Page 10 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
He should not have found her fascinating, quite against his will. It would have been easier to shrug off the promises he had made. He had considered doing it many times in the years since her father had died, given her seeming disinterest in the promises that bound them together.
But breaking promises was something soft, weak, poisonous creatures like his mother did, claiming it was a virtue. Claiming she was saving them both, Cyrus and her, long ago.
Cyrus had made himself a man who did not make promises he did not keep.
No matter what.
“I could see the wisdom in the strategy,” Cyrus said reprovingly now. “Given the legal skirmishes my parents had engaged in when I was younger. And so my father’s mother—also an Englishwoman, as is tradition—approached your father and the two of them came to an agreement. This has always been our way.”
“This promise you say he made.” Hope shook her head. “I told you, I don’t know anything about it. And even if I did, he’s gone. I wish he wasn’t, but one thing I’ve learned is that wishes do not come true.”
“We are not speaking of wishes,” Cyrus told her with a certain quiet ruthlessness.
If his tone troubled her, she did not show it. “And I know they don’t come true, because I’ve tried. Again and again and again.”
There was something in the way she said that. It made its way beneath his skin when he should have been immune.
Perhaps that was why he sounded so severe when he continued. “It is not a wish, but a fact, that your father promised your hand to me on your eighteenth birthday. Or, if you took it upon yourself to go to university to educate yourself, upon your graduation.”
She made a soft little sound. “He didn’t. He wouldn’t. Would he?”
“He did. And yet you were walking down that aisle to marry another man.” He found he was leaning forward himself now, his gaze so intent on hers it almost felt as if this was a kiss.Almost.“Quite as if no promises had ever been made at all.”
CHAPTER THREE
THISWASBEGINNINGto feel like a bit of a roller coaster and Hope had never been any kind of fan of amusement park rides. She didn’t even like a too-fast car, much less the games some liked to play on small watercraft.
No, thank you. She liked her stomach to stay put.
But that didn’t appear to be an option available to her today.
Not when the most beautiful man she’d ever encountered had not only snatched her out of the jaws of her own wedding, but claimed she’d been promised to him, too. Wholly unbeknownst to her.
“That seems a bit harsh,” she pointed out, while her stomach put on a little bit of a show inside her. She would have told herself she was hungry, that was all, had she not stuffed herself. This was...a different sort of hunger.
“Does it?” Cyrus sounded wholly unrepentant, his midnight eyes dark. “I would have said that the breaking of promises was far harsher than any discussion of them. But I am an elemental creature, as you will soon discover.”
Hope thought she was doing pretty well, trying her best to make sense of what was meant to be her step forward into the role of wife to a stranger that had taken a dramatic left turn into the clutches of Cyrus Ashkan, a man who had been his own soap opera, back in the day. Who hadn’t pored over every article? Every picture? Every questionable tell-all from supposed staff?
Her own story paled in comparison to his. First she’d been frog-marched from car to helicopter, helicopter to plane. Then she’d been...fed, which did not seem to fit with the frog-marching. Then he’d told her the story of his own infamous kidnapping, though he didn’t seem to view it the way the rest of the world did.Hedid not seem to mind that no one had laid eyes on the boy Cyrus had been for all of those years.Heappeared to be under the impression that his mother was the villain.
His mother, who had never modeled again, had been seen in public only when petitioning various members of the government to take up her cause, and who had been considered a study in parental grief ever after.
Especially once Cyrus had reappeared and had been nothing short of scathing toward her and about her.
But all of that, as sensational as it was, paled in comparison to the notion that her beloved father had married her off to some stranger long ago, then had never mentioned it again... Though, of course, he had intended to live.
He would have thought he had time.
Oh, how she wished he’d had time—
Hope decided she couldn’t possibly think too much about that part of it. Not now. Not yet. Not until she knew what she was in for.
Hope was inclined to wonder if this was all some kind of pre-wedding dream she was having, trying to save herself at the last minute from a marriage that was certainly better than the kinds she’d assumed she’d likely have to suffer. But still wasn’t exactly what she would calldesirable.
After all, while Lionel Asensio had many fine qualities—mostly that he wished for her to play a very specific marital role for his family with very clear requirements, none of which were icky—it was not as if, deep down, Hope hadwantedto marry him.
She wasn’t thrilled aboutthisturn of events either, no matter how good the food was. What didn’t track was the way this man was looking at her as if she, personally, had made him promises. And then had recklessly and thoughtlessly and deliberately broken them.
