Carrying the Sheikh's Heir(52)
And now she had to marry him. She didn’t know how she was going to survive if she had to keep navigating a sexual minefield with him. They’d done everything backward. Baby, sex and now marriage, and she couldn’t keep going down the same path without knowing who he was. Really knowing.
“The sex doesn’t mean anything to you,” she said. He did not contradict her, and her belly squeezed a little tighter. “And it doesn’t mean anything to me either, but it could start to mean more than it should just because I feel so out of place here.”
That was what truly frightened her. She was a stranger in a strange land, wholly dependent on this man, bound to him by ties greater than any devised by law. She had to keep her feelings grounded in reality. To do that, she couldn’t fall into bed with him every time he came near her.
He shoved his hands into his pockets—God, he was delicious in faded jeans—and adopted a casual pose that belied the tension in the set of his shoulders. He was a man poised on the edge of action. Always. That he would attempt to hide that from her was encouraging.
Because they both knew who had the true power. That he would allow her to have her own both stunned and warmed her. It was progress.
“I am not trying to place you in a box. You seem not to realize how very privileged your life is about to become.”
“A gilded box is still a box.”
He rubbed a temple and came around to sink down on the cushions of a settee. “I do in fact know this.” He leaned back and gazed up at the domed ceiling above them. “I hated living in this palace as a child. It was hell in many ways.”
She came around the chair and perched on the edge of it, her heart in her throat and a dull pain stinging her eyes.
He shrugged. “My father was a harsh man, habibti. He did not believe in sparing the rod, so to speak.”
She swallowed. Was he actually sharing things with her? Or was this an anomaly? “I heard that you only recently returned to Kyr. Is that why?”
His eyes glittered. “The palace is full of information, it would seem.”
“The person I heard it from seemed rather terrified to impart it. As if you would be angry. As if you are a tyrant who punishes people for slights.”
He looked rather stunned at that revelation. “I am a king, and I must be harsh at times. But I am not a tyrant. The only people who feel my wrath are the council and my immediate staff. I have no need to terrify maids or cooks, I assure you.”
“Honestly, I didn’t think you did.” Because the people she’d met seemed happy to have him as their king, though they were also more than a little awestruck by him. He didn’t speak much, they said. He kept to himself. He was serious and responsible and he didn’t smile.
But he was fair. No one had yet claimed he wasn’t.
One dark eyebrow arched as if he didn’t quite believe her. “Really? I would imagine you were my greatest critic. Did I not kidnap you and force you to come to Kyr? Am I not forcing you to marry me against your will?”
She clasped her hands together in her lap. “Well, those things are pretty bad and you should feel quite ashamed of yourself. But you haven’t been cruel. Exasperating and arrogant, but never cruel.”
He held her gaze steadily. “I am intimately acquainted with cruelty, and therefore I have striven never to be the kind of man who resorts to it in order to achieve his aims.”