In Defiance of Duty (16 page)

He ran a hand over his face as if he was tired. When he looked at her again, his eyes were almost kind. And she thought he might have shattered her heart, just like that.

“Is it really what you’ve always wanted?” he asked quietly. “Are you sure?”

KIARA barely slept.

At a certain point, tired of turning this way and that without end, the fine linen sheets wrapped around her like instruments of torture, she’d stopped trying.

She’d half expected Azrin to appear with the dawn to start in with his particular brand of torment all over again. She’d braced herself for it, scowling hollow-eyed and sleepless at the gently billowing canopy that hung above her until the light outside her windows was the blue of just before dawn and she’d finally fallen into an exhausted, restless sort of doze.

But he didn’t come. Not when her attendant brought her a steaming cup of strong, dark Khatanian coffee to herald the start of the new day. Not as the morning wore on, the sun streaming in the old windows, lighting up the oddly shaped chamber with its one wall of wholly unfinished rock, the rest seeming to simply hang from the mountainside, old woods and fine tapestries scattered here and there and thick, colorful rugs stretched over the smooth floors.

The night had ended abruptly. She’d simply stood up and walked away without another word, leaving him at the table without so much as a backward glance.

She told herself now that it had been necessary—that once again, she’d needed space. From him. From the things he made her think about. Both.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he’d murmured, the dark irony in his low voice following her as she’d retreated, yet another fresh hell to add to her collection.

Kiara told herself she was thrilled that he was otherwise occupied today. Delighted, in fact. She could lounge about this lovely, sun-drenched suite of rooms she’d been given, stuff herself with figs and almonds and sweet dates drenched in honey, and not spend a moment turning over everything that had been said the night before in her head.

But that, of course, proved impossible.

She found her way outside, onto the small, private balcony off her suite. She welcomed the day’s warmth in the stones beneath her bare feet, a simple pleasure that felt more healing, perhaps, than she wanted to admit. She couldn’t help but sigh as she looked out over the series of pools, a breathtaking view down the canyon that had grown no less stunning, even if she knew to expect it this time. She rested her hands on top of the sun-baked iron railing, and let the light from high above dance over her face.

And admitted to herself that she had never felt so lost. So alone. And empty, too—as if she’d been hollowed out, as if she was no more than a shell erected around all the things she’d held to be true, all the beliefs she’d had about herself. Her whole life and all she’d worked for. Her goals, her dreams. Azrin and this marriage of theirs. Even the past few months.

Did she use sex as a weapon, as he’d claimed? Did she really not know what she wanted from her life? Was she truly as uninterested in being like Diana as she was in becoming Queen Madihah, and if so, what did that mean?

The questions seemed to thud through her like heavy stones, one after the next.

Azrin was a forceful, commanding man. He had been groomed since birth to lead. To be the king of this country and all that entailed. To rule. He was dark sometimes, even brooding. He had a temper, certainly. He was fierce. Demanding. Arrogant and ruthless. What he wanted he took, he’d told her once, and she knew it was true. She’d experienced it personally. But he was more than all of that—there was that flashing intelligence, that dry wit. His intense, shattering sensuality. His strong sense of duty. His kindness. He was a complicated man, by any reckoning. On some level, still a mystery to her.

sensuality. His strong sense of duty. His kindness. He was a complicated man, by any reckoning. On some level, still a mystery to her.

But she had never known him to be anything but honest.

She didn’t want to think about what that must mean. There were so very many things, she realized then, that she didn’t want to think about. That she went out of her way to keep from thinking about, in fact. Not that it worked. Not entirely.

Strong enough to wait. Strong enough to keep from running.

That was what he’d said he wanted from his queen. From her. But she hadn’t given him that, had she? She hadn’t waited. She hadn’t even attempted to give him the benefit of the doubt. She’d left on the very first morning she could without causing an international scandal, right after their official tour was finished. She’d run, despite the fact she’d always believed herself to be the kind of person who would never do such a thing. Yet she didn’t know what she was basing that belief on, when she’d run again, last night. When in every way that mattered, she was still running.

So the only question was, what, exactly, had she been running from?

And where would it end? Where would she stop?

She didn’t know. As ever, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

But she did know she couldn’t sit here, marinating in all of these revelations, without exploding. Or worse. She had to do something to escape her own head.

Kiara studied the collection of statues in the high-ceilinged, arched gallery that snaked along the outer lip of one of the lower levels of the palace. She’d wandered out of her rooms and through the palace, following whatever passage seemed most appealing, and had ended up here.

It was a striking, impressively unique room. The interior walls were rough and old, but the rest of the gallery was a modern confection of latticework and glass, showing the old clay statuary and assorted relics within to their best advantage. She leaned closer to a display of ancient-looking daggers, still deadly so many centuries since they’d been made.

And when she straightened, Azrin was beside her.

Her skin seemed to tighten over her bones, even as that familiar heat bloomed within her. Her body had no confusion where Azrin was concerned. Her body simply wanted.

“You have your very own museum here,” she said before she knew she meant to speak, surprised to hear that light, sunny tone she would have said was lost to her trip from her lips so easily.

“It is part of the family collection,” Azrin replied. When she glanced at him beside her, his gaze was narrow on hers. Considering. “Periodically we show pieces of it in the Royal Museum in Arjat an-Nahr.” He reached down and ran a fingertip along the edge of an ancient scabbard. Kiara felt sensation swirl inside of her as if he’d touched her instead. “Though some pieces have been here for centuries.”

He looked tired, she thought, her traitorous heart melting, even as her stomach twisted in a guilty little knot. His near-blue eyes seemed too dark, and his black hair looked rumpled, as if he’d been running his fingers through it. He wore another version of his all-black casual uniform, more warrior today than desert king—a pair of dark trousers and another torso-hugging T-shirt that made her hands itch to touch him. She smoothed down the front of the floor-length, casual sundress she wore instead, and found it a poor substitute.

“You certainly know how to hit on a girl.” She tilted her head back and smiled slightly as she gazed at him. “Who can resist a man who claims an entire museum is only part of his family’s private collection?”

His eyes met hers. Held. A moment passed, then another. Then, slowly, that almost-blue gaze began to gleam silver.

“It takes artifacts to win you, does it?” He spread out his hands, taking in the whole of the gallery. “Then I am your man.” His mouth curved. “I can offer you the plunder of several museums.”

“Tell me more,” she said, aware of the way her heart beat a little bit harder, a little bit faster. She decided she might as well play the game the way they used to.

Bold lies and brash claims. Whatever came to mind, purely to entertain. “I am nothing if not avaricious. I might as well be a magpie.”

“My favorite quality in a woman,” he said drily.

“I should think so,” she agreed, and even laughed. “After all, you always know where you stand, don’t you? When in doubt, throw some more priceless gems into the mix.”

“Be still my heart.”

She hadn’t meant to move, hadn’t realized they’d started walking together, until Azrin was gesturing for her to precede him out of the great glass doors that led out to a patio ringed with tall shade trees and a tall, gurgling fountain in the center. Kiara couldn’t help but sigh in pleasure.

She walked to the fountain and sat on the wide lip of its basin, then trailed her fingers in the clear water. It was cool against her skin, but when she looked up at Azrin again, she knew the water was not why she had to restrain a shiver.

He stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his uncompromisingly fierce face intense, his hard mouth merely hinting at the possibility of a curve. And his gaze seemed to move inside her like her own overheated blood. He was too beautiful, and somehow forbidding, too, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look away as she thought she should.

“I like that you’re a king,” she said in that flippant way that usually made him smile, and nearly did today. “It matches the palace. It’s all very fairy tale-ish. And as a stereotypical magpie, I can’t help but approve of all the implied royal shininess.”

“Fairy tales tend to be inhabited by princes, not kings.” There was that silver glint in his gaze, his mouth that little bit softer. “I think you have your happily ever afters confused.”

“Are you saying I’m not Cinderella?” she asked in mock horror. She looked down at her sundress, the bright red fabric threaded through with hints of white flowers, all cascading to the feet she’d slipped into thonged sandals. “Does that make me Little Red Riding Hood instead?” She arched her brows when she looked back at him. “I think we both know what that makes you.”

“You have no idea,” he said, his voice like silk, as warm as the bright sun far above.

Time seemed to slip, to heat, to disappear into that sensual promise that hummed between them. Kiara had to look away to gain her balance. To remind herself why she should not—could not—sink into that promise and disappear.

“It must be better to be a king than a prince,” she said instead, her voice huskier than it should have been. She found her teasing tone and matching smile hard to

“It must be better to be a king than a prince,” she said instead, her voice huskier than it should have been. She found her teasing tone and matching smile hard to come by, but she managed both, somehow. “Everybody loves an upgrade.”

Azrin looked at her for another long moment, this one threaded through with something far darker, a kind of smoke across the more familiar terrain of their wild chemistry.

“I’ll share this with you,” he said, as she’d begun to wonder if he planned to speak at all, “since you are a complete stranger to me. Just a girl I met in a museum, by chance, yes? It will be like confessing to the wind.”

“You’ll never see me again,” she agreed, smiling. “As of tomorrow morning it will be like I never existed. You can tell me anything.” He rocked back on his heels, a curious sort of look on that powerful face, and a tension she didn’t understand drawing the magnificent lines of his body tight. She felt her smile falter. He shrugged then, though he never looked away, and made a sound that was near enough to a laugh.

“I don’t want to be king.”

It was such a simple sentence. Such unremarkable words. He said it so quietly, almost casually, but Kiara knew better. She could feel the words like the bullets they were, one after the next. She felt every hair on her body seem to stand on end, and found it suddenly hard to swallow.

“But this is your destiny,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “You have been preparing for it all of your life.”

“It is my duty,” he corrected her. His mouth curved then, but it was not a smile. “I have always done my duty, you understand. It defines me. Cambridge, Harvard Business School, the Khatan Investment Authority—all of these were carefully calculated steps toward the throne, decided upon by my father and his advisors, to make sure to craft me into a just and capable monarch, a credit to my family name in every respect.” His hard mouth twisted. “My every move has been mapped out for me since the day I was born.”

“Lucky for you that you excelled at all of those things,” she said, trying to keep her tone light and not sure she succeeded.

“It wasn’t luck,” he said, not arrogant then so much as matter-of-fact, which made her heart seem to contract, then ache. “It was what was expected.”

“Then I suppose we should be happy that you are so good at living up to expectations.” She smiled again, though she suspected it was not a happy smile. “Some of us are not.”

She searched his face, hardly recognizing the expression he wore, barely understanding the way he was looking at her.

“And then one day I met a girl in a café,” he said quietly. Devastatingly. More bullets, and these hit hard, burrowed deep. “And she was completely unexpected.”

“You should be careful about these girls you meet in all these public places.” It was hard to sound teasing, mildly chastising, when there was such a great lump in her throat. When her chest hurt. “It can’t possibly end well—and your reputation is sure to suffer.”

“You are the only thing I ever wanted purely for myself,” Azrin said, cutting through the game that easily, that sharply. Cutting it off. “The only thing that was not simply expected of me.” His gaze was like fire, searing into her, until she felt all but cauterized. And breathless from the sting of it. He did not look away. He did not seem to move at all. “You are the only thing I chose.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. And she felt that panic inside her, pushing through her limbs, making her shaky. Making her feel impossibly fragile. She wanted to move, to outrun it before it drowned her completely.

And she knew in a moment of perfect clarity that if he had not called her on it just the night before, she would have closed the distance between them and tried to soothe his words away with her mouth. Her hands. Any weapon at her disposal.