when she’d thought she was too tired, too stressed, too poor, too something to get out there and meet someone seemed like a character flaw, not simple self-protection. Because Shona hated the fact that Malak was the sum total of her experience of sex and men when he also had the power to ruin her life.
Again.
“Even if we had something to talk about, which we don’t, I’m at work,” she told him in the same tone she’d used before. As if the moment she could, she’d be dialing 911 to have him bodily removed and possibly subjected to a psychiatric evaluation. “This is neither the time nor the place for your goon squad or you. You should try calling, like a normal person.”
“A call would not have sufficed in this situation.”
“We have no situation,” Shona said, with a little more force.
Because there was only one thing that he could possibly be talking about, and Shona was not going to let this happen. She would die first.
She’d worried about this moment for years. And now that it was here, it was as if she had done all her panicking already. Maybe that was why, despite the pounding of her heart and that sick feeling in her belly, she found herself focusing hard on Malak instead of giving in to all the sick feelings churning around inside of her. She noticed the way his guards had blocked all the exits. She calculated what she had to do to make it through this so she could run, pick up Miles from Ursula’s and get the hell out of New Orleans.
The great thing about coming from nothing and having only slightly more than nothing to her name now was that disappearing would be no problem. She was barely on the grid as it was. All she had to do was get away from Malak tonight and she could go somewhere—anywhere—far away from here. It would be like she and Miles had never existed.
She was kicking herself for not doing exactly that five years ago.
“You are correct, of course,” Malak said, a dangerous light in those eyes of his. Miles’s eyes. “He is not a situation at all, is he? He’s a little boy. I believe you call him Miles, do you not?”
She wasn’t calm at all, Shona realized then. She was frozen solid, but not in fear. Or not only in fear. She was stitched through with fury, red and bright. “Miles is no concern of yours.”
“Something you must believe very strongly indeed,” he murmured, and there was something even harder about him then. It pricked at Shona like an accusation. “If you prefer to raise him in squalor rather than as what and who he is. The only son of a prince of Khalia.”
“I don’t know or care who his father is,” Shona gritted out at him. “What matters is that he’s mine.”
“Let me tell you what happens when a prince becomes king,” Malak told her, his voice soft with a different kind of menace. “No need to offer your condolences, as I am certain you were about to. Neither my father nor my brother died. They abdicated, one after the next, like royal dominos.”
And Shona couldn’t quite take that in. She didn’t want to make sense of what he was telling her. Because that would mean...
But he was still talking. “Transfers of power are always fraught with peril, I am sure, but perhaps never more so than when the new king was never meant to come anywhere near the throne. First, the palace advisors rend their garments and pray for deliverance, of course. That takes some time. But when they are done, when reality has set in on all sides, they launch a full investigation into the new monarch, a man who...how shall I say this—?”
“Couldn’t keep it in his pants?”
His mouth curved, though whether it was at her dry tone or because he actually found that description of himself amusing, she couldn’t tell.
“As you may recall, Shona, nobody wanted me to keep it in my pants. Least of all you.” He shrugged when her eyes narrowed at that. But it wasn’t as if she could argue. He wasn’t wrong. “The palace investigators had their hands full, I regret to say. They found every woman I’ve ever touched.”
“I wouldn’t think anyone could count that high.”
Malak inclined his head, but that gaze of his never left hers. And she was beginning to imagine it might leave marks. “Each lucky paramour was thoroughly investigated to make certain there was nothing about her or her liaison with me that could embarrass the kingdom. And of them all, Shona, this great and glorious legion of former lovers, only you were keeping the kind of secret that makes the average palace aide turn gray overnight.”
“You are mistaken.” She was gripping herself too hard. But she didn’t let up, even though she was half afraid she would crush her own ribs with her crossed arms. “Miles and I have nothing to do with you.”
“I admire your independence,” he told her in a tone that suggested the opposite. “I do. But I’m afraid there are no choices here. Or, I should say, none I expect you will like. The boy is mine. That makes him the heir to the Khalian throne. And that means he cannot stay here.”
She dug her fingers into her sides, but she didn’t wake up. This was a nightmare she’d had more than once since she’d given birth to Miles, but this time, she couldn’t jolt herself awake. She couldn’t make Malak go away.
“Let me make sure that you understand something,” Shona said, though there was a ringing in her ears. Her heart still pounded, but it had gone slow. Intense. And she was focused on Malak as if he was a target, if only she could find the right weapon. “You will not touch my child and if you try, six beefed-up goons with guns won’t save you. Nothing will.”
She didn’t know what she expected Malak to do then.
But it wasn’t the way he threw back his head and laughed, with all that infectious delight and lazy sensuality that had been her downfall five years ago. His laughter had not changed at all. The dark and somber suit was new, as were the guards surrounding him. That grave note in his voice, this talk of kings and thrones and palace advisors—all of that was new, too.
But that laugh... It was as dangerous as she remembered it.
More, maybe, because unlike back then, it was wholly unwelcome.
It curled into her like smoke. It wound through her, insinuating itself into every crevice and beneath every square inch of her skin. It licked into her like heat, and then worse, wound itself into a kind of fist between her legs. Then pulsed.
She’d told herself she’d been drunk that night. She’d told herself she’d imagined that pull she’d felt when she was near him, that irresistible urge to get closer no matter what. That aching, restless thing inside her that hummed for him only. She’d imagined all of that, she’d been so sure—because she’d never felt it again. She’d never felt anything the slightest bit like it, not with any man who’d come near her before or since.
But she hadn’t imagined it.
It turned out that he was the only man in the entire world who made her feel all those things. And if anything, she’d let time and memory mute his potency.
He was standing here with armed guards, threatening her baby and life as she knew it, and that didn’t keep her from feeling it. What the hell was the matter with her?
When his laughter faded and he looked at her again, Malak’s eyes were gleaming bright and she was breathless.
