Exquisite brown eyes slowly fluttered open.
“Zohra, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said in a low whisper, “and now that you know that I wasn’t about to attack you, can you please let go of me?”
With a curse, he loosened his fingers.
She pushed at his shoulders and he let himself fall back onto his haunches, his gut churning with a vicious force. Her fingers around her nape trembling, she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.
Her chest rose and fell with her slow, painful breathing.
He could have hurt her so easily... If he hadn’t stopped when he had...
Terror pounded through his blood, a vise squeezing his chest. His hands shook, delayed shock pulsing through him from head to toe. “I could have killed you.”
Fire erupted in that beautiful gaze. The fear was all gone now and she was pure, ferocious anger. Her small body bristled with the force of her emotion, her chest rising and falling with it.
She raised her hand and even realizing what she intended, Ayaan couldn’t move, couldn’t stop her. She slapped him hard, the sound of it ringing around them.
Her chin wobbled, tears falling onto her cheeks. “I am beginning to believe you are truly mad.” Her voice was as sharp as the sting of the slap she had delivered. “Why else would anyone invite such pain upon themselves? You knew what might happen to you here. The desert, these stables, this is why you have been such...a monster this past week, why you kept everyone away...” She wiped her tears on her sleeve.
“You saw your brother and sister die here. Why walk in here?” She shoved him again, feeble as her energy was. “I want an answer.”
In the face of her angry energy, he clasped her gently, a knot in his throat. “If I hid from it, if I pretended that it didn’t exist during this trip, it would forever haunt me. I needed to come here, I needed to see what it could do to me.” When I looked at you next, I needed to know that I faced it instead of hiding.
Shaking her head, she tugged his hand off her. “And if it had pushed you past that edge, if it had robbed—”
He pulled her to him and tucked his face in her hair. “That was a price I was willing to pay.” He swallowed hard, the scent of her seeping into his cells. “My life, Zohra. How could you be so stupid as to follow me?”
She pushed him again, tears flowing freely across her face, trying to break free. “And you think you are not fit to be king, that you don’t have what it takes? You are a ruthless bastard, Ayaan. You have all the arrogance that is required to rule your blasted country. Now, let go of me.”
“No,” he said loudly, crushing her with his arms, emotion robbing him of any sense.
She landed across his knees, the air knocked out of her. She fought him every inch of the way, but he didn’t give a damn. He kept his grip on her gentle, but letting go of her was a concept he just couldn’t grasp in that moment. She pounded her fists into his stomach. He held her shoulders in a tight grip and forced her head down.
As if sensing his intentions, she stilled. She felt soft and warm against his thighs. Combing his fingers through her hair, he checked for any swelling. There was none.
“There’s no swelling, Ayaan,” she said, wriggling under his hold.