A Royal Engagement: The Storm Within\The Reluctant Queen (14 page)

T
HE
summer wore on as the country settled into its new era, with its new rulers fully ensconced upon the throne, and Adel could not understand why—having finally achieved all he'd ever wanted—the only thing he seemed to think about was his wife.

Not the warring factions that forever threatened to sink the government. Not the leftover yet ever-thorny issues from the various world powers that had tried to take the strategically located Alakkulian Valley in their time. Not the need to protect and support the economy, nor the tendency of some citizens to live as if it were still the tenth century. It was not that he did not care about all of these things. It was just that his focus was Lara. Always Lara.

The way her skin felt against his, naked and soft, hot and delicious. The way her head tipped back in ecstasy, showing the long, elegant line of her neck as she cried out his name. The way her toned, athletic legs wrapped so tightly around his hips. The way she would smile at him, so dreamily, in those stolen moments after they had both reached heaven, her eyes that silver-blue that made his chest expand and ache.

He was enchanted by her, this woman he had loved for so much of his life, and the reality of her far exceeded his fantasies.

It wasn't just the perfection of her body. He even enjoyed her when she argued with him—which was, he reflected as
he took in the cross expression she wore as he entered their private breakfast room in the palace—most of the time.

“I don't see the point of being called a queen when all I do is sit around the palace, staring out of windows and boring myself to death,” she threw at him with no preamble, her fingers picking at the pastry before her.

“Good morning to you, too,” he murmured, settling himself in his usual place opposite her while the servants bustled around him, pouring out his morning coffee and presenting him with a stack of papers for his review.

She ignored him. “I am used to working,” she said. “
Doing
something, not sitting around like an ornament attached to your lapel!”

“Then do something,” he suggested, picking up his coffee and eyeing her. She made his heart swell with what he could only describe as gladness. Most women cowered before him, or fell all over themselves in an attempt to please him. Never this one. She was bold. Brash. Unafraid. “You are the Queen. You can do as you like.”

“Perhaps I wish to rule, as you do,” she said, with a sideways glance at him, and he had a sudden image of what it might be like with this woman at his side forever, on the throne and in his bed—this warrior queen he had never expected would grow to be so strong. And yet he loved it. Her.

He shrugged. “You have an affinity for tedious meetings, day after day, with puffed-up, pompous men?” he asked mildly. Not his Lara, he thought. She would shred them with her sharp tongue, and he would laugh in admiration, and whole decades of careful diplomacy would go up in smoke. “Men who will insult you and berate you, who you cannot treat as you would like to do? This calls to you?”

She let out a sigh. “No,” she said after a long moment. “Not really.”

“Because, Princess, though your charms are many indeed, I do not count among them a particular gift for the diplomatic
arts.” He smiled when her gaze sharpened on his. “This is not a flaw. You are too honest for politics. One of us should be.”

He could feel the tension rise between them then, that tautening of the air, that narrowing of focus until he knew nothing but her face. The swell of her lips. The shine of temper in her gaze. The sweep and fall of her black curls.

He knew her so well now. He could see the way the color washed across her face, and knew it would be the same all over her body. She would pinken as her body readied itself for him. Were he to reach for her under the table, he would find her hot and wet beneath his hands. He felt himself harden. He could not seem to get enough of her, no matter how often they sated each other. No matter how easily she came apart in his hands.

“I am no longer a princess,” she said, her voice husky, a gleam of awareness in her magnificent eyes. “And you never use my name.”

“I use your name,” he contradicted her, smiling slightly, “in certain circumstances.” He did not have to spell those circumstances out. Her flush deepened, as they both remembered the last time he'd called out her name, sometime before the dawn, when he'd been so deep inside of her he would have been happy to die there. She made him feel like a man, he realized. Not the soldier he had been, not the King he was now, but a man.

“There is more to life than sex,” she said, and he saw a darkness pass through her eyes—some kind of shadow. But she blinked, and it was gone.

“Apparently not for you,” he said lazily. “Apparently, you are bored with everything that happens outside our bed. One solution would be to make sure you never leave it.”

“Promises, promises,” she chided him, a gleam in her eyes. “Who would run the country if we spent all our time in bed?”

 

The man was insatiable, Lara thought.

And what was so astonishing was that she, who had always enjoyed the company of men but had certainly never felt
compelled
by them, was too.

He had her in the suites of hotels where they stayed while on royal engagements, her back up against the wall, his hand and mouth busy beneath her skirts. He seduced her on a speedboat as they made their way to one of the more remote clans, only accessible across a system of mountain lakes. There was no place he did not look at her with that dark passion, that promise, alive in his gray eyes. And no place where she did not immediately respond, no matter how inappropriate it might be.

It was lust, she told herself. And unexpected chemistry.

And she was no better.

She climbed astride him in the backseat of the plush limousine as the motorcade wove through the twisting streets of the capital city, rocking them both into bliss before a command appearance at the city opera. She had taken it upon herself to explore him in every room she could discover in the old castle—behind doors, on ancient chairs, under the fierce and disapproving glares of her ancestors high above in their glowering state portraits.

It was only lust, she thought. And lust was fine. Lust was allowed. Lust would fade. Though she could not help but note, every now and again as the summer wore on, that the more she touched him, the more she tasted him, the less she worried about the ways in which she might have lost herself in this strange little fairy-tale.

She was not an idiot. She did not, in truth, wish to govern, and doubted she would be any good at it, anyway. She would have no idea how one even went about it. Lara had no particular interest in politics, but she could, she realized, use the position she found herself in for good. There was no excuse for lying about a
castle
, of all places, feeling bored and put
upon. How she would have slapped herself for even thinking such a thing, once upon a time, when her paycheck had had to last far too long and cover books and tuition as well as pay her rent! Appalled at herself, Lara began to involve herself in charity work—to get a sense of what her people, her subjects, her countrymen really needed.

And what she needed, too, if she was to stay here. If she was really to do this long-term. She pretended it was a lifestyle decision she was mulling over, like when she'd decided to stay in Colorado after college and make her life in Denver. She pretended it was a decision about a
location
, and about a
job.

After all, fairy-tales weren't real. Not even this one.

“You are just like your father, may he rest in peace,” an old woman told her as Lara toured one of the local hospitals, visiting the helpless and the needy, talking to the overworked staff.
I can help these people,
she had been thinking just moments before, as she'd tried to smile at a little girl gone bald from the cancer treatments, clearly the old woman's grandchild.
Maybe that's why I'm here.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked, fighting to keep her smile in place as the old woman held on to her hands. It was not the physical contact she minded, she realized, but that wild intensity in the woman's eyes.

“He was a good man,” the woman said, in the dialect of the upper mountains. “And a great king. I give thanks every day that you have returned to us, to bless us and help us prosper as your family has done for generations, no thanks to that evil woman who stole you away in the first place!”

And what could Lara say? It was hardly the place to argue—particularly with the grandmother of a sick child. And why did it seem as if the part of her that had defended Marlena for so long was simply…tired?

“Thank you,” she said, fighting to keep her expression serene. “I hope I can live up to his memory.”

Later that night, Lara met Adel at the start of a great ball to honor a dignitary whose name she had yet to commit to memory as she knew she should. The palace was alive with lights and Alakkul's most glamorous people were decked out in their finest clothes, all of it shining and sparkling. The palace gardens had been converted to a kind of wonderland for the evening, complete with a dance floor and little tables clustered in and around the flowering trees and geometrically shaped shrubberies. It was the end of August already. The twilight brought with it hints of the coming fall, the air was cool, and Lara felt a restlessness shiver through her, making her feel as if her skin was two sizes too small.

“You are fidgeting,” Adel told her without altering his calm expression as they stood side by side to receive their guests. She did not have to look at him to know that he looked as he always did—so strong, so capable, his mouthwateringly male form displayed to perfection in the dark suit that clung to his every muscle and made his chest look like some kind of hard, male sculpture. He was mesmerizing. Still.

“It is just as well that you were raised since you were young to rule this place,” she said, not thinking, letting the wildness that rolled inside of her have its way. “I would have made a terrible ruler. Perhaps you knew that. Perhaps my father did, too. Perhaps it is not sexism but practicality that governs you.”

He did not reply. He shot her one of those dark, far-too-calm glances that made her breath catch, and something thick and heavy turn over into a knot in her gut. Then he returned to his duties, the endless greeting and acknowledging of guests, as if she had not spoken at all.

Later, he pulled her out on to the dance floor, and smiled slightly as he gazed down at her. His mouth was softer than usual, that hard line almost welcoming. The band swelled into a waltz as he held her in his arms, his hand in the small of her back seeming to beam heat and comfort directly into
her skin through the silk of her gown, the hand holding hers so warm, so strong.

She did not know why she wanted, suddenly, to weep.

“What is the matter?” he asked in that quiet way of his, and she knew he was continuing the discussion from earlier, that nothing ever truly distracted a man of his focus.

“I do not know,” she said, surprised to hear that she was whispering. She blinked, and tilted her head back to study his face. He only watched her, that boundless patience in his gray eyes—that calm readiness for whatever she might say, whenever she might say it to him.

“There is nothing you can tell me that will tarnish you in my eyes,” he said in a low voice, sweeping her around the dance floor, his eyes on her as if nothing else existed. As if there was only the music, the palace, the low murmurs of the well-heeled guests, like a bubble around them. As if there was only this perfect, tiny jewel of a country, hidden away in remote mountains, beautiful in ways that hurt her soul. In the same way that he did.

And she understood, then, how easy it would be. To simply let go. To let him lead, as he did now, waltzing with the grace and mastery she had come to expect of him no matter what he did, his mouth in that enigmatic near-curve as he gazed down at her. It would be so easy to simply accept this life he'd given her. A country. A crown. And the endless delight of their explosive, uncontainable chemistry.

She need only forget herself. What she knew, who she was. She need only accept that her father was never the villain, but instead the misunderstood hero. She need only learn to think of her selfish, childish mother the way the Alakkulians obviously did—as the evil witch who had so destroyed their king with her string of lovers. The woman who had stolen away their princess. She need only erase all she'd believed to be true about her life, her world,
herself.

And then she could have him, and all those dreams she'd longed for as a teenager would finally come true.

It would be as easy as breathing. As easy as letting him move her about the dance floor with all of his skill and grace. It would be so very, very easy—and she had done most of it already. She had become so concerned with turning herself into a proper queen—because she wanted his approval. She wanted that slow curve of his mouth that was only hers. She wanted the shine in his eyes that meant he was proud of her.

When had that happened? When had his opinion of her become more important to her than her own?

And why didn't that realization horrify her as she knew it ought to do?

“You look as if you have seen a ghost,” Adel said softly, his lips so close to her ear that she shivered, feeling that low murmur in every part of her.

“Sometimes you make me feel as if I am one,” she said, before she knew she meant to speak.

His head reared back slightly, and his eyes narrowed, but the song ended—and their ever-present aides interrupted them, prepared to usher the King to one table and the Queen to another.

“Duty calls,” he murmured, holding on to her hand for a beat, then another, after the music had ended. Calling attention to the fact he had not let her go. “But we will return to this topic, Princess.”