“Galila. There is nothing wrong with you,” he insisted, coming across to take her hands. “Look at me.” He dipped his head and waited until she was looking into his eyes. “You’re very engaging. Very easy to...”
His mouth tightened and she could see him pulling himself back behind some invisible wall.
She tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip on her hands.
“Listen. I find myself letting down my guard with you. That’s not something I ever do. Not with anyone except perhaps my mother. Even then...it’s not comfortable for me.”
“Well, it’s not comfortable for me to let down my guard only to be shut out afterward. That’s why I’m still a virgin. That sort of intimacy isn’t easy for me, either. Not unless I’m convinced my heart will be safe.” She pulled her hands free and quarter-turned away. “Maybe that’s what all relationships are, though? Maybe I am a fool, thinking there’s some way to feel safe in one.” She spun back. “But your mother and father were in love. It’s possible, Karim.”
He was the one to walk away this time, hand drawing down his face as he let out a harsh breath.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said with despair frosting her insides. “That I’m ruining our honeymoon night. I don’t mean to set ridiculous standards. I just...” Find it all very disappointing. Heartbreakingly empty. “I don’t know how I’ll live in this state of hurt for the rest of my life. How do you not care, then? Teach me that, Karim.”
His shoulders flexed as though her words had struck like a whip across them. He shook his head, voice disembodied when he spoke.
“I have trained myself not to care, Galila. To keep my thoughts to myself and control my desires. A man in my position can’t give in to urges and open up doorways to vulnerability. I can’t, Galila. The kingdom depends on my strength.” He turned to deliver that bad news in a voice that was calm and factual but kind, at least.
Her mouth trembled and she nodded. “I know. Look at my father, abdicating because he was so devastated by losing my mother, even after what she had done. I just don’t know how to be like you, Karim, instead of like him.”
“I don’t want you to be like me,” he said in a voice that was low and quiet, but carried an impact that seemed to go through her as a shock wave, shivering all her pieces into new alignments. “I like who you are, Galila.”
“You don’t even know me, Karim.” Her eyes were hot, and she wanted so badly to believe him.
“Untrue. Look at this party tonight. It was a ridiculous expense, one where you could have made it all about yourself. Instead, you gave it meaning. You are beautiful, so beautiful you trick the mind into thinking that’s all you are. Then you display intelligence and kindness and you navigate all aspects of my life—a life I fight to control every minute of every day—you walk through that obstacle course with a graceful lack of effort. It’s astonishing to me how well you fit in.”
“My mother should get the credit for preparing me for this life, not me,” she pointed out, throat abraded by emotion.
“And humble on top of the rest.”
“Karim, it’s very nice of you to say these things, but—”
“I don’t do platitudes, Galila,” he cut in flatly. “I’m telling you what I have learned of you during our short union . You have qualities I didn’t expect, but I never expected to have a partner at all. A wife, yes, but not someone who is a genuine support. It’s the strangest thing to me. Do you understand that? I don’t want to grow accustomed to your presence at my side. I never needed you before. Why should I need you now? But there it is. You make it easier to carry out my duties, even as I feel weak for allowing you to lift any of the load. It’s a paradox I haven’t worked out how to solve.”
She was soaking up the mud with the rainwater, feeling the contradiction inside her while watching the dismay battle with resignation in his brutally handsome features.
“Do you understand that it’s your reluctance to allow me to share in your life that is killing me? Every time you push me away and act like I’m more annoyance than necessity, I hurt. How do I relax and give myself to you tonight, then face your withdrawal tomorrow? When you’ve decided I’ve seen too much of you?”
His cheek ticked.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, shaking her head in defeat. “I don’t think I can—”
“I won’t,” he cut in, tone thin and sharp as a dagger, one corner of his mouth pulling down into the deadly curve of a jambiya blade. He was tensile steel, pupils expanding and contracting with inner conflict—a warrior on the defensive, but ready and willing to attack.
“Won’t...?”
“Shut you out. I won’t,” he vowed.
She searched his expression, anguished by the struggle she could see in him, disheartened by how clearly it went against the grain for him. “That’s not a promise you want to make. I can see that much, Karim.”
Why didn’t he want to share himself with her?
His lips pulled back against his teeth.
“But I will.” He came across to cup her cheek. His gaze dropped to her throat, where her pulse throbbed fast. His palm slid down to cover it, so her heartbeat was hitting the heel of his hand. “Because I would do almost anything to touch you.” His voice was both graveled and velvety. “That is the crux of it. And I can’t believe I am handing you that weapon.”
He looked tortured, but if his statement was a weapon, it was one that disarmed her as thoroughly as him. Her eyes burned and the rest of her grew weak. With her own tentative trust building, she set her hand on his chest, where his heart hammered in fierce pounds that made her own echo in her ears.
“It’s the same for me. You know it is,” she whispered.
“Our souls may be destined for hell then, because I have tried to resist—”
He dipped his head and this time, when he dragged his mouth across hers, she melted. The harsh truth was, she wanted him far more than she feared the detriment he might become to her well-being.
And how could she deny the hunger in his kiss? He was so unabashed it was as if he’d let himself off leash. His lips demanded while his tongue took and gave, making her whole body feel gripped in a force that was both energizing and weakening. The pulse that had raced in her throat grew to something she felt in the pit of her belly and at the juncture of her thighs. It was nervous anticipation. Knowledge that this was it.
Neither of them could be torn from the other now.
She clung to him, growing so hot, she whimpered in frustration because she didn’t want to let him go to remove the rest of her clothing. Her one hand went to her back and tried to work the zipper.
He lifted his head, eyes glowing and avid, cheeks flushed, mouth wet and pulling in a nearly cruel grimace.
“We have time,” he said roughly.
“I don’t feel like we do,” she said breathlessly, feeling overcome and anxious and—
With a feral noise, he scooped her up and strode to the bed. His angular features were warrior sharp, hawkish and fierce.
“This,” he said as he set her on the mattress and leaned on the hands he braced beside her shoulders. “This is what scares the hell out of me. It’s your first time and I feel like an animal. If I don’t control it, who will, Galila?”
“Come here,” she demanded. Begged. And set her hand behind his head, moaning in tortured joy when his weight came down on her along with the heat of his lips against hers.
They attacked each other with erotic passion, legs tangling in her gown as she tried to make space for him. Her fingers caught at the collar of his robe, pulling at it so she could taste his shoulder when he dragged his tongue down the side of her neck. Somehow her teeth set against his skin and she had to restrain herself from biting down, but she wanted so ferociously to mark him, it was a fight to keep herself to a scrape and a threat of pain.
“Go ahead,” he said, lifting his head and revealing a dark smile that was so transfixing, she felt it like the sun hitting her bare skin. It lit her up inside and out, nearly blinding her. “Claw at me. Bite me. I want all of it. Whatever is inside you.”
She dragged her nails down his back through his robe, then dug them into his buttocks, hard as steel but flexing at her touch to drive his firm flesh against her sensitive mound.
He cupped her head and held her still for another rapacious kiss. Again and again, he feasted on her, satisfying yet stoking. Driving them both wild until she was ready to cry, she was in a state of such heightened arousal.
“I need to feel you,” she panted when his hot mouth went down her throat again. “Please, Karim.”
His answer was to yank at her bodice, baring her breast to his greedy mouth. She arched, crying out at the sharp pull on her nipple.
“Too hard?” His breath bathed her skin in a tease.
“Never,” she gasped, and dragged at his robe, trying to get beneath it.
He shifted, went after her other nipple with equal fervor while he began gathering her gown up her thighs. The second he found skin, his hand climbed unerringly to the lace that shielded her most intimate flesh.