And it was what she was saying, in that slightly husky voice with an unplaceable accent, neither North American nor European, not quite. She’d used her hands for emphasis, and animated facial expressions besides, instead of the studied, elegant placidity of the women he knew. She’d talked so quickly, so passionately, that he’d been interested despite himself. And when she finished, she’d laughed, and it had been like clear, cool water. Sparkling and bright, washing him clean, and making him thirsty—so very, very thirsty—for more.
“Let me guess,” she’d said, her voice dry and faintly teasing in a way that had shot straight to the hardest part of him—forcing Kavian to remind himself that she hadn’t been speaking to him. That what he’d been watching was a taped video call between this woman and her brother. “The mighty King of Bakri is not a Harry Potter fan.”
She had been a hard blow to his temple, making his head spin. The effect of such an unexpected hit had coursed through his body like some kind of ferocious virus, burning away everything in its path and leaving only one word behind:
Mine.
But he’d only smiled blandly at Rihad when the video finished.
“I am not at all certain I require a wife at present,” he’d said languidly, and the negotiation had begun.
He’d never imagined it would lead him here, to this inhospitable land of snow and ice, pine trees and heavy fog, so far north he could feel the chill of winter like a dull metal deep in his bones. He admired her defiance. He craved it. It would make her the perfect queen to reign at his side. But he also needed a wife who would obey him.
Men like his own father had handled these competing needs by taking more than one wife—one for each required role. But Kavian would not make his father’s mistakes. He was certain he could find everything he needed in one woman. In this woman.
“Listen to me,” Amaya was saying, her hands still on her hips, her defiant chin high, as if this were another negotiation instead of a foregone conclusion. “If you’d listened to me in the first place, none of this would have happened.”
“I have listened to you.” He had listened to her back in Bakri, or he’d intended to listen to her anyway, and then she’d run. What benefit was there in listening any further? Her actions had spoken for her, clear and unmistakable. “The next time I listen to you, it will be in the old city, where you can run your heart out for miles in all directions and find nothing but the desert and my men. I will listen and listen, if I must. And it will all end the same way. You will be beneath me and all of this will have been a pointless exercise in the inevitable.”
KAVIAN TURNED THEN and started for the door, aware that all the exits were blocked by his men on the off chance she was foolish enough to try to escape him one last time.
He still hoped she would. He truly did. The beast in him yearned for that chase.
“We are leaving, Amaya. One way or the other. If you wish me to force you, I am happy to oblige. I am not from your world. The only rules I follow are the ones I make.”
He yanked open the door and let the sharp weather in, nodding to the guards who waited for him on the other side. Then he looked back at this woman who did not seem to realize that she’d been his all along.
That all she was doing was delaying what had always been coming, as surely as the stars followed the setting sun. As surely as he had assumed the mantle of his enemy to defeat the murderous interloper and reclaim his throne, no matter the personal cost or the dark stain it left behind.
Her hands had dropped from her hips and were balled into fists at her sides, and even in the face of her pointless stubbornness he found her beautiful. Shockingly so. He could still feel that resounding blow to the side of his skull, making the world ring and whirl all around him.
And this despite the fact that she still wore her hair in that same impatient braid, a long, messy tail pulled forward over one shoulder as if she hadn’t wanted to bother with it any further. At their engagement party, she’d worn it up high in too many braids to count, woven together into some kind of elegant crown. And here he stood on the other side of the world, still itching to undo it all himself and let the heavy, dark length of it fall free.
He wanted to bury himself in the slippery silk of it, the fragrant warmth. In her, any way he could have her. Every way.
It didn’t even matter that she was dressed in a manner that did not suit her fine, delicately otherworldly allure—and was certainly not appropriate for a woman who would be his queen. Jeans that were entirely too formfitting for eyes that were not his. Markedly unfeminine boots. Both equally scuffed and lived in, as if she were still the university student she’d been not too long ago. A bulky sweatshirt that hid her figure, save those long and slender legs of hers that nothing could conceal and that he wanted wrapped around him. And the puffy jacket she’d thrown over the nearest chair when she sat down that, when she wore it zipped up to her chin, made her look almost like a perfect circle above the waist.
Kavian wanted to wrap her in silks and drape her in jewels. He wanted her to stand tall beside him. He wanted to decorate her in nothing but delicate gold chains and build whole palaces in her name, as the ancient sultans had done for the women who’d captivated them. He wanted her strength as much as her beauty.
He wanted to explore every inch of her sweet body with his battered hands, his warrior’s body, his mouth, his tongue.
But first, and foremost, he wanted to take her home.
“Is it force, then?” he asked her, standing in the open doorway, not in the least bit concerned about being overheard by the townspeople. “Will I throw you over my shoulder like the barbarians of old? I think you know I will not hesitate to do exactly that. And enjoy it.”
She shuddered then and he would have given his kingdom, in that moment, to know whether it was desire or revulsion that swept through her at that thought. He hated that he didn’t know her well enough, yet, to tell the difference.
That, too, would change. And far quicker than it might have had she come with him as she’d been meant to do the night of their engagement party, when he’d been predisposed toward a gentler understanding of her predicament. But there was nothing gentle left in him. He had become stone.
Amaya swept her big coat up in one hand and hung the ratty bag she carried over one shoulder. But she still didn’t move toward him.
“If I come with you now,” she said, that husky voice of hers very even, very low, “you have to promise that you won’t—”
“No.”
She blinked. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“What can it matter? I made you a set of promises upon our betrothal. You should not require anything further. You made me promises, too, Amaya, which you broke that very same night. It is better, I think, that you and I do not dwell on promises.”
“But—”
“This is not a debate,” he said gently, but he could see the way the edge beneath it slapped at her.
Her lips fell open, as if
