Heir to a Desert Legacy - By Maisey Yates Page 0,59

me a favor, Sayid,” she said.

“What?” he asked, his voice husky.

“Don’t throw yourself on a bomb anytime soon. You might not care, but I do.”

He didn’t speak for a moment, didn’t move. “Do me a favor, Chloe,” he said finally.

“What?”

“Don’t care. Not about me.”

It was too late for that. “I’ll do my best.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

SAYID HAD NEVER BEEN accused of being reckless. He was a planner, a strategist, and while he took risks, they were always calculated.

But with Chloe, he had been reckless.

He had missed the signs of her innocence, and he was nearly certain it wasn’t because she’d hidden it so carefully. It was simply because he hadn’t wanted to see it. Because what he’d wanted, what he’d needed, was to lose himself in her, to take advantage of the crack she’d put in those self-imposed walls. To allow himself a moment to breathe, unrestricted, unbound.

He’d only been with a virgin once before, and never would have sought one out again. He was the wrong man for such a task.

He had cared about Sura. Had loved her. But he’d been a different man then. A boy, really. Sixteen and, though he’d been affected by his uncle’s child rearing tactics, he was not yet broken. The two of them had shared in first love, their first time together a meeting of hearts, not simply of bodies.

But that boy he’d once been was dead, along with the capability to love as he once had. It had not been his heart that had craved Chloe. He’d used her. Used her as a way for him to break free of his demons. Sure, he’d wrapped it up in giving her control, giving her something she needed, and while he knew it had worked for her, it had been a selfish act in many ways.

One he was actively attempting to regret, but could not. He was also trying to forget her offer in the hall. The offer to be with him, for as long as they both desired.

He wanted it. Wanted it much more than he should.

He raked his fingers through his hair and stared out at the sea from the window of his office. He could hardly recognize himself. He felt like he was in another man’s body. A body that was starting to ache, to tingle, like muscles and nerves long unused were waking up. Were regaining feeling.

It terrified him, how much he wanted it to happen. How much he wanted to stop it.

He threw his mind back. To the beatings Kalid had given him. Beaten him until he had learned to stop screaming. Until he’d found a way to make himself hold the pain in.

To the loss of the one person he’d loved, the tiny life he’d scarcely gotten a chance to love.

That was why he couldn’t feel. Why he must never feel.

He felt like the office walls were curving inward, closing in on him. Like a prison. A gilded prison, one that forced him to hide himself. Only, he was finding little sanctuary within today. Bit by bit, the crown was breaking through his defenses. And Chloe was accelerating the destruction.

He pushed back from his desk and went down the stairs, stripping off the long jacket he was wearing, the one that denoted his rank. He stripped his shirt off, too. Edged in gold, the dark blue symbolizing royalty. He wanted none of it today.

The sun was, as ever, close to the earth in Attar, even as it sunk into the sea, the rays searing his skin, the cool ocean breeze coming behind it to wash away the sting. Sayid walked out onto the beach, looked out at the horizon, endless and open, the gray and green waves rolling back toward the sky in an infinite motion. And still he felt trapped.

He had left the office, stripped off his royal garments and still he felt locked up tight. He would strip off his skin if it were possible. It was suffocating him.

He walked to the rocks that seemed to grow straight from the sand and leaned against the rough surface, the cutting pain in his back a familiar one at least.

It reminded him of being in jail. And it made the suffocation make sense at least.

If he couldn’t make it go away, then maybe he could at least think of the place he’d truly been held captive and apply it to that.

His only other option was to recognize that it was his own body choking the life out of him.

“Sayid?”

He looked