Tarek roamed away from her then. The tent was expansive, this room in particular, but it was still only a tent. There was only so much distance he could put between them.
He heard her follow him, her dress rustling in a way that set fire to parts of his imagination he wished he could cut out. Or dig out with his own fingers, whatever worked, just to be...himselfagain.
This was not how he had imagined this evening going.
When Tarek had looked up and seen her—there at the other end of the aisle that his staff had made through the center of the crowd, laden with flower petals to mark her way—he’d worried that he might truly have died where he stood.
Right there, in full view of the world.
He felt as if the skies had opened up and rain had poured down on this stretch of ancient desert that was lucky to see water from above perhaps twice in a decade. More, he was sure he’d been struck by lightning.
Repeatedly.
If possible, she was even more beautiful than she’d been only the night before, when he’d been bound to her in the desert, the fires all around them flickering over her and making her glow.
Tarek had wondered how it could be that every time he looked at her it was as if he’d never seen her before. He felt that stunning jolt of recognition. His heart beat at him, hard. He felt the punch of it in his gut. And always, that heavy fire in his sex that was only hers.
It was not Alzalamian tradition for a father to walk a bride to her husband. It was rare that a bride’s family had even been present in weddings of old, when brides had been used to end wars and make allies of enemies. Tarek had never been gladder that he was made of this place, these sands and these proud tribes, because even the sight of her dour father would have marred the perfection he’d seen moving toward him on her own.
A vision in white. Petals at her feet and glittering jewels in her hair.
His Queen. His woman. His Anya.
Her gaze was fixed on him as if he was the sun. She was smiling, brighter than the desert sky far above them in the grand courtyard.
There was a part of him that knew news organizations from around the world, set up around the courtyard with their cameras, would capture that smile. That it would sell their story better than anything else could. Tarek was aware of it the way he was aware of the sky, the heat, the crowd. All the inevitabilities, but he didn’t care about it the way he should have. He didn’t feel as if it was a job well done, that smile of hers, or as if he ought to sit around patting himself on the back for the show.
All he could think was that her smile was his.
His.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, possibly ever, Tarek had resented the fact that he was the King. That he could not enjoy Anya’s joyful smile privately. That he could not keep this perfect, exquisite vision of his Anya walking toward him to marry him to himself.
I do not wish to share her, he had thought.
And when she finally reached him, he’d gazed down at her in a kind of shock, torn between what he wanted and what was.
Duty and desire, as always.
But there was only one winner in that fight, and ever had been.
Tarek knew that. He had always known that. And yet here he stood, engaged in futile battles inside himself while she looked at him with eyes so soft it made him ache, speaking oflove.
“You can’t really mean to tell me that you think there isn’t more between us than a bargain we made,” Anya said from behind him.
He turned and braced himself, but she didn’t look the way he expected her to look. Her arms were folded and she was glaring at him. She was not cringing. She was certainly not frail and fainting. If she was awash in whatever emotions he’d seen in her eyes outside, he could see no trace of it on her.
This is your American doctor, he reminded himself.In case you have forgotten.
Not the sweetly pliant woman who smiled at him like he was a sunrise and ran all over him like the heat of the day.
“You’re talking about sex,” he said, harshly. “I won’t pretend I don’t enjoy it. But it is only sex.”
Tarek meant that to hurt. To cut her in half, or at least stop this conversation. And he did not admire that he had that in him. That urge to cause pain that did not speak well of him or his ability to control himself no matter the situation. How had he imagined he’d been tested before? He clearly had not been.
But he didn’t take those words back, either.
He should have known better. This was Anya.