Dana Marton - Royal Protector - Traded to the Desert Sheikh / Royal Captive / His Pregnant Princess Bride

She hadn’t thought about that period of her life in a very long time. Elizaveta had moved on the way Elizaveta always did and Amaya had stopped imagining anyone could fix what her father had broken. She felt something crack inside her now, as if Kavian had knocked down a critical foundation with that unexpected swipe—but he was still talking. Still wrecking her with every lazily destructive word.

“Or perhaps you are referring to your years at university in Montreal?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “While it appeared to be a city you enjoyed, in many respects, you left it as often as possible during your studies. You went to the mountains, as we have established. But also to Europe. To the Caribbean for sun in the midst of all those relentless winters. And you left Canada altogether shortly after your graduation for Edinburgh, where you took up a very unsuitable job in a local pub while you made the most feeble of gestures toward a master’s degree in some or other form of literature at the university there.”

Amaya wanted to make a gesture toward him that was anything but feeble, but restrained herself. Barely. She felt the prick of her own nails against her palms, and wished she could sink them into him instead.

“It’s not up to you to decide what feels like home to me. My life is not something that requires your input or critique.” She fought to keep her voice even. “You can tell because I didn’t ask you for either one.”

“Unfortunately for you, it is indeed up to me.” Kavian shrugged, and it was not a gesture of uncertainty on a man like him. It was another weapon, and Kavian, she was beginning to understand all too well, did not hesitate to use the weapons he had at his disposal. “You do not have a home, Amaya. You never have. But that, too, has changed now. Whether you are prepared to accept that or not is immaterial.”

She couldn’t breathe. She felt as if he’d thrown her down a staircase, as if she’d landed hard on her back and knocked all the air from her lungs, and for a moment she could do nothing but stare back at him.

“I want to be somewhere you are not,” she managed to grate out, finally.

“I am sure you do. But that is not among the choices available to you.”

“This is a huge palace. There has to be a room somewhere you can stash me, far away from everything and everyone. I don’t care if it’s a dungeon, as long as it’s nowhere near you.”

Where she could figure out how to breathe through this, recover from this. If that was even possible.

Where she could work out what the hell she was going to do.

“There are many such rooms, but you will be staying in mine.”

He only watched her, utterly without mercy. And she didn’t know which was worse, the wet heat threatening to spill from her eyes, the simmering flame deep in her core that she wanted to deny, the shaking she couldn’t quite seem to control now he’d upended the whole of her life in a few short sentences or the fact that he’d trapped her here. In every possible way, and they both knew it.

“No,” she said.

But it was as if she hadn’t spoken. It made her wonder if she had.

“I apologize if this distresses you, but I am not a particularly modern man,” Kavian replied. He did not sound remotely apologetic. Nor did he look it. “I do not trust what I cannot touch. I want you in my bed.”

Bed. The word exploded inside her, ripping through her with a trail of white-hot images that centered on his mouth, his hands, that body of his above her and around her and in her—

“I don’t want to be anywhere near your bed. You’ve already done as you like with me in an alcove, a pool—why can’t we leave it at that?” She sounded hysterical. She felt hysterical. “Why can’t we just leave it ?”

Kavian, by contrast, went very, very still, though his dark eyes burned.

And she felt another foundation crumble into dust at that look on his face.

“The next time I take you, Amaya, two things will happen,” he said softly. So very softly. It was a whisper that rolled through like a battle cry. “First, it will be in a proper bed. I may not be civilized, precisely, but I do have my moments. And I wish to take my time. All the time in the world, if necessary.” He waited for her to shudder at that, as if he’d expected it. Then he nearly smiled again, which was its own devastation. “And second, you will use my name.”

“Your name?”

“You have yet to utter it,” he pointed out, and she could see that though he still lounged there, though his voice was almost as languid as he looked, there was absolutely nothing mild about him at all. That mildness was an illusion he used to do his bidding, nothing more, like everything else. “I assume this is yet another attempt on your part to maintain distance between us. Is it not?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I say your name all the time, usually as a curse word.”

“You will use my name.” He didn’t rise. He didn’t have to. It was as if he held her tight between those hands of his even as he reclined in his chair. She was sure she felt the press of his palms, like all those New Zealand stars when she’d been thirteen, crushing her deep into the earth. “You will sleep in my bed. You will give yourself to me. There will be no distance between us, Amaya. There will be nothing but my will and your surrender.”

“Followed by my suicide, as quickly as possible, to escape you,” she threw back at him to hide the pounding of her heart that told her truths she didn’t want to face.

But Kavian only laughed at her, as if he could hear it.

As if he knew.

CHAPTER FIVE

AMAYA HADN’T MEANT to fall asleep.

The smiling, almost too deferential attendants had been waiting for her when she’d pushed her way out of the baths, still reeling from all that had happened with Kavian. They’d surrounded her as they’d led her through the gleaming labyrinth of a palace, and Amaya hadn’t been able to tell if they were deliberately taking her on a confusing route to her rooms or if the palace really was that difficult to navigate.

Either way, they’d deposited her in a rambling suite of rooms that clearly belonged to the king himself. And had pretended they didn’t understand her when she demanded to be taken elsewhere.

“I don’t want to stay here,” she’d told them, again and again, until she’d finally had to take it up with the two intimidatingly ferocious guards who stood at the doors.

They’d only stared back at her, without any of the sweet smiles or pleasing laughter of her attendants.

“I need my own rooms,” she’d said stubbornly. “This is a mistake. I’m not staying here.”

The guards had only stared back at her, for what had seemed like an inordinate amount of time, especially when Amaya realized she was wearing nothing but the robe the attendants had wrapped her in.

“You may take that up with the king if you feel it is your place to question him,” the larger of the two guards replied eventually, in a tone that suggested this conversation was itself scandalous and inappropriate—or perhaps, Amaya had realized belatedly, it was simply that she was. After all, from this man’s perspective, she wasn’t the unfairly trapped woman who deserved to make her own choices in life no matter whose blood ran in her veins—she was the princess who had been exalted by his beloved king’s notice only to throw her good fortune in the sheikh’s face by running away.

She’d been certain she could see that very sentence run through the man’s expression like a tabloid ticker at the bottom of a television screen. That—and the fact that he and his compatriot looked as if they’d have relished the opportunity to chase her down in the corridor like an errant fox—made her retreat into the suite and shut the door.