“You aren’t … “
“I was. Then especially.” He had never spoken these words to anyone. Never told the whole truth of it. But he wanted her to know.
Her green eyes were filled with pain. Not pity. Nothing so condescending. It was as though she felt what he’d felt. As though she shared in it. “How did you even go on, though? To lose your family … and then her?”
“I had Hajar. And I knew that I had to protect my people. That it was left to me. And as much as I am not a ruler … I had to do what I could. I started with homeland security, moved into hospitals for children who had been victims of attacks. We treat children from all over the world for free. Of course to support that I had to work on new ways of bringing revenue in. It’s kept me going.”
“How can you think you aren’t meant to be a ruler, Zahir? Your people … “
“Are afraid of me.”
“Maybe because you haven’t shown them who you really are.”
She said it with such earnest sweetness, as though she truly believed there was something in him worth valuing, even after his admission of how … dark and empty he was inside. Maybe she just didn’t understand. He’d been told that could be part of the PTSD, too. The absence of emotion. But it didn’t go away. Other things had gotten better, but the blank void inside him remained. And knowing that it might have a medical cause did nothing to make it less acute.
He looked at her, studied the way she looked at him. And he longed to change it. He turned away from her. “So I have been preparing to deal with the crowd. Is there anything else?”
“We … we’ll have to dance. We don’t have to dance, actually. If your leg … “
His stomach tightened. He’d been damned if he’d take the easy way, the handicap or whatever it was she was offering. “I thought we had to.”
“Not if you … I don’t want to … “
“You told me you’re not fragile. Neither am I,” he said. “I used to dance. I didn’t take lessons or anything, but especially during my university years in Europe, I danced quite a bit.” Not that he’d enjoyed it for its own sake. It had been more of a pickup technique. But it had worked.
“That surprises me.”
“It shouldn’t. Women like to dance and I always liked women.”
“And they liked you.”
“It seems another lifetime ago, but if I can ride a horse, I’m certain I can dance. Unless you don’t want to dance with a man who might limp through the steps.”
She frowned. “That’s not it. I don’t want to tax you, I … “
A shot of competitiveness sent a spark of adrenaline through him. “Latifa, you are welcome to try to tax me. I doubt you will be able to.”
A stubborn spark lit her eye, an answer to his challenge. Good. He wanted her to challenge him. To see him as a man, and not her patient. “I’d like to see some of these dancing skills,” she said.
“Not up to par with what you’re used to, I’m certain. But I know I still can.”
He held out his hand and she simply stared at it. “I’m not really used to anything. I haven’t done a lot of dancing.”
“That surprises me.”
“Why?”
“You’re a beautiful woman.”
Katharine cleared her throat and looked away, the compliment making her feel self-conscious. “Well, I am a woman who was promised to a sheikh in marriage. And who anticipated being used for another political union so … I was never really encouraged to dance.”
“And you need encouragement to do things? I thought you did as you pleased.”
“I do what my father asks,” she said quietly. “What makes him see some kind of value in me.”
Zahir’s eyebrows locked together, his expression fierce. He leaned in, cupping her chin and tilting her face up so that she had to look at him. “If he does not see the value in you, he is a blind fool. No, not even blind. I can’t see out of one eye, and yet I see your value.”
Katharine swallowed hard, her eyes riveted to his. “Do you?”
“You are the only person who has challenged me, on this side of the attack or the other. You have more tenacity than any man I have ever met.”
“Same goes,” she said, fighting to keep from crying, to keep from melting over the words he’d just spoken. They were balm on a wound she hadn’t realized was so raw. “Now,” she said, trying to change the topic before she dissolved, “dance with me.”
Eyes trained on her, Zahir bent and picked up a flat remote from the side table, pointing it upward and hitting one of the buttons. Slow, sexy jazz guitar filled the air. Not what she expected against the Arabic backdrop, but maybe even more fitting because of that. Because none of this was what she expected.
Zahir advanced on her slowly, his black eyes on hers, his movements languid, despite the limp. He held out his hand and she took it, warmth flooding her when his fingers entwined with hers. He pulled her to him, her breasts meeting his chest, and he wound his other arm around her waist. For a moment she saw it, the playboy he’d been. The man who’d had women falling at his feet, into his bed.
It coupled with the other things she knew about him, the intensity of the trauma he’d undergone. How far he had come since. As sexy as he had been before the attacks, as attractive as he’d been when he’d been a playboy dancing his way through the clubs in Europe, she knew that Zahir couldn’t touch the man he was now.
This Zahir possessed a fire. An intensity. He had clawed over every obstacle in his path. He had emerged with a strength and honor that made her feel so safe with him. That made her respect him in ways she’d never respected another human being.
And on top of all that, when he held her to the heat of his body, she felt a kind of desire she’d never even dreamed possible.
It made her shivery inside.
His movements weren’t completely smooth, his limp impossible to disguise entirely. But he had rhythm, more naturally than she did. Then, as she’d told Zahir, she hadn’t done a lot of dancing. This made her wish she had. Made her wish she’d pursued a little more than what duty asked of her.
This was a layer of life she’d never explored. She was starting to fear that there were many of them. Beneath that thin layer of what royal life offered her, there was so much more. A richness and depth she’d never yet reached.
She’d never been conscious of it before.
He moved his hand from her lower back, around to the curve of his hip, his fingers tightening there, gripping her. She looked up, met his dark gaze. She didn’t want to turn away.
She tightened her arms around his neck, bringing herself in closer. Needing to be closer. Needing to simply be near him. Needing something even more than that, and not quite knowing how to get it.
This wasn’t part of the plan. Any plan. Human touch, human warmth, was unfamiliar to her. And right now, Zahir was hot. And so very close.
She unclasped her hands and wove her fingers through his thick, black hair. A deep rumble echoed in his chest, his eyes hot on hers.
She slid her hand forward, up the side of his neck, cupping his cheek, his skin rough from stubble beneath her palm. She needed more. She needed closer. Needed to satisfy the empty well of longing that had opened up in her. A well she was afraid might be impossible to fill.
But she could try. She had to try.
She