Читать книгу Royal Families Vs. Historicals - Annie West, Rebecca Winters - Страница 72

THE HEADLINE A MONTH LATER was like a slap—the hit, perhaps, that Sterling had been expecting all along. She sat frozen solid on the balcony outside Rihad’s suite, staring down at the tablet computer Rihad had left sitting there when he’d stepped inside to take a phone call. She felt sick.

Black Widow Sterling Lures King Rihad into Her Web! the worst of the European tabloids shrieked. And the article beneath it was even worse.

Sex-symbol Sterling flaunts postbaby bod and enslaves the desert king! Starry-eyed King Rihad can’t keep his eyes—or his hands!—off his late brother’s lover. “But Sterling left a trail of broken hearts behind her in New York,” say concerned friends. Will the formidable king be one more of heartbreaker Sterling’s conquests?

It was beautifully done, really. Killer Whore. Vain Whore. Married Whore. Omar’s Whore. New York Whore. So many clever ways of calling Sterling a whore without ever actually uttering the word.

The worst part was, she hadn’t seen this coming. She hadn’t expected it, and she should have. Of course she should have. But she’d actually believed that now that she and Rihad were not only married, but also actually as intimate as that honeymoon had been meant to suggest, the awful paparazzi would leave her alone.

She’d been incredibly naive.

There are no happy endings, she reminded herself then, frowning out at the sea that stretched toward the horizon before her as if basking, blue and gleaming, in the sun. Not for you. Not ever.

But she’d been lulled into believing otherwise.

Their lazy days at the oasis had bled together into one great burst of brilliant heat, a haze of bright sun above, desert breezes over the cool water in the shaded pools and the desperate, delirious hunger that only Rihad had ever called out in her—and that only he could satisfy.

Sterling had learned every inch of his proud, infinitely masculine body. She’d tasted him, teased him, taken him. She’d learned how to make him groan out his pleasure, how to scream out her own. He’d taken her beneath the endless stars, in the vast softness of his bed, in the luxurious tub that stood in her own luxuriously appointed tent. He’d been inventive and uninhibited—and demanding, as he’d promised. She’d learned to be the same in return.

Sterling had given herself over to the exquisite pleasures of the flesh that she’d denied herself so long—all her life, in fact. Touch. Lust. Desire and its sweet oblivion. She’d eaten too much, drunk too deeply. She’d lost herself in Rihad, again and again and again. She’d told him the truth about herself, or a critical portion of the truth anyway—and the world hadn’t ended.

She’d let herself imagine that Rihad was as powerful as he’d always appeared to her. That he could truly hold back whatever nightmares threatened. That he would.

That she and Leyla and this marvel of a man could create their own truths and live in them. That they could finally be the family she’d always wanted.

But she’d forgotten who she was.

She always did.

It had been some weeks since they’d left the oasis and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why the tabloids had latched on to her again. The article went on to make salacious suggestions about a list of regional leaders and some local celebrities, all of whom had been at last night’s elegant function in one of the new luxury hotel complexes being built along the shore of the Bay of Bakri.

That meant that someone at that party had taken exception to the Queen Whore being paraded about on their king’s arm and had taken to the tabloids to express their feelings.

“I’d prefer you not read that nonsense,” Rihad said from the doorway, his deep voice like a flame within her, that easily. That quickly. Sterling looked over at him, still frowning, despite the little flip her heart performed at the sight of him, dark and beautiful there in the arched entryway. His mouth crooked as if he could feel it, too. “It will rot your brain.”

“I told you not to take me to your events, Rihad.” When his fierce brows rose, she flushed, aware that her agitation had sharpened her tone. “I knew this would happen.”

“It is our job to ignore the tabloids,” he said, mildly enough. “Or so you told me yourself.”

But this was different. She was a different person than the woman who had said that to him. And this incarnation of herself didn’t want to let the tarnish of that one seep into what they’d built between them in the past month. She thought it might break her apart.

“It’s only going to get worse.” Sterling folded her hands in her lap and tried to remain calm, or at least to look it. “It always gets worse. They already call me the Queen Whore.”

“Not out loud or in print, they don’t.” There was no softness on his starkly beautiful face then. No hint of a curve to his lush mouth. Only that dangerous light in his dark gold eyes. “Not unless they wish to explain themselves to me personally. Let me assure you, no one does.”

“You can’t threaten everyone on the planet, Rihad. You can’t decree that people forget my past.”

“Your imagined past.”

“What does that matter? When it comes to perception, all that matters is what people believe.” She shook her head at him. “Isn’t that why we went on our honeymoon in the first place?”

“It was one among many reasons,” he said, and his dark gold eyes moved over her the way his hands did so freely, these days. And she was still so astonished that she liked it. That she more than liked it. “The least important, I think.”

He looked dark and forbidding in the gleaming robes he’d worn today for his meetings with some of the local tribes later on, but he didn’t intimidate her any longer. Not the way he once had. Now all that power, all that dark authority he wore so easily, made her shiver for entirely different reasons. His dark gold eyes fixed on hers and everything inside her stilled in glorious anticipation, the way it always did now. Goose bumps moved sinuously over her arms and shoulders, and she wished she could continue to lose herself in it. In him.

But she knew what he didn’t.

That her past was a living thing that stalked her. It always would. It always did, because it lived inside of her. No matter what she did, or how, the world thought the worst of her. That wouldn’t change. It had never changed. She’d told herself she was immune to it for all those years with Omar, because that kind of notoriety had been exactly what he’d wanted and they’d courted it together.

But Rihad was different. Rihad wasn’t hiding. The last thing Rihad needed was notoriety.

Rihad deserved a whole lot better than a secondhand queen he’d married only for the baby’s sake, no matter how they fit together in bed. Sex might have been new to Sterling, but it wasn’t to him. He could get it anywhere, she reminded herself brusquely and ignored the deep pang inside her at the thought. He was the King of Bakri. There would be women lining the streets of Bakri City should he indicate he was looking.

Sterling was the one who couldn’t imagine anyone but him touching her. She was the broken one, all the way through.

“You married yourself off to stop a scandal,” she reminded him lightly, though nothing inside of her felt anything like light. It was as if the moment she’d acknowledged the darkness, it had seeped into everything. Every part of her. “Not to perpetuate one every time you step outside the palace walls.”

He considered her for a moment, his dark gaze unreadable. He was still standing there in the arched doorway that led into his rooms, where she’d spent the bulk of her time since they’d returned from the desert. They hadn’t even discussed it—he’d simply moved her things into his suite. Sterling had been so spellbound by this man it hadn’t occurred to her to maintain any distance.

For his sake, not hers.

And it was then, frowning up at him, angry at herself and worried about his future, that Sterling understood that she’d fallen in love with Rihad al Bakri.

It stunned her. It was a hit as brutal as that tabloid headline, swift and to her gut, with the force of a hard kick. She didn’t know how she managed to keep from doubling over. How she managed to keep looking at him as if her entire life hadn’t run aground right then and there, decisively and disastrously.

Love wasn’t something Sterling could do. Ever.

How had she managed to fool herself all this time? A baby. A husband. No one will ever love you, little girl, they’d told her. This is what you deserve. Deep down, you know it.

She did know it. And she never should have let all of this get so complicated.

“What can possibly be going through your head?” Rihad asked quietly, jolting Sterling’s attention back to him. “To put such a look on your face?”

“I was only thinking about how soon we should divorce,” Sterling said, in a surprisingly even tone of voice. There were too many things rolling inside of her, making her feel unsteady on her own feet, as if she was a storm about to break. “That’s obviously the easiest and best way to solve this problem. You remain the dutiful, heroic king who married me only to secure Leyla’s position and when they discuss the scandal that is me, it won’t affect you at all.”

He’d gone so still. His dark gold eyes burned.

“Do I appear affected now?” It was a dangerous question, asked in that lethal tone of voice.

“It will make me seem particularly heartless and horrible if I were to leave before Leyla is a year old,” Sterling continued matter-of-factly, not answering him. “That might be best, then. I trust that once everything’s died down, once you marry someone far more appropriate, we can work out a quiet way for me to stay in her life.”

“Sterling.” He waited until she met his hard gaze, and she could admit that it was difficult. That it cost her. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Our divorce,” she said, struggling to keep her voice light. To gaze back at him as if there was something more inside her than a great weight and a terrible sob breaking her ribs apart. “Leyla is now legitimate. A princess of Bakri, as you planned. There’s no reason to drag this out if my presence here is causing you trouble. That’s silly.”

“Because it has worked out so terribly for you thus far?” he asked, a hard edge in his voice, like a lash, and she had to force herself not to react to it. Not to show him how it had landed and how it hurt. “My condolences, Sterling. When you came apart beneath my mouth in the shower this morning, twice, I had the strangest impression that you’d resigned yourself to the horrors of this marriage. Somehow.”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and made herself glare at him as if she still hated him—as if she’d ever really hated him—her heart pounding at her as if she was running. She wished she was.

Then again, this was how it had started.

“That’s sex,” she said dismissively, and she felt something sharp-edged scrape inside her as she said it. As if she wanted to hurt him. As if she wanted to remind him that this had never been meant to happen between them. As if he was to blame for the fact she’d lost herself in sex and happy fantasies of happy lives she could never have. As if loving him was something he’d done to her. A punishment for daring to imagine she could love anyone without repercussions, when she’d been taught otherwise a very long time ago. “I’ve never had it before, as you know. It turns out, it’s a lot of fun.”

“Fun,” he repeated softly, in a way that should have terrified her.

She told herself it didn’t. Or that it didn’t matter either way.

“And I appreciate you introducing me to this whole new world,” she said, never shifting her gaze from his. “I do.”

“Introducing you?” he echoed, and that time, a chill sneaked down her back. Her heart already ached. Her stomach twisted. But if she loved him, if she loved her daughter—and God help her, but she did, so much more than she’d known she was capable of loving anything—she had to fix this.

And there was only one way to do that.

Maybe she’d always known it would come to this. Maybe that was why she’d never touched a man in her life. Because no matter who he was, it would always end up right here. Face-to-face with the worst of her truths and no way to escape it.

There is no other man, a small voice inside intoned, like words chiseled into stone. Deep into her heart. Not for you.

She knew that was true, too. It didn’t change anything.

“But you’re not the only man alive, Rihad, regardless of how you act,” she told him then, before she could talk herself out of it. Before she could give in to all the things she wanted. “You were merely my first.”

* * *

For a moment Rihad held himself so still he thought he might have turned to stone himself, into one of the pillars that held up this palace of his, smooth and hard and cold all the way through.

Which would have been safer for Sterling by far.

Because what shook in him, rolling and buckling, seismic and intense, was so vast he was surprised the whole cursed palace didn’t crumble down around them where they stood. There was a clutching sensation in his chest, a pounding in his head and a murderous streak lighting him up like a bloody lantern.

“I am your first, yes,” he said, in the voice of the civilized man that he’d always thought he was, before her—a king, for his sins, not this wild, fanged creature within that wanted only to howl. Then stake its claim. “And your last, Sterling. Let us make sure that part is clear.”

“That’s not up to you,” she said, tilting her chin up as if she was expecting a wrestling match to break out.

Rihad could think of few things he’d like more than to put his hands on her, but he wouldn’t do it just then. Not while he was still battling his temper, which was all the more unpredictable because he was so unused to it.

He’d never understood desire. Need. This kind of exquisite weakness. Now he was made of nothing else.

He tried to remain calm. Or at least sound calm. “I think you’ll find it is.”

“There’s no need to get so emotional,” she chided, and he was as astonished as that day back in New York when she’d started issuing orders. She stood, smoothing her hands down the front of the long dress she wore over her bare feet, a combination he found maddeningly erotic. Or was that another emotion? He seemed to be full of them where she was concerned. “I don’t know why you’re not seeing this clearly. The sooner we divorce, the easier it will be to rehabilitate your image.”

“My image is fine.”

Sterling inclined her head toward the table and his tablet and all those snide tabloid articles. “Evidently not.”

She even smiled serenely in his direction as she walked past him into the suite, the long skirt of her dress flowing out and around as she moved, so lithe and pretty on her feet it was as if everything she did was a dance. Even the way she walked away from him.

And this was absurd. He knew that. He knew she was trying to needle him, though he couldn’t have said why. He knew she wanted him as much as he did her—he hadn’t imagined their morning in his shower, the way she’d cried out his name and ground herself against his mouth, and he’d seen that same hectic fever in her gaze now, too. It was always there. Always.

He hadn’t imagined everything that had happened between them over the past month. This woman was his in every conceivable way. He had no intention of divorcing her, or even permitting her to sleep apart from him again. What did it matter if she admitted this or not?

Yet Rihad found it mattered quite a lot.

He stalked after her, catching her while she was still crossing his bedchamber and using her elbow and her momentum to spin her back around to face him.

“Don’t you dare—” she began, but he was already touching her, and that was its own alchemy.

That fire that only burned hotter by the day exploded between them, the way it always did, wild and bright. He saw her pulse accelerate in her neck. He saw that white-hot heat make her eyes go glassy.

“You little fool,” he bit out, but this wasn’t temper, he understood. Not any longer. There was that bittersweet pang of jealousy at the thought of her with other men, but everything else was pure, sensual menace that he had every intention of taking out on her delectable body. Until she took his point to heart. “Do you think this happens every day?”

“I assume it must,” she fired back at him, so busy fighting him she didn’t seem to notice the way he was backing her across the room, to the nearest wall. “Or every popular song I’ve ever heard is a lie.”

She let out a small, surprised noise when her back came up against the nearest brocaded wall, and then another when Rihad merely leaned closer and pressed his forehead to hers, holding her that simply.

“This is the sex you seem to think you can get anywhere,” he told her, and her mouth was a serious temptation, but he ignored it, concentrating on pulling that long skirt of hers up and sliding his hands beneath. “This is the chemistry you imagine is so run-of-the-mill.”

He felt that shudder go through her and then his hands were on her soft thighs, and it was his turn to let out a long breath when he found she was completely bare beneath her dress. There was nothing but the heat of her skin, the touch of her soft curls, and then that molten core of her, all his.

Only and ever his.

“Rihad…” she whispered.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he told her.

He angled his head back so he could look at her, even as he plunged a finger deep into her heat. He watched a flush spread over her cheeks and knew that was the truth of things between them. The only truth that mattered, and it always would be. That dark, bewitching fire. That endless well of need.

“If you have something to say to me, Sterling, say it. Don’t poke at me. Don’t pretend.”

She stiffened at that. “Pretending is the problem. It’s what we’ve—I’ve—been doing this whole time!”

“I don’t think so.”

He pulled his finger from her depths, then held her gaze as he licked it clean, her taste as intoxicating as ever on his tongue. He felt his mouth curve as her lips parted at that, as if she was finding it difficult to breathe regularly. He reached down between them to handle his robes and his trousers, and then he stepped between her legs as he lifted her up, wrapping her around him and holding her there for a long, hot instant.

This time, he didn’t carry her to a nearby table. This time, as he lowered her against him he slid deep inside of her, so deep they both groaned at the sensation.

Her hands balled into fists at his shoulders and she bit her lip as if she meant to resist him. But then she rolled her hips against his as if she couldn’t help herself, and Rihad smiled.

He took control then. Her ankles were locked tight around his hips and he lifted her up, then brought her down, working her against him slowly. So slowly. Making her shudder and pant. Making it so good she’d forget all this divorce and separation nonsense.

Because she was soft and hot, a revelation around him with every stroke, and she was his.

All his. Always his.

It took him a long while to realize that he was chanting that out loud, like a prayer or a promise, and when he did, he laughed.

“Say it,” he demanded.

But this was Sterling, his Sterling. So even as she writhed against him, even as her hips met his in this wild dance of theirs, she defied him.

And God help him, he loved it. He loved all of this more than he’d ever imagined was possible, more than he’d ever loved anything or anyone. Sterling was his, damn it. All of her. Her body and her heart alike, and he didn’t much care if she thought otherwise. He knew the truth.

He wasn’t giving her up. Ever. Even if his kingdom came down around him. Even if the world followed suit.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t care about his duty. He cared about her.

“Say it,” he told her again. “I can do this all day. And if I can, you will. But you will not come until you admit what we both already know is the truth.”

She let out a sound then, half fury and half need, and Rihad laughed again, because he was as hungry as she was. As greedy for her.

“All yours,” she gritted out, her blue eyes slick and warm on his, and he felt it like a caress. This was who they were. Caress, capitulation, it was all the same thing. It all led to the same place. “Damn you, Rihad, I’m yours.”

He reached down between them and pressed hard against the taut center of her hunger, and she bucked hard against him, arching her back and digging her fingers hard into his shoulders, then screamed as she plummeted over the edge.

But Rihad was only getting started.