One Desert Night: Destined for the Desert King / Hidden in the Sheikh's Harem / Claimed by the Sheikh

To her horror she realised that she had spoken the words out loud, letting them escape in a whisper from a tongue she seemed to have no control over.

‘How could you be a disappointment?’

‘Well—I have nothing to compare it with. You might have wanted more—seduction on my part.’

‘More seduction?’ To her consternation the amusement was back in his eyes, making them glitter behind the rich thickness of his black lashes. ‘Now, why would I need that?’

One powerful hand smoothed over her body, down from her shoulders and over her ribcage, lingering on her hips. Aziza fought with herself not to respond too naively, too revealingly, even as her insides seemed to melt under his touch, turning her stomach into a pit of warm honey, the moisture between her thighs drying against the heat of her skin. She wanted to press herself against that heated caress, purr like a contented kitten. But even as the thought slid into her mind she felt the raw, hungry pulse start to beat again between her legs, making her shift restlessly against the sheets.

‘You are pure seduction in yourself. I knew from day one that it would be like this.’

‘And would that be day one when I was your chosen wife? Or at the banquet following our—’

‘Neither,’ Nabil broke in sharply, his eyes fixed on where the long hands rested, lean and slightly darker against the cushioned curve of her hip. ‘I wanted you that first night, when we met.’

Aziza’s breath caught, and had to be forced out again in a rush. She felt as if the colour that she could feel rushing into her cheeks must be flooding the rest of her body, leaving her flushed pink against the whiteness of the sheets.

‘When I was...’

Nabil shifted slightly in the bed, moving so that he was looking straight down into her eyes. His hand moved from her thigh to cup the side of her cheek, warm and gentle.

‘Zia the maid, or Aziza my princess, you were the one who stirred my senses more than any other woman I was supposed to consider as my bride.’

But not any woman, ever, a cold little voice whispered inside Aziza’s head. There had been Sharmila, his first love, the mother of his child. The woman who had died in his arms. She was only here because of the tragedy that had filled his youth.

In a marriage that was the result of love, such as the one that Nabil had shared with Sharmila, this was the time that, in the darkness and softness of the marriage bed, he would have whispered words of love, of joy that she was his wife and they were together. But there was no room for feelings such as that in this marriage that was made purely from diplomacy and political alliances. No matter what she felt for Nabil, those feelings were not returned. But at least he had chosen her as his bride. And he wanted her.

‘I felt that way too,’ she grabbed at all her courage to admit. ‘From the moment you kissed me.’

Oh, who was she kidding? Before that kiss, long before it, she had given him her heart. He’d had it in his keeping ever since she’d first seen him, even though he’d held it so carelessly, not even aware of what he had.

‘I lo—’ she began, needing to say the words just once, even if he never put any value on them. But in the space of a heartbeat all her courage deserted her and she knew that she couldn’t bear to let her secret out into the cold light of day. ‘I loved that kiss,’ she managed instead. ‘And I wanted more.’

Raising herself up on one elbow, she pressed her lips to his, feeling the combination of the soft and the rough as the edges of his beard brushed against her skin. She’d longed to have the nerve to take that kiss up along his cheek, out to the pale, raised line along his cheekbone and out towards his temple.

Tonight she felt brave enough to do that. Lifting herself again, she let her mouth touch on the marked line of his scar, kissing it softly and delicately, letting her tongue trace its way towards the corner of his eye, tasting the salt of his skin and feeling the brush of those long black eyelashes as his eyes closed for a moment against her caress.

‘Aziza...’

His voice was rough and raw as if catching against something in his throat, so that hearing it she was already prepared for the way he reached for her, hard fingers clamping around her arms as he pulled her under the weight of his body. Pushing one strong knee between her thighs, he opened her up to him while the heat of his mouth captured her breast, moist tongue trailing up towards the pouting nipple and encircling it, making her writhe in hungry response.

‘Does this look like I need more seduction?’ he muttered, the words hot against her skin. He adjusted his position so that the thick, hard force of his body pushed at her welcoming core. ‘Or feel like it?’

He emphasised the words with a swift, powerful thrust, filling her completely and joining them as one.

‘This is all I need,’ he declared as he began to move, fierce and strong, and totally obliterating her ability to think any more.

‘You...’ Aziza managed. ‘You’re all I need.’

But then she had to break off on a moan of delight, abandoning herself to pleasure before, thankfully, she, or Nabil, could realise that she had meant the words in a very much deeper way.

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ud83f3334-bf69-53be-9535-2db87e0008f3)

WHAT A DIFFERENCE a week could make. Aziza yawned widely, stretching luxuriously in the bed and feeling the tiny aches and tender spots that had resulted from long nights with Nabil.

Long, passionate nights, and even longer, sensuous days. Nabil had never actually described this trip to the mountain palace as their honeymoon, but the truth was that that was exactly what it had turned into. Because, after all, wasn’t that what a honeymoon was all about? About spending time with your new spouse without anything interrupting the private moments? About having the freedom to discover the sexual delight they had in each other and indulge in the pleasures of married love?

Not that love had anything to do with it, at least on Nabil’s part. The thought made Aziza flinch and start into a sitting position. The movement of stretching her arms wide had brought them into contact with the rest of the bed, forcing her to the awareness of the emptiness on either side of her.

Hadn’t it been this way all week? Every morning she had woken to find that Nabil had got out of the bed before she stirred, leaving her alone and letting the sheets where he had lain grow cool and empty without the warmth of his body there.

But this wasn’t like all the other times. It was still the middle of the night, the room in darkness. Outside the high windows the only light was the starlit sky, the faintest breeze stirring the delicate curtains the only sign of movement in the silent palace.

Where was he? And what had pulled him from his sleep tonight?

Slipping from the bed, Aziza pushed her feet into soft slippers and pulled a white silky robe on over her nakedness. Padding silently over the cool marble floors, she made her way out of the bedroom, through the royal suite and down the long, silent corridors.

The waft of a breeze from a door left slightly open alerted her to just where Nabil must be. There was a balcony there, smaller and higher than the one outside the banqueting hall of the city palace where she and Nabil had met that first night, but enough like it to have memories of that meeting swirling in her thoughts as she peered through the partially opened door.

‘Nab...’ she began, but what she saw froze the words on her tongue and had her pulling back slightly, out of sight.

Just as on that first evening, Nabil was leaning against the high wall of the balcony, staring out at the darkened valley below. He had only paused to pull on a pair of jeans, with nothing on his chest or his feet, and the moonshine brushed his powerful shoulders, the long line of his ribcage, with a wash of silver. His face was set and intent, his gaze fixed on some point away on the far horizon, and the dark shadow of his beard could not conceal the tight compression of his mouth, the tension in the muscles of his jaw and throat.

He looked disturbed and alone, so much like the way he had looked that first night. Then she had felt concern and sympathy for him, so much that she had made a move to break into his mental isolation. But tonight she didn’t dare to speak, to make any move or sound that would draw his attention to her. Tonight was not the time to break into whatever bleak dreams enclosed him.

Particularly not when she saw him lift his left hand and rub at the white line of the scar on his face, fretting at it with obvious disquiet.

The ghost of tragic Sharmila must have surfaced in his thoughts, possibly even seeming to reprove him for marrying another bride, for sharing the heat of passion in their bed.

There was no way that Aziza wanted to take the risk of being told that Nabil regretted the passion they had shared when it revived memories of the bond he had enjoyed with his tragic young love. Silently, reluctantly, she turned and crept away, leaving Nabil to the darkness of his thoughts.

Perhaps one day she would learn how to handle the changeable moods that this new husband of hers displayed so openly. One moment he would be calm, attentive, considerate. He took her riding out along the mountain paths, or swam in the huge swimming pool, built indoors to hide them from the burning heat of the desert sun. But then in the space of a heartbeat he would change, his disposition becoming darker, withdrawn, and each time he had left her bed she had recognised how hard she found it to reach him.

Once the restraint between them had been stripped away on that first night, from then it had taken just a second to put a light to the hunger that they felt for each other, heating the blood in their veins until they were molten with passion. In the space of a heartbeat they would lose themselves in each other, obliterating reality in the heat they created between them.

But when the burn of passion ebbed, when they lay silent and sated on the cool sheets, as the throb of fulfilment slowly ebbed between Aziza’s legs, her pulse slowing to a heavy, lazy beat, she had felt Nabil stirring, raking long fingers through the black sleekness of his hair. It had taken an effort to turn to him, one day, fighting against the wash of exhaustion, the way that her eyes felt as if they were weighted down so that it was impossible to lift her heavy lids at all.

‘Where are you going?’

She’d had to make an effort to put no note of complaint into it and, although her hands itched to fasten around the long muscular arms that were now pushing himself up from the mattress, she clamped them tight down by her sides to keep them from reaching for him.

‘Things to do,’ he’d said, pulling on the trousers that had been discarded on the floor in the heat of their rush to the bed.

‘Such as? This is our...’ But no, the word ‘honeymoon’ was obviously going to be a mistake. A red rag to a bull if the swift, flashing glance he’d turned in her direction was anything to go by.

How did someone switch off so completely just like that? She’d been fighting hard against the sleep that had still threatened to overwhelm her, and all she’d wanted was to curl up close to him, to drift away on the warm sea of contentment into the peace of dreams.