you want about me and my past and whatever else, but I had nothing to do with it. I was the only thing in his life he liked.”
“Sterling.”
His face was closed down then, granite and bone. Utterly forbidding.
“If this is where you bore me with self-serving lies about your idyllic arranged first marriage, I think I’ll pass.” She eyed him. “I’m not as big a fan of stories as you seem to be.”
“It is my second marriage that should concern you, not my first.”
She stared back at him. Then she understood, in a terrible rush that felt like a tide coming in, crashing over her and rolling her into the undertow, then sweeping her far out to sea. All in that instant.
“Do I know the lucky bride?” Sterling asked, her voice as sharp as the razor-edged smile she aimed at him. “I’d like to convey my condolences.”
“An heir to my kingdom cannot be born out of wedlock,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if that note in his voice was fury or satisfaction. Perhaps it was both. It thudded in her all the same. “You must realize this.”
She jerked up her chin, belligerently. “I’m not marrying you. I’m not getting on that plane, I’m not letting you near my baby, and I’m definitely not marrying you. Your heirs are your own damned problem.”
And the sheikh only smiled.
“I didn’t ask you to marry me,” he said softly. “I told you what was going to happen. Resign yourself to it or do not, it won’t make any difference. It will happen all the same.”
“You can’t tell me to do anything,” Sterling fired back at him, and she couldn’t control the way she trembled then, as if he’d already clapped her in chains and carted her away to his far-off dungeon. “And you certainly can’t make me marry you!”
“Pay attention, Sterling.” Rihad’s gaze was hotter than the summer sun, and far more destructive. And his will was an iron thing, as if he didn’t require chains. She could feel it wrapped around her already, pressing against her skin like metal. “I am the King of Bakri. I don’t require your consent. I can do whatever the hell I want, whenever I want. And I will.”
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