Kate Walker - One Desert Night

The words rang inside her head, harder now, more brutal than before and hitting home with cruel precision. Because this time she knew just who she had been kissing; and she very definitely knew what kind of man she wanted. She wanted Nabil and only him, her childhood crush flowering into a fully formed adult hunger. The trouble was that he couldn’t have made it any plainer that she was not the kind of woman he wanted.

At least not in any way that he would admit to. But he had wanted her before—hadn’t he? She had so little experience in these things so had she read it all wrong? Was it true that, as her father had always said, she was not the marriageable prospect that her sister was? Or had she shocked Nabil by appearing so forward, by displaying her need so openly?

‘But now that you know I’m not concealing any weapon? That I’m no danger to you...?’

‘Not unless that was your secret weapon,’ Nabil flashed back, stunning her.

His searing look that slid over her bewildered face, lingering at her breasts and hips, confused her even further until she realised just what he was saying and her blood ran cold.

‘You think that I was trying to seduce you into...’

‘You were not trying—you were succeeding,’ Nabil retorted but he managed to make it sound as if that was the greatest crime on earth.

She was forgetting that the man who had grabbed her hand and all but dragged her here from the banqueting hall had had his mind filled with thoughts of conspiracy and treachery. Did he really believe that she had set out to seduce him, to distract his thoughts from the realisation he had been deceived...betrayed? The memory of the moment he had pulled out the knife made it feel as if the weapon had twisted in her own heart.

She had tried so hard to make him believe that she was someone he could trust, even submitting to that brutally intimate search, letting his hard fingers go wherever they wanted on her body. She could still feel the scorch they had left behind.

‘As I said, we are done.’ The ultimate dismissal.

Just for a moment Aziza almost returned to the mood of the night when they’d met on the balcony. When she had been pretending to be Zia the maid. He had spoken in the same dismissive way then, wanting rid of her as quickly as possible. Once again she’d been ordered to leave the presence of the Sheikh, dismissed by him, and this time her response was very nearly the same. She even let her hands drop to gather the golden folds of her skirt, ready to dip into the respectful curtsey protocol demanded. But then she met Nabil’s cold-eyed stare once more and knew a welcome rush of rebellion.

No . The word reverberated inside her head so strongly that she felt sure Nabil must hear it too. But the brutal glare showed no response, no alteration in his expression. She felt the change in herself, though, and was determined to act on it. He had chosen her once even if the dark suspicions built by something in his past had caused him to go back on that decision. She would show him that, even if he didn’t believe it as yet, she had his best interests and that of the kingdom at heart.

‘So you want me to go out there...’

With a wave of her hand she gestured towards the closed door through which he had bundled her such a short time before.

‘And let everyone see that this marriage has failed already? To tell my father that the treaty is null and void—dead in the water?’

And that her father was correct when he’d said that his ‘other daughter’ was not a suitable wife for the Sheikh.

‘As you wish.’ She made her voice as cold as his had been.

Then she drew herself up, lifted her chin and turned on her heel. Not even glancing back over her shoulder to see his response, refusing to let it look as if she cared, she took one step away from him, then another.

‘One moment.’

It came from behind her, brutal and hard as a bullet hitting her between her shoulder blades.

‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

Was he going to let her go? Nabil demanded of himself. Was he actually going to let her walk out of here and take with her everything that this whole marriage arrangement had been about? Was he really going to throw away the peace and prosperity of the country, the heir that his throne needed so badly?

‘I believe that you said we are done. If that is the case then I don’t intend to wait around for you to decide whether you trust me or not.’

It wasn’t her he didn’t trust, but her father. Farouk had been scheming for this wedding for so long that he could believe Aziza’s father would do anything to make it work. Even accept that the daughter Nabil had chosen had not been the one he had wanted him to marry. It was strange but now, when she was walking away from him, his mind was filled with the most vivid image of when they had first met, when she had fallen from that pony and broken her finger. She must have been in pain and distress, but her small back had been straight, her head held high as her nursemaid had hurried her away. She was so much taller now, her figure that of a woman, not a child. But it wasn’t the physical change that struck him. It was the proud defiance, the regal elegance of her figure.

He had spent too long thinking of the gentle child Aziza had been that it was a shock to realise she had become a woman—all woman. Even more of a shock to recognise that she was the woman he had lusted over when she had told him her name was Zia. If he let her go now then he was losing more than just the treaty and doing his duty by the country. This wasn’t for Rhastaan, this was personal.

But in that case, trust was all the more important. He’d rushed into this marriage with too little thought. He’d weighed the pros and cons of the arranged marriage with a cool head, but he’d chosen Aziza in a very different mood. The last time he’d done that it had ended with marriage to Sharmila, and the fallout from that had scarred so much more than his face. If there was one thing that experience had taught him, it was to be wary, that nothing was what it appeared on the surface.

He had time to spare on this. He could bank the treaty, play a careful game, and see if he might get more out of it than he had ever planned. One thing he was sure of was that he was damned well not going to lose the women who had sexually excited him most in years if he could help it.

‘Did I give you permission to leave?’

‘Do I need your permission?’

She wanted to resist—wished she had the strength to tell him to go to hell and turn and walk away. But she knew she wasn’t going to manage that. How could she try for any other reaction when she’d already given him the message he wanted simply by staying at all?

She had to prove to him that she could be trusted. That there was no conspiracy at all behind her appearance as his potential bride. What else could she do? If Nabil suspected her father, her whole family would be in danger, her mother and sister disgraced.

The memory of the moment he had taken her from the banqueting hall, the way that her father had had to bow as she passed, the look on Jamalia’s face when Farouk had said those words he has chosen you , all combined to put a touch of steel in her spine, fire up her blood. She could see his face reflected in a mirror on the wall, the dark scowl that brought his black brows together.

‘I am the King,’ he growled now.

‘And I am your Queen. Well, that’s true, isn’t it? Or was our marriage illegal in some way?’

She waited a nicely calculated moment, watched his face freeze, those black eyes flashing dangerously.

‘You wanted to know who I am—well, I’m not Zia the maid, or even just Aziza any more. I am the Sheikha, the Sheikh’s chosen wife, by marriage at least if not in actual fact.’