“I liked it from the start. No one paid me any attention. I felt free there.” She selected one of the flaky almond cookies and broke it in half. “It’s different now. I’m known, and more alone than ever.”
“You’re lonely?”
She nodded. “Yes. I miss what I had. Not the things, but the friends, the activities, the energy. I used to wake up every day, excited to see what the day would bring. Now I just get by. Push through.”
“Once we return to Ketama, once everyone knows of our marriage, you will discover that doors presently closed to you, will open. As my wife, you will be welcome everywhere. As my wife, no one would dare to shame you, or exclude you.”
Jemma popped half the cookie in her mouth and chewed, but her mouth had gone dry, and the cookie tasted like sawdust. “I don’t want to be accepted because people are afraid of alienating you. I want to be accepted because people like me.” Her eyes suddenly burned and she took a sip from her golden goblet. “It hurts to be scorned.”
“Which is why you need my protection. I do not want you to suffer more than you have.”
His gaze met hers and held. His dark eyes burned into her. She felt her pulse quicken, and butterflies flit wildly in her middle, her body humming with awareness.
Mikael would be a protective husband. He would probably be generous to a fault. He’d already showered her with gifts and trinkets, and was good at paying her compliments.
She wondered what marriage to him would be like. Not the honeymoon part, but the ever after part.
What kind of husband would he be?
Would he have expectations for his wife’s behavior? Rules for the relationship? What would he not permit, or tolerate?
Mikael’s eyes met hers, and held. “You have something on your mind.”
“You can read me too easily. Have you always been so attentive to women?”
“No. Never.” He leaned over and refilled her goblet. “I’m usually accused of being insensitive and self-absorbed.”
“Are you different with me?”
“It would seem so.”
“Because I am your wife?”
“Because I can’t help but pay you attention. You command it.”
“I command it. Interesting.”
“You are a queen now. You are in a position of significance.”
“Careful. The power might go to my head.” But she was laughing as she said it, and from his lazy smile, she knew he was amused. “Do you enjoy your power?”
He thought about the question for a moment and then nodded. “Sheikhs are allowed to be as demanding as they like. It is the benefit of being royal. But power carries responsibility to provide for one’s family, and people, and protect them as well. This is where my father failed. This is where I cannot fail.”
“I do not think you will. You have the right mindset. You are focused on the right goals.”
“I am less focused now that you are here,” he admitted. “With you here I find I only want to think about you.”
“It is your honeymoon.”
“Our honeymoon,” he corrected, reaching out to stroke her cheek, and then press his thumb to her lips.
Heat raced through her, followed by a frisson of sensation that made her breasts tingle and her legs quiver. She felt so aware of him and the awareness was a bittersweet tension, her body humming in response. She ached inside, at the place where her thighs joined, and she hated wanting...needing...
Jemma squeezed her thighs together, denying the need, and struggling to ignore the way her skin tingled, sending fresh darts of sensation from her breasts to her belly.
His gaze met hers and held, and he couldn’t know what she was thinking or feeling, but she blushed anyway, heat racing through her, making her hot and cold.
She was attracted to him. She was responding to him. It crossed her mind that she just might be in over her head.
“Yes, laeela?” he asked, reclining against the cushions. “What are you thinking?”
She shouldn’t have agreed to this. She shouldn’t have played this game. It was a game she could lose. “You...your government,” she stuttered, thinking she could never admit that sex was on her brain. Sex, seduction, sensual lovemaking...no, better to keep the conversation away from the personal.
“Our government?” he repeated, eyes crinkling. “Politics intrigue you?”
No, but you intrigue me. You make me wonder about everything I do not yet know. Instead she crossed her legs and tried to calm herself. “Did you inherit your power?”
“Yes.”
“Because you were first born, of the first wife?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”