Elizabeth Lane - Special Deliveries - Heir To His Legacy - Heir to a Desert Legacy

He battled to get control over his body.

“Sorry,” he said, matching the annoyance in her tone, portraying that he was most definitely not sorry. “There is a celebration happening in the streets in Aden’s honor. In your honor.”

She tugged her glasses off. “Mine?”

“Yes. Yours.” Certainly not his. Chloe was the bright spot the country had been waiting for. She had brought the first bit of hope to Attar since the death of Rashid. Since Sayid’s installation to the throne. “You are the savior of the heir of Attar. The savior, indirectly, of the country, and my people are celebrating.”

“Except… I’m not the savior of anything. You lied.”

“Did I?” He kept his eyes trained on her face, on her wide blue eyes. She looked vulnerable now, the anger, the extreme standoffishness, faded into the background. She was an interesting mix of softness and strength. And he didn’t have time to be interested.

“Yes. You did. You made it sound like I wrested him from the claws of death or something, and the press seem to have believed you.”

“You hid him until you could not hide him any longer, and I know that the bulk of your concern was for his safety, so the essence of the story remains the same. Had I given you instructions regarding his security, had there truly been suspicion surrounding the accident, I would have given you the same instructions. To hide him until we were certain he would be safe.”

“I acted more out of shock than anything else.”

“And fear of me,” he said, watching her expression.

She stood, arching her back, her round breasts pushing against the stretchy cotton fabric of her top. His eyes were drawn there, his focus compromised. He was a man who liked women, a man who enjoyed sex. But he didn’t let his desire off its leash unless it was an appropriate time. An appropriate woman. This was not the appropriate time. She was not the appropriate woman.

Which meant it was time to meet her eyes again, and not search for the outline of her nipples beneath the layer of thin fabric. But it was difficult to redirect himself. Much more so than it should have been.

He could see her swallow hard, her pulse pounding in her neck. He wanted to put his lips over that spot, taste her skin. “Well, can you blame me? The love of power is the inspiration for most of life’s atrocities.”

“Perhaps, but this,” he said, sweeping his hand in front of him, indicating the palace, “is not the kind of power I crave.”

She blinked. “And… what kind of power do you crave?”

“Simple,” he said, his eyes blank. “I don’t crave anything.” A hard claim to make considering the current direction of his thoughts.

“That’s impossible.”

He shook his head. “Craving anything, in my position, would be dangerous. Something easily exploited.”

She arched a pale brow, the expression of utter disbelief plain in her clear blue eyes. His eyes drifted lower again, to the curve of her full breasts, the intoxicating shape of her body.

“Everybody wants something,” she said.

“I’m above such things.”

It was almost impossible to keep himself from making a move toward her. It had been months since he’d been with a woman, time and circumstance not permitting it, and he was starting to feel the effects of his celibacy. But there was no time to deal with it now, and certainly not with her.

Another thing he needed power over. The strong, strange craving that was making its way through him, heating him from the inside out, making him burn. It was as if the Attari sun had penetrated his skin, as if cool blue eyes had the power to cover him in fire.

“High opinion of yourself.”

“I am a sheikh,” he said, “I expect to have a certain amount of power, as is my birthright. I was never the heir, but I have always been a leader. I ask for nothing. I demand it, and it is so.”

A lie. Throughout his life, if he had demanded something that had not fallen into line with his uncle’s vision for him, he had been denied it. Or it had been taken from him, ruthlessly.

He had spent years having any royal arrogance stripped from him, leaving him exposed. A man, simply a man, with no power but what he found inside of himself. No defense beyond the walls he built around his emotions. It had spurred him to make them stronger, to take everything his uncle had taught him and use it as a shield against those who sought to break him.

“I am the final authority,” he said, reinforcing himself.

Her eyes shuttered, going cold and dim. “I see. Was there something you wanted or were you just informing me about the celebration?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice getting rough, his body tightening in reaction to her words. He put his power into mastering it, into overcoming the inconvenient, unnecessary attraction to her that seemed to be intent on taking him over. “I came to issue you an invitation to the proceedings.”

Unsurprisingly, “invitation” had meant that she was required to go. Aden was tucked safely in his bed, back at the palace with both of his nannies standing by.

And she’d had to put on the only dress that fit her and her newly expanded figure, again, and get into Sayid’s limousine. Not that she had a direct complaint with the limo. Under any other circumstance, she would have thought it was really cool to ride in a limo. But his heavy-handed tactics, combined with the disturbingly close confines of the vehicle, were dampening her glee.

The fact that a car the size of this one gave the impression of close quarters said a lot about the disturbing effect Sayid seemed to have on her.

It was all that power, and the unapologetic enjoyment of it. He was so comfortable with it, so clearly in need of it. It made her fear what might happen if it was denied him. If he felt it was threatened.

What lengths would he go to in order to get it back?

Would he find it in the use of his fists against someone weaker than him? In a woman’s pleading? Would he find it in holding the life or death of someone weaker than him in his hands?

Her father had. And while she knew that all men weren’t abusers… men who prized power, men who were so unashamedly dominant, were the ones who set off her internal alarms.

And Sayid was certainly creating a strange effect in her. A kind of restless edginess. Nerves that cramped her stomach and made breathing difficult. A warning from her body, she was certain.

“See the hope they have now?” Sayid’s voice was surprisingly soft.

Chloe looked out the window. It was no wild reverie that gripped the people lining the streets, rather a solemn expression of love for their country. Flowers in people’s hands, a memorial for the fallen sheikh and his wife. A gift for the new prince.

“Yes,” she said, her throat tight.

Sayid sat, his hands folded in his lap. The people outside waved, but Sayid made no move to wave back. Chloe pressed the button on the limousine window and expected to be scolded by Sayid. But he said nothing.

She slipped her hand outside the window and waved. The solemnity broke. Cheers erupted, smiles on the faces of the Attari people who before had looked so bereft. She looked at Sayid, questioning.

“You are the woman who saved their future ruler,” he said. “You are loved.”

“A strange thing to be loved for something you didn’t do.”

“You did save him, though,” Sayid said, his tone strange, as though he was having a revelation even as he spoke. “You carried him. Gave him life. You’re the reason he is.”

“If not me, it would have been someone else.”

“But it was you.”

Yes, it had been. And now the whole thing was tearing her apart slowly, piece by painful piece. Because her plan for her life had been so perfect. And she’d been so happy with it. Now it was altered forever.