Destined For The Desert King

CHAPTER TWO

THE SOUND HE made was one of obvious scepticism, low and rough in his throat, and it brought her whirling round to face him once again.

‘It’s true! How can you even doubt it?’

Dear heaven how had he come to be so close? She had barely noticed him move and yet all her senses had been on such high alert that she should have caught even the tiniest movement. But now she was staring him right in the face, eyes burning into eyes, their breaths almost seeming to mingle in the cool of the evening air.

‘After all that happened—all you endured...’

She wasn’t getting through to him. She might as well be throwing her words at a stone wall for all the impact they made. But she had lived through those times and she knew of the fear that had gripped the country when a rebel group had turned against the young Crown Prince and tried to stage an uprising.

‘All that I endured?’ How could he lace a single syllable with such black cynicism? ‘What do you know of it?’

‘Doesn’t everyone know?’

Even at just thirteen, she had been starkly aware of those shocking television images. The crack of gunfire, the way that everyone had frozen just for a moment. Then security men had rushed forward, some towards the steps of the library where Nabil and his young Queen had been standing, others in the opposite direction in search of the would-be assassin. How could anyone ever forget the image of Nabil sinking to the ground, ignoring the blood streaming from the wound on his left cheek, as he cradled his mortally wounded Queen in protective arms?

Wasn’t it this that had kept alive the flame of the torch she had carried for him from the first moment they had met? Even through the long years when he had been so distant, just a remote, untouchable figure glimpsed at one public event or another.

‘If you had behaved differently there might have been civil war—worse—but the example you gave when your wife died...’

Now what had she said? She had wanted to express her admiration for him, her respect for the way he had handled a difficult, tragic situation, but instead it was as if she had tossed some bitter acid right in his face. His dark head snapped back, burning eyes narrowing sharply as he turned a shockingly cynical glance in her direction. The cold moonlight caught on the white scar on his cheek, a stark reminder of that terrible day.

‘I don’t think about it,’ he stated flatly. ‘I don’t want to remember any of that.’

The words were so cold that they slashed at her like a blade of ice but the frightening thing was that at the same time just the simple action of speaking brought him closer to her. The aggressive jut of his jaw was now just inches away from her face, the brilliant glitter of his eyes like polished jet in the moonlight. His powerful body shut out the light from the windows, from the moon, and there was just him, a dark and dangerous shadow looming over her.

She should feel afraid. Common sense screamed at her that she should move hastily away from here, away from him. But, shockingly, something else spread through her body at his nearness, something that held her where she was, unable to move.

It wasn’t fear, or even apprehension that fizzed through her veins. No, Aziza had to admit that what she felt was a stinging, burning excitement that was purely and totally feminine and focused tightly on the forceful masculinity of the man before her. The scent of his body surrounded her. She could feel the heat of his skin reach out to her, and that powerful jaw was so close that if she was to lift one hand...

‘What the hell...?’

Nabil’s snapped response sliced through the air, making her start in shock and realise what she’d done. Impelled by forces that were more potent than rational thought, she had actually put her feelings into action and had stretched out her hand to stroke lightly over the black hairs of his beard, feeling their crisp softness beneath her fingertips.

‘What are you doing?’

She should listen to the dangerous note in his voice and heed the warning in it. She was sure she had broken some code of behaviour when in the presence of the Sheikh—and that touching him was positively forbidden—but she couldn’t regret it. The feel of his beard against her skin was intoxicating, sending electrical shivers down her nerves. There were grey wings in the glossy black hair, at each side of his head, revealing the way that the passage of time had affected him and there, on the left side of his cheek, was that raised and ridged line of scar tissue, not quite hidden under the luxuriant growth of facial hair. She felt him start and tense as she touched it, and knew a shiver of apprehension, but at the same time those feelings were tangled with a heartfelt sensation of concern and sympathy for the darkness of the memories he had tried to hide behind the words, ‘I don’t want to remember any of that.’

‘I can see why you feel that way.’

The faltering softness of her voice brought his head in closer to catch the words so that now his mouth was just inches above her own. She saw the tightness that had clamped his lips together ease and felt her own mouth soften, lips opening as she tilted her head to one side, feeling the warmth of his breath on her cheek.

‘I understand.’

Did he plan to kiss her? The words had barely had time to register in her thoughts before they were pushed away again, driven out by the violence of his response.

‘You understand?’ Nabil demanded in a dark undertone. ‘Oh, you do, do you? And what, precisely, is it that you understand?’

‘I— You...’

Caught up sharp when she was still drifting on the heated waves of awareness that just touching him had brought to the surface, Aziza found the words had tangled up on her tongue and she couldn’t get them out. How had she found herself in this situation, here on this darkened terrace with the man who was ruler of all of Rhastaan?

But he was more than a sheikh, he was a man, a dark, powerful male. A man who was like a force of nature, hard and strong as the mountains that bordered his country, and she had overstepped some mark with him, trampling in where angels feared to tread and so sparking off some terrible wave of rejection and fury that she didn’t understand.

‘What do you know of me? Of anything?’

Nabil moved forward, reaching out to capture her chin in long, powerful fingers, twisting her head so that she was looking up at him, unable to avoid his burning gaze unless she closed her own eyes. Something she didn’t dare to do.

‘What can you tell me that I don’t know already?’

Nabil was having such trouble controlling the force of his feelings that his voice was just a dark, intent hiss of sound. Her words had hit on things he didn’t want to remember; things he didn’t want to let into his mind. He’d faced them once and it had almost destroyed him. Not again. Not now.

Not when this woman was before him, curvaceous, dark-haired and wide-eyed, reminding him so much of Sharmila. The woman who had died in his arms, taking the bullet that had been meant for him in a bungled assassination attempt. He had felt the impact of that attack in the way she had shuddered in his arms before she had crumpled to the ground. It was only much later that he’d realised that the bullet had nicked his own face, gouging a raw wound along his cheekbone on its way to a much more vulnerable, more valuable target.

But by then he had been unable to care about anything that happened to him because the bullet that had ended his young wife’s life had also taken his country’s future. The hole her death had left in his own life was something he flinched away from even now. Sharmila had been pregnant with the heir to his throne when she’d died, and the gap that had left in the heart of the country was one he had yet to fill.

Which was why he was going to have to make a decision some time very soon. As everyone kept reminding him. Even Clemmie had advised him, gently of course, that the country desperately needed an heir. He had no time, should have no inclination, for any dalliance with a woman he had just met by chance.

The twist of Zia’s head, pulling away from his fingers, dragged Nabil back into the present, and he wasn’t any happier to be there. The bitterness of memory lingered, making him tighten his grip, holding her still for a moment.

‘You know nothing,’ he said, dark and dangerous. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘I saw...’

‘You saw what you wanted to see—what everyone wanted to see. And it has nothing to do with you.’

Her swiftly indrawn breath brought his eyes down to where her soft mouth was partly open, exposing sharp white teeth. As he watched he saw her pink tongue slip out and slick hastily over her dry lips, the tiny gesture making his pulse pound in primal response. Some change in the position of her head brought her face closer to his, the feel of her skin soft against his gripping fingertips.

How did she make him want her so much when he had felt only indifference for so long? The soft sheen of moisture that lingered where her tongue had touched her lips made his own mouth hunger for the taste of her.

One night...

Even as his body put the suggestion into his mind, rational thought was pushing it away again. He was not going down this path again, even if her slender body was pure temptation, the need to hold her close making him ache with the battle against carnal hunger that threatened to destroy rational thought.

‘You want me to kiss you, do you?’

He turned his own thoughts against her and felt a grim satisfaction as he saw the faint start of surprise that revealed the truth of the accusation he had flung at her.

‘Is that really what you want? You stupid little fool—you wouldn’t even know who you were kissing. What kind of man you wanted...’

A new wave of sound from inside the palace intruded into the dark, private world they had built for themselves out here on the balcony, reminding him once again of his royal duties. He had lingered too long out here, balanced precariously on the edge of self-indulgence. Duty called. The duty he could never escape. It was time he took some much-needed steps away from temptation.

But every male instinct in him rebelled at the thought of leaving her untouched.

‘I...’

Aziza had no idea how she could answer him. She had wanted his kiss. How could she deny it when it must have been written on her face, stamped into her eyes? But did she still want it?

Fool that she was, the answer was yes.

And, double fool that she was, he must have seen that truth in her eyes. That hand that was clamped about her chin tightened bruisingly. He pulled her face towards his with a strength she could not resist, and the next moment his mouth came down hard on hers, brutal, ruthless, demanding, but in the same moment shockingly sensual too. White heat flew through her veins, leaving her stunned that she actually didn’t go up in flames with the stunning, primitive nature of her unexpectedly wild response. Her legs seemed to melt in the heat, her head spinning in a stunned delirium. With no control over her actions, she opened her lips to his, let him plunder the soft interior of her mouth and met the invasion of his tongue with the dance of her own.

But it was as she gave herself up to his kiss that she felt the sudden change in him, the snatched in breath, the stiffening of his muscular body.

‘No...’

With a speed and ruthless determination that made the gesture one of brutal rejection, he snatched his hand away from her face.

‘Enough!’ he snapped. ‘You are dismissed.’

Dismissed?

Who did he think she was? Not Aziza El Afarim, that was for sure. Nabil would never have treated her father’s daughter in this way. But then of course this Nabil was not the boy she had known. In his eyes she was nothing more than the maid she had claimed to be, the one who had given her name as Zia. Not ‘the beautiful one’ but the second El Afarim daughter. The ‘spare’ to Jamalia’s heiress, the problematic one as her father so often reminded her.

So she knew who he was, but this wasn’t the Nabil she knew—had thought she knew. This was a harder man, a darker man. Someone she no longer recognised or even wanted to understand.

Someone she no longer wanted to spend any more time with, even if all the cells in her body still burned from the contact that had seared through her.

‘Sir.’

It was all she could manage through lips that were as stiff as wood. She’d turned it into a sort of acknowledgement of his command, but she couldn’t make her body move away from him, or force her rubbery legs to walk away, as the arrogant lift of his hand, the snap of his fingers, had indicated.

But she didn’t need to. Nabil, it seemed, had had enough of this situation. He had no intention of lingering any longer. Instead he had turned on his heel and was marching towards the doors away from the balcony, this time with her tossed from his mind without a second thought, his attention firmly on the gathering back inside the palace. He didn’t even spare her a single backward glance.

And for that she could only be thankful. She had fought to keep her composure and just about managed it, but now she didn’t want Nabil to see the other darker battle she was having with her innermost self.

Tears burned at the back of her eyes and clogged her throat, stinging brutally. But she would not let them fall. Not until Nabil had gone. Not until he had disappeared back into the lighted room in a swish of silken robes, letting the glazed doors swing to behind him as they closed against her.

Then at last she bowed her head and gave in to her feelings, acknowledging the moment of misery as she admitted the way she felt now. This was not the Nabil she had adored on sight. Now he was someone else entirely. Another man, a harder, colder being and one she could never imagine ever wanting to get close to. The bitter sense of loss was almost more than she could bear.

CHAPTER THREE

‘LET IT BE DONE.’

Nabil’s own words echoed inside his head as he acknowledged the sweeping bow that his chancellor made before him.

Just four short words and he had set in motion the process that would change his life—and hopefully his country’s future—for ever.

Things had moved faster than he had anticipated. He had never thought that he would be here today, ready to take the final step in selecting an arranged bride for himself, less than a month after the tenth anniversary celebrations for Karim and Clemmie. But of course, the traditions and procedures for such an event had been written into the constitution of Rhastaan since the beginnings of time, it seemed, and all he had to do was to speak those four formal words and the whole process swung into action, largely without his involvement.

Until now.

Now it seemed that everyone needed him and his part in the ceremony had suddenly become vital; his opinion, his choice, the only thing that was needed before the process of turning his bride of convenience into the Sheikha of Rhastaan was ready to be finalised.

To be honest, he really didn’t give a damn about this part. After all, hadn’t he shown himself to be all sorts of a fool—and a blind fool at that—when it came to choosing women, let alone living with them for the rest of his life, having children...? The much-needed heirs for the kingdom.

Clemmie had talked with him about that just before she’d left.

‘Find someone who can take Sharmila’s place,’ she had said, looking deep into his eyes. ‘Someone who can make you happy—give you a family.’

How like Clemmie it was to say it that way. ‘A family’ was so very different from a woman he married only to provide him and Rhastaan with heirs. A family was what she had with Karim. What he had once thought he had found with Sharmila.

Memory burned as Nabil made himself face the way he had turned away from Clementina Savaneski because she was the bride his parents had chosen for him when he’d been just a child. He had been besotted with Sharmila, believing that in her he had found someone to fill the emptiness in his life. Someone who had wanted him for himself and not on the orders of his dictatorial father. So he had snatched at the excuse offered by the reports of the night Clemmie had spent alone with Karim when the then Crown Prince had been sent to fetch her from where she had fled to England.

Those reports had been slanted by enemies of the state to look far worse than the truth, but he hadn’t cared. He’d barely blinked when Clemmie herself had told him that she was in love with someone else. He’d lost a potentially perfect wife—but in doing so he had gained a wonderful friend.

But even to this wonderful friend he had never spoken of the truth of his affair with Sharmila. If he had, then she would never have urged him to find someone who could make him happy. That was certainly not the emotion the woman who had once been his Queen now roused in him.

‘Sire?’ The chancellor had obviously asked some question, was waiting for his reply.

With an effort Nabil dragged his thoughts back to the present and gave a sharp, curt nod of agreement.

‘Go ahead,’ he declared. ‘Put this in motion.’

Another low, sweeping bow and the man left his presence, and Nabil was alone once more. He should be used to it by now. His parents had trained him well, barely sparing more than a moment’s attention in their days. It was because of that that Sharmila had had such a pull for him. If only he had known that with her he’d be more alone than at any point in the past ten years. Now, it was how he preferred to be.

Pushing himself to his feet, Nabil walked down to one end, turning to stare down the length of the room towards the raised dais where two heavily carved chairs—two thrones—stood, polished and ornate.

It was a woman to fill one of those thrones, to sit beside him as his Queen, that he was looking for. All he hoped for from this process was a woman who was tolerably attractive and tolerably comfortable to be with.

And fertile.

That was all that he asked his ministers to find for him. And in return he would give her the sort of life most women would dream of. A life of comfort and luxury, jewels, clothing and anything else she asked for. He was sure that one of the women of noble birth his chancellor would deliver to him as arranged would find that acceptable. He was no tyrant. He would give her everything she asked for—within reason. The only thing he couldn’t offer was anything that could conceivably be described as love.

He couldn’t offer love. That demanded that he also offered his heart. And he didn’t have a heart to offer.

So why did his thoughts go to the young woman he had met on the balcony on the night of Karim and Clemmie’s anniversary celebrations? His memory filled with images of dark, glistening eyes, black silky hair, a soft voice and that entrancing perfume that had swirled around his senses.

After all that happened—all you went through.

Her words echoed in his thoughts. Her words and the softness of the mouth they fell from—the faint gleam of moisture along her skin where her tongue had slicked over the lower lip. Something raw and needy clawed at his insides, forcing him out of the room and down the corridor at a pace that made his robes sweep against the wall as he moved.

He hadn’t seen the woman again that night, though the truth was that he hadn’t really tried to find her. He’d had little inclination to seek out the El Afarim clan. He knew, as everyone did, that Farouk El Afarim currently held the balance of power between the crown and the scheming of the rebel leader. If he took his loyalty and that of his own tiny principality to side with Ankhara, then hard-won peace would once again be threatened dangerously.

He knew only too well just how precariously balanced that peace was, and he would do anything to strengthen it. So he knew that El Afaraim’s daughter must inevitably be on the list of suitable, acceptable brides for him. To risk seeing Zia in the company of Farouk had been a risk too far, no matter how much the temptation had tugged on his senses.

‘No!’

Entering his room, he slammed the door behind him, hearing the heavy thud of the wood with a raw satisfaction at the way it closed off the rest of the world, giving him back the privacy he sought. The only problem was that it would not shut out the thoughts of the girl he had met on the night of the anniversary celebration. Her essence seemed like some sort of persistent shadow, following him wherever he went, whispering in his thoughts at night as he tried to sleep.

He needed to find a wife, as everyone said. No matter if it was the sort of arranged marriage he had rebelled against last time. And look where that had got him. Older, and hopefully wiser, he had decided that this was the only path to follow.

He would do his duty by his country. He would take a wife to be his Queen, to give the kingdom the much-needed heir who would secure the dynasty and guard the peace.

And that was all.

He would be a dutiful king, a faithful husband, surely a caring father. He might not have learned how to be a father from his own coldly distant parents, but surely that meant he knew what not to do? And there was Karim’s example to follow.

He needed a wife and he would treat her like a queen. But he would never, ever let her in. If he did she would see that all there was inside him where his heart should be was a cold, empty cavern.