LITMIR.BIZ

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      With his own bare hands this time.

      And she couldn’t repress the shiver that swept over her at that thought.

      Much less the one that chased it, when Kavian’s sensually grim mouth curved slightly at the sight of her reaction.

      Control yourself, she snapped. Inside her own head.

      But Kavian looked as if he heard that, too. She hated that some part of her believed that he could.

      “You seem surprised to see me,” he said. “Surely not.”

      “Of course I’m surprised.” Amaya didn’t know how she managed to push the words out of her mouth. A list of things she needed to do—right that second, if there was any hope for her to escape him again now that he’d be fully expecting her to try—raced through her head. But she couldn’t seem to look away from him. Just like the last time she’d met him, at her brother’s palace to the south of Kavian’s desert kingdom, for the occasion of her arranged engagement to this man, Kavian commanded her full attention. “I thought the last six months made it clear that I didn’t want to see you, ever again.”

      “You belong to me,” he said, with that same sheer certainty that had sent ice spearing through her at the celebration of their betrothal in the Bakrian Royal Palace half a year ago. That same spear felt even colder now. “Was this moment truly in doubt? I was always going to find you, Amaya. The only question was when.”

      His voice was deceptively calm, something like silken in the quiet of the small café. It did nothing to lessen the humming sort of threat that emanated from that lethal body of his, all harsh muscle and a kind of lean, austere maleness that was as foreign to her as it was oddly, disruptively fascinating. He looked nothing like the local men who had been in and out of this very café all morning, wreathed in hearty beards and thick plaid jackets to fend off the northern cold.

      Kavian wore unrelenting black, relieved only by those furious slate-gray eyes he didn’t shift from her for a single moment. Black trousers on his tough, strong legs, utilitarian black boots on his feet. What looked like a fine black T-shirt beneath the black bomber jacket he wore half-zipped that managed to show off his granite-hard chest rather than conceal it in any way. His thick dark hair was shorter than she remembered it, and the closer-cut style accentuated the deadly lines of his brutally captivating face, from that warrior’s jaw with the faintest hint of his dark beard as if he hadn’t bothered to shave in days, his blade of a nose and cheekbones male models would have died for that nonetheless looked like weapons on such a hard-hewn face.

      He looked like an assassin, not a king. Or perhaps a king in hiding as some kind of nightmare. Her nightmare. Either way, he looked catastrophically out of place here, so far across the planet from Daar Talaas, where his rule seemed as natural as the desolate desert and the stark, forbidding mountains that dominated his remote country.

      Or perhaps the only catastrophe was the way her heart thundered inside her chest, louder by the second. He was like a shot of unwanted, far-too-tactile memory and adrenaline mixed into one, reminding her of the treacherous, unwelcoming desert where she’d been born and where she’d spent the first few years of her life, wrapped up tight in all that sweltering heat, storming sand and blinding, terrible light.

      Amaya hated the desert.

      She told herself she wasn’t any fonder of Kavian.

      “You are quite enterprising.”

      She didn’t think that was a compliment. Not exactly. Not from this man, with his harsh gaze and that assessing way he looked at her, as if he was sizing her up for structural weaknesses he could then set about exploiting for his own ends. That’s exactly what he’s doing, she told herself.

      “We almost had you in Prague two months ago.”

      “Unlikely, as I was never in Prague.”

      That crook of his mouth again, that made her breath feel choppy and her lips sting, and Amaya was certain he knew full well that she was lying.

      “Are you proud of yourself?” he asked. She noticed then that he hadn’t moved in all the time he’d sat there. That he remained too still, too watchful. Like a sentry. Or a sniper. “You have caused untold damage with this pointless escapade of yours. The scandal alone could topple two kingdoms and yet here you sit, happy to lie to my face and sip at a latte in the wilds of Canada as if you are a stranger to your own responsibilities.”

      There was no reason that should hit Amaya like a blow.

      She was the half sister of the current king of Bakri, it was true. But she hadn’t been raised in the palace or even in the country, as some kind of royal princess draped in tiaras and expectations. Her mother had taken Amaya with her when she left and then divorced the former king—Amaya’s father—and Amaya had been raised in her mother’s painful whirlwind of a wake. A season here, a season there. Yachts in the south of France or Miami, artistic communes in places like Taos, New Mexico, or the beach resorts of Bali. Glitzy cities bristling with the rich and famous in their high-class penthouses and hotel suites, distant ranches ringed with fat, sleek cattle and more rustic interpretations of excessive wealth. Wherever the wind had blown Elizaveta al Bakri, wherever there were people to adore her appropriately and pay for the privilege, which Amaya had come to understand was her mother’s substitute for the love her father hadn’t given her, that was where they’d gone—as long as it was never, ever back to Bakri, the scene of the crime as far as Elizaveta was concerned.

      That Amaya had returned to the country of her birth at all, much less because Rihad had prevailed upon her after their father had died and somehow gotten into her head with his talk of her birthright, had caused a distinct rift between Amaya and her mother. Elizaveta had been noticeably frosty to her only child since the old king’s funeral, which Amaya had attended and which had been, in Elizaveta’s view, a deep betrayal.

      Amaya understood. Elizaveta still loved her lost king, Amaya was sure of it. It was just that Elizaveta’s thwarted love had grown more than a little gnarled and knotted over all these years, becoming indistinguishable from hate.

      But there was no point thinking about her complicated relationship with her mother, much less her mother’s even more complicated relationship with emotions. It solved nothing—especially not Amaya’s current predicament. Or what Kavian viewed as her responsibilities.

      “You’re talking about my brother’s responsibilities,” Amaya said now, somehow holding Kavian’s hard warrior gaze steadily as if she weren’t in the least moved by his appearance before her. It she did it long enough, maybe she’d believe it herself. “Not mine.”

      “Six months ago, I was prepared to be patient with you.” His voice was soft. It was the only thing about him that was. “I was not unaware of the way you were raised, so ignorant of your own history and the ancient ways, forever on the run. I knew this union would present challenges for you. Six months ago, I intended to meet those challenges as civilly and carefully as possible.”

      The world, so still already since he’d sat across from her, shrank down until it was nothing but that flame of sheer, crackling temper in his dangerous gaze. Gray and fierce. Piercing into her, beneath her skin, like a terrible burning she could neither control nor extinguish. It seared through her, rolling too fast, too unchecked, too massive to bear.

      “How thoughtful you were six months ago,” she said faintly. “It’s funny how you didn’t mention any of that at the time. You were too busy posturing and grandstanding with my brother. Playing to the press. I was nothing more than a little bit of set dressing at my own engagement party.”

      “Are you as vain as your mother before you, then?” His voice turned so hard it left her feeling hollow, as if it had punched straight through her, though he still didn’t move at all. “That is a great pity. The desert is not kind to vanity, you will find. It will strip you down to the bone and leave only who you really are behind, whether you are ready to face that harsh truth or not.”

      Something flickered behind

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