“And if the empress or her ministers call on you?”
Ariq’s jaw clenched. Missing
that
opportunity would be a loss.
“Send Mara and Cooper,” she said softly. “If Krakentown is under threat, I am certain your brother and your soldiers are containing the danger as best they can and trying to send word. And Blanchett is a fine lieutenant, so if he encountered any troubles I am certain that he is also handling them as best he can. But there is nothing you can do at this moment that Mara and Cooper cannot, and if there
is
anything wrong, you’ll know of it as quickly as they can return. And if they don’t return within two days . . . well, you’ll know to hire an army to take with you instead of flying in blind, as you would be now.”
“I love you,”
he said fiercely from his heart, and though his wife didn’t know the Mongolian he thought she recognized those words by now. “You are everything.”
Her jade eyes shone in the soft light from the hearth lamp. “Does that mean you agree?”
In all but actual deed. “No. I won’t leave you unprotected.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe. No one in Nippon is going to hold me for ransom or care that I’m Archimedes Fox’s sister. And it’s safer than the embassy. Tatsukawa and Ghazan Bator wouldn’t dare abduct me here. Not when such an action would confirm every claim you’re making against them.”
His wife spoke true, but that wasn’t what concerned Ariq. “I’m not thinking of them.”
“Then who—”
Click.
He couldn’t have timed it better. Ariq crossed his arms over his chest and waited. She narrowed her eyes, not at all flustered by his clear victory, and suddenly he recalled the night she’d come to his home to negotiate her passage to the smugglers’ dens, and the night he’d gone to her chambers at the embassy to hear the truth about who she was. Both times, she’d had her arguments prepared. She did this time, too. Because she’d already anticipated his path.
He hadn’t anticipated hers.
But he realized now, beyond a doubt—Mara and Cooper were already gone. After Ariq had told Cooper that no word had come from Krakentown, they’d probably waited until he’d entered these chambers, then left on the same airship that had brought him here.
And Zenobia was very well named.
“My fox of a wife,” he said softly. “It is custom among my people that the husband makes all important decisions for his family.”
Her green eyes sparked with fire. “And among my people, the husbands nod along when the women speak.”
“Is that so?”
“It
should
be.” Her teeth briefly caught her lower lip before she added quietly, “I don’t mean to take the decision away from you. It’s your town. They’re your people. I only wished to avoid wasting hours debating whether I would be safe enough here—hours that they could spend traveling, instead. You know this is the most sensible course . . . and if it isn’t, you can call them back. They will be in sight of the tower for at least another thirty minutes. You only have to go to the western terrace and flash a lantern three times.”
Ariq didn’t move. “So you have tactics that you will use against me, as well.”
This time, by withholding information.
“Only some. I just wanted to persuade you first. I’d have told you what I’d done before they flew out of reach.” Her cheeks had flushed. “I could have distracted you in bed and waited until it was too late. But I would never use that tactic against you.”
Because it was too akin to Ariq using his confession of love to batter her defenses, he realized. And she was right. That would have hurt him.
This only inspired a small amount of anger and a mountain of admiration.
He contained the anger. “In the future, we should toss away custom and make these decisions together.”
His chest tightened as he watched her hope flare again. This time no fear followed it. A tremulous smile appeared, instead.
“And if we can’t agree?”
“Then we use whatever strategy we can to persuade each other. No rules, but for one: We both remove our clothes first.”
Her smile became a laugh. “That is acceptable.”
It was. And it would be no hardship. Raised first in the royal palace, then among rebels, Ariq had been taught to honor the customs of his ancestors and the most honorable khagans—but in all of the Golden Empire, there was not just one set of customs. The empire encompassed too many people, and governors often adopted the manners common to the territories in which they lived.
By building his town, Ariq had essentially established a new territory. He could create new customs, as well.
“How did you persuade the Coopers?” Although the mercenaries were in her employ, Ariq knew they wouldn’t have left unless she’d convinced them, too.
“It was all the same argument. This tower is safer than the embassy is, and no one will kidnap me here.” She shrugged and looked to the hearth. “Will you eat?”
“Not yet. If you’re hungry, start.”
“I’ll wait.” Her gaze pierced him. “What can’t you put aside?”
He glanced pointedly at the clockwork horse. “The imperial guard came today and put that in our chambers, yet Mara and Cooper still agreed to leave?”
“Oh. Well. I just pointed out that
if
Lady Nagamochi and her soldiers returned, Mara and Cooper couldn’t protect me, anyway. The guards have more weapons and we would be far outnumbered.” She glanced up at him through her lashes. “Even you could probably not stand against them.”
Now she teased him. But there was likely some truth to what she’d said—and the Coopers must have seen it. Against the imperial guard, they would have little defense. Just as almost all of western Australia would have little defense if the empress decided to destroy them.
Which meant any danger the empress posed here was part of the same battle Ariq was already fighting. The same battle he had to win before a single shot was fired or sword was drawn. Because if it reached that point, he’d have already lost.
So Ariq forced it aside for now and looked at his wife. There was still another battle to win. “If the imperial guard ambushed us, I wouldn’t try to stand against them. It isn’t the custom of my people.”
Her eyebrows arched and she reached up, tugging a pin from her hair. “No?”
In the time that it took for her to lay the pin on the table between them, his cock hardened to burning stone. Ariq dragged his gaze from the pin to her face.
“I’d flee and leave you behind, because you would only slow my escape. Then I would return when I had enough strength behind me to destroy them and rescue you.”
She laughed and laid another pin beside the first, a soft
tic
of steel against wood. “And that is the custom? To abandon your wives?”
“Not custom,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t be condemned for it. Even Chinghis Khan did the same.”
“Truly?”
Slowly, Ariq nodded. “They didn’t have enough horses. Börte was left behind because he knew his enemies wouldn’t kill her as they would have killed him. In those days, it was custom to enslave captives.”
Her amusement had died. “But enslavement is not all that a woman has to fear when she’s captured.”
“No,” he said softly. And was not all that Börte had suffered. She’d given birth to their first son not long after her return. Seven centuries later, the argument over lineage still created small factions within the empire. The histories claimed there had been no question of paternity, that Jochi had been Chinghis Khan’s son, but those were only histories—and written by men who’d had reason to make that claim, beginning with Jochi’s son Batu, who had been both khagan and the greatest general the Golden Empire had known.
“What happened to her?”
“He rescued her months later, then went on to conquer the world. She became empress of it, and her children its rulers.”
“Months,” Zenobia echoed.
“Yes.”
“I suppose it’s sensible,” she said, but the set of her jaw told Ariq that she didn’t care if it was. “If they had been caught together, he would be dead and she would still be enslaved, but with no hope of rescue.”
“Any sensible man would do the same,” Ariq said.
She stared at him, a glassy sheen shimmering in her eyes. “You are not sensible at
all
.”
“I’m not,” he agreed.
“Ghazan Bator thought you would be. On the ironship, he thought you would . . . do the . . .” Her breath shuddered. “He thought you would do the same. Leave me behind. Because it
would
have been sensible. And who could have blamed you? Even I wouldn’t have. But you came anyway.”
“Yes.”
Her hair unpinned and tumbling over her shoulder, she bowed her head. Tears slipped from beneath her lowered lashes and glittered in the lamplight.
Ariq’s chest constricted. He shoved the table aside but she was already crossing the distance on her knees and reaching for him, her hands framing his face and her eyes shining. He lifted her against him, sitting back on his heels as she straddled his hips, her feet braced on the floor and her knees tucked alongside his ribs.
Her ink-stained fingers stroked his cheeks. “You came for me,” she whispered again, her gaze searching his, filled with something more than hope this time.
He always would come. But his throat closed like a fist, and he couldn’t reply.
“You’ll never let me go, will you?” she said and softly kissed him, hesitantly, as if she had never kissed him before. Her words whispered over his lips. “When you hold me, I never have to fear that you’ll fall out from beneath me.”
He could only manage a rough
“No.”
A sobbing breath burst from her in response. Her fingers pushed into his hair and she tasted him fully this time, her mouth claiming his. Hot, carnal, she kissed him as if she might never get enough. Ariq wouldn’t. Heart pounding, he gripped her hips and pulled her tighter against his aching erection. She moaned into his mouth. Her fingernails dug into his scalp, the sweetest pain. Then her head fell back, and he licked the length of her throat before snagging the collar of her robe in his teeth and dragging it over her shoulder, baring her skin. She arched her back and her exposed nipple pouted up at him, taut and aroused. His hunger surged. He needed to taste, needed to hear her cry out his name.
Click.
Ariq reared back. That rutting—
“No.” When the device had sounded, Zenobia had deflated against him, her forehead against his shoulder. Now with a single word she drew his gaze from the device to meet hers. Eyes bright, her skin flushed, she leaned in and nipped his lower lip. Her hands slid down his shoulders. With a playful flick, she unclipped the buckle of his tunic. “Let them see how strong you are.”
He didn’t care if they knew. “I don’t want them to see you.”
“Then they won’t.” She pulled the edge of her robe up over her shoulder, then trailed her hands down the front of his chest. “They won’t see anything. Only the Kraken King, sheathing his weapon and making me scream. Oh, they’ll tremble.”
She made him laugh, but he would be the one trembling if she continued. His breath hissed as her fingers worked the ties of his trousers, fabric tugging against his engorged cock.
Zenobia grinned against his mouth. “They’ll know better than to make an enemy of you when they see how ruthless you can be. How you make me beg but still show no mercy.”
May the blue heavens help him. Her warm grip closed around his shaft and he couldn’t stop the primal jerk of his hips. Groaning, Ariq stilled. He would
not
thrust mindlessly into his wife’s hand. She was determined to play with him and he would let her.
His will was steel. His body was hers.
Her tongue slicked over his lower lip before she rose against him. Her hands fumbled between them, rustling silk and linen. Baring herself.
Ariq gritted his teeth in agonized pleasure as scalding wetness surrounded the head of his cock. So tight, her snug channel clasped his throbbing flesh, as if pulling him in.
“You should be rough with me,” she said breathlessly. Clinging to his shoulders, she swiveled her hips and slowly drove him deeper. “Let them see you . . . hold me down—
oh, God
—and take what you want, until I can’t, I can’t take any more—
Ariq
.”
His shaft buried inside her, she threw her head back and keened his name. His control frayed.
With a ravenous growl, Ariq fisted his hand in her hair and captured her panting lips.
His wife.
He couldn’t love her any more than he did.
But he would. He knew he would.
And that was what the Empress’s Eyes would see. His need. His desperation. His heart.
Ariq didn’t want to share it with anyone but Zenobia.
Carrying her with him, he surged to his feet. She gasped against his mouth, then moaned as his first step pushed his cock deeper. Her thighs tensed around his waist, and he almost dropped to his knees when she began to ride him, pumping shallowly as he walked. Tried to walk. Her teeth sank into his shoulder. He staggered past the screen.