She was not turned away. She was offered refreshments. His highest-ranking assistant offered to interrupt the king’s conference call if it was an urgent matter.
“It’s not. Merely a private discussion I’d like to have before our guests arrive. I’ll ring if I require anything.”
She was left alone to explore the private library. It was a retreat, a place for Zyria’s ruler to freshen up between meetings, since there was a very luxurious bathroom and a small walk-in closet with a spare of everything.
It ought to smell like Karim in here, she thought, as she lifted the sleeve of a robe to her nose.
She was actually craving the scent of him, some lingering evidence of their intimacy. Her nights were agony as she relived the way he had pleasured her in the tent, then fantasized all the other things they might do to one another if he came to her. Why hadn’t she at least pleasured him the same way when she had had the chance?
In the darkest hours, when she was sweaty and aching with desire, she rose and walked to the closed door between their apartments but couldn’t bring herself to knock.
Was he being honorable? Giving her time to adjust to their marriage as he had promised he would? Or had he completely lost interest in her?
She always went back to bed bereft, wondering what she had done to turn him off.
As brutal as the nights were, the days were far worse. Each time she was in his presence, she fought lust. His lips on the rim of a coffee cup made her shake with desire. His voice stroked across her skin, causing her pulse to race. If she caught his scent, she had to close her eyes and take control of herself.
Even now, anticipating being alone with him, her intimate regions were tingling with anticipation. Her one-track mind turned to fantasies of making love on the floor of his very closet, his naked weight upon her. His thick shaft piercing—
Flushed and impatient with herself, she went back into the main area.
The only thing worse than suffering this constant yearning would be his discovering how deeply she felt it and feeling nothing in return.
She shook herself out of her mental whirl by taking a more thorough look around the main room. Did he even come in here? There wasn’t a speck of dust in sight, but she had the sense he spent very little time in here.
A sofa and chairs were arranged to face a television, should there be breaking news he needed to watch, but the cushions were undented. The liquor cabinet held nothing, not even nonalcoholic choices.
When she looked at the books, they were also dust free and arranged with precision, but who read actual books anymore? Especially dry nonfiction. Give her a romance and she would sneeze her way through the most yellowed pages, but biographies and history? No, thanks.
She couldn’t help touching the mane of the gold lion that lounged on an ebony bookend. His one front paw was relaxed and dangling off the edge. His tail appeared about to swish. It was an eye-catching piece, one that looked vaguely familiar, making her think she’d seen something like it, perhaps by the same artist. She would have remembered if she’d seen this one. It was not only startlingly lifelike, with the animal’s musculature lovingly recreated, it emanated power along with the innate playfulness of cats. The lion peered around the edge of the upright slab of ebony that he lounged against, as if waiting on his mate. Inviting her to come to his side of the books.
Galila looked for the match, but there was only the one. Strange. Bookends came in pairs, didn’t they? That was why there was an expression about things being “bookended.”
She looked on the desk for it, then realized the heavy curtains behind the desk hid a pair of tall doors that led onto a balcony. She pulled them open.
Was this where his father had fallen?
She wasn’t a morbid person, but something drew her to open the doors and step onto the shaded balcony. The heat crushed like a wall, but the view of the sea was stunning. There was a broader balcony on the other side of the palace that was used for ceremonies. It overlooked a public square and had been a means of addressing the masses before television.
This one, like the room behind her, was a place for reflection.
With an unforgiving courtyard a fatal distance below.
“No,” Karim said, startling her into gasping and spinning. She clutched her chest where her heart leaped.
Mouth tight, Karim pointed her back into the center of the room.
“I didn’t—I was just—”
He closed and locked the doors, then drew the drapes across with a yank on the cord. The room became cooler and darker, but she was still hot and flustered.
“Karim.” She had come in here on a wave of temper, determined to confront him, but found herself in the middle of the carpet with her hands linked before her, apologies on her tongue.
“It’s not up for discussion,” he stated.
She didn’t have to ask him if that was where the accident had happened. She could see the truth in his severe expression. He’d been six. How was it such a painful, visceral memory for him?
As she searched his expression, her infernal attraction to him began to take root and flourish through her. She noted how handsome he was in his business attire of pants and a button shirt. Nothing special, but it was tailored to his strong shoulders and framed his hips just so. He was as sexy and casually powerful as the lion she had admired.
He also had a thorn in his paw. She yearned to be the one who pulled it, she realized. The one he cherished for healing him.
“The ambassador and his wife will arrive soon. You should change.”
It was a dismissal.
They were alone for the first time since the tent and he didn’t have any use for her. Just like that, her temper flared. She remembered why she had been so infuriated, why she had hiked the distance across the massive palace to confront him.
“I need to talk to you.” She folded her arms, chin set.
“It can’t wait?”
“Until when? Do you propose I discuss my doctor’s appointment over the dessert course so our guests can weigh in?”
His whole body tightened, as if bracing himself. His brows slammed together and his gaze swept her up and down. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she admitted, realizing she had alarmed him, which was a tiny bit gratifying since he hadn’t given her any indication of even a mild passing concern for her health and well-being since he’d poured out her brandy the night they met. “I mean, it’s not a health problem, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He made an impatient noise and flicked his hand at her. “That’s exactly what I thought. But if you’re healthy, then what?”
“I want to know why you told the doctor I could go on whatever birth control I would prefer.”
His head went back with surprise. “You said you didn’t want children right away.”
How was it possible for him to become more inscrutable? He pushed his fists into his pockets. The motion drew the fabric of his trousers tight across his fly, which revealed the hint of his masculine flesh.
She had been spending way too much time wondering about that part of him and her guilty conscience pushed heat into her cheeks. She forced herself not to stare and looked instead to the hardness in his jaw. Something in his stance made her think he’d been offended when she had told him she didn’t have a particular desire to have his children, which had been true-ish at the time.
Now, she folded her arms, defensive because she was so—oh, she was going to have to own it. She was frustrated. Sexually.
“Aside from the fact it is not your decision what I put in my body,” she declared hotly and for all womankind, “I don’t understand why you think birth control is necessary when you seem to have decided on abstinence.”
He blinked. His face relaxed with a hint of satisfaction that made her think of the lion swishing his tail, pleased he wouldn’t have to run her to ground because she was edging close enough he wouldn’t have to make any effort to chase her at all.
Oh, he read her agitation like it was a neon sign, she could tell. She blushed even harder.
“Hot and bothered, are you? We agreed to wait until after the wedding ceremony next week.”
“Is that what we agreed? I thought you stated it and I have been given no opportunity to discuss it. What happened to it being my choice what happened between us in bed?”
His eye ticked, then his jaw hardened.
“If you can’t wait for our wedding night...” His hands came out of his pockets and he waved them slowly at himself in offering. “Help yourself.”
As bluffs went, it almost worked. She was still a virgin and already feeling very scorned by him. This was daylight, not the safety of a pitch-black tent. Years of reading sexy romance novels, a rich fantasy life and curiosity were all a far cry from the reality of staring down a fully dressed man whose mouth was curling with smug knowledge that he was getting the better of her.
Because he thought she was some trembling wallflower who wouldn’t make advances.
Well, he thought wrong. She was sick of feeling like his dalliance. A flame of fury glowed hot within her, refusing to be at the mercy of his whims. She would not be the only one obsessing about how they would feel together. She could give him pleasure.
She was determined to prove it.
When she walked up to him, however, and he loomed over her despite the heels she wore, her heart began to beat fast with apprehension. This was a dangerous game.