Page 49 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

“I have to be a king, Shona. I cannot be...this.”

That last word came out raw. As if it was ripped from deep inside him. As if it was a rib he’d torn from his own chest.

And then it was as if the dam broke. He could no more keep the words inside than he could take his hands off her or step away. And he tried. He tried but failed to do anything but keep her close.

“I think of nothing but you,” he told her, and he didn’t know if he shouted or whispered. He couldn’t hear a thing past the roaring in his ears. “You haunt my dreams. You’re in my head wherever I go. This is madness.”

He expected her to step away then; to fight him, because that was what she did. That was what they did.

But instead, incredibly, she smiled.

And it felt like sunlight, there in the middle of a dark desert night.

“It’s not madness,” Shona told him. “It’s love.”

“Love is not this red, fanged thing,” he growled at her. “Love is not dirty and wild and ravenous. It cannot be this full, this comprehensive, this—”

“This perfect?” she asked, still smiling. Shona shifted then, pushing herself up on her toes and balancing herself against his chest, her face tipped to his. “I hate to break it to you, my favorite little king, but all of that—all of this—is love.”

He felt as if something roared in him then, something animal and intense. On some level, he was astounded that the walls of the castle didn’t crumble where they stood, but they stayed tall and strong, and so did Shona, gazing back at him with water on her face and trust in her gaze.

Malak wanted nothing more than to earn that trust, no matter if it took him the rest of his life.

“I don’t know why you think this could possibly work,” he said, but he was gathering her close, as if his body knew things he was afraid to look at directly. “When all that has ever happened here is disaster.”

“Because it has to work. Because there is no alternative.”

Shona’s smile went wicked, but it was the most beautiful thing Malak had ever seen. It lodged deep in his heart, where, he understood at last, she had been since the day he’d seen her draped in gold in a hotel bar so long ago.

Where she would always be, for the rest of their lives.

“Haven’t you heard?” she asked, there against his mouth, fit tight against him as if she’d been made for him. Malak knew she had. “I am always right. After all, I am the queen of Khalia.”