His mouth curved, though whether it was at her dry tone or because he actually found that description of himself amusing, she couldn’t tell.
“As you may recall, Shona, nobody wanted me to keep it in my pants. Least of all you.” He shrugged when her eyes narrowed at that. But it wasn’t as if she could argue. He wasn’t wrong. “The palace investigators had their hands full, I regret to say. They found every woman I’ve ever touched.”
“I wouldn’t think anyone could count that high.”
Malak inclined his head, but that gaze of his never left hers. And she was beginning to imagine it might leave marks. “Each lucky paramour was thoroughly investigated to make certain there was nothing about her or her liaison with me that could embarrass the kingdom. And of them all, Shona, this great and glorious legion of former lovers, only you were keeping the kind of secret that makes the average palace aide turn gray overnight.”
“You are mistaken.” She was gripping herself too hard. But she didn’t let up, even though she was half afraid she would crush her own ribs with her crossed arms. “Miles and I have nothing to do with you.”
“I admire your independence,” he told her in a tone that suggested the opposite. “I do. But I’m afraid there are no choices here. Or, I should say, none I expect you will like. The boy is mine. That makes him the heir to the Khalian throne. And that means he cannot stay here.”
She dug her fingers into her sides, but she didn’t wake up. This was a nightmare she’d had more than once since she’d given birth to Miles, but this time, she couldn’t jolt herself awake. She couldn’t make Malak go away.
“Let me make sure that you understand something,” Shona said, though there was a ringing in her ears. Her heart still pounded, but it had gone slow. Intense. And she was focused on Malak as if he was a target, if only she could find the right weapon. “You will not touch my child and if you try, six beefed-up goons with guns won’t save you. Nothing will.”
She didn’t know what she expected Malak to do then.
But it wasn’t the way he threw back his head and laughed, with all that infectious delight and lazy sensuality that had been her downfall five years ago. His laughter had not changed at all. The dark and somber suit was new, as were the guards surrounding him. That grave note in his voice, this talk of kings and thrones and palace advisors—all of that was new, too.
But that laugh... It was as dangerous as she remembered it.
More, maybe, because unlike back then, it was wholly unwelcome.
It curled into her like smoke. It wound through her, insinuating itself into every crevice and beneath every square inch of her skin. It licked into her like heat, and then worse, wound itself into a kind of fist between her legs. Then pulsed.
She’d told herself she’d been drunk that night. She’d told herself she’d imagined that pull she’d felt when she was near him, that irresistible urge to get closer no matter what. That aching, restless thing inside her that hummed for him only. She’d imagined all of that, she’d been so sure—because she’d never felt it again. She’d never felt anything the slightest bit like it, not with any man who’d come near her before or since.
But she hadn’t imagined it.
It turned out that he was the only man in the entire world who made her feel all those things. And if anything, she’d let time and memory mute his potency.
He was standing here with armed guards, threatening her baby and life as she knew it, and that didn’t keep her from feeling it. What the hell was the matter with her?
When his laughter faded and he looked at her again, Malak’s eyes were gleaming bright and she was breathless.
And in more trouble that she wanted to admit, she knew.
“There is a certain liberty in having so few choices,” he told her, almost sadly, and it felt like a cage closing, a lock turning. “This will all work out fine, Shona. One way or another.”
“There’s nothing to work out,” she said fiercely. Desperately. “You need to turn around and go back where you came from. Now.”
“I wish I could do that,” Malak said in that same resigned sort of way, and oddly enough, she believed him. “But it is impossible.”
“You can’t—”
“Miles is the son of the king of Khalia,” Malak said, and there was an implacable steel in that dark gaze and all through that body of his, lean and sculpted to a kind of perfection that spoke of actual fighting arts, brutal and intense, and not a gym.
And she believed that, too, though she didn’t want to. She believed that every part of him was powerful. Lethal. And that she was in over her head.
Again.
“Congratulations, Shona,” he continued, all steel and dark promise. “That makes you my queen.”
MALAK WAS FURIOUS.
That was too tame a word. He was nearly volcanic, and the worst part was, he was well aware he had no right to the feeling because he’d been the one to cause this situation in the first place. No one had asked him to carry on as he had, following pleasure wherever it led.
But knowing his own culpability only made it worse.
He hadn’t believed it when the palace advisors had put the photographs before him. He’d had enough on his plate, with his brother Zufar’s abdication following so soon after their father’s and the bracing news that after a life of being ignored—which he had always quite enjoyed, in fact, as it had meant he could do exactly as he pleased without anyone thundering at him about his responsibilities—he was to be king.
Malak had never wanted to be king. Who would want such a burden? He’d preferred his life of excess and extremes, thank you. But Zufar was happy, a thing that Malak would never have believed possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, not after the way they’d grown up. And Malak loved both his brother and his country, so the decision was simple.
The decision, perhaps, but not the execution of it. His initiation into his new role had thus far been all that he’d feared and more, starting with a close examination of his entire sybaritic existence. Laying all his exploits bare, one by one, until Malak was profoundly sick of himself and the great many salacious, debauched urges he’d never attempted to curb in the slightest.
He had never been much for shame, but it was difficult to avoid when faced with so many photographs and so many thick dossiers enumerating his indiscretions, one after the next, on into infinity. And particularly when so many of the women in those pages were nothing but vaguely pleasant blurs to him.
And yet he remembered Shona. Distinctly.
How could he not? Of the many beautiful women he’d been privileged enough to sample, she had been something else entirely. It had been his last night in New Orleans after a week of blues and all manner of questionable behavior. He had settled in for a quiet drink in the lobby of his quietly elegant hotel to prepare himself for the trip back home to see his family, who would all have been deeply disapproving of his antics if they’d ever spared him a moment’s notice.
And then there she was. She’d been almost unbearably pretty, with rich, creamy dark skin and a lush mouth that made him feel distinctly greedy at a glance. And her beautiful hair, arrayed in a great halo around her head with springy curls he’d longed to sink his hands into. She’d worn a skimpy little dress that had glittered like gold and had made a delectable poem out of her lean curves.
Better still, she’d walked to the gleaming wooden bar and taken the only empty seat, which had been directly next to his.
Malak was only a man. And not much of one,