The Desert King's Secret Heir

Arden Wills wasn’t dressed to seduce. Her dark green pullover swam on her, just hinting at the curves beneath. Her old jeans were frayed and there was a patch on one knee. Her face was free of make-up. Yet her hair rippled around her like a halo on a Pre-Raphaelite model, beguiling and exotic. She made him want to forget duty, forget necessity, and tug her to him so she fitted between his thighs, cradling him with her hips.

‘So, what is it you want?’

‘Pardon?’ Idris shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets as he realised the direction his thoughts wandered. To whether she wore a bra beneath that bulky pullover and whether her pale skin was as petal-soft as he recalled.

‘Why did you come here, if not to see your cousin?’ She paused, her lips tightening. ‘Surely not to catch up on old times.’ Her breathing altered, drew short and jerky, as if she, too, remembered how it had been between them all those years ago.

‘Why not?’ Idris lifted his shoulders in a show of insouciance he was far from feeling. ‘I was...curious about you. It’s been, what? Four years?’ As if he didn’t know precisely how long it had been. His reign as Sheikh of Zahrat dated from that week. ‘There have been changes in both our lives.’

Her face stilled, her eyes darting to the side almost furtively, as if tempted to look behind her but thinking better of it.

Instantly Idris was on alert.

He couldn’t read that look but instinct warned him something was afoot. Something she hid from him. His gaze lifted to the gleaming paint of the door behind her. What could she possibly feel the need to hide? She wasn’t living in squalor, not here. Something sordid? A lover?

Adrenalin surged, coiling his tension tighter. He took another half step forward, only stopping when a small palm flattened against his chest. He felt the imprint of it through the fine wool of his suit. His skin tingled where she touched as if abraded. As if she’d scraped sharp nails over his bare flesh.

Idris sucked in oxygen and forced himself not to react.

‘I don’t want you here.’ Those eyes were so huge in her face he felt he could dive into them.

His hand covered hers and fire danced across his skin before burrowing deep inside. A judder of potent sexual hunger tightened his groin.

‘You need to say that as if you mean it.’

The scent of her was so vivid he could almost taste her on his tongue. Sweet with a telltale hint of warm musk. No woman before or since had smelled like Arden Wills. How had he forgotten that?

‘I do mean it.’ Yet her voice had a soft, wondering quality that reminded him of the night they’d shared their bodies that first time. Her eyes had shone with something like awe. She’d looked at him as if he were a glorious deity opening the secrets of the heavens, until her eyes clouded in ecstasy and she’d shattered in a climax so powerful it had hauled him over the edge.

His thumb stroked the back of her hand and she quivered. Her hand was small but strong. He recalled how, as her confidence grew, she’d been as demanding as he, exploring, stroking, driving him to the brink with her generous passion.

She’d driven him to flout his self-imposed rules and invite her to France on holiday with him, because a week together hadn’t been enough.

Idris hauled himself back to the present. To the slant of sunlight burnishing her hair and the distant sound of a car. London. His betrothal. The peace treaty between his nation and Ghizlan’s.

He shouldn’t be here. His life was about duty, control and careful, deliberate decision-making. There was no room for spur-of-the-moment distractions.

In another second he’d step away.

But first he needed her to acknowledge what was between them. Even after all this time. Idris couldn’t countenance the idea that he alone burned. Pride demanded proof that she felt this undercurrent of hunger. This electricity simmering and snapping in the air. The charge of heat where they touched.

‘You need to leave. Don’t make me scream for help.’ Her head tipped back against the door, as if to increase the distance between them, yet her touch betrayed her. Her hand had slipped under his jacket lapel, fingers clutching his shirt. Heat poured into him from her touch, spreading to fill his chest.

He forced his hand to his side, conquering the impulse to haul her close.

‘I said, leave me alone.’ Her breath was warm on his chin and his thoughts whirled as he imagined her sweet breath on other parts of his body. He needed a moment to curb his arousal.

Here, on a London street!

Anger flared. At this woman. At his unruly body that for the first time in memory didn’t obey.

* * *

‘It’s obviously escaped your notice, but I’m not touching you. You’re the one touching me.’

His voice, crisp with challenge, nevertheless held that once heard and never forgotten deep note that resonated right to her core.

Arden blinked, dragging her gaze from his mouth and solid, scrupulously shaved jaw to his chest.

Heat scorched her cheeks at the sight of her hand clutching him, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. As if, even now, his desertion couldn’t kill the slavish passion she’d felt for him.

Though, if he told the truth, he hadn’t deserted her.

It was too much to take in.

Too terrible to think that perhaps he hadn’t betrayed her as she’d believed.

Words trembled on her tongue, the truth she hadn’t been able to share with this man for four years. But caution held her back.

She needed time alone to sort out what it meant if he hadn’t deserted her. Time away from his piercing dark gaze and hot body that reduced her hard won defences to ash.

Arden dragged her hand away, pressing it against the solid door behind her. That was what she needed. To remember where they were and how much was at stake. She couldn’t risk revealing too much.

‘You need to go. This isn’t right.’ A weight lodged on her chest, making her breathless so she could only manage short sentences.

Something that might have been anger flickered across his face. Yet still he didn’t shift.

Desperation coiled tight in her belly. A desperation fuelled by the urge to spill everything to him, here and now, as if by doing so all her burdens would be lifted.

But Arden had spent a lifetime learning self-reliance. The last years had reinforced that. She carried her burdens alone.

‘We’ve both moved on, Shakil.’ It was as if she evoked the past with that one single word. ‘Idris,’ she amended quickly.

‘Moved on where? To Hamid?’ His voice was a low growl that sent fear feathering her skin. His head lowered and she felt tension come off his big frame in waves. ‘You’re afraid your lover will see us together?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ It came out as a hiss of distress. It had been bad enough realising last night that Hamid now saw himself as far more than a friend.

‘Ridiculous?’ Idris’s eyes narrowed to ebony slits. Those carved cheekbones loomed threateningly high as his face drew taut. ‘You call me ridiculous?’

Fire branded her neck as hard fingers closed around her nape, moulding to skin turned feverish at his touch.

Arden swiped her suddenly arid mouth with her tongue, searching for words to stop the fury in that glittering gaze.

But his touch didn’t feel like anger. That was the problem. She could have withstood it if it did.

Arden trembled as the hand at her neck shifted and long fingers speared her hair, spreading over her scalp, massaging. Shivers of delight rippled through her and her eyelids hovered, weighted, at half mast. Tendrils of fire cascaded from her scalp down her spine and around to her breasts where her nipples peaked.

She swallowed convulsively and forced herself to straighten away from the door, even though it meant brushing against him.