AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He thought,Have I loved her all along?
And the thought itself seemed to fuse with that smile on her face, the stars all around them, and all the ways he fell. Until he was filled with a wild sense of wonder.
“I think I stuck the landing,habibti,” he told her, and his reward was not only the way her smile widened and took the world with it. But the way it felt inside him, a wild rush that left him smiling, too.
“I love your scars, that you won in defending this kingdom even though it broke your heart,” she said, moving her hands lightly over his chest, tracing one scar. Then the next. He felt it like light, though he still wore his robes. “I love your arrogance and your certainty, because it makes it so evident that you could never be anything but a king. I love my King, Tarek.”
He wanted to speak, then, but he was filled with that wonder and a bright, almost painfulthing—
It occurred to him, at last, that it had never been obsession.
This was so much more than that.Shewas.
“And you deserve to love me back, King and man alike,” she whispered fiercely. “You deserve a place where you can hide, Tarek. Where you can be who you are. No thrones or kingdoms or worries. No people. Just you and me. Just this.”
Tarek felt washed clean. Made new. He held her face between his hands again, but this time there was no darkness in it.
Because there was none left in him.
For she was a light far brighter than the desert sun, and he could feel her inside him like the brightest, hottest midday.
“Just as you deserve a place where you can shine, Anya,” he told her gruffly. “Queen always.MyQueen, always. And whatever you want of me, you will have, as long as I draw breath.”
“Tarek,” Anya whispered. “I do love you. So much.”
“I love you,” he whispered back, because there was no other way to describe the tumult. The longing and the light. The fury and the fear. The endless need, the sharp joy.
Her.Anya.
It was falling and then falling more. It was a tumble from a height so high it made his whole body seize—
But the landing was worth the fall.
It was the way she smiled at him. It was the ferocity in her voice when she came to find him, wherever he’d gone. It was the way she’d knelt before him on a terrace long ago, taking him deep in her mouth and absolving him of the scars he wore, the wars he’d won.
It was the love in her eyes, then and now. Always.
“I love you,” he said again, because it barely scratched the surface. It was too small a word, and yet it was everything.
“Tarek,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”
“Teach me how to love you,” he demanded, urgently. “Teach me every day. And I promise you, Anya, I will give you the world.”
She slid her hands up the length of his chest, then looped her arms around his neck. And then they were both falling, together, and that was no less overwhelming, but it was theirs.
This was all theirs.
And it was good. And Tarek intended to keep on falling, forever.
He was the King of Alzalam, and he would see to it personally.
“Don’t you see?” Anya asked, breathlessly, still smiling as if she would never stop. “You already have.”
And later, Tarek thought, he would think of that scene by the pools as the real moment they became husband and wife, man and woman.
Them.
Forever.
