Page 59 of Her Arabian King

Harper promptly tried to shut the door on the sheikh’s face, but his reflexes were far quicker than hers, the sheikh managing to hold the door back and force his way in.

He was here. The sheikh was here. Khalil was here.

He was dressed in the same cream thobe she had glimpsed from the TV, but he looked a lot thinner, his handsome face bearing an unusual sense of gauntness.

She suddenly realized he was locking the door, and it was enough to make her recover from her shock. “How can you even be here?”

He turned around to face her again before answering. “What you watched was a pre-recording.”

“O-oh.” What did that mean? What could that mean?

“You’re wondering how long I had known the wedding wouldn’t push through?” He saw her eyes widen and smiled grimly. “Your face says everything your lips do not speak of, qalifa. And it may not seem like it, but I know you better than you think—-”

“If that’s true,” she said unevenly, “then you should know what I want you to do now.”

Silence.

And she knew she had hurt him.

Tears stung her eyes. “I’m sor—-”

“Don’t apologize.”

“But I hurt you.”

He smiled humorlessly. “And I didn’t?”

Harper dug her fingers into her palms. “You d-didn't mean to.”

His jaw hardened. “I’m the one who have a million things to apologize for.”

“No—-”

“I should never even have asked you to stay and tolerate another wife.”

The savage self-contempt in the sheikh’s voice made Harper dug her fingers deeper into her palms, made her wish she had sharper, longer nails that could hurt her more – hurt her so much that she would no longer notice the way her battered heart had started to beat again, and just because he was here—-

When they both knew he couldn’t stay.

“I didn’t ask you to do that,” she whispered.

“You didn’t have to. You would never have to—-”

“I don’t want to wake up one day and have you hate me because of what you lost.”

“It would never happen.” She started shaking her head and Khalil’s tone became fiercer. “Did you think I didn’t try to see if I could live without you? I tried. I fucking tried. I had to. Being the king was all that meant to me my entire life, but the two months you were gone—-”

“I don’t want to hear any more!”

Harper tried to run away, but the sheikh hauled her into his arms.

“No more!”

She shoved him away, and when it didn’t work, she beat his chest as hard as he could, forcing him to capture her wrists and lock them behind her wrists.

“Harper—-”

She was crying, the tears silently rushing down her cheeks, and the sheikh flinched.

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