Page 17 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
He felt the woman—his wife, he reminded himself again, for so had he decreed—brace herself as it seemed they might dash themselves against the very rocks that rose before them.
Instead, at the last moment, his men let out a cry. It was answered high up on the battlements and thus the great gate was raised.
They thundered straight through, coming to a stop in the grand court.
Cyrus took a moment to remind himself that he, too, had once looked around this place with awe and wonder, so different was it from the ruins of English castles and the like that he had known while in his mother’s possession.
Different, though its tactical uses were much the same. Like any fortress, it was built as much to keep people within as to keep marauders without.
He rather thought that was the part Hope was wrestling with as she looked around, golden eyes wide from behind her scarves. For all the ornate scrollwork, tile and mosaic and flourishes, fountains and hints of greenery on the other side of the archways, this was to be her prison, just as it had once been his.
Perhaps she was perceptive enough to know it.
And perhaps it would even be the making of her, as it had once been for him.
He slung his leg over and dismounted his favorite horse, then took his woman down after him, letting her body brush against his as he lowered her feet to the earth.
His woman. Hisearth.
And once again, he could feel that blazing thing between them, as much an insult as it was intriguing.
Cyrus had not anticipated that he would want her like this.
That he couldmakeher want him, he had not doubted at all. Feminine eyes followed him wherever he went, whether here in the desert or out there in the wider world. They did not even need to know who he was to gaze hungrily at him wherever he went.
He had seen a similar hunger in her gaze, too, and had every intention of using it against her—of doing exactly what he’d told her he would, making her into nothing more than a mindless, careless slave to sensation. His to command.
Cyrus would build that fire in her, then let her burn out the rest of her days.
This had always been his intention, because it would keep the promise he had made but also incorporate the punishment he felt she deserved for ignoring her part of the bargain struck for her. But it was not until now, surrounded by his men on all sides, the thick walls of the grand fortress rising all around them, that he fully understood that he would enjoy it too.
Far more than he had anticipated he might when he had only watched her from afar.
He sensed more than heard her sharp intake of breath, but even as he did he stepped back to put space between them. Because he did not enjoy parading his private life about in front of the world. He’d had his fill of such things when he was a child.
Instead, Cyrus glanced to one side, where his man of arms waited and raised his brow. His man nodded, and that was all the communication necessary. Cyrus knew that everything was as he had asked. That while he had flown off to Italy to handle this situation before it got even worse, his people had handled things here in this usually abandoned place in accordance with his wishes.
“I would not have you in this gown,” he told Hope then, looking back at her with some small measure of pity as he imagined, in detail, what awaited her. What he would demand of her. “This gown you wore when you imagined you would marry another man.”
“It’s less comfortable than you might imagine,” she said in that way she had, as if she imagined she was being helpful in some way. Because apparently, she did not have it within her to feel even the slightest hint of the shame she ought to have felt at her own behavior. She even smiled, confounding him. “But, fun fact about being carried off from your own wedding ceremony—I don’t have anything else to wear.”
“That will not be an issue,” he told her. In repressive tones that, as usual, appeared to have no effect on this woman.
It made him wonder what would.
He raised a hand then, and the women came. They spilled out from inside the fortress’s mosaiced walls and came hurrying toward him. Once there, they fanned out around Hope, sneaking glances her way while they kept their gazes lowered before their king.
“The women will ready you,” he told his wife.
His wife.
Grandly, he could admit.
But she did not look cowed like the rest. Though she did not look quite as relaxed as she had on the plane, either. He chose to take that as some kind of victory.
“Dare I ask what I am to be ready for?” she asked.
“I’m sure they will prepare you sufficiently.” He waved his hand at the women around her. “I believe they have perhaps seven English words between them, should you imagine you can sway them to your side. Their job is to make you acceptable. To make certain that their king is not offended by you in any way.”
