Royal Affairs: Desert Princes & Defiant Virgins: The Sheikh's Virgin Princess / The Sheikh and the Virgin Secretary / Desert Prince, Defiant Virgin

‘Modern equipment. And if that lets me down then I rely on experience and more traditional forms of navigation.’

‘Such as?’

‘The position of the sun, the direction of the wind, the smell of the air.’ He shrugged. ‘The desert tells you much if you are willing to listen. Why are you asking me, when you apparently intended to travel it yourself with no assistance? Presumably you already possess all these skills?’

‘I would have been fine.’ Something on the horizon caught her eye. ‘There’s something moving. I can see something.’ Her heart-rate doubled, but Karim didn’t slow the vehicle.

‘It’s a camel train. It’s how many people still choose to get around in the desert.’

‘Camels?’ Alexa stared, fascinated now that she knew it wasn’t a threat. ‘Can we go closer?’

‘You wish to take a closer look at a camel?’

‘Is that a problem?’

A look of incredulity crossed his bronzed features. ‘No, but it’s surprising. A close encounter with a camel wouldn’t be high on most women’s list of coveted life-experiences.’

‘Maybe not. But most women haven’t been trapped in one place all their lives. Have you any idea what it’s like to see the real thing after staring at a picture?’

‘You are telling me that you’ve never left Rovina?’

Unsettled by her impulsive admission, Alexa clamped her mouth shut. Why had she told him that? She knew better than to confide details of her life to anyone.

Ignoring her lack of response, Karim frowned. ‘Your uncle is clearly extremely protective of you. You should be grateful that he cares so much. Do you not feel that you have betrayed him by running away in the night?’

Protective? ‘If you always take things at face value then you’re not going to be much use as a bodyguard. Let’s just say that my uncle and I seriously disagree about the direction of my future.’

‘You are to become Queen in a year. I expect he feels that you should be in the palace, learning everything you can about your new role.’

Alexa leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She could have told him the truth, of course, but she’d long ago learned the dangers of confiding in anyone, so she stayed silent.

But the reminder of Rovina and William had extinguished her innocent enjoyment of the desert, and suddenly Alexa felt sick. There was still so much that could go wrong in the few days before her birthday and the wedding.

She glanced sideways at Karim. If it came to a fight, would he help her?

He was certainly capable of it. He was dressed in combat trousers and sturdy boots, and would have looked like a soldier were it not for the dark stubble that hazed his strong jaw after a night of travelling. Part soldier, part bandit, she thought dizzily. His hair gleamed blue-black in the harsh desert sunshine, and his bronzed skin betrayed his desert heritage.

He was strikingly handsome and more male than any man she’d met before, his face all hard angles and bold arrogance. He regarded the world with something that came close to disdain, and she knew instinctively that there would be few situations in life that this man wouldn’t be able to handle.

Alexa wished desperately that they hadn’t shared that explosive kiss. Until that moment she hadn’t known how a kiss could feel, and she wished she were still living in blissful ignorance. At least then she wouldn’t be using all her energy trying not to stare at his mouth.

With the hunger of an addict contemplating the next fix, Alexa’s eyes lingered on his powerful shoulders, slid down to his flat, muscular stomach and settled on the hard muscle of his strong thighs. He had the hard physique of a soldier and there was no spare flesh on his lean, powerful frame. The deadly blade of the knife glinted in his belt, and she had no doubt that the gun was also around somewhere close.

‘Stop staring at me, Your Highness,’ he drawled softly. ‘Or is the heat of the desert firing your blood? It has that effect on some people. To be in the desert is to return to life at its most basic and primitive.’

Colour flooded into her cheeks and she looked away immediately, hideously embarrassed that he’d been aware of her scrutiny. ‘I wasn’t staring.’

‘Once you are married to the Sultan you will need to hide the fact that you are attracted to other men.’ The vehicle lurched suddenly, and he muttered something under his breath and swung the wheel, skilfully compensating for the deficiencies of the terrain.

Clinging to her seat, Alexa felt her face burn, and suddenly the heat in the car seemed increasingly oppressive. ‘I’m not attracted to you.’

‘You were gazing at me as you would a lover. The same way you looked at me last night, when you came to my bedroom.’

She’d never had this type of conversation with anyone before, and the breath jammed in her throat. ‘I came to your bedroom to find my passport. And I certainly wasn’t looking at you as I would a lover. Trust me on that one.’

She’d never had a lover, and after one particularly traumatic experience when she was sixteen she hadn’t wanted a lover. Until this moment.

The thought startled and shocked her, and she rubbed her fingers over her damp forehead, trying to return her mind to its previous state of indifference to romance. The experience of her youth had taught her an important lesson. Once—just once—she’d trusted a man and she’d been paying the price ever since. She hadn’t been so much burnt as fried to a crisp. But in a way, that experience had made it easier to do what had to be done. Marriage to the Sultan had somehow seemed less daunting, knowing that love and romance were never going to be an option for her.

Trying to ignore the way Karim made her feel, Alexa stared out of the window, feeling the solid ground of her belief system shifting dangerously beneath her feet. She didn’t want to feel like this. She didn’t want to think these things.

‘Try and stay in character, Your Highness,’ Karim advised. ‘You can’t be bold and feisty one minute and embarrassed the next.’

Angered by his remark, Alexa turned. ‘That depends on the conversation topic.’

He glanced briefly in her direction, a faint smile touching his hard mouth. ‘Thinking about sex is a perfectly natural mind-progression between people of a certain age, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘No, I wouldn’t! And I’m not thinking about sex.’ But now the word was out there in the open she felt her pelvis burn and her stomach flip. And suddenly she could think of nothing but sex. And not sex in the abstract or in general—sex with Karim.

With a feeling close to desperation, she felt her eyes stray to his bronzed, capable hands. He handled the vehicle with skill, but the lightness of his touch didn’t fool her for a moment. She knew that Karim was in control. The master. And then her capricious mind imagined those same confident hands moving over her body, and she suddenly felt as though she’d been seared by the flame of a blow torch. ‘Is the air-conditioning working?’

‘You grow hot, habibati?’ His mouth tightened, and it was evident that he didn’t welcome the chemistry any more than she did. ‘You are worried that you are having such explicit thoughts about one man only a few days before your wedding to another? It’s inconvenient, I agree.’

The fact that he’d so clearly guessed her most intimate thoughts left her mortified. ‘I’m not thinking about you at all.’

‘No?’

‘No. And if you think that then you’re delusional.’

‘I’m honest, Your Highness, but I realize that honesty is not a trait that most women possess, especially when they have their eye on the higher prize.’

‘I’m marrying the Sultan in four days.’

‘Precisely.’ He glanced towards her, but the sunglasses made it impossible for her to read the expression in his eyes. ‘You should save those hot, longing looks for your wedding night.’

His words tied her in knots. She didn’t want to think about her wedding night. ‘I don’t want to talk about this any more.’

‘Why? It’s the future you’ve chosen. Why wouldn’t you want to talk about it?’ He turned his attention back to the road. ‘I would have thought you would be interested in knowing about the Sultan.’

Her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. Perhaps talking about the Sultan would return her mind to reality. ‘All right. Tell me about him.’ It didn’t actually matter what they talked about as long as it took her mind off the dangerous chemistry that was pulsing between them.

‘He is a typical only child.’

‘Overindulged?’

Karim gave a faint smile. ‘I was thinking more of the fact that he is a high achiever who is perhaps most at home in his own company.’

‘People must fall over themselves to obey his every wish. It must be difficult. He’s probably surrounded by people who say what he wants to hear, and he can’t really trust any of them because they all have their own agenda.’ Her words were greeted by a long silence, and when she glanced towards him she saw that his jaw was tense.