Her eyes, emeralds embedded in gold, blazed and she caught him inside the flames.
‘Of course I am. I’ve been getting things wrong my whole life. And my dad was in my head too long for him to disappear with an outrageous marriage proposal. But I’m here.’
Her hand moved down his cheek to his shoulder. A slide of her palm and every nerve-ending came alive under her touch.
He resisted. Stood still. Resolute.
She placed her palm over his heart. ‘And so are you.’
‘And so am I...’ His reply was raw. Rough. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He should be in his own rooms. He should be anywhere but here, letting her touch him. Soothe him.
‘You told me feelings shouldn’t matter here, but can you feel it?’
He could feel everything.
‘Feel what?’ he asked, denying that her touch did anything but pull at his groin.
‘The past paving the way to the future.’
‘Maybe for you. But for me...’
‘You are to be the next King.’
He didn’t answer. His every action since he’d stepped into this room had not been kingly.
She tilted her head. ‘What makes you so afraid of your feelings? Of mine?’
‘I am not afraid.’
‘I am—but not of my feelings. Whatever has brought you here this morning, and whatever has kept you away since we got here, it isn’t because you don’t feel. It’s because you do. I see you confronting the past—our shared past—’ she watched him with compressed lips ‘—and it hurts.’
‘I am not in pain,’ he dismissed angrily. ‘I do not feel pain.’
‘Of course you do,’ she contradicted him, her eyes zeroing in on his face, moving across every taut vein, the thrust of his hard jaw. ‘If you weren’t in pain, you wouldn’t look at me like I’m an alien because I’m calm about a betrayal that affected us both.’
His eyes stayed on her plush little mouth, that was saying, oh, so sweetly, all the words he didn’t want to hear. Shared betrayal. Shared rejection. A shared past! He did not want to hear them, let alone speak of them.
He could silence those lips—pin her tongue against his and stop it wagging.
She stepped back. One step. Two steps. Three. It would take him less than a millisecond to correct her error. It was a mistake to make him chase her. Hunt her.
She tilted her chin at him, elongating her throat. She was luring him away from duty, trapping him inside himself, and he wanted the heat of her on him. Not these feelings causing his chest to tighten and his temples to throb. He wanted her to throb. He wanted—
‘Tell me why you’re here,’ she said.
Wisps of hair had escaped her ponytail and were curling haphazardly under her ears. He wanted to release the trapped mass, let it fall about her shoulders. Feel its thickness in his hands.
He stilled. ‘I never should have come.’
‘Akeem—’
‘Shush.’ He silenced her attempt to speak, but really he was turning up the volume on the song of duty that he could never mute. It was always playing, and whatever the volume he could hear it—because it came from within...because it lived inside him.
He would not allow this energy between them to leave these rooms. He had a duty to deny his needs—even the basic needs of a man—and show the people of Taliedaa he would not abandon them for pleasure. He would not abandon them as his father had. As his father had abandoned his mother.
Him.
Charlotte had known the boy. Akeem Ali. The son of Yamina Ali.
He took a breath, filled his lungs, and made himself stand straight. Tall. Privileged.
She did not know this man.
She did not know the King.
Charlotte felt it. The shift.
It wasn’t a dramatic change. It was a change in the atmosphere. Akeem’s head was bare, his hair ruffled, his bearded jaw squared, and his black tunic hung loosely from his broad shoulders. But inside his muscles were taut. Her eyes moved down his throat to the V-neck collar. He reflected nothing but steel, even though his clothing was relaxed.
‘You never should have come at all,’ she said. ‘If you didn’t—’
‘Didn’t what?’
‘Didn’t want me. I know you wanted the girl you thought I was. A one-night stand. But this woman in front of you now. She is an unwanted queen—’
‘Wanting is not the problem. This—’ he waved his hands between them ‘—is the problem.’
‘Me?’
‘This intensity.’
‘You came to me,’ she reminded him. ‘Not the other way around.’