Page 32 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
Cyrus could not pretend, now, he had not greatly enjoyed collecting on these prices she paid, but he had not expected that Hope would enjoy it so much too.
Oh, he had known that in the heat of things, she would want nothing more. That she would beg him to continue. He had never had any doubt on that score with any woman, not that he could seem to remember any others of late, and certainly not one who looked as if she was as fascinated with him as Hope always did.
But he had expected that when faced with the fact that she wanted this man who she had been promised to and had therefore wronged, however unknowingly, she would shrink into herself and at leastpretendshe could not feel the heat between them.
Perhaps he would not even have blamed her.
Blame or not, he had expected her to feel shame.
Instead, she danced in the courtyard with the other women. Last he had heard, she had made friends of them all, and half the rest of the staff as well. Her laughter could always be heard in the halls and in the baths, until he began to wonder if he’d heard it on the wind down south, too.
Until he woke, craving the sound.
Cyrus had started to wonder why it was she never gave him what it was she’d given other men—and why it was he wanted her anyway. Had he been wrong about her dating life these past two years?
But no. He’d had the men she’d had all those dinners with extensively researched. He could not imagine any one of them would have let her slip between their fingers. Yet still he wanted her—and more by the day.
He had imagined that fulfilling his part of the promises made would be a coldhearted exercise, something he could compartmentalize as easily as he did everything else. With a swift and calculated seduction that would leave them both in precisely the places they belonged, as he’d explained to her at the start. He’d intended to give her the position her father had wished her to have, but nothing else.
None of it had gone as expected.
Because he’d met her, touched her, carried her from that chapel. He’d tucked a scarf around her face to protect her from the desert sun. He had watched her laugh at him, more than once.
And there was nothing cold or calculated in the way they kissed.
He was quickly realizing that he wanted this wife of his far more than he should. Far more than was wise, as he had always been taught, for wanting was itself a weakness.
Something he was forced to reflect upon even more intently once he tore himself away from the dancing in the harem, settled himself in the office he used here, and tried to convince himself that he was neither besotted nor obsessed.
Which was hard to do when his man had asked him the very question he wished to answer least of all.
That of phase two of that original plan of his.
“I have assembled a slate of candidates, sire,” his man told him, with obvious pride. “I have personally located the finest daughters of the finest men in the land. I have vetted the families myself, and I can tell you that not only are these women beautiful enough to be worthy of your notice, they are all eager for the opportunity to take their place in your harem and provide you with fine sons, so that the choice of the next Lord and King need not be made for them.”
His own father had not been lucky in sons, something he and the whole of the country blamed on the woman who had stolen his firstborn from him. Whether that made sense or not had never mattered. Historically, the Lord of the desert tried to have as many sons as possible so he could, if necessary, make them into their own army. So had it been throughout the ages.
Cyrus did not feel he required an army. He tried to tell himself that was why he was not moving to fill his harem the way he’d planned to have done already.
“You have done fine work and I am pleased,” he told his man.
The man placed a tablet before him. He indicated that all Cyrus needed to do was swipe this way or that to view pictures of the women on offer along with dossiers outlining precisely who they were and the benefits they would provide the kingdom if elevated to one of the Lord’s wives.
Cyrus nodded along.
And later, after he had taken several phone calls and video conferenced with a number of advisors, he found himself flipping listlessly through the pictures. All the women ran together. They were beautiful, each and every one of them. But instead of congratulating himself that he had such loveliness to choose from, he found himself instead entirely too preoccupied with Hope.
As if he was the one imprisoned, songs in his head once more.
It was unsupportable.
It had to stop.
“It is time,” he muttered to himself, staring out his window and seeing her face in place of the endless sand.
He had the staff prepare the usual dinner he would share with her, but this time, in his actual bedchamber. They arranged it in front of the grand fireplace, there to make tolerable and comfortable the winter nights that could made this old place of stone intolerably frigid.
As he had discovered by living without a fire on the nights his father wished to teach him that lesson, too.
