“This isn’t what I signed up for,” she said matter-of-factly, though it cost her to keep so calm.

“And it isn’t a tantrum to say so. Pretending that this is a childish display of temper so you don’t have to deal with what I’m saying, however, very well might be.”

“When you met me I was the Crown Prince of Khatan,” Azrin said, the chill back in his voice, that terrible steel in his eyes. “This is, in fact, exactly what you signed up for.” He laughed slightly, though there was no humor in it. “Sooner than we planned, perhaps, but that’s life. Plans change. Sometimes you simply have to do your duty.”

“You’re talking about your life,” she said through the constriction in her chest which she was deathly afraid were the tears she refused to cry. But not in front of him. Not when it was so important that he take her seriously. That he listen. “Your duty. What about mine?”

“What about it?” he asked, every inch of him so arrogant. So incredulous. “This is your life, Kiara. Whatever games we’ve played over the past five years, this is reality. The sooner you accept it, the happier you’ll be.”

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 middle school social life. And so began her life-long 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 backpacked 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.

Recent titles by the same author:

HEIRESS BEHIND THE HEADLINES

PRINCESS FROM THE PAST

KATRAKIS’S LAST MISTRESS

MAJESTY, MISTRESS, MISSING HEIR …

PURE PRINCESS, BARTERED BRIDE

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

In Defiance

Of Duty

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To all the fantastic writers at the 2011 Romantic Writers of Australia Conference who were so lovely and welcoming to me, despite my crippling jetlag. It was such a treat (and an honor) to get to spend time with you—and I hope I did justice to your beautiful country!

And to my favorite Los Angeles-based Australian, Kate Rogers, who told me the truth about magpies.

CHAPTER ONE

“LOVELY view.”

Kiara didn’t turn toward the deep, commanding voice, even as it washed over her and somehow into her blood, her bones, making her very nearly shiver. She’d sensed his approach before he’d helped himself to the chair next to hers—there had been a certain expectant stillness in the air around her, a kind of palpable, electrically charged quiet, as if all of Sydney fell silent before him. She’d pictured that easy, confident walk of his, the way his dark, powerful masculinity turned heads wherever he went, the way he’d no doubt been watching her with that intense, consuming focus as he drew near.

But then, she’d been expecting him.

“That’s a terrible pickup line,” she pointed out, a shade too close to flippant. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. She decided she wouldn’t look at him unless he earned it. She would pretend to be enchanted by the water of the harbor, the coming sunset. Not by a man like him, no matter how tall, dark and dangerous he might be, even in her peripheral vision. “Especially here. This particular view is famous, I think you’ll find. Renowned the world over.”

“That should make it all the more lovely, then,” he replied, a thread of amusement beneath the steel-and-velvet seduction of his voice. She felt it like heat, pressing into her skin. “Or are you the dreary sort who finds a view is spoiled forever if too many others look upon it?”

Kiara sat at a small outdoor table tucked in on the lower concourse beneath Sydney’s glorious, soaring Opera House and the sky above, with full and unfettered access to the famous and beautiful arch of the Harbor Bridge opposite. The setting sun above had just settled into rich and tempting golds, sending the mellow light dancing over the sparkling water of the harbor itself, as if taunting the jutting skyscrapers of the city—as if daring them to look away from the spectacular evening show.

She certainly knew the feeling. And she wasn’t even looking at the man who lounged next to her as if he owned the table, the chair, and her, too, though she was aware of him in every possible way. In every part of her skin and blood and bones.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” she said mildly, as if wholly unaffected by him and the great tractor beam of power and charisma that seemed to emanate from him. He was lethal. So compelling it almost hurt not to turn and let herself look at him, drink him in. “You’re the one who trotted out a tired old line. I only pointed it out. I don’t think that makes me dreary.”

She knew intuitively that his particular brand of dark male beauty—so fierce and breathtaking, laced through with all that dizzying masculine power—would be equally dazzling if she dared turn her head and look at it. She could feel it. In the way her stomach clenched and, below, ached around a deep, feminine pulse. The way the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood at attention, almost making her shiver. The way the whole world seemed to shrink to just this table, this chair.

Him.

Instead, she fiddled with the coffee cup she’d drunk dry a while ago, even toyed with the ends of the wavy light brown hair she’d swept back into a high ponytail, her hands betraying her even as she sat there with such studied carelessness, pretending she was unaware of the great strength of him next to her. The imposing fact of him—ink-black hair against oddly light eyes, the stamp of his Arab ancestry in his fierce features, and that mouthwatering fantasy of a body—that she could grasp even with only the briefest glance from the corner of her eye. The impact on not only her, but the whole of the Opera House Bar around them.

She could see the group of older women at the next table—the way they turned to look at him, then widened their eyes at each other before dissolving into besotted giggles better suited to the girls Kiara imagined they’d been some thirty years before.

“Tell me how to play this game,” he said after a moment that seemed overripe with the gold sinking against the water, the murmur of the crowd of tourists all around them, his own dark magnetism spread over them like an umbrella. “Will I woo you with my wit? My appreciation of the local beauty? Perhaps I will tell you a series of pretty lies and convince you to come back to my hotel with me. Just for the night. Anonymous and furtive. Do you think that would work?”

“You won’t know until you try,” she said, biting back a grin, even as carnal images chased through her head—none of them either anonymous or furtive. All of them spellbinding. Wild with passion. “Though I hardly think laying out your options like that, so coldblooded and matter-of-fact, will do you any favors. You should think in terms of seduction, not spreadsheets.” She found she was grinning despite herself then, but still kept from looking at him, staring resolutely ahead at the delicate arch of the bridge as if unable to tear herself away. “If you don’t mind a word of advice.”

“I relish it, of course.” His low voice was cool, ironic, and still managed to kick up fires all along her skin. And deeper. She shifted in her seat, crossing and then recrossing her legs, wishing he did not take up quite so much space. He did not seem to move at all, and yet, somehow, she was even more aware of him.

“So far,” she continued, her own voice confiding, pitched for his ears alone, “I must tell you that I’m completely unimpressed.”

“With the view?” Now his amusement wasn’t hidden at all. It moved through his voice even as it moved through her, teasing her with hints of something else beneath his crisp British public school vowels, something that indicated English was only one of his languages. The faintest suggestion that he was nothing simple or easily categorized. “I hope you’re not one of those terminally bored socialite types, so shallow and endlessly fatigued by everything the world has to offer.”

“And if I am?”

“That would be a great disappointment.”

“Luckily,” she said drily, “you can hardly have been too invested in something that could only have ended in lies and a furtive hotel visit, could you? I imagine the disappointment will be minor.”

“But I am captivated,” he protested in an insultingly mild way that made her laugh despite herself.

“By my profile?” She smiled at the bridge, imagined the man, and shook her head. “It’s all you’ve seen of me.”

“Perhaps it is your profile superimposed on such a famous view,” he suggested. “I’m as awestruck as any run-of-the-mill tourist. If only I’d remembered my camera.”

She forgot she didn’t mean to look at him and turned her head.

It was looking into the sun. Searing. Dizzying.

He was beautiful—there was no other word for it—but there was nothing in the least bit pretty about him. He was a study in controlled ferocity. He was all sleek muscle and hard, strong lines. His rich black hair, his dark skin, the gleam in his unusual, near-blue eyes. The merciless thrust of his cheekbones, his belligerent jaw. He lounged beside her with seeming nonchalance, but she wasn’t fooled.

He was all focus and menace, his rangy, athletic body showcased to perfection in a dark suit and a snow-white shirt that he wore open against his neck, as if he was attempting a casual gesture when everything else about him shouted out the formidable force he wore the way another man might wear a jacket. He looked as if there was nothing at all he couldn’t do with his disconcertingly elegant hands—and nothing he hadn’t already done with them. She could think of several possibilities, and had to swallow against the shocking surge of heat that swept through her then, wild and out of control.

She was sure he could feel the very same flames.

“Hello,” he said quietly as their eyes met. Held. His sensual mouth curved into a knowing smile. “I like this view, too.”

Kiara forced a jaded sigh. “You really aren’t very good at this, are you?”

“Apparently not.” His impossible eyes, somewhere between blue and green, or possibly gray, gleamed. “By all means, teach me. I live to serve.”

She didn’t laugh at that. She didn’t need to. His own mouth quirked up in the corner, supremely arrogant and male, as if he was as unable to imagine himself serving anyone or anything as she was.

“For all you know, I could be meeting someone.” She forgot about the view; he was far more mesmerizing, especially when his gaze turned darker and something like stormy. She smiled then. “My very jealous lover, for example, who might find you here and take out his aggression all over you. With his fists.”

“A risk I feel prepared to take, somehow.”

There was no denying the edge of confident menace in his smile then, and she wondered what sort of woman she was to find that as appealing as she did. Surely she ought to be ashamed. She wasn’t.

“Is that a threat of violence?” she asked tartly. And then lied. “That’s incredibly unattractive.”

“That is exactly how you look,” he said, the knowing quirk of his hard mouth deepening, his storm-tossed eyes too hot, too sure. “Unattracted.”

“Or perhaps I’m simply a single woman out on the town, looking for a date,” she continued in the same nonchalant, careless tone. “You seem to want to talk only about the view. Or make depressing remarks about the furtiveness of a night of wild, uncontrollable passion. Neither is likely to make me want to date you, is it?”

“Are we talking about a date?” His mouth curved again, as if he was trying not to laugh, and very nearly failing. His almost-blue eyes reminded her of the winter sea, and were as compelling. “I thought this was a negotiation about sex. Endlessly inventive sex, I believe. Or hope, in any case. Not a tedious date, all manners and flowers and gentlemanlike behavior.”

It took her a moment to breathe through the way he said sex, like some kind of incantation. Much less the images he conjured up, and their immediate effect on her body. How could one man be this dangerous? And why was she wholly unable to offer up any kind of defense against him?

“The way this works is that you pretend to be interested only in a date,” she told him as if she was this close to exasperation but only the kindness of her heart kept her from it. “You pretend that you want to get to know me as a person. The more you do that, the more romantic it will all feel. To me, I mean. And that, of course, is the quickest route toward rampant sex in a hotel room.” She shrugged her shoulders as if she felt she shouldn’t have to be the one to share this with him. As if every other person in Sydney was well aware of this, and she wondered why he wasn’t.

“I can’t simply ask for rampant sex?” he asked, as if baffled. Possibly even shocked. Though that lazy, indulgent gleam in his eyes said otherwise. “Are you sure?”

“Only if you are planning to purchase it.” She eyed him, and the hint of a smile that toyed with that mouth of his, and made her wish all sorts of undignified things. “Which is, of course, perfectly legal here. And no, buying me a drink is not the same thing.”

“Your country has so many rules,” he said softly, the amusement leaving his gaze as something far hotter took its place. “Mine is far more…direct.”

She felt the way he looked at her, the fire in it moving over her like a caress, making her wish that she was dressed far more provocatively. Making her wish she could bare her skin to his gaze, to the night falling all around them. The black blazer she wore over a decadently soft black jumper and the dark blue jeans she’d tucked into her favorite black suede books felt confining, suddenly, instead of the casually chic look she’d been going for. She wished she could peel it all off and throw it all in the harbor. She wondered what it was about this man that made such an uncharacteristic urge seem so appealing in the first place.

But she knew.

“Direct?” she echoed, feeling the pull of that hard face, those unholy eyes. She wanted to move closer to that wicked mouth of his. She wanted it more than was wise. More than she should, out in public like this, where anyone could see. For a moment she forgot the game—herself—entirely.

“If I want it,” he said quietly, so quietly, but she felt it flood into her as if he’d shouted it, as if he’d licked it into her skin, “I take it.”

Kiara felt that hum in her, electric and something like overwhelming. For a moment she could only stare back at him, caught in that knowing gaze of his, as surely as if he’d caged her somehow. Trapped her as surely as if he’d used manacles and heavy iron bars. She shouldn’t feel that like a thrill, twisting through her, but she did.

“Then I suppose I should count myself lucky that we are not in your country,” she said after a moment, not sure until she spoke that she would be able to at all. She was surprised that her voice sounded so steady. Almost tart. “This is Australia. I’m afraid we’re quite civilized.”

“All of you in your new, young countries are the same,” he said in that low tone, his voice its own dark spell, weaving its way over her, inside of her, as inexorable as the setting sun. “So brash, forever carrying on about your purported civility. But you are all so close, still, to your disreputable pasts, aren’t you? All of it welling up from beneath, making a lie of these carefully cultivated facades.”

Kiara realized two things simultaneously. One, that she could listen to him talk forever—about countries, about pasts, about whatever he liked. That voice of his triggered something deep inside her, something helpless and wanton, that made her breathless and so wrapped up in him that the world could fall to pieces around her and she wouldn’t notice. Or, as now, the sun could disappear entirely beneath the horizon without her registering it, ushering in the inky sweetness of the Sydney night, and she would still see nothing but him.

And two, and more important, that she would die if she didn’t touch him. Now.

“As fascinating as your thoughts on young countries and disreputable pasts may be,” she said then, keeping her voice a low murmur, her eyes hot on his, “I think that I’d rather dispense with all this meaningless chatter and just get naked. What do you think?”

He smiled again, and she felt it shiver through her and curl her toes. He reached over and took her hand in his, carrying it to his mouth. It was the faintest hint of a kiss, a timeless gesture of chivalry for the benefit of the people all around them, but she felt it like a hard kick. Like a promise.

“There is nothing I would rather do,” he said, that gleam of amusement in his eyes turning them something near silver. “But I’m afraid I’m meeting my wife for dinner. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand.” Kiara played with his strong fingers in hers. “Who would want to stand in the way of acrobatic, inventive sex, after all?”

“She’s terribly jealous.” He shook his head almost sadly. “It’s like a sickness—ouch.” His gaze turned baleful, and a silver heat gleamed there, while something almost too warm to bear echoed in a kind of sizzle low in Kiara’s belly. “Did you just bite me?”

“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.

“I will be king one day,” he reminded her, keeping his voice light, because he knew—he did—that she was only teasing, the way she often did. The way she always had. Wasn’t her very irreverence why he had been so drawn to her in the first place? “Everything will come second to my country then, Kiara. Even you.”

And him, of course. Especially him.

She looked up at him, those marvelous brown eyes of hers moving over his face in the dark. He knew that she could read him, and wondered what she saw. Not the truth, of course. He knew even she could not know that, not from a single searching look, no matter how well she could read what she saw. No one knew the truth yet save his father’s doctors, his mother and Azrin himself.

“I know who I married,” she told him softly, though Azrin did not think she could when he felt so unsure of it himself. “Do you doubt it?” She smiled; soothing, somehow, what felt so raw in him that easily. As if she could sense it without his having to tell her. And then her voice took on that teasing lilt again, encouraging him to follow her back into lighter, shallower waters. “You always take such pains to remind me, after all.”

It was only change, he told himself. Everything changed. Even them. Even this. It was neither good nor bad—it was simply the natural order of things.

And more than that, he had always known this day was coming. Why had he imagined otherwise, these past five years? Who had he been trying to fool?

“Do you mean when I request that you keep your voice down while you are pretending that I am merely some overconfident stranger picking you up in a bar, lest the papers feel the need to share this game of yours with the whole world?” He couldn’t quite make his voice sound reproving, especially not when her brown eyes were so warm, so challenging, and seemed to connect directly with his sex. And his heart. “Does that count as taking pains, Kiara? Or is it simply a more highly developed sense of self-preservation?”

“Yes, my liege,” she murmured in feigned obeisance, laughter thrumming in her voice, just below the surface. She even bowed her head in a mock sign of respect. “Whatever you say, my liege.”

His almost equally feigned look of exasperation made her laugh, and the bright, musical sound of it seemed to roll through him like light.

He couldn’t regret the past five years. He didn’t.

He had always taken his duties as Crown Prince as seriously as he’d taken his position as the managing director of the Khatan Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Kiara had always been wholly dedicated to her own role as vice president of her family’s famous winery in South Australia’s renowned Barossa Valley, a career that took her all over the world and kept her as busy as he was. Theirs had always been a modern marriage, the only one like it in the whole of his family’s history.

But then, he had long been his country’s emblem of the future, whether he wanted to be or not—and no one had ever asked him his feelings on the subject. His feelings were irrelevant, Azrin knew. While his father was very much and very proudly wedded to the old ways, Azrin was supposed to represent the modern age come to life in the midst of old-world Khatan, his small, oil-rich island nation in the Persian Gulf.

He knew—had always known—that once he took the throne he was expected to usher in the new era of Khatan that his father either could not or did not want to. He was expected to lead his people into a freer, more independent future, without the bloodshed and turmoil some of their neighboring countries had experienced.

And Kiara had been his first step in that direction, little as he might have thought of her in those terms when he’d met her. She was a twenty-first century Western woman in every respect, independent and ambitious, a fourth generation Australian winemaker and wholly impressive in her own right. Marrying her had been a commitment to a very different kind of future than the one his old school father, with his traditional three wives, offered their people.

Together, Azrin and Kiara were considered the new face of a new Khatan. That wouldn’t change now—it would only become more analyzed and critiqued. More speculated about. More observed and remarked upon. Their marriage would cease to be theirs; it would become his people’s, just as the rest of his life would. It was inevitable.

Azrin had always known this day would come. He just hadn’t expected it would come now. So soon. And perhaps because he’d thought he would have so many more years left before it happened, he certainly hadn’t understood until now how very much he’d dreaded it.

He didn’t want to admit that, not even to himself.

“Where have you gone?” she asked now, stopping, and thereby making him stop, too. The busy Sydney Pier bristled with ferries and commuters headed home for the evening, tourist groups and restaurant patrons on their way to an evening out. Her clever eyes met his as her palm curved against his jaw. “You’re miles away.”

“I am still in Khatan,” he said, which was true enough. He took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together, and tugged her along with him as he started to walk again, guiding her around the usual cluster of stalls and street performers making the most of the evening rush and the ever-present tourists. “But I would much rather be in you. Naked, I think you said?”

“I did say that.” Her voice was so proper, so demure. Only because he knew her well could he hear the mischief beneath the surface, that touch of wickedness that made him harden in response. “I thought you might have forgotten. My liege.”

“I never forget anything that has to do with your naked body, Kiara,” he said in a low voice. “Believe me.”

He wasn’t ready, he thought—and yet he must be. What he wanted, what he felt—none of that mattered any longer. What mattered was who he was, and therefore who he was about to become. He simply had to learn to keep his own desires, his own feelings, in reserve, just as he’d done for years before he’d met Kiara. In truth, it had been nothing but selfishness that had allowed him to spend the past five years pretending it could ever be otherwise.

He handed Kiara into the long black car that idled at the curb once they reached the street and climbed in after her.

Despite the fact that they were a prince and a princess, a royal sheikh and his chosen bride, they had spent years behaving as if they were like any other high-powered couple anywhere else in the world. They’d believed it themselves, Azrin thought. He certainly had.

The Prince and Princess of Khatan were relatable, accessible. Normal. They worked hard and didn’t get to see as much of each other as they’d like. Theirs was not a story of harems and exoticism, royal excesses and the bizarre lifestyles of the absurdly privileged. They were your everyday, run-of-the-mill power couple, just trying to excel at what they did. Just like you.

And yet they were not those couples, and never would be.

They were not normal. They had only been pretending. He told himself it was not a kind of grief that gripped him then—that it was simply reality.

He would be king. She would be his queen. There were greater expectations of those roles than of the ones they’d been playing at all this time. There were different, more complicated considerations. He knew with the kick of something like foreboding, deep in his gut, that there were great sacrifices that both of them would have to make.

It was only change, he told himself again. Everything and everyone changed.

But not tonight.

CHAPTER TWO

IT TOOK Kiara long moments after she woke in the wide, plush bed in the center of a room bathed in light to recall that she was in Sydney. In the penthouse in Sydney, she reminded herself as she stretched—that glorious multilevel dwelling high on the top of an exclusive building that only Azrin, who had been raised between several palaces, could call an apartment. Her lips curved.

She swung her legs over the side of the platform bed and rose slowly, smiling at the delicious feeling of bone-lessness all throughout her body. That was the Azrin effect. She supposed she should have been used to it by now. Images of the previous night swept through her head, each more erotic than the last. He was a sensualist, her husband; a demanding lover who held nothing back—and took everything in return.

She found herself in the opulent shower with no real idea how she’d got there, humming to herself as she used the delicately scented soap over the skin he’d tasted and touched repeatedly. That was what he did—he made her a besotted, airheaded fool. When he was near, she found she could think of very little else.

Just him. Only him.

She stepped from the great glass shower that she knew from past experience could hold both of them as well as some of Azrin’s more inventive fantasies, and toweled herself off, letting her hair down from the clip she’d used to secure it away from the hot spray. Sometimes she felt guilty that she often considered her demanding career a necessary a bit of breathing room between rounds with her far more demanding, far more consuming husband. There was just something about Azrin, she thought, smiling to herself, that encouraged complete surrender.

She found him out in the great room, lounging carelessly on the low sofa that sprawled out in the center of the sleek, modern space, speaking in assured and confident Arabic into the tablet he used for video conferencing. His fierce gaze met hers and though he did not smile, a flash of heat moved through her anyway.

Even after the night they’d shared, she wanted more. Her core warmed anew, ready for him at a glance. Again. Always.

He was lethal.

She made sure to keep out of sight of the camera, slipping into the open-plan gourmet kitchen that neither she nor Azrin had ever cooked in to fix herself a morning coffee from the imposing, gleaming espresso machine. A few minutes later she settled with the fruits of her labor—a flat white in a warm ceramic mug, perfectly made if she said so herself—on one of the chrome bar stools that fetched up to the shiny granite expanse of kitchen counter.

She still did not speak Arabic, though she’d picked up a few phrases over the years, none of them particularly repeatable outside of the bedroom. So she didn’t try to figure out what he was talking about in that commanding tone that reminded her that he was a royal prince who some called my liege without irony; she let his deep, sure voice wash over her like a caress. She sat and enjoyed a rare moment with nothing to do but look out the wall of floor-to-ceiling glass windows that faced north, the spectacular view stretching across the green lushness of Hyde Park toward the gorgeous Royal Botanic Gardens, the soaring shapes of the Sydney Opera House, and the picturesque Sydney Harbor, all of it bathed in the sweet, golden Australian sunshine.

But she couldn’t keep it up. Too soon she was worrying over a problem that had cropped up with the export of one of the Zinfandels they’d been experimenting with in recent years, and wondering if it required a quick, unscheduled call to her mother, the formidable CEO of Frederick Wines and sometime bane of Kiara’s existence. Given the complicated cocktail of guilt, love and obligation that characterized Kiara’s relationship with her mother as both her daughter and her second-in-command, Kiara usually preferred to handle things like this on her own. She argued the pros and cons in her head, going back and forth again and again.

Sydney preened before her in the abundant sunshine, skyscrapers sparkling in the light and the harbor dotted with sails and ferry boats far below, but Kiara hardly saw them. In her mind, she saw the greens and golds of her beloved Barossa Valley, the rich green vineyards spreading out in all directions, the complacent little towns bristling with Bavarian architecture, built by settlers like Kiara’s ancestors who’d fled from religious persecution in Prussia. She saw the family vineyards that had dominated her life since she was a girl—and the grand old chateau that had been in her family for generations.

The winery had taken over her mother’s life when she’d found herself there, a widow with an infant, and it was Kiara’s life, too, as it could hardly be anything else. At the very least, she had to prove to both her mother and herself that it had all been worth it, didn’t she? All the years of sacrifice and struggle on her mother’s part to build and maintain Kiara’s heritage—surely Kiara owed her, at the very least, her own commitment to that heritage.

She wasn’t sure what made her look up to find Azrin watching her then, his conference clearly over and an unusually serious look on his ruthless face.

“Good morning,” she said and smiled, pushing her concerns away as she drank him in, as if he could clear her head and vanquish her mother’s doubt just by being there in front of her. Instead of halfway across the world somewhere, available only by phone or video chat, which was the way she usually saw him.

She expected him to smile back. But he only looked at her for a long moment, and something twisted inside her—something she didn’t entirely understand. She remembered, then, his unusual urgency the night before. The edge to him that had made him even more fierce, even more demanding than usual. Something skittered down her spine, making her sit straighter on the stool. She smoothed the edges of her silk wrapper around her. She didn’t look away.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked softly. “What’s happened?”

“I am admiring my beautiful wife,” he said, though there was a certain rawness in his near-blue eyes. “My princess. My future queen.”

Kiara was uneasy, and she didn’t know why. He looked as if he’d been up for hours, which was not particularly remarkable, given his many business concerns and the world’s various time zones. His dark hair looked rumpled, as if he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly. He hadn’t bothered to shave, and the rough shadow along his tough jaw made him look more like the sheikh she sometimes forgot he was and less like the cosmopolitan, sophisticated husband with whom she explored the great modern cities of the world.

For some reason, her throat was dry.

“You could sound a bit less complimentary,” she pointed out, trying to sound as teasing and as light as she usually did. “If you tried. Though you’d have to work hard at it.”

He nearly smiled then, and she had the strange notion that it was against his will. Something sat heavy in the room, making her anxious, and she could see he felt it, too—that it was in him, something grim and hard behind his gaze, making those near-blue eyes grow dark. Making it difficult to breathe.

Kiara prided herself on her ability to close deals and navigate the sometimes treacherous labyrinth of international business concerns in general and the wine industry in particular. Hell, she was good at it. She’d had to be, having had to overcome the usual suspicions that she’d been promoted thanks to her relationship with the boss lady rather than her own hard work, and then, after her wedding, having to stare down everyone who’d sniggered and snidely called her your highness or princess in the middle of a tense meeting.

She enjoyed confounding expectations, thank you very much. She’d learned how to keep people at arm’s length as a defense mechanism against her mother’s complete lack of boundaries when she was still a girl. She’d spent her professional life cultivating a little bit of an untouchable ice-queen facade, and becoming a widely photographed and speculated-about princess had only helped make her deliberate shell that much more impenetrable. She liked it that way.

But this man was different. This man looked at her with some kind of pain in him and she would do anything—dance, tease, crawl, whatever worked—to make it go away. This was Azrin, and the love she felt for him—the love that had crashed into her and wholly altered the course of her life five years ago—was impossible to hide away behind some smooth mask. He was the one person on earth that she never, ever wanted at arm’s length, no matter how wild and unbalanced that sometimes made her feel inside, and no matter how far away from each other they often were.

She was up and on her feet before she knew she meant to move, crossing over to him.

“I have something to tell you,” he said, his gaze still so dark, so bleak.

“Then tell me,” she said. But she straddled him where he sat, letting her silk wrapper fall open to show that she was naked and still warm from her shower beneath it. “But you’ll forgive me if I make the conversation a little more exciting, won’t you?”

She wasn’t really thinking. She only knew she wanted to soothe him, and to do something to make whatever this was better. She felt him harden beneath her, felt his breath against her neck, as if he was as helpless to resist this pull between them as she had always been.

But she knew they both were. It had been this way, outsized and impossible and wholly irresistible, from the very beginning.

“Kiara …” he said, in that tone that was supposed to be reproving, chastising even, but his hands slid beneath the wrapper and onto her bare skin, smoothing over her hips. She arched against him, feeling the scrape of his jaw against the tender slope of her breast. He tilted his head back to look up at her, his hard mouth in an unsmiling line. “What are you doing?”

She thought that was obvious, but she only smiled, and rolled her hips, the heat and strength of him against the softest part of her. She ached as if she’d never had him. She burned as if he was already deep within her. And his eyes lit with that same fire, and she knew he felt it, too.

Holding his gaze, she reached down between them and released him from his trousers with impatient hands, stroking his silken length, driving herself a little bit wild. Still watching him, those unholy eyes and his fierce, uncompromising face, she shifted up and over him, then sank down, sheathing him hard and deep within her.

“I’m distracting you,” she told him, her voice uneven.

“Or possibly killing me,” he muttered, taking her mouth with his in a long, hard kiss. “As I suspect is your plan.”

She moved against him, rocking him deeper into her, unable to bite back her own small sigh of pleasure. He moved with her until she started to shake, and then he took control. His hands gripped her hips, preventing her from rocking against him when she wanted to tip herself over the edge.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice a mere scrap of ragged sound, and his smile made her shiver.

“Distracting you,” he said, his cool eyes glittering with that sensual promise that made her feel nearly giddy. “You’ll come when I tell you to, Kiara, and not before.”

She wanted to argue, but he moved then, and she could do nothing at all but move with him, surrendering to his hands, his wicked mouth, and his dark, whispered commands. Letting him build the fire between them into an out of control blaze. Letting him take them both exactly where she wanted to go.

And when he finally ordered her to come, she did, screaming out his name.

Azrin could not understand why he didn’t simply tell her.

Why he hadn’t told her already. Why some part of him didn’t want to tell her at all.

They’d had the one last, long night. Drawing it out any further was nothing more than the very kind of selfishness he could no longer allow himself.

She was still in the shower. He could see the shape of her through the steamy glass, and he already regretted having left the warm embrace of the hot water. He could have stayed in there with her, and continued this exercise in pretense, in misdirection, as if they could lose themselves enough in each other that the whole world would go away.

Perhaps that was what he wanted. If he was honest, he knew that it was.

Hadn’t that been what Kiara had always been for him? A step away from the expected—an escape from the traditional?

Enjoy yourself while you can, his father had said when he’d married, his creased face canny, knowing. As unsympathetic as ever, the old man as harsh a ruler of his family as he was of his country. You will pay for it all soon enough, I promise you.

Because his father had known, too: Kiara was Azrin’s way of asserting himself in a life that would too soon be swallowed whole by duty and sacrifice. There would be no escape.

But Kiara had been his. All his. He’d been unable to resist her. She was his most selfish act of all, having nothing whatosever to do with the things that were expected of him, the things he expected of himself. He had been meant to marry a woman like his own mother—one of the exquisite Khatanian girls who had been trotted out before him at every social opportunity since he was a boy, each more perfect than the last, each competing to show herself to be the most obvious choice for Azrin’s future queen.

They were indistinguishably attractive, impeccably mannered and becomingly modest. They were all from powerful, noble families, all raised with the same set of ideals and expectations, all bred to be perfect wives and excellent mothers, all taught from birth to anticipate and tend to a man’s every passing whim—and if that man was to be their king? All the better.

Instead, he’d met Kiara in a crowded little laneway in Melbourne. He had been walking off his jet lag as he prepared for a week’s worth of meetings with some of the city’s financial leaders. He’d ducked into one of the narrow alleys that snaked behind a typical Melbourne street featuring a jumble of sleek modern skyscrapers and Victorian-era facades, and had found his way to a tiny café that had reminded him of one of his favorite spots in Paris. His bodyguard had cleared the way for him to claim a seat at one of the tiny tables overlooking the busy little lane—perhaps a touch overzealously.

“I think you’ll find it’s customary to pretend to apologize when stealing a table from someone else,” she had said, a teasing note in her voice that made her sound as if she was about to bubble over into laughter. As if there was something impossibly merry, very nearly golden, inside her just bursting to come out. That had been his first impression of Kiara—that voice.

Then he’d looked up. He’d never been able to account for the way that first look at her, when she’d been a stranger and speaking to him as if she found him both unimpressive in the extreme and somewhat ridiculous—not something that had ever happened to him before—had struck him like that. Like an unerring blow straight to the solar plexus.

First he’d seen that mouth. It had hit him. Hard. He’d seen her brown eyes, much too intelligent and direct, with the same arch look in them that he’d heard in her voice. He’d had the impression of her pretty face, her hair thrown back into a careless twist at the back of her head. It had been winter in Melbourne, and she’d dressed for it in boots and tights beneath some kind of flirty little skirt, and a sleek sort of coat with a bright red scarf wrapped about her neck. She had been all edges and color, attitude and mockery, and should not have attracted or interested him in any possible way.

“But as you and your entourage are fairly bristling with self-importance,” she’d continued in that same tone, waving a hand at his bodyguard and himself with an obvious lack of the respect he’d usually received, which Azrin had found entirely too intriguing in spite of himself, “I can only assume that you see café tables as one more thing you are compelled to conquer.” She’d smiled, which had not detracted from her sarcasm in any way. “In which case, have at. You clearly need it more than I do.”

She’d turned to go, and Azrin had found that unbearable. He hadn’t allowed himself to question why that should be, or, worse, why he should feel compelled to act on that unprecedented feeling.

“Please,” he’d said, shocking his usually unflappable bodyguard almost as much as he’d shocked himself—as Azrin was not known for his interest in sharp-mouthed, clever-eyed girls who took too much pleasure in public dressing-downs. “Join me. You can enumerate my many character flaws, and I will buy you a coffee for your troubles.”

She’d turned back to him, a considering sort of light in her captivating eyes, and a smile moving across that generous mouth of hers.

“I can do that alone,” she’d pointed out, her smile deepening. “I’m already doing it in my head, as a matter of fact.”

“Think of how much more satisfying it will be to abuse me to my face,” he’d said silkily. “How can you resist that kind of challenge?”

As it turned out, she couldn’t.

Azrin had spent the rest of the afternoon trying to convince her to join him for dinner at his hotel, and the rest of his time in Melbourne trying to persuade her to go to bed with him. He’d managed only the dinner that night and then a week of the same, and he was not a man who had before then had even a passing acquaintance with failure of any sort.

He hadn’t known how to process it. He’d told himself that had been why he’d been so unreasonably obsessed with this woman who had treated him so cavalierly, who had laughed at him when he’d tried to seduce her, and yet whose kisses had nearly taken off the back of his head when she’d condescended to bestow them upon him.

“You want the chase, not me,” she’d informed him primly on his last night in Melbourne.

She had just stopped another kiss from going too far, and had even removed herself from Azrin’s grasp, stepping back against the wall outside the door to her flat, into which she’d steadfastly refused to invite him. Again.

He’d had the frustrating suspicion that she was about to leave him standing there.

Again.

“What if I want you?” he’d asked, that wholly unfamiliar frustration bleeding into his voice and tangling in the air between them. “What if the chase is nothing but an impediment?”

“What a delightful fantasy,” she’d replied—though he already knew that was not quite true, that careless tone she adopted. “But I’m afraid that your great, romantic pursuit of me will have to take a backseat to my graduate studies. I’m sure you understand. Dark and brooding princes tend to turn out to be little more than fairy-tale interludes, in my experience—”

“You have vast experience with princes, do you?” His tone had been sardonic, but she’d ignored him anyway.

“—while I really do require my Masters in Wine Technology and Viticulture to get on with my real life.” She’d smiled at him, even as he’d registered the way she’d emphasized the word real. “I’ll understand if you want to throw a little bit of a strop and sulk all the way back to your throne. No one will think any the less of you.”

“Kiara,” he’d said then, unable to keep his hands off her, and wanting more than just the simple pleasure of his palm over the curve of her upper arm, which was what he’d had to settle for. She was not for him—he’d known that—but he’d been completely incapable of accepting it as he should. “Prepare yourself for the fairy-tale interlude. I may have to go to Khatan tomorrow morning, but I’ll be back.”

“Of course you will,” she’d said, smiling as if she’d known better.

But he’d come back, as promised. Again and again. Until she’d finally started to believe him.

He watched her now, his unexpected princess, as she climbed from the shower and wrapped herself in one of the soft towels. She smiled at him, and he felt something clench inside of him. She had never wanted to be a queen. She hadn’t even wanted to be a princess. She’d wanted him, that was all, just as he’d wanted her. Perhaps it had been foolish to imagine that that kind of connection, that impossible need, could be enough.

But foolish or not, this was the bed they’d made.

And now it was time to lie in it, whether he liked it or not. Whether she liked it or not.

Whether he wanted to be the King of Khatan or not— which had never mattered before, he reminded himself sharply, and certainly didn’t matter now. It simply was.

“My father’s cancer is back,” he said abruptly.

“Azrin, no,” Kiara breathed, as she tried to process his words.

He did not move from his position in the doorway. He leaned against the doorjamb with seeming nonchalance, beautiful and yet somehow remote, in nothing but dark trousers he hadn’t bothered to fully button. But she could see the grim lines around his mouth, and the tension gripping his long frame. And the dark gray of his eyes, focused on her in a way that she could not quite understand.

“He plans to fight it, of course,” he said in that same, oddly detached way, as if he was forcing himself to get through this by rote. As if this was the preview to something much bigger. Something worse. What that might be, Kiara did not want to imagine. “He is nothing if not ornery.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kiara said, her head spinning. It was difficult to imagine the old king, Azrin’s belligerent and autocratic father, anything but his demanding and robust self. It was impossible to imagine that even cancer would dare try to beat King Zayed, when nothing and no one else had ever come close to loosening the iron grip he held on his country, his throne. His only son.

“He does not seem particularly concerned that it will kill him this time,” Azrin continued. He shifted then, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers. His mouth twisted. “But then, he has always had an exalted sense of himself. It is what led to the worst excesses of his reign. He leaves the wailing and gnashing of teeth to my mother.”

Queen Madihah was the first of the old king’s three wives. That and her production of the Crown Prince rendered her a national treasure. She was the very model of serene, gracious, modestly restrained Khatanian femininity, and as such, had always made Kiara feel distinctly brash and unpolished by comparison. It was impossible to imagine her changing expression, much less wailing.

“He’s in excellent health otherwise,” she said, thinking of the last time she’d seen her father-in-law, sometime the previous spring. He had insisted she join him for a long walk in the palace gardens, and despite the fact that Kiara regularly put in time on treadmills in gyms all over the world, the pace the older man had set had left her close to winded. That and the way he’d interrogated her, as if he was still suspicious of her relationship with his son and heir, as if he expected her to reveal her true motives at any moment, whatever those might be. “You would never know he was in his seventies …”

Something moved across Azrin’s face then, and she let the words trail away.

“He has announced that he is an old man, and has only the weapons to fight one battle left in him,” he said. Kiara felt frozen in place, and she didn’t understand it. It was something to do with the way he was looking at her, the set to his jaw, that made her … nervous. Much too nervous. “He doesn’t think he can care for the kingdom and for himself, not now. Not the way he did the last time.”

“Whatever he needs to do to beat it,” Kiara said immediately. Staunchly. “And whatever we need to do to help him.”

The silence seemed to stretch taut between them.

“He is stepping aside, Kiara,” Azrin said. Almost gently, yet with that steel beneath that made a kind of panic curl into something thick and hot in her belly. “Retiring.”

For a moment, she didn’t know what he meant.

“Of course,” she said, when his meaning penetrated. “It will be good practice for you to take the throne while he recovers, won’t it?”

“No.” Again, that voice. His eyes so hard on hers. As if she was letting him down—had already done so—and she didn’t know how that could have happened without her knowing it. Without her meaning to do it. She locked her knees beneath her, afraid, suddenly, that they might tremble and betray the full scope of her agitation.

“No?” she echoed. “It won’t be good practice?”

“It won’t be temporary. He is stepping aside for good.”

She blinked. He waited. Something inside her seemed to go terribly still. As if she could not comprehend what he was telling her. But she did.

“That means—” She stopped herself. She had the urge to laugh then, but knew, somehow, that she did not dare. That he would not forgive her if she did, not now. She shook her head.

“It means I will be the new king of Khatan in six short weeks,” Azrin said in that strong, sure voice, as if that hardness was a part of him now, as if it was part of who he was becoming. As if it was a necessary precursor to the throne.

“Six weeks?” Kiara did laugh then, slightly. Her voice seemed too high, too uncertain. “I’d hardly got used to you being a prince over five years of marriage. I can’t get my head around you being king in a little more than a month!”

She thought he might smile at that, but his mouth remained that flat, stern line. His eyes were the coldest she’d ever seen them. She felt, again, as if she’d been thrown neck deep into something that she ought to understand, but didn’t.

“You don’t have to get your head around it,” he said with a kind of distant formality that made her tense up in response. “I’ve been getting my head around becoming king my whole life. This was always going to happen—it’s just happening a bit more quickly than I’d originally anticipated.”

Pull yourself together, Kiara ordered herself then, suddenly aware that she was standing stock still in the middle of the bathroom floor, staring at him as if he’d transformed into some kind of monster before her very eyes. Hardly the way a good, supportive spouse should behave at such a time.

She imagined there was no one in the world who wouldn’t feel out of their depth at a moment like this. Thrones! Kings! But this was her husband. This was real. She could sort out her own feelings later. In private. She walked over to him, rising on her toes to press a kiss against his hard jaw.

“This can’t be easy,” she said softly. “But I love you. We’ll figure it out.”

“I suspect he must be sicker than he wishes to let on,” Azrin said, his voice gruff. “He always promised he would die before he abdicated.” He let out a sound that was not quite a laugh. “But then, he took the throne when he was all of nineteen. There was only one way to hold it. He came by his ruthlessness honestly.”

She kissed him again, determined to ignore that tension simmering in him and all around them. She knew that Azrin’s relationship with his father had never been easy. That the king had never been pleased with the way the kingdom viewed Azrin as some kind of savior-in-waiting. Azrin had always said that if his father had only managed to have another son, Azrin would never have remained his heir. But he hadn’t.

This is real, she told herself again.

“You can do this,” she said. “You’ve been preparing for years. You’re ready.”

“Yes, Kiara. I’m ready,” he said quietly, his eyes again too dark, his mouth too grim.

Something gripped her then, some kind of terror, but she shoved it aside, annoyed with herself. Again. Was she really so self-involved? She could only stare up at him as he ran a hand over the back of her head, smoothing down her wet hair, gently tipping her head back to gaze at him more fully.

Azrin’s mouth curved slightly then, though it was in no way a smile, the way she wanted it to be. His gaze seared into hers, and she was afraid, suddenly, of the things he might see there.

“But are you?” he asked.

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