LITMIR.BIZ

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the motion making his heart feel slightly overlarge for his chest.

      “I think of the two of us, I am the strange one.”

      “Possibly.” She lay back on the bed, temptation personified. He could easily get lost in her. Make love to her until they both fell asleep.

       And what will happen when sleep comes?

      Ice replaced the blood flowing through his veins.

      “It is time, I think, for you to go back to your room,” he said.

      “What? I just thought…”

      “For many reasons, not the least of which being that I have yet to solve the sleepwalking-with-weapons issue, I think it would be best if we kept to our separate quarters.”

      She nodded slowly. “I anticipated that we would have separate rooms in general, but I thought perhaps tonight…”

      “There is the issue of the sword.”

      “Perhaps chuck it out into the hall?” she asked, one brow raised.

      “I could, but then what else might I get hold of? I’m very resourceful.”

      She raised her other brow. “Are you? I feel as if I’ve just benefited from some of that resourcefulness.”

      That cool top layer of hers was back in place. It was because he’d hurt her in some way, and he could sense that. But he couldn’t fathom what he might do to fix it. Not when her fingers on his arm were crushing him now. Not when he needed space. Not just from her, but beyond these walls. Out in the desert.

      But failing that, he just needed to be alone. He needed time to process. Time to rebuild. He couldn’t do that with her here.

      “Please do not take this personally,” he said. “Please don’t be hurt.”

      She shook her head slowly, removing her touch from him. “It doesn’t work that way, Tarek.”

      “Why not?” Not even he was that obtuse when it came to interacting with people. Still, it seemed unfair.

      “You can’t call a bullet back after it’s been fired. I would think that’s something a warrior would understand.”

      “But I didn’t mean to fire at you.”

      She put her hand on his cheek. “You know that doesn’t matter, either.”

      “It is for your safety.”

      She tilted her head to the side. “I’m sure it is. Good night, Tarek.”

      She slipped from his bed, taking her wedding gown from the floor and slipping it back on, holding the front closed, not bothering to collect anything else. Not her bangles, not her veil, not her belt.

      She had entered the chamber a bride, and she was leaving a wife. An unhappy wife.

      But he had to set limits, even now. It was best she learned. When it came to sharing his body, he had determined to give. Because he could do nothing else, in truth. But there were other things that must remain off-limits.

      He had whittled the focus of his soul down to a sleek, streamlined arrow, with all of the excess shaved away. He could not go back. He would not.

      Yes, his body he could afford to share. But never his soul. He could never, ever expose her to everything he’d been through. Never share the creation of his scars.

      She was far too lovely for him to ever present her with something so ugly.

      Difficult, when the ugliness was written all over his body.

      And one more reason to stay out of her bed tonight.

      * * *

      Olivia was playing petulant games, and she knew they would come to nothing with Tarek. Removing herself from her first husband’s bed for a certain length of time when she’d found him irritating had typically resulted in the desired apology. Because Marcus didn’t want to be without sex, he would say whatever he needed to in order to restore harmony in that area. Tarek, of course, wouldn’t understand. She was attempting to manipulate a man who was impossible to manipulate. Not because he was so strong, but because he simply didn’t understand subterfuge.

      She felt wretched.

      But he had torn her open on their wedding night, laid her bare in more ways than just the physical. The way he had looked at her… As though she was special, as though she was the only one. Her heart seized tight. It was because she was the only one. The only woman to ever touch him. The only woman to ever kiss him, to have him inside her body.

      It forced more unfavorable comparisons between him and her first husband.

      Marcus had been skilled. He had been with countless women before she’d come into his life. For him seduction had been about knowing exactly where to touch, exactly how.

      He’d left her feeling as if she was floating on a cloud, left her feeling sated and satisfied.

      Tarek had left her bruised. Aching. Desperate for more.

      There was something so impolite about the way he had ravished her. Like the man himself. In contrast, Marcus had unfailing manners, always. But Olivia couldn’t escape the thought that it was a testament to how little it mattered which female was in his bed at any given time.

      She had spoken to Tarek about how they would both have to learn. Of course she would have to take the time to watch his responses, to feel what made him shake. What made him moan. What made him hard. But then she’d realized that hadn’t been the case with Marcus. He had never learned her in that way. He knew women. That was different.

      Not that she had cause for complaint; not that she never asked for more.

      It was pointless to stand here and compare two men who were completely different. Particularly when one was dead, couldn’t give more even if she begged him to. And she hadn’t. When he’d been alive she’d asked him for nothing beyond what he gave.

      Unlike Tarek, Marcus had never pledged fidelity.

      She’d never asked him to.

       You didn’t ask Tarek to, either.

      And yet he had.

      None of this made her wonder what was wrong with Marcus. Rather, she was beginning to wonder what was wrong with herself. Why she had never pushed for more. Because she and Marcus had professed love for each other, and still he had given her less than half. And she had accepted it. Not only had she accepted it, she’d been comfortable with it. Had he made eye contact with her as he thrust deep into her body the way that Tarek had, she probably would have curled in on herself and retreated.

      Intimacy meant reaching deep. It meant sharing and changing. Turning over things that were wrong and discovering how they could be fixed. Facing problems head-on.

      That had never gone well for her in the past. The potential cost felt too great.

      For that reason, she hadn’t wanted that sort of intimacy with the man she’d once called her husband.

      She wasn’t entirely certain she wanted it now. Because that intimacy was the reason she was avoiding Tarek’s bed in a fit of pique. His rough, unpracticed movements, that it was all for her, only for her, had stripped a layer of skin from her body, left her raw and exposed. And then, after all that, he had asked her to leave. When she had wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around his waist and curl up beside him, bury her face in the curve of his neck. Lie with him until her breathing matched his, until they both drifted off to sleep.

      He had denied her that.

      She was still angry. Still angry, even knowing she had to get into a limousine with him and go down into the capital city for him to make a speech at a monument of war to commemorate a day in the nation’s history. It was, in her understanding, a celebration of the founding of the country. The unification of the primary tribes into one

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