* * *
It had worked all too well, Rihad thought a few days later, as he sat in his luxuriously appointed offices and found it impossible to concentrate on matters of state.
Because she haunted him.
Her taste. The sounds she’d made as she’d writhed beneath him. The scent of her skin. The sweet perfection of her touch.
He found he couldn’t think of much else. Especially during the meals they took together in his garden, where they both acted as if that scene right there on the table hadn’t happened. They outdid each other with crisp politeness.
But it hummed beneath everything. Every clink of silver against fine china. Every sip of wine. Every glance that caught and held. Every movement they each made.
It was a madness in his blood, infecting him.
Or she was.
Because Rihad hardly knew himself these days. His entire relationship with his brother had been a lie. He was hung up on a woman he’d married while he’d believed she was Omar’s mistress—and he had lusted after her while believing it. He was more enamored by the day with a tiny child who was not his in fact, but who felt like his in practice. He felt as if he was reeling through his life suddenly, unmoored and uncertain, and he had no idea how to handle such an alien sensation.
It was as if there was nothing left to hold on to. Or, more to the point, as if the only thing he wanted to hold on to was Sterling—as if he was as bewitched by her as he’d always thought his brother had been.
Maybe his enemies were not wrong to threaten invasion. Rihad was beginning to think it would be a kindness.
He was halfway through yet another inappropriate daydream about his wife when his personal mobile rang with a familiar ringtone.
Rihad dismissed his ministers with a regal wave and then swiped to open the video chat.
His sister gazed back at him from the screen, looking as defiant as ever.
“Amaya.” He kept his voice calm, though it was harder than it should have been, and he didn’t want to think about why that was, all of a sudden, or who was to blame for his endless lack of control. “Have you called to issue your usual taunts?”
“The quick brown fox always jumps over the lazy dog, Rihad.” Her dark eyes were a shade lighter than the fall of thick dark hair she’d pulled forward over one shoulder, and it irritated him that she was both unquestionably beautiful and entirely too much like her treacherous mother. Smarter than was at all helpful and not in the least bit loyal to the Bakrian throne. It made her unpredictable and he’d always hated that—at least, he’d always thought he had. “I’m only giving you a much-needed demonstration.”
“I feel adequately schooled.”
“Obviously not. I can see you scanning behind me for details on my location. Don’t bother. There aren’t any that will help you find me.” The light of battle lit her face, and he stopped trying to find any sort of geographic marker in what looked like a broom closet around her. “Are you ready to call off this marriage? Set me free?”
This was where Rihad normally outlined her responsibilities, reminded her that despite what she might have preferred, she was a Bakrian princess and she had a duty to her country. That it didn’t matter how many years she’d spent knocking around various artistic, bohemian communities with her mother pretending she was nothing more than another rootless flower child, she couldn’t alter the essential truth of her existence. That her university years in Montreal might have given her the impression that her life was one of limitless choices in all directions, but that was not true, not for her, and the sooner she accepted that the happier she would be.
He’d been telling her all of this for months. Years.
None of those conversations had been at all successful.
Today, he thought of the brother he’d treated as if he was a failure, the brother he’d claimed he’d loved when he’d never given him the opportunity to be himself. Not in Rihad’s presence anyway. He thought of the way Sterling, the only woman—hell, the only person—who had ever defied him to his face with such a lack of fear, had flinched as if she expected him to beat her, all because she’d told him the truth.
He thought that perhaps he had no business being a king, if he was such a remarkably bad one.
“I wish I could do that, Amaya,” he said after a long moment. “More than you know.”
She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe he’d said that. He wasn’t sure he could, either.
He shrugged. “These are precarious times. The only possible way we will maintain our sovereignty is to unite with Daar Talaas. But you know this.”