LITMIR.BIZ

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her. “The sad truth is that the leader of a country is never truly on holiday, despite what he might wish. But you will join me for dinner. In the meantime, Ushala will lead you to your tent and see that you are settled in.”

      “What if I don’t want to join you for dinner?” she asked.

      She thought they both knew that she wasn’t really talking about dinner.

      And in any case, Rihad only smiled.

      * * *

      Sterling disappeared into one of the sleeping tents that functioned as a luxurious guest room out here in his family’s private oasis. Rihad took a few calls as the afternoon wore on, impatient with this life of his that could not allow him anything resembling a real holiday. Not even a honeymoon.

      He opted not to think too much about the fact that when he’d gone on a honeymoon previously, he’d welcomed the opportunity to work from the oasis, and neither he nor Tasnim had expected to see much of each other outside of their carefully polite meals.

      But then, Sterling was different. Perhaps he’d known that from the first moment he’d seen her, so long ago now on that Manhattan sidewalk.

      She did not emerge again until the sun dipped low and began to paint the dunes in the shifting colors of sunset. Reds and oranges, pinks and golds, and Sterling walking toward him in the middle of it all like another work of art.

      Rihad sat in one of the majlis, a seating area marked off with a soft rug beneath him, bright pillows all around in the Bedouin style and a low table stretched out beneath a graceful canopy. It opened on the sides to let the evening in as he sipped a cool drink and watched the sunset outdo itself before him, as if for his pleasure alone.

      After a glance to make sure she was coming to him—of her own free will, which pleased him, though he imagined he’d have sought her out if she hadn’t and he wasn’t certain what that told him about himself—Rihad didn’t look up as Sterling approached him, didn’t take his eyes off the horizon.

      Almost as if he worried that if he did, his best intentions would simply crumble into sand and blow away.

      He smiled at the glorious spectacle laid out before him instead, the colors changing and blooming as he watched. He never tired of the desert. How could he—how could anyone? The landscape was constantly shifting, yet always the same. The great bowl of the sky stretched high above with these magical, daily displays of fierce natural splendor. It reminded him who he was. It reminded him that Bakri was as much a part of him as he was of it. Just as the sky and the land were fused into this stunning unity twice a day as the sun rose and fell, so, too, was his family a part of this country. Twined together, made one.

      That was what a marriage was, at its best. What it was supposed to be.

      What he was determined this one would be, no matter what he had to do to get there.

      Rihad did not choose to analyze all the reasons why his need for this burned in him. He only knew that it did.

      She settled herself down across from him at the low table with that innate grace of hers that was beginning to feel something like addictive.

      “Does your tent suit?” he asked her, as if they were meeting at some or other royal exercise, where the highest protocols were observed.

      “It’s lovely,” she replied in the same tone.

      Rihad bit back a smile and waved to the servants. They appeared at once, filling the low table between them with various dishes, from perfectly grilled skewers of lamb to a pile of handmade flatbread, a generous pot of homemade hummus, assorted other dipping sauces and side dishes. Rihad took the opportunity to study this woman, this wife of his. She was nothing like Tasnim. He couldn’t remember a single moment with his first wife that had ever felt like this—this seething thing, nearly at a boil, that thrummed along beneath his skin and made him feel predatory and possessive even when she wasn’t in front of him.

      And much, much more so when she was.

      She wore another one of her dresses and a flowing pashmina she wrapped tightly around her like a blanket. More to continue to conceal herself from him as much as possible, he thought with no little amusement, than to ward off the night air. Her lustrous strawberry blond hair was pulled back into what was, for her, a merely serviceable ponytail at her nape, but then, elegance was stamped into her bones. She couldn’t help but appear chic, even when she was attempting to look dowdy. She’d been haunting in those teenaged photographs that had taken the modeling world by surprise years back, all high cheekbones, world-weary blue eyes and that hooker’s mouth of hers. More than a decade later, she was objectively, inarguably stunning, no matter what lengths she went to hide it.

      And Rihad was merely a man.

      He lounged there against his pillows and watched her eat her dinner with evident relish, this woman who could knock men flat like dominoes. Take down whole kingdoms. Wreck worlds.

      Or maybe that was just what she’d done to him, when he’d been expecting something so much different.

      “You’re staring at me as if I’m an animal in a zoo,” she pointed out crisply when she’d demolished a few lamb chops and several heaping spoonfuls of the grain and greens salads. “It’s going to give me indigestion.”

      “I’m waiting for you to finish eating,” he said lazily. “You’re building up your energy, are you not? For the sex. Consummation on command, I believe you called it. A warning, Sterling. I’m very demanding.”

      “The sex,” she repeated slowly. There wasn’t a flicker of reaction on her perfect face, or even in those sky-blue eyes of hers when she fixed them on him, but he knew better. He could feel the air itself sizzle between them. “Am I to understand that you’ll be performing a solo act? Right here, out in the open? How fascinating. You’ll understand if I don’t watch, I hope. I wouldn’t want my stomach to turn at a delicate moment and throw you off your stroke.”

      He only watched her as the servants cleared all the plates between them and then piled the table high again with an array of tempting desserts—but Sterling was looking at him with that fire in her gaze and he couldn’t have imagined any better treat than her.

      “You’re sitting here in silence, Sterling,” he pointed out, playing up the languid desert king because he could see the way it got to her. He could see the way she shifted against her pillows, as if she couldn’t quite get comfortable. “I assumed that you’d decided we should jump right into the sex rather than have a frank discussion.” He smiled. “I’m perfectly all right with that, if it’s what you wish.”

      * * *

      She most certainly did not wish, Sterling told herself then. But she had the growing notion that she was lying to herself.

      And worse, that he knew it.

      “Do you ever have interactions with anyone in which you aren’t threatening them?” she asked, mildly enough. “Whether directly or indirectly?”

      “Most of my interactions are political in nature,” he replied, a vision of male ease as he lounged there and watched her too closely, his dark eyes glittering in the light thrown by too many hanging lanterns to count. “So, no. I don’t have any conversations that do not involve jockeying for power, or position, or status, or economic gain.”

      “You are aware that some people have conversations that involve none of those things?”

      A faint crook to that perfect mouth. “I’ve heard rumors.”

      “I will have to decline your lovely offer,” she said, and smiled at him in the polite-yet-distant way she’d perfected in New York. “I’ve never been to an oasis before and I think I’d like to take a swim in the middle of a desert. Your marvelous suggestion that we delve into my past and/or me, personally, while tempting, will have to wait.”

      She thought he would throw something back at her, but he only continued to study her with that small smile in the corner of his mouth.

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