was helpless to resist, no matter how many reasons she had to avoid him and how little she wanted to hear what he might have to say.
But if there was one thing she refused to be, it was helpless.
“Wonderful,” she said, pulling herself back from the brink of disaster. Her tone was acerbic, as much to defend herself against this man as to convince herself he was not getting to her in so many odd, uncomfortable ways. “I’m glad you traveled across the world to tell me all of this. You can consider our absurd betrothal ended.”
“As you wish,” he said again. But he did not move. His gaze seemed to sharpen, as if he was some great predator and she nothing but prey. She fought off an involuntary shiver. “You need only pay me the bride price.”
“The bride price?” she repeated, caught as much by the sudden ferocity in his dark gaze as by the words themselves.
“Your dowry was the throne of Alakkul, Princess,” Adel said quietly, deliberately. “I am afraid that the sum my family paid for you was significant, give or take such things as the exchange rate, the rate of inflation, and so on.”
He named a number that she could not possibly have heard right—a number so astronomically high that it, too, made her laugh. It was as patently absurd as him suddenly appearing in a parking lot and announcing he was going to marry her, just as she’d dreamed when she’d first left Alakkul—and as impossible.
“I have nothing even approaching that amount of money, and never will,” she said flatly. “I am an accountant. I live an entirely normal and ordinary life. That amount of money is a fantasy.”
“Not to the Queen of Alakkul,” he said, and something flared between them, hot and bright, making her breath tangle in her throat, making her ache low in her belly. “Or to me.”
“That is another fantasy, one I have no interest in.”
“I am a compassionate man,” Adel said after a moment, though the expression he wore made her doubt it. “I will release you from your obligations to me, if that is your desire. You need only repay what your mother stole from the palace when she disappeared twelve years ago. It is not so much. A mere nine hundred thousand dollars, and some precious jewels.”
“Nine hundred thousand dollars,” Lara repeated in disbelief. “You must be joking. I don’t have it—and if my mother took it, it is no more than she deserved, after what my father subjected her to!”
Adel merely inclined his head. “I will not argue with you about your mother,” he said. “Nor will I debate your choices with you. They are simple. Marry me, or pay the price.”
He held up an autocratic hand when she started to speak, and she knew deep in her bones that he was every inch a king as well as a warrior. She should hate that—him. And yet her treacherous body, instead of finding him repulsive, yearned.
“There is not much time, Princess,” he said. “I regret the necessity, but you must make your decision. Now.”
CHAPTER TWO
HE APPROVED of the woman she’d become, Adel thought, her fierceness and her attempts at fearlessness, and was not certain why that surprised him.
“Do you accept credit cards?” she asked icily after a moment, her silver-blue eyes glittering in the late-afternoon light, even as she held herself so rigidly, so determinedly still. “If so, I am certain we can work something out.”
Adel only smiled, enjoying her, even under these circumstances. The girl he had never forgotten for a moment had become a woman he wanted to know better. “You are stalling.”
“Of course I am.” She shifted her weight and let the paper sack she carried fall to the ground at her feet. He heard the faint crunch of glass against the pavement, but she only glared at him. “It will take me more than thirty seconds to choose between marriage to a man I hardly know or a lifetime in debt I’ll never pay off. The interest rates alone would kill me! You’ll just have to wait.”
He liked that, too. She was as much the child of the late King Azat, his revered mentor, as she was of the faithless woman who was her mother. Brave. Vibrant. And she would be his wife. His queen, as had been decided so many years ago. The warrior in him appreciated the way she stood so straight, emotion darkening her eyes but not overtaking her, her