to her escape fantasies that easily.
Sterling sat in the backseat and stared at the gleaming metal thing with its powerful rotors as if, were she to concentrate hard enough, she could make it go away again.
But it didn’t. Of course it didn’t.
For a long, shuddering moment, nothing happened.
The helicopter sat there in the middle of the otherwise empty road. Sterling’s driver, having lapsed into what sounded like frantic prayers as it had landed, was now muttering to himself. And that meant she had a lifetime or two to contemplate the leaping somersault her heart kept performing in her chest, no matter how sternly she told herself that hope was inappropriate.
She wasn’t running away this time. She wasn’t desperate or scared. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old kid and she was no longer afraid of her best friend’s big, bad wolf.
This time, she was doing the right thing.
The helicopter’s back door opened and Rihad climbed out, his movements precise and furious, and yet still infused with that lethal, masculine grace that made her mouth water. Maybe it always would.
But if so, it would happen from afar. In magazines or on the news.
She was no good for him. She was even worse for her precious daughter. Nothing else mattered
“Stay here,” she told her driver, not that he’d offered to leap to her defense—the man clearly recognized the royal insignia on the helicopter’s sides if not his king himself.
Sterling slammed her way out of the car into the hot desert sun. Memories assaulted her as the hot wind poured over her. Of facing Rihad much like this on a Manhattan street, in what seemed like a different lifetime. Of the dark look he’d worn then and the far darker and grimmer look he wore now.
Sterling didn’t wait for him to reach her.
“What are you doing?” she threw at him across the hard-packed stretch of sandy road that separated them. “Let me go!”
“Never.”
Short. Harsh. A kingly utterance and infused with all his trademark ruthlessness.
She was as instantly furious at him as she was pointlessly, traitorously moved by that.
“It wasn’t a request.”
“You do not give the King of Bakri orders, Sterling.” He was closer then, and she could feel that edginess that came off him in waves, as if he was his own sun. “Your role is to obey.”
“Stop this.” Her voice was a hiss, and she slashed her hand through the air to emphasize it. “You’re not being reasonable.”
He was beyond furious—she could see it in every line of that body of his she knew better than her own now. He was practically vibrating with the force of his temper. And yet he only stared at her for a beat, then another, as if he couldn’t believe she’d said that to him.
And then he tipped back his head and laughed.
He laughed and he laughed.
When he focused on her again, Sterling was shaking, and not from anything like fear. It was need. Longing. Love.
“I am renowned for my reason,” he told her, no trace of laughter remaining in his voice then. “I am considered the most rational of men. My family is filled with emotional creatures who careened through their lives, neglecting their duties and catering to their weaknesses.” He shrugged. “I thought I didn’t have any weaknesses. But the truth is, I hadn’t met you yet.”
Again, she didn’t know how to feel, so she ignored the great, swirling mess inside of her. She balled her hands into fists and scowled at him.
“You’re making my point for me. I’m a weakness and you’re a man who can’t afford any. You need to let me go.”
“Yet when it comes to you, Sterling, I am not the least bit reasonable,” he growled at her. “Why the hell are you running away from me?”
“Why do you think?” she challenged, astonished. “I’m an anchor around your neck, weighing you down. You can’t have this endless scandal and that’s all this is. That’s all I am.”
“You left Leyla behind.”
Sterling couldn’t let herself think about that.
“She’s better off,” she gritted out. She swallowed back the anguished sob that threatened to pour out of her, to tear her open. “Divorced couples share custody all the time. There’s no reason why we can’t. And that means Leyla can grow up here, where she’ll be safe.”
“I can hear the words that come out of your mouth.” His voice set every hair on her body on end. It prickled over her, harsh like sandpaper and a darkness beneath it. “Yet not one of them makes the slightest bit of sense.”
“All I ask is that you find a good woman to help you raise her,” Sterling pushed on, determined, despite the way everything inside of her lurched and rolled as if she was about to capsize herself. She couldn’t let that happen. “Someone who is—”
“What?” Rihad asked brutally. “Not as dirty and ruined as you are?”
There it was.
It was shocking to hear someone else say that out loud after all these years. It was soul-destroying to hear it from him.
But Sterling wasn’t running away from the only man she’d ever loved like this, or ever would, because it was easy. She was doing it because it was right. Which meant she couldn’t collapse at that. She couldn’t let all that wild darkness inside of her take her down to her knees. It was too important that he accept this.
“You know, then.” She couldn’t process it.
He looked furious. Impatient. Darkly focused on her.
“I have an idea what those terrible people must have told you. It doesn’t make it true.”
“If you know,” she managed to say, “then there’s no reason for this to be so dramatic. I’m doing you a favor.”
His expression shifted into something incredulous and arrogant at once.
“I do not want a favor, Sterling,” he threw at her. “I want my family.”
And that easily, he broke her heart.
“You can make yourself a perfect family,” she told him, and she only realized as she spoke that her throat was constricted. That tears were welling up and pouring over, splashing down her face. It was as if he hadn’t simply broken her heart—he’d broken her into a thousand tiny pieces and she couldn’t keep them all together any longer. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to do it again. “You can have more babies and a sweet, biddable wife who follows your commands and never shames you in public. You can—”
“You are my family!” he roared at her, and when she jumped back an inch he followed, taking her arms in those hard, surprisingly gentle hands of his. “You are my wife, my queen. We have a daughter. This is your family, Sterling. I am your family.”
“Rihad—”
But her voice was choked and her words were lost somewhere in a great, wild tangle that swamped her then. Far greater than fear. Far more encompassing.
“And I know that you love me, little one,” he told her then, his voice lower, but still so raw it almost hurt to hear it. Almost. “Do you think I can’t tell? When I do nothing but study you, day after day?”
“I don’t,” she managed to respond, though she couldn’t stop shaking. “I can’t. Nothing good ever comes of my loving something.”
His hands tightened slightly on her arms, but his expression softened. He pulled her even closer. His dark gold eyes searched hers.