The phone clanged into the stillness, making him jump. Though he could let his secretary get it, he preferred the distraction to his chaotic thoughts.

“Yes?” he barked into the receiver.

“I hear that your wife arrived today,” his brother Adan said.

“That’s correct,” Malik replied somewhat stiffly. “She is here.”

He’d kept her away from Jahfar for a reason. Now that she was here, he had no choice but to share her with his family. Though he’d thought there might be a bit more time before that happened. Malik frowned. His brothers would be polite, but his mother certainly would not.

“And do you plan on bringing her to the palace?”

Malik ground his teeth. He hadn’t told Adan why Sydney was here. He hadn’t told anyone. “Perhaps in a few days. Or not. I have business in Al Na’ir.”

“Surely you can spare an evening. I wish to meet her, Malik.”

“Is that a command?”

There was no pause whatsoever. “It is.”

How very easily Adan had slipped into power. He hadn’t been the heir to the throne, just as Malik had not been a part of the ruling family, until their cousin had died in a boating accident and Adan suddenly found himself the heir to their uncle. When their uncle died a year later, Adan had ascended the throne as king.

He’d been a good king. A just king.

“Then I will bring her. Though not today. She is tired from the journey.”

“Of course,” Adan replied. “We will see you for dinner tomorrow night. Isabella looks forward to it.”

“Tomorrow night then.”

Their goodbyes were stiff, formal, but Malik had expected nothing different. They’d had such a barren childhood, with nannies and a kind of rigid formality that was not conducive to warmth between them. Oh, Malik loved his brothers—and his sister—but theirs was not an easy relationship.

He wasn’t quite sure why. There’d been no huge trauma, no major falling out. Just a quiet distance that seemed impossible to breech. The more time moved on, the wider the chasm.

Perhaps that was why he’d been so drawn to Sydney. She’d made him feel less alone, and he’d been addicted to that feeling. But that was before she’d betrayed him, before she’d proven she was no different than anyone else in his life.

Malik checked his watch. It had been over six hours since he’d brought her here. He debated calling Hala to check on her, but decided he would do so instead. He would not hide from her, would not shrink from the raw emotions still rolling between them like a storm-tossed sea.

He found her on the small terrace off her room, her long hair loose and flowing down her back, the wind from the sea ruffling the auburn strands. She’d put on a fluid cream-colored dress that skimmed her form. It was slightly darker than the milk of her skin, but it made her look ethereal. Like an angel.

She turned her head as he approached, setting down the coffee she’d been cupping in both hands. Her expression went carefully blank, but not before he saw the yearning there.

It gutted him, that yearning.

“Are you feeling refreshed?” he asked.

“I am, thank you,” she replied, glancing away again.

He pulled out the chair opposite her, setting it at an angle so he could view the sea and her face at once if he so chose. “Your luggage is intact, I take it?”

“Yes. Everything arrived.”

She picked up the coffee again, her long fingers shaking as she threaded them on either side of the cup. He did that to her, he realized. Made her as skittish as a newborn foal.

It reminded him of the first time they’d made love. She hadn’t been a virgin, but she hadn’t been terribly experienced, either. Everything he did to her had been a revelation. Soon, she’d been bold and eager for more.

His body hardened instantly.

This was the problem, he thought, with no small measure of anger. This need that flared every time he was with her. He’d ceased trying to understand it long ago. He’d never been the sort of man to be ruled by his penis—until Sydney came along and turned everything upside down.

He blew out a disgusted breath and turned to stare at the container ship gliding into port in the distance. It wasn’t simply the physical that drew him to her.

No, he’d been dissolute long before Sydney came along. He’d indulged every appetite, every whim. It had been great fun.

At first.

But in the last couple of years, the more he’d pushed the envelope, the emptier he’d felt.

And she seemed to fill that emptiness somehow.

“I’m going to need internet access,” she said, cutting through his thoughts. “I have work to do while I’m here.”

“There is Wi-Fi,” he told her. “I will have someone give you the password.”

“Thank you.” Her fingers drummed against the side of the cup. He heard her draw breath, as if she was planning to speak, but she said nothing. Several more times she tried, until he finally speared her with a look, pinning her into place.

“Say it, habibti.”

She was looking at him with those big grey eyes, her long lashes sweeping to her cheeks and back up again as she let her doubts war with her desire to speak.

Then she bit her lip, and he forced himself not to turn away. Forced himself to deal with the slice of pain that shafted into him, the flood of desire that pooled low in his groin.

He would conquer this ridiculous need.

She was a woman, like any other. She was not special, or different. She possessed nothing that he couldn’t obtain elsewhere. Whatever pull she had on him, whatever imagined void she seemed to fill … she was not irreplaceable. No woman was. He knew that better than most.

Her expression changed by degrees, turned fierce, and he knew she’d made up her mind. He relished her fierceness. It was far better than wide-eyed defeat.

“I want to know why you never brought me here,” she burst out, gesturing at him, her hand encompassing his entire body as she swept it up and down. “This is who you are—the clothes, the desert—but you never let me see it.”

She leaned toward him then, her eyes stormy. “Did I embarrass you that much?”

There, she’d said it. She’d finally put voice to the pain that had been nagging her since the moment she’d arrived and seen him dressed in traditional clothing. This was who he was. This was his life, his heritage, and he’d never allowed her to be a part of it.

She knew why, but she wanted to hear him say it. She wanted him to admit to her that he’d regretted taking her for his wife. Her heart thundered, her pulse throbbed and her breath razored in and out of her chest. She needed to hear him say it.

To her face this time.

Not that she was in any danger of forgetting, of succumbing to his considerable charm, but she wanted the pain front and center so long as she was here. If she kept it there, it would act as a shield.

He’d removed the headdress between the time she’d seen him earlier and now. His dark hair was wavy, thick, and she remembered threading her hands into it, pulling his mouth down to hers as she lay beneath him in their bed.

Her heart turned over at the thought. Warmth gathered in her belly. A knot of something she dared not name tightened in her core.

No. Those memories had nothing to do with now.

“You did not embarrass me.” Malik’s handsome face was carefully blank, and though the words were what she wanted to hear, she did not believe them. He was too stoic, too detached. “We would have come here eventually.”

“Eventually,” she repeated, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. He would not tell her the truth, even now. Had she truly expected it?

“What do you wish me to say, Sydney?” he demanded. “It was not foremost on my mind, I have to admit. I was more concerned with how long I had to wait until the next time I could get you naked.”

Sydney set the coffee cup down, grateful that she didn’t clang it into the saucer. “Why can’t you just admit the truth?”