LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      TAREK FELT AS though he hadn’t slept. Odd, considering he now lived in a palace, when before he had lived in the hollowed-out shells of houses not inhabited by anyone other than him for the past two hundred years. One would think he would find better rest protected by guards, in a temperature-controlled environment. With a mattress. And yet, he found he didn’t.

      He’d been awake for only an hour, and already he had been accosted by several members of staff while walking through the halls. So many decisions that had to be made before he had seen to his morning routine.

      In the desert, he had started a fire early every morning, boiled water for coffee. Usually he ate bread or an instant hot-cereal packet he acquired from different traders that came and did business with him every few months.

      He spent the morning getting into the rhythm of the day. Tasting the weather on his tongue, getting a sense for what the earth had in store for him. He worked hard, and when his brother had need of him, he did dangerous, bloody business. But he would also go many days in a row without ever speaking to another person. Without doing much beyond physical training and tending to his encampment.

      When trouble was brewing, he would attach himself to the Bedouin camps, rallying with the men to see what could be done to protect their borders. Otherwise, he led a solitary existence.

      The palace was never solitary. There were people moving about constantly. And it all seemed to revolve around him.

      He didn’t like it. Not at all. He was the man who waited. Who said, “Here I am, send me.” He was the weapon. He was not the one who wielded it.

      He was now in pursuit of coffee. The breakfasts they served here in the palace were too ornate for his liking. Cheese and fruit, cereals, meats. His brother had always lingered over meals. And Tarek had begun to believe that any indulgence his brother had was one that might cause corruption. Was one he ought to abstain from.

      Food, in his estimation, was yet another tool designed to complete a specific task. It was simply fuel.

      Coffee was a slightly more necessary fuel. A part of his routine he could not forgo.

      He walked into the dining room and saw Olivia sitting at the head of the table, a bit of the type of food he had just been thinking of spread out over her plate. She looked up, smiling. She had a pleasing smile. Pink lips, even, white teeth. He liked the look of it.

      He quite liked the look of her.

      Much like lingering over food, he had never much lingered over women.

      “Good morning,” she said. A dull blush rose in her cheeks. That, he felt, was also pleasing.

      “Good morning.” He felt obliged to return the greeting, though he didn’t agree with her assessment.

      “How did you sleep?” she asked.

      “I would imagine not well. I’m still tired.”

      She nodded slowly. “Oh. You don’t have any insight about why?”

      A strange flash of memory broke over him. Terror. Pain. Restlessness.

      He shoved it aside. These memories, memories long suppressed, had taken on new life when he’d returned. An even more violent life when he’d discovered his brother’s private journals.

      Admission that Malik had ordered the death of their parents. A secret Tarek could never share with the country, for they had suffered so much already at the hands of Malik. His spending had left people poor, bereft, taxed beyond reason with the infrastructure of the city left to decay.

      He could not do further damage.

      In addition to the admission of his parents’ murder had been chronicles of how he’d tortured Tarek. To break him. To ensure that it was never discovered that Malik had ended the lives of the former sheikh and sheikha. To transform him into a malleable weapon to be used at Malik’s discretion.

      If his brother was not already dead—of an overdose, naturally—Tarek would have, in fact, killed him upon discovery of those writings.

      Because Malik had never broken him. He had hardened him.

      His brother had transformed him; there was no doubt. But every drop of blood Malik had spilled from Tarek’s veins had soaked into the earth here. Had bound him, not to his brother, but to his nation. To his people.

      He would not stray from that now.

      “I do not like this place,” he said.

      A servant bustled into the room. “Is there anything I can get you, Sheikh Tarek?”

      “Coffee. And bread.”

      The woman looked at him as though she feared for his sanity, but said nothing as she nodded and then left again. Only he and Olivia remained. He didn’t sit; rather, he began to pace the length of the room. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “You know I didn’t sleep,” he said, turning to face her. “Tell me.”

      Her blue eyes widened, pale brows arching upward. “How do you know that?”

      The edges of his mouth curved upward. He might have no experience of women, but he could read this one. “You become very still, very smooth when you are holding back an avalanche. There is much beneath the surface, I think. A very diplomatic woman, but occasionally you slip. You have a very sharp tongue. When you’re holding it in check this well I assume it’s because there is much to withhold.”

      The color in her face deepened, and a sense of pleasure curled itself around his stomach. Unfamiliar.

      Satisfaction, he supposed.

      And why not? So often he felt out of his element in this place. It was immensely rewarding to have the sense that he had claimed a victory.

      To go from being the master of his domain, a man who conquered the desert, who thrived in it, to a man who could scarcely sleep. A man who was caged… It was jarring indeed. There was nothing he despised more than a sense of helplessness. And that sense of helplessness had pervaded his being from the moment he had stepped back within the palace walls. That considered, he celebrated this small victory slightly more than was necessary.

      “You sleepwalk,” she said, her words straightforward. Succinct. “Naked. With weapons.”

      Something about that word on her lips sent a burst of heat through his veins. He wasn’t sure why. And yet again he was back in unfamiliar territory. Not just because of what she’d said, and how it made him feel, but because he was…doing things he didn’t remember.

      Out of his own control.

      That settled far beyond disturbing.

      “I was not aware,” he said, keeping his tone flat.

      “It would account for why you don’t feel rested in the morning,” she said. “Why don’t you sit?”

      “I’m not in the frame of mind to sit. I have business to attend to.”

      “It won’t hurt you to eat breakfast,” she said, a small smile playing at the edges of her mouth.

      “What is so funny?”

      “We already sound like a married couple.” She put her hands flat on the tabletop, looking down at them. “My husband never took time for breakfast. He would eat

Скачать книгу