Page 23 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child
“My sister was more of a pampered, special toy to my parents, at least until she grew older and my mother viewed her as competition,” Malak said, because he didn’t mind Shona knowing these things. She would hear them all soon enough, once the palace gossips decided to share their stories with her instead of just talking about her. “But I was completely ignored, always. A state of affairs that suited me just fine, to be clear. I’ve never wanted to play a starring role in my family’s many storms.” He forced his smile to deepen and waved a hand, encompassing the palace, the kingdom. “And yet I was caught up in them all the same.”
Shona frowned. “But surely the purpose of a spare is always to step in at a moment’s notice.”
“Theoretically, of course it is. But no one could have anticipated that my brother would abdicate. Least of all my brother.”
“Why did he?”
Malak’s smile felt fiercer than usual then, even on his own mouth. “It appears the downfall of the men in my family is love. It ruins them all, sooner or later.”
Shona’s gaze met his and he hated, suddenly, that he couldn’t read her. “‘Them?’”
She didn’t say “but not you.” Yet still it seemed to hang there between them.
And that wasn’t the only thing that shimmered in that space.
“I believe in sex, Shona,” he told her, because if he couldn’t make it better, he wanted to make it worse. “It might not change anything, as you said, but that’s never how it feels. I believe in hot nights that ache forever, and shave off parts of your soul in return for all that pleasure. But that is all I believe in. You don’t need to concern yourself that I’ll ever pretend that sex is anything more than exactly what it is.”
“Of course you believe in sex, but never, ever love.” Shona shook her head at him as if he was...silly. Or a small child. He had to grit his teeth to keep himself from reacting to both insults the way he would have liked to. “Isn’t that a hallmark of men like you?”
“I beg your pardon. Are there men like me? Anywhere? I rather doubt it.”
“I’ve never heard of a man alive who imagines that he is capable of love, even if the only thing he is king of is his own living-room couch.” Shona’s gaze was entirely too steady on his, as if she meant to indict him with every arch, deceptively soft syllable she uttered. He assumed she did. “My understanding has always been that the world might end if a single man ever imagined himself capable of such a thing. And yet here we all are.”
Malak laughed at that. Because it was that or reach for her again, and he didn’t want to cede his advantage. “The difference between the vast phalanxes of men you apparently know so well, aside from the obvious fact that I am the ruler of an entire country rather than a piece of furniture, is that I know myself.”
He didn’t tell her what else he knew. All the ways that love had ruined his father, for example. And all the rest of them, caught up as they were in the wreckage of their parents’ sad little marriage. He had always known that such excesses of emotion were not for him. That he would never fall, not like his father had. He would never let the love of a woman blind him to the rest of his life.
Especially not when there were so many other, more entertaining excesses to explore.
That was how he’d lived his life, until these past months.
It wasn’t that he thought he was immune to love, because he wasn’t. He loved his family. He loved his country. He felt fairly certain that the epic punch he’d felt at the first sight of Miles was love, too—one that grew the more time he spent with the boy.
But he had absolutely no intention of wrecking himself over a woman the way his father had. And was still doing after that woman’s death. That the woman in question was his own mother didn’t make Malak any more kindly disposed toward his father’s complete loss of himself.
Malak had never expected to take his father’s or brother’s place. But now that he had, he did not intend to follow in their footsteps and make their same mistakes.
He had vowed to himself that whatever else happened, he never would.
“If you say so,” Shona said, and she didn’t even sound particularly dismissive. But then, she didn’t have to. It was written all over her.
And Malak didn’t understand how he had gone from being completely at his ease to...this. He didn’t know what to call that churning sensation inside of him, as if his skin had suddenly grown too tight and nothing inside of him could bear it.
“I not only know myself, I know you,” he told her, because he felt weaponless, suddenly, and he couldn’t allow it.
She didn’t laugh, though her dark eyes filled with a kind of mirth. “You don’t know anything about me. Thank God.”
“But I do, Shona.” He shook his head at her, regaining his equilibrium as he did. “Do you imagine that I would allow just any woman to walk in off the streets and take her place at my side? Without knowing every possible detail about her?”
“If she was unlucky enough to have found herself pregnant with your child, yes. Absolutely. I think anyone would do.”
Malak didn’t like the way she said that. Especially because she wasn’t wrong.
And he didn’t know why he felt as if he had something to prove, suddenly. Or possibly it was more about regaining the upper hand. He wasn’t precisely proud of that urge—but that didn’t diminish it.
“I know more about you than you might imagine,” he told her. “I know that you spent the first part of your life in the foster system. Is that not what they call it in America when you are taken into the care of the state?”
“I don’t hide the fact that I was in foster care. That’s not exactly a secret.”