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“It was not a question of should. Or a question of what we wanted. It’s what happened. Carry your demons. I’ll carry mine. We do not need to shoulder one another’s.”
And on that note, his brother turned and began to walk away from him. “You have a woman in your bed,” he said. “So do I. Why are we in hallways?”
“I don’t know.”
Except he did know. He was staying away from her because... Because things had begun to feel complicated. Here. In this place. Where he could not ignore the truth of what he had done.
Of what he deserved.
He had taken her. And he had no right to do so. And it was only a happy accident that Riyaz had found a woman that he preferred. Otherwise...
He gritted his teeth and turned abruptly, going back to his apartment, to his room.
And when he pushed open the door, she was there.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, her sheet barely obscuring her glorious curves. “What are you doing in here?”
“Waiting for you,” she said.
She shifted, and the sheet fell just between her thighs, covering the triangle of curls there. But her hips were exposed. She only just had her breasts covered with the edge of the white fabric.
And a kick of lust overtook him. Except... There was something more. Something deeper. And he rejected it. Wholly.
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Everything about you suggests otherwise,” she said, dropping the sheet and letting it slither down her curves.
For all that she had been a virgin when he had first laid with her, she had never had any sort of embarrassment about her body. Which he appreciated. She was beautiful, and she had nothing to be ashamed of, but he could certainly use a little bit of it right now. Because this... This restless display of all her glory was pushing against things he could not afford to have challenged.
He was too much on edge.
This was supposed to be his redemption arc. And had he not destroyed it already by taking her as his wife? Certainly, he could rewrite the story, certainly, things had worked out better than he could have anticipated, because of the fact that Riyaz clearly had an attachment to Brianna. But he had not known that.
He could not be redeemed. That was the problem.
And yet... There she was. Looking like temptation personified. Like everything he wanted.
And he did not think that he could turn away. Why?
He had proven that there was no redemption in sight for him. No change. The best that he could hope for was to fling himself on the altar of service to his brother. Because as far as his soul went? It was selfish. It always had been. It was selfishness that had driven him to give her father that information out in the courtyard. It was selfishness and the need to stay out of trouble. It was selfishness that had him out in the desert with Ariel in the first place.
Because the gravest sin had been what she had been about even before her father had approached him. When he had taken her into the room with the jewels. When he had let himself fantasize about making her his wife. And then what had he done? Years and years and years of working to reclaim the throne, to get Riyaz what he wanted, and instead, he had claimed her for himself.
His soul was hollow. It was corrupt. And there was nothing else that he could ever be. Nothing. The idea that he could be...
It was nothing more than a vague fantasy. But she was not a vague fantasy. She was here. In the flesh. Smooth and tempting and lovely and everything that he wanted.
And so he would have her. He would have her now. In his bed, because had he not already committed the unpardonable sins?
Yes, he had. Already he’d taken her. Already, his actions had seen his brother in prison for sixteen years. Already his weakness had seen his mother slaughtered on the tile floor of the throne room. Already his cowardice had caused the death of his father. His father who had fought until the end, while he had run away.
He was already these things.
And if he was going to be a sinner, then he might as well revel in it. Might as well glory in the iniquity. For what else was to be done?
He had sought to become better. Sought to become more honorable, but even in his pursuit of bringing back the power to the throne, he had been nothing but a hedonistic playboy. He could tell himself all manner of stories about why he had done these things, but some of it had been to glory in the freedom of being away from the soul. Some of it had been to glory in the fact that he was not in his traditional country where his moves would be watched. Some of it was reveling in the fact that he was alive. And the fact that he was not in chains.
What a grave sin it was.
