SHONA STAGGERED OUT of Malak’s private suite, not at all clear about how she was expected to walk when nothing about her body seemed to work the way it was supposed to any longer. The way it had when she’d walked in.
She felt taken over. Ruined in every respect, as if the longing that still moved through her was a kind of poison, corroding her from the inside out.
She nodded stiffly at the guards who stood at Malak’s doors, and assured herself they couldn’t possibly see what she had been up to inside. With him. They couldn’t possibly see abandon written all over her.
Surrender, she told herself fiercely, did not have a scent.
Still, she was certain she could feel their eyes upon her even as she walked off down the gleaming corridor, fighting to make her legs work the way they were meant to do. To keep herself upright. Not to slump against the nearest wall the way she wanted to.
Shona didn’t think she pulled in a full breath until she rounded the corner.
She had learned her way around the palace in these weeks she’d been trapped here, but that didn’t make it feel any more familiar to her. She wasn’t certain she could ever really get used to all the luxury on conspicuous display at every turn. The marble. The gold. Statues and fine art in every alcove. Mosaics on the floors and the walls.
It was exactly what a palace ought to be, she supposed—but it wasn’t home.
It wasn’t her home.
Shona stopped next to one of the fountains and dipped her fingers into the cool water. Far above, the ceiling opened up to let in the night, and the moon was silvery as it danced down into the water.
She wanted to cry.
She knew there were eyes on her regardless of whether she could see them or not. Everywhere she went, everything she did, she was watched. Gossiped about. Discussed and dissected. Her advisors had made that clear to her every day, in case she hadn’t noticed it on her own as she’d tried to go about her business here, such as it was. The simple truth of the matter was that Shona no longer belonged to herself. Whether she decided to become Malak’s queen—assuming that was a decision she was even allowed to make, of course, and wasn’t simply tossed a crown and made to wear it—or refused, she would always be tied to this place. These people.
Because Miles was.
That had been bad enough. That unpleasant realization that never seemed to get easier no matter how many times she told herself to get over it. To accept it. To move on from the things she couldn’t change, because to do anything else was to ask to feel crazy. And to set herself up for more of the same.
Miles was Malak’s son. If she left here tomorrow, that wouldn’t change. And little as she might like to think about it, that simple truth meant that Miles would always belong here. One day he would rule this kingdom as surely as his father did.
She didn’t have to like it. It didn’t matter if she liked it. It was the truth either way.
It was one thing to have her son used against her.
It was something else entirely to have her body used in the exact same manner.
Whether she liked it or not, her own cries seemed to echo in her ears. There was no sound in the atrium where she stood save the splashing of the water, but still, all she heard was her own voice. Her own loss of control.
Her total and complete surrender.
She sat on the lip of the fountain and moved her fingers through the water. This way, then that. She stared fiercely at the place where the fountain met the pool beneath it, hoping that would keep her own tears from falling.
And in her head, all she could hear—all she could see—was what had happened on Malak’s balcony.
She could still see him kneeling down before her, his wide shoulders keeping her legs apart and his hard hands holding her hips where he wanted them.
His mouth against the part of her that yearned the most.
Out here in this atrium, all by herself, she was still slick. Melting hot.
And ashamed of herself.
She didn’t know how long she sat there. It could have been moments or hours.
But she heard the scuff of a foot against the marble behind her before she heard a voice. The same voice she always heard.
“Mistress?” Yadira called from the shadows that lined the atrium. “Are you unwell?”
Someone had seen her, no doubt, and reported back to Yadira that Shona was not where she was supposed to be. Because somebody would always pass on something like that. Because there was no hiding here, in this palace that appeared so vast.
There was no hiding anywhere.
Not even from herself.
“I’m fine,” she said, and rose to her feet. Her legs still felt like jelly, but she didn’t let that slow her down. She ignored it as she walked toward the woman who was more her jailer than her servant, and she even got herself to smile as she did it. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
She tuned out Yadira’s usual chatter as they walked back across the palace to Shona’s own suite of rooms. She nodded her thanks and smiled her way into her bedroom, where she took a long, hot shower and then crawled into her bed at last.
Because it was only there, in the dark of her bedroom with the covers pulled high over her head, that she could allow her face to crumple as it would. It was only there that she could permit her tears to fall, that she could face the fact that the worst part of what had happened with Malak tonight—and that night five years ago—was that she’d wanted it.
She’d more than wanted it. She’d longed for it.
And she’d loved every wicked pass of his tongue against the softest part of her.
So much that she still ached, well into the night, even as she was lying there alone and beating herself up for betraying every last thing she’d thought she stood for.
And worse, she had no idea what it said about her that she should want the man she knew would be the end of her, one way or another.
Or what to do now that he knew it.
* * *
Malak wasn’t the least bit surprised the following night when Shona stayed in her seat after the nannies took away Miles.
“Do you not wish to take your normal stance of pointless defiance?” He leaned back against his pillows and studied her as she glared at him. “I was hoping for another decadent dessert tonight, I must tell you. This is a disappointment.”
She looked different tonight, he thought. Not exactly subdued, but…contained.
As if he wasn’t the only one who had come to some conclusions about this little war of theirs.
“I prefer to sit,” she said after a moment. She even smiled, though Malak would scarcely call it polite. It was a pretense for her to be so civil. “But thank you.”
“Are you certain? I so enjoyed the last time you stood before me. I know you would not dare to tell me you did not.”
“Congratulations,” she said, that dark gaze of hers meeting his in that steady, challenging manner no one else would dare. “You won that battle, I guess. You got me to sit down. But what else have you really gained?”
Malak grinned. “You mean, aside from the sheer joy of your sweet little—”
“Sex doesn’t change anything,” she said, cutting him off. And he had to stop registering surprise every time she did things no one else would dream of doing in his presence. Much less to him. “It’s just sex. It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to be here. That I don’t want to be a queen at all, and certainly not your queen. That I have no interest in any of this.”
Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t seem particularly angry about it that allowed him to consider her objections to all of this a little more carefully than he had before. Or maybe it was that he’d tasted her again and had spent a night plagued by dreams of all the things he could have done had he not left her on that balcony.
After all, it was hard to maintain any level of reasonable fury when all he wanted was another taste.
Either way, he considered her for a long moment. “I assure you, you are not the only one whose wishes were not consulted in this. If that makes you feel any better.”
He could see from the expression that flitted over her face that it did not. But she didn’t throw that back at him as she sat there on the other side of the low table, her hands in her lap. Malak found himself mesmerized by the elegant curve of her neck, and only partly because he’d had his mouth there the night before and knew—now and again and always—how she tasted. Tonight she had her hair pulled up into something complicated, her tight curls bound together on top of her head, spilling this way and that.
Every time he saw her she was more beautiful. Malak didn’t understand how that was possible, only that it was true.
“Surely you always knew that you might be king,” Shona said, frowning at him as if he’d lied to her. Another insult he chose to ignore.
“Not at all.” Malak made himself smile. Lazily and easily, the way his life had been until recent months had changed everything. “I was the spare. My older brother, Zufar, was meant to be king and he has been trained since his birth to take over the role. My sister, Galila, and I were both afterthoughts in our own ways.”
He didn’t mention his high-strung, selfish mother’s indiscretions, and only partly because he was still coming to terms with them himself. To say nothing of that half brother he still didn’t quite know how to make sense of. Especially since Adir’s existence made Malak’s life make a different sort of sense. His mother had chosen to have the baby of the man she’d loved, then had given Adir away. Malak was the child she’d dutifully had and had never loved. The way he’d been ignored all these years made a painful sort of sense, really.
He didn’t mention his mother’s death, or the way his father’s encompassing grief over her loss brought back entirely too many memories of the way his father had ignored his children all their lives—the better to cater to a woman who had never cared for him in return. His father had abdicated his throne out of grief. His brother had then followed in his footsteps and abdicated for love. Malak understood neither of these choices, but he didn’t have to understand. He only had to play his prescribed role and do his duty.
“My sister was more of a pampered, special toy to my parents, at least until she grew older and my mother viewed her as competition,” Malak said, because he didn’t mind Shona knowing these things. She would hear them all soon enough, once the palace gossips decided to share their stories with her instead of just talking about her. “But I was completely ignored, always. A state of affairs that suited me just fine, to be clear. I’ve never wanted to play a starring role in my family’s many storms.” He forced his smile to deepen and waved a hand, encompassing the palace, the kingdom. “And yet I was caught up in them all the same.”
Shona frowned. “But surely the purpose of a spare is always to step in at a moment’s notice.”
“Theoretically, of course it is. But no one could have anticipated that my brother would abdicate. Least of all my brother.”
“Why did he?”
Malak’s smile felt fiercer than usual then, even on his own mouth. “It appears the downfall of the men in my family is love. It ruins them all, sooner or later.”
Shona’s gaze met his and he hated, suddenly, that he couldn’t read her. “‘Them?’”
She didn’t say “but not you.” Yet still it seemed to hang there between them.
And that wasn’t the only thing that shimmered in that space.
“I believe in sex, Shona,” he told her, because if he couldn’t make it better, he wanted to make it worse. “It might not change anything, as you said, but that’s never how it feels. I believe in hot nights that ache forever, and shave off parts of your soul in return for all that pleasure. But that is all I believe in. You don’t need to concern yourself that I’ll ever pretend that sex is anything more than exactly what it is.”
“Of course you believe in sex, but never, ever love.” Shona shook her head at him as if he was…silly. Or a small child. He had to grit his teeth to keep himself from reacting to both insults the way he would have liked to. “Isn’t that a hallmark of men like you?”
“I beg your pardon. Are there men like me? Anywhere? I rather doubt it.”
“I’ve never heard of a man alive who imagines that he is capable of love, even if the only thing he is king of is his own living-room couch.” Shona’s gaze was entirely too steady on his, as if she meant to indict him with every arch, deceptively soft syllable she uttered. He assumed she did. “My understanding has always been that the world might end if a single man ever imagined himself capable of such a thing. And yet here we all are.”
Malak laughed at that. Because it was that or reach for her again, and he didn’t want to cede his advantage. “The difference between the vast phalanxes of men you apparently know so well, aside from the obvious fact that I am the ruler of an entire country rather than a piece of furniture, is that I know myself.”
He didn’t tell her what else he knew. All the ways that love had ruined his father, for example. And all the rest of them, caught up as they were in the wreckage of their parents’ sad little marriage. He had always known that such excesses of emotion were not for him. That he would never fall, not like his father had. He would never let the love of a woman blind him to the rest of his life.
Especially not when there were so many other, more entertaining excesses to explore.
That was how he’d lived his life, until these past months.
It wasn’t that he thought he was immune to love, because he wasn’t. He loved his family. He loved his country. He felt fairly certain that the epic punch he’d felt at the first sight of Miles was love, too—one that grew the more time he spent with the boy.
But he had absolutely no intention of wrecking himself over a woman the way his father had. And was still doing after that woman’s death. That the woman in question was his own mother didn’t make Malak any more kindly disposed toward his father’s complete loss of himself.
Malak had never expected to take his father’s or brother’s place. But now that he had, he did not intend to follow in their footsteps and make their same mistakes.
He had vowed to himself that whatever else happened, he never would.
“If you say so,” Shona said, and she didn’t even sound particularly dismissive. But then, she didn’t have to. It was written all over her.
And Malak didn’t understand how he had gone from being completely at his ease to…this. He didn’t know what to call that churning sensation inside of him, as if his skin had suddenly grown too tight and nothing inside of him could bear it.
“I not only know myself, I know you,” he told her, because he felt weaponless, suddenly, and he couldn’t allow it.
She didn’t laugh, though her dark eyes filled with a kind of mirth. “You don’t know anything about me. Thank God.”
“But I do, Shona.” He shook his head at her, regaining his equilibrium as he did. “Do you imagine that I would allow just any woman to walk in off the streets and take her place at my side? Without knowing every possible detail about her?”
“If she was unlucky enough to have found herself pregnant with your child, yes. Absolutely. I think anyone would do.”
Malak didn’t like the way she said that. Especially because she wasn’t wrong.
And he didn’t know why he felt as if he had something to prove, suddenly. Or possibly it was more about regaining the upper hand. He wasn’t precisely proud of that urge—but that didn’t diminish it.
“I know more about you than you might imagine,” he told her. “I know that you spent the first part of your life in the foster system. Is that not what they call it in America when you are taken into the care of the state?”
“I don’t hide the fact that I was in foster care. That’s not exactly a secret.”
“I imagine we can trace your foolhardy stubbornness and unnecessary independence to that experience.”
“Or, perhaps, to me simply being an actual adult. Who, like most actual adults, doesn’t like being bullied by strange men.”
“Yes, men. You know so much about them, you tell me. You have a great many philosophies. And yet my investigators were unable to come up with the slightest shred of evidence that you’ve ever touched one.” He smiled. “Aside from me, of course.”
She studied him for a moment. “Does that make you feel special?”
But before he could answer, she laughed. And Malak did not like the way she laughed. And kept laughing, as if he’d told a marvelous joke. She even wiped at her eyes, as if she’d laughed so hard she’d made herself cry.
“I had a baby, Malak. And not in a palace like this. There were no packs of nannies roaming about the streets of New Orleans, desperate for the opportunity to give me a hand. Even if I’d wanted to date somebody, I had no time. And I definitely didn’t have any energy.” She shook her head at him. “Besides, the experience of having a one-night stand and being left pregnant and alone to handle the consequences was somehow less entertaining than you seem to imagine. Why would I want to repeat it?”
“This confirms what I thought,” Malak said after a moment. “Last night in particular. You don’t know.”
He could feel the tension in the air between them. But he knew, now, it wasn’t the way she looked at him. It wasn’t the lies he imagined she told herself to explain it all away. Perhaps she took solace in them.
But the truth was, she didn’t know.
“What don’t I know?” Shona asked, in the tone of one who would have much preferred not to ask the question at all.
Malak thought about her taste. Her scent. The sweetness that was only hers and that he wanted almost more than he could bear. “You don’t know that this isn’t normal. This thing between us. You think this happens all the time.”
She laughed again, though he thought it sounded far more uneasy than before. “I was under the impression that for you, it did.”
“Sex, Shona. Sex is easy enough. But this?”
He leaned forward then and stretched his hand across the table. He saw her jolt, as if she meant to pull away but then ordered herself to remain still, to fight some more, because that was what she did—what they did, if he was honest. He reached over and took one of her hands in his. That was all.
But it was enough.
“This,” he told her softly, as wildfire arced between them. The sizzle. The burn. “This is in no way usual, my fierce little queen.”
Shona stared at him, her gaze too dark to read.
“Careful,” she said quietly. “You wouldn’t want someone to think you were falling in love, would you? Not after all the bold statements you made.” She tilted her head to one side. “My little king.”
Malak didn’t like any part of what she’d said. Not the absurd mention of love when he’d already told her he was immune, or the insulting endearment he was sure she knew was offensive. But he would be damned if he’d let her see that. Any of that.
He didn’t have it in him to ruin himself the way the rest of his family had.
He refused.
“You don’t need to worry about whether I might fall,” he said, somehow keeping his temper in check. He imagined it had something to do with the wildfire greed that coursed through him, making him hard. Making him as close to desperate as he’d ever been. “Better by far you should worry about yourself.”
“I’m not worried about me at all.” That belligerent chin of hers lifted. “Are you?”
“I want you in my bed,” he told her, and watched that molten heat make her eyes go glassy again, just the way he liked them. “I’m tired of this game. There is no escaping this marriage or this throne, and I regret to inform you that you are stuck in it as surely as I am. But what I don’t understand is why you want to fight when you know how good it is between us.”
“You’re talking about sex,” she bit out, though her voice was hoarse. “That’s not a marriage.”
His hand gripped hers tighter when she tried to pull it away. “It’s the best part of a marriage. And the only part I have any interest in, if I am honest.”
“Marriage is more than stunts out on balconies,” she threw at him, her voice stronger. And this time, when she pulled her hand away, he let her. “It’s about sharing your life. It’s not about threatening someone with their own child. It’s not about battles for custody and kidnap attempts. It’s supposed to be a partnership.”
He bared his teeth. “What do you know about marriage?”
“Nothing,” she threw at him, as if this was another battle. But he thought she sounded desperate, as if she feared she was losing it. “Nothing at all, except that I don’t want to marry you. I don’t.”
And this time, when she stood up and made as if to walk from the room, Malak concentrated on her desperation, that suggested he’d already won, and let her go.