he said with a certain dignity, a quiet insistence. “From the first moment I saw you, when you were little more than a girl. I have loved you my whole life. Nothing has changed that. Nothing could.”
Oh, how her treacherous heart yearned to believe him! But she knew him—more than she wanted to, and better than she should. She knew his ruthlessness, his focus. In bed and in his pursuit of whatever else he wanted. Look at how quickly he had turned her from defiance to purring contentment in his arms! Look at the way her body warmed for him even now!
“You will say anything,” she said, appalled to hear the catch in her voice, but unable to stop it, much less the hot tears that followed. “Do anything. Do you think I don’t know that? You told me so yourself. This is who you are. The man who cannot compromise. The man who is not modern.”
“Lara—”
“I cannot do this again!” she cried, and there was nothing held back anymore, nothing hidden. She looked at him and she saw all the betrayals and disappointments of her youth. All the times she’d known, somehow, that Marlena was not telling her the truth. All the lonely days and nights spent waiting for Azat to come and claim her, to let her know she was worth something to him. Worth fighting for.
“There is no again,” Adel said fiercely. “There is only you. Me. This child. I cannot change the circumstances that have brought us here, Lara, but how can you doubt—”
“I won’t do it,” she threw at him. “I won’t subject my own child to this endless tug of war, this game with no end. I will not have this baby grow up wondering what she’s worth, and why, and have her squabbled over like a piece of meat in the market. Not this child!”
“This child will be loved,” he said, in that wild voice, low and throbbing. Uncontrolled. “Celebrated and adored.”
“Yes, far away from thrones and politics. And you.”
The silence seemed to hum between them. Lara was aware, suddenly, of the rain beating against the windows, and her own tears wet on her cheeks. She dashed at them with her fists, her breathing too fast, too hard. And all the while, Adel gazed at her, his beautiful, hard face open in a way it had never been before—shattered, a small voice inside of her whispered.
As if she’d destroyed him. As if she—or anyone—could have that power.
She wanted to turn away, but she could not make herself do it. She wanted to go to him, to press her lips against the uncompromising lines of his jaw, his brow. She did not do that, either. Could not let herself.
“I told you I loved you,” he said, as if from a great distance. “I have never loved anyone else in my life. Only you. Always you.”
“Prove it,” she heard herself say—harsh and fast. Before she could think better of it, or change her mind. “Let me go.”
She thought the bleakness in his eyes might have killed her right there, on the spot. She felt it pierce her heart, and shoot like fire through her veins, making her stomach lurch. She gasped for breath.
But Adel merely bowed his head slightly, as if the anguish she could see in his face was nothing at all.
“If that is what you want,” he said, his voice the barest thread of sound, and yet it still seemed like a lash against her flesh. “Then it is yours.”
And then Lara watched him turn and walk out of the hotel door, leaving her, just as she’d claimed she’d wanted.
So why, when the door closed behind him and the room was empty of everything save the rain against the windows, did she feel as if part of her had just died?
CHAPTER NINE
SHE walked back into the palace like a warrior, proud and strong, and Adel felt his heart stop in his chest.
Then begin to beat, hard. Something inside of him, granite and cold, began to ease as she stalked across the great marble floor of what had once been the throne room and was now the antechamber to his office.
“I did not expect to see you again,” he said, standing in the doorway between the two rooms, his arms folded across his chest. It had been two days. He knew, intellectually, that those forty-eight hours had been no longer than any other set of forty-eight hours, but it had not felt that way.