AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Later, Tarek promised himself, he would take a moment to ask himself why, exactly, he found himself attracted to a prisoner only recently released from his dungeon. Surely that spoke to issues within himself he ought to resolve. Especially if he truly thought himself compassionate in some way.
“I’m happy to answer questions now,” she said, with a certain bluntness that made Tarek blink.
He wondered if it was simply that she was a Western woman, doctor or no. They were different from the women of his kingdom; he knew that already. Anya Turner was forthright, even so recently liberated from her prison cell. She appeared to have no trouble whatever meeting his gaze and more, holding it. The women of his country played far different games. They were masters of the soft sigh, the submissively lowered eyes, all to hide their warrior hearts and ambitions—usually to become his Queen and rule the kingdom in their own ways.
Not so this doctor, who had clearly never heard the wordsubmissivein her life.
It was an adjustment, certainly.
“I had no idea you were being held here,” Tarek told her. He lifted his mobile as if she could read the documents Ahmed had sent him while she ate. “But I have read your file.”
“Would anything have been different if you had known?” she asked, and it wasn’t precisely an interruption. He had paused.
Still. That, too, was different.
He reminded himself, with a touch of acid, that this was the woman who had cheerfully called him a pig while still behind bars. Unaware that he had come to liberate her, not punish her further.
Perhapsbluntandforthrightdid not quite cover it.
“I cannot alter the past, much as I would like to,” he said. He studied her, and the easy way she held his gaze. As if she was the one measuring him, instead of the other way round. “Do you know why you were imprisoned in the first place?”
She let out a sharp little laugh of disbelief. Not a noise others generally made in his presence. “Do you?”
Again, he indicated his mobile. He did not react to the disrespectful tone. Much. “I know what was written in your file when you were taken into custody.”
Another deeply impolite sound, not quite a laugh, that he congratulated himself on ignoring. “I believe the pretext for our arrest was an illegal border crossing. The fact that we were administering humanitarian aid and were in no way dissidents fomenting rebellion or revolution did not impress your police force. Mostly there was a lot of shouting. And guns.”
“That was an upsetting period here,” he agreed. “There was an attempt at a coup, as I mentioned. Dissidents tried to take the palace and there were a few, targeted uprisings around the country.”
If he had only listened to his mother, he might have armored himself against the unforgivable affection that had allowed him to minimize his brother’s behavior over the years. He’d convinced himself Rafiq’s bad behavior was not a pattern. And even if it was, that it wasn’t serious.
“A man who will be King cannot allow love to make him a danger to his country,”his mother had warned him.“What a man loves is his business. What a king loves can never be anything but a weapon used against him.”
Tarek had never imagined that weapon would be a literal one. Or that he would wish, deeply and surpassingly, that he had listened more closely to his mother when he’d had the chance.
There was something about the sharp focus Anya trained on him, complete with a faint frown between her brows, that he liked a lot more than he should. When he knew he would consider it nothing short of an impertinence in anyone else. And would likely react badly.
But even this doctor’sfocusfelt like passion to him.
“A coup? In the palace?” She waited for his nod. “You mean they came for you. Here.”
“They did.” He did not precisely smile. “More accurately, they tried.”
Rafiqhad tried. Personally. A bitter wound that Tarek doubted would ever truly heal.
Still, he had the strangest urge to show her his scars. An urge he repressed. But he found himself watching the way her expression changed, and telling himself there was a kind of respect there.
“You’re lucky you have so many guards to protect you, then.”
He opted not to analyze why that statement bothered him so much.
“I am,” Tarek agreed, his voice cooler than it should have been, because it shouldn’t have mattered to him what this woman thought—of him or the kingdom or anything else. “Though they were little help when my brother and his men tried to take me after what was meant to be a quiet family meal commemorating the two-month anniversary of our father’s death.”
He did not like the memory. He resented that he was forced to revisit it.
Yet Anya’s expression didn’t change and Tarek could feel her...paying closer attention, somehow. With the same ferocity she’d used while demolishing a plate of pastries earlier.
Why did that make him want her so desperately?
