his tone. But why should he apologize? He’d won. “But should you wish for anything else, it is yours.”
“Except my freedom,” she said with more bitterness than she’d intended. “My life.”
“Except that,” he agreed, his voice moving from that exotic steel to a softer velvet.
He shocked her then by reaching over and taking her hand in his far bigger one, holding it between his palms.
Lara jumped, a shudder working through her body, as she stared at the place they were connected, her fingers curling toward his. She felt herself blush, hard, the heat prickling over her and casting her in a hot, breathless red.
“Is it so terrible?” he asked softly, very nearly amused, his voice a caress in the stillness of the car’s plush interior. “I am not a bad man.”
“You’ll understand if I choose to reserve judgment on that,” she said in a voice that sounded so much stronger, so much crisper, than she felt—and yet she did not pull her hand away from his. “Given that you are currently blackmailing me into marrying you, as if we are in some gothic novel.”
“You intrigue me, Princess,” he said, his voice insinuating itself in places it should not have been able to reach. Heat moved between them, or she simply burned, and she could not pretend that she was not at least partly as motivated by that as she was by her concern for the rest of it. What did that make her?
“That sounds like a fantastic basis for a marriage,” she managed to say. “You are intrigued, I am forced into it against my will, and the fate of my mother and all the citizens of Alakkul hangs in the balance. How delightful.”
“Ah,” he said in a voice that made her think of much darker delights, skin against skin, long, hot nights, all those things she’d long imagined with him but thought would never come to pass, “but will is a delicate thing, is it not?”
He lifted her hand to his mouth. Trapped, captivated— appalled, she told herself!—she only watched. As he turned her hand in his. As he brought her palm closer to the hard line of his full lips. As his thunderstorm eyes met hers, electric, demanding.
And as he kissed the center of her palm, sending a lightning bolt of impossible desire directly into her core.
CHAPTER THREE
LARA snatched her hand back, jumping in her seat as if he’d bitten her. And then she felt herself melt into a wild heat, imagining what it might be like if he did exactly that.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, horrified at herself, curling the palm he’d tasted into a fist and shoving it into her lap. Would she fall for him so easily, so quickly? After twelve years and far too much water under the bridge? “You can’t—you can’t possibly—”
“We are to be married,” he said, leaning back in his seat, his gray eyes gleaming silver now, his hard mouth allowing the smallest curve. “What do you think I’m doing?”
She could not think at all—that was the problem! Her mind was a loud, buzzing blank, like static, and it was all too much to take. Adel’s unexpected appearance in the parking lot. The threats, the compulsion. The news of her father, which she could still hardly bear to think about, could still barely bring herself to accept as real. Her own capitulation that had led to her presence in this car. And it was his fault! She could not seem to form a single coherent thought, save that. He had done this. Lara was perfectly clear about the fact that Adel Qaderi was capable of anything. It was just as her mother had always said—Alakkulian men could not be trusted.
Hadn’t he just proved that? What decent, honorable man would behave as he had done, under these insane circumstances?
Her own pounding need, her own desire—Lara could not let herself consider.
“How can you possibly imagine that I would welcome your advances?” she hissed at him. “I will never—”
“Never is a very long time,” he said, with a soft laugh, as if she delighted him. “Be careful how you use the word. It might come to haunt you.”
Suddenly, the future she could not escape yawned open in front of her, a deep, black hole. It was one thing to offer to make a sacrifice, knowing it was the right thing—the only thing—to do. But how was she meant to survive this? The day-to-day, moment-to-moment reality of being in this man’s possession? Being a