out on one of the palace’s many balconies.
This one was made for comfort. He placed her on one of many low, bright couches, ringed all around with torches, and a canopy far above. There was a thick rug tossed across the ground at her feet and lanterns scattered across the table, making her think of long-ago stories she’d read as a child.
Tarek stood before her, gazing down at her as if she was the spoils of the war he’d fought, and he intended to fully immerse himself in the plunder.
Her entire body reacted to that thought as if she’d been doused in kerosene. She was too hot. She had too many clothes on. She was burning alive.
Looking at him was like a panic attack, except inside out. Anya’s heart pounded. She could feel herself grow far too warm. And she felt a little dizzy, a little unsure.
But what was laced through all of that wasn’t fear.
There was only him.
And how deeply, how wantonly and impossibly, she wanted him.
As she watched, Tarek began to remove those robes of his, casting them aside in a flutter of ivory and gold. He kept going until he stood before her, magnificently naked.
And when he made no move toward her, she felt a moment’s confusion—
But then, as her gaze moved over his body, roped with muscle and impossibly powerful, she found the red, raised scars. One crossed the flat slab of his left pectoral muscle. Another cut deep across his torso, all along one half of the V that marked where his ridged wonder of an abdomen gave way to all the relentless masculinity beneath. Those were the biggest, most shocking scars—but there were more. Smaller ones, crisscrossing here and there.
Anya realized she was holding her breath.
And she thought he realized it too, because with no more than a simmering look, he turned so she could see the ones on his back.
“Your scars,” she whispered.
“They came in the night like the cowards they were,” Tarek told her, slowly turning back to face her. “But let me assure you, their wounds were far greater than mine.”
“Wounds are wounds,” Anya said. And she wondered what lay beneath his. What it must have felt like for him, with his own brother involved in the plot against him. “And the marks we carry on our skin is the least of it, I think.”
“Perhaps.” He inclined his head in that way of his. So arrogant, every inch of him the absolute ruler he was, that she didn’t know whether to scream or launch herself at him. “But what matters is that I won.”
Anya had spent hours with this man by now. And had thought only of herself. Rightly so, maybe, given what had happened to her.
But she thought of his words from earlier. Tell me your secrets, and I will show you my scars. She thought of the fact that he hid them in the first place.
That he clearly had no intention of discussing his feelings, God forbid.
And it occurred to her, in a flash that felt a lot like need, that though he stood before her, the very picture of male arrogance, what he was showing her was vulnerability.
This was how this man, this King who had fought off his enemies and protected his throne and his people with his own hands, showed anything like vulnerability.
Anya understood, then. If she showed him softness, it would insult him. If she cried for the insult done to his beautiful body, she would do nothing but court his temper.
Tarek was not a soft man. And he did not require her tears.
So she responded the only way she could.
She flowed forward, moving from the edge of the cushion where she sat to her knees before him. She tipped her head back to look up at him, catching the harshness of his gaze. Matching it with her own.
Bracing her hands on either side of his hips, Anya took the hard, proud length of him deep into her mouth.
He tasted like rain. A hint of salt, that driving heat, and beneath it, something fresh and bright and male.
She had never tasted anything so good in her life.
Anya sucked him in as far as she could, then wrapped her hand around the base of him to make up for what she couldn’t fit in her mouth.
And then, using her mouth and her hands together and his hard length like steel, she taught herself what it was to live again.
His hands fisted in her hair. Anya thrilled