A Royal Engagement: The Storm Within\The Reluctant Queen (16 page)

“There is no
again
,” Adel said fiercely. “There is only you. Me. This child. I cannot change the circumstances that have brought us here, Lara, but how can you doubt—”

“I won't do it,” she threw at him. “I won't subject my own child to this endless tug of war, this game with no end. I will not have this baby grow up wondering what she's worth, and why, and have her squabbled over like a piece of meat in the market. Not this child!”

“This child will be loved,” he said, in that wild voice, low and throbbing. Uncontrolled. “Celebrated and adored.”

“Yes, far away from thrones and politics. And you.”

The silence seemed to hum between them. Lara was aware, suddenly, of the rain beating against the windows, and her own tears wet on her cheeks. She dashed at them with her fists, her breathing too fast, too hard. And all the while, Adel gazed at her, his beautiful, hard face open in a way it had never been before—
shattered
, a small voice inside of her whispered.

As if she'd destroyed him. As if she—or anyone—could have that power.

She wanted to turn away, but she could not make herself do it. She wanted to go to him, to press her lips against the uncompromising lines of his jaw, his brow. She did not do that, either. Could not let herself.

“I told you I loved you,” he said, as if from a great distance. “I have never loved anyone else in my life. Only you. Always you.”

“Prove it,” she heard herself say—harsh and fast. Before she could think better of it, or change her mind. “Let me go.”

She thought the bleakness in his eyes might have killed her right there, on the spot. She felt it pierce her heart, and shoot like fire through her veins, making her stomach lurch. She gasped for breath.

But Adel merely bowed his head slightly, as if the anguish she could see in his face was nothing at all.

“If that is what you want,” he said, his voice the barest thread of sound, and yet it still seemed like a lash against her flesh. “Then it is yours.”

And then Lara watched him turn and walk out of the hotel door, leaving her, just as she'd claimed she'd wanted.

So why, when the door closed behind him and the room was empty of everything save the rain against the windows, did she feel as if part of her had just died?

S
HE
walked back into the palace like a warrior, proud and strong, and Adel felt his heart stop in his chest.

Then begin to beat, hard. Something inside of him, granite and cold, began to ease as she stalked across the great marble floor of what had once been the throne room and was now the antechamber to his office.

“I did not expect to see you again,” he said, standing in the doorway between the two rooms, his arms folded across his chest. It had been two days. He knew, intellectually, that those forty-eight hours had been no longer than any other set of forty-eight hours, but it had not felt that way.

He had believed she was lost to him. Forever.

“I did not expect you to give up and slink away like a whipped puppy,” she threw at him as she closed the distance between them, going immediately for the jugular. He should not admire that as he did. She should not arouse him, with her temper and her daring. He should be furious that she had turned on him, run from him—and on some level he was. But more than that, he wanted her. He wanted her, and she was here, and she was glorious.

And his.

“You told me to set you free, Princess,” he drawled. Surely she had come back in all ways, or why would she have come back at all? “I was only following your orders.”

She came to a stop before him, her remarkable eyes a mix
of bravado and something else, something that made him long to touch her. It took all he had to keep from doing so.

Not yet, he thought. Not just yet.

“Since when do you listen to what I want?” she asked, a slight frown between her eyes. “I cannot recall a single instance of you ever doing so, in all the time I've known you.”

“I cannot follow this conversation,” he replied, his tone silky, his attention on her lush mouth. “I am a bully if I do not listen to you, and a whipped puppy if I do?”

She did not answer him. She only gazed at him for a long moment, her full mouth soft, her eyes big. Adel could feel the tension between them, the kick and the spark. He could see the truth of it reflected in the way she caught her breath, the way her body swayed toward his as if of its own volition.

Mine
, he thought, deep inside. Like a perfect note played on a traditional
balalaika
, low and true.

“You said you loved me.” She said it so matter-of-factly, yet he could still hear the question. The uncertainty.

“I do.” And then he could not help but touch her, reaching across the space he did not want between them to hold her soft cheek in his hand. She shivered slightly, and then leaned into it, like a cat. “And I suspect you must feel the same, or you would not be here. You would have gone on to America. You would not have returned.”

“It seems I cannot stay away,” she said softly.

“Nor should you,” he said. “You are the Queen, Lara. You are my wife. This is your home.”

Lara blew out a breath, as a shadow moved over her face. “I do not want what my parents had,” she said, her silver-blue eyes so serious it made Adel ache. “I refuse to do to this child what was done to me. Or to you. I refuse.”

“Stay with me, Princess,” he said softly, raising his other hand to hold her face between them, looking deep into her eyes, into their future. “We will make the world whatever we wish it to be, together.”

 

Once again, Lara stood out on the terrace high in the mountains and looked out over the Alakkulian Valley. It sparkled in the bright morning light, the chill of the coming autumn already moving in from the higher elevations, bringing a sharper kind of light and a certain crispness to the air. She pulled her thick robe tighter over her torso and snuggled into it, flexing her toes against the cold stones beneath her.

She felt…alive. More alive than she had ever felt before.

Because she had chosen, finally. For the first time since Adel had appeared before her in that far-off parking lot, as if conjured out of the June afternoon,
she
had decided.

She had sat in that anonymous hotel room for what seemed like weeks, unable to process both what had happened and her own reaction to it. She'd wanted to die. She'd felt as if part of her had, as every moment stretched out and seemed to last forever, all of them resoundingly, painfully empty of Adel. She had not understood how she could yearn for him so much,
hunger
for him. How his absence could feel like a missing limb. How she could want him near her as much for the calm, quiet steadiness of his presence as for the desire he could stir in her with a single glance.

But then she'd realized that this time, it was up to her. He had let her go. His doing so had shocked her, but it had also freed her, as she'd wanted.

And once she was free, and could choose to be anywhere, Lara had realized that there was only once place on earth that called to her. Only one place on earth she could feel like herself anymore.

How had that happened? When had it happened? How had she put all of her past aside without even noticing it? Because while every word she'd thrown at him in that hotel room had been true, the truth was, there was no point being free, or strong, or
alive
, without him. None of that held any appeal.

She heard the French doors open behind her. She smiled slightly. They had hardly slept—reaching for each other again
and again in the night. Re-learning each other. Revelling in her return, and renouncing their separation in the most intimate way possible. She leaned back into the warm, solid wall of his chest as he moved behind her, marveling at the way her body readied itself for his touch. Her knees felt weak. Her core melted. She even felt heat behind her eyes.

He was hers. He loved her.

Standing in his arms, looking out at the beautiful country of her birth, Lara realized that finally,
finally
, she'd found the home she'd been looking for all of her life.

She turned to look at him. That hard face. That uncompromising mouth. That tough, warrior's body. And all of it hers, forever.

Because she'd been given the choice—a real choice this time—and she'd chosen him.

“I love you,” she whispered, though it felt like a shout, a howl, that could be heard from mountain to mountain across the great valley. His mouth curved.

“So you have showed me,” he said quietly. He let his hand trace a path down her body, slipping it inside her robe to her abdomen, where he placed it over the child they'd made. The child they would raise together, in this country they would rule.

And maybe, just maybe, just for them, if they worked hard enough to make it happen, the fairy tales would come true. Exactly as they'd dreamed together, so many years ago.