breath. Her eyes were unreadable when they met his again, dark gray now instead of blue.
“Why ask me at all?” she demanded, her voice strained. “Why pretend that I have a choice to make if I do not?”
He wanted to trace the shape of her delicate cheekbones, the bold line of her nose, the full swell of her lips. He did not understand what he felt then—tenderness? Affection? Need? All of the above at once?
“Here is what I will promise you,” he said abruptly, called somehow to fix the darkness of her expression. “I will honor you and respect you, a claim I do not make to many without cause, but one I made to you twelve years ago. I will not take lightly the sacrifice you are making today. I doubt I am an easy man, but I will try to be fair.”
He saw tears at the back of her eyes, making them shine too bright. But she did not let them fall. He saw the panic, the uncertainty, the fear. But then she swallowed, and let her hands drop to her sides, and he knew it was as much a surrender as a challenge.
He could handle both. He’d been waiting for her for over a decade. For the whole of his life. He was amazed at how much, how deeply and how completely, he wanted to handle her. In every sense of the term.
“Congratulations,” she said bitterly. “You’ve won yourself a completely unwilling queen.”
Adel did not, could not care if she thought she hated him now. He would win her. He had won her years before—and she had already showed him she remembered more than she claimed she did. He would build on those memories, and he would win her all over again. And this time, in the way a man won a woman he meant to keep.
“I will take you any way I can get you,” Adel said now, and extended his hand, keeping the hard, bright triumph that flared inside of him under tight control. She was his. Finally. “Come,” he said. “Our future awaits.”
He saw her pulse go wild in her throat, saw her remarkable eyes widen a fraction. He saw her waver. He saw her legs shake as if she fought against the urge to bolt. Still, he held out his hand, and waited.
She bit her lip, surrendered, and slid her hand into his.
She had no choice.
Everything seemed to burst into speed and color, exploding all around her.
There was the feel of his warm, strong palm, his skin against hers, arrowing deep into her, making her soften and yearn. Just like before. There was his strong, dangerous body too close to hers—so close she imagined she could feel his heat—and the way she wanted to lean into him even as her mind shrieked in denial of everything that was happening. Her body had already decided. Her body had chosen him years ago, and was now exultant at his return. It was her mind that reeled, that was desperate for an out.
But what was her alternative? Her mother jailed? War? How could she possibly live with any of that, knowing she’d had the power to prevent it and had refused?
And she did not doubt that Adel Qaderi was more than capable of the things he’d promised. She could feel his ruthlessness taking her over like an ache in the bones, making it impossible for her to breathe. It was his ruthlessness, she told herself firmly, and nothing more—certainly not that old, demanding heat that only he raised in her. Certainly not that.
Adel raised his hand, and they were suddenly surrounded— by a fleet of hard-mouthed, serious-looking men who spoke in staccato tones into earpieces and herded Lara into a limousine she had not seen idling nearby.
It was only when she was tucked inside the car and it was speeding away, while her head spun wildly, that her eyes fell on the pieces of luggage on the seat opposite her. She recognized them at once. She had last seen them in the hall closet of her apartment.
She stared at them for a moment, her brain refusing to make the obvious and only connection, and then whipped her head around to stare at the man who sat with such devastating confidence beside her.
He only raised his dark brow, and watched her.
He had known she would surrender.
He had planned it.
“Your belongings have been packed up and are being shipped,” he said without the slightest hint of apology in