A Royal Wedding(42)
“That sounds like a fantastic basis for a marriage,” she managed to say. “You are intrigued, I am forced into it against my will, and the fate of my mother and all the citizens of Alakkul hangs in the balance. How delightful.”
“Ah,” he said in a voice that made her think of much darker delights, skin against skin, long, hot nights, all those things she’d long imagined with him but thought would never come to pass, “but will is a delicate thing, is it not?”
He lifted her hand to his mouth. Trapped, captivated— appalled, she told herself!—she only watched. As he turned her hand in his. As he brought her palm closer to the hard line of his full lips. As his thunderstorm eyes met hers, electric, demanding.
And as he kissed the center of her palm, sending a lightning bolt of impossible desire directly into her core.
CHAPTER THREE
LARA snatched her hand back, jumping in her seat as if he’d bitten her. And then she felt herself melt into a wild heat, imagining what it might be like if he did exactly that.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, horrified at herself, curling the palm he’d tasted into a fist and shoving it into her lap. Would she fall for him so easily, so quickly? After twelve years and far too much water under the bridge? “You can’t—you can’t possibly—”
“We are to be married,” he said, leaning back in his seat, his gray eyes gleaming silver now, his hard mouth allowing the smallest curve. “What do you think I’m doing?”
She could not think at all—that was the problem! Her mind was a loud, buzzing blank, like static, and it was all too much to take. Adel’s unexpected appearance in the parking lot. The threats, the compulsion. The news of her father, which she could still hardly bear to think about, could still barely bring herself to accept as real. Her own capitulation that had led to her presence in this car. And it was his fault! She could not seem to form a single coherent thought, save that. He had done this. Lara was perfectly clear about the fact that Adel Qaderi was capable of anything. It was just as her mother had always said—Alakkulian men could not be trusted.
Hadn’t he just proved that? What decent, honorable man would behave as he had done, under these insane circumstances?
Her own pounding need, her own desire—Lara could not let herself consider.
“How can you possibly imagine that I would welcome your advances?” she hissed at him. “I will never—”
“Never is a very long time,” he said, with a soft laugh, as if she delighted him. “Be careful how you use the word. It might come to haunt you.”
Suddenly, the future she could not escape yawned open in front of her, a deep, black hole. It was one thing to offer to make a sacrifice, knowing it was the right thing—the only thing—to do. But how was she meant to survive this? The day-to-day, moment-to-moment reality of being in this man’s possession? Being a wife? A queen? A lover, a voice inside whispered, and her stomach clenched again.
“Are you so delusional that you truly believe that a woman in my position would ever want you to touch her?” she asked, her voice rasping over everything she could not say, everything she feared—including her own reactions to this man. Especially her reactions. The heat between her legs. The ache in her too-heavy breasts. Her inability to draw a full breath. The car seemed too close around her. He was too close.
“I don’t know about a woman in your position,” he murmured, stretching his arm out along the back of the seat and in so doing, drawing her attention away from her own panic and bringing it to his electric physicality. “That is far too abstract for me. I can only tell you what is concrete.” His hot gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth. His voice lowered. “What I see, what I smell, what I know.”
“That I can barely remember you?” she supplied in desperation, shifting to be sure she avoided even the faintest brush of contact with his arm. “That I want nothing to do with you?”
“That your body wants me, no matter what you might say to the contrary,” he said, seemingly unperturbed by her acidity. He even smiled, as if he could see the way her breasts firmed, her thighs clenched. As if he knew her treacherous body better than she did. As if he understood the potent, wild combination of emotion and arousal that made Lara feel like a stranger to herself.
“You know nothing about me,” she threw out, desperately. “We might as well be complete strangers!”