In Defiance of Duty (17 page)

The revelation that he was absolutely right stunned her.

She had to blink it away like hot tears, burning at the backs of her eyes. Her heart was pounding too hard now, echoing in her ears and making her feel as if the whole earth, the stone palace and the pools beyond, rocked wildly beneath her. Even though she knew they did not. Even when she could hear the cheerful, oblivious splash of the fountain, like a merry little song that mocked what was happening inside her. She found herself on her feet, braced to run again, to bolt.

Only the fact he’d called her on that, too, stopped her.

And Azrin simply stood there, entirely too close, his arms crossed over his chest now, and watched her as if he could see this fight writ large across her face. She had no doubt that he could and that, too, made her wonder how she could possibly keep all the tears inside.

“You made me wish I could be a different man, Kiara,” he said in that low voice that rolled through her, setting off more of those small earthquakes, leaving only debris and rubble behind. “I let myself imagine that we could simply be normal. Like anyone else. You made me forget, for five years, why that could never be.

Left to my own devices, I would have played that game with you forever.”

His gaze was hot, far hotter than the warm winter sun above them, and seemed to incinerate Kiara where she stood. She felt it—him—like a touch. As if he’d taken his elegant hands and run them all over her body. And as if he really had done exactly that, she felt her breasts grow heavy, the core of her grow damp. She felt that deep, low ache that only he could ease.

As if she could only process how much she wanted him, all the different layers of it, through the simplest, most direct method. As if sex could say everything she couldn’t. As if it could bridge all of the spaces between them.

She felt frozen there before him, as surely as if he held her in his palms. Or pinned her to some wall somewhere.

He sighed slightly, as if he’d lost his own battle. As if he recognized hers. Then he reached over and curled his hands around her upper arms.

Don’t, she thought desperately. Please don’t.

But she didn’t say the words out loud. Because she had no idea if they were directed to him—or to herself.

She could have moved away from him. She could have told him to stop. She knew she should have.

“Azrin …” she whispered.

But she didn’t know whether she meant to beg him to stop, or to never stop, and the fact that she didn’t know—that she couldn’t tell—made her shake inside.

Again. Anew.

And that was when he bent and fixed his mouth to hers, hot and sweet and irresistible, and everything went wild and white.

He should not have tasted her. It was madness. He was a fool.

But he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

But he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

He only knew that it took forever to claim her mouth with his. It had been so long. Too long. An eternity since he’d kissed her, held her. He exulted in the perfect fit of her against him, the sweetness of her curves beneath his hands, the promise in the tiny noises she whimpered into him as he slanted his mouth over hers and drank deep.

What could possibly matter, save this?

His body shouted the usual demands, as desperate for her as ever. But this time, he ignored the wild clamor of need. The driving beat of that passion that he could feel burning between them. The overpowering urge to drive deep inside of her and ride them both into blissful oblivion.

This time, he simply kissed her.

He sank his hands into the soft waves of her hair, anchoring her head into place, angling her face so he could find the perfect, slick fit of his mouth against hers.

He let the kiss slow, go deep. She moved even closer, looping her arms around his neck and pressing her pert, plump breasts against his chest, making that demanding fire within him blaze ever higher, ever brighter.

He loved all of it. Her. He wanted to taste her from head to toe. He wanted to take that bright sundress off with his teeth. The ways he wanted her played on an endless, infinite loop inside of him, stoking that burning need, making him harder and wilder and that much more desperate for her.

And still he kissed her. As if there was nothing at all but this. But them.

As if there was no world at all, no demands. No throne. No winery. No hotel room in Washington, shrouded in all that bitterness.

Only the shimmering, magical pools, the quiet song of the fountain behind them. Only the taste of her mouth. Only the perfection of the curve of her cheek beneath his palm.

Skin to skin. Her mouth under his. The sun and the sky and this. Them.

Her hands moved to stroke his jaw, his neck. He let one of his hands make that dangerous descent from the back of her head to the wickedly tempting line of her spine, tracing his way down until his fingers rested proprietarily at the small of her back.

My wife, he thought, a fierce and almost savage feeling pumping through him. My queen.

And he kissed her, over and over, endlessly, until he was drunk with it, intoxicated by her taste, by her closeness, by the small sounds she made, by the way he could not help but want her, love her, need her.

My Kiara.

He moved her away from him, settling her against the edge of the fountain again and moving to kneel before her. He ran his hands down her legs, all the way to her ankles, where he found his way beneath the hem of her dress. Then he retraced his path, skin against skin this time, and heard the ragged way she pulled in her next breath—so ragged it nearly qualified as a moan.

He’d take it.

He pulled the dress out of his way, baring her long, silky legs to his view. He followed the elegant line of one, using his lips and tongue, finding his way over the perfection of her calf to the sweet curve of her knee—and the delicate place behind it that made her shiver when he stroked it with his fingers. Then he moved higher, kissing his way up the delectable curve of her inner thigh. He found the scrap of silk and lace that stretched across her hips and pulled it down and then off, tossing it aside.

He looked up at her then. Her chest was heaving, her eyes wide. Her hands gripped the lip of the fountain so hard he could see a hint of white at her knuckles, and he could feel the way she trembled. He ran his palms up her legs again, shifting her slightly as he moved closer, then pulled up her legs to drape them over his shoulders, opening the very heart of her femininity to him.

She made a noise that could have been his name, her brown eyes black with passion. With the same need that clawed at him, dragging steel-tipped talons through his gut and demanding he take her, taste her, glut himself on her.

He leaned forward and licked his way into the molten core of her.

She shuddered and shook. She sobbed out his name, unmistakable this time. She moved against his mouth, riding his tongue, and he loved it, all of her. He anchored her hips with his hands and let her go wild against him, her back arching as her lovely body tensed. He worshipped her, lips and tongue and the faintest hint of his teeth, reveling in her incomparable taste. Her scent. Her hot, writhing pleasure.

She cried out his name once more—louder—and then she burst into flames all around him, nearly incinerating him, too, in the force of her sweet release.

It was not enough, Azrin thought then, as she slumped against him. It was never enough.

He moved to sit on the edge of the fountain beside her, letting her lean heavily against his shoulder as she fought to come back to him.

It took two breaths. One, then another, and then her face paled.

She sat upright, pushing herself away from him. Her beautiful eyes darkened, and not with passion this time. She made a small, panicked sort of noise that seemed to hurt her, and thus him, and then she shoved herself away from him. She staggered slightly as she got to her feet, and the male in him found that leftover reaction far more satisfying than perhaps he should.

“Where are you going?” He could still taste her. It made him hard and edgy, neither of which he suspected would help him here. He wanted to pull her back against him and hold her, pull her down to the ground and take her until they were both limp and happy, but he imagined she wouldn’t want that, either.

“Is this your plan?” she asked, her voice shaking. Her dark eyes looked haunted, despite the sunshine that poured down from above them. “You predicted this, didn’t you? My token protest followed by sex … Isn’t that what you said? How pleased you must be that I’ve fallen into line, just as you expected I would.”

“Kiara.”

There were spots of color high on her cheekbones now, and he saw the way she shivered, though it was nowhere near cold in the patio. She ignored him.

“Worst of all, you broke our agreement,” she said in the same uneven voice. Her lips trembled. “And I let you.”

“Was this not a gift?” he asked. “It was the very definition of a gift, I would have said.”

“You know perfectly well that it was not.” She bit at her lower lip. “The strings attached are practically visible.”

“Kiara …” He said it again, as if her name would soothe her. Reach her. He had to order himself not to move, to simply sit and wait, and not use his body in a way she would claim was deliberate. As she claimed everything he did was deliberate. And so he only watched her, even as temper galloped through him, burning way she would claim was deliberate. As she claimed everything he did was deliberate. And so he only watched her, even as temper galloped through him, burning him alive. “I can’t pretend I’m not in love with you.”

He watched what looked too much like pure misery wash over her face, before she stepped back—as if she couldn’t handle the words and needed to physically put space between her and their source. She shook her head slightly, as if she wanted to unhear them. As if she could. He saw her eyes grow bright and glassy, and knew she was fighting back tears. Her lips pressed together as if she was afraid of what she might say—or holding back sobs.

It killed him to see her like this.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” she rasped out.

“Is it really so terrible?”

He had the sense she was too fragile, now; too breakable, and he had to fight back everything inside of him that wanted to go to her, to protect her from whatever hurt her—even if it was herself. Or, worse, him.

“This is the problem,” she managed to say after a moment, though her voice was choked. “No matter what I want, no matter what I think is right, I just …

surrender to you. As if I have no will at all. I make a mockery of everything I believe to be true about myself every time I let you near me.” He ran his hands over his face, temper and protectiveness in a pitched battle inside of him. She looked at him through bruised eyes, as if he truly was the big, bad wolf of all those European fables, and he found himself torn between the need to prove to her that he was not—and the more primal urge to simply show her his teeth.

“Kiara,” he said, torn between a kind of exasperated amusement and something else, something deeper and, he thought, far sadder, “this is passion. This is love.

This is what people all over the planet search for, fight for, kill for. How can you believe it’s a problem?”

“It’s easy for you to say that, isn’t it?” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she could ward off the shivers that way. Or him. “You always end up getting exactly what you want.”

The things he wanted were so mundane, he thought, looking back at her from only a foot or two away, and yet, so far.

They were always so far away from each other.

He felt a profound sense of futility move through him then, and he shoved it aside. He refused to give up, to accept it. He wanted Kiara, in a hundred different ways. That was all. In his arms. In his bed. In his kingdom. But most of all—in his life. Why didn’t she want the same things? Why was he the only one fighting for the two of them, for their marriage, while she seemed perfectly content to keep fighting him?

“You cannot honestly believe that any of this is what I want,” he bit out, and there was no controlling the edge in his voice then. He didn’t even try.

Her face seemed to crumple, and she took another step back. She shook her head again, as if trying to steady it, and she didn’t meet his gaze.

He hated this. All of it. Himself most of all.

“I can’t do this,” she said in a low, thick voice. “I just can’t.”

He should let her go, he knew, though every part of him revolted at the very idea of it. She turned and started for the glass doors, hurrying as if she expected to be hauled back—or to collapse into tears. He knew he should say nothing at all. He should let her regroup, let her come up with a new suit of armor to wear around him. Let her build new walls. Produce new battalions to fight this endless war he was beginning to wonder if either of them would ever win.

He simply couldn’t do it.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice pitched to carry, laden with command, enough that she stopped in her tracks, one hand on the glass door in front of her. “When do you think we’ll discuss the real issue here?”

She turned slowly. Carefully. It took her one breath, then another, to meet his gaze. Azrin stretched his legs out before him, crossing his ankles. He folded his arms over his chest. He watched her take that in, then gulp, and he accepted the possibility that he did not look as relaxed or inviting as he wished to appear.

“We’ve done nothing but discuss the real issues,” she said after a moment, her head tilted slightly as if she was trying to read him. “Over and over again, in fact.

We clearly do nothing save hurt each other. In the end, it’s all a terribly painful waste of time.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Anticipation burned in him then, low and bright, and he felt everything in him still. Wait. Focus. She flinched slightly as if he’d surprised her.

“Right.” She looked confused for a moment, then inexpressibly sad, but she pulled it all in and managed to produce that neutral, unassuming expression instead.