LITMIR.BIZ

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not mine, no matter that my name is on her birth certificate,” he said, after a moment, when she was beginning to imagine she might simply crack open.

      “Did I know that you put your name on the birth certificate?” Sterling asked, shocked and taken aback, somehow, at that little revelation. “I don’t think I did.”

      She remembered his look of dark impatience, though she hadn’t seen it in a while. That made it all the more effective today.

      “Exactly what sort of legitimacy did you imagine I meant to convey on your child when I married you?”

      “I guess the sort where we’re not completely erasing Omar from his daughter’s life.” She reached over and fiddled with the hem of the blanket that drooped over the side of the buggy, though Leyla still slept soundly and no adjustments were needed.

      “It is a legal maneuver, nothing more,” Rihad said, his tone harsher than it had been in months, but that couldn’t be why her chest felt tight. It shouldn’t matter to her either way. “But you’re making my point for me. Omar has not been erased in any meaningful way. Everyone knows who fathered Leyla. Her place might be assured on paper and in the courts, but in the eyes of the Bakrian people and, more important, our enemies, her legitimacy must come from us.”

      “Us?”

      “Us. Me, their king, and you, my brand-new and deeply controversial queen.”

      She shied away from that term, scowling at him instead. “I don’t like that word.”

      “Which one?” His voice was so dry then. So dark and compelling. “Us? Controversial?”

      “Queen.” Her scowl deepened. “It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t fit the situation at all.”

      She meant it didn’t fit her, trash dressed up in an unearned crown—and she had the strangest notion he knew exactly what she meant. His dark gold gaze almost hurt against hers.

      “And yet it is your title, accorded to you with all due deference two months ago when you married the King of Bakri. That would be me, in case you’re not following this conversation, willfully or otherwise.”

      “But I don’t want to be your—”

      “Enough,” Rihad said then, cutting her off.

      He sat back in his chair, never shifting those mesmerizing eyes of his from hers, looking dark and terrible and entirely too fascinating, from that brusque nose of his to his strong jaw and all that rich brown skin in between. She wanted to lean closer to him, explore him—and hated herself.

      “I don’t care what you call yourself, Sterling. You are my queen either way. I suggest you accept it.” When she didn’t respond, that light in his gaze sharpened and made it a little too hard to breathe. “I think you understand perfectly well that we cannot allow any speculation that this marriage is fake to fester. It serves no one but our enemies.”

      She felt oddly fragile. “Why do you keep talking about enemies?”

      “The kingdom has been rocked by one scandal after the next and we are weak.” His gaze sharpened. “My father’s tumultuous love affairs. My wife’s death without giving me any heirs. Omar’s notorious mistress that he flaunted in the tabloids and his refusal to come back home and do his duty. My sister’s betrothal to Kavian of Daar Talaas, which she responded to by running away—”

      “I like her already.”

      “Amaya was a successful runaway, Sterling. She’s managed to avoid both my security and Kavian’s for months. Kavian will no doubt run out of patience with her, and when he does? Our countries will not unite and if they do not, Bakri will fall. There are too many other powers in the area that want our location and our shipping prowess, and we cannot possibly keep them all at bay alone.”

      “You’re talking about your enemies.” She lifted her chin as she held that harsh gaze of his. “The only enemy I’ve ever been aware of was you.”

      “I am talking about our enemies.” He nodded toward the tablet. “Or do you imagine that whatever ‘pal’ sold that story is your friend? Will they take you in when I am imprisoned and you—if you are lucky—are a royal Bakrian in exile?”

      Sterling opened her mouth to argue when something else occurred to her. That wild kiss swelled up in her again, a tactile memory. Searing through her as if it had only just happened. Flooding her with sensory images, with yearning, all over again.

      “Is this really because you’re worried about how our marriage is perceived?” she asked him. “Because of enemies? Or is it because you want to get into my pants?”

      He didn’t move a muscle. She knew that because she was watching him so closely that she could see it when he breathed. He didn’t even tense. And yet he seemed to explode outward, becoming twice his size and a thousand times more dangerous, like some kind of mystical being let loose from its cage at last.

      And every single cell in Sterling’s body shivered to red alert.

      She was flushed with the heat of it. Her skin seemed to ache for his touch. Her breasts felt too heavy and the taut peaks pulled tight. Inside of her, there was a low, hot humming that coiled between her legs and pulsed. Hard and wet. Ready.

      It was the most carnal experience of her entire life.

      It was the only carnal experience she’d ever had, save that last kiss.

      And they weren’t even touching.

      * * *

      That he did not turn over the table between them and taste her again right now was, Rihad thought, the only evidence remaining that he had once been a civilized man.

      He thought too much about his enemies as it was. He did not want to think about Sterling’s pants. He did not want to think about that body of hers that had redefined grace while heavily pregnant and now… She was difficult to look away from.

      He found he rarely did.

      Rihad did not want to think about the way he fought himself to keep from touching her, because he was determined to make this marriage work in some fashion or another, the way it had with his first wife. He and Tasnim had been friends, after a fashion. They’d eased into the physical aspects of their marriage and had worked on their friendship first. He’d decided at some point during the first days of gorgeous little Leyla’s life that he owed her mother no less, no matter how they’d come to find themselves married.

      But that did not explain why he took himself in hand each morning in his shower to slake his growing need. And it certainly did not explain the tempting array of images he tortured himself with as he did so.

      His voice was quiet when he finally answered her, and it cost him. “Can’t I be preoccupied with both the perception of our marriage and ‘getting in your pants,’ as you so charmingly put it?”

      “Unlikely. Men are more often focused on the one thing above all else.”

      “That shows how little you know me. I am not merely a man. I am a king.”

      “I know you enough, Your Majesty.”

      Her blue eyes rivaled the summer sun above them, and yet even when she looked straight at him he was certain he could see the walls she kept up, high and bolstered. He loathed them more and more each day. He wanted them knocked down. And he was entirely too aware that the urge was not exactly friendly.

      “And besides,” she continued, her voice light, “you don’t really want into these pants anyway.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh and waved her free hand in the general direction of her midsection. “Everything’s gone a little crazy after giving birth.”

      He snorted. “Self-deprecation does not suit you, Sterling.”

      She frowned at him, and he saw her ball her hands into fists, then drop them in her lap. “I don’t know

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