In Defiance of Duty
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“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.” It was a dare.
He let go of her hand, but shifted closer, reaching over to pull gently on the end of her ponytail, tilting her head up slightly to meet his searing gaze.
“Perhaps I can risk my wife’s jealous rages after all,” he said musingly. He moved still closer, until their faces were a mere breath apart, his delectable mouth just there, just out of reach.
Her breath came out ragged, then, as if she’d broken into a run. She felt as if she had. His smile licked over her, into her.
“You look as if you can take it,” Kiara agreed, and then she closed the distance between them and kissed him.
His wife, Sheikh Azrin bin Zayed Al Din, Crown Prince of Khatan, reflected with no little amusement, was endlessly delightful to him.
Her lips were soft and sweet against his, hinting at the passion that neither of them could succumb to out in the public eye like this. It was as frustrating as it was delicious. He wanted more than this hint of her, after two weeks apart. He wanted to taste her—take her—with a ferocity that might have surprised him, five years after marrying her, had he not been well used to this relentless thirst for her.
A thirst he could not indulge. Not here. Not now.
He pulled away, controlling himself with the ruthlessness that was second nature to him, particularly where his wife was concerned, and smiled again at the dazed look she wore, as if she had forgotten where they were. Azrin could look at her forever. Her pretty oval face with its delicate nose and brows, and her wide, decadent mouth that had been the first thing he’d noticed about her. Her hair was a mix of browns and golds, tumbling down past her shoulders in light waves unless, like tonight, she’d opted to put the heavy weight of it up in one of her sleek, deceptively casual styles. She looked taller than she was, her body firm and toned from her years of athletics and hard work, and she tended to dress conservatively as suited her position, yet with a quiet little flair that was hers alone.
That deep current of wickedness was all for him.
“If you had spoken to me like that when we met,” he said lazily, taunting her, “I doubt I would ever have pursued you at all. So disrespectful and challenging.”
She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would. “I did speak to you like that,” she replied. Her generous mouth widened into a smile. “You loved it.”
“So I did.”
He got to his feet then and took her hand to help her rise. She held on for a moment too long, as if she wanted to cling to even that much contact. He felt the kick of it, of her, deep inside of him. He craved her. He wanted to lick his way over every inch of her skin, relearning her as if the two weeks he’d been without her might have changed her. He wanted to find out for himself. With his mouth, his hands.
She curved into his side as they began to walk back along the concourse toward Sydney’s impressive, glittering array of skyscrapers, and the penthouse he kept there that was as much a primary residence as anything could be for two people who traveled as much as they did. He slid his arm around her slender shoulders and contented himself as best he could with a light kiss on the top of her head that barely reached his chin. Her hair smelled of sunshine and flowers, and he could not touch her the way he wanted to.
Not here. Not now. Not yet, he thought.
No unrestrained public displays of affection for the Crown Prince of Khatan and his non-Khatanian, scandalous-merely-by-virtue-of-her-foreign-birth princess. Well did Azrin know the rules. The public—particularly in his country—might fight for any possible glimpse of what they called his modern Cinderella romance, but that didn’t mean they wanted to see anything that wouldn’t have suited the family-friendly film of the same name.
There could be nothing that suggested that Azrin was compromised in any way by what many in his country took to be the lax moral code of anyone not from their own part of the world. There could certainly be no hint that the passion between Azrin and his princess was still so intense, so all-encompassing, that some days they did not even get out of bed, even after all this time. He was hoping that this night might lead directly into one of those lost days, even though he knew there was so much to do now, so many details to take care of and so little time to do it all in…
He should tell her now. Immediately. He knew that he should—that there was no real excuse for waiting. There was only his curious inability to speak up as he should. There was only that part of him that didn’t want to accept this was happening.
He wanted this one night, that was all. This last, perfect night of the life they’d both enjoyed so much for so long that had let him pretend he was someone else. What was one night more?
“I missed you, Azrin,” Kiara whispered, her supple body flush against his, her arm around his waist as they walked. “Two weeks is much too long.”
“It was unavoidable.” He heard the dark note in his voice and smiled down at her to dispel it. “I didn’t care for it, either.”
He would be happy when this part of their life was behind them, he thought as they made their way through the usual crowds flocking to Sydney’s pretty jewel of a harbor to enjoy the mild evening, the restaurants, the view. He would be more than pleased to do without these weeks of separations that they tried valiantly to keep to ten days or less. The endless grind of international travel to this or that city, in every corner of the globe, to steal a day, a night, even an afternoon together. Meeting up with his wife in hotels that became interchangeable in the cities where they did not have a residence, and hardly noticing which residence was which when they were in one of them. New York, Singapore, Tokyo, Paris, the capital city of his own country, Arjat an-Nahr, on an endlessly repeating cycle. Always having to plan to see his wife around the demands of their calendars, never simply seeing her. Never really able to simply be with her.
He would not miss this part of their life at all. He told himself that having this part end would be worth the rest of it. At least they would be together. Surely that was the important thing.
“You should not have stayed so long in Arjat an-Nahr,” she was saying, that teasing note in her voice, the one that normally made him smile automatically. “I’m tempted to think that you care more for your country and its demands on your time than your poor, neglected wife.”
He knew she was kidding. Of course she was. But still—tonight, it pricked at him. It seemed to suggest things about their future that he knew he didn’t want to hear. That he could not accept, not even as an offhanded joke. It cut too deep tonight.