Malak watched her lovely face as he peeled down her trousers, exposing her perfect legs to his view. He pulled them off, freeing one foot, then the other.
And he couldn’t tell if it was her harsh breathing that filled his ears, or his own. But he didn’t care. He set his hands to her legs again, tracing them and learning them as he smoothed his way back up the satiny soft skin he’d bared.
And when he made it to the delectable swell of her hips, he hooked his fingers around to the sweet, lush curve of her bottom, and pulled her toward him.
“Malak...” she said again.
And he interpreted that as an invitation. One he was more than happy to accept.
Malak smiled, then leaned close. He pushed the bit of lace she wore to the side and then he licked his way into the melting sweetness between her legs.
At last.
And he didn’t know which one of them exploded. Or if it was both of them, in a rolling, endless burst of fire that threatened to consume them both.
He welcomed it.
He exulted in it.
And he wanted more.
Malak held her still, even as she bucked against him. He licked and he sucked. He used a hint of his teeth. And still, he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. Her taste. That sweet, molten heat of hers that made him ache. Everywhere.
And the next time she called out his name, it sounded like a prayer. He felt her stiffen, then shatter into a hundred glorious pieces right there against his mouth.
But it still wasn’t enough.
He shifted, sucking the center of her need into his mouth as he used one finger, then another, to test her wet, clinging heat.
Her hips rocked against him. The noises she made were delicious. Sweet and broken, as he took her from one shattering straight back into that fire.
And then he made her burn.
Again and again, until she was limp and sobbing.
Only then did he stop. Only then did he pull back, and smooth her lace panties back into place, and somehow keep himself from assuaging his own powerful need right then and there.
Because it was possible he was better at restraint than he imagined.
Malak stood, keeping his hand hooked around her arm so she wouldn’t simply collapse over the side of the balcony. He felt more than a little deep, male satisfaction at how boneless she looked. How thrown. He handed her back her discarded trousers, and continued to prop her up as she blinked, looking delightfully dazed before she pulled them back on.
It took her a moment, because it was as if her limbs had ceased operating at her command.
“You can stand as long as you like,” he told her, his voice as dark as all the wild and desperate greedy things that fought for supremacy inside him. But she had already taught him about patience. And need. Control. And the chase.
Now it was time to practice a different kind of restraint. Vinegar didn’t work on Shona. She was too tough, deep into her bones, in ways Malak didn’t particularly want to recognize. Too determined to meet anything that came at her with strength and defiance.
She was much too sure of herself in ways he should have found appalling in a woman, especially one who would become his queen, but instead found he reluctantly admired in this one.
But it looked like honey was something she couldn’t resist.
“Stand?” she asked, her voice thick. As shaky as the rest of her.
Malak didn’t work too hard to hide his smile. “You can stand at every meal we have together until the end of time, if you so desire.” He waited until her dark eyes, still a bit glassy and more than a little dazed, met his. “I will assume it is an invitation to partake of my favorite dessert. Do you understand?”
She looked mutinous. Or perhaps just a shadow of mutiny, lost there behind need and longing and the melting he could see written all over her.
And she was still breathing too hard when she answered him. “I don’t like dessert.”
Malak laughed, despite the heaviness in that part of him that urged him to simply lift her against him, carry her to his bed and be done with these games.
But he didn’t, because he thought he understood this woman now. Or this game, anyway. And the fact that the only thing she was likely to understand was the way he could turn her own body against her. Because any direct approach would result in her direct resistance. But a kiss? That made her melt.
“No?” he asked mildly. “The way you came all over my face, calling my name, would suggest otherwise. But who am I to take away your illusions? Stand all you like, Shona. I not only welcome it. I have to say, I prefer it. I prefer this.”
And he let go of her. Then left her there, shaking on his balcony, while he handled his own body in his shower.
Again.
CHAPTER SIX
SHONA STAGGERED OUT of Malak’s private suite, not at all clear about how she was expected to walk when nothing about her body seemed to work the way it was supposed to any longer. The way it had when she’d walked in.
She felt taken over. Ruined in every respect, as if the longing that still moved through her was a kind of poison, corroding her from the inside out.
She nodded stiffly at the guards who stood at Malak’s doors, and assured herself they couldn’t possibly see what she had been up to inside. With him. They couldn’t possibly see abandon written all over her.
Surrender, she told herself fiercely, did not have a scent.
Still, she was certain she could feel their eyes upon her even as she walked off down the gleaming corridor, fighting to make her legs work the way they were meant to do. To keep herself upright. Not to slump against the nearest wall the way she wanted to.
Shona didn’t think she pulled in a full breath until she rounded the corner.
She had learned her way around the palace in these weeks she’d been trapped here, but that didn’t make it feel any more familiar to her. She wasn’t certain she could ever really get used to all the luxury on conspicuous display at every turn. The marble. The gold. Statues and fine art in every alcove. Mosaics on the floors and the walls.
It was exactly what a palace ought to be, she supposed—but it wasn’t home.
It wasn’t her home.
Shona stopped next to one of the fountains and dipped her fingers into the cool water. Far above, the ceiling opened up to let in the night, and the moon was silvery as it danced down into the water.
She wanted to cry.
She knew there were eyes on her regardless of whether she could see them or not. Everywhere she went, everything she did, she was watched. Gossiped about. Discussed and dissected. Her advisors had made that clear to her every day, in case she hadn’t noticed it on her own as she’d tried to go about her business here, such as it was. The simple truth of the matter was that Shona no longer belonged to herself. Whether she decided to become Malak’s queen—assuming that was a decision she was even allowed to make, of course, and wasn’t simply tossed a crown and made to wear it—or refused, she would always be tied to this place. These people.
Because Miles was.
That had been bad enough. That unpleasant realization that never seemed to get easier no matter how many times she told herself to get over it. To accept it. To move on from the things she couldn’t change, because to do anything else was to ask to feel crazy. And to set herself up for more of the same.
Miles was Malak’s son. If she left here tomorrow, that wouldn’t change. And little as she might like to think about it, that simple truth meant that Miles would always belong here. One day he would rule this kingdom as surely as his father did.
She didn’t have to like it. It didn’t matter if she liked it. It was the truth either way.
It was one thing to have her son used against her.
It was something else entirely to have her body used in the exact same manner.
Whether she liked it or not, her own cries seemed to echo in her ears. There was no sound in the atrium where she stood save the splashing of the water, b
ut still, all she heard was her own voice. Her own loss of control.
Her total and complete surrender.
She sat on the lip of the fountain and moved her fingers through the water. This way, then that. She stared fiercely at the place where the fountain met the pool beneath it, hoping that would keep her own tears from falling.
And in her head, all she could hear—all she could see—was what had happened on Malak’s balcony.
She could still see him kneeling down before her, his wide shoulders keeping her legs apart and his hard hands holding her hips where he wanted them.
His mouth against the part of her that yearned the most.
Out here in this atrium, all by herself, she was still slick. Melting hot.
And ashamed of herself.
She didn’t know how long she sat there. It could have been moments or hours.
But she heard the scuff of a foot against the marble behind her before she heard a voice. The same voice she always heard.
“Mistress?” Yadira called from the shadows that lined the atrium. “Are you unwell?”
Someone had seen her, no doubt, and reported back to Yadira that Shona was not where she was supposed to be. Because somebody would always pass on something like that. Because there was no hiding here, in this palace that appeared so vast.
There was no hiding anywhere.
Not even from herself.
“I’m fine,” she said, and rose to her feet. Her legs still felt like jelly, but she didn’t let that slow her down. She ignored it as she walked toward the woman who was more her jailer than her servant, and she even got herself to smile as she did it. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
She tuned out Yadira’s usual chatter as they walked back across the palace to Shona’s own suite of rooms. She nodded her thanks and smiled her way into her bedroom, where she took a long, hot shower and then crawled into her bed at last.
Because it was only there, in the dark of her bedroom with the covers pulled high over her head, that she could allow her face to crumple as it would. It was only there that she could permit her tears to fall, that she could face the fact that the worst part of what had happened with Malak tonight—and that night five years ago—was that she’d wanted it.
She’d more than wanted it. She’d longed for it.
And she’d loved every wicked pass of his tongue against the softest part of her.
So much that she still ached, well into the night, even as she was lying there alone and beating herself up for betraying every last thing she’d thought she stood for.
And worse, she had no idea what it said about her that she should want the man she knew would be the end of her, one way or another.
Or what to do now that he knew it.
* * *
Malak wasn’t the least bit surprised the following night when Shona stayed in her seat after the nannies took away Miles.
“Do you not wish to take your normal stance of pointless defiance?” He leaned back against his pillows and studied her as she glared at him. “I was hoping for another decadent dessert tonight, I must tell you. This is a disappointment.”
She looked different tonight, he thought. Not exactly subdued, but...contained.
As if he wasn’t the only one who had come to some conclusions about this little war of theirs.
“I prefer to sit,” she said after a moment. She even smiled, though Malak would scarcely call it polite. It was a pretense for her to be so civil. “But thank you.”
“Are you certain? I so enjoyed the last time you stood before me. I know you would not dare to tell me you did not.”
“Congratulations,” she said, that dark gaze of hers meeting his in that steady, challenging manner no one else would dare. “You won that battle, I guess. You got me to sit down. But what else have you really gained?”
Malak grinned. “You mean, aside from the sheer joy of your sweet little—”
“Sex doesn’t change anything,” she said, cutting him off. And he had to stop registering surprise every time she did things no one else would dream of doing in his presence. Much less to him. “It’s just sex. It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to be here. That I don’t want to be a queen at all, and certainly not your queen. That I have no interest in any of this.”
Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t seem particularly angry about it that allowed him to consider her objections to all of this a little more carefully than he had before. Or maybe it was that he’d tasted her again and had spent a night plagued by dreams of all the things he could have done had he not left her on that balcony.
After all, it was hard to maintain any level of reasonable fury when all he wanted was another taste.
Either way, he considered her for a long moment. “I assure you, you are not the only one whose wishes were not consulted in this. If that makes you feel any better.”
He could see from the expression that flitted over her face that it did not. But she didn’t throw that back at him as she sat there on the other side of the low table, her hands in her lap. Malak found himself mesmerized by the elegant curve of her neck, and only partly because he’d had his mouth there the night before and knew—now and again and always—how she tasted. Tonight she had her hair pulled up into something complicated, her tight curls bound together on top of her head, spilling this way and that.
Every time he saw her she was more beautiful. Malak didn’t understand how that was possible, only that it was true.
“Surely you always knew that you might be king,” Shona said, frowning at him as if he’d lied to her. Another insult he chose to ignore.
“Not at all.” Malak made himself smile. Lazily and easily, the way his life had been until recent months had changed everything. “I was the spare. My older brother, Zufar, was meant to be king and he has been trained since his birth to take over the role. My sister, Galila, and I were both afterthoughts in our own ways.”
He didn’t mention his high-strung, selfish mother’s indiscretions, and only partly because he was still coming to terms with them himself. To say nothing of that half brother he still didn’t quite know how to make sense of. Especially since Adir’s existence made Malak’s life make a different sort of sense. His mother had chosen to have the baby of the man she’d loved, then had given Adir away. Malak was the child she’d dutifully had and had never loved. The way he’d been ignored all these years made a painful sort of sense, really.
He didn’t mention his mother’s death, or the way his father’s encompassing grief over her loss brought back entirely too many memories of the way his father had ignored his children all their lives—the better to cater to a woman who had never cared for him in return. His father had abdicated his throne out of grief. His brother had then followed in his footsteps and abdicated for love. Malak understood neither of these choices, but he didn’t have to understand. He only had to play his prescribed role and do his duty.
“My sister was more of a pampered, special toy to my parents, at least until she grew older and my mother viewed her as competition,” Malak said, because he didn’t mind Shona knowing these things. She would hear them all soon enough, once the palace gossips decided to share their stories with her instead of just talking about her. “But I was completely ignored, always. A state of affairs that suited me just fine, to be clear. I’ve never wanted to play a starring role in my family’s many storms.” He forced his smile to deepen and waved a hand, encompassing the palace, the kingdom. “And yet I was caught up in them all the same.”
Shona frowned. “But surely the purpose of a spare is always to step in at a moment’s notice.”
“Theoretically, of course it is. But no one could have anticipated that my brother would abdicate. Least of all my brother.”
“Why did he?”
Malak’s smile felt fiercer than usual then, even on his own mouth. “It appears the downfall of the men in my family is love. It ruins them all, sooner or later.”
Shona�
��s gaze met his and he hated, suddenly, that he couldn’t read her. “‘Them?’”
She didn’t say “but not you.” Yet still it seemed to hang there between them.
And that wasn’t the only thing that shimmered in that space.
“I believe in sex, Shona,” he told her, because if he couldn’t make it better, he wanted to make it worse. “It might not change anything, as you said, but that’s never how it feels. I believe in hot nights that ache forever, and shave off parts of your soul in return for all that pleasure. But that is all I believe in. You don’t need to concern yourself that I’ll ever pretend that sex is anything more than exactly what it is.”
“Of course you believe in sex, but never, ever love.” Shona shook her head at him as if he was...silly. Or a small child. He had to grit his teeth to keep himself from reacting to both insults the way he would have liked to. “Isn’t that a hallmark of men like you?”
“I beg your pardon. Are there men like me? Anywhere? I rather doubt it.”
“I’ve never heard of a man alive who imagines that he is capable of love, even if the only thing he is king of is his own living-room couch.” Shona’s gaze was entirely too steady on his, as if she meant to indict him with every arch, deceptively soft syllable she uttered. He assumed she did. “My understanding has always been that the world might end if a single man ever imagined himself capable of such a thing. And yet here we all are.”
Malak laughed at that. Because it was that or reach for her again, and he didn’t want to cede his advantage. “The difference between the vast phalanxes of men you apparently know so well, aside from the obvious fact that I am the ruler of an entire country rather than a piece of furniture, is that I know myself.”
He didn’t tell her what else he knew. All the ways that love had ruined his father, for example. And all the rest of them, caught up as they were in the wreckage of their parents’ sad little marriage. He had always known that such excesses of emotion were not for him. That he would never fall, not like his father had. He would never let the love of a woman blind him to the rest of his life.
Especially not when there were so many other, more entertaining excesses to explore.
Sheikh’s Secret Love-Child Page 7