whatever it was the ladies wore in a place like this. But she wouldn’t have minded a shower and some conditioner.
Still, he’d said he had his questions and Anya didn’t know what would happen if she refused. Would it be straight back into the dungeon with her?
“Tell me how you came to be in my country,” he invited her, though she felt the truth of that invitation impress itself against her spine as the order it was. “In the middle of a minor revolution.”
“Minor?”
The Sheikh did something with his chin that she might have called a shrug, had he been a lesser man. “Loss of life was minimal. My brother anticipated a quiet coup and was surprised when that was not what he got. He lives on in prison, an emblem to all of his own bad decisions and my mercy. Despite his best efforts, the country did not descend into chaos.”
Anya didn’t have a brother, but doubted she would sound so remote about a coup attempt if she did. “I guess you must not have been out there in the thick of it.”
His lips thinned. “You are mistaken.”
Anya blinked at that, and found herself clearing her throat. Unnecessarily. And more because of that storm in her than anything in her throat. A storm that wound around and around, then shifted into more of that melting that should have horrified her.
She told herself it was shock. This was all shock. Her whole body kept reacting to this man and she didn’t like it, but it wasn’t him.
You’re not yourself, she told herself, but it didn’t feel like an excuse.
It felt a lot more like permission.
But Anya had trained in emergency medicine. Then had trained more by flinging herself into the deep end, in and out of some of the worst places on the planet and usually with very little in the way of backup.
She could handle tea with a king, surely.
There were fewer bodily fluids, for one thing.
“Crossing into Alzalam was accidental,” she told him. She’d gone over it a thousand times. Then a thousand more. “We were working in one of the refugee camps over the border. You know that civil war has been going on for a generation.”
“Yes,” the man across from her said quietly. “And it has ever been a horror.”
As if he felt that horror deeply. Personally.
Her heart jolted, then thudded loudly.
“I’m surprised you think so,” she said without thinking, and watched a royal eyebrow arch high on his ferociously stark brow. “That you are even aware of the scope of that kind of disaster from...” She glanced around. “Here.”
“Because I am no different from a tyrant who rules by fear.” His voice was soft, but she did not mistake the threat in it. “We are all the same, we desert men in our ancient kingdoms.”
Her heart and that knot in her chest pulsed in concert, and she thought she might be shaking. God, she hoped she wasn’t shaking, showing her weaknesses, letting him see how easily he intimidated her.
“To be fair,” she managed to say, “my experience of desert kings has pretty much been nothing but death, disease, and dungeons. Not to discount the pastries, of course.”
She was holding her breath again. His gaze was so dark, so merciless, that she was sure that if she dared look away—if she dared look down—she would find he’d made her into some of that filigree that lined his archways. An insubstantial lace, even if carved from bone.
And then, to her astonishment, the most dangerous man she’d ever met, who could lock her up for the rest of her life with a wave of one finger—or worse—
Smiled.
CHAPTER THREE
TAREK HAD NEVER before considered food erotic. It was fuel. It was sometimes a necessary evil. It could, upon occasion, be a form of communion.
But watching the doctor eat with abandon, as if every bite she put in her mouth was a new, sensual delight, was a revelation. She had him hard and ready. Intensely focused on her and the unbridled passion she displayed as if she was performing her joy for him alone.
He could not recall ever experiencing anything quite like it.
And certainly not because of a captive still in her prison attire.
Still, Tarek smiled at her as if none of this was happening. He reminded himself—perhaps a bit sternly—that honey attracted more bees than vinegar. And that even a king could allow himself to act sweet if it suited him. It helped that his plan of how to handle