthy sheikh today, in his traditional garments that only emphasized his strength, his power. The sheer intensity he carried with him like a sword, and now she knew he could wield it, too.

His expression was like stone as he gazed back at her, though his dark gold eyes burned the way she still did with the aftereffects of that kiss stampeding all over her, and Sterling couldn’t bring herself to look away.

“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.” Her voice hardly sounded like hers, and she understood that it was far too revealing. That it told him far too much, and in far more depth. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. “Not today.”

Rihad’s nostrils flared as if he was pulling in a deep, deep breath, or fighting for control. As if he was as thrown by this as she was. As if the addictive taste of that wildfire that still crackled through her was too sharp, too dangerous, in him, too.

“I’m touched,” he said, and she understood that was all wishful thinking on her part, thinking this was difficult for him. Nothing was, after all. Not for the king. “I had no idea our wedding meant so much to you, considering how bitterly you complained throughout it.”

His voice was rough and sardonic, but Sterling was sick, she understood then, because she still felt the kiss like a caress. Her oversensitive breasts ached as if it had been that faintly calloused palm of his all over her bare skin. A little flicker of sensation skated from the tight peaks of each of them down through the center of her body to pool deep in her core. Then pulsed.

She’d always had a vivid imagination. But now what stormed in her was need.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said, with what she thought was admirable calm, given the fact she now knew what that hard mouth of his felt like against hers, so hot and so male she might never recover from it.

“The trouble is, I know entirely too much about you,” he said after a moment, his tone harsh and cool, while his golden gaze seemed to tear into her. “And despite the temptation, I can’t overlook the fact that you were my brother’s low-class tramp of a mistress for over a decade.”

“And I am now also your wife,” she pointed out, amazed that her voice sounded so much calmer than she felt, if not quite as regally cool as his. She tipped up her chin. “Congratulations on your choices.”

“Let me be clear about how this marriage will work,” he said, and something curled up inside of her at the way he said it. “You will stay here in the palace until you deliver the baby. Will you wish to nurse it?”

“I…” She felt as if he’d tossed her over the side of that terrace after all. One moment he was kissing her, all carnal longing and impossible heat, and the next he was interrogating her about her plans for the baby’s feedings?

“I don’t care if you do or do not,” he said when she only blinked at him. “But if you do, you will stay here until the child is weaned. You will receive all the care and help you could require, of course. For all intents and purposes, that is now my child.”

“Never,” she said at once. Softly enough, but with feeling. “This is Omar’s baby. My baby. Nothing you do can change that.”

“Yes.” And his voice was ferocious. “Omar’s baby. Omar’s mistress. Omar’s many problems. This is nothing new for me, Sterling. I have been cleaning up after my brother all my life—why should it change now that he is dead?”

It was all too easy to remember how much she hated him then, and she clenched her hands so tightly into fists that her nails dug into her palms.

“What happens after the child is weaned?” she asked in a clipped voice as a tsunami of self-loathing crept ever closer, reminding her that she’d not only let this callous man touch her, but she’d also liked it. More than liked it.

She’d wanted more. Maybe she really was the whore Rihad thought she was. Maybe the fact she’d never touched anyone had concealed the essential truth about her.

“That is entirely up to you,” he said curtly. “Behave, and I may let you stay here, as long as you do not make a nuisance of yourself. Misbehave, and I will have you locked up in a remote part of the kingdom, a prisoner in fact and deed. I don’t care which it is.”

“I don’t want this,” she blurted out, because she was suddenly light-headed, and the thought that this was really her life now, that this had really happened, made the world spin.

He lifted a shoulder, then dropped it in that way of his—the royal sheikh untouched by and uninterested in such lowly concerns.

“Life is filled with sacrifices, Sterling.” His voice scraped over her, so harsh she expected it had left marks. “There were always going to be consequences for your relationship with my brother, whether he told you so or not. This is but one of them.”

She shook her head, as much to clear it as to negate him. “I don’t understand why you won’t let me go.”

He considered her for a moment, and there was no reason at all Sterling should flush while he did.

“You cannot imagine I would release a member of my blood into your tender care, can you?” He sounded amazed. And that was so insulting it would have hurt, had not everything else hurt that much more already. “The child stays here. And if you have a shred of maternal feeling in you, which I doubt, so will you. A child needs its mother, I am reliably informed. Even if that mother is you.”

“Wonderful,” she managed to say then, her voice bitter and thick. “That sounds like quite a life sentence. How lucky I am to have been snatched off the street and forced into such an advantageous marriage with the most benevolent and thoughtful dictator around.”

“If you weren’t so appallingly self-centered, you’d see that you truly are lucky,” he retorted, a flash of something dark in those eyes of his. “Far luckier than you deserve. But then, thinking of others is hardly your strong suit, is it? Or you’d have left my brother alone years ago.”

“And a happy wedding day to you, too, Rihad,” she threw back at him, and it was easier to simply hate him. Cleaner. Less complicated. It felt like a relief, and she didn’t question why she felt so free to do it. “You’re a terrible man and will no doubt be a worse husband, in much the same way I’m sure you’re an awful king. Oh, joy.”

Temper cracked over his face then, dark and alarming, and she braced herself for whatever awful thing he might say next—whore whore whore, wash and repeat, whore whore whore, she thought with a mental roll of her eyes that suggested an insouciance she didn’t quite feel—but instead, he went still. Then frowned.

Not at her, exactly. More at the floor beneath her.

Sterling looked down to find a puddle around her, soaking the hem of her wedding dress and then spreading out across the inlaid mosaic tiles at her feet, and froze in horror. Had she actually humiliated herself to such a degree that she’d—

But then she understood.

The puddle announced what she should have guessed from her mounting discomfort throughout this conversation, but had been too furious and too emotional to face—that her water had broken.

Her baby was coming a few weeks early, whether she was ready or not.