.

an improvement for that wild hunger battering at him from within. Because she had been so beautiful when they’d met that she’d made Manhattan disappear so he could better admire her. And she grew more beautiful by the day. And the fact that she was no longer big with her pregnancy was the least part of that. “You gained a minimal amount of weight while carrying Leyla, lost most of it while giving birth to her and are probably healthier now than when you got pregnant in the first place. If the fashionably gaunt pictures I’ve seen of you back then are any guide.”

      He saw emotions he couldn’t name flit across her face, one after the next, and he hated that he couldn’t read them. Or her. That she defied him even now, without a single word, by simple virtue of remaining opaque.

      Rihad couldn’t have said when he’d begun to find that intolerable.

      “I’ll thank you to keep your comments on my body to yourself.”

      He smiled, and then wider when he saw the spray of goose bumps rise along her bare arms. “Unfortunately for you, Sterling, you are mine. And I take a keen interest in the welfare of the things that belong to me, whether that means trade prospects in my cities or my wife’s form.”

      She was flushed, he noted, and he was sure that if he mentioned it she would claim it was disgust. Distress. But he didn’t believe that.

      “How delightfully medieval.”

      And he enjoyed this, Rihad realized with a thud. He liked her sharp tone, her icy wit, even if it was at his expense. Because Sterling was the only person he’d ever met who dared speak to him this way.

      Perhaps there was something wrong with him after all, that he should enjoy it—her—so much.

      “Your body is fine, Sterling,” he told her, as much to see her draw herself up in outrage as anything else. He made a show of drinking from his coffee cup, then setting it down, for the sheer pleasure of watching temper crack through those blue eyes of hers like lightning. “You’re not a model any longer. You certainly don’t need to keep yourself so drawn and skeletal.” He smiled again, and he could feel the wolf in it. “If you want to dissuade me from making advances on you, you’ll have to come up with something better than that.”

      Her lips quivered and her gaze flashed dark, with something he didn’t understand. He was fascinated all the same.

      “How about this.” Her voice was fierce, almost aggressive, but that only deepened his fascination. “Don’t make advances on me at all. I don’t want you.”

      He watched her for a moment. He waited, and sure enough, she flushed again, brighter and delightfully redder than before.

      “Now, that’s just an outright lie,” he murmured.

      And she looked away, because he was right. And she hated it. And he loved that he could read that as easily as the text on his tablet.

      “Is this where you force me again?” she asked tightly, her eyes on the pool nearest the table while her body shouted out all the ways she was a liar, again and again, as if it was in collusion with Rihad. “Because that was so much fun when you called it a wedding.”

      He laughed then and saw her jolt with surprise. She turned back to him, her gaze unreadable again, but he’d come to a decision. The friendship angle had been fine these past months. It had been appropriate. The woman had just had another man’s child—and lost that man to a tragic accident besides. But it was time to move on.

      Rihad stood, aware of the way her eyes clung to him as he moved, very much as if she was finding his body as much a temptation as he found hers.

      “We’ll have a honeymoon, I think,” he said, and watched her shift restlessly in her chair, the truth in the pink bloom on her cheeks. “You and me for two weeks in the desert, with a thousand opportunities for intimacy.”

      “What?” She sounded panicked, and he was not a civilized creature, he realized. Not at all, because he liked that. “Intimacy? Why would you want that?”

      “Perception.” He shrugged. “Of course, it will be widely assumed that you’re merely pandering to my base, animal instincts with that famously lush body of yours. Men are beasts, are they not? And I am no better than my brother when it comes to your seductive powers.”

      “Yes, you are!” Sterling looked alarmed. “You live to resist me! Or you should.”

      “I am unfamiliar with weakness,” he told her, and he didn’t care if that truth hit her as arrogance. It didn’t make it any less true. “But in this case, succumbing to the practiced charms of a known seductress is a weakness I am prepared to allow the world to dissect at their leisure.” He eyed her aghast expression. “Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful story for your tabloid-loving friends to sell far and wide?”

      Her voice was scratchy when she answered, and her eyes were much too bright with a heat he wanted to bathe himself in. “It sounds heinous. And completely unbelievable anyway.”

      “Why don’t you ask me the question?” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, because he doubted she’d appreciate it if he put them on her. Yet.

      “Why are you so awful?” Sterling asked at once, her voice sharp but with that storm in her blue eyes. “But I already know the answer, of course. Because you can be.”

      “That’s not the question you want to ask.”

      Sterling stared back at him. He heard the summer breeze high above them, dancing through the plants and the trees, and the running water all around them, like songs. He saw her pulse hammer against the delicate skin of her neck and wanted nothing more than to press his mouth to it, as if he could taste her excitement. He saw her hands open and then bunch into fists again, as if she couldn’t control them.

      She sat up straighter. Squared her shoulders. Tilted up her chin.

      “So we’ll simply go out to the desert for a little while. Spend the time out there so people think…whatever they want to think. Call it a honeymoon so the whole world leaps to the same conclusion. That we’re together in more ways than one. A unit.”

      “Yes.”

      She swallowed, hard. “You won’t… I mean, we won’t…”

      “I have no intention of forcing you to consummate this marriage,” he said bluntly, and he told himself it wasn’t fair to think she should already know that he was not that kind of man. It didn’t help when she sagged in her chair in exaggerated relief. “Have I given you cause to imagine otherwise?”

      “You kidnapped me,” she pointed out, though what he noticed was how little heat there was in it. “You married me against my will. You’ll forgive me if I’m not entirely certain where you draw that line.”

      He took his time moving around the table. Her eyes widened, but stayed fast to his, and she made a squeaking sort of noise that reminded him of Leyla when he pulled her chair out from the table and then around to face him, so he could brace himself on its arms and put his face directly into hers.

      And God help him, but it was sweet.

      “Bringing you to Bakri and marrying you before you bore a royal Bakrian child outside of wedlock was my duty,” he told her, dark and serious, though he was far more fascinated by the high color on her cheeks than was wise. “Containing the scandal that you represent is my responsibility. But what happens between us now?”

      “Nothing is happening! There’s no us for anything to be between!”

      He ignored her. “That has nothing to do with duty.” Rihad leaned in closer, so close he could have easily tasted that seductive mouth of hers, yet he held himself back. “That has everything to do with need.”

      “I have no needs,” she said, but then she shivered, and Rihad smiled.

      “I won’t force you, Sterling,” he told her with quiet intent. “I won’t need to.”