Heidi Rice - Claimed For The Desert Prince's Heir / A Shocking Proposal In Sicily

‘He can’t force you to marry him,’ Cat said, covering her clasped hands. ‘Even if you went to him willingly and didn’t tell him you were a virgin. If he follows you here and tries to insist, Zane will have his advisors explain the law to him. You don’t even have to see him again if you don’t want to. You certainly don’t have to go back to England to avoid that confrontation.’

‘I know,’ she said. She turned her hands over and clutched Cat’s.

Now would be the perfect time to tell Cat the whole truth, to reveal that the man she’d slept with was the ruler of the Kholadi and Zane’s half-brother. And the reason he was demanding marriage was bound up in his bloodline and his legacy and the responsibilities he had to his position—it wasn’t just a generic obsession with Narabia’s more traditional and outdated customs.

But she couldn’t tell Cat.

Not only was she hopelessly ashamed of her behaviour, she knew if she told Cat, and by extension Zane, they would still back her to the hilt. But it would put them in an impossible position. Especially given Zane’s strained relationship with Raif.

She’d screwed up, and the only way she could see to fix it was to leave. If she returned to the UK, Raif wouldn’t follow her there. It would let them both off the hook—erasing the problem and releasing him from an obligation he didn’t want. He would no longer be bound by the ancient law if the woman he had compromised, or thought he had compromised, was thousands of miles away. Surely even his honour wouldn’t dictate that he leave the desert, leave his people to venture out into a world he knew nothing about to track down a woman he’d had an ill-advised one-morning stand with?

‘I’d rather just go back to the UK,’ she said. ‘And forget this ever happened.’ Not that she ever would be able to forget Raif, she thought miserably, as the swelling in her throat was joined by the hot throb of reaction in her sex.

He was going to be a hard act to follow. But that’s what happened when you chose to lose your virginity to the man of your dreams, and he lived up to every single one of them.

‘Are you sure?’ Cat said, her eyes shadowed with concern.

‘Yes, I’m positive. If the man follows me here…’ There was always the possibility that Raif wouldn’t come to the Golden Palace, but from the furious frown on his face the last time she’d seen him, she wasn’t taking that chance. If nothing else, she felt sure he would want to get his beautiful horse back. She ought to have at least a couple of days’ grace as he only had the small pack pony to ride and would have to return to the Kholadi encampment first to get a new mount. ‘It’ll be easier for everyone concerned if you can explain I’m no longer here. I know it’s cowardly but I—’

‘Stop saying that, Kasia. There’s not a cowardly bone in your body. I totally understand if you want to avoid this guy,’ she added, patting Kasia’s arm. ‘I’ll help you pack. Then I’ll arrange a car to take you to the airport in Kallah—we can book you on the flight out tonight.’

‘Thanks.’ Kasia smiled at her friend, so pathetically grateful for Cat’s stalwart support she had to swallow down another wave of tears. ‘Will Zane be okay with that?’

‘He’ll have questions, I expect,’ Cat said. ‘But he trusts my judgement and he trusts you, too, Kasia. And no way would he make you face this guy if you don’t want to, okay?’

Kasia nodded. ‘Thanks.’

Cat smiled. ‘At least it’s good to know you got two orgasms out of him before he turned into a jerk.’

Kasia forced herself to smile back. ‘And they were spectacular ones, to be fair.’

Cat laughed. ‘There you go. Spectacular orgasms are never bad.’

But Kasia’s heart shrank in her chest as Cat dashed off to make the travel arrangements and left her to finish packing.

Zane trusted Cat’s judgement because he adored his queen. Theirs was the kind of relationship Kasia had always hoped to emulate. It was one of the other reasons she had never dated seriously in Cambridge. Because she’d wanted what Zane and Cat had—before she’d been hijacked by her own pheromones.

But it wasn’t just her pheromones that were to blame for this disaster.

The bedrock of a relationship like Zane and Cat’s was trust and honesty—something Kasia had failed at the very first time she was tested.

Somehow she doubted Zane would trust her once he found out to whom she’d given her virginity so thoughtlessly. In fact, he might well hate her a little if there was any political fallout from this mess. She may well have soured her relationship with the Sheikh—a man she had always admired a great deal and whose respect meant a lot.

But why did it hurt so much more to know the person who would probably hate her most was Raif?

‘KASIA SALAH—I need to speak to her. Now.’

Raif controlled the fury that had been building for four days now, and held onto the curse word lodged in his throat as the woman standing at the gate of the Golden Palace’s women’s quarters trembled visibly but still refused to open the damn gate.

He didn’t bully women. But this was intolerable. He’d arrived fifteen minutes ago and he still hadn’t been able to locate Kasia.

Following a short ride and a very long walk to the nearest Kholadi encampment, he’d been forced to rest overnight to get his strength back after a bout of vomiting before he’d been able to make the two-day ride to Zafari.

A pain in his right side had developed during the journey. And he’d had to stop several times to recuperate—turning the two-day ride into three. Somehow in the midst of this titanic mess he’d managed to pick up a very persistent stomach bug as well.

He probably should have waited until he had completely recovered from it before making the journey. But the urge to find Kasia and confront her had been stronger than his common sense.

She’d run out on him. Stolen his horse. And all after promising to consider his proposal of marriage. He should have expected it. No one was ever as guileless as they appeared. He should never have trusted her.

‘I’m sorry, Prince Kasim, but she is not here,’ the girl said.

‘Then where the hell is she?’ The shout rang out as his smouldering temper burst into flames and the aching pain ground in his gut. The girl cowered.

‘Kasim, I’ve only just been informed of your arrival. We hadn’t expected you.’

Raif swung round to see his brother striding across the courtyard towards him, followed by two of his advisors.

Terrific. Just what I need—a political delegation to slow this process down even more.

His brother clasped his hand, giving him a jolt that seemed to knife into his gut. Raif struggled not to flinch.

‘It’s good to see you, as always, brother.’ While Zane’s smile was tight—he was probably wondering what Raif had been doing at the gates of the women’s quarters, shouting at one of his staff—it looked genuine, which only annoyed Raif more.

He was far too irritable and out of sorts right now to make the effort to pretend a brotherly bonhomie he didn’t feel.

He respected his half-brother, had been forced to acknowledge over the last ten years that Zane was a good Sheikh. But they were hardly friends. Even if Zane could overlook the difference in their upbringing—as the legitimate, wanted son of the old Sheikh and the son he had never acknowledged—Raif could not.

For some reason, Zane always acted as if their tainted past didn’t exist, often going to extraordinary lengths to deny the strained nature of their sibling relationship.

The only time Raif had managed to get a rise out of Zane had been five years ago when Zane had arrived at the Kholadi camp with the academic he had hired to write a book about the kingdom. Raif had sensed the attraction between Zane and Catherine Smith and had decided to have some fun at his brother’s expense, mercilessly flirting with the young woman during their evening meal and then assigning her the same tent as Zane, even though Zane had insisted they be accommodated separately. Raif had won that round. Zane had been furious with him, but unable to show it because he had been maintaining the fiction he wasn’t sleeping with his beautiful biographer. But the last laugh had eventually been on Raif when the two of them had married a scant three weeks later and Catherine had become Zane’s queen.