“My God…you’re killing me,” he whispered hot and fierce against her ear. “I cannot take what you’re offering…not unless all of you comes with it.”
She huffed in frustration. “Why must it be all or nothing with you? Why can’t you take things in degrees? You are being stubborn and unreasonable!” Her hand fell away from him and he almost sagged with a combination of relief and regret. He couldn’t decide which was the greater feeling.
“I could say the same to you,” he said intensely. “Why can’t you give way? Let yourself go? Seek your own pleasure and to hell with everything else!”
“You would never act that way! You would never put your own needs ahead of those of your people!”
He looked dead into her eyes and cocked a single brow up high.
“And you think kidnapping you was the best thing for my people? Risking war and strife is what was best for them? That there was nothing selfish in my motivations?”
He had her there and she cast about for a rebuttal in frustration.
“But you believe in your heart that I would be good for your people,” she said triumphantly.
“I do believe that. But that is a happy consequence of my actions, not a motivation for my taking them. I saw you. I wanted you. I took you. I weighed it all heavily in my mind, it is true, but in the end I did what I wanted. Followed my heart and the hungers within it. All I ask is that you do the same. Follow the hunger in your heart. Let it sweep you away. Do what you want to do, not what you think is best for your people. Your people aren’t here. They aren’t in this room. Don’t put them between us.”
“I am my people. You cannot separate them from me any more than I could separate yours from you.”
“I have already separated myself from them…for you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? That I would do anything for you?”
It did mean something to her. She wouldn’t admit it to him, but she realized that she was deeply flattered by his passion for her and the way he had disregarded everything to be with her. But she couldn’t act so selfishly herself.
Could she?
Because she had to admit, there was a huge part of her that craved doing exactly that. She thirsted for his touch and the passion he sent washing over her in hot persistent waves. She wanted to drink long draughts of him, letting the potency of his desire sweep her away from herself and all of her cares and concerns. And she knew that he could. He could easily make her forget herself, make her forget all of her responsibilities.
“I could never do what you are asking of me,” she whispered.
His jaw clenched and, grasping her by her upper arms he gave her a single shake. Then he swooped in and kissed her. He kissed her with white-hot passion, until she was breathless and weak. On the verge of giving in to him. She felt need unlike anything she’d known in her life before this. Before him.
Then he put her away from himself and backed away from her.
“Never is a long time,” he said hoarsely. Then he turned on his heel, walked across the room, and banged on the door.
Mordol unlocked the door and let him out.
Had she not been dizzy with her emotions and repressed needs, she might have noticed the leer Mordol sent her way.
As it was, she did not.
Chapter Seventeen
Ariana slept fitfully. Her body burned with unsatisfied needs. Her mind ached with guilt and frustration. She was tormenting him without meaning to. She knew she couldn’t be responsible for his feelings and needs, but she couldn’t help it. She was hurting him and she had never meant to.
The next day she went through like a zombie, her routine familiar enough now to go through it with only a modicum of attentiveness. That is, until his mother called her on it.
“Something weighs on your mind,” she said.
“No. I’m sorry. I merely drifted in my thoughts. Could you repeat what you just said?” Drifted yes. Drifted to the man who was beginning to haunt her every waking and sleeping moment.
“It would be better instead for me to listen to you,” Fatima said. She left her loom and walked over to where Ariana had been sitting staring at her stitching rather than making any progress on it. She took the seat across from Ariana and laid a comforting hand over hers a moment before taking the stitching away and setting it aside. Then she returned to pick up Ariana’s limp hand in hers. “Is it my son who occupies you so?”
“Yes,” Ariana confessed. “But I do not wish to discuss it.”
“Why not?”
“Because…because I am already obsessed with my thoughts of him. I do not need to further indulge myself.”
“So. He dwells in your mind and yet you will not discuss him. Could it be you do not wish to discuss your feelings because you do not wish to admit you have feelings to begin with?”
“The only feelings I feel for your son are those of frustration. He is stubborn and thick-headed and refuses to see what is right in front of him!”
“And that would be?”
“That I cannot disregard my people as easily as he would have me do.”
“I don’t think he wants you to disregard your people, only to make up your mind without letting them influence you.”
That brought her eyes up to the older woman’s. “What has he said to you?” she demanded.
“Nothing of much consequence,” she said. “But I know my son very well. He is just like his father. He takes what he needs with every fiber of his soul if he feels it is crucial and important. My son needs you. That much has been made very clear to any who spend more than two minutes in a room with you. His eyes follow you every moment you are together. You can see the craving in them. He pursues you with a single-mindedness that can only come from a man who is in love.”
Ariana gasped, her eyes going wide. “That is not true! He does not love me! He hardly knows anything about me!”
“Ariana, my son has never been in love before, but I recognize the signs because I saw them first in his father’s regard for me. He may not even realize it himself, but he does love you. A great deal. Enough so that he has risked everything to have you.”
“No.” She shook her head wildly. “He is selfish, not love-struck. He simply wants a toy that he cannot have. If he were to get that toy he would begin to tire of it just as quickly as he came to desire it. He is simply used to getting what he wants and cannot stomach being told no.”
“Is that what worries you? That he will tire of you?”
“Yes! I mean—no! There are other things to consider that are far more important than that.”
“I don’t agree,” Fatima said thoughtfully. “I think you fear being a passing fancy. That his love for you would not be a constant thing. Perhaps because you have developed feelings for him as well.”
“I have not developed feelings for him! That is ludicrous! He is my captor!”
“Is he? You could escape any time you wanted to. You could perhaps beg action from any one of the foreign diplomats that sit at table with you every night. Or perhaps overpower me one day and make your escape that way.”
“I could not! I am under guard constantly!”
“You are a very powerful woman. Even I can see that. If you wanted to be free, nothing would stop you.”
“Mariah, my maid, would stop me. For I cannot think of leaving here without her.”
“So. If I were to provide a way for you and your lady maid to be free tomorrow, you would go and never look back?”
The answer should have been a resounding yes, yet she hesitated. She didn’t know why she hesitated, but she did. It confused her. Of course she would want to be free! She would be happy to escape this place…wouldn’t she? To escape this hauntingly determined and struggling people, to put this machine of delicate checks and balances behind her and get back to her cold and lonely, well-run government seat?
The conflicting thoughts and emotions only served to bewilder her more.
“Yes!” she yelped aloud. “I don’t want to be
here! I would leave in an instant given half a chance. But that chance is not about to come any time soon so it is a moot point. It only frustrates me to think of it.”
“And even if you could escape, he would only hunt you down again,” Fatima said.
“Yes.” But why did that thought excite her so much? Thoughts of being chased down, swept back into his powerful embrace and then carried off back here, to his home. To his bed. The thoughts made her weak and wanting, made her confused and desperate for clarity of thought.
“And perhaps you would be glad of it,” Fatima said knowingly.
Tears came to Ariana’s eyes. Tears of pure frustration brought on by the perplexing contradictions in her desires. He was getting to her, she thought with infuriated temper. He had promised he would wear her down and he had. If she didn’t escape from there soon, she would end up throwing herself at him. She knew it. She could feel it.
“I don’t want him,” she whispered. But even she knew it was a lie as she said it. Knew it was transparent to the woman seated across from her.
“You don’t want to want him. But you do. You want him very much. So much more than you want to admit to yourself. But you are afraid. Afraid of what it might mean to you. What it might mean to him.”
“No!” Ariana surged to her feet, pacing out of reach of the other woman. “I am merely a conquest to him. I will not become a man’s concubine! Of little value until I breed an heir! I will not be one of many.”
“Is that what you think? That you would be one of many?”
“Of course I would. I only have to sit at table with his brother and his five women to see I would have no real importance in his life. That as soon as he tired of me he could move on to a fresh new woman and in this society it would be allowed!”
“So we are back to your fear of him growing tired of you. Perhaps you should explore this more in your thoughts. Does my son appear to be the sort of man who would tire of a woman he loves? Does he appear to be the sort who would change his feelings the way a Weath shaman changes the weather? Do not judge him based upon his brother’s temperament. I know you do not respect Vich—no, it is all right. My younger son does little to recommend himself,” she said when Ariana would have politely argued. “But I know you see the tremendous difference in a man like Sin and a man like Vich. Vich is motivated completely by self-gratification. Sin…the only thing Sin has ever done to gratify himself was to take you.”
Ariana swallowed as her heart began to pound with her excitement at the thought of being the one thing Sin had ever wanted for himself.
“If my son had wanted other women, other concubines, then he would have taken them by now. He is a healthy man in the prime of his life…a man in need of an heir to inherit his kingdom. Yet even though he has been desperate for that heir, he has made no move toward getting one. Not until now. Doesn’t that say something to you?”
It did. It said a great deal. Hearing Fatima put it that way shed a whole new perspective on Sin’s actions. Could it be true? Did he really love her? Would he love her to the exclusion of all others?”
“But in his desperation for an heir,” Ariana said, “he would throw me over if I could not produce one.”
Fatima tsked. “If that is what you think of my son, then perhaps it would be best if you leave.”
Ariana realized that she didn’t think that of Fatima’s son. That in her heart she didn’t think he would use her so ill. He was a man of honor and respect who usually put the needs of others before his own. He would not have risked everything only to turn his back on her.
Ariana’s heart fluttered in her chest, her stomach tightening. But what did it matter if he loved her? It couldn’t make a difference when it came to her people and their needs.
Yet, for the first time she petulantly didn’t want to consider her people’s needs. She was tired of constantly putting their needs above her own. She was a healthy, red-blooded woman. She had the healthy appetites and desires to match. Yet she constantly denied them for the sake of her people.
But what good to her people was a woman who never knew what love felt like? Who never knew what it meant for her to be treasured above all others? Sin had proven to her time and again that he would do anything for her…who else had ever done so much?
No one. No one but Sin.
Ariana didn’t realize it, but her pacing was growing more frantic with her every thought. Her hands ran up and down her thighs, desperately needing some kind of tactile sensation. In fact, her whole body was in need of tactile sensation. She had been humming and at the ready for days. Tuned to a perfect pitch by masterful, loving hands.
That was all this was, she argued with herself. Frustration. Physical frustration. It was toying with her thoughts.
“Would you like to go for a ride?”
Ariana gasped. She had not even noticed Sin enter the room. The request was thoughtful as he looked her over from head to toe. His mother was right. He looked at her as a starving man looks at a meal behind enclosed glass.
“I—” She cut herself off as she took a moment to take him in as well. She looked him over from his raven black hair to his broad chest to his tight, trim waist, his lean hips and his strong, muscular thighs. He wore a loose black shirt and skintight black breeches. His shining black boots reached his knees and his sleeves cuffed at his wrists without lace. The shirt was open at the neck, revealing little sprigs of hair at the point of the ‘v’ neckline. He was a day behind on shaving and looked handsomely scruffy. His hair looked mussed, as if he had been running his fingers through it in successive strokes.
That was the moment she admitted to herself that she wanted him unlike anything she had ever wanted before. That she wanted to toss away her concerns and worries and just be a woman with him. She just wanted to feel his hands on her body, to feel his mouth worshipping her skin as she knew he would do. To feel him hard and unyielding inside of her.
“Yes,” she breathed.
“All right then, let’s go. We should get you a cloak.”
“Excuse me Fatima. And,”—she turned to take the woman’s hands in hers and squeezed them— “thank you.”
Sin didn’t know what he had walked in on with Ariana and his mother, but he had felt that scorching once over she had given him right to the bottoms of his soles.
He led her out into the hall, trying to guess what she and his mother might have been talking about. At a loss, he could only mull it over in confused silence. They got to her room and when they walked in she turned back and closed the door behind them. It perplexed him because they were simply coming to get a cloak for their ride. Perhaps she wanted to talk to him…to tell him once more all the reasons she didn’t want him.
Well, he wasn’t in the mood to hear it all again. He hadn’t slept at all last night, had instead spent the night in his study staring blankly at ledgers and then into a fire as he rolled a glass of useless liquor in his hands. It never helped. He didn’t know why he continued to try it. Nothing was strong enough to shut her out.
He had paced and cursed. Paced and thought about her smell and her taste and the feel of her body against his. Paced and tried not to feel everything he was feeling.
He grabbed her cloak from the hook on the wall and reached for the door. She stepped in his way and the sweet, exotic smell of her drifted up into his senses. He gritted his teeth.
“I’m tired,” she said.
He blinked in confusion.
“You don’t want to go for a ride?”
She gave him a mysterious little smile than made his belly clench with want.
“Not in the way you mean, no.”
The hint at the double entendre made him freeze in place. His hand clenched around the cloak he held.
“In what way?” he said hoarsely.
She reached out and took hold of the cloak. She drew it free of his death grip and dropped it carelessly to the floor. She moved forward several inches, until their bodies met and meshed. Sin had to stifle a
groan.
“Ariana, I’m not in the mood for games,” he said his voice as ground up as gravel.
“Isn’t this what you wanted? For me to come to you?”
Sin went stock-still. Surely he had heard her wrong? He must be mistaking her meaning. Just last night she had been adamant about keeping her distance. What had changed between now and then? Nothing. Nothing could possibly have changed. They were still who they were, each at an incredible impasse of wills.
“Tell me something,” she said when she was met with stony silence. “Am I simply a phase? Something you will grow tired of the moment you finally have me? Is my inaccessibility my chief lure?”
“Your inaccessibility is my chief frustration. There is nothing alluring about it,” he said, his tone hard. “What is this all about?”
“I’ve been speaking with your mother,” she said, reaching up to trail soft fingers down his unshaven cheek. “She made me realize a few things. Things I think you have been trying to tell me…but I wasn’t listening.”
“What things?” he asked, struggling to keep hope from blossoming in his chest.
“That I mean more to you than a simple conquest.”
His eyes widened then his brows snapped down in a frown. “If I haven’t made that clear by now, then I’ve been going about this whole business all wrong,” he said. “You are far more than a simple conquest. If I wanted a conquest…I would start a war…invade a country. Not kidnap a woman for my bed.”
“But…according to your laws, I would be nothing more than a royal concubine. I could never stomach the idea of—“
“A concubine! Ariana I do not want a concubine! I want a wife!”
“But I cannot become your wife until I produce your heir.”
His frown deepened. She had a point. According to tradition she could not become his wife until she had birthed him a son.
“Do you mean…if I were to make you my wife regardless of my country’s traditions, you would consider having me?”
She withdrew from that and he sighed.