Trish Morey - Innocent in the Desert - The Sheikh's Impatient Virgin / The Sheikh's Convenient Virgin / The Desert Lord's Bride

This was not the desert, it was a street with electric lights. She could have been anywhere except there was no litter, and there were no sprawling suburbs—civilisation stopped abruptly and gave way to desert. Karim himself had told her that there was virtually no crime here.

She was perfectly safe and she was allowed to take a walk if she felt like it. She lifted her chin to a defiant angle. Karim probably wouldn’t even notice she wasn’t there.

And if she was needed Eva had no doubt Layla would be only too happy to deputise.

You’re not in prison, Eva , she told herself.

But she was—a beautiful luxurious prison, but nonetheless that was what it was and what made it worse was she had walked inside, locked the door, thrown away the key and fallen for her jailer!

She shook her head and muttered, ‘No, it’s just sex.’

Her brooding thoughts returned to the reception. Was it just sex with Layla or was Karim in love with the curvaceous brunette?

Perhaps that was why a sexless marriage did not seem to bother him in the slightest—he had the lissom Layla to keep him warm when the sun went down.

The graphic images that went with this line of speculation made Eva’s stomach churn sickly. Her hands balled into fists as she barred her teeth in a determined grimace; she was going to get the truth out of him if it killed her!

She had been here long enough to know how palace gossip worked and she was sure that if Layla was his mistress she was probably the only person who didn’t know! The humiliation of being an object of pity was something she just could not bear.

She couldn’t bear their unconsummated marriage, and the irony was that her celibacy had never bothered her before. She had occasionally speculated on what she was missing—now what she was missing was driving her slowly insane.

The trouble was it wasn’t exactly a level playing field. He was the world’s sexiest man and not exactly inexperienced, while her experience consisted of a couple of goodnight kisses and a narrow escape from a supposed friend who had turned into a groper when they’d shared a taxi.

How did you confess to a man who thought you were some sort of sexual expert that you were in fact clueless?

A clueless virgin!

Did he know she couldn’t think of anything else but him?

Of course he knew … With a grimace of self-disgust she shook her head angrily. You could only take self-deception so far … and Karim not knowing that her bones ached with longing when he was near was about as likely as him not touching her because he was afraid of rejection!

And now there was the further complication of Layla, who was not clueless or flat-chested and had possibly spent the last week in his bed.

An emotional rush of misery rushed up to clog Eva’s throat and with a sniff she hitched her narrow skirt that was making it hard to walk above her knees and tucked a long strand of hair that had been pulled free of her elegant topknot behind her ear.

The strong warm wind that blew in from the desert immediately swept it back into her eyes.

With a disconsolate sigh she left it there and thought … Are they having an affair?

The possibility brought a militant light to her eyes; if he thought she was going to put up with him installing Layla as his official mistress, he could think again! Eva’s pace quickened in response to the energising rush of anger that swept through her body.

Karim should have told her about Layla; she had a right to know before she committed herself. Though as not committing herself would have made her responsible for destabilising an entire region and destroying economic progress it was extremely doubtful that her decision would have been different.

This was not what she had signed up for.

She had been so lost in her dark reflections that Eva had walked on several hundred yards before she realised she had run out of streetlamps.

With a sigh she turned and began to reluctantly retrace her footsteps, slowly now as the anger that had consumed her had burnt itself out.

As she walked she became aware that the buffeting wind had increased in strength and while it should be on her back now it was actually everywhere, hitting her from all sides.

She bent her head as the sand in the air stung her face.

She had not gone a few feet before she became aware that she was in trouble: the lights above were barely visible through the sand that stung and bit into every exposed inch of her skin. She couldn’t see where the road surface ended and the desert began and the tall turrets and gleaming spires of the royal palace were barely visible.

Mind-numbing panic running just beneath the surface of her paper-thin stoic calm, she refused to recognise it as she told herself that it was lucky she had not strayed from the highway or walked far.

All she had to do was walk in a straight line.

‘How difficult can that be?’

A few minutes later she was forced to acknowledge that her forced jovial comment had been a classic case of tempting fate. The surface she now stumbled over was not tarmac, it was uneven and rocky. Even if she had been able to lift her head there was no point—the visibility was nil, the world was black and the sand cut into every exposed inch of tender flesh without mercy.

She coughed, unable to breathe as she dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around herself in a futile attempt to protect her face.

There was nothing in her world but the noise of the storm, a roar all around … inside her head, everywhere. A strange sense of calm descended over her as she huddled there. Someone who was going to die ought not to feel so calm.

Eva began to lift her head … the expected sting on her face was not as bad as she had anticipated. Had the storm abated slightly? A tiny grain of hope took root and somewhere deep inside the instinct for survival stirred.

‘I can’t die! I don’t want to die!’

If she died Karim would marry Layla.

‘That’s not my plan, either.’

When he had first spotted what looked like a bundle of rags Karim had thought the worst, then as the bundle had moved and he’d heard her speak a surge of relief had flooded his body.

His relief was tempered by the realisation that if he had chosen another path he would never have found her. He might have passed within yards of her …

He was not normally a person who dwelt on what might have been, but he struggled not to dwell on the narrowly diverted disaster as he reminded himself that they were not home and dry yet.

Hearing things could not be a good sign; Eva lifted her head and forced her reluctant eyelids to part. The voice was not in her head, it was in her ear.

The storm had not abated; it was a man’s body and more precisely his chest, broad and incredibly comforting, that sheltered her from the extremes of the sandstorm.

Karim had found her.

‘Karim? You shouldn’t have come—now you’ll die too!’ she wailed.

The wind tugging and dragging at his white robes, he knelt before her, appearing immune as the rocks to the wind and sand. His eyes above the cloth that covered his lower face blazed like the stars that had been blotted by the sandstorm.

He bent his head close to hers like a lover, but there was nothing loverlike in the words he yelled in her ear. ‘Nobody is going to die. If the storm kills you it will deny me the pleasure of throttling you with my own hands!’

‘I—’

‘Shut up!’

Before Eva could respond to this autocratic decree she found herself drawn against his body. She gasped and stiffened, then sighed as a hand behind her head forced her face into his shoulder.

Karim, holding her, found himself caught between rage and tenderness.