* * *
Odir watched his wife’s shoulders begin to shake, as if tiny tremors were working their way through her body. He couldn’t tell whether it was from the cold or the shock. Though even he recognised the unseasonable English heat—if it could be called heat—that surrounded them in the midnight air.
He slipped off his jacket and placed it over her slight frame, pulling it tight around her. Whether it was this simple act of caring for his wife, or the proximity of her to his body, he couldn’t tell, but he felt an unwelcome curl of desire unfurl just beneath his skin. It started in his hands, where they had come to rest just beneath her breasts, and spread out like a fire lighting his skin and his lungs in the same moment.
But it wasn’t just desire. It was something much darker and more dangerous than that. It was anticipation. And Odir found himself wondering, not for the first time, what it would be like to lose himself completely in his wife’s body. What it would be like to plunge his tongue into deeper depths than his wife’s soft mouth. What it would be like to feel Eloise shiver beneath his touch with something other than cold.
Odir met his wife’s eyes and saw the compassion and the sympathy held there and he hated it. Hated it that his wife was looking at him in the one way that could undo him. Damn her—why wasn’t she feeling it too? The same madness that was so tempting to him...more tempting than anything he had felt since his wedding night.
And then, as if his thought had been spoken out loud, he saw the moment that she felt it too. Her eyes widened—just a fraction. Had they been in a crowded room he doubted very much that anyone else would have noticed, would have seen the subtle change that came over her features and sent a spark of satisfaction rampaging through his body. Here was something secret—just between his wife and him.
Her eyes, usually a bright shade of blue, grew dark, almost matching the night sky behind her. Her pupils widened and he saw the flicker of her pulse quicken beneath the soft indentation in her jaw. For a fanciful moment he believed that their hearts were beating in time, and cursed himself for the thought.
‘We need to leave,’ he said, shutting down the madness that—had he had more to drink—he would have blamed on alcohol.
He removed his hands away from where they rested and walked towards the glass door that separated them from the party within. Malik and one of the other guards were stationed either side of the door, and as they passed through Odir registered the soft tones of the party still in full swing with surprise. It seemed almost inconceivable that the world was continuing to turn despite the events of the last few hours.
Turning away from the muffled noise, he stalked towards the lift, and once again Eloise stepped in beside him. In the mirror, she looked dishevelled. As if it had been he rather than the wind who had run his hands through her hair, who had pushed aside her skirts.
He clenched his fists and ordered himself back under control as the lift arrived at its destination.
In the hallway another guard held the door to his suite open, and once again Odir marched straight into the darkened rooms and, control be damned, headed straight for the whisky.
He listened for the sounds of Eloise behind him and realised that she was the first person that he’d told about his father’s death.
Jarhan had been with him when the doctor had conveyed the news that had set his every action today in motion. Odir had been able to tell, when he’d seen his aide, that he had already been informed by the medical staff—in the event that the Princes would need further support. And now, between his aide and his bodyguards, who had been sworn to secrecy, it left the number of people who knew about his father’s death at a total of twelve—including the doctor and nurse.
It felt so strange. The man he’d spent years hating, the man who had almost obliterated any happy childhood memories—memories of when his father had not been the monster he had become the day his wife tragically died—was now gone from this world. He wondered, not for the first time, if it would have been easier had he not had those happy memories. If Abbas’s later actions had truly killed any knowledge of the man he had once been. The father he had once been.
‘It’s okay to mourn him, Odir.’
A bitter laugh erupted, unbidden, from his lips, searing his flesh with its intensity.
‘Thank you for your permission, but I mourned the loss of my father years ago—the moment he stopped being a father and a husband and became a widowed king.’
He crossed the room in two strides and went to the drinks cabinet, with a determination to wash the taste of grief and anger from his palate with whisky. Unthinking, he put ice into two crystal-cut glasses, poured a generous amount of amber liquid into both, and passed one to Eloise. The weight of the glass was oddly satisfying, and he was left oddly bereft when she took it from him.
He looked up and found Eloise watching him through narrowed eyes.
‘You think that a cruel thing to say? You think me cruel?’ he asked.
He was genuinely curious. For although once he might have claimed to know her thoughts, with the changes the last six months had brought to her he honestly couldn’t tell.
‘No. On the contrary,’ Eloise said, so quietly he had to strain to hear her. ‘I think it an eminently practical thing to mourn the loss of a person who has changed irrevocably.’
Odir was surprised. He’d thought that she would try to comfort him with gentle words and
