Duty and the Beast

‘Maybe it’s time you faced facts yourself—you’re arrogant beyond belief, you’re a bully and you’re so anxious to be Al-Jirad’s next king that you would stop at nothing to get on that throne. I won’t marry you now and I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man left on earth!’

Blood pounded in his temples, pounding out a drum-beat of fury, sounding out a call to war. What must he have done wrong in some former life that he would be lumbered with this selfish little princess for a wife? What gods had he somewhere and at some time insulted that they would visit upon him this poisoned shrew? For if he had a choice right now, if he didn’t know Mustafa would otherwise get the crown, he would take her back and dump her back in that desert camp and be finished with her.

‘Do you actually believe that I want to be king? Do you actually think that even if I wanted a wife I would want to marry someone who does not know when she is being offered the better end of the deal? Do you really think I want to marry such a spoilt, selfish little shrew?’

‘Bastard!’ He heard the crack, felt the sting of her hand hard across his cheek, and the blood in his pounding veins turned molten.

He seized her wrist as it flashed by, wrenching her to him. ‘You’ll pay for that!’ She tried to pull her arm free and when he did not let go she pounded his chest with her free hand, twisting her shoulders from side to side.

‘Let me go.’

Like hell.

He grabbed her other wrist, and she shrieked and tugged so hard against his restraint until she shook the hair loose behind her head and sent it tumbling down in disarray. ‘Let me go!’

‘Why?’ he ground out between clenched teeth. ‘So you can slap me again?’

But she twisted one arm right around, her wrist somehow slipped free and she raised it to lash at him again. He caught it this time before she could strike and pulled her in close to his body, trapping her arm under his and bringing her face within inches of his own. She was breathing hard, as if she’d just sprinted a mile, her chest rising and falling fast and furiously against his, her eyes spitting fire at him, her lips parted, gasping for air and showing those neat, sharp teeth, whose bite he could still feel on his hand.