dream of his family for generations. She was the throne of Alakkul. She was his destiny taking shape, finally, after so many years spent preparing for it.
She was the only woman he had ever loved. His queen. His.
Which meant he could wait a little bit longer before taking her, though he longed to do it now with every inch of his body, the want of her so fierce, so total, there was a long moment he was not at all certain he could let go of her.
She would be his queen.
She made a soft sound of distress when he tore his mouth from hers, and set her away from him. Her silver-blue eyes were wide and dark, her mouth damp and slightly swollen from his kisses. He felt a sharp surge of possessiveness, of desire. He let his hands rest on her shoulders for a moment, then dragged his thumb over her full lower lip, smiling when she shuddered her response.
“Not here,” he said, though it was more difficult than it should have been. “Not now.”
She blinked, and he could see when she understood him. Color flooded her face, staining her cheeks as she disentangled herself from him.
“You are getting ahead of yourself,” she snapped at him, in what he imagined she intended to be quelling tones, and might have been, were she not still breathless.
His smile deepened, and he let his hand drop to her breasts, where her nipples stood out, proud and taut, against the tissue-thin fabric of her shirt. He traced one hard peak with the pad of his finger.
“Am I?” he asked lazily.
“You are a pig!” she hissed, rearing back from him, putting space between them and climbing to her feet.
Adel let her go. Temper made her coloring that much more dramatic, and in any case, he had tasted the sweet honey of her desire. He could see the way she trembled, the way her eyes kept returning to his mouth. He knew the truth. If she had to hate him, if she had to pretend—well, he knew what her body wanted, what it needed. It would betray her easily enough.
“Calm yourself,” he suggested mildly.
She looked murderous for a moment. He heard her sharp intake of breath, and then, stiffly, she gathered herself, her flowing dark curls like a curtain around her slender shoulders. He watched her spine straighten. She stood near the line of windows, and looked away from him for a moment. Then another. Biting her tongue, he had no doubt.
“I will not rut with my future queen here,” he told her when she turned toward him again, her gaze shuttered, as if she could hide from him. “On a plane, God knows where. You deserve greater respect from me than that.”
“How interesting,” she said, her voice sharp. “Respect seems an awful lot like control.”
“I am sorry to disabuse you of your deep-held fantasies,” he said softly, “but the truth is that I do not wish for you to be my puppet, dancing on a string or otherwise. I want you to be my wife. My queen.” He smiled slightly. “The dancing is purely optional.”
“And what about what I want?” Her voice was strained. Stark. He did not think this was defiance—he thought this was something else, perhaps even the thing that haunted her, making her eyes too big in her face, her skin too pale. Would she tell him what it was? Would she learn to trust him?
He wanted her to do so more than he wanted to admit.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, his voice hushed, as he struggled with urges inside of him he could not entirely understand. “If I can give it to you, I will.”
“Perhaps I wish to rut with you, right here and right now,” she said, her eyes meeting his boldly. He could not help but harden even further at that—almost to the point of pain—as he imagined her astride him, beneath him, her lush mouth fastened to his, her softness spread out before him. “Why do you get to make the decisions? Am I to be your queen or your slave?”
He could think of several answers to that question, but chose to take the query seriously.
“We will rule together,” he said. “As tradition requires.”
“What does ‘together’ mean to an Alakkulian male, I wonder?” she mused, her eyes narrowed. “I somehow doubt it means the same thing to you as it does to me. What if we wish to rule differently? What if you are wrong?