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“I will marry you,” he said, as if there had never been any other possibility.
“You cannot!” she cried, hard emotions racking her, fear scraping through her, leaving her trembling in his arms. “I do not deserve you! Not after—” Her eyes swam with tears, blurring the world, but she could still see him, so strong and intent. “I gave him away, Tariq. I gave him up.”
“And we will miss him,” Tariq replied after a moment, his voice thick with his own emotions. “Together.”
Jessa let out a breath and, with it, something tight and frozen seemed to thaw, letting light and hope begin to trickle through her. Letting her wonder, what if?
He pressed his lips against her forehead. In a softer tone, yet no less demanding, no less sure, he said, “And we will have another child, Jessa. Not as a replacement. Never as a replacement. As a new beginning. This I promise you.”
The tears spilled over now, wetting her cheeks. She touched his face, an echo of that cold day when Tariq had finally understood the magnitude of what she had given up, and why. Jeremy would be an ache they carried with them for the rest of their lives, day in and day out. But for the first time, she dared to hope that they would carry it together across the years, making it easier to bear that way. And someday, only if he wished it, they would tell Jeremy the story of how much he was loved, and how well.
“Yes,” she breathed, her heart too full to let her smile. “We will be a family.”
“We will,” he said gruffly, and something powerful and true swelled between them then, and seemed to spread out around them to fill the room.
The thought of making a child with Tariq—deliberately—in joy and in love, and then raising that child together as she had always wanted to believe they were meant to do…It was almost too overwhelming.
Almost.
“I haven’t agreed to any marriage,” Jessa told Tariq then, with a small smile, while an intoxicating cocktail of hope and joy surged through her. She could feel it inexorably changing her with every second. Could dreams come true after all, after everything they had been through? After all that they had done? Was it possible?
Looking at him, she dared to believe it for the first time.
She was still twined around him, her legs astride one of his and her sex pressed intimately against his thigh. He moved slightly and made her groan as that sweet, delirious heat rocked through her.
“I suggest you get used to the idea,” Tariq said, a smile in his voice, his eyes. “This is my country. I do not require your agreement.” He kissed her again, capturing her lower lip between his teeth for a moment before releasing her. He smiled. “Though I would like it.”
“Yes,” she said softly, wonder rolling through her, making her feel as incandescent as the desert sun. Only with Tariq. Only for him. “Yes, I will marry you.”
“You will be happy, Jessa,” he vowed, fiercely, sweeping her up off the floor, high against his chest. She wrapped her legs around his waist and gripped tight to his shoulders, looking down at him as he held her. At the jade eyes that so consumed her that she had bought a necklace to match, so she might have something like him to look at when he was away. At this man she had loved for so long, and in so many different ways. Her playboy lover. Her king. Her husband.
“You will be happy,” he said again, frowning at her as if he dared her to disagree.
“Is that your royal decree?” she asked, laughing as he whirled her around and tipped her backward onto the soft bed behind them. He fell with her, following her down and then bracing himself on his arms before he crashed into her.
“I am the king,” he said, leaning over her. “My word is law.”
“I am to be the queen,” she said, shivering slightly as the idea of it began to truly take hold. She would have this man forever. She would be able to hold him like this, love him like this. She felt her eyes well up as she reached between them to trace his mouth, the hard planes of his face. Harsh, forbidding. Hers.
“So my word should also be law, should it not?” she asked.
“If you wish it.”
Jessa smiled and lifted her head to kiss him, sweet and more sure than she had ever been of anything.
“Then we will be happy,” she said and, for the first time, truly believed it, with all of her heart and soul. “Because I say so.”
Katrakis’s
Last Mistress
Caitlin Crews
To Liza, who dreamed of gold-eyed dragons, Jane, who knew I couldn’t pull that punch, and Jeff, who makes it easy to write about heroes.
Chapter One
NIKOS KATRAKIS was by far the most dangerous man aboard the sleek luxury yacht. Ordinarily Tristanne Barbery would take one look at a man like him—so dark and powerful her breath caught each time she gazed at him from her place within sight of the elegant marble-topped bar where he stood—and flee for her life in the opposite direction.
