LITMIR.BIZ

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rest of his skin. “He liked fruit. I remember watching him peel the skin from a pear. He was perfectly capable of peeling off a layer of human skin with as much efficiency. I wear the evidence of that.”

      “Tarek. No,” she said, her stomach twisting painfully.

      “When I returned to the palace it all came back to me. That is why I woke from my sleep. That’s why I walked the halls with a sword. To kill his ghost if he lingered. I could feel everything he’d done to me again. As though he was wounding me afresh. I found his journals. He admitted to having my parents assassinated. He…detailed the work he did on me to make me a loyal soldier. He liked the whips, as you saw. Liked to isolate me, as well. Deprive me of all sensory input, then…flay my skin with something sharp. My brother. My own brother. My parents were dead, and then…and then he betrayed me, and I have truly…truly never felt so alone as I did in that first moment when he tied me down and traced shapes in my back with the blade of his knife. That was when I started thinking of myself as a rock. Because a rock is unmoved. It might be reshaped, but it doesn’t bleed. It will not die. It is simply reformed. And it remains strong. A rock is never weakened.”

      Olivia closed her eyes, stifling the sob that was climbing her throat. “How could he have done that to you? How?” They were empty words. Meaningless. And yet they were all she had.

      “This is why I turn away from indulgences. From lusts of all kinds because…look at where it brought him.”

      “You aren’t Malik.”

      “No,” Tarek said, his voice blazing. “I know he did not intend it, but he gave me purpose. He ensured with all he did that I would guard myself against the weakness that infected his blood.”

      “Why? Why did he do it?”

      “To break me, though he didn’t say it. Strength, he said. It was always strength. Truly, I think he wanted me to rejoice in being banished to the desert. To make me hate the palace so much that I would never want to return. He wanted me too broken to rule. Too broken to realize his true character. Brainwashed. He did a magnificent job. Out there, I felt nothing. I had but one purpose—to fulfill the bargain I had made with my brother. The one that meant he would leave me be. There was clarity there. A beauty in the simplicity. I cherished it. In that way, I suppose he did his job. He made me strong. He made me the rock. He made that existence feel easy.”

      “It was a mind game. He didn’t care for you. He didn’t make you strong. You were strong. Any other man would have been broken.”

      He looked up at her, his eyes so black, so empty, they wounded her. “Was I not broken, Olivia?”

      “No, Tarek. No. You are not broken.” Her throat tightened, tears rolling down her cheeks. She put her hand on his chest, felt his heartbeat rage beneath her fingertips.

      “Do not cry for me, Olivia. Not for me.”

      “Who else will?”

      “No one needs to.”

      “That isn’t true. It isn’t.”

      “Whatever I was before Malik… Whatever happened before… I am different now. I’m another man. Whether or not I’m broken is immaterial. I am not what I should be. I can never be.”

      “You are everything you choose to be, Tarek,” she said, the words ringing with conviction. “He cannot command control over you, not anymore.”

      “You don’t understand. You don’t understand the years I spent there. That they were my refuge. You cannot possibly understand what they meant to me, what they did to me.”

      “Make me understand. I’m tired of being alone, Tarek. I’m so tired of being alone. Let me see. Let me see you.”

      He rolled out of the bed, standing upright, naked, beautiful and unashamed. “Tomorrow,” he said, his voice strained. “Tomorrow I will show you. I will make you understand. I am not the man you wish I could be. I am not the man you should have.”

      “But you have me,” she said, as close to an admission as she could muster right now.

      Pain flashed through his eyes, but almost as quickly as it appeared, it was replaced by the flatness again. “Tomorrow, I will show you.”

      “Tarek…” She blinked rapidly, looking down at her left hand, at the blue stone there. “Just…before you go… Why did you choose this ring for me?”

      He looked at her, a subtle shift in his face softening his features. “Your eyes,” he said. “The stone was blue. Like your eyes. And I very much liked the look of it. Since it made me think of you.”

      Her breath caught in her throat. A simple answer. But from Tarek…it may as well have been poetry. It was the truth. So simple. So perfect. It came from his soul, and touched her all the way down to hers.

      Then he turned and walked out of the room, leaving her alone once again.

      But this time, she didn’t feel devastated by the loneliness. Because she wasn’t simply going to lie back and allow it to be her fate. He had chosen this ring. Because of her eyes. That mattered. Because of that, she would fight.

      It didn’t matter what had happened before. Her fear had no place. Tarek was brave. A warrior to his soul. She would be nothing less for him. For herself.

      With him, she would fight for more. With him, she would fight for everything.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      TAREK COULDN’T QUITE describe the feeling that took hold of him as they drove farther away from the city and deeper into the desert. It had surprised Olivia to know that he could drive a car. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. There were a great many gaps in his education when it came to modern civilization. And while it was a skill he had not often used, it was one he possessed.

      Thankfully all of his duties today had been office work, and he had managed to reschedule to make this time for Olivia.

      He had demanded they go alone. He was more dangerous than any of the men on his security detail and had likely insulted them by saying so.

      But this had been a necessity.

      A dark, gnawing sense of panic had been chewing at him since yesterday. Possibly since their wedding night. Or perhaps even before that. Whenever it had appeared, it was only growing worse as they drove into the bleached, bone-dry wilderness.

      It was as though the air in his lungs had been replaced with dust. Like drowning on land. He wondered why he was doing this. What he hoped to find out here. What he hoped to show her.

      Last night she had looked at him with need and expectation. No one had ever looked at him like that before. Much less such a soft, vulnerable creature. And he had realized in that moment that being prepared to ride out into battle for her was not enough.

      He knew nothing else. He knew nothing beyond living by the sword. He had heard somewhere that meant he would surely die by it, and if that was the case, he was prepared. He would die for her. He had no question on that score. But he had no idea what stood in between indifference and a willingness to sacrifice himself. It was those feelings, those things that frightened him.

      Because they weren’t a goal. They weren’t an end point. It wasn’t something clean and easy he could focus on.

      The very idea splintered in his mind, confused him. Frightened him.

      He could’ve laughed. Death didn’t frighten him, but whatever the small, pale woman made him feel was the closest thing to terror he had experienced in his memory.

      “How much farther?” she asked when they had been driving for well over two hours.

      “Close now,” he said. “There will be no one for miles. This time of year.”

      “What

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