Midnight in the Harem: For Duty's Sake / Banished to the Harem / The Tarnished Jewel of Jazaar

“That option was not on the table for negotiation.”

Her brow wrinkled charmingly. “I don’t understand.”

“I lobbied for a party with my siblings. My father insisted on a state dinner.”

Her gasp was far too adorable. Perhaps even he could be influenced by the emotion of the moment the first night with his bride.

“You mean you weren’t allowed to have a children’s party at all?”

He shrugged and admitted, “I was seven when I had my last children’s party.”

He had continued to try to negotiate for one until his twelfth year, when his father had informed him he was a man and had to put away childish things. It was the way of things for someone in his position. He knew his cousin in Jawhar had been raised with a similar set of ideals.

“That is terrible.”

He shook his head. “You are too softhearted.”

“No child of mine would be forced to have a state dinner for his birthday celebration.” She sounded like she was discussing some form of torture.

And he could not help chuckling. “I learned the importance of my role and responsibilities.”

It had been an effective lesson in putting the needs of his people before his personal desires.

“You learned that you were not allowed to be a child.” Her tone implied she had just discovered something of importance about him. “It wasn’t the same for your brothers.”

“Naturally not.”

She glided back toward him through the water. “Tonight, no one else is here. This is not about duty and obligation.”

Suddenly a stricken expression took over her features. So, she remembered she had made this night a condition of the ridiculous “offer” she had made to let him out of their families’ agreement.

He was tempted to let her flounder simply because the entire premise to this night was so very ludicrous.

However, she was right. “Making love to you in no way feels like a duty.”

Her gaze searched his, as if trying to ascertain the truth of his statement. He knew she would find what she sought. For he spoke the truth.

Which was something of a relief for him, though he would never admit it.

The brilliance of her smile was worth his admission. “Tonight you are simply Zahir, not Crown Sheikh.”

He was never anything less than what he was, leader and servant to his people. Not even during his time with Elsa, though for those stolen hours he had come closest to being simply a man than any other.

It was not a thing Angele could comprehend. Even had she been raised among their people. To know from birth that an entire country depended on you for its well-being was a circumstance known by only a handful in the entire world. And from those he had met, he knew not all were raised from infancy with the sense of responsibility to their people that his father and mentors had instilled in Zahir.

He would not shatter Angele’s beliefs however and they were not entirely false. While not the entire truth, either. This night, he was as far removed from his position as dutiful sheikh as he could allow himself to be.

Fully cognizant he needed to make the night special so Angele would lose her fear of intimacy between them, there was still no denying that making love to her in this way—without the benefit of an official wedding—was not the action of a dutiful, responsible sheikh of his people. An internal voice, that sounded suspiciously like one of his mentors, chided him. Telling him there were other ways he could have allayed Angele’s fears.

The simple truth, as unexpected as it had been to realize, was that Zahir wanted Angele. He found her more sexually desirable than he’d ever allowed himself to realize. The years they had waited to formalize their engagement, much less marry, had taken a toll on him as well. Though he had not known it.

He had forced himself never to think of her sexually. At first, because she had been so young and later because that part of his psyche was reserved for Elsa.

He now accepted that Angele was the ideal woman to share his bed and had been all along.

He pulled her back into his arms. “Are you ready to continue this night out of time?”

Her doe-soft eyes darkened with desire and she nodded before angling her head in a clear invitation to kiss.

It was an invitation he would never reject again.

Angele woke to pleasurable, never before experienced aches in her body. No doubt the pain would be acute but for the two soaking baths Zahir had insisted she share with him the night before.

A night filled with more passion and pleasure than she had ever thought possible.

The temptation to ask him to maintain their status quo as promised for future marriage was so strong, she’d literally had to bite her tongue to keep it back as they said their goodbyes in the wee hours of morning.

Though she would have much preferred waking in Zahir’s arms at least one time in her life, she understood his concern with the possibility their tryst would be discovered if she did not leave while all but the security men on duty slept. So, she had gone, her body sated and her heart filled with longing for what would never be.

Although she had showered with Zahir before leaving his rooms, she took another bracing one in semicool water now. She needed every trick to maintain her resolve.

She packed quickly, leaving out the four envelopes she had prepared before stepping foot in Zohra.

One held a letter to her pseudouncle, the King of Jawhar telling him she was backing out of the agreement to marry Zahir sometime in the distant future. She apologized, pleaded with him not to hold her father accountable for her choices and told him she would understand if he no longer recognized her as part of his family. Her heart would have broken at the prospect, but it had shattered all those months ago when she’d first seen evidence of Zahir’s affection for Elsa Bosch and there wasn’t anything left to break. Or so she told herself.

The second envelope was similar to the first, only the letter inside was written to Zahir’s father. In this one she once again apologized and begged the king to consider her actions her own and in no way a reflection on her pseudouncle or her own parents—as none were aware of her growing discontent with the agreement as it stood.

The third envelope was thicker. It contained a letter to Zahir, this one the only one she had written this morning. She thanked him for their one special night and told him she would never forget it.

She also explained about the enclosed pictures, detailing when she had first received them and how. She gave him as much information regarding the blackmail as she could, including a list of payments she had made and how she had done so. She assured him she had told no one, not even her parents of the pictures or the blackmail monies she had paid.

She hoped he would discover how best to keep them out of circulation, for his sake as well as his family’s. But come tomorrow, or perhaps even tonight, the blackmailer would know that Angele was no longer a pony in this race.

Her eyes flicked to the final envelope, the one that would ensure there would be no turning back. Though, really, it was only symbolic. It held a press release, scotching any “rumors” of a suspected permanent connection between the house of Jawhar and the house of Zohra vis-à-vis a marriage between her and Zahir. She had included a couple of personal quotes. One to the effect that she had no desire to live her life in the public eye as a royal and the other her absolute refusal to make a permanent home outside of her adopted country, America.

After reading it, her father might disown her and her mother would undoubtedly be furious, but Angele wasn’t going to live the rest of her life without love. She just wasn’t.

She might not be American by birth, but she’d been raised around an entirely different set of ideals to the duty-bound royals that led Jawhar and Zohra. While she loved the country of her birth and Zohra as well, at heart? She was a modern American woman.

She wasn’t about to allow Zahir to be forced into a marriage he so clearly had never really wanted, either.

She was under no illusions. He would probably enter another arranged contract, but this time he was older. Zahir would have more input into who his chosen bride was to be. Angele could only hope, for his sake, that it was someone he could develop real feelings for.

She snuck down the secret passageways for the last time and left Zahir’s packet in his room while she knew he was busy with his father. She left each of the letters to the kings with their respective secretarial staff. And finally she dropped the press release off with the PR department.

She had prepared a timed email with a duplicate release to be sent to the major news distribution agencies in a few hours. She would be in flight back to the United States when news hit.

Cowardly? Perhaps, but she preferred to think of it as politic.