In Defiance of Duty

He was beautiful—there was no other word for it—but there was nothing in the least bit pretty about him. He was a study in controlled ferocity. He was all sleek muscle and hard, strong lines. His rich black hair, his dark skin, the gleam in his unusual, near-blue eyes. The merciless thrust of his cheekbones, his belligerent jaw. He lounged beside her with seeming nonchalance, but she wasn’t fooled.

He was all focus and menace, his rangy, athletic body showcased to perfection in a dark suit and a snow-white shirt that he wore open against his neck, as if he was attempting a casual gesture when everything else about him shouted out the formidable force he wore the way another man might wear a jacket. He looked as if there was nothing at all he couldn’t do with his disconcertingly elegant hands—and nothing he hadn’t already done with them. She could think of several possibilities, and had to swallow against the shocking surge of heat that swept through her then, wild and out of control.

She was sure he could feel the very same flames.

“Hello,” he said quietly as their eyes met. Held. His sensual mouth curved into a knowing smile. “I like this view, too.”

Kiara forced a jaded sigh. “You really aren’t very good at this, are you?”

“Apparently not.” His impossible eyes, somewhere between blue and green, or possibly gray, gleamed. “By all means, teach me. I live to serve.”

She didn’t laugh at that. She didn’t need to. His own mouth quirked up in the corner, supremely arrogant and male, as if he was as unable to imagine himself serving anyone or anything as she was.

“For all you know, I could be meeting someone.” She forgot about the view; he was far more mesmerizing, especially when his gaze turned darker and something like stormy. She smiled then. “My very jealous lover, for example, who might find you here and take out his aggression all over you. With his fists.”

“A risk I feel prepared to take, somehow.”

There was no denying the edge of confident menace in his smile then, and she wondered what sort of woman she was to find that as appealing as she did. Surely she ought to be ashamed. She wasn’t.

“Is that a threat of violence?” she asked tartly. And then lied. “That’s incredibly unattractive.”

“That is exactly how you look,” he said, the knowing quirk of his hard mouth deepening, his storm-tossed eyes too hot, too sure. “Unattracted.”

“Or perhaps I’m simply a single woman out on the town, looking for a date,” she continued in the same nonchalant, careless tone. “You seem to want to talk only about the view. Or make depressing remarks about the furtiveness of a night of wild, uncontrollable passion. Neither is likely to make me want to date you, is it?”

“Are we talking about a date?” His mouth curved again, as if he was trying not to laugh, and very nearly failing. His almost-blue eyes reminded her of the winter sea, and were as compelling. “I thought this was a negotiation about sex. Endlessly inventive sex, I believe. Or hope, in any case. Not a tedious date, all manners and flowers and gentlemanlike behavior.”

It took her a moment to breathe through the way he said sex, like some kind of incantation. Much less the images he conjured up, and their immediate effect on her body. How could one man be this dangerous? And why was she wholly unable to offer up any kind of defense against him?

“The way this works is that you pretend to be interested only in a date,” she told him as if she was this close to exasperation but only the kindness of her heart kept her from it. “You pretend that you want to get to know me as a person. The more you do that, the more romantic it will all feel. To me, I mean. And that, of course, is the quickest route toward rampant sex in a hotel room.” She shrugged her shoulders as if she felt she shouldn’t have to be the one to share this with him. As if every other person in Sydney was well aware of this, and she wondered why he wasn’t.

“I can’t simply ask for rampant sex?” he asked, as if baffled. Possibly even shocked. Though that lazy, indulgent gleam in his eyes said otherwise. “Are you sure?”

“Only if you are planning to purchase it.” She eyed him, and the hint of a smile that toyed with that mouth of his, and made her wish all sorts of undignified things. “Which is, of course, perfectly legal here. And no, buying me a drink is not the same thing.”

“Your country has so many rules,” he said softly, the amusement leaving his gaze as something far hotter took its place. “Mine is far more…direct.”

She felt the way he looked at her, the fire in it moving over her like a caress, making her wish that she was dressed far more provocatively. Making her wish she could bare her skin to his gaze, to the night falling all around them. The black blazer she wore over a decadently soft black jumper and the dark blue jeans she’d tucked into her favorite black suede books felt confining, suddenly, instead of the casually chic look she’d been going for. She wished she could peel it all off and throw it all in the harbor. She wondered what it was about this man that made such an uncharacteristic urge seem so appealing in the first place.

But she knew.

“Direct?” she echoed, feeling the pull of that hard face, those unholy eyes. She wanted to move closer to that wicked mouth of his. She wanted it more than was wise. More than she should, out in public like this, where anyone could see. For a moment she forgot the game—herself—entirely.

“If I want it,” he said quietly, so quietly, but she felt it flood into her as if he’d shouted it, as if he’d licked it into her skin, “I take it.”

Kiara felt that hum in her, electric and something like overwhelming. For a moment she could only stare back at him, caught in that knowing gaze of his, as surely as if he’d caged her somehow. Trapped her as surely as if he’d used manacles and heavy iron bars. She shouldn’t feel that like a thrill, twisting through her, but she did.

“Then I suppose I should count myself lucky that we are not in your country,” she said after a moment, not sure until she spoke that she would be able to at all. She was surprised that her voice sounded so steady. Almost tart. “This is Australia. I’m afraid we’re quite civilized.”

“All of you in your new, young countries are the same,” he said in that low tone, his voice its own dark spell, weaving its way over her, inside of her, as inexorable as the setting sun. “So brash, forever carrying on about your purported civility. But you are all so close, still, to your disreputable pasts, aren’t you? All of it welling up from beneath, making a lie of these carefully cultivated facades.”

Kiara realized two things simultaneously. One, that she could listen to him talk forever—about countries, about pasts, about whatever he liked. That voice of his triggered something deep inside her, something helpless and wanton, that made her breathless and so wrapped up in him that the world could fall to pieces around her and she wouldn’t notice. Or, as now, the sun could disappear entirely beneath the horizon without her registering it, ushering in the inky sweetness of the Sydney night, and she would still see nothing but him.

And two, and more important, that she would die if she didn’t touch him. Now.

“As fascinating as your thoughts on young countries and disreputable pasts may be,” she said then, keeping her voice a low murmur, her eyes hot on his, “I think that I’d rather dispense with all this meaningless chatter and just get naked. What do you think?”

He smiled again, and she felt it shiver through her and curl her toes. He reached over and took her hand in his, carrying it to his mouth. It was the faintest hint of a kiss, a timeless gesture of chivalry for the benefit of the people all around them, but she felt it like a hard kick. Like a promise.

“There is nothing I would rather do,” he said, that gleam of amusement in his eyes turning them something near silver. “But I’m afraid I’m meeting my wife for dinner. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand.” Kiara played with his strong fingers in hers. “Who would want to stand in the way of acrobatic, inventive sex, after all?”

“She’s terribly jealous.” He shook his head almost sadly. “It’s like a sickness—ouch.” His gaze turned baleful, and a silver heat gleamed there, while something almost too warm to bear echoed in a kind of sizzle low in Kiara’s belly. “Did you just bite me?”

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.” It was a dare.

He let go of her hand, but shifted closer, reaching over to pull gently on the end of her ponytail, tilting her head up slightly to meet his searing gaze.

“Perhaps I can risk my wife’s jealous rages after all,” he said musingly. He moved still closer, until their faces were a mere breath apart, his delectable mouth just there, just out of reach.

Her breath came out ragged, then, as if she’d broken into a run. She felt as if she had. His smile licked over her, into her.

“You look as if you can take it,” Kiara agreed, and then she closed the distance between them and kissed him.

His wife, Sheikh Azrin bin Zayed Al Din, Crown Prince of Khatan, reflected with no little amusement, was endlessly delightful to him.

Her lips were soft and sweet against his, hinting at the passion that neither of them could succumb to out in the public eye like this. It was as frustrating as it was delicious. He wanted more than this hint of her, after two weeks apart. He wanted to taste her—take her—with a ferocity that might have surprised him, five years after marrying her, had he not been well used to this relentless thirst for her.

A thirst he could not indulge. Not here. Not now.

He pulled away, controlling himself with the ruthlessness that was second nature to him, particularly where his wife was concerned, and smiled again at the dazed look she wore, as if she had forgotten where they were. Azrin could look at her forever. Her pretty oval face with its delicate nose and brows, and her wide, decadent mouth that had been the first thing he’d noticed about her. Her hair was a mix of browns and golds, tumbling down past her shoulders in light waves unless, like tonight, she’d opted to put the heavy weight of it up in one of her sleek, deceptively casual styles. She looked taller than she was, her body firm and toned from her years of athletics and hard work, and she tended to dress conservatively as suited her position, yet with a quiet little flair that was hers alone.

That deep current of wickedness was all for him.

“If you had spoken to me like that when we met,” he said lazily, taunting her, “I doubt I would ever have pursued you at all. So disrespectful and challenging.”

She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would. “I did speak to you like that,” she replied. Her generous mouth widened into a smile. “You loved it.”

“So I did.”

He got to his feet then and took her hand to help her rise. She held on for a moment too long, as if she wanted to cling to even that much contact. He felt the kick of it, of her, deep inside of him. He craved her. He wanted to lick his way over every inch of her skin, relearning her as if the two weeks he’d been without her might have changed her. He wanted to find out for himself. With his mouth, his hands.

She curved into his side as they began to walk back along the concourse toward Sydney’s impressive, glittering array of skyscrapers, and the penthouse he kept there that was as much a primary residence as anything could be for two people who traveled as much as they did. He slid his arm around her slender shoulders and contented himself as best he could with a light kiss on the top of her head that barely reached his chin. Her hair smelled of sunshine and flowers, and he could not touch her the way he wanted to.

Not here. Not now. Not yet, he thought.

No unrestrained public displays of affection for the Crown Prince of Khatan and his non-Khatanian, scandalous-merely-by-virtue-of-her-foreign-birth princess. Well did Azrin know the rules. The public—particularly in his country—might fight for any possible glimpse of what they called his modern Cinderella romance, but that didn’t mean they wanted to see anything that wouldn’t have suited the family-friendly film of the same name.