her ear she’d felt it everywhere. Everywhere. Like the most intimate of caresses.
She still felt it. And she hadn’t the slightest notion what to do about it.
It wasn’t until they reached her door that Sterling realized she had no idea what was going to happen next. That she’d resolutely refused to believe this was happening at all, this mockery of a wedding, and had thus not thought about…the rest of it.
Did he expect…? Would he…? Her mind shied away from it, even as her body burst into a humiliating flash of delirious heat that she was terrified he could see, it felt so bright and scarlet and obvious. She clutched at her belly, as much to remind herself that she was hugely pregnant as to assuage her sudden spike in anxiety.
But Rihad merely deposited her inside the lovely, spacious suite that was the prettiest prison cell she’d ever seen, then turned as if to leave her there without another word—standing in the middle of the suite’s grand foyer in an indisputably gorgeous dress her attendants had insisted she wear today, that had made Sterling feel pretty despite herself. Despite him.
“That’s it?” she blurted out.
She wished she hadn’t said anything when he turned back to her. Slowly. He was particularly beautiful then, in his ceremonial robes with that remote, inscrutable expression on his lean face. Beautiful and terrible, and she had no idea what to make of either.
But she didn’t think it was fear that made her pulse pick up.
“What were you expecting?” he asked, mildly enough, though there was a dark gleam in those gold eyes of his that made her breath catch. “A formal wedding reception, perhaps, so you could insult my guests and my people with your surly Western attitude? Berate our culture and our traditions as you are so fond of doing? Shame this family—and me—even more than you already have?”
“You’re not going to make me feel guilty about a situation all your own doing,” she told him, ignoring the hint of shame that flared inside of her anyway, as if he had a point.
He does not have a point. He hurt Omar, kidnapped you—but she could still feel it inside of her. As if her own body took his side over her own.
“Or perhaps you thought we should address the subject of marital rights. Did you imagine I would insist?” Rihad moved closer and Sterling held her breath, but he only stopped there a breath away from her, his gaze burnished gold on hers, and still too much like a caress. “I hate to disappoint you. But I have far better things to do than force myself on my brother’s—”
Sterling couldn’t hear him call her a whore on the day she’d married him. He’d come close enough out on the terrace. She couldn’t hear him say it explicitly, and she didn’t want to consider why that was. What that could mean.
“Don’t let me keep you, then,” she said quickly before he could say it. “I’ll be right here. Hating you. Married to you. Trapped with you. Doesn’t that sound pleasant?”
“That sounds like normal life led by married couples the world over,” he retorted, and then he laughed. It seemed to roll through her and a smart woman, Sterling knew, would have backed away from him then. Found safer ground no matter if it looked like retreat. But she, of course, stood tall. “And yet there is nothing normal about this, is there?”
And something shifted then. The air. The light that danced in from outside her windows. Or, far more disturbing, that shimmering, electric thing that she worked so hard to pretend she couldn’t feel there between them. It pulled taut. It gleamed there in his fascinating gaze, dark gold and intoxicating.
Maybe that was why she did nothing when he reached out and slid his hand over her jaw to cup her cheek. Nothing but let him, when she’d never let anyone touch her before. She only held that gaze of his and possibly her breath, too, as his hard dark gold eyes bored into her and the heat of his hand changed her, from the inside out, telling her things she’d never wanted to know about herself, because she felt so many things, so many wild and intense sensations, and none of them were revulsion—
“Damn you,” he muttered, as if he was the cursed one. As if he was as lost as she was, as utterly out of control. “Everything about you is wrong.”
Then he bent his head and fit his mouth to hers, claiming her as easily as if he’d done so a thousand times before. As if she’d been his forever.
And everything stopped. Then melted.
Sterling braced herself for the kick of panic, of horror, but it never came. There was only the heat of it, the banked fury, the rolling wildfire that swept through her and altered everything it touched.
It was long and hot, slow and thorough.
Astonishingly carnal. Deliriously perfect.
It was nothing like the kisses she’d imagined, locked safely away in her little world, where she was never at risk of having one. Rihad’s kiss was possessive and devastating at once, storming through her, making her forget everything but him. Everything but this.
She forgot that she was anything but a woman—his woman, however he would have her, whatever it took, to burn in this fire until she was nothing but ash and longing, fire and need.
And his. God help her, she wanted to be his—
Rihad pulled away then and she could feel his breath against hers, harsh and stirring. Uneven, just as hers was.
He dropped his hand from the side of her face and stepped back, and it was as if he’d thrown them both out of vivid color and bright hot light into a cool, gray chill in that same instant. They only stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.
Sterling was aware of everything and nothing at once. The fine tapestries on her walls, in pinks and reds and ancient golds. The gilt and marble statuettes that bristled on every surface and the sparkling crystal that adorned the high chandeliers, every inch of which she’d studied in the long days she’d been here. The endless blue sea outside, putting the world right there in front of her yet always out of reach, so high up on the cliff side was the Bakrian royal palace. The baby inside of her, low and painful today, as if even her unborn child was expressing its disgust at what she’d let happen to her.
And Rihad. The king. Her husband. The man who had just kissed her. He looked every inch the wealthy sheikh today, in his traditional garments that only emphasized his strength, his power. The sheer intensity he carried with him like a sword, and now she knew he could wield it, too.
His expression was like stone as he gazed back at her, though his dark gold eyes burned the way she still did with the aftereffects of that kiss stampeding all over her, and Sterling couldn’t bring herself to look away.
“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.” Her voice hardly sounded like hers, and she understood that it was far too revealing. That it told him far too much, and in far more depth. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. “Not today.”
Rihad’s nostrils flared as if he was pulling in a deep, deep breath, or fighting for control. As if he was as thrown by this as she was. As if the addictive taste of that wildfire that still crackled through her was too sharp, too dangerous, in him, too.
“I’m touched,” he said, and she understood that was all wishful thinking on her part, thinking this was difficult for him. Nothing was, after all. Not for the king. “I had no idea our wedding meant so much to you, considering how bitterly you complained throughout it.”
His voice was rough and sardonic, but Sterling was sick, she understood then, because she still felt the kiss like a caress. Her oversensitive breasts ached as if it had been that faintly calloused palm of his all over her bare skin. A little flicker of sensation skated from the tight peaks of each of them down through the center of her body to pool deep in her core. Then pulsed.
She’d always had a vivid imagination. But now what stormed in her was need.
“You don’t know anything