felt twice as big on the inside than she could ever be on the outside, ripped open and wholly altered by a kind of glorious light she hadn’t known could exist. Love, maybe. Hope. Both.
As if windows she hadn’t known were inside of her had been tossed wide-open, and nothing but sunshine streamed in.
And she’d known the instant she’d held her baby against her own skin that she absolutely had to be a good mother to this little girl. To her daughter. No matter what that meant. No matter what it took.
Her eyes met Rihad’s then, over Leyla’s dark little head and soft brown cheeks. This man who detested her, who had never thought she was anything but the worst kind of whore, and had said so. And Rihad’s dark brows edged up that fine, fierce forehead of his even farther, as if he was astonished that she was in any doubt following his stated opinion on the matter.
It occurred to her that there was something the matter with her, that she should find that so comforting.
“You are a good mother,” he replied.
It sounded like one of his royal decrees. And Sterling wanted to believe that, too. Oh, how she wanted to believe it.
“You can’t know that,” she argued, her palm moving to rub against that ache in her chest she didn’t understand, in the very place where Leyla’s hot head had first rested. She scowled at him instead, because it was easier. “And the fact I can’t nurse my own child certainly suggests otherwise.”
“This is the great beauty of living in a monarchy, Sterling.” His lips twitched, which on anyone else she might have called the beginnings of a smile, or even laughter—but this was Rihad. “The only opinion on the subject—on any subject, in fact—that matters at all is mine. Are you not relieved? If I say you are an excellent mother, that is not merely a social nicety I am extending to my brand-new wife on a trying afternoon for her. It is an edict, halfway to a law.”
“But—”
“Go,” he ordered her. He lifted his chin in that commanding way of his when she only blinked back at him as if he’d lapsed into Arabic. “Take a shower. A bath. A walk outside. Sleep as much as possible and let others worry about this one. She will be fine, even if you let her out of your sight. This I promise.”
Leyla hadn’t been out of Sterling’s reach since her birth. Not even once. “But I can’t—”
“This is the royal palace,” he reminded her gently. Yet still with that implacable steel beneath his words. “I am perfectly capable of watching an infant but I don’t have to do that, either, because we have an extensive and very well-paid nursing staff here to tend to her every possible need. Which you might have noticed over the past three weeks had you not been so determined to drive yourself into the ground.”
“But—”
“Martyrdom is actually a far less endearing trait than many people seem to imagine, Sterling. And it always ends the same unpleasant and painful way.” His voice was all steel again then, and dark command besides. “Let the nurses do their jobs.”
“I don’t need them,” she argued, though she was so tired she thought she might fall off into sleep right where she sat, if she let herself. As if sleep was a cliff and she’d been balancing on the edge of it for weeks now, unsteadily. “Leyla is my daughter.”
“Leyla is also a royal princess of the House of Bakri,” Rihad said, with all that innate power of his she hadn’t forgotten, exactly, but had certainly stopped noting in the past few weeks. There was no noting anything else then, not when he sounded like that—as if he truly was issuing edicts he expected her to follow. “There is nothing, no accommodation or luxury or whim, that is not available to her at a moment’s notice.”
His dark gold gaze moved over hers, seeing things Sterling feared she was too tired to hide the way she should. And she was definitely suffering from sleep deprivation, she told herself, because there was no way Rihad would actually look at her the way he seemed to be then, with an expression that veered far too close to tenderness.
But that was impossible. She was delirious.
“You do not have to do this by yourself, Sterling,” he said quietly. “Especially not here in the royal palace. I don’t know what you think you have to prove.”
She knew exactly what she felt she had to prove, but she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anyone, but she especially couldn’t tell Rihad—and not only, she assured herself, because this was the nicest, warmest interaction she’d had with the man since she’d met him. But also because he wasn’t her confidante. He was her husband, yes, but only in the broadest sense of the term. There was no relationship, no trust. There wasn’t even affection, despite that odd light she’d imagined in his gaze just then. There was no intimacy.
Only that one kiss, she thought, the memory prickling over and into her, like gooseflesh rising along her arms. She’d almost forgotten it.
Perhaps she’d wanted to forget it, as there was no making sense of it.
She shoved it away again now, as his too-incisive gaze rested on hers as if he was also reliving those strange, wild moments with his mouth hard on hers. She needed sleep, that was all. Especially before she started thinking about things that made no sense—things she’d been so certain were purely hormonal and would disappear when she was no longer pregnant.
Maybe that kiss was still something she needed to sleep on, she thought then, as a different sort of shiver moved through her. Maybe it was something she needed at least a long shower and a good night’s rest to consider. Or maybe it was better by far—safer, certainly—to pretend it had never happened.
But either way Sterling stopped arguing and did as he’d told her.
Carrying that image, of the ruthless and terrible Rihad al Bakri cradling her tiny infant daughter in his strong arms, from the long, hot shower and straight on into her dreams.
“I OWE YOU an apology, Rihad,” Sterling said, her voice crisp and matter-of-fact.
She’d worked hard to make it that way. To sound businesslike, which suited this strange marital arrangement of theirs instead of actually apologetic, which did not. Apologetic was far too emotional.
They sat out in the fantastical garden that was the king’s private retreat in the center of the palace. Lush plants tangled with brightly colored flowers around three separate fountains, while gentle canopies covered the different seating areas tucked into this little bit of wilderness hidden away inside the palace complex. It was possibly the most beautiful thing Sterling had ever seen.
Then again, so was Rihad—not that it was at all smart to let herself think along those lines.
It’s like admiring the tapestries in my suite, she told herself today, sitting across from him at the graceful iron table where their breakfast had been laid out for them, the way it was every summer morning. That he’s beautiful is a fact, not an emotional thing at all, and certainly doesn’t take away from how terrible he always was to Omar.
But when he glanced up from the tablet computer where he’d been scrolling through something the way he often did, she felt too hot and looked away, and only partially because his dark gold gaze seemed harsher than usual today. She looked toward the nearest fountain that had been made to resemble a tropical waterfall, gurgling down over slick, shiny rocks to form a small, inviting pool Rihad had once told her she was welcome to make use of whenever she wished.
Yet somehow, despite the fact this man had seen her at her worst, dirty and crazy and sobbing and wild, the idea of him seeing her in anything like a bathing suit—splashing around in front of him or, worse, with him—made her heart thud too hard inside her chest. She chose to ignore that, the way she always did.
She