Beloved Sheikh

Beloved Sheikh
ALEXANDRA SELLERS

THE SEDUCTIVE SULTANSheikh Rafi could have a harem of women… but he wanted bewitching Zara Blake. And just as the prince was about to steal that first, sizzling kiss from Zara, she was stolen from him - abducted by his archenemy!HIS CAPTIVE QUEEN-TO-BEZara's head was spinning - she'd been kidnapped! And her captor was a dead ringer for the prince. Then Rafi appeared with a rescue plan and a promise to make her his queen. Was this a trap… or the only way back into the arms of her beloved sheikh?Powerful sheikhs born to rule and destined to find love as eternal as the sands… SONS OF THE DESERT.

She Was A Stranger In A Strange Land, A Woman Desired By A King. (#uc33647e8-4637-5659-af35-a4b2fdc25e85)Letter to Reader (#ud5010912-bddf-5c8c-a89f-983c09e650cb)Title Page (#ub03d774a-bc43-512a-a195-53f6b0d75474)Dedication (#u4ca6668c-6a71-5f6b-9deb-089dded2ab85)ALEXANDRA SELLERS (#ue30aa044-cce5-54b6-a5e8-3709a2b5cc8b)Rafi’s Inheritance The Sword of Rostam (#u21ffcf5b-4589-5558-8994-380175ba225d)Chapter One (#uc4354fb3-6383-5706-91ca-0fe03c1b0157)Chapter Two (#uc539aea6-8a99-5af3-b51d-9f3024fd44f7)Chapter Three (#uf194eea5-d007-54d5-ba86-50406aec951d)Chapter Four (#u2c51830c-a858-5a18-9fe9-ac720dfc471e)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

She Was A Stranger In A Strange Land, A Woman Desired By A King.

Suppose Zara gave in to Prince Rafi for one night, or one week, or... What would it mean, in the end? Did kings let women go, after they had loved them, or did they guard them jealously, not willing that any other man should ever have the power of being compared with the king as a lover?

Zara heard a clinking sound, and something that sounded like a horse whinnying. In sudden alarm, she lifted her head.

“Who’s there?” Zara called, realizing she had been a fool to come wandering in the desert on her own. She ran light as wind toward the sheltering rocks. Damn the moonlight!

Then a black horse reared up in front of her. Out of the shadows, a body bent down and dark hands reached for her.

The prince?

She clung to him for safety; there was nothing else to do.

Dear Reader,

Why not sit back and relax this summer with Silhouette Desire? As always, our six June Desire books feature strong heroes and spirited heroines who come together in a highly passionate, emotionally powerful and provocative read.

Anne McAllister kicks off June with a wonderful new MAN OF THE MONTH title, The Stardust Cowboy. Strong, silent Riley Stratton brings hope and love into the life of a single mother.

The fabulous mimseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE BRIDES concludes with Undercover Groom by Merline Lovelace, in which a sexy secret agent rescues an amnesiac runaway bride. And Silhouette Books has more Fortunes to come, starting this August with a new twelve-book continuity series, THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS.

Meanwhile, Alexandra Sellers continues her exotic SONS OF THE DESERT series with Beloved Sheikh, in which a to-die-for sheikh rescues an American beauty-in-jeopardy. One Small Secret by Meagan McKinney is a reunion romance with a surprise for a former summer flame. Popular Joan Elliott Pickart begins her new miniseries, THE BACHELOR BET, with Taming Tall, Dark Brandon. And there’s a pretend marriage between an Alpha male hero and blue-blooded heroine in Suzanne Simms’s The Willful Wife.

So hit the beach this summer with any of these sensuous Silhouette Desire titles...or take all six along!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Beloved Sheikh

Alexandra Sellers

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

This book is dedicated to my niece

Jessica Sellers Stones,

that rarest of creatures—a poet

ALEXANDRA SELLERS

was born in Ontario, and raised in Ontario and Saskatchewan. She first came to London to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and fell in love with the city. Later she returned to make it her permanent home. Now married to an Englishman, she lives near Hampstead Heath. As well as writing romance, she teaches a course called “How To Write a Romance Novel” in London several times a year.

Because of a much-regretted allergy, she can have no resident cat, but she receives regular charitable visits from three cats who are neighbors.

Readers can write to her at P.O. Box 9449, London, NW3 2WH, England.

SHEIKH’S RANSOM, Prince Karim’s story, April 1999

THE SOLITARY SHEIKH, Prince Omar’s story, May 1999

BELOVED SHEIKH, Prince Rafi’s story, June 1999

Available only from Silhouette Desire.

Rafi’s Inheritance The Sword of Rostam

To Prince Rafi’s lot fell the Kingdom of East Barakat, a land of richly varied landscape, extending from marshlands at the seacoast, through the broad desert with its ancient remnants of civilisations long dead, to the broad flowing river called Happiness, and into the mountains, where his palace lay.

To him also was given the great Sword of Rostam. This fabulously jewelled and inscribed sword had, according to the ancient story, once been the battle sword of the great hero Rostam. Since that time, any King of Barakat who drew the sword in anger signalled to his people and to the enemy against whom he drew it that there should be no respite from battle until one or the other was vanquished. Once the Sword of Rostam was drawn, negotiation was no longer possible.

Therefore a king must be very certain of his ground before drawing the Sword of Rostam.

There was once a king of ancient and noble lineage who ruled over a land that had been blessed by God. This land, Barakat, lying on the route of one of the old Silk Roads, had for centuries received the cultural influences of many different worlds. Its geography, too, was diverse: it bordered the sea; then the desert, sometimes bleak with its ancient ruins, sometimes golden and studded with oases, stretched inland for many miles, before meeting the foothills of snow-capped mountains that captured the rain clouds and forced them to deliver their burden in the rich valleys. It was a land of magic and plenty and a rich and diverse heritage.

But it was also a land of tribal rivalries and not infrequent skirmishes. Because the king had the ancient blood of the Quraishi kings in his veins, no one challenged his right to the throne, but many of the tribal chieftains whom he ruled were in constant jealousy over their lands and rights against the others.

One day, the king of this land fell in love with a foreign woman. Promising her that he would never take another wife, he married her and made her his queen. This beloved wife gave him two handsome sons. The king loved them as his own right hand. Crown Prince Zaid and his brother were all that he could wish for in his sons—handsome, noble, brave warriors, and popular with his people. As they attained the age of majority, the sheikh could look forward to his own death without fear for his country, for if anything should happen to the Crown Prince, his brother Aziz would step into his shoes and be equally popular with the people and equally strong among the tribes.

Then one day, tragedy struck the sheikh and his wife. Both their sons were killed in the same accident. Now his own death became the great enemy to the old man, for with it, he knew, would come certain civil war as the tribal chieftains vied for supremacy.

His beloved wife understood all his fears, but she was by now too old to hope to give him another heir. One day, when all the rituals of mourning were complete, the queen said to her husband, “According to the law, you are entitled to four wives. Take, therefore, my husband, three new wives, that God may bless one of them with a son to inherit your throne.”

The sheikh thanked her for releasing him from his promise. A few weeks later, on the same day so that none should afterwards claim supremacy, the sheikh married three beautiful young women, and that night, virile even in his old age, he visited each wife in turn, no one save himself knowing in which order he visited them. To each wife he promised that if she gave him a son, her son would inherit the throne of Barakat.

The sheikh was more virile than he knew. Each of his new wives conceived, and gave birth, nine months later, to a lusty son. And each was jealous for her own son’s inheritance. From that moment the sheikh’s life became a burden to him, for each of his new young wives had different reasons for believing that her own son should be named the rightful heir to the throne.

The Princess Goldar, whose exotically hooded green eyes she had bequeathed to her son, Omar, based her claim on the fact that she herself was a descendant of the ancient royal family of her own homeland, Parvan.

The Princess Nargis, mother of Rafi and descended from the old Mughal emperors of India, had in addition given birth two days before the other two wives, thus making her son the firstborn.