In Defiance of Duty (8 page)

Trying to understand how she could feel so far away when she was right there, within reach. The tension between them pulled taut, making the vast room seem to contract around them. He hated that, too.

“Of course I’m not ill,” she said, her forehead allowing the slightest frown.

“Pregnant?” He didn’t know why he’d asked that. To poke at her?

He could see her swallow almost convulsively as he walked down the steps, closing the distance between them. Her mouth flattened. Her eyes flashed with what he took to be temper, but at least it was better than that mask.

“No. Still not pregnant, should you care to alert the media.”

“If there is something wrong—” he began, hearing the impatience in his own voice and unable, somehow, to curtail it.

“What could be wrong?” Her eyes were too bright. She turned her head as if she wanted to hide it, looking out toward the brick terrace that stretched the length of the suite on the other side of the glass windows, the rooftops of Georgetown spread out before them. Deceptively inviting, Azrin thought darkly, in such a of the suite on the other side of the glass windows, the rooftops of Georgetown spread out before them. Deceptively inviting, Azrin thought darkly, in such a deceitful city. “You are a success by any measure. You have been hailed as an innovative and modernizing force for good in a troubled region. A worthy successor to your father in every respect. Surely all of this has turned out exactly as you wanted. As you planned.”

“Kiara.”

He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t feel like any kind of success, not when she looked away from him, when she seemed so closed off, so far away. He didn’t know what moved inside of him, tearing at him. He only knew he couldn’t stand this. Whatever this was.

“What else can you possibly want?” she asked him, her voice the faintest whisper. From me, he thought she added, but he couldn’t be sure. And he didn’t know he meant to move until his hands were on her shoulders and his mouth was hard against hers.

“I want you,” he growled. He tasted salt and something else, something bitter, but beyond that was simply Kiara, and it took so very little of her to make him drunk. “I always want you.”

He dragged his hands through her hair, scattering the diamonds that had nestled there, digging his fingers into the long tresses, holding her still as he took. Tasted.

And took some more.

He was desperate then, and she met him with her own heat, turning his own mad desire back on him—sending them both higher. Hotter. She tugged his coat from his shoulders, his shirt from his trousers. He unhooked her from her gown with more determination than finesse, and then she was pushing him down on the nearest sofa. He twisted her beneath him, settling himself between her thighs as they wrestled off what remained of their clothing and then he found his way into the molten core of her, thrusting hard. Deep.

She gasped, arching up against him, locking her long, smooth legs tight around his hips. He exulted in the heat of her, the lush softness. The perfect fit. The way her hips rose to meet his, then rolled in that particular way that was all Kiara. All his.

He slowed, brushing her hair back from her face and waiting for her eyes to open, to focus on him.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

But she only moved her hips against him, her ankles locked in the small of his back. He leaned down and pulled one of her tight, hard nipples into his mouth, making her laugh and then moan.

“Tell me,” he said again, and then began to move, his strokes measured and deep, making her shudder against him.

“I’ve told you in a thousand ways,” she said, her voice uneven, her body arching to meet his thrusts. “You need to learn how to listen.” So he listened. He took her other nipple in his mouth, reached down between them to the place where they were joined, and with a single sure touch, threw her right over the edge.

And then he did it all over again.

And again.

Until, he was sure, nothing at all could ever matter but this.

When he woke, it was morning.

He pulled on the nearest thing he could find and made his way out into the long living area of the suite. He found her fully dressed in one of her elegant day dresses and standing by the windows in the great room. She held her morning cup of coffee between her hands, her eyes fixed out the window again, as if the rooftops opposite held secrets she was determined to solve.

“We will not fly out for another few hours,” he said, his voice still raspy from sleep. And the lack of it. He was happier than he perhaps should be that the tour was finally over, that he could revel in this morning, empty of his aides and his responsibilities, for now. He leaned down to press a kiss to the back of her neck.

“Come back to bed.”

“I can’t,” she said. Then a small sound, as if she sucked in a breath. “I’m not going back to Khatan with you.”

“Where are you going?” He felt lazy. Indulgent.

He helped himself to her coffee, pulling the heavy ceramic mug from her hand and taking a pull of it before handing it back to her. She set it down on a nearby accent table and then looked at him, her gaze unreadable.

“Australia.”

He nodded absently and turned back toward the bedroom, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He was thinking of the shower, and how good the hot water would feel against his skin. He was wondering how long he could keep any outside thoughts at bay this morning, after such a long and satisfying night—how long he could pretend he was nothing more than a man. Not a king at all today. Not yet.

“Are you planning to visit your mother?” he asked over his shoulder. “When will you return?” She didn’t respond. He turned again, to find her watching him with an expression he didn’t recognize on her pretty face. Resigned, perhaps. Some mix of sadness and something else, something like defiance.

“What is it?” he asked, on alert again.

“That’s just it, Azrin,” she said. “I don’t know that I will return.”

If it had not been for that terrible, arrested look on his face, the sudden stillness in his powerful body, Kiara might have thought she hadn’t spoken out loud.

“I need some time,” she said.

She wasn’t sure, now, if it was some newfound strength or simple desperation that had chased her from their bed this morning, got her to stop her silent, pointless sobbing in the shower, and wait for him here. Much less actually say what she’d wanted to say for weeks now. She wasn’t sure it mattered either way.

She let out the breath she’d been holding, closed her eyes and finished it. “I want a separation.” There was a beat. Then another. Her heart pounded so hard inside her chest that it actually hurt.

“What did you say to me?”

Her eyes snapped to his. They glittered dangerously. He looked particularly wild this morning, his dark hair mussed from sleep, his jaw unshaven, and only those trousers low on his narrow hips. His voice was the iciest she’d ever heard it, a frigid sort of growl that sliced into her like a blade. She had the panicked thought that trousers low on his narrow hips. His voice was the iciest she’d ever heard it, a frigid sort of growl that sliced into her like a blade. She had the panicked thought that if she looked down, she would see her own blood.

But she didn’t look. She didn’t dare. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from his. She couldn’t do anything but stand there, frozen solid while he seemed to expand to fill the room and she was forced to remember that he was a dangerous, impossibly lethal man.

He only pretended to be tame, she reminded herself, feeling breathless and faintly ill, because it suited him to do so.

“I can’t possibly have heard you correctly,” he said, his voice that same cold lash.

He didn’t move closer to her, but then, he didn’t have to. She could see every long, hard line of his big body, so dangerously still, all of that uncompromising male power coiled in him. Ready. Sex and command. It was so heady, so intoxicating, that she understood with no little despair that she would always want it—

want him—no matter how miserable it might make her.

But this was what men like Azrin did. They commanded. They ruled. They blocked out the whole world. They took. What had ever made her think she could stand strong and independent, her own person, next to this much power and force? She’d been lucky he’d let her play around in the fantasy of it all this time.

Lucky, she repeated to herself, and it almost made her cry.

“Are you planning to say something else?” he asked, in that dark, impatient tone that made her stomach turn over, hard, even as she felt too hot, too cold. “Am I to draw my own conclusions about this time you need? This separation? Or, let me guess, you are laboring under the delusion that I’ll just let you run back to Australia without a fight?”

“I am not happy,” Kiara said then, finally, simply, and the words seemed to crack something open inside of her. As if she’d been afraid to say them, afraid to admit that she felt them, afraid of what would happen once she did …

This, she thought then, wishing she could feel numb. Wishing this could simply be over somehow. Wishing that she had never sat down at that café table all those years ago. This was exactly what she was afraid of.

“Are you sure?” His voice was so dark, with such a vicious kick beneath. “You seemed happy enough every time you came in my arms last night. I lost count, Kiara. How many times was it?”

Some sickening mix of temper and desperation swirled in her belly and then pulled tight, giving her just enough false courage to lift her chin, square her shoulders and figure out some way to push the necessary words out of her mouth.

“Yes, Azrin,” she said. “You’re very good in bed. Congratulations. But that isn’t the point, is it?” He spread his hands out as if in surrender, and she had the despairing thought that he’d never looked less like a supplicant. Even a gesture like this made him look like what he was—a bloody king, indulging her. Patronizing her, on some level, whether he knew it or not.

“Why don’t you tell me what the point is,” he suggested, and there was less ice in his voice now and more of that deliberate, measured calmness that she found she hated. It smacked of that same indulgence. “You are the one who wants to separate.” He said that last word as if it was a vile curse.

“I have done nothing for the past three months but trail around after you,” Kiara said, evenly. Rationally. The way she delivered reports in business meetings.

“First there was the pre-coronation finishing school with your sisters. Then the months of appearances. Always smiling. Always dignified and silent and polite, entirely without opinions on anything except the flowers. The decor. The weather. That is not what I want from my life.”

“That is your job,” he said, shrugging, though his eyes remained hard on hers.

“It is your job,” she retorted, still fighting to keep her voice as calm as she knew it needed to be. “I have an entirely different job, as you know very well. It does not involve acting as if I am nothing more than a repository for opinions you have already vetted. A figure, nothing more. Or, even better, a currently empty uterus that your whole country gets a say in filling, apparently. My actual job involves my brain.” His eyes were so dark now, too dark, and seemed to bore into her, seeing all kinds of things she was sure she’d rather keep private. Hidden. But she didn’t look away. She knew this was a fight for her life. She knew it with a certainty that should have scared her—that had scared her so much that she’d gone almost entirely mute these last weeks rather than risk these words slipping out at some state dinner and shaming them both in front of the whole world.

And because she hadn’t wanted this, she admitted to herself. She hadn’t wanted to believe that this was happening, even as every day she saw less and less of herself in the mirror.

“I can’t believe that you honestly think the Queen of Khatan should—or could—be the vice president of a foreign corporation in her spare time.” Azrin’s voice was dark and curt.

He shook his head, an impatient expression moving over that ruthless face and telling her quite clearly that he was not taking her seriously. That he had already relegated her to just one more of those daily fires of his, just one more problem to solve. She told herself she shouldn’t let it hurt as much as it did. That this—

exactly this—was precisely why she had to take this step.

“I don’t think you truly think so, either,” he continued in the same tone. “I think your feelings are hurt. My attention has been on my responsibilities and you feel ignored. Hence this tantrum.”

“This isn’t what I signed up for,” she said, though it cost her to keep so calm. “And it isn’t a tantrum to say so. Pretending that this is a childish display of temper so you don’t have to deal with what I’m saying, however, very well might be.”

“When you met me I was the Crown Prince of Khatan,” Azrin said, the chill back in his voice, that terrible steel in his eyes. “This is, in fact, exactly what you signed up for.” He laughed slightly, though there was no humor in it. “Sooner than we planned, perhaps, but that’s life. Plans change. Sometimes you simply have to do your duty.”

“You’re talking about your life,” she said through the constriction in her chest, which she was deathly afraid were the tears she refused to cry. Not in front of him.

Not when it was so important he take her seriously. That he listen. “Your duty. What about mine?”

“What about it?” he asked, every inch of him so arrogant. So incredulous. “This is your life, Kiara. Whatever games we played over the past five years, this is reality. The sooner you accept it, the happier you’ll be.”

And there it was, she thought dully. Painfully. Had she known all along that it would come to this? Had she felt it somehow? Was that why all the pressure to have a baby had rubbed her the wrong way—because she knew this was only a game to him after all?

“Were you playing games all this time?” she asked, unable to keep the catch from her voice. “Because I wasn’t. I have my own responsibilities. My own duties.

There are people depending on me, too—”