Page 22 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

Someone had seen her, no doubt, and reported back to Yadira that Shona was not where she was supposed to be. Because somebody would always pass on something like that. Because there was no hiding here, in this palace that appeared so vast.

There was no hiding anywhere.

Not even from herself.

“I’m fine,” she said, and rose to her feet. Her legs still felt like jelly, but she didn’t let that slow her down. She ignored it as she walked toward the woman who was more her jailer than her servant, and she even got herself to smile as she did it. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

She tuned out Yadira’s usual chatter as they walked back across the palace to Shona’s own suite of rooms. She nodded her thanks and smiled her way into her bedroom, where she took a long, hot shower and then crawled into her bed at last.

Because it was only there, in the dark of her bedroom with the covers pulled high over her head, that she could allow her face to crumple as it would. It was only there that she could permit her tears to fall, that she could face the fact that the worst part of what had happened with Malak tonight—and that night five years ago—was that she’d wanted it.

She’d more than wanted it. She’d longed for it.

And she’d loved every wicked pass of his tongue against the softest part of her.

So much that she still ached, well into the night, even as she was lying there alone and beating herself up for betraying every last thing she’d thought she stood for.

And worse, she had no idea what it said about her that she should want the man she knew would be the end of her, one way or another.

Or what to do now that he knew it.

* * *

Malak wasn’t the least bit surprised the following night when Shona stayed in her seat after the nannies took away Miles.

“Do you not wish to take your normal stance of pointless defiance?” He leaned back against his pillows and studied her as she glared at him. “I was hoping for another decadent dessert tonight, I must tell you. This is a disappointment.”

She looked different tonight, he thought. Not exactly subdued, but...contained.

As if he wasn’t the only one who had come to some conclusions about this little war of theirs.

“I prefer to sit,” she said after a moment. She even smiled, though Malak would scarcely call it polite. It was a pretense for her to be so civil. “But thank you.”

“Are you certain? I so enjoyed the last time you stood before me. I know you would not dare to tell me you did not.”

“Congratulations,” she said, that dark gaze of hers meeting his in that steady, challenging manner no one else would dare. “You won that battle, I guess. You got me to sit down. But what else have you really gained?”

Malak grinned. “You mean, aside from the sheer joy of your sweet little—”

“Sex doesn’t change anything,” she said, cutting him off. And he had to stop registering surprise every time she did things no one else would dream of doing in his presence. Much less to him. “It’s just sex. It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to be here. That I don’t want to be a queen at all, and certainly not your queen. That I have no interest in any of this.”

Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t seem particularly angry about it that allowed him to consider her objections to all of this a little more carefully than he had before. Or maybe it was that he’d tasted her again and had spent a night plagued by dreams of all the things he could have done had he not left her on that balcony.

After all, it was hard to maintain any level of reasonable fury when all he wanted was another taste.

Either way, he considered her for a long moment. “I assure you, you are not the only one whose wishes were not consulted in this. If that makes you feel any better.”

He could see from the expression that flitted over her face that it did not. But she didn’t throw that back at him as she sat there on the other side of the low table, her hands in her lap. Malak found himself mesmerized by the elegant curve of her neck, and only partly because he’d had his mouth there the night before and knew—now and again and always—how she tasted. Tonight she had her hair pulled up into something complicated, her tight curls bound together on top of her head, spilling this way and that.

Every time he saw her she was more beautiful. Malak didn’t understand how that was possible, only that it was true.

“Surely you always knew that you might be king,” Shona said, frowning at him as if he’d lied to her. Another insult he chose to ignore.

“Not at all.” Malak made himself smile. Lazily and easily, the way his life had been until recent months had changed everything. “I was the spare. My older brother, Zufar, was meant to be king and he has been trained since his birth to take over the role. My sister, Galila, and I were both afterthoughts in our own ways.”

He didn’t mention his high-strung, selfish mother’s indiscretions, and only partly because he was still coming to terms with them himself. To say nothing of that half brother he still didn’t quite know how to make sense of. Especially since Adir’s existence made Malak’s life make a different sort of sense. His mother had chosen to have the baby of the man she’d loved, then had given Adir away. Malak was the child she’d dutifully had and had never loved. The way he’d been ignored all these years made a painful sort of sense, really.

He didn’t mention his mother’s death, or the way his father’s encompassing grief over her loss brought back entirely too many memories of the way his father had ignored his children all their lives—the better to cater to a woman who had never cared for him in return. His father had abdicated his throne out of grief. His brother had then followed in his footsteps and abdicated for love. Malak understood neither of these choices, but he didn’t have to understand. He only had to play his prescribed role and do his duty.