Conquering His Virgin Queen

‘Do. Not. Say. That. Again.’

Each whispered word pressed a puff of air against her heated skin, causing her pulse to jump erratically in response—her body seemingly ignorant of the threat his words implied.

He brought her back round to his side and pushed her through the crowd towards a private elevator. The doors slid open without a sound and Eloise stepped into a mirror-lined lift. If he wanted to talk, so be it—as long as it brought about her freedom.

It took her a moment to realise that she was alone with her husband for the first time since their wedding night. Since he had left her by herself, unable to get out of that ridiculous white dress. Standing by his side now, she looked at their reflection, multiplied over and over again until it was all she could see.

She took in the changes that six months had brought to his handsome features. The fine dusting of grey at his temples, shining bright against his thick dark hair. The lines that framed his eyes—closed now—and the hollows beneath his cheekbones, serving only to make him seem even more powerful and commanding. His cologne infused the air about them until it was all she could smell, overwhelming her completely.

She had expected anger from him. Fury, even. Not this cold carelessness that seemed to vibrate from his being. But she was astute enough to recognise the anticipation of anger as a learning from her childhood. From the powerful men she had encountered. Like her father. Like his.

‘Odir—’

‘Not yet,’ he said, without even bothering to open his eyes.

And all the anger she’d held at bay since the moment his lips had touched hers raised its ugly head and forced its way out.

‘No, you’ll listen to—’

But before she could finish her sentence the lift arrived at its destination and Odir stalked out into a corridor and through a door being held open by the guard already stationed there.

Eloise followed, feelings of uncertainty and a hatred of being ignored filling her, propelling her forward as she stepped over the threshold of a room she hadn’t expected.

Floor-to-ceiling windows launched her gaze out to the London she had glimpsed earlier from the lift. Spread out before them like a blanket made of black silk and sequins, its tiny lights shifted and flashed, outlining the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. And strangely she felt an ache of homesickness pulse within her, even though she had not lived in London since she’d left university and made her way to Farrehed.

Not even three years later here she was, surveying it as if she were its lord and master.

And then she realised how foolish that thought was. She had never been lord and master of anything. That had been the role of her father and then her husband. The women in her family had never had the privilege of holding such power. Not until she had left her husband’s side.

Odir was standing two feet in front of her, but the reflection in the glass distorted the distance between them, showing them as almost side by side. He made no move to turn on the lights in the apartment and shadows swept around them as the clouds sped their way across the light of the moon, casting her husband’s face into half-light and shade as he turned to face her.

They might not have shared a bed, and they might not have spoken in half a year, but Eloise knew her husband. Knew that she should not push him. But she couldn’t back down now. It had taken everything she had to come here tonight. To face him one last time.

‘I want a divorce.’

‘What? No small-talk?’

‘You want small-talk? Fine. Hello, Husband, how was your day?’ she replied, mock sweetness dripping from her voice.

‘Pretty bad, actually. How was yours?’

‘Equally so, having been summoned halfway across Europe for God knows what reason.’

‘I’ve seen quite a number of sides to you, Eloise. Sweet and innocent, cold and indifferent. But I think this—righteous indignation—suits you the best.’

Yet he’d never seen the truth of her, she realised. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted or needed to once he’d had his ring on her finger. She sighed heavily. This was getting them nowhere.

‘Odir. Please. I want a divorce.’

‘As you keep saying,’ he replied. ‘But I’m afraid that doesn’t fit with my plans.’

‘And I’m afraid your plans no longer matter to me. I have built a life for myself in Switzerland. A life that doesn’t involve you. I’ve...changed, Odir. I am not the same woman you married.’

His eyes narrowed at that. Justifiably so. Six months ago she wouldn’t even have thought to fight back. But she was now.

‘Mmm...’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps you have changed.’

* * *

Odir took in the defiance that filled her slim frame. She had lost weight in the last six months, and he wasn’t sure that he liked it. He let arrogance fuel his gaze as it dropped to her feet and leisurely made its way back up, over her hips to her breasts, to her face. A gaze that heated her cheeks and stoked a fire within him.

He ate up the subtle changes in her—the way that anger brightened her eyes and flushed her cheeks—and for a second he thought he might possibly be forgiven for mistaking it as arousal. He cursed the way his body reacted, but knew it served as a reminder to be on his guard.

‘If you had liked what you saw when we were married, Odir, we might not be in this situation now.’

The barb hit home. It struck at the weakness he’d had for his wife—the one thing he’d promised himself he would not indulge in. Hadn’t his father’s obsessional love for his wife nearly destroyed his country? Hadn’t the impossible attraction between Odir and Eloise nearly made him do the same?

‘Don’t you dare turn this around on me.’ His low, dark tone buzzed in the air between them. ‘I may not have graced your bed, but someone else—’

‘Stop!’

She issued the command with such force her hand came up between them. And, bastard that he was, he relished her anger. Relished the fact that her feelings matched his own.

‘You never did like hearing the truth, did you, Eloise? Always running...always hiding.’

As the words fell from his lips he briefly wondered if they should instead be aimed at himself.

‘And you were never interested in the truth, Odir. Only in what suited you and Farrehed.’

‘What version of the truth would that be, Eloise? I’m curious. Because I’d like to know what I would find on the divorce papers. Would you place the blame at my feet, or would you own the fact that it was you who betrayed me? Tell me, Eloise, would you be ready to see, splashed all over the pages of the international press, the fact that you committed adultery with my brother?’

* * *

Eloise wanted to scream. Her hands were clenched into fists and she knew that her nails would leave crescent-moon-shaped indentations in her palms, but still she couldn’t release them. Because if she did they would be hurled against her husband, and she didn’t know if she would be able to stop.

Never had he asked her for the truth of that night. Not once.

‘Get out! Get out of my sight and don’t you dare come back!’

The words rang through her mind and she felt her heart break twice over—once for the past and once for the present. Odir had made an assumption. The wrong one. And he had never looked back, using it instead as an excuse to avoid his bought bride.

The night Odir had found his brother trying to kiss her had been one of the worst of her life. He hadn’t given either her or his brother the chance to explain. And clearly Jarhan had never put him right. Then again, she hadn’t really expected him to.

She tried to shake off the memory of Jarhan’s drunken attempts to kiss her but its hold was too great and it dragged her under.

She was in a different room...in a different country. She had been keeping Jarhan company ever since Sheikh Abbas had unveiled his plans for his younger son to wed the Princess of a nearby principality—Kalaran. She had been trying to comfort him, trying to convince him to explain, to tell the truth. But the fear in Jarhan’s eyes had been very real.

Stains from the red wine he’d been drinking all night had scored red grooves into the corners of his mouth, and the second his thin lips had crashed painfully against hers the young Prince had gone from being someone she had considered a friend and confidant to becoming the weapon of her undoing.