‘And, Amir, there is no need for you to return. Take the rest of the day off. I wish to see the Queen in private.’
Amir hesitated. ‘You do not need me to help you undress and bathe, Your Excellency?’
‘No, I do not,’ he said. Because he intended to ask Catherine to take over that task. The knot in his gut loosened a little as Amir executed a deep bow, then sped out of the room.
He thrust his fingers through his hair as he walked into the adjoining washroom to the pool chamber. For once he didn’t care if he sounded like a tyrant. A little urgency wouldn’t do Catherine any harm at all.
He’d treated her well these past three months. He hadn’t made too many demands. He’d supported her in her role as Queen and been considerate of her pregnancy. He had limited himself to coming to her chambers every other night... Thank goodness she had finally stopped requesting he stay with her after they had satisfied the physical urge that would not die.
But tonight he felt irritable. As if something was bubbling under his skin that had been bubbling for a while. The trip had exacerbated the feeling, had definitely made it more acute, but that feeling had been there for weeks now.
He sat on the divan and yanked off his boots, then stood to untie the sash around his waist. He kicked off his pants, but as he whipped open the cabinet above the marble vanity to find his razor, he spotted the bottle of pregnancy vitamins she kept there.
He touched the small bottle with his fingertip and realised that it was nearly empty. The dropping sensation in his stomach twisted in his abdomen. And he cursed under his breath.
He’d tried not to notice the way her body had changed in the last few months. The nausea had stopped over a month ago, but her breasts had only become more tender, more sensitive, her body more voluptuous as it ripened in pregnancy.
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, staring blindly at the bottle. And finally forced himself to acknowledge what had been bothering him for the last few weeks.
The baby. And the fact that it would be impossible to avoid discussing it much longer.
Catherine was already four months pregnant. Eventually, he would have to stop coming to her bed.
He braced his hands on the marble unit. Need and desire reverberated through his body.
He reached down to grasp the base of the painful erection. Closing his eyes, he pumped his fist up and down, feeling the tug on his skin, trying to picture her there, doing it for him.
He cursed violently and let go, because the image wasn’t enough. He slapped his palms down on the marble. Sickened by his own desperation. The feral need rioting through his veins that only she seemed capable of satisfying.
This was becoming an obsession. He needed to stop this now. To control this yearning, these urges. It had been a mistake to bring her so closely into his life. To indulge himself to this extent. By doing so he had unleashed a beast. The same beast he had always known was there, and now he was very much afraid he might never be able to control it again.
He stared at his face in the mirror. And saw the harsh planes and angles of his father’s face. A face that had once haunted him in nightmares. Tension screamed across his shoulder blades, made his buttocks flinch as the skin burned and pulsed with the phantom pain of the whip.
The erection mercifully began to wilt.
He was having some kind of weird emotional crisis, that was all, brought on by stress and the enforced celibacy of the last three days. This was about sex. Watching Catherine’s body blossom and her confidence grow as his Queen had been captivating and fascinating and wildly erotic. But once she had the child, once they stopped sleeping together—or rather having sex together—he would be able to return to who he had been before.
Perhaps he should call a halt now. Make a clean break. Waiting any longer would only make the need worse. He would miss the spectacular sex with a woman he had an undeniable chemistry with. But his inability to be without her for a scant three days proved he had become fixated on her. His emotions had become too close to the surface. He had to re-establish the control that had been so hard-earned when he had first arrived in Narabia.
Taking a drying cloth off the neatly stacked pile Amir had left for him, he wrapped it around his nakedness.
‘Zane?’ Catherine’s voice, urgent and familiar, coming from her own chamber, echoed in his chest. ‘Wher
e are you?’
‘Here.’ His voice sounded gruff, not his own as he marched into the pool room to greet her.
She rushed towards him and threw her arms around his waist. ‘Zane, you’re back a day early,’ she said, bright and eager. Why did it feel so good to know she had missed him too?
He should pull away, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself wrapping his arms around her shoulders and drawing her flush against his body.
The blood charged back into his groin as he dropped his cheek to the unruly wisps of hair and drew the scent of her shampoo—chamomile and honey—deep into his lungs.
‘Where have you been?’ he said, more harshly than he had intended as the desire tormented him.
She dropped her head back, tilted her chin up to look into his eyes—and for a moment he saw something flicker there, something wary and unguarded.
But before he could decipher it, her face stretched back into that bright smile. ‘Kasia and I only just got back from—’