“Believe that if it helps you hate me.” His head fell back against the couch, and his eyes closed again. “Don’t drive that fruit knife into me while I rest. It will plunge Behraat into chaos.”
“I’ll control my murderous urges for now,” she quipped, noting the blue shadows under his eyes, the gaunt look to his features.
He was king of the palace and he wanted to rest here?
Sighing, she uncoiled her legs to move away from him.
Instantly, his hand shot out and clasped her wrist. Streaks of heat from his thumb on her veins. “No, stay.
“I like having you next to me, your heart beating rapidly, your nerves stretched to the hilt, your head saying no and your body saying yes, while you wonder whether I will touch you or not, kiss you or not. Whether this will be the day when you surrender your will to me.
“It relaxes me, unlike the myriad delights the palace offers.”
A gasp escaped her, half outraged, half laughing. “You’re a sadist.”
“Hmm.”
She settled back against the chaise, her hand trapped still in his.
“Maybe keeping a helpless, pregnant woman captive—” A bark of disbelieving laughter escaped him and it was a dart shot straight to her heart “—is haunting you at night and you can’t sleep?” Her hand reached out to push a lock of hair from his forehead.
Only when she saw her pale fingers against the backdrop of that high forehead did she realize what she was doing. Snatching it back, she fisted it in her lap. “You look awful.” And because she couldn’t bear for him to think she was concerned, she added, “Is the world not bowing and scraping enough to Your Highness?”
Uncomfortable silence lingered as he slowly opened his eyes. Studied her. She saw him hesitate and then sigh. A wealth of emotion reverberated in that soft exhale. “It’s more likely due to a couple of nights spent by my comatose father’s bed because the doctors think he might have moved a finger.”
Lauren finally identified the emotion radiating from him.
Grief.
He was grieving and he’d come to her. Somehow, Lauren couldn’t stop thinking they were connected, couldn’t stop her mind from jumping to a thousand different conclusions. Curiosity trampled her every effort to keep him at a distance, shattered the safety net of her hatred.
“Every couple of weeks, I’m told that consciousness is within his grasp. So I wait by his bedside to tell him that my brother, his firstborn, is dead, so that I can push him that last step to his death, and put both of us out of our misery.”
The pain in his voice gutted Lauren, the resignation in it so unlike the man she knew.
“I’m the man who ordered the death of his brother so that he can rule Behraat.”
Those words slammed into her. How easily she had buried her head in her own fears and insecurities, how egotistic to believe that she was the center of his world?
His father was in a coma, his brother recently dead...to take up the rule of Behraat in such a volatile climate, she couldn’t imagine what he was going through.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Hmm?” he said absentmindedly, his gaze lingering on her neck. She fought to sit still under the scrutiny.
“If his chopper hadn’t been caught in that desert sandstorm and led to his death, Tariq would have been captured and...executed. Under my order.
“If he were here, I would pick up a gun and shoot him again for what he did to Behraat, for what he did to...” He flexed his fingers as though he could feel the gun in his hand. “Do you still feel sorry for me?”
Guilt and grief reverberated in each word he spoke. She held on to his gaze steadily while her insides quivered. He didn’t want her sympathy, in fact, his words were tinged with warning.
She ran a hand over her tummy, more to distract him than to calm herself. “I’m actually wondering how I’d explain all this family history to the baby without sounding like we’re a couple of nutcases, y’know? Murdering father, untrustworthy mother...”
A light came on in those golden eyes, chasing away the shadows. His grin tugged at her. “We have annihilated any chance of normality the poor child had, yes?”
She laughed, the tightness in her chest loosening. They could hate each other all they wanted, but they shared a bond through this child. And it filled her with immense joy and sadness. “Definitely. But then normal is overrated, don’t you think?”
She loved it when she could laugh with him like this, when she could bring that warm light to his eyes.
“Is there anything I can do to help, Zafir?”
That gaze, amused and fiery, jerked to hers and she instantly wanted to snatch her words back. He turned his neck this way and that. “Work those magical fingers over my neck.”