Maisey Yates - To Defy a Sheikh

“I see now why you had such an easy time ambushing me,” he said.

“I have a black belt in Hapkido. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“A Jaharan princess who is a master in martial arts.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Strange times we live in.”

“I should say. You know someone tried to murder me in my bedchamber last night.”

“Is that so?” she asked, taking a bite of lamb.

“I myself spent the ensuing years in the palace. Now that we’re caught up, I think we should discuss our engagement.”

“Do you really see this working?” she asked.

“I never expected to love my wife, Samarah. I have long expected to marry a woman who would advance me in a political fashion and help my country in some way. That is part of being a ruler, and I know you share that. You are currently a sheikha without a throne or a people, and I aim to give you both. So yes, I do see this working. I don’t see why it shouldn’t.”

“I tried to kill you,” she said. “That could possibly be a reason it wouldn’t work.”

“Don’t most wives consider that at some point? I grant you, usually several years of marriage have passed first, but even so, it’s hardly that unusual.”

“And you think this will…change what happened? You think what happened can be changed?” she asked. And she found she was honestly curious. She shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t really want to hear any of what he had to say.

“Everything can be changed. Enough water can change an entire landscape. It can reshape stone. Why can’t we reshape what is left?”

She found that something in her, something traitorous and hopeful, something she’d never imagined would have survived all her years living in the worst parts of Jahar, enduring the worst sorts of fear and starvation and loss, wanted to believe him.

That the pieces of her life could somehow be reshaped. That she could have something more than cold. More than anger and revenge. More than a driving need to inflict pain, as it had been inflicted on her.

“And if not,” he said. “I still find the outcome preferable to having my throat cut. And you will have something infinitely nicer than a storeroom to sleep in. That should be enough.”

And just like that, the warm hopefulness was extinguished.

Because he was talking as though a soft bed would fix the pain she’d suffered. The loss of her family, the loss of her home.

He didn’t know. And she would have to force him to understand. She would make him look at her pain, her suffering. And endure it as she had done.

“Yes,” she said, smiling, a careful, practiced smile, “why not indeed?”

CHAPTER FOUR

NOT FOR THE first time since striking the deal with Samarah, Ferran had reservations. Beautiful she was, biddable she would never be.

She was descended from a warrior people, and she had transformed herself into a foot soldier. One he’d rather have on his side than plotting his death.

She’d been a little hermit the past few days. But he was under no illusion. She was just a viper in her burrow, and he would have to reach in and take her out carefully.

Barring that, he would smoke her out. Metaphorically. He wasn’t above an ironhanded approach. He supposed, in many ways, he was already implementing one. But the little serpent had tried to kill him.

There was hardly an overreaction to that. Though, there was a foolish reaction. Proposing marriage might be it. And there were the reservations.

He walked up to the entry of her bedchamber and considered entering without knocking. Then he decided he liked his head attached to his shoulders and signaled his intent to enter with a heavy rap on wooden doors.

“Yes?”

“It’s Ferran,” he said.

He was met with silence.

“If you have forgotten,” he said, “I am the sheikh of Khadra and your fiancé. Oh, also your mortal enemy.”

The left door opened a crack, and he could see one brown eye glaring at him through it. “I have not forgotten.”

“I haven’t seen you in days, so I was concerned.”

She blinked twice. “I’ve been ill.”

“Have you?”

“Well, I haven’t felt very well.”

“I see,” he said.

“Because we’re engaged.”

“Did my proposal give you a cold?”

The eye narrowed. “What do you want?”

“I did not propose to you so you could nest in one of the rooms in my palace. We have serious issues to attend to. Namely, announcing our engagement to the world. Which will involve letting the world know that the long-lost, long-mourned sheikha of Jahar lives.”

“Can’t you write up a press release?”

“Let me in, Samarah, or I will push past you.”

“Would you like to try?”

“Let me in,” he repeated.

She obeyed this time, the door swinging open. She held it, her arm extended, a dark brow raised. “Enter.”

“Why is it you make me feel like I’m a guest in my own palace?”

“These are my quarters. In them, you are a guest.”

“This is my country, and in it, you are a prisoner.” Her shoulders stiffened, her nostrils flaring. “Such an uncomfortable truth.”

“I can think of a few things more uncomfortable.”

He arched a brow. “Such as?”

“If I planted my foot between your ribs,” she said, practically hissing.

“You and I shall have to spar sometime. When I’m certain you don’t want me killed.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time.”

“Careful. Some men might consider this verbal foreplay.” He said it to get a reaction. What disturbed him was that it did seem that way. It made his blood run hotter. Made him think of what it had felt like to hold her over his shoulder, all soft curves and deadly rage.

He gritted his teeth. He was not a slave to his body. He was a slave to nothing. He was master. He was sheikh. And with that mastery, he served his people. Not himself. That meant there was no time for this sort of reaction.

Her upper lip curled into a snarl. “You disgust me. Do you think I would sleep with the man who ordered my father killed?”

“For the good of our people? I would sleep with the woman whose father caused the death of my parents.” The man who had wrenched the bars open that held Ferran’s demons back from the world. The man who revealed what it was Ferran could be with the restraints broken.

He ignored those memories. He ignored the heat that pooled in his gut at the thought of what sleeping with her would mean.

She blinked. “I feel as though we have an impossible legacy to negotiate. I have, in fact, been thinking that for the past few days.”

“To what end?”

“To the end that in many ways I understand what you did.” Her dark eyes looked wounded, angry. “But I don’t have to condone it. Or forgive it.”

“Your father killed mine. Face-to-face and in cold blood. My mother…”

“I know,” she said. “And…it is a difficult set of circumstances we find ourselves in. I realize that.”

“Not so difficult. Marriage is fairly straightforward.” It was a contractual agreement, nothing more. And as long as he thought of it in those terms, he could find a place for it in his ordered world.

Both brows shot up. “Is it? As our parents’ deaths were a result of marital infidelity I think it’s a bit more complex than you’re giving it credit for.”

“Passion is more complex than people give it credit for. Passion is dangerous. Marriage on the other hand is a legal agreement, and not dangerous in the least. Not on its own. Add passion and you have fire to your gasoline.”

“Okay, I see your point. But are you honestly telling me you act without passion?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Yes. If I acted based on passion I would have had your pretty head for what you tried to do. Lucky for you, I think things through. I never act before considering all possible outcomes.” He studied her, her petite frame hinted at by a red, beaded tunic that hung to her knees, her legs covered by matching pants. Her dark hair was pulled back again, the top of her head covered by a golden chain that was laced over her crown. He wondered what her hair might look like loose. Falling in glossy black waves over her shoulders.