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“And what will you do?”
“I will marry you before taking you to the palace. We had our wedding feast after all. And our wedding night.”
“How will you do that?”
“I will get a preacher to come and marry us, obviously. Clergy are not so hard to come by. I will have one flown in.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing he can do.”
“I thought that him being the sheikh meant that he could do anything he wanted.”
“Perhaps. But I believe that he will respect it. He will respect that I have claimed you in this way. It is something he can understand.”
“You speak of him like he’s an animal.”
“Not an animal. But a warrior. He has spent these long years turning himself into a weapon. But so have I.”
“Cairo... What of love? Of children?”
“I did not use protection when I took you. Children may be an inevitability of the passion that we find between ourselves. Love has nothing to do with marriage.” He looked at her, his black eyes dark. “Passion has nothing to do with love. Fate is not love, is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I...”
“And what love have you seen in your life? Did your father love you? Did he love your mother?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it.”
“Do not worry about love. Think of what I can make you feel.”
“And my career?”
It didn’t actually seem that important in the moment.
“You may have whatever you wish. My moon, I will not keep you prisoner.”
“But you won’t let me go either.”
He shook his head. “No. I will not.”
“That is being a prisoner, Cairo. Just one with privileges.”
“Then I will be your jailer as well as your husband. I had hoped that you might decide for yourself that you wished to stay.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. That was for certain. But just for a moment... Just for a moment she imagined what it might have been like if the two of them would have met on a busy city street. If he would have asked her to dinner, and she would’ve said yes. If they would’ve gone to the movies and eaten popcorn. And he would’ve kissed her goodnight on the doorstep, and she would have done something wild like have sex with him that first date, and felt just slightly guilty but not regretful. And made a promise to see him again. And again and again. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to leave him. But she wasn’t sure how she felt about him issuing life sentences. And she just wished...
She just wished that she might have been a different woman. And him a different man. She just wished that it might’ve been... Fate that had brought them together in a different way. And not this hard and sharp reality. Not Stockholm syndrome.
Maybe it had always been Stockholm syndrome.
“I will have someone here to wed us by nightfall.”
“Cairo...”
“I will not leave any room for this to fall apart. I will not leave any room for him to take you from me. That is all.”
And this was her life, she realized. Being caught between two impossible alpha males. This man, who sought to bend the world to his sheer will in spite of the fact that he was not—by birth order—the heir to the throne of his country.
