KARIM ROSE AND prowled through the dark to the door to Galila’s bedroom, paused, turned back and sat in the chair, elbows braced on his splayed thighs.
He was hard, so hungry for her he was sweating and panting with need, but he made himself resist the lure of her. The weakness that going to her would represent.
She might not welcome him anyway. He had ground her heart beneath his heel a few days ago and she’d been walking around like a ghost ever since. He loathed himself for doing it, but clung to the truth he had spoken. They had a child on the way. He had to keep a level head on his shoulders for the next two decades, at least.
Two decades of meting out their lovemaking in small measures to prove to himself he didn’t need her like air and water. Twenty years of averting his gaze from her laughing expression so he wouldn’t be tempted. Of listening to the falsely cheerful tone she used when she was hurting and trying not to let it show.
Of knowing he was breaking her heart.
She had said she was falling in love with him.
He closed his eyes, savoring those words before pushing them to the furthest reaches of his consciousness. Whatever she felt was so new, she would be able to recover from his rejection. He was sure of it.
He had to believe it.
Unable to sleep and quite sure he would go to her if he stayed, he dressed and went to his office across the palace. It wasn’t even sunrise. He ate an early breakfast in his library, a room where she permeated the walls, layering over old memories like a clean coat of paint, then started his work day.
He was little better than a ghost himself, unable to say later what he had accomplished. The entire day was an exercise in deprivation. He counted the minutes until he would see her. It was exactly the sort of weakness he dreaded in himself, but he finally began to breathe again when he entered his apartment to dress for their dinner with a general and his wife.
That was when he was informed Galila wouldn’t be joining them.
“The queen was feeling under the weather and canceled all her engagements for the rest of the week,” her assistant informed him.
Shock and concern washed through him in a sickly wave.
“Why wasn’t I informed?” He started to brush past her into Galila’s rooms.
“She’s not here, Your Highness,” the woman quickly said. “I thought—it must be my mistake. I understood she intended to speak to you before she left.”
Something inside him snapped. Broke. Exploded. “Where the hell did she go?”
The girl fell back a step, eyes wide. “I believe she went to stay with your mother.”
* * *
Galila was beating herself up for being the neediest wimp alive, scurrying off for TLC in the desert palace.
She discovered, however, that being needy could be a good thing. Sometimes a person needed someone to coddle and fuss over. Galila’s low spirits pulled a maternal instinct from Karim’s mother that put a smile of warmth on the older woman’s face. A brightness of purpose.
“I’m so glad you came to me. Of course, you should come anytime you feel a need to get away,” Tahirah said in response to Galila’s apology for imposing. “You’ll be a new mother soon. Learn to let people take care of you.”
Her spoiling and attention was so sincere, Galila wanted to cry with gratitude. Here was the mother she desperately needed. They talked pregnancy and babies and the challenge of running a palace and the endless social obligations of royal duties.
She was still scorched by Karim’s refusal to love her, but at least she had someone who seemed genuinely happy to bond with her. Her heart would still be in two pieces, but at least those pieces could be offered to his mother and the child he gave her. Her life would not be completely devoid of love.
Those broken pieces of her heart jangled when Karim rang through on a video call as she was dressing for dinner. She dismissed her maid and answered.
He looked surprisingly incensed. “What are you doing there?” he snapped.
“I was going to discuss this with you over breakfast this morning, but you weren’t there.” Completely true, but rather than seek him out or text him or try to inform him via the many other avenues of communication available at the palace, she had slipped away like a criminal. “I’m not here to tell her anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just needed some time.”
“For what?”
“To think about how I’m going to accept the kind of marriage you’ve offered.”
“We went over this in the early days, Galila. It will be fine.”
“For you. But I fell in love with you. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it did. And you don’t feel the same. Can’t. So I need to think about all of that.”
“And do what?” His tone sharpened. “If you think you’re going back to Khalia, or taking my child to Europe—”
“If I wanted to do that, I would already be there, wouldn’t I? I came to your mother’s, Karim. That’s as far as I plan on taking your child without your permission. We’re having a lovely visit so let me be.”
His mouth tightened. “When are you coming back?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“I’ll send the helicopter tomorrow.”
“I just got here! Why would you even want me to come back? We’re not sleeping together. You barely speak to me. I’m surprised you noticed I was gone.”
His nostrils flared as he drew a deep, patience-seeking breath.
“What?” she goaded. “You don’t even like when I help with your royal duties. You said so. I make you feel weak. You never needed me before we married and still don’t want to, judging by the way you’ve been treating me. Go back to your old life, then. Pretend I don’t exist.”
“Galila, if you’re trying to provoke some kind of reaction—”
“I know that’s impossible! You feel nothing, Karim! We both know you’re not going to kill yourself if I stay a few days with your mother so that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
She jammed the button to end the call.
Then she threw the phone across the room. It hit a marble column, shattering the screen.
* * *
“Her Highness has broken her phone,” Galila’s assistant informed Karim the next morning. “A new one is on its way. She’ll be back online this afternoon, I’m sure. In the meanwhile, you’ll have to message her through your mother. May I also ask...? There are a number of agenda items I needed to discuss with her, but in her absence, will you approve these?”
Karim went through them quickly, resenting every second of it. Why? Not because he didn’t want to review the preliminary budget for the women’s health center. He would have to do that eventually anyway, but because he was staring at an empty chair, speaking instead of listening.
We both know you won’t kill yourself...
He forced himself to proceed through his day, thinking of her constantly. He kept making mental notes to share things with her only to realize he wouldn’t see her later. He wouldn’t watch her painted mouth as she entertained their guests, wouldn’t stand with pride beside her, wouldn’t set his hand in the middle of her back just so the silken fall of her hair would caress his skin.
By the time he was alone in his library, he was thinking for the first time in his life how good a shot of whiskey might taste.
Furious, he yanked open the curtain and glared at the balcony. Instead of seeing his father there, he saw Galila, tall and strong, chin up, eyes on the horizon.
By your logic, I should drown myself.
Was she hurting? Was that why she had run away? Breaking her heart had never been his intention. Collateral damage was inevitable in life, but he tried not to purposefully hurt anyone. Galila, with her spirit and compassion and sharp intelligence, deserved every speck of the adoration she earned.
She had definitely earned his respect, not only solving the mystery of her mother’s lover, but protecting that secret as diligently as he always had. She had been reluctant to tell him, and he knew how heavy the load was on that.
It was considerably lighter these days, he realized. Because he had shared it with her? Or because he was carrying a different load on his conscience? Her bruised heart crushed like a piano atop his own.
He turned to stare at the lion on the bookshelf, the one engraved with the words Where Is She?
The same question clawed inside him. His mate was in a palace in the desert. She might as well be locked in a vault the way the lioness was. Locked in the dark for safekeeping. Endlessly searching for her mate while this one eternally waited here.
Apart.
Why? Why did it have to be this way?
With a snarl, he grabbed the bookend, tempted to throw it through the glass doors and over the balcony, into the sea.
Instead, he carried it with him to his empty bedroom.
* * *
Galila was treading water in the infinity pool that overlooked the oasis when she heard her maid make a startled noise. She dragged her gaze from the sand dunes and palms, swirling in the water to face the paved courtyard that surrounded the pool.
Her husband picked up her robe off the chair while her maid scampered away.
Her chin was in the water and Galila very nearly sucked a mouthful into her lungs, managing at the last second to merely swallow a taste of chlorine.
“Come,” Karim said, shaking out her robe. “I want to talk.”
She hesitated, then kicked herself into a glide toward the steps, self-conscious as she climbed them. Her body hadn’t changed. She was barely pregnant, but she didn’t know which would be worse—his avid gaze or a disinterested one.
He gave her a rapacious one. His features hardened as his attention followed the flow of water off her shoulders, between her breasts and across her quivering belly, over the triangle of green-blue bikini bottoms and down her thighs and calves.
Shaken, she couldn’t find a voice to ask what he was doing there. She turned to thread her arms into the sleeves of the robe, then caught the edges and folded them across her front. The silk clung to her wet skin, warm despite being in the shade.
He didn’t let her step away. His arms closed around her and held her before him, damp hair under his chin. He trapped her arms in a crisscross before she could get the belt tied.
“Karim—”
“Shh,” he commanded softly. “Let me feel you. I need to know that you are here.”
“You knew exactly where I was.” She didn’t know why, but her heart began to pepper even harder in her chest. Her body twitched with uncertainty. Relax? Remain on guard? “Why are you here, Karim?”
“To tell you that we don’t have to repeat history. We shouldn’t.”
“In what way? Because you’ve already made it clear you won’t allow yourself to feel anything toward me,” she said with a jagged edge on her voice. Most especially not the depth of love his father had felt for her mother.
His arms tightened and his beard brushed her wet cheek as he spoke against her skin. “I don’t know that I had a choice in how I feel about you. From the moment I saw you, I was transfixed.”
Her insides juddered in reaction while she recalled that luminescent moment of turning to see him watching her.
“So was I,” she whispered in stark honesty.
“The difference is, you were willing to accept how I made you feel. I was never going to allow myself to be this vulnerable, Galila. I knew I couldn’t afford it. I had to fight it.”
“Because you don’t trust me.” She pushed out of his arms and turned to confront him.
“Be careful,” he said through gritted teeth, glancing toward an upper balcony to indicate they could be overheard by his mother at any moment.
“I know,” she hissed. “But that secret is the reason you married me, yet you withheld it from me. Even when things changed. At least, I thought things were changing.” She touched where her heart was a cracked and brittle thing in her chest. “You made me think we were growing close, that we could trust one another, but no. You were keeping secrets, refusing to care...” Her voice trailed into a whisper. The despair that had been stalking her crept close enough to swallow her whole.
“Galila.” He tried to reach for her.
She held him off with an upraised hand, too raw to accept his touch without crying under the agony of a caress that wasn’t genuine tenderness or affection.
He flinched at her rejection.
“I trust you,” he said gravely. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have let you stay here like this. I know you’ll guard what you know as carefully as I do. I wouldn’t be having a child with you if I didn’t trust you.”
“But you don’t trust me with your heart! What do you think I’m going to do with it? Treat it as badly as you treat mine?”
He snapped his head back, breath hissing in with shock, as though she had struck far deeper than he had imagined anyone could.
There was no satisfaction in it. It made her feel small. She looked to the arid sands of the desert, a perfect reflection of their future.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” she murmured. “I’m just not ready to be with you and act like I’m happy when I’m not.”
“You won’t be until you come back to me, Galila. We have to be together.”
She started to shake her head, but he spoke with more insistence.
“The denial is what does the damage. Pushing you away is killing me.” His tone was an odd mix of vehemence and tenderness.
She glanced at him, not wanting the unfurling of hope again, only to open herself for a stomping.
“You were right,” he continued. “I won’t kill myself over your absence.”
And there it was. Her heart went into free fall toward a shattering impact.
“I will come after you and fight to keep you. I am fighting for you.” His possessive words, the light of anguished need in his expression, was a hand that thrust out and caught her heart before it hit the ground, dragging it into his possession so it would be his forever. “Come home.”
Her mouth trembled. “I want to, but—”
“I love you, Galila.”
Her knees weakened.
He caught her with real hands this time, grasping her upper arms and holding her in front of him so all she saw was him. His features were hard, but cast in angles of concern and repentance. His eyes gleamed dark and solemn, but they were open windows to his soul, holding back none of the brilliant light within him. A light that shone with ardent, aching love as he scanned her features.
It was such a startling, intimate look into his own heart, hot tears of emotion brimmed in her eyes and a lump formed in her throat.
The rest of her crumbled. Not in a bad way. In the best possible way, even though she was quite sure it was her least elegant look ever. Her chin crinkled and she had to bite her lips while tears of joy and love overflowed her eyes. Her face was clean of makeup, her hair skimmed flat, her robe damp and ruffled as she hugged herself into him. Hard.
“I love you, too,” she choked. “So much.”
She lifted her mouth and he brought his head down. Their lips met in a kiss that made her cry out at the power of it. The sweet perfection. He kissed her the way he had that first night in the garden outside the palace of Khalia. Like he was released from years of restraint.
She returned his passion with her own overwhelming need for him, ignoring the aching tenderness in her breasts in favor of pressing closer and closer—
“Karim!” his mother called sharply from an upper terrace. “The servants. Take that to your room.”
He pulled away from their kiss as they both broke into laughter.