It was all exactly how she’d wanted it, in the papers. She was Khaled’s queen, not a woman someone wholly unremarkable like Brian would throw over. She’d started over as if from scratch, completely erasing her entire previous life.
If only she felt she fit into her new one better.
Especially because, now that the wedding was over, what the papers speculated about was whether or not she was pregnant—and if that was the slightly less romantic, and certainly less flattering, reason for her breathlessly quick engagement to a man who had never looked even remotely inclined toward matrimony before. “Does the sultan have a baby on the way?” the headlines asked. “Is that a bump behind Cleo’s coat?” Was this all a game of smoke and mirrors from the start?
It occurred to her as the armored car navigated its way through the crowded center of the city that she had no idea what Khaled thought about having children. That there were any number of things she’d simply...neglected to ask him, so caught up had she been in the whirlwind of their engagement.
In her total commitment to living this fantasy to the fullest.
She’d never regretted that before. She found she did now. More deeply than she wanted to admit.
Margery droned on about the following day’s duties. Cleo tuned her out. Do you know Khaled at all? a dark little voice whispered inside her head. Do you want to?
Because the man she’d thought she’d married wouldn’t have signed off on an entire month of never seeing her without a single reservation. Without so much as discussing it with her first.
But then, there were a lot of things Khaled didn’t find it necessary to discuss with her.
Cleo had expected to move in to his bedroom—with him—when they’d returned from their week in the desert. She hadn’t been able to hide her stunned disappointment when he’d directed her to remain where she was instead, in her suite in a different wing of the palace from his as though she was still a guest instead of his wife.
“We won’t sleep in the same room?” she’d asked, astonished. She’d found herself powerfully addicted to his touch by then, after a week spent so close to him she knew how his skin tasted at different times of day, could feel the weight of his strong arms slung across her, holding her close, even when they weren’t touching. Which was seldom.
“I am thinking only of your comfort,” he’d told her smoothly—but even then, so sated and dazzled by him, she’d wondered if there was too much darkness in his gray gaze as he kept it level on hers. And he hadn’t been touching her then, had he? “I keep odd hours. I wouldn’t wish to disturb your sleep.”
“I like it when you disturb my sleep,” Cleo had replied, frowning at him. She’d been thinking of that very morning in their tent, sometime before dawn, when she’d woken to find him already moving into her, waking her and taking her in the same thrilling moment.
The beauty of it had still thrummed in her all those hours later, a live wire of sensation and desire. That perfect, glorious, dizzying fit that was only theirs, as if they’d been created for each other. How could he want to lose that?
Khaled’s mouth had crooked to one side, his gaze had gleamed in that way she’d discovered meant he wanted her, but he’d only shaken his head—the sultan once more, she’d thought, instead of her dark, passionate lover. “I suspect I will find ways to disturb you in that way more often that I should, no matter where we sleep.”
Later, she’d told herself there hadn’t been a raw note in his voice when he’d said that, very much as if he wished he could fight it. Fight her. She’d told herself she was simply overemotional after such an intense honeymoon, as anyone would be.
And besides, he came to her in the night, almost every night. He was a commanding force, tearing her into a thousand pieces again and again and then disappearing before sunrise.
“No one else will ever touch you,” he’d whispered to her hoarsely in the hot, slick dark, more than once. “I am not a civilized man, Cleo.”
“I don’t want civilized,” she’d whispered back, and when he drove into her with all that power and glory that only grew deeper every time they tested it, she hadn’t been sure she even knew what civilized was. She certainly hadn’t cared.
She’d thought that was passion. Need. Even love, raw and wild.
She’d thought it was enough.
The mornings were harder, because she woke alone. The desert sun rose hot and pitiless over the old city, and the moment Karima appeared in her bedroom to start her day, Cleo had to perform her brand-new role. The wife of the sultan never had days off.