His expression was tightly controlled. “When you appear before the council, you will wear traditional clothing. Aside from that, I don’t care.”
She lifted her chin as she met his dark stare. “Oh, I already gathered that, Rashid. You don’t care at all.”
* * *
Rashid met with the council and informed them he would be marrying, and why. The council wasn’t pleased that Sheridan wasn’t Kyrian, but they could hardly argue with the fact she was carrying his child.
“And would you consider a Kyrian woman for a second wife, Your Majesty?” one of the men asked.
Rashid let his hard stare glide over the gathering. They were good men, wise men, men whose families had spent generations on the council. And while they had gotten far more progressive over the years, they still clung to some traditions. A pure Kyrian dynasty was one of those, though they all knew that past sheikhs had sometimes married foreigners and had children with them. Still, it cost him nothing to appease them. They would not accept Sheridan as queen, but as a princess consort. And with a future queen of Kyrian descent to be named, they would be happy.
“I will,” he said coolly. “But not immediately.”
That seemed to satisfy them and the council was dismissed. Rashid returned to his office to work, but he couldn’t seem to stop picturing Sheridan up against the wall, her lovely legs wrapped around him, her sweet voice panting in his ear as he took her over the edge.
He pushed back from his desk and sat there staring at the place where they’d been. He’d taken her like a savage. Like a man for whom control was impossible to attain, when nothing could be further from the truth.
She wound him into knots and he didn’t like it. She’d said he didn’t care, but he very much feared he might. Not a lot, certainly, but more than he was comfortable with. Because he couldn’t stop thinking about her, or about how it felt to lose himself in her body.
He was not the sort of man to become obsessed with a woman, yet she intrigued him. Had from the first moment he’d seen her standing in her shop, all small and blond and seemingly sweet.
But then he’d kissed her and his world had gone sideways. He’d wanted her every moment since.
And he hated that he did.
She was pregnant. Thinking the words sent that same cold chill through him, as always—but there was something else, too. Pride, possession, ownership. She was carrying his child and he was going to marry her. For Kyr.
Rashid got to his feet and left the office, striding through the palace until he came to his rooms. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but the hour was growing late. He changed into jeans—not without thinking of her informing him that she would be wearing her jeans whenever she wanted, that defiant tilt to her chin—and a button-down shirt, and then went through his suite of rooms to the hidden door that connected to the women’s quarters.
He stood there for a long moment, staring at the lock. And then he released it and stepped inside. She wasn’t in bed so he moved through the rooms until he saw her at the computer. She was hunched over it, her head in her hands, and his heart squeezed.
Then she reached for a tissue and he knew she was crying. Damn it. His fault, no doubt. Because he’d pushed her away. But how could he explain to her that being in her arms after they had sex felt like a betrayal? Not because of the sex, but because of the way he wanted to linger, the way he wanted to know everything about her.
“Sheridan.”