IT WAS AS if Shona had been swept out to sea.
A wave of sensation crashed over her and dragged her off, tumbling her end over end and tossing her far away from anything like land. She knew she needed to swim in the few moments she had left before she began to drown.
But Shona didn’t know how to swim. She wasn’t sure she knew how to float. So instead, all she could do was cling to Malak as if he was a lifesaver when she knew very well he was the reason she was out there fighting to stay above water in the first place.
Not that any of that seemed to matter much when he kissed her.
He kissed her and he kissed her.
She didn’t know how to keep track of all the feelings and sensations that swirled around her and inside her, so she poured herself into the kiss instead. She didn’t know what she wanted—or she didn’t know how to express it—so she stopped worrying about it and lost herself in the slick magic of his tongue against hers.
He’d called her out and then he’d called her treasure, and how could she be expected to handle that kind of whiplash?
She wound her arms around his neck. She stopped pretending that she didn’t hunger for him with every part of the body that had already betrayed her so comprehensively out on that balcony.
His hands moved down the length of her back—though it hardly felt like her back at the moment, covered as it was in the finest fabric Shona had ever touched—and he made a low noise in the back of his throat when his palms moved over her bottom.
Then the world seemed to move in a dizzy little circle, and when it was done, he was sitting on that bench next to the fountain and she was on his lap, astride him, her back to his front.
He was that strong, she thought in a kind of dazed amazement. He could simply lift her and position her and do as he wished with her.
The notion made her shudder.
“I want you to watch,” he told her, his voice low and gritty with that same need she could feel storming through her. Changing her. Altering the bones inside her skin. Making her imagine things she’d given up on so long ago she’d forgotten it was possible to want them in the first place. “I want you to tell me what you see.”
They were reflected in so many different mirrors. Malak was beautiful, as big and broad as he was lean. He held her so easily, there on his lap with his strong arms wrapped around her waist, and try as she might, she didn’t see anything resembling a treasure. She saw the same thing she’d seen in the reflection back in her rooms.
Seeing herself dressed up in a princess costume only pointed out how far away she was—and would always be—from ever being such a thing.
But she didn’t feel the lurching, awful knot in the pit of her stomach anymore the way she had when she’d first caught sight of herself. And she knew it had everything to do with the way Malak’s hands moved over her. His palms found her breasts and he lingered there, playing with pressure until she moaned and moved against him, wordlessly begging for more. She watched him track his way over her abdomen, then reach down farther, raking up the skirt of the long, emerald-green dress to expose her thighs.
And he didn’t stop there. He pulled up the dress farther and farther, until she was sitting on his lap with only his trousers and her skimpy little panties separating them.
“I can feel your heat,” he said against her ear, his voice as rough as it was warm against her skin.
Shona didn’t want to look anymore. She wanted him, too, with a kind of desperate greed she was afraid to examine too closely. And those things fused together as she leaned back against the wall of his wide chest, angling herself so she could set her mouth to his again.
She lost herself in that kiss, again even as she felt his hands busy beneath them. He tugged at her panties until she felt the tugging give way and understood that he’d ripped them from her body.
It only made the way his tongue dueled with hers that much hotter. Better.
He broke the kiss, his hands at her hips. He lifted her up and laughed a little at the small noise of distress she made, then settled her down on his lap again—except this time, she could feel that extraordinary length of him between them.
Hard. Thick.
Hot.
Better by far than she remembered.
“Watch,” Malak ordered her, his voice deliciously stern.
And Shona did.
His fingers dug into her hips as he lowered her, so slowly it was like an exquisite torture, onto the part of him that was hardest. The part of him she wanted most, as she melted in helpless longing. Her dress slid over her thighs again and hid what he was doing from view in those mirrors, so all she could see was Malak behind her, concentrating fiercely, and her own face.
Her own surrender was like a glare illuminating her.
Her eyes were wide and glazed and her neck felt like it could hardly bear the weight of her own head. Her lips parted as if she wasn’t sure she could breathe and her hands had nothing to do but grip fistfuls of her dress.
It had been such a long time. It was almost as if this was new again: the way he stretched her, the way he filled her, the exquisite ache of his possession when he was finally fully settled inside her body.
Malak shifted then. He wrapped one arm around her and tilted her forward a little so that he moved even deeper within her.
And Shona felt it everywhere. Her toes. The tips of her ears.
“Go on then,” he ordered her, his dark green gaze as fierce as emeralds, burning her into a crisp through the reflection of the glass in front of them. “Show me who you are.”
And if there was the faintest shadow of some kind of argument inside her, she ignored it.
Shona began to move.
She tested the rotation of her hips. She rocked herself, forward and back, then in lazy circles.
She arched to dig her toes into the floor on either side of Malak’s legs, and used that as leverage to pull herself up, then slide back down the entire delectable length of him. Once, then again. And again, until they both groaned.
He reached out and found her hands, then laced his fingers with hers as he crossed their arms over her abdomen, together.
And still she rocked against him. She practiced her strokes, reacquainting herself with something she hadn’t realized she’d longed for, deep in the night, lost in dreams she’d pretended not to recall during the day.
Long and slow. Hard and fast.
His eyes blazed in the mirror. There was color high on those cheekbones of his, so sharp they made her feel like swooning even as he held her fast. He was as fierce as he was beautiful, like this place and the desert he ruled.
And she saw herself. The dizzy abandon on her face, that madness in her eyes, that she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before. She thought it might well be joy.
Shona hardly recognized herself.
And if it was a stranger, a little voice inside her whispered, you would say she was beautiful. Because that woman in Malak’s arms is beautiful.
“I want…” she whispered, the words torn from her as if she had no control over them.
“Tell me,” he growled, his mouth like a brand in the crook of her neck, and the strange thing was, she craved the burn of it. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you,” she managed to say.
She felt his smile, wicked and dark, there against her heated skin—even as she saw it happen in the mirror. It was like having the same sensation twice. That much brighter. That much hotter. “You already have me. I’m deep inside you.”
“Please,” she moaned, as if it wasn’t really begging. As if it was the most natural thing in the world to make these noises, to want these things she wanted, but only from him. “Please, Malak…”
“Tell me what you want,” he said again, more fiercely this time. “Tell me what you need, Shona.”
“I want…everything,” she managed to say, dizzy from her own rocking. From the slick, endless slide up, then down, again and again, and him so intensely hard inside of her. “Please, Malak. Please.”
He freed one of his hands from her grip, then reached down between them, moving beneath the silk of her dress to find the place where they were joined. And his fingers were as wicked as they were clever.
Malak found the aching center of her need and pressed down.
“Your wish is my command.” His voice was like another touch. “My queen.”
And then he drove her straight over that edge.
Shona tumbled and soared, bliss chasing itself around and around, and Malak followed her over that same steep, glorious side of the world, calling out her name as he fell.
For a long time they stayed as they were, with Malak lodged deep inside her as if they’d been made to fit like that. Some part of her believed they had been. That every day they’d missed this connection, this perfect fit, had been a kind of crime.
Shona didn’t want to move. She was limp against him, her head tilted back against his shoulder. And when she opened her eyes, she could see the two of them in the mirror still.
He was so big and he held her so easily. He made her feel fragile. Delicate. Precious…and she’d never felt like that in her life.
Shona waited to feel ashamed. To feel that kick of self-disgust. Or that same mocking voice that had chased her since the moment she’d stepped into this dress, telling her what a fool she was making of herself. Telling her how little she belonged here.
In this palace. With this man.
Telling her things she knew, down deep in her bones, were nothing more than the truth.
Because even before he’d become a king, she’d known that Malak wasn’t for her. That the one night she’d had with him was more than she deserved.
But right now, she couldn’t chase after those things the way she knew she probably should have, because all she could feel was Malak. He was still deep in her body, still broad and deep. He was made of steel and heat and he surrounded her. She could feel him when she breathed.
Everywhere.
As if he was a part of her.
“Look at you,” Malak said quietly, and her eyes flew to his. Her heart kicked at her as she waited for that other shoe to hit her again, for him to say some of the things she’d already thought herself, to cast her aside the way she thought he should—but there was nothing but approval on his face. Nothing but that same lust and fire in his dark green eyes. “Look at us. How can you possibly doubt that you belong right here?”
Shona didn’t know if he meant here in the palace, or here in his arms. And she didn’t know why she didn’t ask. Why she didn’t scrape and claw at him with her bitter sarcasm the way she normally would have.
It was almost as if something inside of her had hushed. As if the volume of all that noise she carried around inside of her had been turned down.
And it didn’t feel as if she’d lost something. It felt like a relief.
He didn’t wait for her to answer. His eyes still blazed as he reached between them to disengage himself. And Shona couldn’t help the small noise she made when he pulled out of her.
Malak stood, taking her with him as he rose. He set her on her feet before him, and then took a moment to tuck himself back into his trousers. Shona smoothed down her full skirt and thought it had been easier five years ago, in the dark of a hotel room. She’d drifted off to sleep and when she’d woken up again, he’d been gone.
No reflections in mirrors to contend with. No need to come up with any awkward conversation.
She searched for something, anything, to say. But Malak had other ideas. He swept her up into his arms again, then lifted her high against his chest, and that was better. Easier, anyway.
Shona had always imagined surrender differently. Drowning, maybe. But this was as easy as stepping into a warm bath.
And far, far better.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he began to move.
Malak didn’t look down at her. He kept his eyes straight ahead as he walked, carrying her down the corridors of his palace.
“I’m not done with you yet,” he said, and his voice was still all fire and greed. It twisted through her and lit her up all over again. “Not nearly.”
And Shona thought on some level that she should fight that. Fight him. She should fight because that was what she did.
It was the only thing she’d ever known how to do. Her only skill. The only thing in this world she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she did well.
But she didn’t have it in her. Not tonight. Not here in a palace so far away from anything and everything she’d ever known.
So instead she rested her head against Malak’s shoulder, let her eyes drift shut and let him carry her wherever he pleased.
* * *
When Shona woke in the morning she had no idea where she was.
It wasn’t a new sensation.
Waking up without knowing where she was, in fact, was one of Shona’s least favorite things in the world. She felt it in her stomach first, that sickening little lurch that she remembered all too well, because nothing felt familiar. She opened her eyes to find herself staring at something that didn’t make any sense.
She could see bold red fabric shot through with gold, but she knew her bedroom here was done up in creams and blues.
The night before came back to her slowly. The way these things always did. It reminded her too much of waking up in strange foster houses as a child, never knowing where she was. But she didn’t feel unsafe at all now.
And maybe that was what soothed her, as she took stock of her body, stretched out on a big, wide bed. She felt…protected, even as she tried to sort out what had happened. She felt a delicious tiredness all over, in her fingernails and her skin and the crook of her toes. Marvelously, beautifully used. As if every last inch of her had been—
Shona felt a hot flush move over her, as if from the inside out. Because she remembered, then, in a great, rolling wave of delirious heat. Every last inch, indeed.
Malak had been demanding—fierce and thorough.
She had lost track of how many times he had taken her, there in his dizzyingly vast suite of rooms, all of which were exactly as luxurious and over-the-top as she had expected, given what the rest of the palace looked like. Had there ever been room in her life for such foolishness?
Not that it was his bedroom that had captivated her, hour after hour.
She had learned how he tasted, everywhere. She had explored him as if he was hers. She’d had her mouth and her fingers on every inch of his beautiful body, reveled in that hot, smooth skin of his that looked like cinnamon and tasted all man. Hot and gloriously male.
He had taught her to take him deep in her mouth, either kneeling there at his feet or over him on the bed, propped up between his legs. He had made her scream, with his mouth between her legs again, and more outrageously, using nothing more than his fingers on one nipple and his teeth and a wicked bit of suction on the other.
The night had gone on and on, until it had all felt like liquid, pouring through her hands, impossible to hold, shimmering there whenever she turned her head too fast. And she hadn’t given herself permission to brood. To worry. To do anything but enjoy what was happening there between them.
Again and again and again.
He had called for food at some point, and they’d eaten it together, there in the seating area somewhere beyond the foot of his bed. It was erected around a vast fireplace that looked as if ten men could stand inside it, though Malak had only laughed when Shona had said so. She had wrapped herself in one of the shockingly soft sheets from his bed, and they’d feasted on food that had ceased to seem strange to her, after all these weeks in Khalia. Dates and nuts and strong cheeses. Delicate pastries that melted in her mouth. Meats and casserole-type things that looked like lasagna but tasted far more complicated and airy.
And when they had both eaten their fill, Malak had crawled over her on the sofa where she’d been sitting and had told her he couldn’t wait for dessert. Nor had he, as he’d pulled her hips up to his mouth again, until her cries had echoed off the walls.
She sat up carefully now, waiting to feel something pull, deep inside somewhere. She waited for the pain, because surely that was the price that had to be paid for a night like the one they’d shared. She could hardly remember what had happened five years ago, or not this part of it, anyway. She remembered waking up in that hotel room, how hushed and uncertain she’d felt as she’d crept around, looking in all the rooms. There had been so many rooms, when all she knew about hotels were down-market motels, where a person was lucky to have a bed and a towel that didn’t draw blood. But when she’d discovered he was not lurking in one of the other rooms of the suite, that he’d gone sometime before she’d woken up, she hadn’t wanted to stay herself.
Luxury had made her uncomfortable. It seemed like some kind of…mockery, really. She had gathered herself as best she could, scrunching up her hair so that the curls looked springy again, and smoothed her dress back into place. Her heart had been pounding wildly in her chest when she’d walked out into the front hall that was still a part of the hotel suite, then taken the elevator that was right there down to the ground floor. She’d expected to be stopped at any moment, for one of the people who clearly belonged in a hotel as fancy as that one to question her; to ask her what on earth she thought she was doing in a nice place like that, when she was sure she had her humble beginnings written all over her.
But no one had said a word. And if they’d looked at her with any sort of judgment in their eyes, she hadn’t looked closely enough at anyone she’d passed on her way out to have seen it. She’d escaped back into the bawdy French Quarter gratefully, feeling almost instantly at ease once she’d hit the streets. That was where she belonged. Not in some fancy hotel.
Here, now, she certainly didn’t feel as if she should have been waking up alone in the king’s bedchamber. It was worse than that hotel. It was…royal. Sunlight was streaming into the bedchamber from the grand archways that functioned as both windows and doors, leading out to another one of those polished marble balconies—this one wider and far grander.
Shona sat where she was, listening carefully. She held her breath, trying to hear any clues as to Malak’s whereabouts. She’d learned how to be good at that kind of thing in too many foster homes to count. It was always better to have an idea of where everybody was under whatever roof she happened to find herself.
But she couldn’t hear a thing. Fancy hotels and royal palaces were so quiet. She crept out of the bed, making sure her feet made no noise against the floor, covered as it was in fine rugs. She looked around for the gown that Malak had taken off her so slowly, so deliciously, the night before, but it was nowhere in sight. She frowned at that, because she was certain he had tossed it to the side right there on the floor. But it wasn’t where she thought it should have been, over in the vast expanse between the side of his bed and the bathroom suite that could have housed an entire parish or two.
“You look confused,” came Malak’s voice from the doorway, rolling over her the way she began to realize it always would. As if he was connected to something inside of her and could tug on it at his leisure. “Not exactly a rousing endorsement of last night’s festivities, I think.”
“I was looking for my clothes.”
“I cannot imagine why you think you need such things.” He sounded amused. And something darker. Hotter. “When I am only going to remove them.”