“Any woman can share her body with you,” Olivia said, her tone dismissive. “Very few have the benefit of royal training.”

Tarek’s expression barely changed. Just a flicker in his eyes that was nearly imperceptible. “You think I might find value in that?”

“Unless you want the country you’ve spent so much of your life protecting to burn, I think you will. There is an entirely different manner of strength that is coveted in politics.”

“I don’t have to marry you to receive the benefit of your training.”

“It’s true. You don’t. And perhaps that’s a good place for us to start.”

“I can promise you a marriage between the two of us would be nothing like the one you shared with your first husband.”

She didn’t doubt it.

“Give me one month. I will help you with the finer points, and we can engage in a kind of courtship. A bit of something for the media, something for your people. If it doesn’t work out there is no harm. But if it does…”

He stood abruptly, his movements fluid. It reminded her of the strike of a viper. So still in the moment just before the fatal hit was administered. Over before you ever knew it had occurred.

“Dowager Queen Olivia of Alansund, we have an accord. You have thirty days to convince me that you are indispensable. If you are successful, I will make you my wife.”

MAISEY YATES is a USA TODAY bestselling author of more than thirty romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking, and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isn’t writing she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online, and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website: maiseyyates.com.

Bound to the

Warrior King

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Elyse and Elizabeth, I blame you for this book…

I mean, I thank you for this book.

It was as fun as I thought it would be.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS FRAIL. And pale. Her blond hair pulled back into a tight and elegant bun, the long sleeves of her dress and the hem that brushed the floor were likely an attempt at sparing her European skin from the full brunt of the Taharan sun.

It would not do. A few moments out in the environment he’d spent his past decade in and she would perish.

Nothing more than a white lily drying on the sand until she returned back to the dust, sent away on the next dry, hot breeze.

Whatever advisor had imagined she would make a suitable wife for the Sheikh of Tahar was clearly yet another man he needed to have removed from his position.

When it came to his staff, Tarek’s needs were not Malik’s. As was becoming clearer and clearer every day.

A political alliance. That was what this potential marriage had been called. As Tarek knew nothing of politics he’d been more than willing to investigate the possibilities of the union.

But no. Seeing her now... It would not stand.

“Take her away from my sight,” Tarek said.

She looked up, her expression smooth yet shot through with steel. “No.”

He arched a brow. “No?”

“I cannot leave here.”

“Certainly you can. The same way you came in.” It was he who could not leave. He who could not go back and seek the solace of the desert.

He, who had been kept in isolation for most of his life, who now had to find a way to rule a population of millions.

She tilted her chin upward and he could see her regal bearing, the aristocratic lines of her profile. And he realized he had not bothered to hold on to her name.

He was certain he had been told when, two weeks previously, he’d been informed a princess from a European kingdom would be coming to offer herself in marriage. And yet, his brain had sifted through and retained some things, but not others.

Her name was not essential, and therefore it had been dropped.

“You do not understand, my sheikh,” she continued, her voice steady, echoing in the vast throne room.

He rather liked this room. It was very like a cave.

“Do I not?” he asked, still unaccustomed to the title.

“No. I cannot return to Alansund without this union secured. In fact, it would be best if I did not return at all.”

“And why is that?”

“There is no place for me. I am not born of royalty. I am not even native to the country.”

“Are you not?”

“I’m American,” she said. “I met my husband...my late husband, the king, when he was at school. Now he is dead. His brother is in his place, and is set on taking a wife. One who isn’t me, thank God. But he has determined my value is in a dynastic marriage abroad. And so...here I am.”

“Your name,” he said, because he was tired of not knowing it.

She blinked. “You do not know my name?”

“I have no time for trivialities, and as I am not keeping you, your name did not seem important. However, now I will have it.”

She tilted her chin upward, her expression haughty. “Forgive me, your highness, but my name is not considered a triviality in most settings. I’m Dowager Queen Olivia of Alansund. And I had thought we were going to discuss the merits of marriage.”

Tarek shifted in his seat, lifting his hand and smoothing his beard. “I am not entirely certain there is any merit to marriage.”

She blinked her large luminous blue eyes. “Then, why am I here?”

“My advisors felt that it would be beneficial for me to speak to you. I am not certain.”

“Is there another woman you prefer?”

He wasn’t certain how to answer the question. Because it was a foreign thought. Women had never been a part of his life. Of his exile. “No. Why do you ask?”

“You do require an heir, I would assume.”

She was not wrong in that. He was the last of the al-Khalij family. All that remained of a once-mighty bloodline. Curse his brother for not taking a bride. For not procreating when he had the chance. Now it would fall to Tarek, and nothing in his life had prepared him for the task. Quite the contrary, he had been told that family would be nothing more than a weakness to one such as him. He had been trained to cast off the lusts of the flesh. In order to protect his country he’d had to become something more than a man. He’d had to become a part of the rock that grew out of the dry, impassable desert. Asking him to become blood and bone again was a tall order.

But now he was all that stood between Tahar and her enemies. All that stood between his nation and ruin. He had long been the sword for his people, but now he was the head. A duty he could no more shirk than the previous assignation.

“Eventually.”

“With all due respect, Sheikh, the delay in producing an heir is what finds us both here today. I failed to have a child with my husband when I could have, and your brother failed to do so, as well. Therefore I find myself displaced. My brother-in-law is as uninterested in taking me as his bride as I am in becoming her, and you are here on the throne permanently when it should likely be a nephew of yours assuming the position. If I’ve learned one thing over the past year, it’s that delay in procreation can be quite a costly error.”

Tarek leaned back, his muscles aching. This past month in the palace had done nothing to acclimatize him to modern furnishings. He found the positions they required him to hold unnatural.

His original assessment of this queen, Olivia, was that she was fragile. He was beginning to wonder if he had been blinded by appearances. He knew better than that.

A man who had spent as many years out in the desert as he had knew better than to trust his eyes alone. Mirages were more than the stuff of legend. As he well knew.

In the desert you were far more likely to find sand than any respite from the heat. Still, when news of Malik’s death had been brought to him by the leader of the Bedouin tribe he spent some of his time with, he had been reluctant to return.

What could he offer the country as a diplomat? This country that was a part of his soul. A nation left devastated by his brother’s rule. By the loss of his parents all those year ago to an assassin’s bullets.

This country he had sworn to protect at all costs. Because it was all that remained. The throne, the protection of Tahar, were the very reasons his parents had lost their lives.

Which was why he had to return. Why he had to rule. Why he had to continue on. Why he had to heal this nation left broken and in ruins by Malik.

And why, no matter how distasteful it might seem, he had to consider the merit of taking a bride. One who would fill in the gaps he could not.

“On that you present a well-made point. And yet, I have other options. At the very least I have proved I am much more difficult to kill than my brother.”

She arched her pale brow. “Is anyone actively trying to disprove that? Because my own safety is paramount in my mind. If you have enemies, I find it won’t do to put myself, or any potential children, in that sort of situation.”

“I appreciate your self-interest. However, my brother’s death was nothing more than an accident. There are no enemies. Any detractors he might have had he dealt with harshly. None remain.”

“The manner of ruling ensures that many in fact remain. It’s just they are silenced. Hopefully, you do not bear the brunt of their anger.”

“I am not Malik. I do not intend to follow his example.” Far from it. He intended to rule for the people, not for himself. Malik had intimidated the masses. Had ignored the economy. Had turned a blind eye while people starved. Spent money on lavish parties and bought jewels and penthouses for his latest courtesan. He had served no master but his own lust, and Tarek refused to walk down that same path.

Far better to resent power than to crave it. As Tarek now knew his brother had done from when he was a very young man. As he had learned in greater depth since he’d returned.

His brother was a murderer. Thankfully, now a dead one.

She nodded slowly. “I see. Change can cause its own issues.”

“You speak as though you have experience with this.”

Pale pink lips curved upward. She was such a refined creature. Foreign to him. He had spent very little time in the company of women, less so women such as this.

The females who populated the Bedouin camps he frequented were strong, accustomed to a harsh way of life. To fending off the elements and intruders, both from nature and enemy factions. They were not like this ridiculous and impractically designed specimen before him. Willowy, slim, with a neck that was too long and fragile in his estimation. She appeared far too easily broken.

“My husband made quite a few changes when he took the throne. He was responsible for a great deal of modernization. Alansund was one of the more outdated countries in Scandinavia and King Marcus did quite a lot to change that.” She swallowed, that lovely, impractical throat working. “Change is always painful.”

He nodded slowly. “And your country faces another change. A new king.”

“Yes. Though I trust Anton will do his best for the country. He’s a good man, my brother-in-law.”

“Not good enough for you to marry?”

“He is involved with someone else and wishes to marry her. Anyway, it’s a bit biblical. Taking your dead brother’s wife. Not to mention, it didn’t settle well with me.”

Tarek could not imagine why she would find that specifically objectionable. He tried to imagine what it might have been like if Malik had been in possession of a wife. He couldn’t fathom why it should be more distasteful than any other method of acquiring a sheikha. It didn’t matter to him who the woman had been married to previously.

But then, he had to acknowledge his ignorance when it came to relationships between men and women. Perhaps, it was one of those things that escaped him due to the singular nature of his existence prior to coming back to live in the palace.

“It was he who sent you here? Your brother-in-law?”

She nodded slowly, taking a step toward the throne, the sound of her shoes on the black marble unique to his ears. Something to do with the high-heeled style of her footwear. Intriguing. Unfamiliar.

“Yes. He realized you might be in need of a queen. And it so happened we had an extra.”

He recognized the bit of strange humor in that statement. He might have laughed had he been a man given to such things. As it was, he had forgotten how.

“And we are short one. I can see where this appeared to be a logical solution. But regrettably I find I’m in no space to make vows. Now, are you able to see yourself out or shall I call some guards to assist you?”

* * *

Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she had been dismissed. Or perhaps she could. In reality Anton had summarily dismissed her across the sea and to a foreign country to make herself an asset to Alansund. Because with Marcus dead she no longer qualified as important. It was pointless to be angry about it. She had no royal blood. She had borne no heir. That was palace life. None of it was personal.

The health of the country was paramount. When she had married Marcus she had pledged her allegiance to her adopted homeland, and she could hardly give it up now that he was gone.

In truth, this was the second relationship Anton had attempted to arrange for her. The first to a diplomat from Alansund who would be taking up residence in the United States. Since Olivia was American by birth it had made sense, but...

She’d felt no connection to the man. And the idea of returning to the US had felt like a regression somehow. She wanted something new. Craved it.

Then Malik had died and a new sheikh had been installed in Tahar. The perfect opportunity to forge an alliance with a country long isolated, but rich in oil and other resources.

Anton had asked, and she had agreed. She’d failed him once; she wouldn’t do it again. Still, even knowing the sheikh was unconventional, raised mainly in the desert, she had imagined...something else. She certainly hadn’t expected this man.

His presence filled the throne room with an animalistic air that radiated from him. He was not the sort of royalty she was accustomed to. Her husband and her brother-in-law were cultured. Men who spoke with carefully chosen words, who had posture that would cause envy in the most experienced soldier. Men who wore suits with expert precision—aristocratic beauty so sharp it was deadly.

Sheikh Tarek al-Khalij possessed none of those qualities. He was more beast than man, leaning back on the glittering throne, one hand on his chin, the other holding fast to the ornate armrest. His legs were spread wide, one outstretched, the other tucked beneath the chair.

He was not handsome.

In his unremarkable tunic and linen pants, with his long black hair pulled back by a leather strap and his dark beard concealing most of these features, he was the furthest thing from it.

But he was captivating.

His eyes were like onyx—endless, flat. Assessing. She found it difficult to look away.

In many ways she was relieved that he was turning her down. This was not what she had signed on for. She’d seen pictures of the previous ruler. He had been cultured, handsome in much the same way Marcus had been.

She had been prepared to take on another man such as that. She had not been prepared for Tarek.

Still. She had no idea what would become of her if she turned back now. If she returned to Alansund without completing the proposed mission. If she slipped straight back into the void of grief and uselessness she’d been wallowing in at the palace. And she desperately didn’t want to disappoint her brother-in-law. Didn’t want to sever one of the few good ties she had in place.

She imagined that Anton wouldn’t disown her completely. But there was no place for her there. No purpose. She would have nothing more to do than rattle around the large palace, nothing more than a useless limb that could easily be amputated. Until she said something. Until she spoke up and lost the good favor of the last person on earth who cared about her even a little...

It was too close to what she’d experienced growing up. The forgotten child. Because everyone had had to give Emily every last shred of attention. Watching Emily required constant vigilance. The state of her health needing to be monitored at all times.

What does resenting that make you?

She pushed the thought to the side. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Her parents had done what good parents had to do. And she had done what a good sister should. Still, she had an aversion to idleness. To invisibility.

“I wish you would reconsider,” she said, the words exiting her lips before she had a chance to think them through.

Did she wish he would reconsider? She wasn’t sure. Part of her wanted to run away, to go back to the private plane that had brought her here—the same sort of plane her husband had perished in two years ago—climb into the bed and cover herself with a blanket and spend the flight back to Alansund curled into the fetal position.

That was the other problem. Returning would require getting on a plane again. Three antianxiety pills had not been enough to make that bearable.

She’d never liked to fly. Losing Marcus hadn’t helped that particular phobia.

“Do you know what my function has long been here in my country?” His tone was mild. Deceptive, she had a feeling.

“Enlighten me,” she said, schooling her tone into smooth unbreakable glass.

“I am the dagger. The one a man might keep hidden in the folds of his robe. Concealed, and all the more dangerous for that reason. I did not command the army. Rather, my place was in the desert. My focus on the tribes there, on ensuring stability. Loyalty to the crown. Commanding small battalions when need be. Crushing insurgency before it ever had the chance to take root. The enemy to my brother’s enemies. The one they barely knew existed. They say if you live by the sword, you will also die by it. If that is the case, I suppose I am simply awaiting the final blow. However, as I previously stated, I am quite difficult to kill.”

Unease crept down her spine like icy fingers. If he had been intending to scare her, he had very nearly succeeded. But he had also piqued her curiosity. And for the moment that overrode the fear.

“Do you have any training in being royalty?” she asked.

“Do I know how to converse with foreign dignitaries, give speeches and eat with rudimentary table manners? No.”

“I see,” she said, taking a step closer to him. She felt as if she was approaching a caged tiger. There was no real danger, not in this setting. But the strength, the lethal potential in his body was evident. “With that taken into account, perhaps I could be of use to you in other ways?”

“What other ways? If you mean to entice me with your body—” he looked her up and down as he said the word, his gaze dismissive “—you will find that I am not so easily moved.”

Heat rushed over her in a flood. She wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or anger. And she wasn’t sure why she would feel either. She didn’t know the man. His assessment of her body didn’t mean anything to her. She was confident enough in her appeal. Marcus had certainly never had any complaints.

She did her best to keep from flinching. To keep from faltering. Her emotions, her concerns, had no place here. Truly, she had no right to feel upset, or concerned. She owed this to Anton. He wasn’t asking too much, not when it came to serving the country.

“Any woman can share her body with you,” she said, her tone dismissive. “Very few have the benefit of royal training. As I said, I’m American. An heiress, and certainly from a wealthy family, but not royal. There was much I had to learn before I was ready to become queen. I could teach you.”

His expression barely changed, a flicker in his eyes that was nearly imperceptible. “You think I might find value in that?”

“Unless you want the country you’ve spent so much of your life protecting to burn, I think you will. There is an entirely different manner of strength that is coveted in politics. And like your physical strength, you will be required to work at it. You must build up your muscles, so to speak.”

“I don’t have to marry you to receive the benefit of your training.”

“It’s true. You don’t. And perhaps that’s a good place for us to start.”

“What are you proposing?”

“Give me some time to prove my value to you. Marriage is a rather serious step for two strangers to take.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Have you married one before?”

“Marcus wasn’t a stranger when we married. We met at university.”

“A love match?” he asked, one dark brow raised.

Her stomach twisted uncomfortably, a bit of numbness starting at the tips of her fingers and slowly spreading upward. “Yes.” She swallowed hard. “Just another reason I find it so easy to entertain the idea of a mutually beneficial alliance. I am not searching for, nor do I anticipate having, another marriage like my first. I don’t want one.”

“I can promise you a marriage between the two of us would be nothing like the one you shared with your first husband.”

She didn’t doubt it.

“Fine. Don’t send me back. Give me one month. I will help you with the finer points, and we can engage in a kind of courtship. A bit of something for the media, something for your people. If it doesn’t work out, there is no harm. But if it does... Well, it solves several problems.”

He stood abruptly, his movements fluid. It reminded her of the strike of a viper. So still in the moment just before the fatal hit was administered. Over before you ever knew it had occurred.

“Dowager Queen Olivia of Alansund, we have an accord. You have thirty days to convince me that you are indispensable. If you are successful, I will make you my wife.”

CHAPTER TWO

“A MEMBER OF staff will show you to a room.”

“Perhaps you might trouble yourself just long enough to show me?” Olivia didn’t know why she was pressing for any more time spent in Tarek’s presence. Perhaps it was simply her attempt at reclaiming control of the situation.

She didn’t like feeling out of control, and the past two years of her life had given rise to the feeling that she was nothing more than a rock hurtling through space, at the mercy of gravity’s pull. She hated that feeling. It was too close to what she’d experienced growing up with the specter of terrible illness hanging over the household.

Nothing highlighted your true lack of influence on anything important like death, or the threat of death. Olivia was far too familiar with both.

So you can wallow in it, or you can make a difference. It isn’t like Anton wants to send you on an unpleasant mission. But he has a country to consider.

And so did she.

This wasn’t the time to break down. This wasn’t the time to start making things all about her, and her comfort. There was a broader scope to consider.

“You assume I might know where a prepared guest room is. I assure you I do not.”

“You don’t know the layout of the rooms in your own palace?”

He stepped down from the raised platform the throne sat on, making his way toward her. “This is not my palace. It is my brother’s palace. That is my brother’s throne. I wear my brother’s crown. Metaphorically, of course.” Olivia found it impossible to breathe with Tarek advancing on her as he was. He was nothing like the men she was accustomed to. Nothing like her gentle, sophisticated father. Nothing like her cultured, amusing husband. Or indeed her quiet and steady brother-in-law. If she was focusing on space metaphors, Tarek was a black hole. Sucking the air, the sound, the energy from the room around him, internalizing it. Creating a void that he alone commanded. “None of this is mine. I was not meant for this. If you intend to make me your project, then you should be aware of that fact.”

“What is the solution, then? Because you seem to be here, whether or not you feel destined for it,” she said, not certain where the strength to speak came from. Apparently, though he had sucked the air from her lungs, he had not stolen her ability to speak.

“I suppose you are the solution. My brother’s advisers despair of me. Fair enough, as I despair of them. I feel they are weak-minded sycophants, trained to be so by a ruler who required mindless servitude. I do not. Nor do I want it.”

“Come now, most rulers enjoy a bit of bowing and scraping.”

Black eyes clashed with hers. “Only a man craves praise. A weapon wants nothing more than to be used. And that, my queen, is all that I am.”

She swallowed hard, trying to appear self-possessed. Trying to feel self-possessed. “Then, I will train you to fight. The way a king must fight.”

He began to pace, making a circle around her. A shiver ran through her, chilling her down to her bones. “I worry. I worry about the things I have left behind, untended.”

“Then, use what you have seen. I’m sure you know more about many things than your brother ever did.” She had no idea if that was true; she was simply trying to prove her worth. “Use that. And let me assist you with the rest. Interacting with diplomats is simply politics as usual. My husband excelled at that. As do I.”

“Well, then, I expect for you to prove that within the allotted time. Follow me.” He strode past her, his movements decisive, abrupt.

She snapped to attention, doing her best to keep pace with him. It was nearly impossible. The top of her head came to his shoulder, and that was with the aid of her high heels. She had to take three strides to his every one, sounding like a panicked baby deer as she clicked along the marble. “Where exactly are you taking me? Because you just said you didn’t know where you were going.”

“Give me a skin of water, place me in the middle of the desert and I could find my way back. And yet, I find this palace difficult to navigate. It is too dark. I depend on the sun for my direction.”

“Interesting,” she said, “except, are you leading me to my room or the middle of the desert? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Just then a servant girl turned the corner and began walking toward them down the long corridor, her eyes averted. “You there,” Tarek said, his tone commanding. “Are there guest quarters in which I might install the queen?”

The girl stopped, her eyes widening. “Sheikh Tarek, we did not know to expect a guest.”

“Yes, because I did not tell you we were expecting one. Though I assumed my impotent advisors might have done. It is extremely difficult to accomplish simple tasks here. In the desert each man asks for himself. We have none of this foolish bureaucracy.”

The girl looked at him, her expression blank.

“I’m fine with whatever is available,” Olivia said, attempting to inject some diplomacy into the exchange. “I’m certain it will be fine. So I will need my bags brought from the car.”

The girl nodded. “I can do that. The room nearest the sheikh’s quarters has a made-up bed. It will be the simplest room to prepare.”

Tarek went very still, and Olivia had the feeling he didn’t want her staying near him. “That will be fine,” Olivia said before he could protest. Her aim was to be in proximity with him after all.

“See that it is done,” Tarek said.

The girl nodded and scurried off.

“I imagine you know how to find the room,” Olivia said.

He nodded once. “Indeed. Follow me.”

They wandered down a maze of domed corridors, with silver walls inlaid with stone reflecting off the polished floor. The palace at Alansund housed the crown jewels of the royal family. This palace seemed to be made of them. It was ostentatious, a show of riches that awed even her.

“This is beautiful.”

He stopped, turning to face her. “Is it? I find it oppressive.”

He turned away again, continuing to lead them in their journey. He was such a strange man. Impenetrable as rock, and yet, at the same time, honest in his speech. Still, for all that honesty, she found she could not understand him.

“I suppose when you are used to open spaces, it might be difficult to become used to living behind stone walls.”

“I’m used to stone walls. I’ve spent much of my time inhabiting caves, and an abandoned village out in the middle of the desert. But I have no good memories here.” He let his words die there, and she sensed there would be no reviving them now, no matter how persistent she was.

She didn’t need him to go on. She didn’t need to know his story, didn’t need to understand him.

She simply needed him to marry her.

A wave of fear, of uncertainty, washed over her. She wondered what she was doing here. Why she was agreeing to marry this stranger.

For Alansund. Because you were asked to. Because you are a queen who has no throne, no power. Because you have no husband. Because you have nowhere else, and nothing else.

Her internal voice had ample reason, and she found it difficult to argue. But fear was not looking for rationality. Fear was simply looking for a foothold, and it had found one.

Not so difficult to do in this situation.

Still, she followed on. He paused at one of the ornate doors that led to what she assumed would be her quarters for the duration of her stay. He pushed the door open without saying anything.

“You’re a scintillating conversationalist, has anyone ever told you that?” she asked.

“No,” he said, the sarcasm skating right over his head.

“I’m not that surprised.”

“Conversation was never required of me.”

In that statement, she felt all of the helplessness he would never otherwise express. And somehow, in that moment, with those words, she felt a connection with him. They were both in a situation they were ill equipped to handle. Olivia, having lost her status, having lost the man that was so much a part of her identity. And Tarek, pulled from the desert to become something he had never been trained to be.

“We will find a way,” she said. She wasn’t sure who the assurance was really meant for. Him, or her.

“And if we do not, you can return home.”

“It isn’t my home,” she said, speaking the words that terrified her more than any others. “I don’t have one. Not now.”

“I see. I have one. I simply cannot return to it.”

“Perhaps we will make one here?”

She tried to imagine finding a bond with this man, tried to imagine being his wife, and she found it impossible. Though not more impossible than returning to Alansund. Watching her brother-in-law sit on the throne, where Marcus had been before. Watching his fiancée take her place.

That was perhaps an even bigger impossibility.

“If not that, perhaps we can simply prevent the palace from falling into ruin? And the entire country with it?”

“That’s a lot of faith you’re placing in a stranger,” she said.

“I would more readily put my faith in you than anyone who worked under my brother.”

“Was he so bad?”

“Yes,” Tarek said, offering no further explanation. And she could tell, by the finality in that one-word answer, that he would not.

“Then, perhaps you don’t have as far to go as you might think. You may look good simply by comparison.”

“Perhaps.”

Olivia didn’t say anything; rather, she continued to stand next to him, feeling intensely uncomfortable. Socially at sea. That almost never happened to her.

“I thought you wanted to be shown to your room,” he said.

“I do,” she said, walking past him and into the vast space. Different than her quarters in Alansund, but no less grand. It glittered like the rest of the castle, full of gold and jewels, the bed wrought from precious metal, twisted together like gilt tree branches. “I suppose I just feel a bit—” She turned as she spoke the sentence, and saw that she was talking to nothing.

Tarek had excused himself without a word. Obviously finished with her for the moment.

She was alone. Something that had become far too common in recent months.

How she hated the emptiness.

She crossed the room, taking a seat on the edge of the bed, trying to squash the feeling of terror, of sadness climbing up inside her, mixing together to create a potent cocktail that made her head swim, made it difficult to breathe.

“You can’t break now,” she said. “You must never break.”

* * *

He wasn’t sure if it was a memory or a dream. Both.

Right now, though, it was agony, reality. As it had been ever since he had come back to the palace. Ghosts of the past long banished rising back up to haunt him.

He had spent a great many years out in the middle of the desert with nothing but a sword to act as protection. There, he had known no fear. Because the worst that had awaited him was death. Not so here in the palace. Here, there was torture.

He sat up, his breath burning like fire, sweat rolling down his face, his chest. He was disoriented, unsure of his positioning in the room. Certain, in that moment, that he wasn’t alone.

He was on the floor, a blanket tangled around his naked body. He stood, disengaging himself from the fabric, searching the dark space around him, his every sense on high alert. He felt as if he was dying. His brain lost in a cloud of fog that made it impossible to sort through what raged inside him, and what he had to fear outside.

He walked to his nightstand and took his sheathed sword from the surface. Something wasn’t right about any of this, but he couldn’t sort through what it might be. There was nothing in his mind but a tangle of demons, and he couldn’t see around them to figure out what his next action should be. So he defaulted to what he knew.

Violence. And the intent to draw blood before any could be shed by him.

He pulled the sword from the scabbard and held the blade high, walking toward the door, toward the threat.

* * *

A thunderous sound woke Olivia from her sleep. She sat upright, her hand pressed to her chest, her heart beating fast. Instinctively, because she was confused, disoriented, she looked to her left, checking to see if Marcus had heard the sound, too.

But of course he hadn’t. Because he wasn’t there.

He was dead. She knew that. Was unbearably conscious of it almost all the time. Forgetting now, in a palace in a faraway land, in the bedroom next to the man she was considering marrying in place of Marcus... It seemed cruel.

She heard the sound of metal scraping against stone and clutched the blanket more tightly. For the first time she questioned her safety. She had made a lot of assumptions about Tahar, about Tarek, based on the fact he was a royal. Based on the fact that this was a palace. Based on her position. She questioned all of it now. Now, when it was too late.

She got out of bed, grabbing hold of her robe, sliding the diaphanous fabric over her flimsy nightgown. She pushed her hair back from her face and walked quietly toward the door, the marble cold beneath her feet. That unbearable curiosity of hers was warring with her sense of self-preservation.

You are being overdramatic. You are in a palace. You’re a visiting political ally. Nothing is going to happen to you.

She was just firmly in that place of paranoid thinking she’d been knocked into after Marcus’s sudden death. Where everything was potentially fatal, and most certainly out to get her. She blew out a determined breath and took another step to the door, cracking it cautiously, peering out at the corridor.

Her breath froze completely in her lungs when she caught sight of the figure prowling in the darkness. A man, large, imposing. Naked. In his hand was a sword, a deadly, curved blade glinting in the moonlight that filtered through the high-set windows that lined the long hall.

She should be terrified. And she was, rivulets of fear sliding through her, freezing, increasing the icy terror that wound itself around her lungs. She was also fascinated.

He turned, long hair sweeping to the side with the movement, and she caught sight of his face. Tarek.

He didn’t look like anything that should be here in this time. He was like a relic of a bygone era. A Viking warrior or fierce desert marauder. His chest was broad, thick, the muscles of his arms massive. They would have to be to wield the sword the size of the one in his hand. He was a statue made flesh, the perfect specimen of a man lovingly crafted by an artist’s hands. Brought to deadly, feral life.

He turned away again, prowling down the same length of hall he had done the first time before coming back, moving toward her room. She froze, stopping her breath. She would have stopped her heart for a moment if she had the power. But just like before, he ended his march at the edge of the door to his chamber. A sentry, on guard, weapon in hand.

He didn’t know where he was, that much she was certain of. Though she couldn’t be entirely sure why she was certain. Perhaps simply because she was reasonably sure he wouldn’t normally stand watch without anything to cover his body.

A shaft of light fell across his bare back, highlighting the ridges of muscle along his spine and down lower. Now she couldn’t breathe even if she wanted to.

Her heart thundered a hard and even beat, the blood in her veins running hotter. Faster.

She had no explanation for it.

Except that it had been two years since she’d touched a man. But surely she wasn’t that basic.

So basic that she found herself captivated by a naked man holding a sword, a stranger, when she should be afraid and possibly calling for help.

But her mouth didn’t work anymore, her throat too dry for words to escape.

When he turned again, the light fell across his face. In that moment, it wasn’t his beauty she was captured by, but his torture. His pain. It was there, evident in the lines etched into his skin, in the deep hollowness of his eyes.

She could feel his pain. As though it had invaded her own chest, wrapping itself around her heart and squeezing tight.

That was when she closed the door. There was an ornate key jammed into the lock and she turned it, securing herself in the chamber. She wasn’t sure she was locking him out, or locking herself in. She wasn’t sure of much at the moment.

She grabbed the edges of the robe and held it more tightly around herself, climbing back into bed and covering her head. All she could hear now was the beating of her own heart, her own ragged breathing.

She had a feeling it would be a very long wait for sunrise.

CHAPTER THREE

TAREK FELT AS though he hadn’t slept. Odd, considering he now lived in a palace, when before he had lived in the hollowed-out shells of houses not inhabited by anyone other than him for the past two hundred years. One would think he would find better rest protected by guards, in a temperature-controlled environment. With a mattress. And yet, he found he didn’t.

He’d been awake for only an hour, and already he had been accosted by several members of staff while walking through the halls. So many decisions that had to be made before he had seen to his morning routine.

In the desert, he had started a fire early every morning, boiled water for coffee. Usually he ate bread or an instant hot-cereal packet he acquired from different traders that came and did business with him every few months.

He spent the morning getting into the rhythm of the day. Tasting the weather on his tongue, getting a sense for what the earth had in store for him. He worked hard, and when his brother had need of him, he did dangerous, bloody business. But he would also go many days in a row without ever speaking to another person. Without doing much beyond physical training and tending to his encampment.

When trouble was brewing, he would attach himself to the Bedouin camps, rallying with the men to see what could be done to protect their borders. Otherwise, he led a solitary existence.

The palace was never solitary. There were people moving about constantly. And it all seemed to revolve around him.

He didn’t like it. Not at all. He was the man who waited. Who said, “Here I am, send me.” He was the weapon. He was not the one who wielded it.

He was now in pursuit of coffee. The breakfasts they served here in the palace were too ornate for his liking. Cheese and fruit, cereals, meats. His brother had always lingered over meals. And Tarek had begun to believe that any indulgence his brother had was one that might cause corruption. Was one he ought to abstain from.

Food, in his estimation, was yet another tool designed to complete a specific task. It was simply fuel.

Coffee was a slightly more necessary fuel. A part of his routine he could not forgo.

He walked into the dining room and saw Olivia sitting at the head of the table, a bit of the type of food he had just been thinking of spread out over her plate. She looked up, smiling. She had a pleasing smile. Pink lips, even, white teeth. He liked the look of it.

He quite liked the look of her.

Much like lingering over food, he had never much lingered over women.

“Good morning,” she said. A dull blush rose in her cheeks. That, he felt, was also pleasing.

“Good morning.” He felt obliged to return the greeting, though he didn’t agree with her assessment.

“How did you sleep?” she asked.

“I would imagine not well. I’m still tired.”

She nodded slowly. “Oh. You don’t have any insight about why?”

A strange flash of memory broke over him. Terror. Pain. Restlessness.

He shoved it aside. These memories, memories long suppressed, had taken on new life when he’d returned. An even more violent life when he’d discovered his brother’s private journals.

Admission that Malik had ordered the death of their parents. A secret Tarek could never share with the country, for they had suffered so much already at the hands of Malik. His spending had left people poor, bereft, taxed beyond reason with the infrastructure of the city left to decay.

He could not do further damage.

In addition to the admission of his parents’ murder had been chronicles of how he’d tortured Tarek. To break him. To ensure that it was never discovered that Malik had ended the lives of the former sheikh and sheikha. To transform him into a malleable weapon to be used at Malik’s discretion.

If his brother was not already dead—of an overdose, naturally—Tarek would have, in fact, killed him upon discovery of those writings.

Because Malik had never broken him. He had hardened him.

His brother had transformed him; there was no doubt. But every drop of blood Malik had spilled from Tarek’s veins had soaked into the earth here. Had bound him, not to his brother, but to his nation. To his people.

He would not stray from that now.

“I do not like this place,” he said.

A servant bustled into the room. “Is there anything I can get you, Sheikh Tarek?”

“Coffee. And bread.”

The woman looked at him as though she feared for his sanity, but said nothing as she nodded and then left again. Only he and Olivia remained. He didn’t sit; rather, he began to pace the length of the room. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “You know I didn’t sleep,” he said, turning to face her. “Tell me.”

Her blue eyes widened, pale brows arching upward. “How do you know that?”

The edges of his mouth curved upward. He might have no experience of women, but he could read this one. “You become very still, very smooth when you are holding back an avalanche. There is much beneath the surface, I think. A very diplomatic woman, but occasionally you slip. You have a very sharp tongue. When you’re holding it in check this well I assume it’s because there is much to withhold.”

The color in her face deepened, and a sense of pleasure curled itself around his stomach. Unfamiliar.

Satisfaction, he supposed.

And why not? So often he felt out of his element in this place. It was immensely rewarding to have the sense that he had claimed a victory.

To go from being the master of his domain, a man who conquered the desert, who thrived in it, to a man who could scarcely sleep. A man who was caged... It was jarring indeed. There was nothing he despised more than a sense of helplessness. And that sense of helplessness had pervaded his being from the moment he had stepped back within the palace walls. That considered, he celebrated this small victory slightly more than was necessary.

“You sleepwalk,” she said, her words straightforward. Succinct. “Naked. With weapons.”

Something about that word on her lips sent a burst of heat through his veins. He wasn’t sure why. And yet again he was back in unfamiliar territory. Not just because of what she’d said, and how it made him feel, but because he was...doing things he didn’t remember.

Out of his own control.

That settled far beyond disturbing.

“I was not aware,” he said, keeping his tone flat.

“It would account for why you don’t feel rested in the morning,” she said. “Why don’t you sit?”

“I’m not in the frame of mind to sit. I have business to attend to.”

“It won’t hurt you to eat breakfast,” she said, a small smile playing at the edges of her mouth.

“What is so funny?”

“We already sound like a married couple.” She put her hands flat on the tabletop, looking down at them. “My husband never took time for breakfast. He would eat something terribly unhealthy while he drank a coffee on his way into the office.”

She looked sad, and he did not know what to do with that. “He sounds as though he was suited to this kind of life.”

“He loved his country. Though he was often in a hurry in the morning because he had stayed up too late at a party the night before. And he was rushing to catch up from the moment his feet hit the ground to the moment he lay back down. He was very young, with a lot of weight on his shoulders.”

“I am not so young, yet I find it quite the weight.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty. I believe.”

Little lines of concern wrinkled her brow. “You aren’t sure?”

“I lose track. It isn’t as though anyone has ever baked me a birthday cake.”

She frowned, the expression creating deep grooves by her mouth. She seemed, in his estimation, unduly distressed by his lack of baked goods. “No one?”

“Perhaps,” he said, battling against a memory that was pushing against his brain. “But I would have been much younger.”

It would have been when his parents were alive. And he never could remember back that far. Sometimes...sometimes he saw his father’s face... So serious. So earnest. And he was speaking. But the words were muddled. He could never hear them properly.

He never tried.

Mostly because accessing those memories required him to wade through the ones that immediately preceded them. The years spent in the palace before he had been sent to the desert.

The years that had turned him to stone.

“I always had a birthday cake. Though I didn’t always have anyone there to share it with me. When I was older I would go on trips with friends. Cruises and things. I made sure I didn’t lack for company when I got older.”

“Why didn’t you always have people to share with when you were young?” He found he was interested.

“My parents were busy,” she said, looking away. “I’m twenty-six. If you were curious.”

“I wasn’t.” It was the truth. He was curious about her, but age meant little to him.

“I suppose since you aren’t exceptionally curious about your own age, I can’t be surprised.”

“Is age something people care about?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “How long have you been out in the desert?”

“Since I was fifteen, I would say. Not solely in the desert. Primarily. I returned to the palace periodically to speak to my brother. But I rarely stayed overnight.” He did not like this place. He had not liked to be in close quarters with Malik.

He had the dark thought that he liked the entire world much better now he didn’t have to share it with his brother’s soul.

“I’m amazed you can carry on a conversation as well as you do.”

“I spent a lot of time with various Bedouin tribes. Off and on. Mostly I’ve lived alone. I don’t dislike it.”

She tilted her head to the side. “Did you dream when you were alone?”

Tarek frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Did you dream last night?”

He tried to remember, but everything was fuzzy again. “It wasn’t a dream. Something else. Something woke me. Pain.” Memory. Not dreams. But he didn’t want to tell her that.

Just then a servant appeared with a cup and an insulated pitcher, along with an assortment of rolls in a basket.

Olivia arched a brow. “Have a seat.”

It hit him then, one of the things that seemed so strange about her. “You are not afraid of me.” He took a seat where his food had been placed and set about pouring a cup of coffee.

“Last night I felt afraid,” she said. “But you had a sword.”

A sharp, hot pain lanced his chest. “I did not hurt you or threaten you, did I?”

“Would you feel bad if you had?”

He turned her question over slowly. “I have always taken the protection of women and children seriously. I would not like to hurt you. Or cause you fear.”

“You speak like a man,” she said, “but I wonder if you feel things like a man.”

“Why?”

“You’re very deliberate in your responses. Most people would know right away how something made them feel.”

“I have not spent much time examining my internal workings.”

She pinched her lips, her expression assessing. “You are very well-spoken. It won’t be the manner in which you speak that we will find problematic, only the things you say.”

“You could always write my speeches for me.”

“I assume someone at the palace already does.”

“I released the majority of the staff that worked under my brother.”

“What did he do that made him so bad?” she asked.

Pain lanced his skull. “He just was.”

“Why do you sleepwalk?”

Frustration boiled over inside him, sudden, hot. “I don’t know,” he said through clenched teeth. “I was not even aware that I did. How on earth would I know the reason?”

“I had to take sleeping pills for a good six months after... Sometimes sleeping is hard.” She swallowed, her pale throat expanding and contracting. That part of her was pleasing, as well.

“I’m not going to take sleeping tablets. It would compromise my ability to act if the need arose.”

“You’re surrounded by guards here.”

“You forget, I was used in addition to palace guards, and an army.”

“True. But now you’re the king. And I only have thirty more days.”

“Twenty-nine,” he said.

“No. Definitely thirty. I was only here for a few short hours yesterday, and we barely interacted.”

“Twenty-nine.”

She let out an exasperated breath, rolling her eyes. “You working against me will not make this pleasant.”

“Sadly for you, I am not pleasant.”

She stood, her hands flat against the tabletop. “And I am not pleasant when provoked. I didn’t get where I am in life by being a shrinking violet.” She straightened, tapping her chin with her forefinger. “The first thing you need is a haircut. And a shave. Also a suit.”

“All today?”

“As I only have twenty-nine days, we may, in fact, squeeze more into this afternoon. I don’t know. It depends on how ambitious I’m feeling.”

“Why does that sound ominous?”

“Because,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, an action that drew his eye, “I’m also unpleasant when I’m ambitious. I have some phone calls to make. I will meet you in your office in a half hour.”

With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of the room, leaving him sitting at the dining table alone.

CHAPTER FOUR

OLIVIA WAS TEMPTED to break into her antianxiety medication before meeting Tarek in his office. But no, she needed to save those for full-on panic attacks. Which, fortunately, only happened when she was boarding planes these days. She should have had one when confronted by a naked man with a sword. But panic had not been the dominant emotion.

She squared her shoulders and raised her fist to knock on his office door. She wasn’t going to dwell. Not on the conflicting, heated feelings that had gone coursing through her veins when she’d seen him out in the corridor last night. Naked, tortured.

She was sick to focus on his nudity. She didn’t know the man. He obviously had a great many issues. He seemed scarcely more than a feral beast.

You came prepared to marry him.

True. Which made his naked body very much pertinent to her and her interests. The idea behind marriage, after all, was for him to produce an heir.

She didn’t consider sex a negative. It was part of marriage, as far as she was concerned. Not an unpleasant part. She’d never been under any illusion that this marriage agreement would mean celibacy. And in the two years since Marcus’s death she had, indeed, been celibate.

She knocked, ruthlessly cutting off her line of thought.

So many things were innocuous in theory and much more daunting in practice. Tarek, his body and what she felt on the subject, was one of those things.

“Enter.” She heard his voice through the door.

She pushed the door open and shut it behind her, the breath rushing from her lungs at the sight of him standing in front of his desk with the posture of a soldier, hands clasped behind his back. There was no bracing for the impact of Tarek. She just needed to recognize that now and move on.

“I have entered,” she said, waving a hand. “Now to get down to business.”

“I am happy to take direction from you when it comes to matters of my civilization. However, that does not mean you will be assuming total control of my daily life.”

“Only for the next twenty-nine days.”

He chuckled, an entirely humorous sound that chilled her. “No. If you are to be my wife, then we must start as we mean to go on. I do not know how your previous marriage was conducted. However, should you become my wife, you must be aware of this one thing—you will not be my minder.”

“I didn’t think I would be,” she said, her stomach tightening painfully. “And the subject of my first marriage is off-limits.”

“You spoke of your husband only this morning.”

She sniffed. “It’s different if I broach the subject.”

“Are all women so difficult?” he asked.

“Only when dealing with impossible men.”

His black gaze was impassive. “Then, this should be interesting.”

“That’s one word for it. I assume that somewhere in the palace you have the proper tools to take care of your facial-hair situation.”

“I’m not certain. We could find out.” He walked over to the door of the office, swung it open and took one step out into the corridor. And then he shouted. Possibly the name of a servant, or just the demand, she wasn’t certain.

“What are you doing?”

“I am investigating the presence of a razor. Is that not what you wanted?”

“I assume you have a telephone on your desk. One that might reach servants in a more direct manner than bellowing like an animal.”

“I did not consider that.” He straightened and stepped away from the door, closing it behind him. Then he walked over to the desk, gazing at the phone situated there.

“Do you know how the phone works?”

“I have used it,” he said, his tone clipped.

“Better idea. We go to your bathroom. I’m certain we’ll be able to find something.”

“I suppose.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Follow me.”

She headed toward the door and felt no sense of movement behind her. She paused. “Are you coming?”

Rather than sensing any movement, she felt his heat behind her, his breath warm on her neck. The proximity, his warmth, burned through her with the ferocity of a spark on dry tinder. “I am not a dog to be brought to heel. Make no mistake, my queen, I am not your pet. You are not training me for your enjoyment. I will do what I must to fulfill the needs of my country. But no matter the trappings I am wrapped in, the man beneath will remain the same. I am not a good man. I’m not a bad man. I am simply a man who does what is necessary. You will do well to remember that.”

She felt the loss of his presence like a physical blow, and she froze for a moment, gasping for breath. In that moment, he moved ahead of her, striding out of the office without waiting. She fortified herself, blinking rapidly, trying to gain control as she went after his retreating figure.

He blazed a path through the palace, leading them both back to the wing that contained their bedrooms. He flung open the doors to his suite wide and she followed dutifully.

I’m not a dog to be brought to heel.

Well, neither was she.

She thought her quarters were quite grand. His surpassed anything she had ever seen before. She had been a guest at many palaces during her tenure as queen of Alansund. They all paled beneath the shimmer of the palace in Tahar.

Tarek’s domain could house the average dwelling. Open and vast with a massive bed at the center. The bathroom was not partitioned off from the rest of the space, a sunken tub, shower and gilt mirrors visible from where she stood in the doorway.

“I can see why you haven’t found a razor. You could hide an army in here.”

“Only a small army,” he said. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing, or being literal. It was difficult to say with Tarek.

“Small in number, or small in size?”

“Neither would be terribly helpful.”

She laughed. “No, I don’t suppose. Okay, if I was a razor I suppose I would hide in a cabinet. If I was a very small army, I would probably hide in a cabinet, too.” She checked his face for a glimmer of humor. She saw none. “You’re a tough crowd, Tarek.”

“I’m not a crowd.”

She shook her head and walked into the bathroom area, stopping in front of the mirror and sink, then crouching down in front of the cabinet. There was indeed a shaving kit there waiting. “Found it.” She took the leather case from its position and set it on the mosaic countertop.

Tarek gripped the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, and all Olivia could do was stand there, her eyes wide, her lips parted. She was captivated. By his strength. By the shift and bunch of his muscles. By the acres of golden skin covered in dark hair, and beneath that, an air of violence, of electricity that was barely contained by the flesh stretched over his bones.

He advanced on her, every inch the predator. Something in her went still, quiet.

She was, she realized, the prey. She could not run. She could not hide. And so she waited.

At the point where she saw dark spots in front of her vision she realized her subconscious had taken on a rather dramatic position. She took a sharp breath, placing herself firmly back in the moment.

“Was the strip show really necessary?” she asked.

He looked at her, one dark brow arched. “Yes. It was.”

He said nothing more as he set about unzipping the bag and disseminating the contents.

There was an economy to his movements that she found fascinating. Each movement direct, capable. He was such a large man it would be tempting to think he didn’t possess fine coordination. But he did. He took to readying the shaving supplies with all the skill of a man assembling a weapon.

He looked up and she studied his face as he studied his reflection in the mirror. He looked like a man regarding a stranger, not a man staring at himself.

It occurred to her then that she didn’t have to stay and supervise the proceedings. But she found she couldn’t tear herself away. And he didn’t ask her to.

It was a terrifying feeling, being rooted to the spot like that, unable to focus on anything other than the man in front of her.

Was it so easy to attach to somebody when you had spent so much time in isolation?

Her throat ached suddenly, thinking of the empty halls of her childhood home. Of escaping that kind of solitude, finding friends, finding her place, finding her husband. And then returning to the same life. Alone. In a palace, rather than a mansion in upstate New York, but alone all the same.

Here, she had Tarek. She had a goal. A rock to cling to in a choppy sea, when before she had been adrift.

Was she so simple?

He turned the faucet on, held his hands beneath the stream of water before splashing it onto his face. Water droplets ran down his neck, down his chest. She was suddenly thirsty. Very, very thirsty.

This was just another way she was simple, apparently.

She was mesmerized by the flex in his forearms as he set about his task. He applied the same ruthless efficiency to this as he had done in the prep. The razor was a straight blade, and he wielded it with all the skill with which she had seen him wield his sword.

She had found him compelling with the beard. But the face he uncovered beneath it was simply stunning. It was a fierce kind of beauty, like the desert itself. Harsh, hard. Almost too brilliant to behold. Hard lines and unexpected curves. From his blade-straight nose to his sensual mouth. Without the competition from his facial hair, his brows were stronger, darker, framing his eyes, making them even more arresting. More powerful.

Was it only yesterday she had thought he wasn’t good-looking? So much had changed between that first sighting to that unguarded moment when she’d seen him, stripped bare in every way, outside his chamber. To this moment here, as he scraped away another layer, revealed yet another facet of himself.

When he finished, he pooled water into his hands again, rinsing away the remaining soap and the odd stray whisker still clinging to his skin. He straightened and turned to look at her, and it was almost as if she was seeing a different man.

Except for those eyes. Those eyes were undeniable.

His dark hair was wet, hanging loose down to his shoulders. He would have to get that dealt with as well, but she didn’t expect him to do that on his own. She almost thought it was a shame. There was something arresting about him as he was now, something disreputable about the long hair. A nod to the fact that he appeared to be, in many ways, a relic of the past.

She took a step toward him, and he stayed, immovable as stone.

Her heart was thundering so hard that if he spoke, she wouldn’t be able to hear him over the sound echoing in her ears. She felt compelled to close the distance between them. She knew one moment of hesitation, one moment where she thought she might be better off showing restraint. But why? There was no reason to show restraint of any kind. No reason to suppress the buzz of attraction she couldn’t deny she felt for him.

Maybe she felt it only because it had been so long since she’d been with a man. Maybe she felt it only because she was lonely. But maybe, just maybe, the reasons didn’t matter. Her ultimate goal was to marry him after all.

Chemistry was a very powerful reason for marriage, as far as she was concerned.

There would be no harm in testing that chemistry.

She looked at him, tried to assess what he was thinking. Searched for knowledge deep in his eyes about what would come next. She saw nothing. Nothing but an abyss. And yet, like a child drawn to a bottomless well, she kept on moving toward him.

He smelled like clean skin and the soap he had just used, and there was something about the simplicity, the intimacy of that, she found irresistible.

Somewhere in the back of her mind a logical voice was telling her to think through her actions. Was tapping her shoulder and reminding her that, though she had come here with the aim of marrying him, Tarek was a stranger. That she had waited two months to give Marcus so much as one kiss, and waited until she had been given an engagement ring before she shared her body with him.

That she was dangerously close to exposing parts of herself she should hide for her protection. Because she knew what happened when she stepped out of bounds. When she made waves.

She ignored that voice, because while it spoke the truth, it was telling the truth about the girl she had been. Not the woman she had become.

Tarek was a man. Not a boy barely out of university. And she would appeal to him as a woman appealed to a man.

She reached up, brushing her fingertips over his cheekbone, down along the line of his jaw. His skin was smooth now, the sensation intoxicating. She felt him tense beneath her touch, a muscle in his cheek jerking. “It’s very nice,” she said, drawing closer still.

Her heart was thundering hard, her breasts aching, her nipples tight and sensitive. She lifted her other hand, pressing her palm flat against his chest. He was so hot. So hard. She moved her hand slightly, intent on trailing her fingertips down his abs, but she found herself wrenched away from him, stumbling backward.

Those black eyes were fearsome now, his chest, the chest she had just barely touched, heaving with the force of his breath.

“What are you doing, woman?”

And suddenly the thoughts that had been nothing more than a niggle in the back of her mind blanketed her completely, suffocating her. What was she doing? He had given no indication he wanted this. She barely knew the man.

Belatedly, she snatched her hand back against her chest, holding it in tightly. As though contracting in on herself now would make him forget she had ever reached out to him.

Then she wondered why, why she was allowing herself to feel embarrassed. Why she should bother to cover up the impulse. If they were to be married, they would have to come to an agreement on this. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life pretending to be a different woman. Pretending to want different things than she did. Truthfully, she was a bit shocked she wanted much of anything with him, considering he was a stranger. But she did. And in many ways, it was fortuitous. Being married to a man she wasn’t attracted to would be a hideous fate.

“I was touching you,” she said, her tone hard. “Is that so shocking?”

“For what purpose?”

She stared at him, hard, trying to work out if he was being disingenuous. “Because I wanted to touch you.”

“Don’t.”

“If we marry, that could be a problem.”

“If we marry, we can deal with it then.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. It’s important that we deal with these sorts of things now.” She swallowed hard. “I expect for this to be a real marriage.”

“It could hardly be a fake marriage.” He turned away from her, stalking back to the center of the room, bending over to pick up his shirt. “It will have to be legal, obviously.”

“Paperwork isn’t all there is to it. You have to interact with the person you marry. You have to coexist together. Sexual chemistry and compatibility are important.”

“If it is important to you, then, should I decide that marriage between the two of us is the most advantageous option, I will ensure your needs are met.”

His words were so dispassionate, so disconnected she couldn’t think of how to respond. This was not the language of seduction as she knew it. This was a one-sided conversation. He spoke as though it didn’t matter to him. In her experience, sex mattered a great deal to men. And also, in her experience, having a similar appetite to one’s husband was extremely advantageous.

“It is important to me,” she pressed, mainly because she was so fascinated by his response. Or rather, his lack of response.

“Then, should we decide on marriage, we will deal with it.”

He shrugged his shirt on and she stood there, blinking. “I don’t... I’m not certain I understand.”

“There is nothing to understand.”

Maybe not for him, but she was confused. Never in her life had a man reacted so neutrally to her touch. Not that she was incredibly experienced. Marcus had been her only lover after all. But she had practiced flirting plenty when she’d been at school, and it had usually gone well. Her first forays into looking for attention from those other than her parents had gone well enough. It had never gone beyond very innocent kissing, but even that had been balm for her parched soul.

This was... It was far too close to that horrible, dead feeling of standing there, begging for more and receiving nothing.

Too close to that moment she’d finally told her parents she needed more than walking past each other on occasion in the halls, more than false conversation over a monthly dinner.

She was not going to think of that now.

“I imagined you would have an opinion on the topic. Men usually do.”

“Men, as a species, are weak. They are fallible creatures who have far too many appetites that demand constant satisfaction. A servant cannot have more than one master. I have learned to live for the service of my country. That means I cannot serve my own appetites, as well. Doing so would make me a weak servant indeed. The fact that I am now sheikh changes nothing. I can desire nothing greater than the desire to serve.”

His words made something inside her curl in on itself. Something she hadn’t realized had been trying to bloom.

What was wrong with her? Why did this matter so much?

Why did it feel so desperately personal to be rejected by a stranger?

Stop being so needy.

“I should arrange for your haircut now.” It was automatic for her to get on with the task at hand. Anything was better than lingering in her discomfort and unexpected pain. “And clothing. You need to address your clothing situation.”

“There is something wrong with my clothing?”

“What did your brother wear to various events? Did he wear traditional Tahari clothing, or did he wear Western-style suits? This is important. I need to figure out how to handle your wardrobe.”

“I can see that if I offer you one sweet you will clamor for the whole bag.”

She smiled widely, trying not to reveal the fact that the potential double entendre in his statement had hit her in a vulnerable place. Yes, it would seem that if all of this was a sexual metaphor, if he gave her one little treat, she would try to devour the whole thing. She cringed internally.

Rejection stung. Always.

“That is what I’m here for,” she said, rather than giving in to saying any of the insecure things that were rolling around in her head.

“It doesn’t matter to me what my brother wore. I would prefer to draw a distinction between him and myself.”

“That’s a good place to start,” she said, not asking the questions that arose due to that statement. “What sort of ruler do you want to be? That’s a question only you can answer, Tarek. Though the answer is probably also relevant to me.”

“I do not believe a man is king for his own enjoyment. I believe a man can only serve if he is serving a purpose. A purpose that is beyond himself.”

“You speak about serving so often.”

“Bearing the responsibility of a nation is nothing if not service. If your primary objective is simply to rule, to lord over, then you accomplish nothing.”

She studied him, the harsh, hard lines of his face. “If you disagreed with your brother’s style of leadership, why didn’t you say anything to him?”

“It was not my task. My task was very specific. And an agreement was struck between Malik and myself some years ago.”

“What was that?”

“If he would leave me alone, I would be at his disposal to protect our people,” Tarek said, his words layered with darkness. “A mutual agreement we both respected. He called upon me when aid was needed, and I gave it. Anything else would have been abandonment of my post, of the people I cared for. I am in a different position now.”

“You have the power now. That’s the brilliant thing about being sheikh. What do you want to wear? Who do you want to be?”

“I do not have the capacity to care about such a thing as clothing,” he said, “but perhaps there is a connection I am missing?”

She straightened, indicating the well-fitted white dress she was wearing. “Clothing is important. It presents a certain image. I would like to think mine conveys quiet luxury and sophistication. Something people prize in a queen, or so I was told.”

“I...I see how that could be.”

“Good,” she said. “You care about your people. I know you do.”

“More than my own life,” he said.

Her stomach tightened, that conviction, that bone-deep certainty of his opening up a cavern of longing from deep within. To have someone care about her with that ferocity. With that strength.

She swallowed hard. No. Even letting herself think about that was dangerous.

“We are in a new age in Tahar,” he said, his tone grave. “And I am able to lead us there. I will. Let us show them.”

“Well, seeing as we can’t put you on the back of a white stallion brandishing a sword, I’m going to go with a power suit. I’ll make some phone calls. We will be in touch.”

With that, she walked out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, and beat a hasty retreat back to her own quarters. She needed some time alone. Needed some time to think. She had to get a handle on herself, because she couldn’t act in such a stupid, unthinking way again.

If nothing else, her own response to him, the emotional fallout of it, was reason enough.

She knew better than to need. Knew better than to depend on anyone.

She simply needed to remember.

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