by Dani Collins
She was wide awake and tingling with arousal, but it felt nice to be cuddled, so she stayed exactly as she was, listening to his breaths settle into the slow, deep soughs of sleep.
She didn’t realize she had also fallen asleep until he brushed her cheek and said, “Ya amar. The other man in your life needs you.”
“Oh.” The stars were gone and the sky pearlescent with coming dawn. With it came the realization she was lying on his mostly naked body out in the courtyard.
When she’d run her tongue all over him last night, she hadn’t considered that she would have to make eye contact with him at some point. Too soon!
From the door to her apartment, she heard Qaswar’s muted cry, as though the nanny was trying to appease him with his Binky or a bottle, but he knew what he wanted.
“I’ll go.” She stood so fast her head swam, and she nearly wobbled into the pool.
Behind her, she heard Akin leap to his feet, but she quickly got herself under control and hurried away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NURA APOLOGIZED PROFUSELY for waking Hannah, but Hannah hadn’t even seen her. She was too befuddled and embarrassed to do more than brush the whole thing off, assuring Nura she’d done the right thing.
Hannah pumped for emergencies, but she had made very clear to all the staff that she preferred to breastfeed her son even if it meant waking her. She only wished she hadn’t fallen asleep so soundly, forcing Nura to come out. The poor woman had only wanted to gently shake her awake, but whatever she’d seen in Akin’s eyes when he snapped them open had spooked Nura into believing he wished her staked on an anthill.
Hannah tried to reassure the girl that Akin wouldn’t have been upset in any way, but she suspected Nura was as relieved as she was when the only word they had from him that day was the message that he would like Hannah to continue visiting his mother in his stead.
Hannah was a tiny bit stung but reasoned that he had just returned after being away two weeks and would have a lot of work to catch up on. She wasn’t ready to talk to him, anyway. Going out to greet him, she’d only been seeking a chat, not...that.
Then the pearls arrived. The necklace was like an infinity scarf that could be twisted and turned into drapes of three or four or five strings. Nura was thrilled and couldn’t wait to try all the clasps and pendants so she could rehearse a full repertoire of styles, but Hannah was appalled. Was he sending her some sort of reward for what she’d done?
Akin hadn’t included a note and, as two more days of silence passed, Hannah made a couple of discreet inquiries about the King. He hadn’t taken a sudden downturn, so that left Akin’s reason for ignoring her a mystery.
As her hurt and pique grew, Hannah decided she would rather not hear from him. There was no way she was reaching out to him, either. Not when he was ghosting her worse than a frat boy who’d passed his final and no longer needed a free tutor. Been there, done that, and made all the poor excuses for jerks who didn’t deserve her benefit of the doubt in the first place.
On day five after their encounter by the pool, she arrived at his mother’s parlor to find him there. He wore the green robe that usually meant he’d been with foreign dignitaries, and looked as though he’d had a fresh beard trim. He stopped whatever he was saying to swing his attention to her.
Damn him and his bedroom eyes. She hated that the sight of him made her feel as though a wave picked her up and tried to float her toward him.
“Oh, you’re here. How nice,” she forced herself to say, as she handed the baby to Tadita. She didn’t show her teeth when she stretched her lips in a flat smile and sent it in Akin’s general direction. “I’ll leave you to your family time.”
“Hannah,” he said in that tone, the one that instructed missiles to launch or armies to halt.
It hit her in the middle of her spine, but she ignored it. She ignored him hard as she stalked away with her eyes on fire.
He didn’t come after her, which was even more insulting than if he had caught up to her and chewed her out in public.
Maybe she was overreacting, she cautioned herself as her belly churned with misgiving. She lived in her own bubble here. Perhaps the zombie apocalypse was in full swing and Akin had been tied up with digging a moat around Baaqi. Perhaps zombies choked on pearls and that was why he’d sent them instead of a note that said something like, I’ll be tied up for a few days and will call as soon as I’m free.
There could be any number of rational explanations for his ignoring her, but letting a man treat her like garbage was not on her happiness list.
Prince Akin could go to hell and he was not taking her with him.
Akin probably should have checked the palace library first. He probably should have read into the fact that she’d gone to the library, and not have entered the hallowed space the way a bull entered a china shop.
However, by the time he had sat with his mother, explained that the “white nanny” was actually his wife, been berated again for marrying the mother of Eijaz’s son, he was already aggravated. And he’d walked all the way across the palace to discover Hannah hadn’t returned to her rooms—suffering a stark moment of panic when he thought she’d gone missing, even as her bodyguard took his own sweet time to reveal her whereabouts. Then he’d paced all the way across the palace again to the library, his patience thinning to its very last thread.
“Out,” he barked to the cavernous room, startling a handful of clerics and Hannah, who lifted her nose from a book she was browsing near a shelf on the upper gallery.
She gave him one very haughty look, then slid her book back onto the shelf and came down the stairs with her gaze on the door, as if she was calmly exiting during a fire drill.
“Not you,” he said. “And you damned well know it.”
She stopped on the bottom step, one hand on the top of the post. “You’re supposed to talk quietly in a library,” she reminded him stiffly as the door closed behind the last straggler.
“I don’t have time for games, Hannah. Ever. If we have a problem, let’s confront it and get through it.”
Her fist closed on the post, the only sign that she wasn’t comfortable with facing conflict head-on. “I find gifts for sex insulting.”
Wow. She might not be comfortable with fighting, but she didn’t pull her punches when she decided to throw some.
“That’s not what it was. I knew I wouldn’t see you for—”
“I don’t care.” She spoke over him. “I don’t care what you thought you were saying by sending it. It came across as paying me for sex. That’s gross. If you want to say something to me, do what you’re forcing me to do and say it to my face. Don’t encode it. I’m not going to guess. Obviously, mistakes can be made,” she summed up tightly.
Anyone else would understand what a land mine they stood on, talking to him like this. Not Hannah. She was as infuriatingly magnificent in her temper as ever.
It was moments like this that had imprinted her on his thoughts. He’d been reliving their intimate encounter almost continuously. She had leveled him, virtually leaving him in a coma. Which was one of the reasons he hadn’t made a point of seeking her out right away. For those exquisite minutes, she had been his entire world. It was humbling to realize how helpless he’d been while she’d caressed him with her mouth. His climax had been incredible. He’d succumbed to such a deep sleep afterward, her maid had been on the point of touching Hannah’s shoulder to wake her before his awareness of the young woman’s approach had penetrated his consciousness.
He typically slept very lightly. No one surprised him.
Whatever had been in Akin’s eyes when he snapped awake to see a shadow reaching for his wife had sent the maid running back in terror to Hannah’s chambers.
Everything had added up to a level of vulnerability that disturbed him. Akin didn’t allow himself weaknesses. Softness and distractions got a man kille
d. Caring was a one-way endeavor that ultimately left him empty.
“You know I have many demands on my time. I’ve made that clear,” he reminded.
“And you understand that my desire to have a baby alone was for this reason right here. I don’t want to expect anything from a man. I don’t expect anything from you,” she insisted, voice growing strident. “I won’t, in future anyway. And you shouldn’t expect anything from me. What happened the other night will never happen again.”
A clammy hand folded around his entire being. “We’re married,” he said grittily, as if that had anything to do with anything.
“It’s not a real marriage. You’ve made that more than clear, as well.”
He stepped forward into the fray, as he would to rescue anything that was important to him.
She stepped back, stumbling slightly on the step above the one she stood on. She caught her balance with a hand on the wall behind her and pressed her back firmly against it.
As insults went, that retreat was one of the most cutting she could deliver.
“I’m never going to hurt you, Hannah.”
“But you did!” She leaned into that accusation, pointing at him. “I thought you were starting to like me. That you kissed me because you wanted us to be more than allies. We agreed not to lie to one another and what you let happen was a lie.”
He was not the romantic young fool he’d once been. That was what he’d been telling himself these last few days as he fought the craving that had begun to eat at him from the moment Hannah disappeared into her chambers.
“I’m not like you, Akin. My self-esteem is an eggshell. Every man I was ever involved with stepped all over me. They acted like they wanted to be with me, but they only wanted to copy my homework or tell their friends they got the frigid librarian to give it up. They were mean and they didn’t care. You should have warned me that you were just like them.”
As fights went, he was taking the beating of his life. His ears rang, amplifying the injured tone in her words. And he wanted to kill those other men. Actually erase them from this earth.
“Where is the man who keeps telling me it’s his duty to protect Qaswar’s mother from harm?” she charged.
“I was trying to protect you,” he ground out. Both of them, really, but he’d gone about it backward. He saw that with blinding clarity now.
“By running hot and cold? Thanks,” she scoffed derisively, tears standing on her lashes.
Akin scowled into the middle distance, heart pounding. He ran a hand down his face.
“I’m not like those men. I do like you.” He hated to revisit the past, but he could see it was necessary so she would understand why his ignoring her had made twisted sense to him. “But I was in love once.”
Her breath hissed in as though he was the one who’d landed a blow. It only made him feel worse as she stood there so white-lipped and injured.
“Perhaps it was infatuation. That’s what I was told it was.” He spilled the words dispassionately so he wouldn’t dwell on the layers that went beyond a bruised heart to profound scorn from the people who were supposed to love him. “We were young, but I wanted to marry her. I knew I was expected to wait until Eijaz married, then accept the bride my mother chose for me. I planned an elopement anyway. My father sent me into the desert on a mission that kept me there for months. When I emerged, she was married and living in Australia. They have two daughters. I’ve heard she’s very happy, so I suppose we weren’t in love. Still, I’m careful about revealing where my affections might lie.”
“You thought someone would put me on a ship to the colonies if you treated me with an ounce of respect?”
“I don’t know, do I?” he snapped. He had his own back to a wall, and he hated it. “I still have a king who has the power to make brutal decisions without regard to how they affect me. I have been soundly schooled on that, Hannah. My feelings have never mattered. If I let you matter beyond the duty I have toward you and your son...”
He didn’t want to finish that sentence. He didn’t want to contemplate any scenario where this very nascent thing between them was snatched away and given to someone else.
“That’s how you made me feel.” Hannah’s subdued voice seemed to fill the empty room. “Like I don’t matter. It doesn’t help that you’re saying you fell in love once and wouldn’t dare take that risk again.”
“You do matter,” he growled. “I should have made that more than clear to everyone, including you. I see that now. My mother thinks you’re the damned nanny and I’ve allowed that to go on because...” He waved a hand.
Some of the starch left Hannah’s shoulders. “I don’t care about that,” she mumbled.
“I care, Hannah. I just don’t have the ability to change her mind.” He’d never had, and these days her mind was next to impossible to reach, let alone fix. “I can’t be seen as trying to snatch power from my dead brother and weak father, either.” He sighed, exhausted by a sense of futility. “I’ve been holding off on taking any bold steps until...”
“The ceremony.” She had hold of her own elbows.
“Yes.” The official handoff from King to Regent wouldn’t happen for another two months. “You had enough on your plate with the move and having a new baby. The press was all over you. I thought keeping you tucked out of the way was in your best interest. I see now that it’s not.”
“What does that mean?” She seemed to try to blend into the striped wallpaper.
“It means it is time for you to take your public position as the mother of Baaqi’s future king. As my wife. You’ll stand at my side as I go about my duties and my people will see by my regard and respect for you that I’m caretaking our country, not taking it. They’ll recognize your value and protect you as I do.”
“No, they won’t! They hate me!”
“Who does?”
“Trolls,” she said with an abstract lift of her arm. “All those people who were saying things online. The press.”
“Were. They aren’t anymore. I’ve forbidden it.”
“Pfft! I should have thought of doing that myself! They stopped because I’ve been hiding, Akin. Leave me tucked away. I’m sorry I said anything.”
“No. This is the right thing to do. You’ll see.”
“You are so wrong.”
“Hannah.”
“Don’t use that tone on me. I don’t like it.”
“Hannah,” he said as gently as he could, while closing in on her.
She shook her head and the scarf over her head was dislodged because she was still trying to disappear through the solid wall at her back.
He set his hands on the wall on either side of her shoulders, liking that she was up on a step, because it brought her high enough her eyes were even with his mouth. He wasn’t bullying or intimidating her. They were equals.
“You will not ask to be ignored, because you just told me that it hurt you when I did that to you,” he pointed out.
“That was because...” Her bottom lip wasn’t quite steady. The heel of her hand pressed the hollow of his shoulder.
“You thought I didn’t respect you. I do. We are more than allies.”
Her gaze flashed up to his.
“We’re partners,” he said.
Her lashes swept down again to hide whatever came into her eyes at that.
“You will not run from me or anyone who sees you as less than you are, because you are not a coward. Look who you are standing up to right now.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” Her hand was more resting than resisting, but he wasn’t pushing into her space, either.
He wanted to, though. He wanted to flatten her to the wall and feel every soft curve cushion him. He wanted to run his hands over her, his mouth...
He wanted to take because, “I’m not used to being given things,” he confessed. “I’ve
trained myself not to want anything, but suddenly the world is in my lap.”
Literally. Her in his lap the other night had brought on the most profound rest he’d experienced in years.
“I’m taking my brother’s place as father and ruler. His son is mine. Pleasure of any kind has always been a fleeting thing to me. Incidental. Yet you gave it to me with such selflessness.” He grazed her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. “I didn’t know how to accept it gracefully. I still don’t. But I want this marriage to be a real one. I want you, Hannah. It’s not comfortable for me to admit that.”
Her brow gave a little flex of agony and he set his mouth there, trying to ease whatever hurt he was causing, because it was the last thing he wanted to do.
Hannah didn’t know if she was being the biggest fool alive, falling for a line, or reaching for salvation when she let her hand slowly slide up from Akin’s shoulder until her arm was twined around his neck.
Akin seemed to shudder as she stretched against him and let him take her weight as she came off the wall, but she thought she might be trembling, so it was hard to tell which one of them shook. Either way, he wrapped both his arms around her, drawing her into his embrace, and the shaken feeling between them became mutual.
At the same time, he felt warm and solid and secure. Safe. Maybe it was because she was at such a close height to him. She felt like she might be able to handle him right then. Almost. Because as she drew her head back to look at him, he swooped to capture her mouth.
If she had doubted his claim that he wanted her, she had her proof here in the greed of his kiss. Not selfish—oh, no—but hungry and thorough. The control that was so much a part of him was gone as he cradled the back of her head and devoured her lips and swept his tongue into her mouth.
It was overwhelming and might have left her hanging weakly off him another time, but a hot, brilliant need flashed alive inside her, one that wanted him just as fiercely. A dim voice warned caution way in the back of her head, but she ignored it in favor of catching her fist in the back of his collar and clashing her tongue against his.