Desert Fantasies: Duty and the Beast / Cinderella and the Sheikh / Marrying the Scarred Sheikh

I came for you?

Did he mean what he had said? Had he been there after all last night? Had he been one of the men in the rescuer’s party? Or had he been the one to slice his way into her tent, to plaster her to his body too tightly and set off a low, burning heat deep in her belly, to cradle her in his arms as his stallion galloped across the dunes?

For that man had been tall and broad, supremely fit and sure of himself and unbearably arrogant with it. Yet her rescuer had been a mercenary, dressed all in black, his face completely covered but for his dark, glinting eyes.

No, it couldn’t be him. She would not allow it.

She spun around. ‘You are bluffing! You admit speaking to my father this morning. He told you about the rescue and now you try to make me feel so indebted to you, so happy to have escaped the clutches of Mustafa, that I will agree to this—’ she searched frantically for a word that might convey just how crazy this marriage idea was ‘—insanity!’

Not a chance.

‘But by all means,’ she continued, ‘do share this little fantasy of yours with my father when he arrives tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be most entertained.’

Zoltan pushed himself from the edge of the desk, then strode towards her with long, purposeful strides that ate up the distance between them until he stood before her, tall and impossibly autocratic, his eyes fixed with a steely determination, his jaw set like concrete. ‘If you want to talk fantasy, Princess, let me share one with you right now. Would you be similarly entertained if I told you that I cannot wait to see what that mouth of yours can do when you are in the throes of passion rather than in the grip of fear?’

Shock thunderbolted down her spine, ricocheted out to her extremities and made her clenching and unclenching hand itch to slap one darkly shadowed cheek. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

‘How dare I?’ He reached out a hand, put the pad of his thumb to her lip. ‘But you’re the one who put the idea into my head, Princess—you and those sharp, white teeth of yours.’

She gasped, took a step back. ‘You!’

And then he smiled and, seemingly casually, crossed his arms over his chest. She saw it then, on the index finger of his right hand: the imprint of her teeth etched deep and angry-looking on his skin.

He watched her eyes widen. He saw the realisation dawn and bloom. He smelt her fear.

And it felt strangely good.

‘Yes, Princess. Me. Wearing your brand, it would appear—some quaint Jemeyan custom, I assume, to mark one’s intended?’

She looked back up at him, her features tight and determined. ‘It doesn’t matter who you are or whether you were there last night. It doesn’t matter if you were in the party that rescued me from that desert camp. I owe you nothing but my thanks, and you have that. But there is still no way I will marry you. And there is no way on this earth that you can make me.’

‘You can fight this all you like, Princess, but there is no other way.’

‘And if I still say no?’

He smiled. ‘In that case, if you feel that strongly, maybe there is one other way after all.’

‘Yes?’

‘I can take you back to that desert encampment, leave you there and let Mustafa have his way with you. Your choice, Princess.’

She looked as if she was going to explode, face red with heat, her hands clenched at her side and her eyes so alight they were all but throwing flames. ‘When my father finishes his business with the King and comes for me tomorrow, he will tell you the same as I do. There will be no marriage!’

All of a sudden he was tired of the game, of baiting her for her reactions, of toying with this spoilt princess, even though she had provided the only entertainment value in a world suddenly turned upon its head. The need to rescue her had brought him and his three friends together again for the first time in five years, and plucking her from beneath the nose of his hated half-brother had presented a moment of such sublime satisfaction that he would revel in the victory for years to come.

Except now he was faced with a precocious, precious princess who thought she had actually some say in what was happening. Why had he ever let her think that? Why had he tolerated her demands, deflected her questions and allowed her that privilege when she had never had it?

He knew damned well why—because he was still so angry about being put in this invidious position himself. Because he couldn’t see why he should be the only one to suffer and sacrifice, the only one mightily frustrated at the choiceless situation he found himself thrust into. So why the hell shouldn’t he extract some measure of glee from seeing her tossed right out of her precious, princessly comfort-zone?

And what right had she to feel so mightily aggrieved when marriage was the only thing required of her? Whereas his marriage to her was only one tiresome necessity in a long list of requirements his vizier had put before him in order to enable him to take the throne of Al-Jirad. And who had the time for any of this? The ability to speak fluent Jiradi as well as Arabic; the need to be able to quote from the sacred book of Jiradi which he must learn by heart before the coronation; having to honour the alliance between commitment to replenish the blood stock of Al-Jirad with a princess of noble birth from their sister state of Jemeya.

No. Suddenly he was tired of it all.

He sighed as she looked up at him, eyes defiant and openly hostile. He was sick of this whole damn situation before it had even properly begun.

‘King Hamra is dead.’

She blinked. Once. Again. And then it seemed her entire face turned into a question mark, eyes wide, mouth open in shock. Then she shook her head. ‘No.’ Her hands flew to her mouth. ‘You said it was Queen Petra. No!’

He watched those hands. He remembered them. Slim, he recalled. Long-fingered. Hands that had come perilously close to grazing the fabric covering his swelling organ last night. Hands that would soon have that privilege and that right, a right he hoped they would soon exercise.

Then he noticed her eyes and found them already filling with tears, threatening to spill over. He simultaneously wondered at her ability to distract him and cursed it when he knew the news he had to deliver was only going to make her feel worse. ‘But how?’ she cried. ‘When?’

‘The morning before you were kidnapped. King Hamra was on his way to Egypt for a holiday—he and the Queen in one helicopter with his close advisers, his mother and sons, their wives and families in the other. For some reason the two helicopters ventured too close to each other. Nobody knows why. But it seems that their blades touched and both helicopters plummeted to the ground.’

He gave her a moment to let the news sink in before he added, ‘There were no survivors.’

Her face was almost devoid of colour, her dark eyes and lashes suddenly starkly standing out on a skin so deathly pale that he worried she might actually collapse.

He took hold of her shoulders before she might fall and steered her to the nearest chair where she sagged, limp and boneless.

‘But surely not all of them? Not Akram and Renata? Not Kaleem and Akra? And, please, no, surely not the children? They were so young, just babies …’

He could offer her nothing, so he said nothing, just gave the slightest shake of his head.

‘Nobody told me!’ she cried when she realised the truth and the extent of the disaster. ‘I knew nothing. All the time I was in that desert camp they told me nothing. Oh yes, they laughed and smirked and made crude jokes about what Mustafa intended to do with me, but nobody told me that the King and his family had been killed. Nobody told me …’

She looked up at him, the shock, hurt and misery right there in her eyes to see, and for a moment he almost felt sorry for her and sorry for the upset all this damned mess would cause her. But, hell, why should he feel sorry for her, when his life had been similarly turned upside down, his future curtailed by the rules laid down by those of centuries past? The fact was that they were both the victims in this situation.

‘Is this why all this is happening? Because it is somehow connected to that tragedy?’

Why did she have to look so damned vulnerable? He wanted to be angry with her, the spoilt princess who was having to do what her nation needed instead of what she wanted for a change. The last thing on earth he wanted was to feel empathy for her. To feel sorry. Especially when he was being subjected to the same external forces. He sucked in air. ‘Al-Jirad needs a king.’

She looked up at him through glassy eyes, her long black lashes heavy with tears. ‘That man—the vizier—he called you Excellency. Are you to be that king?’

‘I am one possibility. King Hamra was my uncle. My father had two sons to two different wives. One was Mustafa. The other was me.’ He paused. ‘And, of course, whichever one of us it is to be is decided by the pact.’

She nodded, her eyes hardening with the realisation of what this came down to, the grief still there, but framed in anger now. ‘So that’s what this is all about, then, this game of Hunt the Princess. Whoever marries the princess first wins the crown of Al-Jirad.’

‘It is what the pact requires. Where the crown of Al-Jirad is compromised, the alliance will be renewed by the marriage between the royal families of our two countries. Because of your older sister’s situation …’

‘You mean, because she has two children to two different fathers and she never actually bothered marrying either of them, she’s no longer eligible for the position? But surely she has a proven track-record. If it’s heirs you need—and when has any monarchy not been all about heirs?—Marina has proven child-bearing capabilities, where sadly I do not.’

‘Your sister is, to put it mildly, over-qualified for the position. The fact you have not yet bred is still in your favour.’

Have not yet bred. She itched to hit something. Anything. Maybe him. Except princesses were not supposed to do such things, were not expected to give in to such base instincts. But still, the claim that this agreement was somehow in her favour rubbed, and rubbed raw.

‘How can it be in my favour when it forces me into this situation?’