LITMIR.BIZ

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who you are. You’ve forgotten everything but the poison your brother put in your head. And I will not spend my life on the other side of your walls. I want more than that. I deserve more than that. You deserve more than that. Malik nearly destroyed Tahar with his indifference. And he tried to destroy you, too. But you would heal this country and never afford yourself the same. If they deserve it, your people, if this dust and rock you profess to love deserves it, why don’t you deserve it?” She was shouting now, screaming at him. All of her pristine, contained manner gone. “Fight for this. Fight for us. Please.”

      “Wanting more leads to incredible acts of selfishness. As you are demonstrating right now.”

      “I’m not a human sacrifice to be thrown on an altar. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is selfish. Maybe I’m not being giving enough. But I would give you everything if you would let me. You just won’t let me. And I can’t…I can’t pretend that I don’t want more. I won’t sit here and let you kill me by inches with your indifference.”

      “If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s indifferent. I want you. Isn’t that enough?”

      “It isn’t enough. Because you don’t want me. You want a body. You want a woman to stand at your side and be your queen. I want to be loved. I’ve spent too many years trying to fill that void with other things, trying to shut out the ache so I wouldn’t be lonely. So I wouldn’t hurt. But I would rather be lonely than lie to myself. I would rather hurt than hide.”

      He couldn’t breathe. Felt as if he was being held down, subjected to a blade beneath his skin again. “Then, go,” he said.

      She blinked those blue eyes that hours ago he’d been thinking of as his horizon line. “What?”

      “Get out. If you don’t want this, then get out. There are plenty of women willing to marry a sheikh. I don’t need to have an heir with you. If this won’t make you happy, then leave. I will not hold you prisoner. You said you would never send me away. I made no such promises to you.”

      “And if there’s a baby already?” she asked, tilting her chin up in the air.

      “Then, we will handle it.” His stomach tightened and he fought to maintain a streamlined hold on his emotions. Anger was all he needed to feel now. There was no room for doubt, no room for hurt. “Now, get out.”

      “Tarek—”

      “Get out!” he roared at her, not caring that she was undeserving of his rage. Not caring that he had brought this on himself. He was the sheikh. For the first time he would own that. For the first time he would take true command.

      She didn’t shrink; she didn’t pale. Rather, she nodded her head slowly, as regal as the first moment he had seen her. Then she turned and walked out of the room.

      Blinding, burning pain flashed through his chest, and he dropped to his knees.

      Olivia was gone. Olivia was leaving him. The woman he’d never imagined he’d want. The woman who had become everything. She was gone.

      And there was only pain.

      * * *

      Two hours later the car that was carrying his wife departed the palace. Tarek went to his room, locking the door behind him, pacing the length of the space, his heart pounding so hard he was sick with it.

      He would not keep her here. He could not.

      He also knew he could not hold her while clinging to his control. While keeping an eye on his goal. His people needed a leader who would cast aside all earthly pleasures, who would give of himself wholly. He could not do that while clinging to Olivia.

      He stripped his clothes off, pacing awhile longer before lying down in his bed. He would sleep alone tonight. As he had every night. And as he would every night after.

      He craved Olivia. There was no denying it. He was as weak as any man when it came to desire for a woman’s body. A sobering realization. At least she was gone now and he would no longer be a slave to his needs.

      He finally drifted into sleep, but it was restless, filled with nightmares, ghosts of the past. Searing pain. Visions of the torture that had gone on within the palace walls. Visions that had been absent ever since Olivia had become a true part of his life.

      He sat up, his torso drenched with sweat, shaking.

      He swung his legs over the side of the bed, walked over to the window and looked out at the inky black desert. The moon was high in the sky, casting a pale glow on the sand. Such a desolate place, the desert. His kingdom.

      It had seemed less so when she was here.

      When she was here it was more like the years before Malik. More like when his parents had been alive.

      Pain blasted him again, shooting through his skull. He didn’t allow himself to have these memories, and his body accommodated him. Because it hurt too much. Because he loved her too much.

      He thought of Malik, inflicting wound after wound on his body. All while promising love.

      And he thought of Olivia, professing to love him. They were not the same things. How could they ever be? Because Olivia was nothing like Malik. His mother and father had been nothing like Malik.

      His parents. He had so few memories of them. But they were there. Those twisted, broken shards of his humanity would never have existed in the first place if not for them. Back then, he had been whole. He had been loved. Not in the way that Malik had claimed to love him. It had been different.

      He gritted his teeth against the pain of the memory. It was like trying to break through a brick wall. One he had erected. There was a very clear division in his mind. Life before the death of his parents, and life after. He did not allow his mind across the wall into life before because he did not like to remember. Because it split his focus from his purpose. Because it caused him nothing but pain.

      Searing, unending pain. Much like the torture he had endured at his brother’s hands.

      Pain. At least in the desert there had been no pain. At least when he cut out every desire, every longing, every emotion, everything with a singular purpose before him, there could be no pain. And that was why it was so important.

      Why it was so important to keep himself from wanting. Why it was so important to keep everything but that one goal stripped away. He had honed his existence into one of survival. Survival was simple. It cared not for comfort, for enjoyment. It cared only about breathing. Breathing was easy.

      It was the rest that was difficult.

      But he was not Malik. He had determined he would rule independent of his own desires. Was that not enough?

      Unbidden, he saw a familiar face in his mind. Not Olivia’s this time. His father’s. And he heard his voice, soft, distant, from the unused recesses of his memory. The words. Those words he had longed to hear for so very long, muffled by pain and grief, now made clear.

       I love this country. More than my own life. Without love, how can a ruler temper his power? What will he use as his guide?

      A flood of memories filled him then, washing over the wall that remained, reducing it to rubble. Of everything that had happened before. Of who he had been before the torture. Before his exile. And he wished, more than anything, that he had Olivia here to hold him as the images overtook him. Brought him to his knees. Mingling with the grief he already felt over her loss.

      He realized with sudden, stark clarity that whatever Malik had felt for anything, for anyone, it hadn’t been love. He was the evidence of the absence of love and all the destruction it could cause.

      What did it matter if he swore protection, if he professed loyalty in his speeches, if he gave of himself, if he gave his possessions, but there was nothing behind it? If none of those actions possessed love, what did they mean? And what could they become?

      He saw now that love was not pain. Love was the very thing that kept a man rooted. No matter how fiercely he focused on

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