Annie West - The Desert King's Secret Heir

‘You should sit. You don’t look well.’

‘I’m perfectly fine.’ She crossed her arms, making Idris aware of the swell of plump breasts under her shapeless pullover. Had her breasts always been like that? He remembered them as delectable, but—

‘I’m up here.’ A palm waved in front of his eyes and, for the first time he could recall, Idris felt embarrassment at being caught ogling. Heat flushed his face. It wasn’t a sensation to which he was accustomed.

When he lifted his gaze he saw a matching bright pink stain on her cheeks. Annoyance? Embarrassment? Or something akin to the untimely, unwanted attraction he couldn’t quash?

‘I came to see you.’ His voice dropped to a primal, darkly possessive note he couldn’t hide.

‘Me?’ Now she was on the back foot and, ridiculously, it pleased Idris. He hated the sensation, since last night, that he careered out of control.

‘You. Shall we go inside?’

Her folded arms dropped, spreading out a little from her body, almost as if she’d bar his entry to the house. ‘No. We can speak here.’

Idris scowled. ‘Surely even in Britain one invites guests inside?’

Her mouth tightened but she remained defiant. ‘I prefer to stay outside. It’s...better.’ She took a step back. To prevent him hauling the door open?

Idris felt his head snap back as if he’d been slapped. Did she have so little faith in his chivalry? Was she really afraid to be alone with him?

He was torn between delight at the idea he wasn’t the only one feeling the burn of rekindled lust and horror that his feelings were reciprocated and therefore harder to quell.

‘I have a key to Hamid’s house, if you’d like me to let you in upstairs. Since you’re his cousin, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’

Idris jerked his gaze up to the glossy black door a level above them, and then to the one behind Arden, noting for the first time the brass street number with a small but significant letter A beside it. The relief washing through him was palpable.

‘You live in a basement flat? You don’t live together?’

She drew herself up till she almost topped his shoulder. Idris told himself the movement wasn’t endearing, yet he felt a little corkscrewing twist of pleasure that punctured his satisfaction in an instant.

‘We don’t live together. Hamid is my landlord.’

Yet that didn’t mean they weren’t lovers. For all Hamid’s devotion to history and old books, he, like every other male in their family, had a penchant for a pretty face and a delectable female body. Besides, there’d been no mistaking Hamid’s proprietorial attitude last night, or his meaning when he’d spoken about a special woman in his life.

‘It’s you I came to see.’

She shook her head and a froth of hair swung around her, the colour of the desert at sunrise. Last night he’d been thrown by the smoothly conventional way she’d worn it. This was the woman he recalled, with a riot of loose curls that made his palms itch to feel all that silken softness.

‘Why?’

Was she being deliberately obtuse?

‘Perhaps to talk over old times?’

There was a thud as she fell back against the solid door, her face a study in shock.

‘It is you! You were at Santorini.’

Idris stared. ‘You thought I was someone else? You didn’t remember me?’

It was impossible. He might have had more lovers than he could remember, but the idea Arden Wills had forgotten him was inconceivable.

Especially when his recall of her was disturbingly detailed. After four years he still remembered the little snuffling sigh she made in her sleep as she snuggled, naked, against him. The feel of her slick, untried body when they’d made love the first time returned to him time and again in his dreams. He’d almost exploded disgracefully early at the sheer erotic enticement of her delicate, tight body and the knowledge he was the first man to introduce her to ecstasy. Doing his duty and walking away from her had been amazingly difficult.

‘I thought...’ She shook her head, frowning. ‘How can you be a sheikh? You were a student.’

‘Ex-student—I’d just finished a graduate degree in the States when we met. As for becoming Sheikh—’ he shrugged ‘—my uncle died. It was his wish that I succeed him and that wish was ratified soon after his death.’

It sounded easy, but the reality had been anything but. He was a different man to the one he’d been four years ago. Responsibility for a country that had suffered so long because of its ruler’s neglect had transformed him. He carried the burden of changing his homeland into one ready to face the future instead of dwelling on the past. This morning was the first time in years he’d carved time to do something simply because he wished it. His secretary’s disbelieving look when he’d altered his schedule had spoken volumes.

Idris took a step closer, his nostrils flaring at the astringent smell of metal polish and something more delicate that tickled his memory—the scent of orange blossom.

‘Come, let’s take this conversation indoors where we can—’

‘No!’ Her eyes were round as saucers and if it weren’t ridiculous he’d say she was shaking.

That brought him up short. He might be supreme ruler of his kingdom and an emerging force in regional politics, but he wasn’t the sort of man who deliberately intimidated women.

‘I have nothing to say to you, Your Highness.’ She all but sneered his title and Idris scowled. It hit him suddenly that, for all they’d shared, there was a lot he’d never learned about her.

‘You have a problem with royalty?’

She tossed her head back. He couldn’t remember her being feisty before, just warm and eager for him. ‘I have a problem with men who lie about who they are.’

Idris’s hands clenched and his jaw hardened. He wasn’t used to having his will crossed, much less his honour impugned. The fact they were having this conversation metres from a public footpath, albeit in a quiet square, incensed him.

His fingers itched with the urge to haul this spitfire of a woman into his arms and barge through the door into her private domain.

Except he knew in the most primitive, instinctive part of his brain that if he touched her he was in danger of unleashing something far better left alone.

He’d come here to satisfy his curiosity and put an end, somehow, to the nagging sense of unfinished business between them.

He was about to become betrothed to a beautiful, diplomatically desirable princess. Their match was eagerly awaited by both nations. Getting involved in any way with Arden Wills would be a mistake of enormous proportions. Giving in to the dark urge to lay hands on her and remind her how it had been between them with a short, satisfying lesson in physical compatibility would be madness.

And so tempting.

‘I never lied,’ he said through gritted teeth.

Dark gold eyebrows rose in a deliberately offensive show of disbelief that stirred the anger in his belly.

‘No? So you’re telling me you’re not Sheikh Idris? Your name is actually Shakil?’

‘Ah.’ He’d forgotten that.

‘Yes, ah!’ She made it an accusation, looking down that little nose of hers as if he were some lowlife instead of a paragon of duty and honour. No one had ever looked at him that way.

‘I used Shakil when we met because—’

‘Because you didn’t want me finding you again.’ The words spat out like poisoned darts. ‘You had no intention of following through on that promise to meet again, did you? You’d already wiped your hands of me.’

‘You accuse me of lying?’ No man, or woman, for that matter, had ever doubted his word.

Arden crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chin up in a supercilious expression as full of hauteur as that of any blue-blooded princess. ‘If the shoe fits.’