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‘I’m glad,’ she said.
He searched for calculation in her eyes but saw none. Perhaps she was warming to him. Good—it would save time if she had finally accepted a marriage between them would not be such a terrible thing. If there was a way for them to both get what they needed, he intended to find it. Tonight.
‘So tell me, Your Highness,’ he murmured, feeling confident about his approach for the first time in days. ‘Is there anything you would like from me in return?’
Liah saw the hot light in Kamal’s eyes and the promise of pleasure only he had ever fulfilled. Need ricocheted through her over-sensitised body. She was playing with fire now. She got that, because a relaxed and self-satisfied Kamal Zokan was even more dangerous than a furious or dictatorial one.
Who knew?
But, even so, she couldn’t stop the question she had been waiting to ask him ever since that morning from bursting out of her mouth.
‘Why didn’t you tell me we had met before when we were children?’
He stiffened and straightened against the rock, no longer smug. But the guarded look in his eyes, and the wary tension which made the muscle in his jaw jump, told her all she needed to know. She had been right. The man who would soon be King of Zokar and that abused serving boy were one and the same person.
His gaze became hooded. ‘I do not know what you refer to,’ he said evasively, but the defensive tone only confirmed her suspicions.
Her father had told her Kamal had an unusual background for a prince, but she’d had no idea he had managed to gain the throne after such a tough start.
Apparently he seemed determined to hide the fact, though. But why?
She huffed out a breath, the nuclear blush from that morning’s realisation heating her skin all over again as he studied her intently. She was going to have to reveal why she had recognised him all of a sudden.
Terrific.
She swallowed past the dryness in her throat then blurted out the truth.
‘I went to the pool this morning to wash out some of my clothes. But you were already there...bathing.’
His gaze narrowed, the feral light in his eyes making the heat flare at her core. But with it came the flicker of shame.
‘You...you had your back to me,’ she added.
The muscle in his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. ‘You spied on me?’
She broke eye contact. ‘Yes, I guess I did. And I’m sorry.’ She forced her gaze back to his despite the guilt prickling over her skin. ‘Something about you always seemed familiar, ever since we first met at the track.’
She gulped down the blockage in her throat as he simply stared at her, his expression deliberately blank. ‘But I couldn’t put my finger on it. Probably because I’d met you so long ago. But when I saw the scars on your back, it all came back to me. That afternoon during our state visit to Zokar. The serving boy who was so brutally punished by his employer for such a minor infraction. The violence shocked me at the time, probably because I’d led a rather sheltered life.’ She was babbling now, but she couldn’t seem to stop, her heart in her throat as he stared at her, the blank expression making the ache in her stomach so much worse.
What must it have been like to be treated with such casual cruelty? How had he survived it? Had there been no one to protect him? What had happened to his parents?
‘I had nightmares for years afterwards about that incident,’ she continued, suddenly desperate to get a reaction out of him, or at least an acknowledgment. ‘But one thing I never forgot was that boy’s bravery. His refusal to be bowed. He seemed so fierce and proud to me.’ She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that boy was you?’
Did he despise her, resent her, because she had led such a pampered life compared to him? In some ways she would understand that. Was that why he had ignored her for the last four days? She felt embarrassed now that she hadn’t offered to help out around the camp and had left him to do all the work. At the time it hadn’t been a status thing—not at all—it had been a temper thing. But she could see how it might have seemed very different to him.
Her parents had always told her brothers and her that their heritage and wealth did not make them better than anyone else. That the role of royalty was one of dignity, service and duty. But she’d screwed up with Kamal—behaving like the spoilt brat he’d accused her of being without intending to—right from the first moment she’d met him... And suddenly she wanted to take all that back, to start over, to prove to him she’d never thought she was better than him. And had certainly never believed she was too good to marry him. If anything, the opposite was true. She had always been a screw-up and now this proved it.
‘I would never have thought less of you,’ she continued, probably sinking even further into the ginormous hole she’d already dug for herself, but unable to stop digging. ‘For being that boy. I hope you believe me.’
Kamal stared at the earnest expression on Kaliah’s face, her compassion worn like a badge of honour. It triggered a strange warmth in his chest he had never felt before. And frankly didn’t want to feel.
But as the miasma of conflicting emotions boiled in his gut—shock, anger, pain, humiliation—he had no idea how to respond to her.
A part of him wanted to continue to deny he was the boy she remembered. Because it made him feel brutally exposed in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d been that boy. No one knew the whole truth of his origins, not even the tribal elders.Especiallynot Aziz. If they did, his early life—as an orphan, a mere serving boy—might be used as another reason to deny him the throne.
What sickened him the most was the thought of her seeing the scars he had kept hidden for so long. But what shocked him was that, instead of thinking less of him, she appeared to think more of him. Was this some kind of weird fetish she had, to befriend the downtrodden? Or simply a clever trick to gain his confidence and cooperation?
But, even as he tried to galvanise his temper, he couldn’t make himself believe there was anything calculating or condescending about her declaration. Her expression was far too forthright, and more open than he had ever seen it, and her words rang with an integrity that seemed genuine.
