by Maisey Yates
It was love that would see him making the compassionate choices. Love that would help him believe when everything was dark.
It was love that had helped him believe already when life was dark, even though he had been too blind to see it. The love of his parents.
Olivia had told him. She had told him that he was not what Malik had made him. Had insisted that he had been strong already, or he would have perished. She had been right. It was everything his parents had made him. Their strength. Their love.
Love was not the weakness. Love was the strength. Love was everything.
Olivia had shown him that, and he had told her to leave. He had been afraid. He had been holding on too tightly, but had no control. It was the fear. Fear of pain. That was what all of this had been. Him running. Him fleeing the kind of pain he had been subjected to in his past.
And now she was gone. Now was too late.
She was on a plane, back to Alansund.
She should run from him. She had been denied her entire life. Perhaps there was nothing more her parents could have done. Her sister had always been ill; she had said so. Whether or not they could have done better by her, they should have. Simply because she was Olivia. And she deserved the best of everything.
She most certainly deserved a man who wasn’t shattered inside. Most certainly deserved a man who chose to love her the first time she asked.
Not a man with scars both inside and out. Not a man who had wounded her, told her to leave. Not the man who could scarcely imagine coming after her because he had never been away from his country, never been on a plane.
She was his queen. The queen he wanted ruling beside him. The queen of his heart.
Her kiss had changed him back from stone. Had demolished the walls inside him.
She had given him a new goal. Love. And with it, facets to his existence. More than simple survival. More than breathing.
He had no idea what he brought to her. No idea what he had done to deserve the feelings she claimed to have for him.
But if she would have him, he would claim her.
It didn’t matter how impossible it seemed to leave. Didn’t matter how far he had to go to find her. He was more when he was with her. He was the ruler he needed to be. He was a man.
And that meant whatever it took, he would see it done.
* * *
Olivia had never felt such pain. This truly was losing a part of herself. A grief so strange, so open-ended, she didn’t know what to do with it. It wasn’t like losing someone to death. There was no reclaiming someone who was gone. But Tarek was still walking around on this earth, and she could not have him. Could not be with him.
She had never loved like this before, either. With all of herself. Unreservedly. She had made herself vulnerable, and she was paying for it. Yet again she was paying for demanding more.
But she wouldn’t go back, either.
She realized now that though it was Emily who’d been sick all of her life, Olivia had allowed herself to be crippled inside. To shut her emotions, her desires, away so she wouldn’t suffer more rejection.
But now she had.
And she felt more alive than ever. She had been so afraid of loving with all of herself. Because it would leave her vulnerable. Leave her exposed. Marcus’s loss had only seemed to confirm that. But as badly as it had hurt, she could only be thankful at the time that she hadn’t given him her whole heart. Because she’d been afraid long before that loss.
She hadn’t taken any medication for the flight back. She’d been too lost in her sadness over Tarek to feel any anxiety. More than that, she wasn’t afraid to show it if she did. That was half of why she’d taken the pills. Because she was more afraid of showing her fear than of not being able to cope with it.
She didn’t care now. She supposed that was one thing.
She felt battered, broken. But strong. Because she had endured now, hadn’t she? Had faced down her deepest fear, returned alone, back to this palace, useless. No place for her.
But she didn’t care. Didn’t care that she wasn’t useful. Didn’t care if she was underfoot. Didn’t care to make herself indispensable so that someone might deign to care that she was around.
She loved Tarek. No matter what he did. No matter what he said to her, no matter how useful he was.
Didn’t she deserve the same?
She felt she did.
Too bad most of her wanted to get back on a plane and beg Tarek to take her back, whether he ever loved her or not. There was a very large part of her that felt pride was overrated in this situation.
It isn’t about pride. Pride is nothing. It’s about wanting to live.
She knew what life was without love. She’d spent her entire life closed off to it. Desperately wanting it, and denying herself because she was so afraid that others would hold it back from her. Now that she had truly felt it, she didn’t want to go back. She couldn’t.
There was a sharp knock on her bedroom door, and she peeled herself off her bed, smoothing her hands over her hair. “Yes?”
“My queen.” She heard her lady’s maid Eloise on the other side of the door. “There is a man here to see you. He says...he says he’s your husband.”
Her heart stopped, everything in her freezing.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
That was when Tarek chose to stride into the room. It had been only two days since she’d seen him. But she felt very much—and she knew it was desperately corny—as if he was an oasis in the middle of her emotional desert. The first sight of water and shade she’d had in a long crawl across burning sand.
He was so tall, impossibly strong and broad. His face so beautiful. The sharp, defining angles, those lips that could be both soft and commanding depending on how he chose to wield them.
He was a powerful enemy to those who opposed him, wonderful with the sword, she was certain. But as far as she was concerned, his body and all that he could make her feel with it was his most powerful weapon.
“I did not tell you that you could come in yet,” Eloise said, clearly full of pique.
“I did not ask. I am the Sheikh of Tahar, and I am Sheikha Olivia al-Khalij’s husband. It is my right to see her. More than that, it is my due.”
Olivia shivered, her new title, her new last name, somehow erotic and intensely affecting on his lips. “It’s okay, Eloise. Leave us.”
Eloise very clearly didn’t think it was okay. However, she obeyed Olivia’s command.
“I have never been on a plane before. I can’t say I enjoyed it,” Tarek said.
“Flying is terrible. I hate it. Why are you here?”
“I came here to get you, you foolish woman.”
Her heart scampered up into her throat. “I told you. I can’t live with you in a one-sided relationship. I just can’t. For so many reasons.”
“You said you needed to be loved.”
Her throat tightened around her heart, strangling her. “I do. I hate to try to explain what it was like to be married to Marcus. Because in many ways I hate to compare the two of you, because you’re so different. Because what I feel for you is so different. Also, Marcus is dead and I can ask no more of him. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t disappoint me. He didn’t deny me. But I didn’t love him. Not like I love you. It was easy to be with him. We never had to know each other. Neither of us were interested in sharing or being shared with. It gave me companionship without having to make myself vulnerable. Without putting my feelings in any danger. Which you... I can’t do that with you. I want all of you. I want to open myself up and make you understand me. I want you to open yourself up to me. You make me so unbearably aware of how isolated I’ve been. And now that I know, I can’t go back to that.”
He closed the distance between them, cupping her cheek,
his dark eyes blazing into hers. “I cannot go back. I can’t go back, either, nor do I want to. I was so alone. I stripped away every desire. Every emotion. Because I so desperately didn’t want to remember. I so desperately didn’t want to feel pain.” He laced his fingers through her hair, his eyes never leaving hers. “We are so much the same, Olivia. And when you first walked into my throne room I never would have thought so. But we were both protecting ourselves. I tried to protect myself to the end. I blamed love, because somehow I understood it had the power to devastate the most. It was easy to focus in on my torture, on the pain. On all the hate. Because then I could pretend it was the most painful part of what I had been through. It wasn’t. It was the loss of my parents. The loss of their love. And I wouldn’t even let myself remember it, because I wanted nothing to do with the pain. And so I rid myself of every emotion. I focused solely on my goal. So that I could survive.” He shook his head. “And then you came. You made me desire. You made me want. You did exactly what you’ve accused me of doing to you. You opened me up. Demolished the walls. And I was frightened. But after you left I realized that love was never the enemy. Yes, it hurts. It has the power to devastate. I was devastated by the loss of you.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I remembered my parents. Remembered words my father said to me. That hurt, too. But there was so much good in it. I realize now that you can’t have the good things without the pain. I was all right with that for a long time. But I’m not now.”
“What did you remember about your father?” she asked, her throat aching.
“That he loved Tahar. That he loved my mother. That he loved us. And I know for a fact Malik loved none of those things. If he loved any one thing, it was himself. It is the absence of love that hurts. That wounds beyond repair. If there is no love, every action is empty.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “I am tired of being empty.”
“You aren’t. You never were. Being with you... Seeing your strength... It’s what made me find mine.”
* * *
Tarek looked down at the woman he was privileged enough to call his wife. And he could no longer hold back the words that were bursting to be released from him like a torrent of water. He had used his words so sparingly over the years. Preserving them as though they were precious things. Perhaps he had saved them for such a time as this. Perhaps he had saved them for her.
Those things he’d hoarded inside him. His splintered humanity, the things that made him human... Perhaps they had all been saved for her. She made him feel as though he might not be splintered at all.
She made him feel as if he was whole.
“When I speak of love, I speak of love in general. But it is not love in the general sense that made me realize this. It was my love for you.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, everything inside of him shaking. “I love you, Olivia.”
He felt her sag in his arms, her whole body trembling. “Oh, Tarek. I love you, too. I love you, too. I’m so glad you love me.”
“Love is powerful. We have good reason to fear it,” he said, smoothing her hair. “Like any weapon, you must wield it well. And then it is an asset. Even if it is still dangerous.”
“That makes sense. Since I first met you, you told me you were a weapon.”
“And you told me you were a genteel, cultured queen. You did not tell me that you were, in fact, much more deadly than I.”
A smile curved her lips. “I didn’t know.”
He recalled the first time he had seen her. He had thought her frail. A white lily who would dry quickly in the harsh desert heat. But she had not been changed by the desert. Rather, the desert had been changed by her. He had been changed.
“Be my wife, Olivia,” he said, his voice rough.
“I already am.”
“You became my wife for politics. Stay my wife for love. When I ask you now, I ask you for no other reason than that I cannot live without you. I have lived without a great many things, but I could never survive without you.”
She drew a shaking breath, and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I will be your wife.”
“Do you remember, that first day, you told me you needed to be with me because there was no other place for you?”
“I remember,” she said, her words a whisper.
“You have made a place in my heart. And you will always have it. I swear this to you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, a smile tugging at her lips. “More vows?”
“Yes. And I may yet make more. I’m new at this after all.”
“So am I. But that’s okay. We can learn together.”
EPILOGUE
TAREK DID MAKE more vows to Olivia. He made several every night, often while he was lost in her body. He never could get enough of being so close to her. Of being so connected, so loved, when he had spent so many years alone.
With her, he relished a great many things he had forgotten to want. Soft beds, good food. Birthday cakes that were never thrown away, and always shared together. Smiling. Olivia gave him so many reasons to smile. And less than a year after they were married she gave him yet one more.
Olivia walked into their shared bedchamber. They had not spent one night apart since he had come to get her in Alansund all those months ago. And, not coincidentally, he no longer had nightmares. There were no more ghosts in the halls of the palace. They had all been laid to rest by her.
“I have some news for you,” she said, her tone serene. But he was not fooled, because it was the same tone she had used when she had first come to the palace and proposed a marriage agreement between them. It was the tone she often used when she was about to broach something quite monumental and was trying to catch him off guard.
So strange to know another person so well. So wonderful.
“Unless you have invaded Germany, I imagine we can deal with it.”
“No,” she said, waving her hand, “no invasions today. However, I have been to see the doctor.”
“Have you?”
“It seems that you are finally going to get your heir.” And that was where her serene front ended. Tears welled in her eyes, and a smile broke out across her face. “But more important than that, we’re going to have a baby.”
Tarek took his wife into his arms, pressing a kiss to her lips, and then everywhere else he could reach.
She laughed. “I take it you’re happy?”
He was a man who had spent many years believing he was stone. A man who had resigned himself to spending life alone. And in his arms he held the most beautiful woman in the entire world, who had just told him she was going to give birth to a baby. His baby.
He was suddenly so full, he could scarcely breathe.
“I did not know such happiness existed until you,” he said, kissing her again.
She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, as though she was relishing him. No one had ever relished him before. No one except for her. “Neither did I, Tarek. Neither did I.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from TRADED TO THE DESERT SHEIKH by Caitlin Crews.
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Traded to the Desert Sheikh
by Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER ONE
SHE HAD NO WARNING.
There had been no telltale men with grim, assessing eyes watching her from the shadows. No strange gaps in conversation when she walked into the small coffee shop in a tiny lakeside village in British Columbia. There hadn’t been any of the usual hang-ups or missed calls on her latest disposable mobile phone that signaled her little noose was drawing tight.
She had a large mug of strong, hot coffee to ward off the late-autumn chill this far north, where snow was plastered across the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the thick clouds hung low. The pastry she chose was cloyingly sweet, but she ate all of it anyway. She checked her email, her messages. There was a new voice mail from her older brother, Rihad, which she ignored. She would call him later, when she was less exposed. When she could be certain Rihad’s men couldn’t track her.
And then she glanced up, some disturbance in the air around her making her skin draw tight in the second before he took the seat across from her at the tiny little café table.
“Hello, Amaya,” he said, with a kind of calm, resolute satisfaction—while everything inside her shifted into one great big scream. “You’ve been more difficult to find than anticipated.”
As if this were a perfectly casual meeting, here in this quiet café in an off-season lakeside village in a remote part of Canada she’d been certain he couldn’t find. As if he weren’t the most dangerous man in the world to her—this man who held her life in those hands of his that looked so easy and idle on the table between them despite their scars and marks of hard use, in notable contrast to that dark slate fury in his too-gray eyes.
As if she hadn’t left him—His Royal Highness, Kavian ibn Zayed al Talaas, ruling sheikh of the desert stronghold Daar Talaas—if not precisely at the altar, then pretty damn close six months ago.
Amaya had been running ever since. She’d survived on the money in her wallet and her ability to leave no trail, thanks to a global network of friends and acquaintances she’d met throughout her vagabond youth at her heartbroken mother’s side. She’d crashed on the floors of perfect strangers, stayed in the forgotten rooms of friends of friends and walked miles upon miles in the pitch dark to get out of cities and even countries where she’d thought he might have tracked her. She wanted nothing more than to leap up and run now, down the streets of the near-deserted village of Kaslo and straight into the frigid waters of Lake Kootenay if necessary—but she had absolutely no doubt that if she tried that again, Kavian would catch her.