Heir to a Desert Legacy - By Maisey Yates Page 0,68

for her. The only thing. They would crush her, even as they were crushing him.

She did turn then. “But you took mine. How could I do anything less?”

“You will never have to know.”

She nodded once, then walked out of the room. He watched the place where she had been, the man inside of him clawing at his chest, begging to be let out. Begging to be allowed to go after her.

And the darkness swallowed him whole.

* * *

Chloe’s tears fell onto her whiteboard, running down the surface, smudging her equation. She didn’t care. Not then. There was no reasoning her way out of this.

She’d been so sure that she wasn’t even trying. That she was feeling, and not reasoning, but that was a lie. She’d been trying to reason out Sayid, to make him make sense in her mind, to make his problems something that she could solve so that she could have him to herself.

So that she could make him love her.

She blinked, trying to stop a fresh onslaught of tears from falling. She’d been trying to make him palatable. Make him the man she wished he could be, rather than the man that he was.

That was something her mother would do. It was something she’d always done. Put blind spots over her father’s sins, seeing only the good, singing his praises with a split lip that had been injured at his hand.

So she’d been afraid to do the same. Afraid to simply want Sayid as he was.

But there was a difference between Sayid and her father. Her father turned his anger outward, hurting everyone around him, taking nothing on himself.

While Sayid turned it inward, and let it burn him alive.

She’d meant to save him. Meant to show him what he could have. What they could have.

You wanted to show him the future you wanted for him.

That stopped her cold, made her heart freeze. “Oh...Sayid,” she whispered.

She had done to him what people had done to him all of his life. She’d tried to make him her ideal. Had tried to tell him what he should want, had tried to force him to want what she wanted.

That wasn’t love. That was selfishness. Possessiveness. She’d tried to own him, as she’d done their first night together, his hands bound, his body at her mercy.

She’d tried to make him belong to her, to be the man that she needed. And she hadn’t tried, not truly, to be the woman that he needed. Because she’d ignored everything he’d said he felt, dismissed it as a lie. Had told him it didn’t have to be that way and that he could have other things, without ever truly listening to what he did want.

She’d been no better than the others who’d tried to trap him. Who’d tried to manipulate him. As his uncle had done, stealing the woman he loved, robbing him of his child. His future. So that he could harness Sayid.

And she’d tried to do the same. Tried to tame him, make him a man she could handle.

She wiped her hand over everything on her whiteboard, smearing it past the point of being readable, and forked her fingers through her hair. No wonder he had turned her away. She’d made herself think she was making an offer, when all she was making was demands.

She turned and walked out of her makeshift study and ran down the halls, toward Sayid’s office.

“Curse this massive castle,” she panted as she took the second flight of stairs on her way to his personal quarters.

She ran down the long corridor and wrenched the door open. The room was empty. She turned around, panic clawing at her, before she started out of the room, down the hall. She ran into one of Sayid’s men.

“Where is the sheikh?” she asked, knowing she sounded as shaky and emotional as she felt, not caring.

“The sheikh left. He went back to the capital city.”

“When?”

“A couple of hours ago.”

“How?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Did he take a helicopter? Did he walk? Magic carpet?”

“The helicopter I believe.”

She swore and turned back for his office. She walked over to his phone and punched the button that would put her through to the palace. It was answered by one of the office staff.

“Is Sheikh Sayid in?”

“Who is calling?”

“His wife,” she said.

“I’m sorry, sheikha, but he isn’t in.”

She slammed the phone down and planted her palms on the desk, despair covering her like a blanket. And then she saw a name on the speed dial that sent prickles over her skin.

She