A Royal Engagement: The Storm Within\The Reluctant Queen (13 page)

“You are exactly like him,” she said, her voice a low, intense throb of all the pain she had not been able to admit she felt today. All the loss and the bewilderment, and her inability to understand why she should even care that King Azat was dead. Why should it matter to her? Why should she be questioning her mother's motives? And why should she feel
so betrayed that Adel was the same kind of man, when he had never pretended to be anything else? When he had as good as told her that he would do just what he had done? When he—like her father before him—cared only and entirely about the damned throne to this godforsaken place?

Hadn't her mother told her this would happen, years before?
“He picked another snake for you, Lara—just like himself!”
she'd hissed.

“If you mean your father,” Adel said evenly, the suggestion of ice in his voice, “I will accept the compliment.”

“He forced me into this years ago, on my sixteenth birthday,” she said dully, wondering why her heart felt broken—why it should even be involved. “Didn't you know? That was when my mother knew we had to escape. She refused to let me—”

“Please spare me these fantasies.” His voice was a hard whip of dismissal. Startled, she noticed his eyes had turned to flint. “Your mother left because her extramarital dalliances were discovered. She took you with her as insurance, because she knew that if she stayed here she would have been turned away from the palace in shame. Never deceive yourself on this point. She knew that as long as you were with her, your father would never cut off her funds. Just as she knew he was too concerned with a daughter's feelings for her mother to separate you.”

“What?” She couldn't make sense of that. She literally could not process his words. “What are you—? We lived on the run for years! We had to hide from his goons!”

“There was never one moment of your life that the palace did not know where you were,” Adel said coolly, every word like a blow. “And I assure you, if your father wanted his ‘goons' to secure you, I would have done so personally years ago. If it was up to me, I would have reclaimed you before your seventeenth birthday.”

She couldn't accept what he was saying. Her mind was
reeling, and she shook her head once, hard. Then again, to get rid of the part of her that seemed to bloom in pleasure, at the notion that he'd wanted her so badly.

“You would say anything…” she began, but she was barely speaking aloud.

He took her shoulders in his hands again, tipping her head back, making her look at him. Face to face, hiding nothing. Baring far too much.

“I will lie, cheat, steal,” he said. His tone was deceptively soft—with that uncompromising edge beneath. “Whatever it takes. But you will marry me.”

“I wouldn't be so sure about that!” she hissed, but it was all bravado. Inside she was awash in confusion. Full of the possibility that he, unlike her father and even unlike her mother, had wanted her after all. But unable to let herself really accept that possibility—unable to believe it.

She knew what he meant to do even as his hands tightened on her shoulders, even as his hard mouth dropped toward hers. She knew, and yet she did nothing to evade it.

In truth, she did not want to evade him.

And so he kissed her. That same fire. That same punch and roll. Even now, even here, she burned.

She did not know what that meant. She did not want to think anymore. She did not want to feel. She wanted to lock herself away somewhere—to escape.

But he raised his head, and his eyes were dark gray and too capable of reading too much, his mouth in that grim line that called to her despite everything.

“That proves nothing,” she said, because she had to say something—she had to pretend.

“Keep telling yourself that, Princess,” he said in that dark, quiet voice that made her alive and bright with need. “If it helps.”

T
HE
day of her wedding dawned wet and cold.

Was it childish that she wanted the weather to be an omen?

A summer storm had swept in from the mountains, shrouding the ancient city in a chilly fog that perfectly suited Lara's mood. She was up before the gray dawn, staring broodingly out her windows, feeling like a princess in one of those old fairy-tales her mother had given her to read when she was a child.

It did not do much to brighten her outlook when she reflected that she was, in fact, a princess locked away in a castle and about to be married off to a suitor not of her choosing. That in her case, those old stories were real.

No matter how little it all
felt
real. No matter how much she still wanted to jolt awake and find herself back in her safe, small life in Denver. The little apartment she'd barely tolerated, and now missed. The job and the friends and the
life
that she had treasured, because it was hers. Because she had not had to run from anything anymore. She had been so proud of that. Of what she'd built when Marlena had let them stop running.

Marlena…who might not be at all who she'd claimed to be for so long. Who Lara had had no choice but to believe.

She tucked her knees up beneath her on her window seat and took in the luxury that dripped from every inch of the suite all around her—the cascade of window treatments in
gold and cream, the tapered bed posts, the ornamentation of every surface, every detail. What terrified her was how, every day, the real world seemed further and further away. She spoke less English. She found her new clothes less uncomfortable. She forgot.

How soon would she forget what was truly important? How soon would she forget herself completely?

But then the door swung open, and she was no longer alone. And it was, after all, her wedding day.

She was bathed, slathered in ointments and perfumes, and dressed in a gown so beautiful, so light and airy, that it should have taken her breath away. It made her look like a dream. Like another fairy-tale princess. Her hair was curled, piled onto her head, and bedecked with fine jewels and a tiara that one of her attendants told her, with a smile, had once belonged to Cleopatra herself. There was a part of her that longed to believe such a story, that wanted to revel in the very idea of it. But when she looked at herself in the mirror, she hardly recognized herself.

If she allowed herself to disappear inside this dream, the dream she'd cherished as a girl and hardly believed could be happening now, how would she ever wake up?
Could
she ever wake up? Would she want to?

By the time they had finished with all their ministrations, the bright summer sun had burned away the morning fog, and as Lara was driven outside the palace gates it was as if she drove directly into the happily-ever-after portion of all those old fairy-tales she couldn't seem to put from her mind. The people of Alakkul crowded the streets, cheering and waving. The sun streamed down from the perfect blue sky above. She even thought she heard birds singing sweetly in the trees as she climbed the steps to the great cathedral. Everything was perfect, save for the stone inside her chest where her heart should be, and the fact that she desperately did not want to do this.

Yet…was that true?

She did not break away from her fleet of handlers. She did not pick up her heavy skirts and run. She did not even stop walking, step by measured step, toward her doom. And when she entered the cathedral and saw the figure standing so tall and proud at the altar, she knew why.

He stood at the head of the long aisle, where a few days before her father's coffin had been laid out for all to see. Where, so many years ago, she had stood with him once before, in the very same spot, and dreamed of exactly this moment. Yearned for it. Was it the echo of those long-ago dreams that kept her moving, as if it was the very blood in her veins? Or was it the way he turned and looked at her, an expression she could not read on his hard face as she drew close?

He held out his hand, his gray eyes serious and steady on hers—just as he had done in that parking lot in Denver. It seemed like a different life to her now, a different person altogether. She could not imagine who she'd been, however many days ago, before he'd reappeared in her life and altered it so profoundly. She could not reconstruct that last moment before he'd spoken, when she had been lost in whatever thoughts had consumed her then, when she had forgotten he even existed and had no idea she would ever see him again.

She could not imagine it, and maybe that was what compelled her to reach across the distance between them, and once again take his hand.

In the end, it was quick. Too quick.

The priests intoned the sacred words. Adel stood quietly beside her, yet she was so aware of him. Of his slow, deep breathing. Of his broad shoulders, his impressive height. Of the fierce, compelling strength that was so much a part of him. He was every inch the warrior, even now. Even here.

She could think of him as a warrior. As a king. It was the word
husband
that she could not seem to make sense of—it kept getting tangled up in her head.

And in the final moments, when the priest turned to her
and asked her if she came to this union of her own free will, if she gave herself willingly, Lara looked into Adel's silver eyes, and knew she should say no.

She knew it.

But his gaze was so steady, so calm. So serious.

So very silver, and she felt it wrap around that stone where her heart should be, like a caress. Like a promise.

“He will make you nothing more than a puppet,”
Marlena had said.

But there were worse things than that, Lara thought. There were worse things than puppetry, and in any case, she could not remember what it had been like before, what it had been like without that calm silver gaze filling her, making her warm from the inside out, making her feel whole when she had not known anything was missing.

She had wanted this man forever.

“Do you come to this moment of your own free will?” the priest asked again.

And she said yes.

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

 

She said yes.

Adel was not aware he had been so tense, so rigid and prepared for battle, until it eased from him. Her voice rang through the cathedral, and sounded deep within him. Unmistakable. Unquestionable.

It was done.

She was his.

He had fulfilled the old King's wishes, to the letter. He had staved off disaster. He had been prepared for anything today. That she might not appear. That she might try to bolt. That she might throw her defiance in his face at this crucial moment. Anything.

He had not been prepared for her beauty. For the way the white gown hugged her figure so tenderly, nor for the way the jewels that adorned her made her seem to sparkle and glow.

He had not, he realized, as he took her hands in his and recited the old words that would make them one, forever, thought much beyond this moment.

He had only thought of marrying her. But he had not spent much time thinking about the marriage itself.

They walked down the aisle, husband and wife, king and queen, and out into their kingdom, together.

She looked up at him, her eyes seeming more blue than silver in the sunlight. Her expression was grave, as if she found this marriage a serious business, requiring much thought and worry.

And he wanted her. God, how he wanted her. Not as the king she had just made him, but as the man who had wanted her since he'd been barely more than a boy. As the man who had tasted her, and touched her, when he had known he should do neither, both twelve years ago and now.

But now…now he did not have to hold back. Now, finally, he could sink into her as he'd longed to do for what felt like much too long. Now he could love her, openly and fully, as he'd always imagined he should.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, but he could tell she knew.

“Why do you think?” he asked, and smiled. He held her hand in his, and led her toward the waiting motorcade. There was the small matter of the reception to get through, and his coronation. But he was already thinking ahead. He was already imagining how she would taste, how soft her skin would feel beneath his hands. How he would make her cry out his name. How he would make her fall to pieces in his arms.

They stood for a moment, her eyes locked to his, and he felt her tremble slightly in the afternoon sun. As if she could feel it, too. As if she'd finally stopped fighting. As if she was ready, at long last, to be his.

He would make sure of it.

 

The High Palace clung to the side of one of the tallest mountains to the west of the capital city. In ancient times, she remembered learning as a child, it had taken many weeks of travel via sure-footed mountain goats and under the protection of guides and priests for the royal family to make it to these heights. It had been a much quicker ride by helicopter.

Standing out on the wide terrace that had been added off the King's suite sometime since her last visit here, Lara looked out across the sweep and grandeur of Alakkul and wondered how she had ever managed to forget it. So many twinkling lights in the dark, mirroring the stars above. The brighter lights of the city, the far-off glimmers of the mountain villages. The crisp, clean air, cool and sweet.

From so high, it looked magical.

Or perhaps she only felt that way, after such a long day immersed in this fairy-tale that was, somehow, her life. It had to be a fairy-tale, because it couldn't possibly be real. None of it felt real.
She
hardly felt real.

Adel moved behind her. She sensed him first—that prickle along her neck, that banked fire blazing to life within her. She let out a breath she had not known she was holding as she felt him step behind her, his warm hands smoothing along the curve of her neck, tracing down over her shoulders.

“Nothing seems real,” she heard herself say, so softly she thought for a moment the night breeze stole her words away.

“I assure you, it is.” His voice was a low rumble. So amused, and still, her breasts swelled against the bodice of her dress, and that insistent, intoxicating heat pooled lower—became a low ache. He turned her around to face him. “You are my wife.”

“And you are now the King of Alakkul,” she said, tilting her head back to study that hard, uncompromising face. Did she imagine what looked like tenderness in his eyes, so silver in the light from the candles scattered across the terrace? Or
was it that she wanted to see such a thing—needed to believe she could see it?

He reached over and smoothed his hand along her cheek, curving his palm around to cradle her face. There was some part of her that wanted to object. That should
want
to object! She did not have to give in to this heat, this need. He was no brute, no matter how calculating, how ruthless, he might be. Not about something like this. She knew so with a deep, feminine intuition.

If she wanted to stop this, she needed only to open up her mouth and tell him
no.

But she did not speak. She only gazed at him, all of Alakkul spread out behind her, glimmering in the soft summer night and reflecting in his dark eyes as if it was a part of him. He had smiled at her outside the cathedral, his hard gaze open, and shaken her to her core—because she had seen, in that moment, how happy he was. How happy to look at her, to claim her. It had made her breath catch, her heart swell. It had made her think that he was not, after all, the enemy she wanted to believe he was. That perhaps he never had been.

She stood before him now in a dress that made her feel like the princess she supposed she always had been, technically, but had certainly never felt like before. And he was so devastatingly handsome, so strong and so dangerous, standing before her with that almost-smile on his hard mouth.

As if he knew things that she did not want to know. As if he knew far too much.

Lara gazed at him—and did not say a word.

“Tonight I am only a man,” he whispered, his voice a low rasp.

Just as tonight she was finally his woman, as if all the years between them had melted away in his smile. How had she denied him this long?

He pulled her head closer, and bent down to capture her mouth. His kiss was sweet, hot, sending spirals of heat danc
ing through her body, making her come up on her toes to meet him. She let her hands trail up the tantalizingly hard ridge of his abdomen to his broad chest, reveling in the taut glory of his muscles.

He angled his jaw, and took the kiss deeper. Hotter. Lara felt the world fall away, spinning into nothing, and only belatedly realized he'd swept her into his arms. He kept kissing her as he moved, and she looped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Again and again, until she found herself on her back in the center of the wide, white bed, with Adel resting snugly between her thighs.

Was she really going to do this? Pretend nothing else mattered but this fire, this need?

“Adel…” she began, but he smiled at her, even as he moved his hips against hers. Lara gasped, and forgot.

She forgot she'd ever wanted to deny him, and instead opened to his every touch. He stripped them both naked with surprising finesse and long, drugging kisses, feasting on every inch of flesh he uncovered. He trailed fire from one breast to the other, then tasted his way down the soft skin of her belly to claim the heat between her legs.

And then he licked his way into the molten core of her, and she forgot her own name.

She shattered around him, caught in a wave of pleasure so intense, so perfect, she was not sure what would be left of her. She was not sure she could survive it.

When she came back to herself, he was poised above her, his hard face sharpened, somehow, with passion.

And she realized it was just beginning.

“You are mine,” he said hoarsely, and then he thrust within her.