have a modest hope that I am less bloodthirsty than many of the kings who predate me,” he was saying drily. “And I know I’m better to my wives than most of those, given I’ve yet to execute one.”
“Was that on the table here?”
“We’re talking about absolute power. It’s all on the table. Something to remember the next time you’re feeling feisty.” But his mouth was crooked into that small smile of his she was beginning to find addictive, despite that steady gaze of his that made her tremble deep within. “But I can’t imagine you really want to talk about the powers of the Bakrian monarchy, or the march of kings throughout time, do you?”
“I don’t want to talk to you at all. I wanted to swim.”
He indicated the pool behind her with a jerk of his fine chin. “Then by all means, Sterling. Swim.”
But she didn’t move.
They could have stayed frozen there for a decade. She’d never have known the difference. Only that she couldn’t look away from him.
This man who had far more power than the others she’d known, who’d taken theirs out on her because they’d considered her so beneath them. Rihad was autocratic. He certainly used his power. But never like that. Never so viciously.
Eventually, he reached down and traced a lazy, sensual pattern from one shoulder, across the very top of her chest, all the way to the other. Then back.
And she still didn’t understand why his was the only touch that made her feel like this, wrapped up in a blaze of need and outside her own skin. She didn’t understand why she wanted him, wanted more, wanted, when she’d never wanted any other man in her life.
When she’d never wanted any touch in her life.
She didn’t understand any of this, only that when he touched her she wanted to sob out, and not because it hurt her. And when he didn’t touch her, it was worse.
He’d made her into a woman she didn’t understand at all. Maybe it was that she felt like a woman after all. Not a punching bag. Not a clothes hanger. Not an ornament. Not a mother. A woman, for the first time.
“I hate you,” she whispered.
Just as she had at their wedding.
But this time, Rihad smiled, and it was as if that, too, burst into her and pried her wide-open however little she wanted to let him in.
“I am so sorry, little one,” he murmured, his dark gold eyes on hers, and that look of his slid straight through her, too soft and too slick. It made her shake and this time, not only inside. “It’s not so easy to make me the monster you wanted me to be, is it?”
“Maybe not,” she whispered up at him, filled with that same wild urge to do anything to keep him from seeing the truth about her. Before it was too late. “But this is very easy, actually.”
And Sterling reached up, grabbed hold of the arm he had propped on his knee as she braced her feet on the side of the pool, and she yanked him off balance.
Then she hauled the King of Bakri straight into the pool.
He sank like a stone, in a cascade of bubbles while a great wave slapped at her, and she was breathing so fast it hurt while the adrenaline—at her temerity, at the fact she’d actually done it—spiked inside of her. She’d made the split-second decision to get the hell out of that pool right now when he surfaced beside her, and Sterling realized that she was frozen in place. Paralyzed, more like.
Why on earth had she done that?
But Rihad laughed.
He tipped his beautiful face back and he laughed, hard and long, and she was tempted to think it was all a great big joke to him, to have her throw him fully dressed into a pool like that—but then he dropped his head back down, fixed that edgy gold gaze of his on her, and there wasn’t a shred of laughter on his lethally beautiful face then.
“That, Sterling,” he told her, his voice a sensual growl she felt in her sex as surely as if he was already touching her, “was a mistake.”
And then he reached over, hooked a hard hand around her neck and yanked her to him.
* * *
He took her mouth as if he owned it, and Rihad thrilled to it—because he did. She was his. The sweep of her tongue against his. The way she yielded to him so quickly, so completely, meeting him and spurring him on.
This was his woman. His wife. His.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, and he thought he might drown them both as he feasted on her, taking and taking, so hard and so good he thought he might die from it. He thought he might not care too much if he did.
There was no time left then. Not anymore. He had to be inside her, now, and nothing else mattered. Not her secrets. Not all the things she still hadn’t told him and had gone to such lengths to avoid telling him. Nothing but this mad fire, this perfect kiss. The heft of her gorgeous breasts in their little scraps of gold, the slick glory of her taste.
His Sterling. His queen.
Somehow, he moved them to the shallower end of the pool, where he could stand. When he did, he trapped her between the pool’s bank and his body. He felt the wind against the wet shirt on his back, but he didn’t care. He only cared about Sterling. About this. Her hands digging into the flesh at his shoulders. Her legs moving to wrap around his hips again.
And for the first time in his entire adult life, Rihad stopped thinking.
He fumbled between them, wrestling with his soaked trousers to pull himself free. Then, his mouth still fused to hers, he reached down between them, out of finesse and out of his mind as he pushed her little bikini bottom to one side and stroked beneath it, straight into her soft, scalding heat.
“Rihad…” she moaned, straight into his mouth, and it was the sexiest thing he’d ever heard.
He didn’t think. He moved his hand, he held her close and then he simply thrust straight into her, hard and sure, making her truly his at last.
At last.
She made an odd sound, and he pulled back to look down at her lovely face, the haze clearing slightly.
Sterling’s eyes were too big and hinted at some kind of emotion he didn’t recognize. Rihad held himself still, and she breathed hard. Shakily. Once, then again.
“Are you all right, little one?” he asked quietly, still so deep inside of her he thought it might kill him. She was so hot, so wet. Snug around him, as if she’d been made to receive him exactly like this. “Did I hurt you? Are you not yet healed from giving birth?”
“No…” she said, as if she wasn’t sure. Her blue gaze was dark, slick, in the light from the gently dancing lanterns overhead. He frowned as she continued. “I’m fine. I’m healed, I… It’s just… It’s weird, that’s all.”
“Weird,” he repeated, as if the word didn’t make sense,
