A Royal Wedding(43)

He leaned forward, and Lara had to force herself not to squeak like a mouse and shrink away from him. But pretending to be strong only left her far too close to him. Close enough to see the faint hint of his beard along his strong jaw. Close enough to find herself mesmerized by that hard mouth she now knew could be devastatingly soft, if he chose. Close enough to smell the faint hint of sandalwood that clung to him, and something else, something male and only his, beneath.

“We are not strangers,” he said, his eyes gleaming pure silver now. “We never were. I am the man who will be your husband, your lover, the father of your children. These things will happen, Princess. Perhaps not today. Perhaps not even soon. But believe me, they will happen.”

“I said I would marry you,” she breathed, locked in his uncompromising gaze, lost in the spell he cast around them. “I can’t do anything else, can I?”

“No.” His eyes seemed to warm, and to warm her, too. “You cannot do anything else.”

“I never said anything about … the rest of it,” she continued, deeply unnerved. She was aware of him—every part of him. The way he looked at her, the heat that seemed to emanate from his tautly muscled form, even the places his gaze touched as it swept over her. She had to force herself to breathe. And then again.

His smile deepened, as if she was precious to him somehow. As if she was more than merely a pawn in his game. But how could that be?

He reached down with the hand he’d laid against the back of their seat and traced a line along her jaw, from temple to lip, until he held her chin in his fingers.

She knew she should jerk away. She told herself hers was the fascination of the fly for the spider, the moth for the flame, and it would be suicidal to pay more attention to the unfamiliar heat and want that scorched her than to her own mind—

But she did not move.

She only watched him. Helpless. Caught. And unable, in that moment, to think of a single reason she should fight him.

“We will work it out, you and I,” he said. Quiet command rang in his voice, through her. “It was foretold when we were children. Never doubt it now.”

“Of course,” she said, aware of his fingers like hot brands against her skin—aware, too, of the rich, wild heat that washed through her because of it. Of how much she had always wanted him, even when she’d believed him to be no more than a dream. “Because you say so. Does the world always align itself with your wishes, according to your commands?”

“Of course,” he said, echoing her, that smile of his lighting up his eyes, broadcasting that calm confidence, that deceptively graceful strength of his. “I am the King.”

The shockingly luxurious private jet hovered somewhere high in the night sky above the Atlantic Ocean, the world shrouded in black on all sides, but Lara could not sleep as she knew she should. She stared blindly out the window as the plane cut through the dark clouds, shivering slightly as reality sank into her like a great weight.

What had she done? How could she possibly have agreed to this?

She had spent her whole life avoiding exactly this—her return to Alakkul. Marlena had spoken of it as if it was the worst possible scenario, the ultimate pit of doom and despair. As if they would die should it happen—or, worse, wish to die. “Azat will hunt us down and drag us back there,” she had told the young Lara again and again. “He will make you one more of his little puppets, who live only to serve him!”

They had taken Marlena’s mother’s maiden name as their surname. No more Princess Lara. No more Your Highness. Marlena had moved them whenever she felt threatened, whenever she had reason to think the King’s goons were drawing near. Always, King Azat was the boogeyman, the monster they sought to avoid. Lara wasn’t sure when the crushing fear had started to recede—or why Marlena had finally permitted them to settle down in Denver. She only knew that once she’d finished college, Marlena had seemed far less worried than she’d been before, and far happier to make herself a home in nearby Aspen.

Lara wasn’t sure when she’d first started to wonder if, perhaps, Marlena had simply been overreacting. Perhaps there had never been any goons—any escape. Perhaps Marlena had simply wanted a divorce. But thinking such things had always felt deeply disloyal to the only parent she had access to, and felt doubly so now. Lara pushed the thoughts away.

Adel sat not far away, frowning down at the documents before him, a soft reading light surrounding him in a warm halo. Lara could not help but watch him. He was so much more than the cascade of her teenage memories, her teenage feelings, and the simple fact of his commanding presence. He was everything she had been taught to fear about Alakkul—and Alakkulian men in particular. Autocratic bullies, Marlena had said—content to use their power to crush, maim, destroy.