Читать книгу Royal Families Vs. Historicals - Annie West, Rebecca Winters - Страница 69

STERLING FLINCHED, WHEN SHE knew better than that. But she couldn’t seem to help herself.

She’d finally pushed him too far. She’d felt safe with him all this time, safer than she’d ever felt with another man, but that was before. She’d gone over the edge at last and she’d seen that broken look on his face.

She knew what it meant. She remembered too well.

She expected the hit. It had been a long, long time, but she thought she could take it. There was no warding off a blow from a man as strong as he was or as close, but if she could take the inevitable fall well, it wouldn’t immobilize her. The trick was not to tense up too much in anticipation, and then to curl into a tight ball against the kick—

“Sterling,” Rihad said then, in that low, dark way of his that rippled through her, making her want to cry. Making her want him, too, which she thought was evidence that she was deeply sick in the head. Twisted all the way through, the way they’d always told her she was. “What do you think is happening here?”

“Please,” she whispered, trying to stand tall, to square her shoulders despite the fact she couldn’t stop shaking. “Just don’t wake the baby. I don’t want her to see.”

And she closed her eyes, tried not to brace herself too much and waited for him to hit her.

The way her foster parents always had.

She heard nothing. For one lifetime, then another.

Then, finally, Rihad’s voice, but he wasn’t speaking to her. He spoke in Arabic, and she didn’t have to understand the words he used to know he was issuing orders again in that matter-of-fact, deeply autocratic way of his that was as much a part of him as breathing.

Then again, the quiet.

The breeze above and the water all around, and she kept her eyes shut tight because the quiet was the trick. It was always a trick. The false sense of security had always, always tripped her up. The moment she’d thought it wasn’t going to happen and looked to see was the moment they’d laid her flat.

She heard footsteps, then the sound of Leyla’s buggy being wheeled away, and her stomach turned over, then plummeted. He was sending the baby off with the nurses, as she’d asked. That meant—

She flinched away from his hand on her arm, making it that much worse. Her eyes flew open and met his, burning dark, dark gold and far too close, and she nearly bit off her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered hurriedly, in a panic she couldn’t control, even when he let go of her and stepped back. “I didn’t mean to flinch.”

He studied her for a long, long time.

“Sterling,” he said, very quietly, but somehow with more power behind it than she’d ever heard him use before. “Who hit you?”

And everything inside of Sterling ground to a lurching, nauseating halt. She couldn’t risk this. She should never have flinched. Open up that old can of worms and he would see. He would know.

She didn’t think it through, she simply catapulted herself across the wedge of space between them, trusting he would catch her. She didn’t ask herself how she knew he would.

But he did.

His arms came around her as her chest collided with his, and all of that panic and all of those old ghosts shimmered into something else entirely.

His seductive heat poured through her. Into her. Chasing away all those old cobwebs she couldn’t afford to let him see. He couldn’t know.

She didn’t want to think too much about why that was the worst thing she could imagine. The very worst. She only knew, without a shred of doubt, that it was.

“Exactly what do you think you are doing?” he asked, but his voice was as gentle as his hands against her.

And yet she could feel how hot he was, hot and hard and deliciously male against her, everywhere. He wanted her. It was a revelation. He was so hot that she might have thought he was feverish, had she not been looking straight up into those dark gold eyes of his, where she could see he wasn’t the least bit unwell.

Dark and beautiful and much too close to all the parts of her she didn’t want him to see, perhaps. But not sick.

Sterling was more than a little bit worried that she was the sick one here, but she shoved that thought aside. There was no time left to worry about any of that. About the strange revelations this morning had wrought, much less what they meant or the repercussions they might have. She couldn’t let her mind spin out that way. She couldn’t see the future, so there was no use panicking about it.

She could only do her best to confuse the present in the easiest and most direct way available to her before Rihad talked them both to the point of no return. Before he saw who she really was and was as disgusted as everyone else had always been.

So that was what she did.

Sterling pressed against him in what she hoped was an excellent show of wanton abandonment, winding her arms around the strong column of his neck, her mouth actually watering as she let her gaze move from that smooth, brown sweep of skin to his marvelous mouth that was now right there—

“Sterling,” Rihad said repressively, but his hands were flush against her hips and he wasn’t pushing her away. And she could feel him against her belly, so hard where she was so soft and yielding. The wild sensation made her shudder all the way through and then arch against him.

As if this wasn’t the man she’d tried to run from, so long ago in New York, so sure he would ruin her.

As if this wasn’t the man she’d thought was about to haul off and hit her moments before.

Or maybe because it was him. Because she’d snapped into a very old, horribly familiar place and he hadn’t hit her after all. He’d looked appalled at the very idea.

And he wanted her. Even with that glimpse of the truth about her, he wanted her.

He wasn’t like any other man she’d ever known. And that shattering thing swirled inside her, making her feel something rather more like truly wanton after all. That maddening heat, storming through her limbs and gathering low in her belly, making her feel hot and ripe and hungry—

She arched into him, harder this time, then went up on her toes and kissed him.

And everything exploded.

His mouth was divine torture, his kiss insane. Rihad took control almost the second it began, one of his hands moving to wrap itself in her hair, the better to hold her head where he wanted it, the other a hard, wild encouragement at her hip.

He angled his head for a better fit, and then he simply…took.

And she loved it.

Rihad kissed like a starving man, as if Sterling wasn’t the only one scraped raw and left aching by this hungry thing between them. He kissed as if there was nothing at all for her to do but go along for the ride, wherever he took them. He kissed her until she was shivering against him in uncontrollable reaction, need and longing and the rich headiness of desire making her dizzy. And still so needy it hurt.

She couldn’t get close enough. She couldn’t taste him deeply enough. She didn’t care if she could breathe, if her feet touched the ground, and when he shifted to haul her against him and then lifted her high in the air, the only thing she could think to do was kiss him again.

Harder. Deeper. Longer. Hotter.

He wrapped her legs around his waist and held her there, twined around him with no other support, making her tremble at the strength he displayed so offhandedly—and then he shifted again, so their hips dragged against each other, his hardness against the part of her that was the neediest, and she moaned into his mouth.

She’d never liked being touched. But she found that didn’t apply to Rihad, who couldn’t seem to touch her enough.

And right at that moment, she didn’t care why that was. She would die if he knew, she thought. If he comprehended how untouched she truly was.

It wasn’t until her back came up against something that she realized it wasn’t just that spinning in her head that was making her feel loose and adrift—he’d walked over and laid her out on the table like his very own banquet.

“Reach up,” he ordered her, sounding more like a king than she’d ever heard him sound before, and there was probably something deeply wrong with her that she liked it. More than liked it—that hot, dark note in his voice swept over her skin as if he’d used his mouth against her, his mouth and his wicked tongue. “Hold on.”

She did as he asked. As he commanded. She didn’t even think twice about it, and not only because she wanted him to think she was that slut everyone believed she was, but also because that was so much easier than who she really was.

Sterling reached up over her head and grabbed the far edge of the table as he leaned in harder, pressing his hips against hers even as this new position made her back arch, as if she was offering up her breasts to him.

She was. She hoped she looked as if she’d done this a thousand times before—or even if she didn’t, that he’d be too interested in her breasts to care.

He smiled dangerously as he looked down at the place their bodies pressed together, and Sterling felt the glow of that sweep over her. Through her, hard and hot and needy, until it settled like a lightning bolt between her legs.

She bucked against him, helpless against these new sensations, and he laughed.

And then he bent down and found her nipple through the gauzy material of her dress with that dangerously clever mouth of his, so hot and so demanding, and sucked it straight into all that heat.

Sterling lost her mind.

There was nothing then, but the fire that rolled through her, one bright flame after the next, building toward something so immense, so impossible, that she would have been afraid of it if she’d been able to catch her breath.

But Rihad didn’t allow that.

He pressed the proof of his need hard into the place she hungered for him the most, soft and wet and wild for him even through the trousers he wore, with her ankles locked in the small of his strong back. He set a lazy, mind-melting rhythm, and Sterling could do nothing but meet it, shuddering more with every roll of his lethal hips.

She didn’t know what she was doing. But she couldn’t seem to stop.

His mouth teased her breasts through her dress while his hands streaked beneath it, testing her shape, her heat. Learning all kinds of things about her. That she rarely bothered with a bra, even these days when her breasts were still bigger than they’d been before her pregnancy. That a careful pinch against one nipple and a deep tug on the other made her clutch her legs tighter around him and ride him shamelessly, rubbing herself against him as wantonly as she could—

And then it slammed into her.

Like a train.

She cried out, but he was there, licking the sound of it from her lips, moving his own hips harder against hers, making it go on and on and on.

Making her shatter, then shatter again, then shatter once more.

Changing everything.

Changing the whole world.

Turning Sterling into someone new.

And when it was over, he let her drop her legs from around his waist and took a step back while she simply lay sprawled there on the table in a thousand pieces, trying to breathe.

It took a while and even then, it was a shaky thing.

When she sat up and pulled her dress back down to cover her, Rihad stood there above her, his dark face hard and his golden eyes glittering. He folded his arms over his powerful chest and considered her for a long, breathless moment, as if he wasn’t still so aroused that she could see the proof of it pressing against the front of his trousers, hard and thick, and how could she still want him? Even now?

Even as the events of this morning flooded her, making her question a lot of things. Her sanity chief among them.

“Congratulations, Sterling,” Rihad said in that low, rough voice of his that kicked up that fire in her all over again. “You succeeded in distracting me. How long do you think that will work?”

* * *

It had worked all too well, Rihad thought a few days later, as he sat in his luxuriously appointed offices and found it impossible to concentrate on matters of state.

Because she haunted him.

Her taste. The sounds she’d made as she’d writhed beneath him. The scent of her skin. The sweet perfection of her touch.

He found he couldn’t think of much else. Especially during the meals they took together in his garden, where they both acted as if that scene right there on the table hadn’t happened. They outdid each other with crisp politeness.

But it hummed beneath everything. Every clink of silver against fine china. Every sip of wine. Every glance that caught and held. Every movement they each made.

It was a madness in his blood, infecting him.

Or she was.

Because Rihad hardly knew himself these days. His entire relationship with his brother had been a lie. He was hung up on a woman he’d married while he’d believed she was Omar’s mistress—and he had lusted after her while believing it. He was more enamored by the day with a tiny child who was not his in fact, but who felt like his in practice. He felt as if he was reeling through his life suddenly, unmoored and uncertain, and he had no idea how to handle such an alien sensation.

It was as if there was nothing left to hold on to. Or, more to the point, as if the only thing he wanted to hold on to was Sterling—as if he was as bewitched by her as he’d always thought his brother had been.

Maybe his enemies were not wrong to threaten invasion. Rihad was beginning to think it would be a kindness.

He was halfway through yet another inappropriate daydream about his wife when his personal mobile rang with a familiar ringtone.

Rihad dismissed his ministers with a regal wave and then swiped to open the video chat.

His sister gazed back at him from the screen, looking as defiant as ever.

“Amaya.” He kept his voice calm, though it was harder than it should have been, and he didn’t want to think about why that was, all of a sudden, or who was to blame for his endless lack of control. “Have you called to issue your usual taunts?”

“The quick brown fox always jumps over the lazy dog, Rihad.” Her dark eyes were a shade lighter than the fall of thick dark hair she’d pulled forward over one shoulder, and it irritated him that she was both unquestionably beautiful and entirely too much like her treacherous mother. Smarter than was at all helpful and not in the least bit loyal to the Bakrian throne. It made her unpredictable and he’d always hated that—at least, he’d always thought he had. “I’m only giving you a much-needed demonstration.”

“I feel adequately schooled.”

“Obviously not. I can see you scanning behind me for details on my location. Don’t bother. There aren’t any that will help you find me.” The light of battle lit her face, and he stopped trying to find any sort of geographic marker in what looked like a broom closet around her. “Are you ready to call off this marriage? Set me free?”

This was where Rihad normally outlined her responsibilities, reminded her that despite what she might have preferred, she was a Bakrian princess and she had a duty to her country. That it didn’t matter how many years she’d spent knocking around various artistic, bohemian communities with her mother pretending she was nothing more than another rootless flower child, she couldn’t alter the essential truth of her existence. That her university years in Montreal might have given her the impression that her life was one of limitless choices in all directions, but that was not true, not for her, and the sooner she accepted that the happier she would be.

He’d been telling her all of this for months. Years.

None of those conversations had been at all successful.

Today, he thought of the brother he’d treated as if he was a failure, the brother he’d claimed he’d loved when he’d never given him the opportunity to be himself. Not in Rihad’s presence anyway. He thought of the way Sterling, the only woman—hell, the only person—who had ever defied him to his face with such a lack of fear, had flinched as if she expected him to beat her, all because she’d told him the truth.

He thought that perhaps he had no business being a king, if he was such a remarkably bad one.

“I wish I could do that, Amaya,” he said after a long moment. “More than you know.”

She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe he’d said that. He wasn’t sure he could, either.

He shrugged. “These are precarious times. The only possible way we will maintain our sovereignty is to unite with Daar Talaas. But you know this.”

“There must be another way.”

“If there was, don’t you think I would have found it?” He sat back in his chair, his eyes on the screen and on his sister. “It does not give me any particular pleasure to insist you do something you are so opposed to that you’ve been on the run all this time.”

“But…?” she prompted, though he noticed that defiant way she held herself had softened.

“But Kavian is a man who follows the ancient ways, and there is only one kind of alliance he holds sacred. Blood.” He studied Amaya then, saw the expression that moved over her face, that hint of something like heat in her gaze. “And I think you know this all too well, don’t you? Because while you were not exactly thrilled at the idea, you didn’t run away until after you met him at your engagement reception. Did he do something to you?”

Alliance or not, Rihad would kill him. But Amaya only flushed then, though she tried to cover it with a frown.

“The reality of the situation merely impressed itself upon me, that’s all. I realized that I’m not a Stone Age kind of a girl.”

He didn’t believe her, but that was hardly his business.

“I sympathize,” he said instead, and the thing of it was, he did. He truly did.

“And I’m skeptical.”

“Amaya, no one knows more about marrying for the sake of the kingdom than I do. I’m on my second such marriage.”

“That doesn’t exactly recommend the ordeal.” Amaya’s frown deepened. Her eyes searched his for perhaps a moment too long. “You’re not the happiest man I’ve ever met.”

And yet in comparison to Kavian, the desert warrior renowned for his ability to wage war like an ancient warlord, Rihad was a nonstop comedy show. Neither one of them pointed that out and yet it hung there between them anyway.

For a moment they only gazed at each other, separated by their years, the screen, her continued refusal to surrender to the inevitable.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” he advised her. “My marriage is not an ordeal.” He felt a sharp pang of disloyalty then, because he’d forgotten about Tasnim entirely. It was as if he really was a stranger, inhabiting the same body but utterly changed, all because of one lush woman and her artlessly addictive mouth. “And my first marriage might not have been a love match, but it was good. We were content.”

Amaya’s hand crept up to her neck and she cupped her hand there, then looked away.

“Kavian is not the kind of man who is ever going to be content,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear her. The old version of himself would have pretended he hadn’t.

“I wish I could call it off,” he told her quietly, and saw her swallow hard. Was he that harsh? That she had no idea that he wanted to protect her—that he would have if he could? “But you signed all the papers. You made your initial vows. By the laws of Daar Talaas, you are already his.”

She shuddered, and when she looked at him again, he felt that great loosening inside him again, as if he’d lost this, too. This relationship with the only sibling he had left. This sister who clearly had no idea that he loved her, too.

He felt an unknown and unpleasant sensation swamp him then and realized he’d felt it before. When Sterling had stood there before him with her eyes closed and her head bowed, visibly forcing herself to relax, the better to take a hit he hadn’t been planning to deliver.

Helplessness.

He loathed it.

“Amaya.” Her head jerked around and her eyes met his, and he saw confusion there. And something else, something a little more like haunted. “You are not a mere pawn. I care what happens to you. But I can’t fix this.”

“So I am doomed.” And her voice cracked on that last word. “There is no hope.”

“You can appeal to Kavian himself—”

“I’d have better luck appealing to a sandstorm in the desert!”

“Amaya.” But he didn’t know what to say. He was a goddamned king and what was the point? He couldn’t save anyone. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” She shook her head, as if she was shaking something off. “I don’t want war, Rihad. I don’t want Bakri to fall. But I don’t want to be Kavian’s…possession, either. I won’t.”

And her screen went dark.

Leaving Rihad alone with his thoughts and his regrets, which were darker still.