of honey and rain and he wanted nothing as much as he wanted her. Nothing at all. “She was hurt a very long time ago, and hurt is what she knows. She can’t help the way she lashes out.”
He shifted, feeling his mouth flatten as he traced unknowable symbols along the elegant line of her neck, feeling the way she shuddered at his touch. “She is a grown woman who has spent the bulk of her life manipulating others to do her bidding. I do not dance to the tune of fools. Why should I suffer her presence here?”
He saw too many emotions chase each other across her face then, one after the next, and he felt them all like blows.
When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “Because I asked you to.”
Kavian shook his head, a harsh negation that had more to do with the memory of Elizaveta’s cold gaze, so much like the photographs he’d seen of his weak, vain, treacherous mother.
“Then you can’t give me what I want. You can’t give at all.” She raised one shoulder, then dropped it, and he understood that she was not in the least afraid of him. Was that what roared in him, so much like desire? Like greedy admiration? “Don’t claim you want a queen to stand beside you, Kavian, when what you really want is your own way in all things.”
“I want exactly what I claimed from the start.” His voice was practically a growl. “I am exactly who I have always been. More than that, azizty, I am exactly who you need.”
“Then prove that. I’ve told you what I need.” Her dark eyes searched his face. “I don’t need you to understand, Kavian. I need to you listen to me for once.”
He didn’t recognize the thing that swelled in him then. He didn’t understand why he felt as if he’d staggered blindly into a sandstorm and was being tossed this way and that. He only saw something unbreakable in her gaze. Tempered steel, forged in flames.
“If it is what you want,” he said stiffly, because words of acquiescence were foreign to him and came slowly, thickly, “she can remain. She is your mother, as you say.”
Amaya’s eyes glittered. He felt that like another blow, and then her hand came up and slid over his jaw. He felt that touch everywhere. His toes. His sex. His throat.
“Thank you,” she whispered, as if he’d given her a kingdom. All the jewels in his possession. “Thank you, Kavian.”
That stone thing in him sank deeper. Grew harder. And he hated it all the more.
Kavian was finished talking. He hooked a hand around her neck and jerked her to him, noting with a fierce surge of satisfaction that her nipples were already stiff when they came into contact with his chest.
And then he bent his head and devoured her.
He kissed her with all the roughness within him. That wild thing that battered at him. That uncivilized creature that would have locked her away if it could have, that still thought it might. That great stone, that vast weight, that exploded into hunger the more he tasted of her. The man he could not be for her burst from him and into that kiss. He took her mouth like a storm, a great dark invasion, holding nothing back—
And she met him.
More than met him.
It was wild. Raw. Elemental.
He didn’t know if she tore his clothing or he did. He knew he ripped open the bodice of her gown to get at her breasts, to worship them. He knew he sank his hands in the concoction of her hair, the great glory of it.
And God, the taste of her. It blocked out the world.
Then they were down on the floor, right there in his office, rolling and tearing at each other and wild. A hunger unlike any other roared in him, and in her, too. He could feel it as well as his own intense passion.
He thrust into her with more need than finesse. She screamed out his name, and he dug his fists into the thick rug beneath them, holding himself still while she clenched and shook around him and rode out her pleasure, her fingers digging hard into his back.
“Thank you,” she whispered again, like the blessing he didn’t deserve.
And that was when Kavian began to move.
* * *
The banquet the night before the wedding that was being fancifully billed in all the papers as East Meets West at Last—a rather theatrical name for what was, at the end of the day, a rehearsal dinner—seemed to drag on forever, Amaya thought. Dignitaries and aristocrats, many of whom had come in days before, lined the tables in the vast ballroom. A band played. Servants outdid themselves, a brace of belly dancers performed during one of the early courses and Kavian lounged there at the head of the high table with his slate-gray eyes fixed on her as if he expected her to bolt at any moment.
As if he could read her mind, even as she smiled and laughed and played her part for the assembled throng.
The meal ended after what seemed like several excruciating lifetimes and the worst part was, Amaya thought as she stood and dispensed her thanks to the guests, this was all her fault. There was something wrong inside her. Twisted. Not right. There was no other explanation. How else could she come to terms with the fact that she simply could not resist this man? Because if she’d had any kind of backbone, as he’d pointed out to her himself, she’d have attempted to escape him. She’d have done it, come to that. And she wouldn’t have found herself standing here, poised to do the only thing worse than what she’d done to him six months back.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Her mother’s voice sliced into her, but Amaya only smiled harder, hoping no one was paying too close attention as the crowd moved from the tables to the great room beyond, where desserts were to be passed instead of served, the better for the politicians to wield their trade as they moved from group to group.
Was she ready? How could Amaya still not know?
“Yes,” she said, because she didn’t want to second-guess herself. She didn’t want to keep ripping herself apart.
“It’s the right thing, darling. You’ll see.” But what Amaya heard was that thread of triumph in her mother’s voice. That hint of smugness. “Men like him can only be the way they are. It never changes.”
“Mother.” She had to check her tone, remind herself where they were. “You don’t actually know him. You know his title.”
“I know men.”
“You know what you want to know, and nothing more.” Amaya glanced around, afraid someone might have overheard that tense tone in her voice, but most of the guests had moved toward the other side of the great hall and on toward the waiting courtyard. She and Elizaveta were as alone as it was possible to be in such a great crowd.
Her mother’s gaze was as cool as her smile was polished. “I don’t know what you mean, Amaya.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Amaya’s smile felt welded to her face. “This isn’t the place to discuss it.”
They would have all their lonely lives for that, she thought—and she felt hollow. Utterly empty and dark. But that was to be expected. She wouldn’t be leaving Daar Talaas unscathed. She’d be surprised if she even recognized herself.
“I
