‘Where have you been?’ Emily whispered into her ear. ‘It’s been ages, El. The rumour mill has had you locked in the Farrehed palace tower by your domineering husband.’
For just a moment Eloise wanted to tell her friend everything. Of the joy she’d found helping others, the freedom she’d found in Zurich, the meaning she’d found in such a simple existence...
‘Mrs Santos,’ Malik said, interrupting Eloise’s thoughts and putting an end to such a foolish whim.
Of course she couldn’t say anything that would reveal her absence from Farrehed...from the Prince.
‘Malik.’ Emily nodded in warm welcome.
‘It’s a long story,’ Eloise replied quietly, with a smile to soften the brush-off. ‘What are you doing here? You’re not usually at these events.’
‘I could say the same for you,’ the brunette replied in hushed tones. ‘My father... He’s... He’s not doing so well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. And your husband?’
‘Not here—thankfully,’ Emily replied with a rueful laugh. ‘Speaking of husbands... Yours has been like a bear with a sore head all evening.’
‘Really?’ Eloise asked, her heart pounding just at the thought of him.
Emily nodded over her shoulder.
And, as if their discussion had conjured his presence, Eloise caught sight of the man she hadn’t seen in six months. She couldn’t see his face, but the broad lines of his back were etched in her memory as if it were the only way she had ever seen her husband: from a distance and from behind.
Even today he stood a head taller than all those around him, and for one second her breath caught in her lungs. A thousand images of her handsome husband ran through her mind and over her skin. That first ever sight of him, dismounting a formidable black stallion. His impenetrable air of authority before she’d even known he was the son of a sheikh. The way that she had mocked him for his arrogance as he’d flung the horse’s reins at the stable hand and the innocent flirtation they had shared—until later that evening when they had been formally introduced.
Betraying nothing of their first meeting, Odir had eased her humiliation, charmed away her embarrassment and made it a secret shared between them, kept from their fathers. One she’d foolishly cherished.
Images crashed through her mind of the brief time they had spent together during their arranged engagement—the trips he’d made out to the borders of Farrehed, where she had been working for a charity set up to help provide medication for the desert tribes. The secret dinners they had shared...the morning they’d watched the sun rise over the sand dunes...
She thought back with shame of how she had told him her hopes and dreams...how she’d eagerly eaten up his plans for Farrehed and its people. Of how they’d come together, in spite of their fathers’ plans, to try and make the best of the arrangement. Of how she’d dared to hope that their marriage could be something more.
But it hadn’t been. She was a bought bride—a pawn used by powerful men.
Her wedding ring slipped down her finger again. She was done waiting for her prince to come along and rescue her. It was time for the Princess to rescue herself.
* * *
Odir’s cheeks ached from fake smiles, his throat hurt from obsequious small talk and his head pounded from the pressure he’d been keeping at bay all day. He rubbed away the exhaustion from his neck. He’d been through worse, he assured himself, but then wondered whether that was actually true.
At that moment, he would have given half of his country away for a whisky.
But the ruler of Farrehed couldn’t be so uncouth as to drink whisky at an event where only the finest champagne was being guzzled by the gallon.
Odir had never quite understood why it required the spending of such large sums of money to raise even greater sums of money for charity. But then the law of diminishing returns was something he’d never held to.
‘And that was when she said that she couldn’t see it!’
Odir joined in the over-zealous laughter at the undeserving joke told by the French Ambassador. And then, instead of turning away and seeking the solitude he so badly wanted, Odir slipped into the kind of seasoned small talk that he could do in his sleep. Perhaps in the brief, heady days of his youth he had even done it in his sleep. But that had been before. Before his marriage, before his father’s grief-stricken deterioration had signalled the near absolute destruction of his beloved country, and before this morning.
And now, despite all this spectacle, all this civility, the future of Farrehed was hanging by a thread. And the only person who could help him hold on to it was the woman he’d let into his palace to wear his ring.
Behind him Odir felt rather than heard a lull in the conversation and the hairs lifted on his arms. She should never have been able to elicit such a reaction in him. He’d once thought the barriers around his heart strong enough to prevent such a thing. But she had. And she still did.
Eloise—his wife, his future Queen—had arrived.
Odir watched her reflection in the glass as she made her way through the throng of people between them. The closer she got, the more eagerly he ate up the defiance that shone from the angle of her shoulders, her determined footsteps. Good. He wanted the promise of the fight she was offering him. He needed it.
He let her get almost within touching distance and then he struck.
Odir wheeled round and imprisoned her within his arms, proceeding to kiss her in a way that he had allowed himself on only a few occasions during their courtship. He took full advantage of her lips, opened partially in shock, and plunged his tongue into...
Into a heaven he’d refused to let himself remember.
As his lips carved out
