He said the last with a growl in his voice and Mina took a step back.
Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, he said, “I’m the King, Mina. Not a murderer. You’re going to get heatstroke if you don’t take off the damn sweater.”
She stared at him mutinously and he prepared for another refusal, inwardly curious at the idea of making good on his word. The image of relieving her of her clothing, albeit with more finesse than she was likely expecting, lent itself to all kinds of intriguing conclusions.
But it wasn’t to be.
“Turn around,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Really, Mina? We’ve just survived an emergency plane landing, we’re alone in the woods, and we’re married.”
She set her jaw and nodded.
“You’re a child,” he said, turning.
Behind him, she muttered under her breath, “Just because I’m not an exhibitionist like everyone else around here...”
He found himself smiling. And that in itself was unexpected. After starting his day with the punch to the solar plexus that had been Mina fresh in the morning, and closing it out by crash landing his favorite plane on a heretofore pristine beach, he wouldn’t have thought he could muster the mood for a smile.
Stealing a quick glance over his shoulder, though, he caught a flash of Mina’s golden-brown skin before it disappeared beneath the black of his shirt and realized he could do more than smile. The glimpse was over before he’d barely had time to register it, and banally chaste at that, yet his mouth watered. The heat that raced through him was the same heat that had overtaken him when she had been in his arms the night before.
Had it only been the night before when he’d kissed her for the first time? He’d have to add bending time to her list of uncanny abilities, this stranger who was his wife. In the short time he’d known her she had been transformed, and yet he realized now that the packaging was entirely superficial when it came to this woman. The core essence of her remained, no matter what she wore, and at her core she was the same woman he’d encountered in the chapel at their first meeting.
The thought had him stealing another glance at her.
She walked deliberately, her eyes continuously scanning the scenery. His shirt was large on her, though her breasts appeared to be doing their best to fill it out, and it occurred to him that it wasn’t fair to other women to have such a brilliant mind wrapped up in all that delicious packaging.
They fellinto sync, making their way through the woodlands, walking side by side, with Mina occasionally stopping to examine a particular plant or sign of wildlife, and Zayn tolerating the delays long enough for her to make a quick note in her pocket memo pad before he drove them onward.
On one particularly exuberant occasion she stopped, gasping and pointing a waggling finger over his shoulder as a series of strange squeals escaped her throat.
Zayn whipped around to catch a rustle in the underbrush and the sound of something scurrying away. Turning back to Mina, he waited for her to catch her breath.
“It was a brown-beaked warbler!”
He smiled. The brown-beaked warbler was one of the endemic species on the island. He’d seen them before, having taken countless trips to the island over the course of his life, but her excitement was catching nonetheless—like watching a child at Christmas.
“To just happen upon one!” she gushed. “What are the chances?”
Her color was up, and so bright that not even the black of his shirt could diminish her glow, and he realized that, despite the circumstances, he was enjoying this time with her. In a way he couldn’t remember enjoying anything since becoming King.
It was hard to truly enjoy things after losing your father, learning that your uncle had been behind the plot that killed him, saying goodbye to your mother, because her home had become a house of mirrors filled with the ghost of her husband, hiding it all, and then assuming the throne—all within a year and a half. And yet here he was, enjoying himself nonetheless.
As they continued their hike Mina grew bolder, pointing out more and more flora and fauna as if she were leading a tour group. None of the information was new to him, the island having been in his family for the last hundred years or so, but her enthusiasm charmed him. With every step, the combination of her earnest exuberance and being back on the island seemed to shake off some of the weight of the past two years.
And she had no idea.
“What exactly is your field of study?” he asked, suddenly feeling the gulf of his lack of knowledge about her.
She frowned, eyeing him suspiciously. “I’m a biological systems scientist. Or rather, I was...” This last she’d added with a frown and a note of confusion.
The uncertainty in her voice roused in him an urge to conquer and destroy, but her identity crisis wasn’t an enemy he could fight. She could thank their fathers for that.
“You are still,” he said, trying anyway. “Becoming Queen does not negate your years of study.”
She sent him a nod, accompanied by a vague smile, and he had the unusual experience of realizing she was humoring him.
“It doesn’t,” he insisted, more determined in the face of her brush-off.