That was her next stop. It would do for now.
She closed her eyes and looked to the sun, letting it warm her face. She ignored the limousine that had pulled up to the front of the palace courtyard, waiting for her. Waiting to take her away.
“Angel?”
She turned sharply, her eyes opening. “Taj?”
He was standing at the entrance to the gardens. She hadn’t seen him in the days since he’d broken things off with her. She’d assumed he’d gone to one of his other homes. It was what she’d been told.
“I didn’t think you were here.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, his voice rough. “I was trying to keep away until you’d left.”
“Am I so repulsive to you?” she asked, her voice crisp, masking the wound his words left in her heart.
He closed the distance between them, his strides long and fast. “Are you repulsive to me?” he asked, his expression stark. Open. “You can’t ask me that? Do you realize that for the three years since I first met you I have wanted no one else? That I’ve had no lovers because the memory of your kiss was enough to keep me from being aroused by any other woman?”
“Lust.” The word came out a whisper. She couldn’t believe it. That he hadn’t wanted anyone else. That he hadn’t had anyone else. It didn’t seem possible. “Lust is all that is. It isn’t enough.”
“Lust is cheap, Angel. If it were lust I could have satisfied it with any number of women in any number of ways. That’s not what it is.”
“Then why are you making me go?” she asked, her voice breaking, her pride forgotten for the moment.
“Because I will not hold you prisoner. I will not bend your will to fit with mine. I will not make you miserable to ensure my own happiness. Not anymore.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“I saw you, in your father’s home, so beautiful. So perfect. And I wanted you. I sought out to buy you like I would anything else I coveted. Because nothing in my life had ever been denied me. I simply asked, or wrote a check, and it was mine. I thought you would be no different. But you left me. And I thought I would forget. But I couldn’t. When I saw you again, standing in the balcony at the palace in Santina, I thought only of satisfying my desire for you. Of having you. Possessing you. Exactly like the first time.”
Angelina crossed her arms beneath her breasts, tightening her hold on herself. She would stand upright. She would not dissolve. “And now what? You’ve decided you want to return me?”
“Then I had you. And you left,” he said, continuing as if she hadn’t spoken. “I swore I wouldn’t chase you. I swore to forget you. Still I could not. And when you told me you were having my baby…the chance at last to tie you to me forever. To bring peace to my world. I was happy. Happy because you could not leave me. Because this time you had to stay.”
He shook his head, a sudden flash of disgust curling his lip. “But something changed. I found myself wanting to give to you. And as I did, I realized how much your happiness meant. How much more it meant than my own. How could I be happy when you were so miserable? How could I hold you prisoner and call you mine?”
“But…but… Does my father have anything to do with this…has he?”
“Nothing,” he said, his voice fierce. “I rejected his offer of a partnership after I lost you. It was I who rejected it, not him. Because I couldn’t face having a connection to you without having you.”
“You said you kept in touch.”
His expression turned bleak. “I called sometimes. To see if there had been word of you.”
“You did?”
“I love you,” he said. “I love you more than I love myself, and I don’t think I have ever felt that way. I’m certain I haven’t. I want…I want your happiness so much more than I want my own. So you must promise me, Angelina, that you will be happy. And then I will let you go with a smile.”
Angelina’s breath caught, her hands shaking. “You…love me?”
“Yes,” he said.
She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “I…I can’t do what you asked just now. I can’t go and be happy.”
“What do you need?” he asked, his eyes shining. “What do you need and I will give it to you.”
“You,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face. “I need you.”
One of his arms curved around her waist and he lowered his head, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. “Why did you wish so badly for things to be different, then?”
“Because you didn’t love me. I wanted your love and knowing I couldn’t have that…that’s why I was sad.”
He raised his head, his eyes meeting hers. “I did love you. I didn’t know what to call it. And I did not love you in the right way. I know with certainty that I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you. But now I’m ready to love you right.”
“What changed?” she asked.
“I did. I think it’s because of you. No, I know it is. You have changed me. You have humbled me. And I needed it, badly.”
“I love you, Taj. I loved you then. But I couldn’t stand the thought of marrying you just because you wanted to strengthen your nation’s economy. I wanted to be more to you than that.”
“You are,” he said. “Though I could not have said it then. I was foolish.”
“Maybe we both were.”
“Maybe we will be again,” he said.
“But we love each other. And that’s why we’ll stay together.”
“You’ll stay with me then? Be my wife?”
“Yes,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips, her heart swelling with emotion, tears sliding down her cheeks.
He kissed her deeper, tightening his hold on her.
“I’ll get a procession of camels, right, sugar?” she whispered, nipping his earlobe.
He chuckled. “Nothing is too grand for you.”
“On second thought, I don’t need the camels.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head, raised her hand and traced a line of moisture on his cheek. “No. I only need you.”
* * *
Penny Jordan
‘ASH.’ Sophia Santina, youngest daughter of the King and Queen of the island of Santina, breathed the name silently to herself, almost reverentially. Just the feel of the nearly silent breath that whispered his name and caressed her throat was enough to raise erotic pinpricks of desire within her flesh. Ash. How the whispering of his name was enough to unleash within her an aching echo of the tumultuous teenage desires he had once aroused in her. The very air was electric with the reckless sensual excitement that wantonly flooded her, even though she had sworn she would not, positively not, allow herself to experience it.
She had known, of course, that he had been invited to her eldest brother’s engagement party here at the castle that was their family home, but knowing that and actually