A Royal Engagement: The Storm Within\The Reluctant Queen (9 page)

But if there was one thing she refused to be, it was helpless.

“Wonderful,” she said, pulling herself back from the brink of disaster. Her tone was acerbic, as much to defend herself against this man as to convince herself he was not getting to her in so many odd, uncomfortable ways. “I'm glad you traveled across the world to tell me all of this. You can consider our absurd betrothal ended.”

“As you wish,” he said again. But he did not move. His gaze seemed to sharpen, as if he was some great predator and she nothing but prey. She fought off an involuntary shiver. “You need only pay me the bride price.”

“The bride price?” she repeated, caught as much by the sudden ferocity in his dark gaze as by the words themselves.

“Your dowry was the throne of Alakkul, Princess,” Adel said quietly, deliberately. “I am afraid that the sum my family paid for you was significant, give or take such things as the exchange rate, the rate of inflation, and so on.”

He named a number that she could not possibly have heard right—a number so astronomically high that it, too, made her laugh. It was as patently absurd as him suddenly appearing in a parking lot and announcing he was going to marry her, just as she'd dreamed when she'd first left Alakkul—and as impossible.

“I have nothing even approaching that amount of money, and never will,” she said flatly. “I am an accountant. I live an entirely normal and ordinary life. That amount of money is a fantasy.”

“Not to the Queen of Alakkul,” he said, and something flared between them, hot and bright, making her breath tangle in her throat, making her ache low in her belly. “Or to me.”

“That is another fantasy, one I have no interest in.”

“I am a compassionate man,” Adel said after a moment, though the expression he wore made her doubt it. “I will release you from your obligations to me, if that is your desire. You need only repay what your mother stole from the palace when she disappeared twelve years ago. It is not so much. A mere nine hundred thousand dollars, and some precious jewels.”

“Nine hundred thousand dollars,” Lara repeated in disbelief. “You must be joking. I don't have it—and if my mother took it, it is no more than she deserved, after what my father subjected her to!”

Adel merely inclined his head. “I will not argue with you about your mother,” he said. “Nor will I debate your choices with you. They are simple. Marry me, or pay the price.”

He held up an autocratic hand when she started to speak, and she knew deep in her bones that he was every inch a king as well as a warrior. She should hate that—him. And yet her treacherous body, instead of finding him repulsive,
yearned.

“There is not much time, Princess,” he said. “I regret the necessity, but you must make your decision. Now.”

H
E APPROVED
of the woman she'd become, Adel thought, her fierceness and her attempts at fearlessness, and was not certain why that surprised him.

“Do you accept credit cards?” she asked icily after a moment, her silver-blue eyes glittering in the late-afternoon light, even as she held herself so rigidly, so determinedly still. “If so, I am certain we can work something out.”

Adel only smiled, enjoying her, even under these circumstances. The girl he had never forgotten for a moment had become a woman he wanted to know better. “You are stalling.”

“Of course I am.” She shifted her weight and let the paper sack she carried fall to the ground at her feet. He heard the faint crunch of glass against the pavement, but she only glared at him. “It will take me more than thirty seconds to choose between marriage to a man I hardly know or a lifetime in debt I'll never pay off. The interest rates alone would kill me! You'll just have to wait.”

He liked that, too. She was as much the child of the late King Azat, his revered mentor, as she was of the faithless woman who was her mother. Brave. Vibrant. And she would be his wife. His queen, as had been decided so many years ago. The warrior in him appreciated the way she stood so straight, emotion darkening her eyes but not overtaking her, her body lean and supple and strong. The king in him imag
ined the future her blood assured, the children they would bear together, the way they would rule his beloved Alakkul. And the man in him wanted to taste the fullness of her mouth, and sink his fingers into the dark glossy waves of her long hair.

Just as he'd always wanted her, even back when they were both young.

He had wanted her even after her lying mother had spirited her away, taking her far from her home—far from Adel. He had wanted her in all the years in between, when the old King insisted they leave her to her new life and Adel had wondered when he could ever lay claim to the woman who had always been his. He wanted her as she denied him, as she fought with him, as she looked at him as if he was her enemy.

He had wanted her so long, it had become as much a part of him as his own name. It did not matter what she'd done in all the intervening years. It did not even matter if she'd forgotten him. He was here now, and she was his.

She was far too Western. She was dressed for summer in America—all bare skin and tight clothes that outlined curves his hands itched to touch. Her hair was untamed, uncovered, a silken black mass of curls spilling around her creamy shoulders. Her high, full breasts filled out the tight, V-necked shirt she wore to perfection, while her slim hips and long legs were encased in scandalously tight denim. Her feet were bare to his sight, her polished pink toenails in thonged sandals.

These things should have displeased him. Perhaps even angered him. Yet they did not. She did not.

At all.

He was fascinated.

“Explain this to me,” she said after a moment, her eyes meeting his and then falling, as if she could sense the direction of his thoughts. “My father signed me away to you?
When I was twelve? And you are the sort of man who wants to honor that kind of archaic, misogynistic agreement?”

“Your father was the King of Alakkul,” Adel said swiftly, not rising to the obvious bait. “And I am his chosen successor. You are his only daughter, and the last of your bloodline. It is fitting that you become my queen.”

It was more than fitting—it was necessary, though he did not plan to share that with her. Not now. Not yet.

Her throat worked. Her eyes clouded over, though with temper or hurt, he could not tell. “How romantic,” she managed to say.

“Surely you have always known this day would come, Princess,” he replied, keeping his voice even, wondering why he felt the urge to comfort her. There was no point addressing that bitter note in her voice. “You have been permitted to live freely for years. But it was always on borrowed time.”

“Interestingly, I was under the impression that I was simply living my life,” she said, her gaze freezing into a glare. “I had no idea you were lying in wait!”

“You cannot tell me you do not remember me.” He saw the tell-tale brush of color on her cheeks, heard the catch of her breath. He remembered the sweet taste of their first, stolen kiss. The music of her sigh of pleasure when he touched her. He could see she did, too. “I can see that you do.”

“It might as well be a dream!” she said fiercely, though her flushed cheeks told a different tale. “That's what I thought it was!”

“Life is often unfair, Princess,” he said, his voice low, his attention on the way she stood on the balls of her feet, as if she meant to run. Would she dare? “But that does not change the facts of things.”

“There are your facts, and then there are my facts,” she said in a low voice. She took a breath, and her silver-blue eyes turned to steel. He liked that, too. The warrior in him, who had fought and trained and gladly suffered to achieve
all that he had done, sang his approval. “You can go ahead and sue me for your money. I won't pay it. And whatever the courts in your tiny little country might say, the court of public opinion will have only one word for a king who chases down a defenseless woman like this.
Bully.
”

Adel smiled then, because she was so much more than he had dared imagine, when he'd thought of her growing up so far from her people, her traditions, him. She was not her mother's daughter at all, as he had feared, no matter how that worthless woman had tried to poison her against all that was hers.

“You will make a magnificent queen,” he told her, though he doubted she wished to hear such things. “It is your birthright.”

She shook her head, as if he'd insulted her, and turned her back on him. It was a deliberate dismissal. And yet he felt it like a caress, shooting through him, desire and admiration coursing through his veins.
Finally
, something in him whispered.
A woman who is worthy. A woman who is not afraid.

“Find another queen,” she threw back over her shoulder as she opened her car door. “I'm not interested in the job.”

Adel moved closer, putting out his hand to hold the door of her car open as she went to get in. He did not crowd her—but he also did not step back when she whipped back around to face him. He stood there for a moment, waiting until her breath came faster, and her gaze dropped to his mouth. He could feel the tension wind between them, and longed to close the distance between them—longed to take her mouth with his and reintroduce himself in the best way he could.

“I spoke of facts, Princess,” he said, when she dragged her gaze back to his. “Let me share a few with you. I have every intention of marrying you, as we both swore to do in our betrothal ceremony twelve years ago. That is a fact.”

“Your intentions are your business,” she replied calmly,
though her eyes flashed blue steel. “They have nothing to do with me.”

“If you do not honor your obligations,” he continued as if she had not spoken, “I will not simply be forced to take measures to secure the bride price owed to me. I will also have no choice but to have your deceitful mother arrested and returned to Alakkul, where her theft of so much money and so many jewels—not to mention her kidnapping of the Crown Princess—will no doubt result in an extremely long and unpleasant jail term. If not death. As your husband and your king, of course, I would be willing to forgive such criminal acts on the part of your relative. But why would I extend such a courtesy to a stranger?”

“And again,” she said after a long moment, her mouth trembling slightly, as if he'd hurt her. “What words do you think come to mind when you say such things?”

“I cannot compromise,” he said softly. Fiercely. “I will not.”

“And that is what kind of man you've grown into,” she replied in the same voice, as something like an ache, a need, swelled in the warm summer air between them. Adel wanted to touch it. Her. “So much for the boy who promised he would never hurt me, that he would lay down his life to avoid it.”

He wanted to smile—did she not realize how much she revealed with that memory? How much room she gave him to hope? But he refrained.

“I wish I could place your feelings above all else,” he said, inclining his head slightly. “But that is not who I am. I cannot pretend that I will not do anything and everything in my power to secure you. And thus the throne. I owe nothing less to the people of Alakkul.” He moved slightly, closer, unable to keep his distance as he should. She was too much—too magnetic, too proud. Too…everything he'd dreamed. “
Your
people, Princess.”

“You can call me
Princess
all you like,” she said, strong
emotion cracking across her face, in her voice. “That doesn't make it so. I left all of that behind. I have no interest in a foreign country I can hardly remember.”

“What will spark your interest, I wonder?” he asked, hearing the danger in his own voice, even as he saw her awareness of it, of him, in her gaze. “Are you as cold-hearted as you would like me to believe? Are you prepared for the consequences of your refusal? Not just to your faithless mother,” he said coldly when she began to speak, “but to the very people you claim to care nothing about. If you do not take the throne with me, I will have to fight for it. That is not a euphemism. I am talking about civil war.”

She rocked back on her feet, and dragged in a deep, ragged breath. Her eyes were unreadable when they met his again, dark gray now instead of blue.

“Why ask me at all?” she demanded, her voice strained. “Why pretend that I have a choice to make if I do not?”

He wanted to trace the shape of her delicate cheekbones, the bold line of her nose, the full swell of her lips. He did not understand what he felt then—tenderness? Affection? Need? All of the above at once?

“Here is what I will promise you,” he said abruptly, called somehow to fix the darkness of her expression. “I will honor you and respect you, a claim I do not make to many without cause, but one I made to you twelve years ago. I will not take lightly the sacrifice you are making today. I doubt I am an easy man, but I will try to be fair.”

He saw tears at the back of her eyes, making them shine too bright. But she did not let them fall. He saw the panic, the uncertainty, the fear. But then she swallowed, and let her hands drop to her sides, and he knew it was as much a surrender as a challenge.

He could handle both. He'd been waiting for her for over a decade. For the whole of his life. He was amazed at how
much, how deeply and how completely, he wanted to handle her. In every sense of the term.

“Congratulations,” she said bitterly. “You've won yourself a completely unwilling queen.”

Adel did not, could not care if she thought she hated him now. He would win her. He had won her years before—and she had already showed him she remembered more than she claimed she did. He would build on those memories, and he would win her all over again. And this time, in the way a man won a woman he meant to keep.

“I will take you any way I can get you,” Adel said now, and extended his hand, keeping the hard, bright triumph that flared inside of him under tight control. She was his. Finally. “Come,” he said. “Our future awaits.”

He saw her pulse go wild in her throat, saw her remarkable eyes widen a fraction. He saw her waver. He saw her legs shake as if she fought against the urge to bolt. Still, he held out his hand, and waited.

She bit her lip, surrendered, and slid her hand into his.

 

She had no choice.

Everything seemed to burst into speed and color, exploding all around her.

There was the feel of his warm, strong palm, his skin against hers, arrowing deep into her, making her soften and yearn.
Just like before.
There was his strong, dangerous body too close to hers—so close she imagined she could
feel
his heat—and the way she wanted to lean into him even as her mind shrieked in denial of everything that was happening. Her body had already decided. Her body had chosen him years ago, and was now exultant at his return. It was her mind that reeled, that was desperate for an out.

But what was her alternative? Her mother jailed?
War
? How could she possibly live with any of that, knowing she'd had the power to prevent it and had refused?

And she did not doubt that Adel Qaderi was more than capable of the things he'd promised. She could feel his ruthlessness taking her over like an ache in the bones, making it impossible for her to breathe. It was his ruthlessness, she told herself firmly, and nothing more—certainly not that old, demanding heat that only he raised in her. Certainly not that.

Adel raised his hand, and they were suddenly surrounded—by a fleet of hard-mouthed, serious-looking men who spoke in staccato tones into earpieces and herded Lara into a limousine she had not seen idling nearby.

It was only when she was tucked inside the car and it was speeding away, while her head spun wildly, that her eyes fell on the pieces of luggage on the seat opposite her. She recognized them at once. She had last seen them in the hall closet of her apartment.

She stared at them for a moment, her brain refusing to make the obvious and only connection, and then whipped her head around to stare at the man who sat with such devastating confidence beside her.

He only raised his dark brow, and watched her.

He had known she would surrender.

He had planned it.

“Your belongings have been packed up and are being shipped,” he said without the slightest hint of apology in his tone. But why should he apologize? He'd won. “But should you wish for anything else, it is yours.”

“Except my freedom,” she said with more bitterness than she'd intended. “My
life.
”

“Except that,” he agreed, his voice moving from that exotic steel to a softer velvet.