“She wasn’t meek and biddable?” Cleo’s face was tellingly devoid of expression. Her arid tone, less so. “Quiet and obedient?”
“She was not.” Khaled never spoke of these things, and it took him another long moment to pull the different pieces together. To decide how best to tell this tale he didn’t wish to share in the first place. “But after she had me, they say, she was never quite the same. Or perhaps there was always that edge in her. It’s difficult to know. Her emotions became uncontrollable. Higher highs. Lower lows.”
“Did she get help?” Cleo asked in a whisper.
“No, of course not.” He eyed her derisively. “My father consigned her to a dungeon and married three younger, prettier wives in rapid succession, forgetting about her entirely in his haste to spread his vicious barbarian seed.”
Her scowl returned. Deepened. “A simple ‘yes, she got help’ would have sufficed.”
“And destroy all your dark fantasies about men like me and my father? I would hate to ruin these desperate imaginings for you, Cleo.”
“If you don’t want to tell me this story, then don’t.” The color was high on her soft cheeks, but that didn’t keep her from aiming that withering glare at him until he felt it like her hands against his skin. “But we’ll both know that you used a diversionary tactic to get out of keeping your promises. I’m all right with that if you are, Khaled. I expect that.”
“My father was in love with her,” Khaled said shortly. “He did everything he could. But he was also the sultan, and it was not a stable time in the region. In the end, he was neither the husband she wanted nor the leader the country deserved, and he has spent the bulk of his life torn between the two.”
“That’s why he shut down the borders,” Cleo said after a moment. “For her.”
“Yes.” Khaled shrugged. “To contain his responsibilities—to focus. But it didn’t work. My mother had Amira—and there are a hundred sad reasons why I am twenty years older than my sister, Cleo. My mother spent those years in varying degrees of despair.” He met her gaze then and didn’t try to hide the grief in his own. For the past, but also for the two of them. “And we all learned far too well that love does not solve anything. It makes things worse. It creates unrealistic expectations on all sides.”
Cleo didn’t speak. She reached out a hand and put it on his chest, like a boon. A gift. As if she wanted to share these grim memories with him, or help carry the load of them.
A simple little touch, and yet he felt it everywhere.
“After Amira was born, my mother no longer got out of her bed,” he continued, not recognizing himself in that moment, lost somewhere between these harsh truths and that warm, reassuring press of her hand against his flesh. “It took years, but she eventually died. The doctors called it a wasting disease, though they couldn’t determine any actual cause. But she told anyone who would listen that my father chose his country over his wife, and that was what destroyed her.”
Cleo let out a soft breath, and Khaled found he was even more tense than before.
“Did he?” she asked, as he supposed he knew she would, her gaze never wavering from his.
“How can I answer that?” His voice was huskier than it should have been, and there was too much in the air between them. Too much, too tight, too complicated. “He never had any choice but to rule. What should he have done? Thrown the country into the hands of the wicked or the greedy so he could be at his wife’s beck and call as she wanted him to do? What kind of man would that have made him?”
“There are compromises, Khaled. There are always compromises.”
Her eyes were wide and slicked with emotion and neither one of them was pretending that this conversation was about the past.
“Is this evidence of compromise?” he demanded then. “You running away from me in the middle of the night, then tying me to a bed so you can pry into my history? Where is the compromise in that?”
“Your mother sounds like she was unwell,” Cleo said, though her voice was rough and there was that bright gleam in her gaze that spoke of tears unshed. That heavy, aching thing that he felt, too.
“There are words for it these days,” Khaled said quietly, as if that might stem the rising tide in him. As if anything could. “But all I saw were two parents who used love as their primary weapon against each other. As a battering ram, Cleo. Neither one of them could stop. And they ended up hating each other.”
She was silent for a long while. So long he realized he could hear the hum of air-conditioning units from somewhere outside, and the dappled, happy burble of what must have been a nearby fountain. All of that and his own heart, pounding too hard. Reminding him why he never, ever discussed this.
Tearing him apart with every jarring thud.
“So this is what you took from that story?” she asked, when he had begun to think she might not speak again.
“Not ‘that story.’” His tone was curt. “My life.”
“That the mistake—the tragedy—was your parents’ loving each other. That’s what you decided.”
He might have gone scathing then, but she sounded so much more tentative than she had before, as though she was trying her hardest to figure him out. Khaled thought he should have told her not to bother with such a fool’s errand, but he couldn’t deny that he liked it, all the same. It made him soften slightly.
“I decided that no wife I ever took would mistake the matter,” he told her, far more gently than he might have. “That there would never be any doubt. I am the sultan and I, too, must rule Jhurat whether I like it or not.”
She didn’t look away. Her chin rose. “You’re trying very hard not to say that you will always choose your country first.”
He was. Damn her.
“It’s not that simple.” But he couldn’t lie to her. It occurred to him then that he’d never been able to lie to her—and all of this would have been so much easier if he could have. He shoved that odd notion aside. “But yes. I will always choose Jhurat. I must. And yet, Cleo, here I lie. Lashed ineptly to an iron bed a planet away from where I should be tonight. So perhaps none of these choices are as black-and-white as you’d like to believe.”
“But it’s more than that.” She shifted, and as she sat back he found he could only marvel at how pretty she was. That it broke through all the rest of this like the sun on an overcast day, and he had no idea how he’d become so weak where she was concerned. So enamored. Or why he missed the soft weight of her hand so terribly it made him tense with the loss. “You told me I had to adhere to a very strict role. That I had to obey.”
“I was trying to protect you,” he grated at her, only dimly aware that he’d clenched his bound hands into fists. “My mother spent her life feeling abandoned and discarded and alone. If you never expected anything of me, how could you feel those things?”
Her face registered astonishment. “Are you— You’re saying that was for my own good? You can’t be.”
“I wanted to protect you.”
“By humiliating me as I knelt before you, naked.” He’d never heard a tone quite so withering. “By keeping me at arm’s length by day and only coming to me at night, as if there was something wrong with me.”
Khaled glared at her. “I wanted you to fall, but not that far. I wanted to keep you safe.”
“Then why did you work so hard to make me fall in love with you?” She shook her head when he started to protest. “You know you did. Why did you spend that week with me in the oasis? How was that anything but...too many expectations?”
“Because when it comes to you, Cleo, I find that nothing goes according to plan.” He indicated his bound wrists. “Including this.”
And then he decided he was done with this game. That it was time to finish this, once and for all. He gave the ties that bound him a quick jerk, and was free.
; CHAPTER TEN
CLEO HARDLY HAD time to register that Khaled was moving when he simply pulled her to him, then rolled so she was beneath him. By the time she understood what was happening, Khaled had balanced his weight on his elbows and was holding her head in his hands, his fingers spearing deep into her hair.
“You promised,” she whispered.
“I am a terrible man, Cleo,” he told her, his gaze so dark she trembled. “A selfish monster from the very beginning. And nothing I ever think I ought to do with you seems to work. Wasn’t that the point of this exercise?”
She was shaking. “You were only pretending. You could have broken free at any time!”
“Perhaps, then, you should ask yourself why I didn’t choose to do exactly that.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, didn’t pause at all, he simply leaned forward and kissed her.
And it was unlike anything that had come before.
That searing, intoxicating current of passion was there, as it was always there, simmering deep within and informing everything, but this time, Khaled’s kiss was sweet. Shattering. Something like sacred.
His mouth moved over hers like a revelation. Like some kind of quiet song that Cleo felt inside her, each exquisite note washing over her like the purest light. Quiet and bright.
Perfect.
Cleo clung to him, transported. Feeling strangely hushed and torn wide open at the same time. Her heart felt too big for her chest, and she felt all the confusion she’d been trying to keep locked away inside her spill over and trickle from her eyes.
And this time, she didn’t care.
He was fully naked and deliciously hard against her belly, and yet he did nothing but kiss her in that same slow, thorough way, as if there was nothing on earth but this. This kiss. This sweet heat. The sheer joy of their mouths meeting, touching, taking them both somewhere that was only, ever, gloriously theirs.
It didn’t occur to Cleo to do anything but kiss him back, losing herself utterly. Kissing him until time ceased to have meaning. Lazy and long, as if this kiss was the only thing that could ever matter.
As if Khaled were the only thing in the world, and who cared how fantastically dizzy she was, how wonderfully weak beneath him, their bodies moving as one, tasting, touching, together—
And she was so far gone that she didn’t understand when he pulled away. Or why he lifted his head and froze for a long moment, then swore.
She started to ask him, but then she heard it. The overexcited clanging of what could only be the doorbell downstairs.
“Do you know anyone who would drop by at nearly midnight?” Khaled asked her, a rueful look in his eyes, gone nearly silver.
Cleo blinked. “Aside from my many lovers?”
The smile he turned on her then was as astonishing—and as beautiful—as it was brief. But she hoarded it to her anyway, dazzled.
“Aside from your soon-to-be late minions, yes.”
“No. I’ve never encouraged drop-by visits, to be honest.” She smiled back at him. “Also, I only know one person in the entire city of New Orleans, and she has her own key.”
The doorbell rang again. Khaled’s thumbs moved, stroking down her cheeks, and his eyes went dark as she watched. It fell through her like a change in temperature. Like a sudden shadow across the sun.
“Then that will be for me.”
Cleo didn’t understand the heaviness in his voice, much less the look on his face as he moved, rolling from her and to his feet in a single lethally smooth motion that mocked even further her attempt to physically restrain him. Had she honestly believed she was holding him against his will? That she could?
He stalked from the room, as unaffected by his lack of clothes as ever, and Cleo trailed him, watching all of that smooth ruthlessness in action as he moved down the stairs like liquid and then pulled on his boxer briefs and trousers with the same swiftness as he’d removed them. Then he went to the door.
“Who is it?” he asked through the heavy wood, sounding surly and dark, and there was absolutely no reason in the world that such a particularly cranky male tone should wrap around Cleo like smoke. She almost laughed at the instant bloom of heat between her legs, the tug on her heart.
And she knew enough Arabic to understand that the man on the other side of the door was part of Khaled’s security detail, who, she was suddenly certain, had indeed been circling her earlier, just as she’d imagined.
“Bad American action movies?” she asked him.
Khaled shot her a look over his shoulder and didn’t quite smile, though his eyes gleamed. “I would never have you thrown into one of the SUVs, Cleo. I would escort you into one, like a gentleman.”
Cleo was smiling as Khaled let his guard inside, and she stood where she was in the living room as the two men spoke in a quick, intense undertone. Then the other man exited and Khaled stood there for a moment. His head tipped forward and he let out a breath that was much too close to a sigh, and Cleo felt gripped by something fierce. Something with sharp, deep talons that made her wonder that she’d been smiling only moments before.
“I must return to Jhurat,” Khaled said, and when he turned to face her he was utterly expressionless.
“Has something happened?” she asked, and she wasn’t sure she recognized her own voice. Or the way her hands had become fists and hung there, hard and angry, at her sides.
“Something always happens,” Khaled replied in a short tone. “Something always will. But in this case, they think they have Talaat’s pissant band of rebels—I refuse to call them an army—pinned down in one of the villages. But the victory will look shallow and invite debate if I am not there to direct it.”
He moved as he spoke, and Cleo blinked, realizing only when he reached down to snatch his shirt from the ground that Khaled had never shared matters of state so readily before. Why was he doing it now? And why did it make her feel as if she were standing much too close to the edge of a long, hard fall?
“What if I assert the power I’m supposed to have tonight?” She watched him as she said it. His mouth twisted into something grim. He pulled his shirt on, and yet she had the sense he was waiting. “What if I demand that you stay? To delegate?”
He took a long time buttoning up that shirt, and when he was finished, he looked at her with his gray eyes like shadows.
“Don’t do this.”
“This was what we agreed.” But she was whispering.
“Cleo.” She’d never heard him sound like this. She didn’t even know how she’d categorize that rough scrape of his voice. “Do not ask me to choose between my country and my wife. I can’t win. And neither can you.”
“What if I don’t care about winning?” Her voice sounded the same, and she knew what it was then. Broken. “What if I want you to stay?”
And Khaled looked haunted. Wrecked, as surely as if she’d torn him apart with her hands. Cleo was hugging herself, her hands still in fists, but she couldn’t seem to do anything else but stand there and watch him.
He stamped his feet into his shoes, and the sound was much too loud. Shots, one after the next, and as painful.
Or maybe that was only the taut, dense silence surrounding them.
“I thought what happened upstairs—” She tried again, not even sure what she was grasping for, only aware that she had to. She had to try.
“Yes,” he said darkly. “That was an object lesson, Cleo, but not one you want to learn. As you say, I could have broken free of your restraints at any time.”
“Then why submit to it in the first place?” she demanded. “Why go to all that trouble to fake it?”
“Because you wanted me there and I didn’t want to break free,” he said, and there was a helpless kind of grief in his voice then. “But I also do not want to be the kind of man—the kind of
sultan—who fails his country. I couldn’t live with myself.”
“Meaning, you will never choose me.” He didn’t argue, and she shook her head, hoping that could conceal the way the rest of her shook. “Some vows are more like curses, Khaled. You should think about that.”
“I am not cursed.” His gaze was a storm. He lifted one hand and pounded it against his chest, the blow loud and hard, though he didn’t seem to note it. “I am the Sultan of Jhurat. It is not a title to me, Cleo. It is who I am.”
“Khaled—”
But she had no idea what she was saying, or when her tears had started to fall again, and it hardly mattered anyway. He wasn’t listening. He stood there, so close and yet so remote, and his gaze burned through her until she was nothing but cinders and the salt of her own tears.
“I love you,” he said, and it sounded as though it was ripped from him, a dark and troubled confession. “I can’t seem to stop, no matter what I do. You hate me when I try to protect you, and the more I’m with you, the less I want to try.” He advanced on her, and Cleo stood there and did nothing but watch him come. Helpless. Powerless. As caught by him as if she were still locked away in that bedroom he’d refused to share with her. “But I still must choose my country. I will always have to choose my country. I am my country—and we have already established that it will eat you alive.” He reached over and dragged a thumb over her mouth, tracing the shape of her lips. “It will drive you insane. And I can’t live with that, either, as much as I wish I could.”
“Khaled.”
He ignored her. And worse, he stepped back, a kind of fury and misery stamped on his fierce face that she felt inside her, a sharp, spiked belt of agony.
“So this? All of this? My love, such as it is?” He laughed, and it was a frozen, bitter sound. It seemed to take up all the air in the room. “It’s nothing but selfishness. If I knew what love was, Cleo, I would have let you go. I wouldn’t have followed you here. I wouldn’t have detained you in the first place, seduced you, married you. You’ve known that from the start.”
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