Tamed: The Barbarian King (13 page)

“Did you marry him, Jasmine?” he asked, his heart in his throat.

She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t do it. I know we can never be together, Kareef, but I couldn’t leave Qusay without telling you the truth. I love you. I always have, and I always will.”

With a shuddering intake of breath, Kareef held her against his chest, holding her tight as he closed his eyes, turning his face to the sun. A warm breeze swirled against his white robes, against his skin.

And for the first time since yesterday, he felt himself live again. Felt his blood rushing back through his veins. Felt air fill his lungs with every breath.
Jasmine loved him.

“You had to know,” she whispered. “I had to tell you. I couldn’t leave with that lie.”

“Leave?” His eyebrows furrowed. “Where are you going?”

“To New York.” She gave a small laugh. “To start a new life. My new old life. And it’s where,” she said softly, “the king of Qusay will always have someone who loves him from afar. I will never forget you. Never stop loving you. Even after you take a wife—”

He stopped her with a kiss. And when he felt her lips against his—her soul against his own, so sweet and strong—he knew what he had to do.

Kareef would honor the vow he’d made long ago. He would hold true to his deepest obligation.

Taking her hand in his own, he led her out of the royal garden. His brother Rafiq was waiting patiently on the
other side of the courtyard. Kareef felt a pang, then hardened his heart. It was the right choice. The only choice. Ancient honor demanded it of him, honor deeper than bloodlines. This promise superseded any other.

But still…

Forgive me
, he thought, closing his eyes. Then he turned to Jasmine. “Come,” he said quietly. “Before you leave this city forever, you will watch me speak the words that bind me.”

A
S
K
AREEF
led her across the courtyard toward the old Byzantine ruin on the edge of the cliff, Jasmine knew it would be painful to watch him speak the words that would make him forever Qusay’s king. But she took a deep breath and followed him anyway. She loved him, and knew this would be the last time she would ever see him. She wanted their last memory together to be of her face shining with love—not those horrible words she’d said to him last night.

He abruptly let go of her hand, leaving her behind the three hundred guests seated in chairs placed tightly amid the old stone columns. Kareef and his brother Prince Rafiq continued walking, straight up the aisle of the ancient, roofless ruin.

She felt some people turn to look at her, a few with scorn, others with envy. Then they turned back around as Kareef faced them. He shook hands with his brother before Rafiq bowed and left to sit in the audience beside her old friend Sera. Those two seemed rather cozy, Jasmine thought. Was there something going on between Prince Rafiq and the Sheikha’s widowed com
panion? Then the music swelled, and suddenly no one was looking at Jasmine at all.

Kareef stood at the front in his white ceremonial robes with the jeweled sword at his hip, set in emeralds, and no one could look anywhere else. Tears rose to Jasmine’s eyes. He was strength. He was power.

He was her love.

As the vizier started to speak in the old dialect of Qusay, her heart lifted as she stared at Kareef, so regal before the crowd. Even now, after it had ended in heartbreak, Jasmine couldn’t regret their affair.

She wouldn’t regret loving him—ever.

The music suddenly stopped. She heard the wind, the sound of the waves crashing beneath the cliffs. The ruins of the thousand-year-old citadel seemed to vibrate beneath their feet.

The vizier paused, and as the ceremony demanded, Kareef turned to the crowds. He was darkly beautiful. The perfect king.

His eyes met hers across the audience. And he spoke.

Not in the old dialect, as the ritual decreed, but in words everyone could understand, in a clear, low voice that rang across sand and sea.

“I renounce the throne.”

There was a gasp like thunder, echoing across the crowd. She heard the vizier cry out in distress. Someone else gave a low shocked hiss—was it his brother?

Kareef remained steadfast and calm, the eye of the storm.

“Thirteen years ago, I asked a woman to marry me. A young virgin, pure and true.” Everyone fell silent, struggling to listen as he said with a harsh lift of his
chin and glittering eyes, “That woman was Jasmine Kouri.”

A gasp arose from half the crowd as they turned to look at her. “The Kouri girl.” The whispers were repeated, even as the foreign dignitaries frowned in bewildered confusion. “The old scandal.”

Kareef’s face hardened. “Jasmine bore the scandal—alone. But there was no shame. She lost our child in an accident. But before that, she was my bride.” He stretched out his arms and proclaimed, “I owe her a debt that supersedes any other duty or obligation.”

She was in shock, her heart in her throat as people got whiplash looking between them.

He took a single step down from the dais, his blue eyes locked on hers.

“Jasmine Kouri, you will marry me.”

“No,” she gasped.

He stepped down to the aisle.

“Jasmine Kouri, you will marry me,” he commanded.

She stared at him, unable to answer against the pounding desire of her own heart.

He continued to come down the aisle, his eyes never looking away from hers. Suddenly, he was right in front of her. He towered over her, his body inches from hers. All eyes were upon them.

“Jasmine Kouri,” he said softly, “you will marry me.”

There was a breathless hush across the ruin.

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

“Yes,” she choked out, her heart full of joy. “Yes. Yes!”

The smile of happiness across his handsome face was like nothing she’d ever seen. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

“Now,” he whispered urgently when he finally pulled away. “Right now.”

“I love you,” she whispered in reply.

The vizier rose behind him like a furious serpent. The old man’s beard waggled in rage and frustration before he turned away sourly.

“Kareef Al’Ramiz has renounced the throne,” the vizier pronounced in a hollow voice that echoed beyond the ancient ruin, across the sea. “There must always be a king of Qusay. Long live…King Rafiq!”

With a gasp, everyone turned to stare at Kareef’s brother, the tycoon from Australia. The most shocked of them all appeared to be Rafiq himself. His blue eyes went wide as he looked down at the woman beside him. Jasmine saw Sera’s lovely face constrict in shock and pain.

But as all chaos broke around them, her view of Sera and Rafiq was blocked by Kareef’s strong, powerful body.

“Say it,” he ordered, looking down at her.

“I marry you,” she whispered in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

“Louder.”

“I marry you.”

He looked down at her, his eyes shining with love. “One more time.”

And this time, when she spoke, her shout was loud and pure and true. “I marry you!”

He pulled the emerald necklace from her neck and placed it around his throat. Cupping her face in his hands in front of half the world’s princes and ambassadors, he gently kissed away the tears now streaking her face.

“And I marry you,” he said, completing the ancient Qusani ritual of marriage. As some of the audience burst into applause, and the rest muttered their shock, Kareef took her hand. As she looked up into her husband’s handsome, brutal, beloved face, all the storm disappeared around them, blowing away like sand.

“Come, my love,” he whispered tenderly. “Let’s go home.”

Six months later, Jasmine brought her baby out of the house to sit in the morning sun. Cuddling Aziza in her lap in a comfortable, shaded chair, she took a drink of ice water from her own cool glass as she watched her husband train a new yearling in a nearby paddock outside the desert ranch house.

The sun was hot and bright in the blue sky, and around their snug, comfortable home, the horizon stretched out with endless freedom.

But the desert was more than just a horizon. It was more than just sand. If a person looked closer, they’d see so much more, Jasmine thought. Tiny pink flowers. Cactus trees. Hawks soaring through the sky and tiny rabbits darting beneath the rocks. What appeared to be barren was truly full of life and color and joy.

“Jasmine!” When Kareef saw them, he left the other trainers and came over to them. Climbing through the fence, he bent to kiss her, then took the happily gurgling baby in his arms. “Come to teach our daughter how to ride?”

Jasmine choked back a laugh. “She’s a bit young yet.”

The baby cooed, watching the unbroken horses run
in a nearby field. She waved her pudgy arms excitedly. Kareef glanced from his daughter to his wife with a lifted eyebrow.

“All right, it’ll happen soon enough,” Jasmine said, smiling. “She has your recklessness.”

Kneeling before her, he wrapped his arms around them both and looked intently into Jasmine’s eyes. “She has your courage.”

As he held them both in the strong, protective circle of his arms, the sun was warm on Jasmine’s back. She leaned against him as they watched the wild horses running across the field. And Aziza laughed. It was a precious sound, one she never tired of hearing, like the ringing of joyful bells across the desert.

What a precious gift. What a precious life.

Jasmine had set out to give her youngest sister the chance for a fresh start, but Nima had done it for her instead. She’d never wavered on wanting to give her child up for adoption, insisting she was too young and immature to be a decent parent. The day after Jasmine’s marriage to Kareef, Nima had called her with a tearful, solemn request. “Take my baby, Jasmine. No one on earth would be a better mother.”

It had taken months before Jasmine had finally accepted that Nima wouldn’t change her mind. She hadn’t really believed it until the day she and Kareef had brought their newborn baby back home.

Nima now lived in New York City, where she attended prep school and next year would start university, with dreams of studying chemistry and biology. She’d visited Qusay several times since the adoption, but she’d made her position clear. “I’m her aunt,” Nima
had said firmly, then glanced between Jasmine and Kareef with warmth and gratitude shining from her face. “Aziza knows who her real parents are.”

Jasmine’s parents and sisters already doted on the newest member of the Kouri family, and had visited their home in Qais multiple times. Even her father could not complain—how could he be anything but proud of the daughter who’d snagged a king, pulling him from his throne into a respectable marriage?

Or at least that was her father’s gruff excuse, but the truth was that even his iron pride hadn’t been able to resist their baby. No one could resist Aziza. Least of all Jasmine.

The happiness of getting everything she’d ever wanted—just when she’d thought all chance was lost—caused her heart to expand so wide in her chest she thought it might break with joy.

Kareef kissed their gurgling baby’s chubby cheeks, then moved to kiss his wife’s forehead. With a new spark in his eyes, he gave Jasmine a hungry look and lowered his mouth to hers. His kiss was tender and full of passion and promise for the night. When he pulled away, she sighed with happiness.

Each day, he kissed her as if for the first time.

Against all expectation, her life, like the desert, had bloomed. And she knew the heat of the sun, the vast blue sky, and the warmth of their love would last forever.