He was nothing but a name now. Nothing but his blood. Nothing but his kingdom. He had one name, and she knew it.
‘I am Akeem Abd al-Uzza, Crown Prince of Taliedaa. The only heir by blood to the Taliedaaen throne,’ he answered. Because that was the only person he could be. Even down here, with the world nowhere to be seen, no one to see them. Because it didn’t matter if they couldn’t see them. He would know.
‘Is he worthy?’ she asked, and he sucked in a sharp inhalation of air. He’d been trying to prove his worth as the chosen Crown Prince for nine years.
‘We claim our own worth, qalbi,’ he answered truthfully. Because that was what he was trying to do now—claim it by proving it. By not being his father or the boy he’d once been.
‘I’m so glad you’ve claimed yours, Akeem,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad the boy I knew found his place, despite his father and mine. Despite St John’s... I’m so glad that, despite it all, he found his home.’
She breathed the word ‘home’, and the word felt distant. Alien. He lived within the palace walls. He ruled a kingdom. The desert was in his genes. But was it home?
Home was belonging. Acceptance.
He had neither.
He steeled himself against her words about belonging. That boy had never found his place—his home...
‘The world told him there was no home for a boy like him,’ she continued. ‘His father told him that everything he was, he didn’t care for. And you proved them all wrong. You did it, Akeem, and your mother would be proud of you. Of that boy.’
Her words were a knife in his heart. All he’d done was for her. His mother. To make her sacrifices worth it.
He choked back words and tugged Charlotte into him. Lifting her effortlessly against him, he moved towards the exit.
Her hands around his neck, she leant into the crook of his neck and said sleepily. ‘I can walk.’
‘Shush,’ he soothed, because he needed her against him, needed her presence...because he was raw, electrified and stripped to the bone. He had not felt this disjointed since his arrival in Taliedaa.
It had been a mistake to bring her here. He hurried back the way he’d come, carrying Charlotte tightly against him. He’d brought no one here. He’d exposed himself. Revealed the secrets to his survival. And now every time he came here to remind himself to be better...stronger...he would see her face...
He did not want to feel. Not this. This pure, undiluted desire and a need, as she had said, for more...
There was going to come a time when he wouldn’t be able to distract her with sex. She’d want him to share himself, and she’d keep asking questions because it was her nature...
What would she do when he couldn’t answer? When she found out that the boy she kept pushing him to show her was dead?