Maisey Yates - Midnight on the Sands - Hajar's Hidden Legacy / To Touch a Sheikh / Her Sheikh Protector

Seeing how little she’d truly felt in her life.

She turned her head and captured his mouth again on a rough moan that would have normally shocked her, embarrassed her. But it didn’t. And it wasn’t because his kiss made things fuzzy—far from it. It was all sharper, more defined. Raw and real and all the better for it.

It was all instinct and feeling, lust and need. He was devouring her and she was willing, more than.

He slid his hand down and gripped her thigh, his fingers wrapping around at the sensitive spot behind her knee. He pulled up gently, opening her to him, wrapping her leg around his hip. It brought the blunt head of his arousal against the bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs that was screaming for attentions, dying for satisfaction.

She rocked against him, following her instincts for once, leaving her head out of the equation.

This was about feeling. Not logic. Not duty. Not about pursuing worth.

She gave a slight growl of protest when he abandoned her mouth, and he laughed, pressing kisses to the side of her neck, her exposed collarbone.

“Zahir … oh, Zahir,” she whispered, tightening her hold on his shoulders, her nails digging into his muscled body.

He froze, pulling his head away, the expression on his face dazed, clouded. And then clarity returned.

He pushed away from her, his chest heaving. “Enough.”

“Zahir … “

“Why are you here, Katharine?”

“I … I wanted to read so I came down after dinner and … “

“No. Why are you here? In Hajar. With me.”

“Because of Alexander. Because … because I need a husband to protect the throne of Austrich.”

“If not for that, would you have come?”

She shook her head. “No.” She spoke the word on a whisper, her entire body trembling.”

He looked at her for a moment, his eyes bottomless wells of ink. Flat and empty. Her stomach tightened in on itself, making her fight to keep upright.

He nodded curtly and turned and walked from the room, leaving her standing there, cold and more alone than she’d ever felt in her entire life.

SHE wasn’t used to saying the wrong thing. Or maybe she wasn’t used to people showing their disapproval as openly. Unless of course it was from her father.

This, with Zahir, went way beyond disapproval, though. She’d hurt him. At least, she thought maybe she had. She wasn’t certain that Zahir felt hurt anymore. She wasn’t sure if there was anything behind that granite wall of his.

Oh, no, there’s … there’s all that passion .

Just for moment, she’d seen Zahir as he’d been. Effortlessly seductive, charming and sensual. As he had been? He still had it. He’d all but turned her to mush.

But that was just physical. A kind of physical she wasn’t used to. But she knew enough to know that men didn’t really need emotion to get into the physical. She wasn’t entirely certain she needed it, either, considering how she’d responded to him.

Not that she was entirely void of emotion where he was concerned.

She thought back to that day in the market, his eyes like a hunted, wounded animal until she’d touched him. And when they’d cleared, in that moment, something had shifted in her. And it had only kept on shifting. The oasis. The dance. The kiss.

Nothing like the few chaste kisses she’d shared with Malik. Theirs had been an attempt to find some passion between them, and she’d been certain that she could, but it hadn’t been anything like being in Zahir’s arms.

With him, she’d gone up in flames.

She still burned. She squirmed slightly in her reclining position on her plush bed, a slight sheen of sweat breaking out over her skin.

She could still feel the imprint of his hands on her, sliding over her curves, his tongue against hers. So sensual, in a way she hadn’t imagined it could be. Her body felt overheated again, just like that. Just the thought of him.

Blinking hard, she turned her attention back to her tablet computer and swiped her fingers over the screen idly, flipping through a few more wedding gown designs. She wasn’t certain it really mattered what she wore, but her usual dresser had sent her some amazing sketches, and it would be great publicity for him and the fashion designer who’d created them. So in that way, it sort of mattered.

She frowned. She was always doing that. Looking for the meaning in what she did. The weight. A way to make herself matter. She rolled over onto her stomach and pushed the tablet out of the way. She would just have Kevin pick one. Because she really didn’t care. What did it matter anyway?

Zahir would rather not be having the wedding at all, and he wouldn’t care if she walked down the aisle in clear tape and packing peanuts. So truly, the wedding gown was moot.

It didn’t represent anything. A legal union that didn’t go beyond the piece of paper they would both be signing. A different set of documents, another pair of signatures, and they’d be unmarried just as easily.

She’d leave the cake flavors and the canapés up to the wedding coordinator, too. Because it just didn’t matter.

And it would matter even less if her groom couldn’t stand there long enough for her to make it up the aisle. If a flashback hit him there and then and he was assaulted by the kind of fear she’d witnessed in his eyes before.

He’d been doing well. They hadn’t taken a drive in a couple of days. Not since the kiss. But he had been doing well on them. His tension not as evident in his posture when they moved through crowded portions of the city.

If not for that, would you have come?

No.

The words repeated in her head over and over. Growing more and more acrid with each replaying. Of course, she’d had no other reason to come, but in that moment it had felt like a rejection to him.

It had been, but it had been to protect herself. Because she could so easily get lost in the kissing. In the passion and the desire, and forget that this was a temporary marriage. And that he wasn’t able to feel emotion for her. That he would never want her in his bed night after night. That even if they gave in, the arrangement wouldn’t last.

“I wouldn’t want it to anyway,” she said into the empty room.

She was headed to the light at the end of the tunnel. Except when she closed her eyes, she didn’t really see a light anymore. She saw a man with bleak eyes and an obvious despair that seemed to reach deep into his soul.

“Katharine.”

Zahir’s deep, strong voice pulled her out of the fuzziness of her dreams and back into the stark reality of wakefulness. The afternoon sun was pouring through the window and spilling on the edge of her bed, where her hand was resting, steadily burning it to a bright pink.

She tugged it back and flexed her fingers. “Yes?” She turned to face him and her heart nearly stopped. He was just so powerful, his presence so full.

“Why is there an army of press at the door?” “I don’t … my father,” she said, moving into a sitting position and scrubbing her hand over her face. “Such a good public showing, I’m sure, is important to him. A message sent to John. Letting him know that his hopes of gaining the throne are completely over.”

She looked at Zahir, at the wild look in those dark eyes, and she felt a sharp stab of pain her stomach unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She wasn’t helping here, that was for sure. She was dragging him into hell. For the sake of her own feelings of accomplishment?

No. This had been important. Real. John couldn’t take the throne, and he couldn’t be allowed to have influence over Alexander.

But the fact that Zahir had to get pushed into this … She gritted her teeth. “We can tell them to go away.” She watched him, his shoulders straight, his eyes glittering in the light. He slowly curled his fingers in, the tendons on the backs of his hands standing out, showing the extreme pressure he was putting on them, on his body. “No,” he said, his voice hard.