“Where are these people now?” Rihad asked softly. Dangerously, as if, were he to speak in his usual voice, he would raze whole cities to the ground with the force of his fury.
And it made something long frozen deep within her unfurl in a little blast of warmth.
“They’re behind me, that’s where they are.” She smiled at him, a real smile that time, and when he slid his hand along her cheek, she leaned into it. “But after that I knew how evil people were, once they thought they had all the power. How vicious and cruel. So I made myself into an Ice Princess who didn’t like to be touched and was always much too sober to have any fun anyway, so everyone left me alone. And then Omar came along, and I didn’t have to worry about that stuff anymore, because everyone believed I was with him. And that’s how I accidentally ended up a virgin.”
Rihad didn’t speak for a long time, and she would have given anything to know what he was thinking. What was happening behind that austere, ruthless face of his and that disconcertingly sensual mouth. She wanted to lick him until neither one of them could think anymore. She wanted to bury her face in the crook of his neck, as if he could keep her safe from all the things that swirled around her that she couldn’t even identify. He would, she thought. He really would.
And God help her, the things she wanted then, that she was too afraid to name.
“But you let me take you.” His gaze was even more golden than usual then, and it set her alight. “Twice.”
“Yes.” Her throat was so dry that it hurt when she swallowed. “I did.”
“Why?” He traced a line from the tender place beneath her ear, down and around to stroke the line of her collarbone, as if he was trying to smooth the ridge of it back beneath her skin. “Why me?”
“We’re already married, Rihad,” she said, as primly as if she was lunching at some terribly dignified country club. “Your name is on my daughter’s birth certificate.”
And she saw that smile of his again, watched it light up his eyes. It filled her with the same light.
“Why, Sterling. That makes you sound traditional and old-fashioned, not modern and scandalous at all.”
“It seemed safe enough,” she told him, caught in that glittering gaze of his. Lost in the way he was touching her, so casually intimate, as if this was only the beginning. As if there was so much further yet to go—but she didn’t dare let herself think that. “And also, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d notice.”
He didn’t seem to move, but everything changed. Got way more intense, so fast it made her stomach drop. “I noticed.”
She froze. “Oh. Was I…? Was I not…?”
Rihad laughed then and rolled, coming up over her and holding her there beneath him, that stunning body of his stretched out above her, so gorgeously male it hurt.
“You were exquisite,” he told her quietly, sincerity in every syllable. “You are a marvel. But I am old-fashioned myself, Sterling, as you’ve pointed out to me many times. Deeply traditional in every possible way.”
She was shaking, and it wasn’t fear. It was him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that you were far safer when I thought you were a whore,” he said bluntly, his dark gaze seeming to burn through her, kicking up new flames and changing everything. Changing her. “Now I know that you are only mine. Only and ever mine. And I, my little one, am a very, very selfish man.”
And then he set about proving it.
THE HEADLINE A MONTH LATER was like a slap—the hit, perhaps, that Sterling had been expecting all along. She sat frozen solid on the balcony outside Rihad’s suite, staring down at the tablet computer Rihad had left sitting there when he’d stepped inside to take a phone call. She felt sick.
Black Widow Sterling Lures King Rihad into Her Web! the worst of the European tabloids shrieked. And the article beneath it was even worse.
Sex-symbol Sterling flaunts postbaby bod and enslaves the desert king! Starry-eyed King Rihad can’t keep his eyes—or his hands!—off his late brother’s lover. “But Sterling left a trail of broken hearts behind her in New York,” say concerned friends. Will the formidable king be one more of heartbreaker Sterling’s conquests?
It was beautifully done, really. Killer Whore. Vain Whore. Married Whore. Omar’s Whore. New York Whore. So many clever ways of calling Sterling a whore without ever actually uttering the word.
The worst part was, she hadn’t seen this coming. She hadn’t expected it, and she should have. Of course she should have. But she’d actually believed that now that she and Rihad were not only married, but also actually as intimate as that honeymoon had been meant to suggest, the awful paparazzi would leave her alone.
She’d been incredibly naive.
There are no happy endings, she reminded herself then, frowning out at the sea that stretched toward the horizon before her as if basking, blue and gleaming, in the sun. Not for you. Not ever.
But she’d been lulled into believing otherwise.
Their lazy days at the oasis had bled together into one great burst of brilliant heat, a haze of bright sun above, desert breezes over the cool water in the shaded pools and the desperate, delirious hunger that only Rihad had ever called out in her—and that only he could satisfy.
Sterling had learned every inch of his proud, infinitely masculine body. She’d tasted him, teased him, taken him. She’d learned how to make him groan out his pleasure, how to scream out her own. He’d taken her beneath the endless stars, in the vast softness of his bed, in the luxurious tub that stood in her own luxuriously appointed tent. He’d been inventive and uninhibited—and demanding, as he’d promised. She’d learned to be the same in return.
Sterling had given herself over to the exquisite pleasures of the flesh that she’d denied herself so long—all her life, in fact. Touch. Lust. Desire and its sweet oblivion. She’d eaten too much, drunk too deeply. She’d lost herself in Rihad, again and again and again. She’d told him the truth about herself, or a critical portion of the truth anyway—and the world hadn’t ended.
She’d let herself imagine that Rihad was as powerful as he’d always appeared to her. That he could truly hold back whatever nightmares threatened. That he would.
That she and Leyla and this marvel of a man could create their own truths and live in them. That they could finally be the family she’d always wanted.
But she’d forgotten who she was.
She always did.
It had been some weeks since they’d left the oasis and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why the tabloids had latched on to her again. The article went on to make salacious suggestions about a list of regional leaders and some local celebrities, all of whom had been at last night’s elegant function in one of the new luxury hotel complexes being built along the shore of the Bay of Bakri.
That meant that someone at that party had taken exception to the Queen Whore being paraded about on their king’s arm and had taken to the tabloids to express their feelings.
“I’d prefer you not read that nonsense,” Rihad said from the doorway, his deep voice like a flame within her, that easily. That quickly. Sterling looked over at him, still frowning, despite the little flip her heart performed at the sight of him, dark and beautiful there in the arched entryway. His mouth crooked as if he could feel it, too. “It will rot your brain.”
“I told you not to take me to your events, Rihad.” When his fierce brows rose, she flushed, aware that her agitation had sharpened her tone. “I knew