She laughed.
And by the time she stopped, he found his teeth were gritted. His jaw clenched so hard he was surprised he didn’t hear something break.
“Oh, Tarek.” There was still laughter in her voice, and she shook her head a little as she said his name. “You can’t really think that I’ll suddenly and magically believe that what happened between us isjust sex, because you say so. It doesn’t work that way.”
“You are mistaken,” he said, though his mouth was full of glass, he was sure of it.
“I was there.” It was as if she hadn’t heard him speak. Her gaze never wavered. “I know better.”
And something inside him was shaking. Shaking, crumbling, turning to ash and that bitter glass even as he stood there. Suggesting that what he’d taken to be the solid iron foundation of who he was, who he needed to be, had only ever been wishful thinking after all.
“I understand what it is you want,” he told her, trying to sound less like broken pieces and more like a king. “But you cannot have it. Royal marriages have always been thus. Each one of us has very specific duties, Anya. I must rule the kingdom. You must support the throne. There will be heirs and they must be raised to respect the country, its people, the traditions that make us who we are, and the future we must make happen if we are to thrive.”
“That sounds like a civics lesson,” she threw at him. “I’m talking about our marriage.”
“Our marriage has even more rules,” he retorted. “How could you think otherwise? This is not one of your romances. This is a union that must produce the next King. You and I do not belong to each other, Anya. We are not lovers. I belong to the kingdom. And you must know your place.”
“My place.” Her eyes glittered with temper and something else Tarek didn’t think he wished to define. “Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what you think that is.”
“I have been telling you.” His voice was an iron bar and he wished he still was, deep within. He wished she hadn’t made him doubt he ever could be again. “What do you imagine this last month has been?”
She did not laugh at that, as he half expected she would, this woman who sobbed out her pleasure as if she might never recover and then faced him down as no man alive would dare. He saw something in that gaze of hers falter as she searched his face. He told himself he did not wish to know what she looked for. “This last month?”
“Yes, Anya.” He started toward her then, the lanterns flickering all around them. The tent was lush, done up in deep colors, soft rugs, and everything that might make the cold of a desert night more comfortable. But it might as well have been a stark, empty cell for all he noticed. “What did you think? I have been teaching you how to be the Queen I want.”
“I didn’t realize that class was in session.” There was that brightness in her eyes again, but she didn’t give in to it. She stood taller, lifted her chin the way he thought she always would, and as ever with this woman, met his gaze.
Defiantly, he thought.
But Tarek was an expert at putting down rebellions. And he knew that if he did not stop this one before it started, it would sweep them both up. He had seen it happen.
He had spent his childhood surrounded by his father’s wives. Some of them loved his father. Others loved his power. But love was always at the heart of the jealous wars that swept through the harem, pitting wife against wife and even half siblings against each other sometimes. All for love.
Practical wives, like his mother, kept themselves above the fray.
“A queen in love with the King is but a silly woman in love with an inconstant man,”his mother had told him long ago, in the dialect that marked her as a member of the fiercest of all the Alzalam tribes. He knew his father had been forced to fight for her—literally, in a bare-fisted battle against her eldest brother. Only when he won did his mother’s people, and his mother, consider his proposal.“The world is filled with such women in love with lesser men. But there is only one King of Alzalam. And I choose to be his Queen first, last, and always.”
He had to make Anya see.
“I have taught you well,” he said as he drew close, impressed as ever that she did not back down. Even when he stood over her, perfectly placed to put his hands on her in temper. In passion. In any way he liked, but she looked unmoved by his proximity. “I taught you the kinds of meals that I prefer and how I like to eat them. I taught you how to give me your surrender when I wish it. Each and every kind of release I prefer. And how to please me with your compliance.”
She shook her head. “Silly me. I thoughtItaughtyouthat there’s nothing wrong with taking out your frustrations on a willing participant.”
“There’s nothing I don’t like about you, Doctor,” Tarek gritted out, because that was no more than the truth. “I like your sharp tongue. I like your temper and your brain. And I think you know I like the pleasures of your flesh. But you must never mistake the matter. Those are part of the bargain we have made. Love does not enter into it.”
“I think,” she said softly, her eyes glittering, “that His Majesty protests too much.”
“There it is again. That maudlin belief that all things end up tied in a bow while something sentimental plays in the distance. I understand that you can’t help it. You can’t change where you came from.” He sighed. “But it’s not real, Anya. It will never be real.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. It makes no difference. Not believing me won’t make what I’m telling you any less true or real. It will only cause you heartache. Facts are facts whether you choose to believe them, or do not.”
“Tarek,” she began, a kind of storm in her eyes. “You must know that I can see—”
But he did not wish to know what she saw. Hecould notknow what she saw.
He had only let his guard down once, and he bore the scars of that mistake.