About the Author

CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her school social life. And so began her lifelong love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has back-packed in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek Islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

Dear Reader,

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of an ordinary woman, going about her ordinary life, only to look up and find herself face to face with her destiny.

If it involves far-off kingdoms, thrones, and a dangerously compelling hero, all the better.

That was my premise for The Reluctant Queen. I wondered what my heroine would feel when she found herself caught up in a fate she’d thought was little more than a childhood dream. And I wondered what her long-lost betrothed would be like, so determined to win back the only woman who’d ever captured his heart—and who he must convince to marry him if he is to take the throne that was always meant to be his.

I hope you enjoy travelling to their distant kingdom, Alakkul, and falling in love with Lara and Adel. I loved telling their story!

Happy reading!

Caitlin

The Reluctant Queen
Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

“HELLO, Princess.”

It was a dark voice, low and deep, and echoed hard and deep in Lara Canon’s bones—making them sing out in recognition. She turned without conscious thought, as if compelled, searching for the man responsible, though some part of her knew at once who he must be. Her gaze flicked across the parking lot of the unremarkable supermarket in her Denver, Colorado, neighborhood, scanning out from the side of her car where she’d stopped still.

She found him at once, unerringly, as if he’d commanded it. Her heart began to beat wildly, even as her skin prickled.

He was even more compelling than his voice, tall and broad like a warrior, with jet-black hair and deep gray eyes above a hard, unsmiling mouth. He held himself with an ease she knew at once was deceptive—he was too watchful, too ready. He wore a black, tight shirt that strained against the tautly packed muscles of his broad chest and flat abdomen, and trousers in the same color that clung to powerful legs and lean hips. He was beautiful in the way that dangerous thunderstorms were beautiful, and Lara discovered that she was breathless.

He was the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen, for all that he was the most arresting. And more than that, she recognized him. She knew him.

She had thought she’d never see him again. She felt her pulse pound beneath her skin.

“I did not expect that you would grow to favor your father,” he said, those remote, storm-colored eyes seeming to see right through her, shocking her, looking straight into the past she’d long denied. The shopping bag in her arms slipped a few inches as her fingers lost feeling. As panic surged through her.

She realized two things, clutching at the brown paper bag before it fell to the asphalt at her feet. First, that he was not speaking English. And second, that she could understand the language he was speaking.

It made her think at once, of course, of Alakkul. Her father’s tiny, oft-contested country in the Eurasian, sometime-Soviet mountains, where his family had ruled with iron fists and an inflated sense of their own consequence for generations.

The country she and her mother had escaped from, in the dark of night, when she was sixteen years old. The country that she had been running from, in one way or another, ever since. And the last place she had seen this man, when he had still been more of a boy. When he had been far less beautiful, far less dangerous, and had still managed to break her teenaged heart.

Her stomach clenched into a thick, tight knot. She told herself it was panic—that it could not be that old, familiar desire she’d been so overwhelmed by as a girl. They were in a busy parking lot, filled with people on this bright June evening. He was standing far enough away that she didn’t think he could reach over and grab her—and anyway, she was twenty-eight years old. Her father could hardly attempt to regain custody now. There was no reason for him to be here. And therefore no reason for her to acknowledge their shared history.

“I’m sorry,” she said. In English. She shrugged to indicate her lack of comprehension and, hopefully, polite disinterest. It had been so long. Maybe she was seeing ghosts. Maybe it wasn’t him at all. “Can I help you with something?”

He smiled, and it was far more disturbing than his voice, or his hard, shocking beauty. It made his gray eyes warm slightly, with a flash of what looked like sympathy. It confused Lara even as it set off a tiny trail of flickering flames across her skin, licking up and down her limbs. Reminding her. Making her yearn for things she dared not name.

“You are the only one who can help me,” he said, in his perfect, exotically accented English. His mouth crooked. “You must marry me. As you promised to do twelve years ago.”

She laughed, of course. What else could she do? She laughed, even as old memories chased through her head—long-buried images of crystal-clear mountain lakes, snow-capped peaks jutting in the distance, the spires of an ancient castle hewn from the very rock of the steep hills. A lean, feral young man with dark gray eyes, looking down at her with a fierce expression while her heart beat too fast and the white-cloaked priests murmured archaic, improbable words through the haze of incense and ritual. His head bent close to hers to whisper secrets in the middle of a great festival dinner, making her shiver. His smile, his occasional laughter, that fire in his stormy eyes when he gazed at her …

How long had she told herself those images were part of a dream? That they could not be anything but a dream? Yet the man who stood before her was undeniably, inarguably real.

And worse, she knew him. Her body knew him—and was reacting exactly as it had then, when she had been so young. She’d spent a long time convincing herself that all that fire had been no more than a young girl’s fantasy. That he could not possibly do these things to her. That she had embellished, exaggerated, as young girls did.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said, as if she was placating him. As if she did not, in fact, remember him. “But I’m afraid I have a personal policy against marrying strange men who approach me in parking lots.”

“I am Adel Qaderi,” he said, in that calm yet implacable voice, his gray eyes on hers, that name sounding within her like a gong. Her breath tangled in her throat. “I am no stranger to you. I am your betrothed, as you know very well.”

It was such an odd, old word. Lara concentrated on that—pushing away the fluttering of her pulse, the constriction in her throat. The onslaught of too many memories she’d thought forgotten long ago.

“I’m sorry,” she said, dismissing him. If she didn’t accept this was happening, it didn’t have to happen, did it? “I’m late for a—”

“You are the Crown Princess of Alakkul,” Adel said in that low, commanding voice, somehow making it impossible for Lara to turn and get into her car as she knew she should. “The last of an ancient bloodline, warriors and kings throughout history. The only child of the great King Azat, may he rest in peace.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees wobbled beneath her.

“May he …?” she echoed. She shook her head, trying to clear it. What could this mean? How could it be true? Her father was the monster under her bed, the nightmare that lay in wait when she closed her eyes. Hadn’t her mother always told her so? “He’s … dead?”

“At least you do not deny your own father,” Adel said, his expression stern. He moved closer to her but then stopped, as if he felt called to an action he chose not to take. Still, somehow, she knew he grieved for her father in all the ways she could not. It made a headache bloom to life in her temples. “Perhaps we can dispense with the rest of this game of pretend now.”

“You approached me in a parking lot, like a vagrant,” Lara hissed. Unwilling to face what he’d just told her. Unwilling to imagine what it might mean. “What did you think my reaction would be?”

“I did so deliberately.” His gaze was cool. Assessing. Dangerous. “I assumed you would feel more at ease in a public place. After all, you have spent most of your life running away at the slightest hint of your homeland.”

Lara shifted the bag in her arms, and wished her head would stop spinning. How was she supposed to act? Feel? She had not heard from her autocratic father directly in twelve years. She had not wanted to hear from him. If asked even five minutes before, she would have announced without a qualm that she hated the man.

But that did not mean she’d wanted him dead.

“I need to inform my mother …” she began, her temples pounding, wondering how fragile, prone-to-hysteria Marlena would be likely to take such news. Wondering, too, what her mother would center her life around now there was no more King Azat to hate and fear and blame. But perhaps that was unkind.

“Your mother is being notified even now,” Adel replied coolly.

Lara found herself staring at the play of muscle in his strong arms, his hard abdomen. She felt her body’s treacherous heat, its instant response to the very sight of him, despite her emotions.

“I am afraid your business is with me, Princess. I cannot allow you the necessary time to grieve.” Was his tone ironic? Or did she only imagine his judgment? Was that guilt she felt, pooling inside of her? “We must wed immediately.”

“You are insane,” she told him, when she could speak. When the red haze of confusion and emotion receded slightly. When she could jerk her attention away from his warrior’s body. “You cannot really believe I’ll marry you!”

Adel smiled again, though this time, there was nothing particularly sympathetic about it. Where was that younger man she remembered, who had been so eager to see her smile?

“I understand that this is a shock,” he said. “But let me be clear. You have only two possible choices before you, and while I am aware neither one is necessarily easy, you must choose one of them.”

“Your attempt at compassion is insulting,” Lara managed to say, her hands clenched tight into the bag she held. Part of her wanted to fling the sack at him as he stood near the trunk of her sensible sedan. And then run. Only the fact that he probably expected that reaction kept her from it.

“Nonetheless, it is real,” he said. His storm-colored eyes moved to hers, and darkened. “It would never have been my choice to confront you in this way, with this news. I regret the necessity. But it does not change anything.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lara said after a moment, her temper kicking in—replacing the wild swirl of far trickier feelings. Anger was better. Anger felt better—more productive. “And more important? I don’t care.”

“Yet you must listen,” he told her. So quiet. So sure. And she could only stare at him. And obey. “I am sorry for that, too, but so it is.”

There was something about the way he looked at her then that … bothered her, in a way she couldn’t quite categorize. As if he could see the buried truths she’d denied existed for years. The old dreams. The yearnings for a life, a family, the kind of things other girls took for granted while she trailed around after Marlena, cleaning up her messes. The way she’d felt about him all those years ago, the things she’d dreamed they’d do together—

Lara blinked, and steeled herself against him—and the surprising swell of something like grief that she would have sworn she’d never feel.

“What, then?” she asked, her voice too rough, as she fought back the unwieldy emotions that shifted and rolled within her. “What is it you think I need to hear?”

“You have a choice to make,” he said again, and the worst part, Lara realized in a sort of horror, was that his voice was kind, his eyes the same. As if he understood exactly what she was going through—as if he knew.

And yet he was continuing anyway, wasn’t he? He was an Alakkulian male. An Alakkulian king. Just like her father, he thought only of himself. That much was blatantly obvious, no matter how kind his eyes might seem. No matter her memories of his smile, of his tenderness.

“The only choice I will be making,” she told him, enunciating clearly, deliberately, with razor-sharp precision, as if sounding tough would make her feel that way, too, “is to get in my car and drive away from here. From you. From this ridiculous conversation. I suggest you get out of the way, unless you’d like me to run you over.”

“You did not merely promise to marry me, as any young girl might,” Adel said in the same calm, commanding tone, as if she had not just threatened him. “You entered into a binding legal contract.”

“I was a teenager,” Lara retorted. “No court in the world would ever hold me to it. It’s absurd you would think otherwise—this is not the Stone Age!”

“You overestimate the progressive nature of the world’s courts, I think,” he replied, something almost like humor flashing briefly across his face. But she did not want to think of him as human, as capable of humor as he’d been before, and ignored it. “But in any case, it does not matter. Your father signed for you when you were too young, as is the custom. When you came of age you did not withdraw your consent from the contract—which, according to the laws of Alakkul, means you thus agreed that you entered into the terms of the contract of your own free will.”

“I will not marry you,” she said. Her shoulders tightened, her chin rose like a fighter’s. “I would rather die.”

“There is no need for such theater,” Adel replied in a faintly reproving tone. Yet his mouth curved slightly—as if he found her amusing. It made her temper kick in again. That, she told herself, was the feeling that pounded through her, shaking her. “You may break the contract, if that is your wish. But there is a price.”

“Let me guess.” Lara scraped her heavy curls back from her face with an impatient jerk of her hand. “My honor will be smeared? My family name forever muddied? Isn’t that how you people think?”

“By ‘you people,’” he asked, his voice staying even though a cold fire blazed to life in his gaze, “am I to understand you mean your own people? Your countrymen?”

“I’ll live with the dishonor,” Lara told him, not wanting to admit the twist of shame she felt move through her. Much less the odd urge she had to reach over and touch him. “Quite happily.”

“As you wish,” Adel said with that great calm that, for some reason, infuriated her as surely as if he’d openly taunted her. It made her want to scratch at him, poke at him—made her want to see beneath the surface, rip off the mask she was sure he wore, see what lurked beneath. She just wanted to touch him.

She had no idea where that urge came from. Nor why it seemed to move through her like a scalding heat, rippling over her skin and pooling in places it shouldn’t.

The city seemed to mute itself around them, the parking lot fading, the bright sky above and the slight breeze from the Rocky Mountains in the distance disappearing. There was only this dangerous, compelling warrior of a man in place of the boy she had once known, and too many emotions to name. She felt … pulled to him. Drawn. As if he’d cast a spell with that fascinating mouth and that commanding, resolute gaze of his, and she was helpless to resist, no matter how many reasons she had to avoid him and how little she wanted to hear what he might have to say.

But if there was one thing she refused to be, it was helpless.

“Wonderful,” she said, pulling herself back from the brink of disaster. Her tone was acerbic, as much to defend herself against this man as to convince herself he was not getting to her in so many odd, uncomfortable ways. “I’m glad you traveled across the world to tell me all of this. You can consider our absurd betrothal ended.”

“As you wish,” he said again. But he did not move. His gaze seemed to sharpen, as if he was some great predator and she nothing but prey. She fought off an involuntary shiver. “You need only pay me the bride price.”

“The bride price?” she repeated, caught as much by the sudden ferocity in his dark gaze as by the words themselves.

“Your dowry was the throne of Alakkul, Princess,” Adel said quietly, deliberately. “I am afraid that the sum my family paid for you was significant, give or take such things as the exchange rate, the rate of inflation, and so on.”

He named a number that she could not possibly have heard right—a number so astronomically high that it, too, made her laugh. It was as patently absurd as him suddenly appearing in a parking lot and announcing he was going to marry her, just as she’d dreamed when she’d first left Alakkul—and as impossible.

“I have nothing even approaching that amount of money, and never will,” she said flatly. “I am an accountant. I live an entirely normal and ordinary life. That amount of money is a fantasy.”

“Not to the Queen of Alakkul,” he said, and something flared between them, hot and bright, making her breath tangle in her throat, making her ache low in her belly. “Or to me.”

“That is another fantasy, one I have no interest in.”

“I am a compassionate man,” Adel said after a moment, though the expression he wore made her doubt it. “I will release you from your obligations to me, if that is your desire. You need only repay what your mother stole from the palace when she disappeared twelve years ago. It is not so much. A mere nine hundred thousand dollars, and some precious jewels.”

“Nine hundred thousand dollars,” Lara repeated in disbelief. “You must be joking. I don’t have it—and if my mother took it, it is no more than she deserved, after what my father subjected her to!”

Adel merely inclined his head. “I will not argue with you about your mother,” he said. “Nor will I debate your choices with you. They are simple. Marry me, or pay the price.”

He held up an autocratic hand when she started to speak, and she knew deep in her bones that he was every inch a king as well as a warrior. She should hate that—him. And yet her treacherous body, instead of finding him repulsive, yearned.

“There is not much time, Princess,” he said. “I regret the necessity, but you must make your decision. Now.”

CHAPTER TWO

HE APPROVED of the woman she’d become, Adel thought, her fierceness and her attempts at fearlessness, and was not certain why that surprised him.

“Do you accept credit cards?” she asked icily after a moment, her silver-blue eyes glittering in the late-afternoon light, even as she held herself so rigidly, so determinedly still. “If so, I am certain we can work something out.”

Adel only smiled, enjoying her, even under these circumstances. The girl he had never forgotten for a moment had become a woman he wanted to know better. “You are stalling.”

“Of course I am.” She shifted her weight and let the paper sack she carried fall to the ground at her feet. He heard the faint crunch of glass against the pavement, but she only glared at him. “It will take me more than thirty seconds to choose between marriage to a man I hardly know or a lifetime in debt I’ll never pay off. The interest rates alone would kill me! You’ll just have to wait.”

He liked that, too. She was as much the child of the late King Azat, his revered mentor, as she was of the faithless woman who was her mother. Brave. Vibrant. And she would be his wife. His queen, as had been decided so many years ago. The warrior in him appreciated the way she stood so straight, emotion darkening her eyes but not overtaking her, her body lean and supple and strong. The king in him imagined the future her blood assured, the children they would bear together, the way they would rule his beloved Alakkul. And the man in him wanted to taste the fullness of her mouth, and sink his fingers into the dark glossy waves of her long hair.

Just as he’d always wanted her, even back when they were both young.

He had wanted her even after her lying mother had spirited her away, taking her far from her home—far from Adel. He had wanted her in all the years in between, when the old King insisted they leave her to her new life and Adel had wondered when he could ever lay claim to the woman who had always been his. He wanted her as she denied him, as she fought with him, as she looked at him as if he was her enemy.

He had wanted her so long, it had become as much a part of him as his own name. It did not matter what she’d done in all the intervening years. It did not even matter if she’d forgotten him. He was here now, and she was his.

She was far too Western. She was dressed for summer in America—all bare skin and tight clothes that outlined curves his hands itched to touch. Her hair was untamed, uncovered, a silken black mass of curls spilling around her creamy shoulders. Her high, full breasts filled out the tight, V-necked shirt she wore to perfection, while her slim hips and long legs were encased in scandalously tight denim. Her feet were bare to his sight, her polished pink toenails in thonged sandals.

These things should have displeased him. Perhaps even angered him. Yet they did not. She did not.

At all.

He was fascinated.

“Explain this to me,” she said after a moment, her eyes meeting his and then falling, as if she could sense the direction of his thoughts. “My father signed me away to you? When I was twelve? And you are the sort of man who wants to honor that kind of archaic, misogynistic agreement?”

“Your father was the King of Alakkul,” Adel said swiftly, not rising to the obvious bait. “And I am his chosen successor. You are his only daughter, and the last of your bloodline. It is fitting that you become my queen.”

It was more than fitting—it was necessary, though he did not plan to share that with her. Not now. Not yet.

Her throat worked. Her eyes clouded over, though with temper or hurt, he could not tell. “How romantic,” she managed to say.

“Surely you have always known this day would come, Princess,” he replied, keeping his voice even, wondering why he felt the urge to comfort her. There was no point addressing that bitter note in her voice. “You have been permitted to live freely for years. But it was always on borrowed time.”

“Interestingly, I was under the impression that I was simply living my life,” she said, her gaze freezing into a glare. “I had no idea you were lying in wait!”

“You cannot tell me you do not remember me.” He saw the tell-tale brush of color on her cheeks, heard the catch of her breath. He remembered the sweet taste of their first, stolen kiss. The music of her sigh of pleasure when he touched her. He could see she did, too. “I can see that you do.”

“It might as well be a dream!” she said fiercely, though her flushed cheeks told a different tale. “That’s what I thought it was!”

“Life is often unfair, Princess,” he said, his voice low, his attention on the way she stood on the balls of her feet, as if she meant to run. Would she dare? “But that does not change the facts of things.”

“There are your facts, and then there are my facts,” she said in a low voice. She took a breath, and her silver-blue eyes turned to steel. He liked that, too. The warrior in him, who had fought and trained and gladly suffered to achieve all that he had done, sang his approval. “You can go ahead and sue me for your money. I won’t pay it. And whatever the courts in your tiny little country might say, the court of public opinion will have only one word for a king who chases down a defenseless woman like this. Bully.”

Adel smiled then, because she was so much more than he had dared imagine, when he’d thought of her growing up so far from her people, her traditions, him. She was not her mother’s daughter at all, as he had feared, no matter how that worthless woman had tried to poison her against all that was hers.

“You will make a magnificent queen,” he told her, though he doubted she wished to hear such things. “It is your birthright.”

She shook her head, as if he’d insulted her, and turned her back on him. It was a deliberate dismissal. And yet he felt it like a caress, shooting through him, desire and admiration coursing through his veins. Finally, something in him whispered. A woman who is worthy. A woman who is not afraid.

“Find another queen,” she threw back over her shoulder as she opened her car door. “I’m not interested in the job.”

Adel moved closer, putting out his hand to hold the door of her car open as she went to get in. He did not crowd her—but he also did not step back when she whipped back around to face him. He stood there for a moment, waiting until her breath came faster, and her gaze dropped to his mouth. He could feel the tension wind between them, and longed to close the distance between them—longed to take her mouth with his and reintroduce himself in the best way he could.

“I spoke of facts, Princess,” he said, when she dragged her gaze back to his. “Let me share a few with you. I have every intention of marrying you, as we both swore to do in our betrothal ceremony twelve years ago. That is a fact.”

“Your intentions are your business,” she replied calmly, though her eyes flashed blue steel. “They have nothing to do with me.”

“If you do not honor your obligations,” he continued as if she had not spoken, “I will not simply be forced to take measures to secure the bride price owed to me. I will also have no choice but to have your deceitful mother arrested and returned to Alakkul, where her theft of so much money and so many jewels—not to mention her kidnapping of the Crown Princess—will no doubt result in an extremely long and unpleasant jail term. If not death. As your husband and your king, of course, I would be willing to forgive such criminal acts on the part of your relative. But why would I extend such a courtesy to a stranger?”

“And again,” she said after a long moment, her mouth trembling slightly, as if he’d hurt her. “What words do you think come to mind when you say such things?”

“I cannot compromise,” he said softly. Fiercely. “I will not.”

“And that is what kind of man you’ve grown into,” she replied in the same voice, as something like an ache, a need, swelled in the warm summer air between them. Adel wanted to touch it. Her. “So much for the boy who promised he would never hurt me, that he would lay down his life to avoid it.”

He wanted to smile—did she not realize how much she revealed with that memory? How much room she gave him to hope? But he refrained.

“I wish I could place your feelings above all else,” he said, inclining his head slightly. “But that is not who I am. I cannot pretend that I will not do anything and everything in my power to secure you. And thus the throne. I owe nothing less to the people of Alakkul.” He moved slightly, closer, unable to keep his distance as he should. She was too much—too magnetic, too proud. Too … everything he’d dreamed. “Your people, Princess.”

“You can call me Princess all you like,” she said, strong emotion cracking across her face, in her voice. “That doesn’t make it so. I left all of that behind. I have no interest in a foreign country I can hardly remember.”

“What will spark your interest, I wonder?” he asked, hearing the danger in his own voice, even as he saw her awareness of it, of him, in her gaze. “Are you as cold-hearted as you would like me to believe? Are you prepared for the consequences of your refusal? Not just to your faithless mother,” he said coldly when she began to speak, “but to the very people you claim to care nothing about. If you do not take the throne with me, I will have to fight for it. That is not a euphemism. I am talking about civil war.”

She rocked back on her feet, and dragged in a deep, ragged breath. Her eyes were unreadable when they met his again, dark gray now instead of blue.

“Why ask me at all?” she demanded, her voice strained. “Why pretend that I have a choice to make if I do not?”

He wanted to trace the shape of her delicate cheekbones, the bold line of her nose, the full swell of her lips. He did not understand what he felt then—tenderness? Affection? Need? All of the above at once?

“Here is what I will promise you,” he said abruptly, called somehow to fix the darkness of her expression. “I will honor you and respect you, a claim I do not make to many without cause, but one I made to you twelve years ago. I will not take lightly the sacrifice you are making today. I doubt I am an easy man, but I will try to be fair.”

He saw tears at the back of her eyes, making them shine too bright. But she did not let them fall. He saw the panic, the uncertainty, the fear. But then she swallowed, and let her hands drop to her sides, and he knew it was as much a surrender as a challenge.

He could handle both. He’d been waiting for her for over a decade. For the whole of his life. He was amazed at how much, how deeply and how completely, he wanted to handle her. In every sense of the term.

“Congratulations,” she said bitterly. “You’ve won yourself a completely unwilling queen.”

Adel did not, could not care if she thought she hated him now. He would win her. He had won her years before—and she had already showed him she remembered more than she claimed she did. He would build on those memories, and he would win her all over again. And this time, in the way a man won a woman he meant to keep.

“I will take you any way I can get you,” Adel said now, and extended his hand, keeping the hard, bright triumph that flared inside of him under tight control. She was his. Finally. “Come,” he said. “Our future awaits.”

He saw her pulse go wild in her throat, saw her remarkable eyes widen a fraction. He saw her waver. He saw her legs shake as if she fought against the urge to bolt. Still, he held out his hand, and waited.

She bit her lip, surrendered, and slid her hand into his.

She had no choice.

Everything seemed to burst into speed and color, exploding all around her.

There was the feel of his warm, strong palm, his skin against hers, arrowing deep into her, making her soften and yearn. Just like before. There was his strong, dangerous body too close to hers—so close she imagined she could feel his heat—and the way she wanted to lean into him even as her mind shrieked in denial of everything that was happening. Her body had already decided. Her body had chosen him years ago, and was now exultant at his return. It was her mind that reeled, that was desperate for an out.

But what was her alternative? Her mother jailed? War? How could she possibly live with any of that, knowing she’d had the power to prevent it and had refused?

And she did not doubt that Adel Qaderi was more than capable of the things he’d promised. She could feel his ruthlessness taking her over like an ache in the bones, making it impossible for her to breathe. It was his ruthlessness, she told herself firmly, and nothing more—certainly not that old, demanding heat that only he raised in her. Certainly not that.

Adel raised his hand, and they were suddenly surrounded—by a fleet of hard-mouthed, serious-looking men who spoke in staccato tones into earpieces and herded Lara into a limousine she had not seen idling nearby.

It was only when she was tucked inside the car and it was speeding away, while her head spun wildly, that her eyes fell on the pieces of luggage on the seat opposite her. She recognized them at once. She had last seen them in the hall closet of her apartment.

She stared at them for a moment, her brain refusing to make the obvious and only connection, and then whipped her head around to stare at the man who sat with such devastating confidence beside her.

He only raised his dark brow, and watched her.

He had known she would surrender.

He had planned it.

“Your belongings have been packed up and are being shipped,” he said without the slightest hint of apology in his tone. But why should he apologize? He’d won. “But should you wish for anything else, it is yours.”

“Except my freedom,” she said with more bitterness than she’d intended. “My life.”

“Except that,” he agreed, his voice moving from that exotic steel to a softer velvet.

He shocked her then by reaching over and taking her hand in his far bigger one, holding it between his palms.

Lara jumped, a shudder working through her body, as she stared at the place they were connected, her fingers curling toward his. She felt herself blush, hard, the heat prickling over her and casting her in a hot, breathless red.

“Is it so terrible?” he asked softly, very nearly amused, his voice a caress in the stillness of the car’s plush interior. “I am not a bad man.”

“You’ll understand if I choose to reserve judgment on that,” she said in a voice that sounded so much stronger, so much crisper, than she felt—and yet she did not pull her hand away from his. “Given that you are currently blackmailing me into marrying you, as if we are in some gothic novel.”

“You intrigue me, Princess,” he said, his voice insinuating itself in places it should not have been able to reach. Heat moved between them, or she simply burned, and she could not pretend that she was not at least partly as motivated by that as she was by her concern for the rest of it. What did that make her?

“That sounds like a fantastic basis for a marriage,” she managed to say. “You are intrigued, I am forced into it against my will, and the fate of my mother and all the citizens of Alakkul hangs in the balance. How delightful.”

“Ah,” he said in a voice that made her think of much darker delights, skin against skin, long, hot nights, all those things she’d long imagined with him but thought would never come to pass, “but will is a delicate thing, is it not?”

He lifted her hand to his mouth. Trapped, captivated—appalled, she told herself!—she only watched. As he turned her hand in his. As he brought her palm closer to the hard line of his full lips. As his thunderstorm eyes met hers, electric, demanding.

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