know if needs is the right word. But yes, I know what you mean.”
Her blue eyes gleamed. “I’m still angry with you. But if you walked over here and took me in your arms, you could make me forget it all for a few hours.”
He was poised to do just that when she continued.
“But I’m asking you not to.” She shook her head. “I need time to process this, Rashid. I need time to figure out how to fit my life into this box you’ve handed me. I can’t do that if you confuse me with sex.”
SHERIDAN’S HEART POUNDED as she gazed at the handsome sheikh standing across the room. Just a word from her and he would cross the distance separating them and make her feel as if she were the most important, wonderful thing in his life for a few hours.
But she couldn’t let it happen again. Not after the way she’d felt this afternoon when they’d made love so urgently against a wall. After, when she’d felt shattered by the emotions he stirred inside her, when she’d needed tenderness and closeness, he’d pushed her away. Every effort she made to be close to him, he rebuffed. So why did she keep doing it?
And now she had to marry him. She didn’t know how she was going to survive if she had to keep navigating a sexual minefield with him. They’d done everything backward. Baby, sex and now marriage, and she couldn’t keep going down the same path without knowing who he was. Really knowing.
“The sex doesn’t mean anything to you,” she said. He did not contradict her, and her belly squeezed a little tighter. “And it doesn’t mean anything to me either, but it could start to mean more than it should just because I feel so out of place here.”
That was what truly frightened her. She was a stranger in a strange land, wholly dependent on this man, bound to him by ties greater than any devised by law. She had to keep her feelings grounded in reality. To do that, she couldn’t fall into bed with him every time he came near her.
He shoved his hands into his pockets—God, he was delicious in faded jeans—and adopted a casual pose that belied the tension in the set of his shoulders. He was a man poised on the edge of action. Always. That he would attempt to hide that from her was encouraging.
Because they both knew who had the true power. That he would allow her to have her own both stunned and warmed her. It was progress.
“I am not trying to place you in a box. You seem not to realize how very privileged your life is about to become.”
“A gilded box is still a box.”
He rubbed a temple and came around to sink down on the cushions of a settee. “I do in fact know this.” He leaned back and gazed up at the domed ceiling above them. “I hated living in this palace as a child. It was hell in many ways.”
She came around the chair and perched on the edge of it, her heart in her throat and a dull pain stinging her eyes.
He shrugged. “My father was a harsh man, habibti. He did not believe in sparing the rod, so to speak.”
She swallowed. Was he actually sharing things with her? Or was this an anomaly? “I heard that you only recently returned to Kyr. Is that why?”
His eyes glittered. “The palace is full of information, it would seem.”
“The person I heard it from seemed rather terrified to impart it. As if you would be angry. As if you are a tyrant who punishes people for slights.”
He looked rather stunned at that revelation. “I am a king, and I must be harsh at times. But I am not a tyrant. The only people who feel my wrath are the council and my immediate staff. I have no need to terrify maids or cooks, I assure you.”
“Honestly, I didn’t think you did.” Because the people she’d met seemed happy to have him as their king, though they were also more than a little awestruck by him. He didn’t speak much, they said. He kept to himself. He was serious and responsible and he didn’t smile.
But he was fair. No one had yet claimed he wasn’t.
One dark eyebrow arched as if he didn’t quite believe her. “Really? I would imagine you were my greatest critic. Did I not kidnap you and force you to come to Kyr? Am I not forcing you to marry me against your will?”
She clasped her hands together in her lap. “Well, those things are pretty bad and you should feel quite ashamed of yourself. But you haven’t been cruel. Exasperating and arrogant, but never cruel.”
He held her gaze steadily. “I am intimately acquainted with cruelty, and therefore I have striven never to be the kind of man who resorts to it in order to achieve his aims.”
Again, her heart twisted for the child he’d been. “I believe you.”
He blew out a breath. “Well, we have progress, then.” He stood suddenly. “Good night, Sheridan. Sleep well.”
“Rashid, wait.”
He turned back to her, a question in his expression.
Why had she stopped him? What did she want to say? Her heart beat hard and her throat ached and she didn’t understand this urge to go to him and wrap her arms around him. Not for the sexual chemistry, but for the boy he’d once been. The boy who’d had a cruel father and hadn’t known much love.
She wanted to know more. So much more. But he was finished and she didn’t know how to make him start again.
“Sleep well,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. And then he was gone.
* * *
Kadir al-Hassan arrived the next day with his wife, Emily. Sheridan had just returned from playing with the puppies when she found the palace staff in an uproar. Or the domestic staff anyway. She swallowed hard and hurried to her room to change out of her jeans and T-shirt. It was quite a relief to be able to dress in something she wasn’t worried about getting dirty, though she’d chosen to wear the hijab, too. She liked the fabric covering her head when she went out into the hot Kyrian sunshine. It helped keep her cool.
Now she hesitated as she stood in her closet. She had her clothes from home and the Kyrian clothing. In the end, she chose to wear a blouse and trousers with the hijab. Then she checked her email and waited nervously for someone to decide she should be sent for.
Finally, there was a knock at her door and Emily al-Hassan was on the other side. She was a pretty girl, tall and slender and elegantly dressed in a designer suit and low heels. And she was smiling.
“You must be Sheridan,” she said after she introduced herself. “I’m so pleased to meet you.”
Sheridan was happy to meet her, too. Emily was American, and it was like having a visitor from home even though they’d never met before.
Emily took a seat and talked easily while Fatima arrived with tea. Once Fatima was gone, Emily’s expression changed to something more sympathetic and concerned.
“How
