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She looked up at him, grasped his cheeks, her hands cool against his hot flesh, the shattering tenderness in the misty green destroying the last of the ice.
‘Knew what, Karim?’
The sob that had been lodged in his throat ever since he was a child, ever since that fateful night, when he had let his mother be beaten and done nothing to help, and all the days after, when he had watched her sink into herself and he had been unable to beckon her back, grew so huge it tore into his chest… And finally unlocked the words burning in his throat.
‘I don’t deserve you. I never could.’
Orla could see the crippling pain, the same nightmare that had haunted him that morning. And all the platitudes she could have told him died in her throat. It wasn’t enough to tell him he did deserve her. What she felt for him was new and scary and untried. But she knew it was real. And she knew he could love her too, if only he would let himself be vulnerable.
It was a start, an opening, she’d thought she’d never have, and she needed to be so careful now, not to destroy that fragile seed with her own fears and inadequacy.
‘Why do you think that?’ she asked, the tears clogging her throat as she stroked his cheeks, the muscles rigid with tension.
He pulled away from her, thrust shaking fingers through his hair, and she knew he didn’t want to tell her, from the guilt and shame in his eyes.
‘I used you, Orla. All the way along the line. How does that make me any different from him?’ he said, his voice breaking, his chin sinking to his chest. ‘He hurt her, and I couldn’t protect her.’
‘But you were just a little boy,’ she said, her heart shattering for that frightened child. ‘How could you have protected her?’
‘I know but… She never recovered,’ he said. ‘She was always so sad. I tried to make her happy…’ She watched his throat contract as he swallowed, the burden that boy had taken on still weighing him down. ‘But I never could.’
The tears ran down her cheeks now. ‘That wasn’t your job, Karim.’
He lifted his head, his gaze finally locked on hers. ‘I can’t go through that again. I’m sorry.’
And suddenly she knew why he was so scared to love her. And her heart lifted in her throat. All this time she’d thought he was protecting himself, when what he’d really been trying to do was protect her.
The words Ameera had said came back to her again—‘I think he is not a man like his father—and you are nothing like his mother’—and at last she knew what to say.
‘You’re not him, Karim. And you never could be.’ He shook his head, but she held on. ‘But more importantly, I’m not her.’
His tortured gaze intensified, until she felt it sear her skin.
‘I’m not fragile,’ she said, because she knew she wasn’t, and she never had been. He’d shown her that, protecting her and cherishing her in ways no man ever had before him, even when he didn’t want to. ‘And I won’t break the way she did.’
He swore softly and she saw the moment he realised the burden had been lifted. That what she was telling him was the truth.
He gripped her shoulders, then tugged her back into his arms, hugging her so hard she felt her heart soar.
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Because if you ever run away from me like that again, I may have to spank you.’
Even though she knew he was kidding, the threat felt somehow erotic as the laugh burst out of her mouth and she struggled out of
his arms. ‘Good luck with that, Your Majesty.’
His eyebrows rose up his forehead, but then he barked out a laugh of his own, the husky chuckle music to her ears.
‘Goddamn it, I love you,’ he said, before covering her mouth with his in a harsh, searing kiss.
I know.
She kissed him back with all the new, exciting love in her heart.
As she fisted her fingers into his sweaty hair and dragged him closer to let the soft line of her body mould to the hard, unyielding line of his, she knew this was just the beginning. That they had a long way to go yet. But she intended to enjoy every single hot, exhilarating minute, getting to know this dominant, commanding, overwhelming man—her King, her husband, her lover. While trying to figure out how the hell to be his Queen.
But as he scooped her up into his arms and carried her towards the tent she’d set up in the palm trees her core quickened, and her heart swelled—and she knew she was already Karim’s Queen in the only place that really mattered.
Inside his full, open, possessive and wonderfully overprotective heart.
