Conquering His Virgin Queen

Hurt opened up a chasm within her. She loved her job—she liked working. Like feeling that she was paying her own way for once in her life and doing something good. And now, just like that, all the possible futures she was considering burnt to ash.

If she were to accept the money—for the centre—she would never be free. She would be required to provide heirs in a marriage built on nothing but lies and distrust. She had grown up the product of such a marriage, and the one vow she’d ever made to herself was that she would never do to a child what had once been done to her.

She looked at Odir and was surprised to find him smiling.

‘I can see that you’re thinking about it,’ he said.

He stalked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself the whisky he’d wanted earlier that evening. He grimly wondered why he wasn’t happier with her consideration of his proposal—why there wasn’t a feeling of victory spreading through him. Then he forced his mind ahead a few hours to the international press conference arranged for eight the following morning.

To be standing alone when he made his announcement would make him look weak—would make his country look weak—and that was simply untenable.

He felt suddenly as if he were standing on a precipice the size of the Grand Canyon. Farrehed was about to be plunged into a time of great turmoil, and as he looked over at the slip of a woman standing before him, staring at him in horror as if he were the devil, he knew that she alone could ensure its security.

* * *

‘You can’t make such an obscene offer and then stand in silence waiting for a response,’ Eloise declared.

She had been watching him closely. She had seen the emotions pass over his distinguished features. Her father had never liked Odir. He’d said it was because he could never tell what the young royal was thinking. But Eloise had never had that problem. Although she couldn’t explain why, she had always known what he was thinking. She had before, and she did now.

Despite the obvious distaste he felt about the offer he was making, the belief that he had her agreement had relaxed his frame. She knew that look well. It was the same look her father would get when he knew he was going to get what he wanted.

And she hated it.

Summoning up all her strength, she knew that there was no way she could return to the marriage she had left—no matter what she had once felt for Odir. She was tired of people thinking the worst of her, tired of the sacrifices she had made for people who cared nothing for her, tired of being alone and unwanted.

‘I will not take one penny of your money, Odir. I want a divorce and I’ll do whatever—whatever—it takes to get it.’

‘I’ll double it,’ he replied, as if a total of fourteen million pounds were nothing to him.

She bit back the curse that threatened to fall from her lips. With that much money she could move Natalia and the whole medical facility to Farrehed. She might even be able to convince her mother to come too. The people she loved the most in the world would never want for anything ever again.

Nausea rolled through her as she realised that she was actually considering his offer. Never had she dreamed that there would be anything he could say to make her consider returning to that life—the life she had fled from.

She took a breath and closed her eyes. Count to ten. Always count to ten before making a decision.

* * *

It was as if the world had stopped turning. He could see it in her eyes. He could see that she was about to say the one word he needed to hear.

And then the tension was broken in an instant with three little knocks on the door. He could have kicked something. Hard.

‘Enter,’ he commanded in a tone that implied nothing of the sort.

His aide peered round the door.

‘Your speech, My—Sir,’ the aide hastily corrected himself. ‘It is time.’

Odir cursed out loud and his aide looked shocked. Odir had not realised they had spent so long in the suite. Once again his wife was distracting him from his duty. Just as she had done during their engagement. His preoccupation with her—his determination to forge a kind of relationship that wouldn’t replicate his parents’—had spectacularly backfired, and prevented him from seeing the damage his father was doing.

He was going to have to pay more attention. Because he didn’t have time for mistakes. He hadn’t expected Eloise to jump at his offer, but still... There had been something unsettling about her response. It hadn’t quite rung true. If she was just after money there would have been something like victory, like avarice in her eyes... Not what he had seen—what he didn’t want to put a name to.

Because if he did it might just undo all his carefully made plans.

Without waiting to see if she would follow, Odir strode from the room and entered the lift. He felt some small satisfaction when Eloise stepped in just behind him and took her place beside him.

The silence between them held all the way back to the function room and Odir used every second of it to curse his father for more things than one, and to curse his own youthful stupidity.

He had agreed to the convenient marriage laid out by both their fathers. A marriage that would benefit all concerned.

But that hadn’t been what he’d wanted once he’d met Eloise.

Perhaps it was because they had met before she’d known who he was. That day in the stables. Had she slipped under his defences then? The first woman not to treat him with calculating looks and speculation? She had turned her quick-witted tongue against him, mocked him as no one had done before. Perhaps it was then that his desire for her had flamed brightest—before he had discovered his father’s wishes and her identity.

Or perhaps it was when he’d thought he’d seen the relief in her eyes as he’d approached her with his offer. One that would welcome a relationship between them.

He’d wanted his future to be more than a cold arrangement but less of an intense obsession such as his father had felt for his mother. He’d thought the practicality of that would safeguard him.

But he’d been wrong.

The evening of his wedding the kiss they’d shared had been incendiary. One he’d so desperately wanted to explore that when his aide had approached him, panicked with the news that might throw Farrehed into war, Odir had paused.

For one moment he’d actually considered letting the world go to hell, because all he’d wanted was to lose himself in his new bride. To luxuriate in the sensual promise still heavy on his tongue from her lips.

And in that horrible moment he’d known the madness his father had felt for his mother.

The fact that his father had used his son’s wedding day to disguise his invasion into Terhren was unspeakable. But the greater betrayal was Odir’s, because he should have known better.

So he’d left his bride waiting for him in his palace suite and taken a helicopter with a handful of aides, leaving the rest to follow the next day. And he had embarked on three weeks of intense, secret negotiations with the Sheikh of Terhren.

And when he’d returned? He’d done everything in his power to shake the hold of their attraction. To ensure that he would never be tempted to disregard his duty again. He’d thrown himself into trade negotiations, soothing the effects of his father’s hurts and betrayals, and developed the infrastructure that would make Farrehed great again.

And now, to ensure that all that work, all his sacrifice, wouldn’t crumble to dust come eight tomorrow morning, he needed his wife’s agreement to return to his side.

He would have her answer before he gave the speech. And if she still said no? Well, then he had his next weapon at hand—one that she wouldn’t be able to shake off.

* * *

The noise that greeted them as they exited the lift was deafening and disorientating.

The events of the last hour had gone to her head. Odir’s offer, delivered in the form of an uncompromising command, still pounded in Eloise’s head, mixing with the painful cacophony of hundreds of inebriated conversations.

It was a shock to the system for a woman who had been living such a quiet, modest and almost unrecognisable life for the last six months.

Each and every one of them would stop and stare if they knew that the future Sheikha of Farrehed had been working as a personal assistant to the CFO of a private medical facility, tucked away in the heart of Zurich.

Eloise’s heart ached. She missed the calm practicality and sensible comfort of her life there. It hurt to step back into this world of deceitful smiles, barbed compliments and cutting remarks, all hidden beneath a light tone as if laughter would make such inherent rudeness socially acceptable.

She looked about her and saw it all dressed up in diamonds as if they would hide the dirt. And she wondered for perhaps the first time what would happen if she let her poised façade drop and allowed her true self out...