When here she’d been all of five minutes ago, feeling something like self-congratulatory that no matter what else was happening—or not happening, as was the case with whiling away a life behind bars—she was no longer one panic attack away from the embarrassing end of her medical career.
Thinking of her medical career made that knot swell. She rubbed at it, then wished she hadn’t, because the Sheikh’s dark gaze dropped to her hand. A lot like he thought she was touching herself for him.
Which made that prickle of sensation tracing its way down her spine seem to bloom. Into something Anya couldn’t quite convince herself was fear.
“Are you apologizing for putting me in your dungeon or for forgetting you put me in your dungeon?” she asked, a little more forcefully than she’d intended. But she lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders, and went with it. “And regardless of which it is, do you really think eight months of imprisonment is something an apology can fix?”
He shifted slightly, barely inclining his head at the man beside him, who Anya knew was in charge of these dungeons. As the round little toad had pompously informed her of that fact, repeatedly. And she watched, astonished, as the keys were produced immediately, her cell was unlocked, and then the door flung wide.
The Sheikh inclined his head again. This time at her.
“I can only apologize again for your ordeal,” he said in that low voice of his that made her far too aware of how powerful he was. Because it hummed in her. “I invite you to leave this prison behind and become, instead, my honored guest.”
Anya didn’t move. Not even a muscle. She eyed the obvious predator before her as if, should she breathe too loudly, he might attack in all that ivory and gold. “Is there a difference?”
The man before her did not shout. She could see temper and arrogance in his gaze, but he did not give in to them. Though there were men all around him, many of them scowling at her as if she was nothing short of appalling, he did not do the same.
Instead, he held her gaze, and she could not have said what it was about him that made something in her quiver. Why she felt, suddenly, as if she could tip forward off of that cliff, fall and fall and fall, and never reach the depths of his dark eyes.
Then, clearly to the astonishment and bewilderment of the phalanx of men around him, Sheikh Tarek bin Alzalam held out his hand.
“Come,” he said again, an intense urging. “You will be safe. You have my word.”
And later, Anya would have no idea why that worked. Why she should take the word of a strange man whose fault it was, whether he’d known it or not, that she’d been locked away for eight long months.
Maybe it was as simple as the fact that he was beautiful. Not the way the men back home were sometimes, mousse in their hair and their T-shirt sleeves rolled just so. But in the same stark and overwhelming way the city outside these windows was, a gold stone fortress that was, nonetheless, impossibly beautiful. Desert sunrises and sunsets. The achingly beautiful blue sky. The songs that hung over the city sometimes, bringing her to tears.
He was harsh and stern and still, the only word that echoed inside her wasn’t pig. It was beautiful.
Anya didn’t have it in her to resist.
Not after nearly three seasons of cold stone and iron bars.
Before she could think better of it—or talk herself out of it—she rose. She crossed the floor of her cell as if his gaze was a tractor beam and she was unable to fight it. As if she was his to command.
Almost without meaning to, she slipped her hand into his.
Heat punched into her as his fingers closed over hers. Anya was surprised to find them hard and faintly rough, as if this man—this King—regularly performed some kind of actual labor that left calluses there.
Snips of overheard conversations between guards echoed inside her, then. Tales of a king who had risen from his bed and held off the enemy with his own two hands and an ancient sword, like something out of a myth.
Surely not, Anya thought.
She saw a flicker of something in his dark eyes, then. That same heat that should have embarrassed her, yes, but something else, too.
Maybe it was surprise that there was this storm between them, as if a simple touch could change the weather.
Indoors.
You have been locked up too long, Anya snapped at herself.
He did something with his head that was not a bow of any kind, but made her think of a deep, formal bow all the same.
Then, still gripping her hand and holding it out before him—like something out of an old storybook, wholly heedless of the way sensation lashed at her like rain—the King led her out of the dungeon.
And despite herself—despite every furious story she’d told herself over the past months, every scenario she’d imagined and reimagined in her head—as they emerged from the steep stone steps into what was clearly the main part of the palace, Anya was charmed.
She told herself it was as simple as moving from darkness into light. Anyone would be dazzled, she assured herself, after so many months below ground. Especially when she’d been brought here that terrifying night they’d been captured, hustled through lines of scary men with weapons, certain that the fact she’d been separated from her colleagues meant only terrible things.
Today Anya still had no idea what she was walking into, but at least it was pretty.
More than pretty. Everything seemed to be made of marble or mosaic, inlaid with gold and precious stones or carved into glorious patterns. It was all gleaming white or the sparkling blue water of the fountains. There were splashes of color, exultant flowers, and the impossibly blue sky there above her in wide-open courtyards, like a gift.
She found herself tipping back her face to let the sun move over it, even though she knew that gave too much away. That it made her much too vulnerable.
But if he was only taking her from one cell to another, she intended to enjoy it.
Anya had learned the language, but still, she didn’t understand what Tarek muttered to a specific man who strode directly behind him. The rest of the men fell away. There were more impossibly graceful halls, statues and art that made a deep, old longing inside her swell into being, and then this blade of a king led her into a room so dizzy with light that she found herself blinking as she looked around.
The light bounced off all the surfaces, gleaming so hard it almost hurt, but Anya loved it. Even when her eyes teared up, she loved it.
Tarek dropped her hand, then beckoned for her to take a seat in one of the low couches she belatedly realized formed a circle in the center of the room. But how could she notice the brightly patterned cushions and seats when the walls were encrusted in jewels and the room opened up on to a long, white terrace? She thought she saw the hint of a pool. And off to one side, more chairs, low tables, and lush green trees for shade.
“This is your suite and your salon,” he told her. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and then I will leave you to reacclimate. You will be provided with whatever you need. Clothes to choose from, a bath with whatever accessories you require, and, of course, access to your loved ones using whatever medium you wish. My servants are even now assembling outside this room, ready to wait on you hand and foot. In the meantime, as I cannot imagine that the food in the dungeon speaks well of Alzalam and because I am afraid I must ask you these questions, I’ve taken the liberty of requesting a small tea service.”
“A tea service,” Anya repeated, and had to choke back the urge to burst out laughing. She coughed. “That is...the most insane and yet perfect thing you could possibly have said. A tea service.”
She suspected she was hysterical. Or about to be, because she was clearly in shock and attempting to process it, when that was likely impossible. She was out of her cell, and that was what mattered. More, she did not think that Tarek had chosen this room bursting with light and open to th
e great outdoors by accident.
Yet somehow, she thought that after all of this, she might not survive if she broke apart like that. Here, now, when it seemed she might actually have made it through.
She would never forgive herself if she fell apart now.
When he was sitting opposite her, all his ivory and gold seeming a part of the light that she was suddenly bathed in. As if he was another jeweled thing, precious and impossible.
If she cried now, she would die.
And as if to taunt her, that knotted horror in her solar plexus pulled tight.
“You do not have to eat, of course,” he said with a kind of matter-of-fact gentleness that made the knot ache and, lower, something deep in her belly begin to melt. “Nor am I suggesting that a few pastries can make up for what was done to you. Consider it the first of many gifts I intend to bestow upon you, as an apology for what has happened to you here.”
Anya didn’t really know how she was expected to respond to that. Because the fact was, she was still here and she couldn’t quite believe what was happening. She shifted in her plush, soft seat and dug her fingernails into her thigh, hard. It hurt, but she didn’t wake up to find herself in her cell. She’d had so many of those dreams at first, and still had them now and again. They were all so heartbreakingly realistic and every time, the shock of waking to find herself still stuck in that cell felt like the kind of blow she couldn’t get up from.
Slowly, she released her painful grip on her own thigh and assessed her situation.
She hadn’t been tossed on a truck headed for the border, or shot in the back of the head, or sent back to the States so she could throw herself off the plane to kiss the ground—not that she thought an airport floor would inspire her to do any such thing.
If this was truly freedom, or the start of it, she was still a long way off from having to sort through what remained of the life she’d left behind.
That was not a happy thought.
When the door swung open again, servants streamed inside bearing platters and pushing a cart. Her stomach rumbled at the sight. Plate after plate of delicacies were delivered to the low table between her and the King. Nuts and dates, the promised pastries, meats and spreads, breads and cheeses. Cakes and yogurts and what she thought was a take on baklava, drenched in a rich honey she could smell from where she sat. Bowls filled with savory dishes she couldn’t identify, all of which looked beautiful and smelled even better. Pitchers of water, sparking and still. Tea in one silver carafe and in another, rich, dark coffee.
Anya might not trust her own happiness, or what was happening around her, but she could eat her fill for the first time in months, and for the moment that felt like the same thing. Because there were flavors again, as bright as the sun that careened around this room. Flavors and textures, each one a revelation, like colors on her tongue.
She glutted herself, happily, and didn’t care if it made her sick.
While across from her, the Sheikh lounged in his seat and drank only coffee. Black.
Anya told herself there was no reason she should take that as some kind of warning.
When her belly was deliciously full, she sat back and took a very deep breath. And for the first time in a long while, Anya was aware of herself as a woman again. Not a prisoner. Not a doctor.
A woman, that was all, who had just engaged in the deeply sensual act of enjoying her food.
Perhaps it was because Tarek was so harshly, inarguably, a man. Here in the dizzy brightness and jeweled quiet of this room, there was no doubt in her mind that he was a king. Mythic or otherwise, and everything that entailed. It was the way he sat there, waiting for her—yet not precisely waiting. Because she could feel the power in him. It was unmistakable.
He filled the room, hotter than the sunshine that poured in from outside. Richer than the coffee and more intense than the sugar and butter, tartness and spice on her tongue.
And his gaze only seemed darker the longer he studied her.
Waiting her out, she understood then. Because he was in control, not her. Yet in a different way than her guards had been in control below, or the cell itself had contained her. Tarek did not need to place her behind bars.
Not when he could look at her and make her wonder why she couldn’t stay right where she was, forever, if that would please him—
Get a grip, Anya, she ordered herself.
She’d thought him beautiful in the dungeons, but here, he was worse. Much worse. There was no getting away from the stark sensuality of his features, with that face like a hawk’s that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find stamped on old coins.
Anya felt distinctly grubby by comparison. She was suddenly entirely too aware that she had not had access to decent products in a long, long time. Her hair felt like straw. Her prison-issue clothes had suited her fine in the cell she’d eventually made, if not cozy, livable. But the gray drabness of the clothes she’d lived in for so long felt like an affront now. Here where this man watched her with an expression that, no matter what pretty words he spouted, did not strike her as remotely apologetic.
“You said you had questions for me,” she said, when it became clear to her that he was perfectly willing to sit there in silence. Watching her eat.
Making her feel as caged as if he held her between his hands.
It only made her feel more like a bedraggled piece of trash someone had flung onto his pristine marble floors. That, in turn, made her think of her long, quiet, painful childhood in her father’s house. Her succession of stepmothers, each younger and prettier than the last.
Anya had never been a pretty girl. Not like her stepmothers. She’d never wanted to do the kind of work they did to remain so. And her father had always frowned and asked her why she would lower herself to worries about her appearance when she was supposedly intelligent, like him, thereby making certain Anya and the stepmother du jour were little better than enemies.
And sometimes a whole lot worse than that.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of the ways she could use her appearance as a springboard toward confidence, upon occasion, when she wasn’t feeling it internally. She didn’t need a gown, or whatever it was the ladies wore in a place like this. But she wouldn’t have minded a shower and some conditioner.
Still, he’d said he had his questions and Anya didn’t know what would happen if she refused. Would it be straight back into the dungeon with her?
“Tell me how you came to be in my country,” he invited her, though she felt the truth of that invitation impress itself against her spine as the order it was. “In the middle of a minor revolution.”
“Minor?”
The Sheikh did something with his chin that she might have called a shrug, had he been a lesser man. “Loss of life was minimal. My brother anticipated a quiet coup and was surprised when that was not what he got. He lives on in prison, an emblem to all of his own bad decisions and my mercy. Despite his best efforts, the country did not descend into chaos.”
Anya didn’t have a brother, but doubted she would sound so remote about a coup attempt if she did. “I guess you must not have been out there in the thick of it.”
His lips thinned. “You are mistaken.”
Anya blinked at that, and found herself clearing her throat. Unnecessarily. And more because of that storm in her than anything in her throat. A storm that wound around and around, then shifted into more of that melting that should have horrified her.
She told herself it was shock. This was all shock. Her whole body kept reacting to this man and she didn’t like it, but it wasn’t him.
You’re not yourself, she told herself, but it didn’t feel like an excuse.
It felt a lot more like permission.
But Anya had trained in emergency medicine. Then had trained more by flinging herself into the deep end, in and out of some of the worst places on
the planet and usually with very little in the way of backup.
She could handle tea with a king, surely.
There were fewer bodily fluids, for one thing.
“Crossing into Alzalam was accidental,” she told him. She’d gone over it a thousand times. Then a thousand more. “We were working in one of the refugee camps over the border. You know that civil war has been going on for a generation.”
“Yes,” the man across from her said quietly. “And it has ever been a horror.”
As if he felt that horror deeply. Personally.
Her heart jolted, then thudded loudly.
“I’m surprised you think so,” she said without thinking, and watched a royal eyebrow arch high on his ferociously stark brow. “That you are even aware of the scope of that kind of disaster from...” She glanced around. “Here.”
“Because I am no different from a tyrant who rules by fear.” His voice was soft, but she did not mistake the threat in it. “We are all the same, we desert men in our ancient kingdoms.”
Her heart and that knot in her chest pulsed in concert, and she thought she might be shaking. God, she hoped she wasn’t shaking, showing her weaknesses, letting him see how easily he intimidated her.
“To be fair,” she managed to say, “my experience of desert kings has pretty much been nothing but death, disease, and dungeons. Not to discount the pastries, of course.”
She was holding her breath again. His gaze was so dark, so merciless, that she was sure that if she dared look away—if she dared look down—she would find he’d made her into some of that filigree that lined his archways. An insubstantial lace, even if carved from bone.
And then, to her astonishment, the most dangerous man she’d ever met, who could lock her up for the rest of her life with a wave of one finger—or worse—
Smiled.
CHAPTER THREE
TAREK HAD NEVER before considered food erotic. It was fuel. It was sometimes a necessary evil. It could, upon occasion, be a form of communion.
Chosen for His Desert Throne Page 3