Royal Families Vs. Historicals

CHAPTER TEN

HE SHOOK HIS HEAD. “We don’t need to speak of it. Not now.”

She nodded slowly, keeping her hand on his arm. She didn’t speak for a moment, her eyes downcast. Then she looked back up at him. “You’ve really never been with a woman before?”

“No.”

“Have you… What…what have you done with…other people…?”

“No one. Nothing. I cannot remember the last time I was touched at all before you.” And suddenly the weight of her fingertips on his arm was like a brick. So heavy it was nearly unbearable.

“You were very good,” she said. “You should know that.”

Never in his memory had anyone said something to him out of interest of sparing his feelings. But he wondered now if that was the case. “There is no need for you to lie. In fact, it is best if you don’t. I need to learn how to please you.”

“You did. I’m not lying to you. Trust me, I wouldn’t. I was not a… You know I was with my husband. He was the only one. But…I say that to tell you I understand how important communication is. Especially in the bedroom.”

“I imagine he did not need instruction.”

“No,” she said, looking down. “He didn’t. Though, in some ways, he did. Anytime you’re with someone new you must learn them. All bodies are not the same. Being with you is different.”

“And does it please you?”

“Yes,” she said, meeting his eyes, leaving off any sarcastic asides.

“If I had known…if I had known what it would be like, I never could have resisted you the day that you touched me.”

A smile curved her lips. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I am a terrible liar. If I suffer from anything, it might be too much honesty.”

“I’ve noticed that. I find it quite refreshing.”

“Why is that?”

The smile inverted, a slight crease appearing between her brows. “I’m not sure. Maybe because I have spent very much of my life around careful people. I’ve spent much of my life being careful and suffering consequences when I wasn’t. I quite like that you aren’t.”

“I suppose carefulness might be a valuable skill to cultivate.”

“If I teach you, you have to promise never to use it on me.”

“An odd request.”

“Maybe I’m odd.” She tilted her head to the side, something about the motion making his heart feel slightly overlarge for his chest.

“I think of the two of us, I am the strange one.”

“Possibly.” She lay back on the bed, temptation personified. He could easily get lost in her. Make love to her until they both fell asleep.

And what will happen when sleep comes?

Ice replaced the blood flowing through his veins.

“It is time, I think, for you to go back to your room,” he said.

“What? I just thought…”

“For many reasons, not the least of which being that I have yet to solve the sleepwalking-with-weapons issue, I think it would be best if we kept to our separate quarters.”

She nodded slowly. “I anticipated that we would have separate rooms in general, but I thought perhaps tonight…”

“There is the issue of the sword.”

“Perhaps chuck it out into the hall?” she asked, one brow raised.

“I could, but then what else might I get hold of? I’m very resourceful.”

She raised her other brow. “Are you? I feel as if I’ve just benefited from some of that resourcefulness.”

That cool top layer of hers was back in place. It was because he’d hurt her in some way, and he could sense that. But he couldn’t fathom what he might do to fix it. Not when her fingers on his arm were crushing him now. Not when he needed space. Not just from her, but beyond these walls. Out in the desert.

But failing that, he just needed to be alone. He needed time to process. Time to rebuild. He couldn’t do that with her here.

“Please do not take this personally,” he said. “Please don’t be hurt.”

She shook her head slowly, removing her touch from him. “It doesn’t work that way, Tarek.”

“Why not?” Not even he was that obtuse when it came to interacting with people. Still, it seemed unfair.

“You can’t call a bullet back after it’s been fired. I would think that’s something a warrior would understand.”

“But I didn’t mean to fire at you.”

She put her hand on his cheek. “You know that doesn’t matter, either.”

“It is for your safety.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I’m sure it is. Good night, Tarek.”

She slipped from his bed, taking her wedding gown from the floor and slipping it back on, holding the front closed, not bothering to collect anything else. Not her bangles, not her veil, not her belt.

She had entered the chamber a bride, and she was leaving a wife. An unhappy wife.

But he had to set limits, even now. It was best she learned. When it came to sharing his body, he had determined to give. Because he could do nothing else, in truth. But there were other things that must remain off-limits.

He had whittled the focus of his soul down to a sleek, streamlined arrow, with all of the excess shaved away. He could not go back. He would not.

Yes, his body he could afford to share. But never his soul. He could never, ever expose her to everything he’d been through. Never share the creation of his scars.

She was far too lovely for him to ever present her with something so ugly.

Difficult, when the ugliness was written all over his body.

And one more reason to stay out of her bed tonight.

* * *

Olivia was playing petulant games, and she knew they would come to nothing with Tarek. Removing herself from her first husband’s bed for a certain length of time when she’d found him irritating had typically resulted in the desired apology. Because Marcus didn’t want to be without sex, he would say whatever he needed to in order to restore harmony in that area. Tarek, of course, wouldn’t understand. She was attempting to manipulate a man who was impossible to manipulate. Not because he was so strong, but because he simply didn’t understand subterfuge.

She felt wretched.

But he had torn her open on their wedding night, laid her bare in more ways than just the physical. The way he had looked at her… As though she was special, as though she was the only one. Her heart seized tight. It was because she was the only one. The only woman to ever touch him. The only woman to ever kiss him, to have him inside her body.

It forced more unfavorable comparisons between him and her first husband.

Marcus had been skilled. He had been with countless women before she’d come into his life. For him seduction had been about knowing exactly where to touch, exactly how.

He’d left her feeling as if she was floating on a cloud, left her feeling sated and satisfied.

Tarek had left her bruised. Aching. Desperate for more.

There was something so impolite about the way he had ravished her. Like the man himself. In contrast, Marcus had unfailing manners, always. But Olivia couldn’t escape the thought that it was a testament to how little it mattered which female was in his bed at any given time.

She had spoken to Tarek about how they would both have to learn. Of course she would have to take the time to watch his responses, to feel what made him shake. What made him moan. What made him hard. But then she’d realized that hadn’t been the case with Marcus. He had never learned her in that way. He knew women. That was different.

Not that she had cause for complaint; not that she never asked for more.

It was pointless to stand here and compare two men who were completely different. Particularly when one was dead, couldn’t give more even if she begged him to. And she hadn’t. When he’d been alive she’d asked him for nothing beyond what he gave.

Unlike Tarek, Marcus had never pledged fidelity.

She’d never asked him to.

You didn’t ask Tarek to, either.

And yet he had.

None of this made her wonder what was wrong with Marcus. Rather, she was beginning to wonder what was wrong with herself. Why she had never pushed for more. Because she and Marcus had professed love for each other, and still he had given her less than half. And she had accepted it. Not only had she accepted it, she’d been comfortable with it. Had he made eye contact with her as he thrust deep into her body the way that Tarek had, she probably would have curled in on herself and retreated.

Intimacy meant reaching deep. It meant sharing and changing. Turning over things that were wrong and discovering how they could be fixed. Facing problems head-on.

That had never gone well for her in the past. The potential cost felt too great.

For that reason, she hadn’t wanted that sort of intimacy with the man she’d once called her husband.

She wasn’t entirely certain she wanted it now. Because that intimacy was the reason she was avoiding Tarek’s bed in a fit of pique. His rough, unpracticed movements, that it was all for her, only for her, had stripped a layer of skin from her body, left her raw and exposed. And then, after all that, he had asked her to leave. When she had wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around his waist and curl up beside him, bury her face in the curve of his neck. Lie with him until her breathing matched his, until they both drifted off to sleep.

He had denied her that.

She was still angry. Still angry, even knowing she had to get into a limousine with him and go down into the capital city for him to make a speech at a monument of war to commemorate a day in the nation’s history. It was, in her understanding, a celebration of the founding of the country. The unification of the primary tribes into one sovereign nation. And of course Tarek would need to be there, again speaking of unity, and of the new future for Tahar.

And she, as the new sheikha, had to accompany him and stand just behind him, staring at him adoringly while she really wanted to eviscerate him. Possibly with her teeth. All right, she was being both dramatic and bloodthirsty.

She walked through the throne room of the palace to the antechamber that led outside. She paused, adjusting the scarf she had wound over her hair and loosely around her neck. Then she walked outside, putting on a pair of large sunglasses to protect her from the glare, and from Tarek’s gaze.

He was already standing there, in front of the limousine. He was wearing a dark suit jacket and perfectly cut trousers, his hands stuffed into the pockets. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and not even the superbly cut pants could disguise the perfection that was the musculature of his thighs. She thought it was funny how quickly he had taken to wearing European-style suits. He seemed to like them. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to bother to have anything else tailored. That could be it. Nothing off the rack was going to fit him. He was too tall, too broad.

She was obsessed with his body. Which wouldn’t be so much of an issue if she wasn’t also obsessed with the man. A man who was nearly impossible to reach.

“Good morning,” she said, opting for the first thrust so that it was his job to parry.

He turned and her stomach lurched. She chose to imagine him still as the great hairy beast-man she had initially encountered in the throne room. But considering that, she sometimes forgot just how beautiful he was. It was easy to focus only on the raw magnetism and forget that he was objectively the most handsome man she had ever seen.

“You are speaking to me, Olivia,” he said, his eyes flicking over her.

She wondered if she should have worn a dress. Or perhaps something more traditionally Tahari. She thought perhaps her cream-colored harem pants, gold blouse tucked into the high waist and long, loose linen jacket might not be the appropriate attire. If he noticed, he didn’t say.

“You do not have to cover your hair,” he said, jerking open the door to the limousine.

“I know. Wind.” She breezed past him and got into the car, sliding to the other side and buckling herself with a resolute click.

And Tarek insulation, but he didn’t need to know that. For that same reason, she kept her sunglasses in place.

“We will be staying in the city tonight,” he said, joining her in the limo, closing the door behind him.

The car began to move away from the palace as she processed this piece of information.

“I didn’t bring anything.”

“It was taken care of for you.”

Of course it was.

“You are angry with me,” he continued. “You haven’t spoken to me in two days.”

“Very good, Tarek. Next we’ll move on to the more advanced human emotions.”

“I explained to you why I didn’t want you in my room.”

“I don’t believe you,” she bit out. Her words lingered in the air, bitter, desperate to her ears.

“You want to stay with me?”

“Yes. I do.”

The admission was difficult, which she despised. Exposing all of her neediness, all of the desire in her that had gone unmet for so many years. Because of herself. Because she had never asked for more. Because she had been terrified of more. She still was. But she also felt as if she had been breathing stale air for too long, and Tarek was like the very wind she’d claimed to be trying to protect her hair from. A rush of something fresh, necessary, that she could not control or harness. But it wasn’t her hair she was concerned for.

It was her heart. That caged, protected creature that she had locked behind golden bars years ago. Because she had been so tired of feeling the hurt every time her parents missed something special of hers because they needed to be with Emily. Because what kind of monster did it make her if she wanted the attention stolen from her sick sister and directed at her? It was why she had been able to accept Marcus’s love for what it was. Why she had been able to love him in return while knowing almost nothing about him, and sharing almost nothing about herself.

She didn’t like any of these revelations. Not in the least. Any more than she liked the revelation that Tarek had disrespected the cage. Had stuck his hands right between the bars and grabbed hold of the thing she’d been coddling the most.

Bastard.

He didn’t even know. Hadn’t even been aiming for her affected organ, she knew. She supposed that was the danger of sleeping with virgins. They were so honest. And everything they gave was all for you.

As a woman who had never had anything that was just for her, she’d been unprepared for what it would do to her.

Marrying a stranger, a feral stranger, who lived across the world, who had completely different customs and practices than she did, surely should have been a recipe for continuing on in the manner she had become accustomed to. Surely he was the last person on earth who should have ever been able to reach her.

She was wretched indeed. And irritated that she was having these realizations while sitting next to him in a car. It wasn’t as if she could jump out of the moving vehicle to escape him.

On second thought, at the moment it sounded preferable to continuing to be enclosed in this tiny space with him.

Alas, she wasn’t going to take a chance on a tuck and roll at this moment.

Which meant she simply had to endure.