Page 30 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

“Right. And because of that you have such a liberal view of, say, marriage.”

“See?” His voice was soft. He doubted very much his expression matched. “You can do battle with me just as easily dressed like this as you can in those strange ensembles you cobbled together from the depths of your closet.”

He thought she looked shaken again, but if she did, she hid it in the next moment, forcing him to contemplate, yet again, the elegant line of her neck.

“It’s easy for you to say such things,” Shona said softly. “You have nothing to lose.”

She turned then and Malak almost let her go. But there was something about the way she moved toward the door, her head angled toward the floor and her hands in fists at her side. It caught at him. It made him question—

But that was not who he was, damn it all. That was not what he did.

He had never been a man of what-ifs and maybes. He did not feel. He had seen, then taken. His conquests had been legendary.

Hell, she was one of them.

Malak caught up to her in the next atrium, with a set of three fountains in the center, greenery and bright magenta flowers flowing from the pillars, and walls bedecked with a thousand tiny mirrors set into the tiles.

And he had not touched her in so long. Too long. It seemed like forever. He reached out and took her wrist, pulling her around to face him again.

Gently. Inexorably. And what he noticed most was how easily she came, spinning back to him as if this was some kind of dance. As if they both knew the steps. As if they shared this same gripping thing that was making his chest feel tight and the rest of him...greedy.

“What do you think you have to lose?” he asked her, and his voice sounded almost gruff. But then, perhaps it matched that arrested expression on her lovely face.

Her gaze searched his. She swallowed, and his eyes moved to track the movement. He held her so he could feel the tumult of her pulse beneath the smooth, dark brown expanse of her satiny skin. He expected her to tug her wrist from his grip, but she didn’t.

Instead, she turned her head to the side and nodded toward the hundreds of mirrors on the nearest wall that together made a great, reflective pool.

“Look at that,” she whispered, something fierce and yet broken in her voice. “You look like a king. You belong here, surrounded by all of this. Fountains and jewels, thrones and servants. But I look exactly like what I am. A foster kid playing dress-up.”

If she’d reached into his chest and dug out his heart with those elegant fingers of hers, he couldn’t have been more surprised. More taken back.

“You look like a beautiful woman, Shona. Elegant and without equal.”

“Just stop.” She didn’t say it in her usual bitter and harsh way. It was more of a sigh. She shook her head at their reflection. “I never played princesses. Or any other games of make-believe. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t need that kind of escape from reality—or anyway, I never liked it. Why pretend things are better when they’ll be just as terrible on the other side of whatever game you’re playing?”

She was telling him something important. Even if Malak couldn’t understand it, not completely, he could feel it. It was like a shudder, working its way down his spine. It settled deep in his belly, like a kind of foreboding.

“I am not a make-believe king, little one,” he told her quietly, moving there beside her, dark and tall while she was so lithe and pretty. And she fit him. Her head reached his shoulder and he wanted to turn her toward him, make her tilt up that chin, and get a taste of that proud, lush mouth that haunted his dreams. “When you become my queen, and you will, it will not be a game we play. It will be real.”

He didn’t understand what it was she was looking at, there on the wall in so many gleaming tiles, what she saw in their reflection that made her brown eyes look so anguished.

He wasn’t surprised when she pulled away from him then. He let her go, watched as she stared at her reflection a moment more, then turned that same anguished look on him.

“I did this for Miles,” she told him, and there was something else in her voice he didn’t recognize. “Because I never want to be the thing that holds him back. Not in anything.” She waved a hand over her dress, her face twisting. “But I don’t want to do this again.”

“I don’t know what you think that gown is doing to you. You’re a beautiful woman. Why shouldn’t you dress like one?”

“I’m an abandoned orphan from New Orleans,” Shona said, grief showing on her face. Or perhaps it was closer to fury. “I come from nothing. I am nothing. I don’t belong in a dress like this.” She shook her head and laughed a little, though there was nothing like humor in the sound. “Yadira even tried to fit me with some kind of—”

“Jewels,” Malak finished for her. “I know. I chose them myself.”

“It’s ridiculous.” She threw the words at him like an accusation. As if it should have been a body blow that knocked him back a few feet, at the very least. “I don’t know what you want. I know what I look like. I know exactly who I am.”

“Then you had better tell me what you think that is. Because I’m afraid I am at a loss.”

“You don’t have to humiliate me,” Shona whispered, and that, then, was the body blow. Malak was surprised he stood his ground. “I’m here, aren’t I? You might think I scowl too much, but I haven’t tried to escape, have I? I haven’t tried to turn Miles against you. I haven’t kept him from you. I haven’t even argued with the way you’ve decided his time here should be spent. Even before you brought us here I agreed that you could see him. Isn’t that enough? Why do you have to humble me as well?”

Her voice cracked and something inside Malak did the same. He took a step toward her and she moved away, but not with her usual grace. It was as if she stumbled, though she didn’t trip. She simply moved, jerkily, over to the bench in front of the nearest fountain and sat there.