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She squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her face, feeling the dampness on her cheeks from the tears that would be contained no longer. ‘I’m such a fool.’
She felt his arms close around her, felt herself pulled against his chest, and the sheer joy of it brought forth a fresh burst of tears.
‘Aisha,’ he said, stroking her hair, pressing his lips to it.
She lifted her tear-streaked face, blinking away the moisture in her eyes, and he swept the hair from her face with his fingers. ‘You’re not still angry with me?’ she asked.
He shook his head, the corners of his mouth turned up the slightest fraction. ‘It’s me who should be asking that. I have treated you appallingly. I was so angry and so resentful with being forced into this position, that I took it out on you. And I understand why you were so hurt the night of the coronation. I’d betrayed your trust once again. And I was going to follow you and tell you that you were right that same night, even though I knew you wouldn’t believe me, and tell you that I cared for you.
‘And then came the news that Marina had been taken. Hamzah was against me going. But I thought, I hoped, that if I could help reunite you with your sister you might understand, just a little, how much you mean to me.’
Her heart swelled in her chest. ‘I still can’t believe you did that, that you risked everything.’
‘But none of it matters, does it?’ he said. ‘If you can’t have what you truly want.’
‘What do you truly want?’
He looked down at her with his dark, potent eyes. ‘I want you. I want all of you. I want you to be my queen. I want your body. I want your soul. I want you for ever.’
She gasped as he pressed his lips to her forehead before pulling back and she hungered for more of his kiss. ‘And I know I fall short of the kind of man you wanted to marry. I know this has all happened the wrong way around and that you have every right to hate me for ever. So I am offering you a choice.’
‘What choice?’
He dipped his mouth, kissed the tip of her nose, and she drank in his air and the very essence of him while her lips searched in vain for his.
‘You can walk away from our marriage and all that it entails, or you can stay and settle for my flaws and imperfections and, ultimately, my love.’
Her swelling heart sang. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’m giving you a choice.’
‘No, not that bit. The other bit.’
‘About walking away?’
‘No!’
He smiled and kissed her eyes, first one and then the other, but when she angled her face higher, to give him access to her hungry mouth, he withdrew. ‘The other choice is my love. You see, I have nothing to offer you, Aisha, that you cannot find in a million other more worthy men, nothing but the one thing only I can give you—my love, if you will accept it.’
‘You never told me. I never knew.’
‘I didn’t know it myself. Not really, not until you walked away and left my heart in pieces on the floor. I love you, Aisha. And I know I am so unworthy. I know I am the last person who deserves it. But will you come back and be my wife? Will you let me love you? Will you find it in your heart to love me one day, even just a little?’
‘Oh, Zoltan, yes—a thousand times yes. I love you so much. And now.’
‘Now?’
‘Now will you kiss me at last?’
He laughed, a low, delicious rumble that vibrated through her all the way to her bones. ‘Only a kiss, Aisha, my queen?’
‘Don’t tell me—you are giving me another choice already?’
His hands scooped down her back to cup her behind, bringing her into even closer contact with the evidence of his desire. ‘Only if you want it.’
She smiled up at him, her blood fizzing in anticipation, dizzy with love. ‘Oh, I want it, Zoltan. I want it all.’
As his head dipped and his lips brushed against hers with that first delicious contact, she heard him say, ‘Then you shall have it.’
And she knew, in her heart, mind and soul, that she already did.
