In Defiance of Duty (21 page)

“What is this?” He sounded impatient, but the way he looked at her said something else, and she clung to that. He rose from the chair then, so they were standing too close together, and frowned down at her. “I thought you would rejoice in your freedom. I thought this would give you the excuse you needed to leave here and never look back.”

“You thought wrong,” she retorted. She wanted to touch him, but held herself in check. “Not the first time.”

“I’ve finally realized that none of this matters, Kiara,” he growled down at her. “You, me—this was nothing more than a fantasy.” His jaw was like granite. “I’ve always known exactly what my life must be, what it will entail and what I will have to do to serve this country as my family has done for generations.” His mouth twisted then, and it was still no smile. It made Kiara’s stomach turn over. He reached over and took her upper arms in his hands, but not, she understood, in a particularly tender manner. She still bloomed beneath his touch.

“I am a selfish man,” he said bitterly. “I always have been where you are concerned. And you were right. I knew what kind of woman I should have married.

One who would have understood what was expected. One who would have welcomed the weight of it all. But I had to have you instead.” He leaned closer, and his eyes were the blackest she’d ever seen them. They made her shiver.

“And look what I’ve done to you,” he whispered, his voice like a lash.

He let go of her then and she fell back a step, feeling dizzy. She was not prepared for this. For what it meant if he gave up. If he stopped fighting for this, for them. For her. But she remembered everything that had happened at the pools, everything they’d discovered, and she knew that if she had to be the one to fight, she would. For him. For them.

For as long as it took.

“I don’t want you to let me go.” She searched his face as he stared at her. She watched the way he raked his fingers through his thick black hair. The way he shook his head. The way he yanked his tie from around his neck as if he, too, felt constricted.

Perversely, that gave her hope.

“I may not have choices,” he said in a low voice, “but you do. If you stay here, I can’t promise that these roles won’t eat us alive. I expect they will. They already have. And then what?”

“I don’t want to disappear.” She moved toward him, deliberately, forcing his gaze to hers. “But I’m not afraid of that any longer, not the way I was. You asked me to trust you, Azrin, and I do.”

“You say that,” he said quietly, his voice laced with regret, and that underlying bitterness, too, “but we both know that’s not so.”

“Maybe it’s a work in progress,” she admitted. “But it’s happening.”

“Then what about children?” he asked in the same quiet tone. He smiled slightly—sadly—when she winced in surprise. “Why do you flinch away in horror whenever the topic arises? You will not even have the conversation, Kiara. Why do you think that is?” She could see that he knew why it was. But so did she.

And she was no longer afraid.

“Yes,” she said, very distinctly. “The very idea of a baby made me feel trapped—choked. Look what happened to my mother! If she hadn’t had me, she could have done anything.” She reached over then and put her hands on his chest. She felt him stiffen, but he didn’t step away. “But I’m letting go of that, Azrin. I’m not my mother. You have to trust me.”

“Kiara—” But he cut himself off, as if he didn’t know what to say for once, and Kiara felt compassion flood through her. His father was dying. He was not only a son coming to terms with his new role in his family, but a king coming to terms with what this must mean for his country. It was not so surprising that he’d done this, when she thought about it that way.

“It’s all right,” she told him, letting her hands stroke him. Soothing him. Calming him. As she knew only she ever did. Or could. “You don’t have to be the king for me, Azrin. You can panic. We’re both safe here.”

A great shudder worked through his big body, and his eyes closed for a moment. But he opened them again almost at once, and reached down to hold her hands in his—less in a romantic way than to keep her from caressing him, she understood. She didn’t protest it.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice a dark thread of sound. “It never even occurred to me to set you free until now, Kiara. It may never occur to me again.

You already know you hate this life. Be very clear about what you want from this.”

From me, his dark gaze added. From any of this, she thought.

But she knew.

“I’m going to be a terrible queen,” she told him, holding his gaze. “I will try hard, but fail you in a thousand ways, because I will never be the kind of woman you should have married.” She shrugged philosophically. “We will have to find the humor in it.”

“And what will you do, as my terrible queen?” He moved his thumbs over the backs of her hands, as if he couldn’t quite help himself. She bit back a smile.

“Aside from embarrassing me at home and abroad with your antics?”

“Maybe I’ll buy a hundred wineries,” she said, her pulse leaping beneath her skin when his lips twitched. “Maybe I’ll start some new kind of business more appropriate for queens.” She was intrigued by the considering gleam in his eyes then, but couldn’t let herself get sidetracked. “Maybe I’ll figure it out as I go along.

But the only thing I know I want, have always wanted, is you.”

He looked down at her for a beat of her heart, then another. For a terrible moment she thought he would pull away, but then he drew her hands to his chest instead, and held them there.

instead, and held them there.

“You have always had that,” he whispered. “I told you. From that very first moment.”

“I love you, Azrin,” she whispered back, her voice harsh with emotion. With regret and with promise. With everything they’d come through, together. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Then if you love me—” he replied in the same tone, an echo of another time, her own words in that awful hotel room. A past she never wanted to revisit “—

don’t leave me. Ever again.”

She lifted herself on her toes and pressed her mouth to his. Making it real. Feeling the way she trembled all over, and sighing as his arms came around her, strong and hard and true.

He kissed her. He kissed her again and again, as if testing out all the angles for the first time, and she tasted him in the same way, as if she could never get enough of him. Knowing she would never get enough of him. He sank his hands in her hair and she wrapped herself around him, desperate. Demanding.

And in his arms again. Finally.

He shrugged out of his jacket, his shirt. Then he took his time peeling her clothes from her body and worshipping every inch of skin he uncovered. They knelt together on the wide, soft rug and lost themselves in each other. Each touch, each taste, a reaffirmation. A vow.

“Being with you isn’t disappearing,” Kiara whispered, kissing her way across his chest, his belly. “It’s finally being found.”

“I will never lose you again,” he told her, laying her out on the floor and crawling over her, tasting his way to the center of her feminine heat. “Never.” And then he kissed his way into her, and tore her apart.

Kiara slowly came back to earth. Azrin stripped the rest of his clothes off and then stretched out next to her, deliciously naked. It was enough to make her rise up, her languor forgotten as she climbed over him and took the hard length of him inside of her.

So deep. So good.

Azrin whispered love words in Arabic and English as he began to move. Kiara rode him, heat in her eyes and his hands so demanding on her hips, until he threw her over the edge again and followed her there, calling her name.

And she knew that they were both exactly where they belonged.

Azrin found the bar in Sydney’s tony Hyde Park neighborhood almost empty.

He pushed in through the heavy glass doors and shook the wet Australian weather from his clothes. He glanced around at the bartender who stood idly by, polishing glasses, and several waiters in a cluster near the kitchens, all of whom respectfully averted their eyes.

He dismissed them, prowling over to the great windows that looked down on Sydney Harbor, gray and rainy this afternoon. He lowered himself into one of the low leather chairs and only then looked at the effortlessly beautiful woman who sat in the other, still gazing out at the view as if she hadn’t noticed him at all.

Though he knew better.

“Let me guess,” she said, her voice a throaty sort of murmur that teased over him like a caress, like an open flame. “You are a very boring sort of businessman.

Sales, no doubt. In town for a tedious conference of one sort or another and thought you’d pop out for a drink.”

“It’s as if you are psychic.”

He let his gaze play over her. She was exquisite. She sat with perfect, if relaxed, posture in the seat next to his. She was elegance and an impossibly pretty face packed into a black dress that nodded toward the conservative yet still managed to emphasize her sleekly athletic figure, and all of it balanced on wicked, wicked shoes. Her hair was twisted into a smooth chignon, and she had accented both her hair and her ears with the hint of pearls. She looked sleek. And edible.

Mine, he thought.

And still she didn’t look at him.

“It’s a pity you have so little to recommend you,” she said as if she was truly saddened. “I’m in from a lovely visit to the Barossa Valley. I need to find someone at least as exciting as the board meeting I just attended.”

She recrossed her legs, drawing his attention to the silken length of them, and those dangerous heels. He pictured them wrapped around his hips and smiled.

“I’m afraid I am not at all exciting,” he murmured. “I am a very poor salesman, as it happens. Far duller than a board meeting.”

“I should tell you that I’m a single woman on the prowl, in the market for no-strings-attached, mind-altering sex.” She let out a disappointed sigh. “Clearly you don’t fit the bill.”

“What if I make you an offer?” he asked, leaning closer. She turned her head to look at him then and they both smiled. Her brown eyes were merry and mischievous.

And that mouth. How he loved her mouth.

“Hello,” she said. And then, her tone turning serious, “I’m listening.”

“I’m a married man.” He tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair and watched the way her eyes tracked his movements. Hungrily. “But if you like that kind of danger, I can promise you acrobatics. A fierce attention to detail. My wife has insatiable demands.” Her smile widened. She propped her elbow on the wide, flat arm of her leather chair, then rested her chin on her hand as she regarded him. He reached over and traced the fine bones of her wrist, then the line of her forearm.

“Do you mean proper gymnastics?” she asked. “Cartwheels and backflips? Or is that more of a metaphor?”

“The choice is yours.” His voice was gallant.

“Meaning it could be proper gymnastics.” She laughed. “Not an offer you’re likely to get just anywhere, I’d think.”

“I am a king among men.”

She smiled in delight. “So you are.”

“Come home with me,” he said, ignoring the game completely, his fingers wrapping around her hand and tugging it to his mouth to press a kiss against it. “I want to be inside you more than I want my next breath.”

to be inside you more than I want my next breath.”

“I love you, too,” she said, her own breath catching as she spoke. “But they’ve cleared out this whole restaurant for us. It would be rude to—” She broke off as he stood abruptly, and laughed as he offered her his hand.

“Or not,” she said. Her mouth curved. “It really is good to be king.”

“How is your mother?” he asked when she was standing, her heels putting her right at eye level, all of Sydney laid out behind her, wet and cloudy and at her feet.

“We will always rub each other wrong, I think,” Kiara said, but then shrugged it away. “She says she may never come back from Iceland, anyway. She loves it there. And we do very well indeed with all the world between us.”

Azrin leaned in and kissed her lightly on that decadent mouth of hers, far more appropriately than he wanted to do. But cleared out restaurant or not, there were still people here. It was still not private. And they were still, and ever, the King and Queen of Khatan. She pulled away from him, smiling ruefully, as if she could read his thoughts.

“Have you thought about the job offer?” he asked.

“It turns out I could probably be a much better consultant than I ever was a vice president.” Her eyes sparkled as she looked at him. “But I’m an even better queen.”

And so she was. She was not traditional, of course, but as Khatan held its first elections and started down the path toward democracy, there was no need for her to be. If she’d wanted to, she could have been as busy as she’d been before, with all the charities that vied for her patronage and all the places that invited her to speak.

They’d both grown so much this past year. His father’s death had forced him to take a cold, hard look at a lot of things. And so had Kiara. It was hard for him to think back to that dark period right after he’d taken the throne. It was hard to imagine he’d come so close to losing her.

He started toward the door, his arm around her. That would never happen again, he vowed. Never.

“I think I’m finally ready,” she whispered as they walked, her face shining as she looked at him, as she leaned in close against his shoulder. “To start trying.”

“Ready?” he repeated, but then, suddenly, he knew.

He smiled as a new kind if joy shot through him, and laced his fingers into hers. Holding her tight. He wanted to run his hands over her flat belly, to celebrate the babies they would finally make together, but he couldn’t do it here. Not while there were still eyes on them.

But there were a thousand ways to love this woman, his Kiara, and touching her was only part of it.

“I will alert the Khatanian media at once,” he teased her instead, grinning when her brown eyes gleamed.

“Don’t be silly,” she said in the same tone, her cheeks flushed with pleasure. “I’ve assured your entire extended family they’ll be the first to know. Preferably over dinner.”