A Royal Wedding(48)

“What does ‘together’ mean to an Alakkulian male, I wonder?” she mused, her eyes narrowed. “I somehow doubt it means the same thing to you as it does to me. What if we wish to rule differently? What if you are wrong? Who gets to decide?”

Their eyes met, held. The attraction that sizzled between them seemed to intensify, seemed to beat at him with hot, dangerous flames. Why did her anger, her restless intelligence, make him want her all the more?

“I suspect,” he said after a moment, “that you already know the answer.”

She made a scoffing noise, and folded her arms over her chest. “What a surprise,” she said after a moment, in a bitter sort of tone.

And something in him tore free. He could not have said why. It was her defiance, perhaps, or—more curious—his surprising, continuing sympathy for her plight. He felt more for her than he had ever felt for another, even across these long years of separation. He wanted her as he had never wanted any other woman. And still she looked at him as if he was the enemy. As if she did not quite grasp who he was.

Perhaps it was time to tell her. To remind her.

He was on his feet before he knew he meant to move—a shocking deviation from the usual iron control he maintained over himself and anyone in his orbit. He stalked over to her, enjoying the way her expression changed, became far more wary, though she only squared her shoulders as he came closer. She did not cower. She did not run. She only waited, and he knew she was more his queen in that moment than she realized.

He moved closer, deliberately stepping into her space, so she was trapped against the wall of the plane and forced to look up at him. He placed a hand on the smooth surface of the bulkhead on either side of her head, framing her face, and leaned in.

“If you kiss me again,” she told him fiercely, “I will bite you.”

“You will not.” But his attention moved to her mouth. “Unless I ask you to.”

“Stop trying to intimidate me,” she ordered him, but once again there was that tell-tale breathiness in the voice she’d clearly meant to sound stern. He smiled, and allowed himself to touch her hair—pulling one dark black curl between his fingers, running the thick silk over his lips, and inhaling the scent. Mint and honey. His princess.

“Stop it!” she whispered, her eyes wide. Wary.

Wanting, he thought, with no little satisfaction.

“Listen to me,” he said. He let the curl drop from his hand, but he did not move back. Her hands moved, as if she went to push him away but thought better of touching him. “I am not one of your American men. I am not politically correct.”

“Really?” Her tone was dry. Defiant. “I hadn’t noticed.”

He liked being so close to her. More, perhaps, than he should. He could smell her, almost taste her, feel the heat of her. But because indulging himself would lead precisely where he did not wish to go, not yet, he leaned away, still keeping his arms on either side of her, but removing his mouth from the temptation of hers.

“I am not modern.” His voice was low. As if he offered her his confession, though the very thought was absurd. “I cannot pretend to be to save your feelings, or to coddle your Western sensibilities.”

“Is that what’s been happening so far?” she asked, her brows arching. She shook her head. “The mind balks. What’s next? The barbarian horde? “

“I was trained to be a soldier since I was a child,” he told her, not certain why he’d started there. Not at all easy with the baffling urge to share himself with her, to let her see him, know him, as he’d thought she might long ago. Not sure he wanted to examine that urge more closely. “A barbarian by your measure, I suppose. My parents sent me to the palace when I was still a child, barely five years old. I was raised to be a weapon. A machine. One of the King’s personal guard.”

She only stared at him. “The cadre,” she murmured. And he knew that she remembered the tight band of warriors who had shadowed her father’s every movement, each one of them more dangerous than the next, whose honor and duty it was to accompany the King wherever he went. To lay down their lives for him at a moment’s notice. To live in service to his whims. He had been the youngest ever inducted into the cadre’s elite ranks. Perhaps she remembered that, too.

“I was taught to sever all emotional ties,” he continued, fighting the urge to touch her soft skin, to feel her heartbeat with his hands. “I learned to focus only on one goal—protecting and serving my king, my country. I did so, gladly. I wanted no greater glory than that. Until your father gave me you.”