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She hadn’t been tossed on a truck headed for the border, or shot in the back of the head, or sent back to the States so she could throw herself off the plane to kiss the ground—not that she thought an airport floor would inspire her to do any such thing.
If this was truly freedom, or the start of it, she was still a long way off from having to sort through what remained of the life she’d left behind.
That was not a happy thought.
When the door swung open again, servants streamed inside bearing platters and pushing a cart. Her stomach rumbled at the sight. Plate after plate of delicacies were delivered to the low table between her and the King. Nuts and dates, the promised pastries, meats and spreads, breads and cheeses. Cakes and yogurts and what she thought was a take on baklava, drenched in a rich honey she could smell from where she sat. Bowls filled with savory dishes she couldn’t identify, all of which looked beautiful and smelled even better. Pitchers of water, sparking and still. Tea in one silver carafe and in another, rich, dark coffee.
Anya might not trust her own happiness, or what was happening around her, but she could eat her fill for the first time in months, and for the moment that felt like the same thing. Because there were flavors again, as bright as the sun that careened around this room. Flavors and textures, each one a revelation, like colors on her tongue.
She glutted herself, happily, and didn’t care if it made her sick.
While across from her, the Sheikh lounged in his seat and drank only coffee. Black.
Anya told herself there was no reason she should take that as some kind of warning.
When her belly was deliciously full, she sat back and took a very deep breath. And for the first time in a long while, Anya was aware of herself as a woman again. Not a prisoner. Not a doctor.
A woman, that was all, who had just engaged in the deeply sensual act of enjoying her food.
Perhaps it was because Tarek was so harshly, inarguably, a man. Here in the dizzy brightness and jeweled quiet of this room, there was no doubt in her mind that he was a king. Mythic or otherwise, and everything that entailed. It was the way he sat there, waiting for her—yet not precisely waiting. Because she could feel the power in him. It was unmistakable.
He filled the room, hotter than the sunshine that poured in from outside. Richer than the coffee and more intense than the sugar and butter, tartness and spice on her tongue.
And his gaze only seemed darker the longer he studied her.
Waiting her out, she understood then. Because he was in control, not her. Yet in a different way than her guards had been in control below, or the cell itself had contained her. Tarek did not need to place her behind bars.
Not when he could look at her and make her wonder why she couldn’t stay right where she was, forever, if that would please him—
Get a grip, Anya, she ordered herself.
She’d thought him beautiful in the dungeons, but here, he was worse. Much worse. There was no getting away from the stark sensuality of his features, with that face like a hawk’s that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find stamped on old coins.
Anya felt distinctly grubby by comparison. She was suddenly entirely too aware that she had not had access to decent products in a long, long time. Her hair felt like straw. Her prison-issue clothes had suited her fine in the cell she’d eventually made, if not cozy, livable. But the gray drabness of the clothes she’d lived in for so long felt like an affront now. Here where this man watched her with an expression that, no matter what pretty words he spouted, did not strike her as remotely apologetic.
“You said you had questions for me,” she said, when it became clear to her that he was perfectly willing to sit there in silence. Watching her eat.
Making her feel as caged as if he held her between his hands.
It only made her feel more like a bedraggled piece of trash someone had flung onto his pristine marble floors. That, in turn, made her think of her long, quiet, painful childhood in her father’s house. Her succession of stepmothers, each younger and prettier than the last.
Anya had never been a pretty girl. Not like her stepmothers. She’d never wanted to do the kind of work they did to remain so. And her father had always frowned and asked her why she would lower herself to worries about her appearance when she was supposedly intelligent, like him, thereby making certain Anya and the stepmotherdu jourwere little better than enemies.
And sometimes a whole lot worse than that.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of the ways she could use her appearance as a springboard toward confidence, upon occasion, when she wasn’t feeling it internally. She didn’t need a gown, or whatever it was the ladies wore in a place like this. But she wouldn’t have minded a shower and some conditioner.
Still, he’d said he had his questions and Anya didn’t know what would happen if she refused. Would it be straight back into the dungeon with her?
“Tell me how you came to be in my country,” he invited her, though she felt the truth of that invitation impress itself against her spine as the order it was. “In the middle of a minor revolution.”
“Minor?”
The Sheikh did something with his chin that she might have called a shrug, had he been a lesser man. “Loss of life was minimal. My brother anticipated a quiet coup and was surprised when that was not what he got. He lives on in prison, an emblem to all of his own bad decisions and my mercy. Despite his best efforts, the country did not descend into chaos.”
Anya didn’t have a brother, but doubted she would sound so remote about a coup attempt if she did. “I guess you must not have been out there in the thick of it.”
His lips thinned. “You are mistaken.”
