Dana Marton - Royal Protector - Traded to the Desert Sheikh / Royal Captive / His Pregnant Princess Bride

“If you think either one of my parents coddled me in any way, at any point in my life, you’re insane.”

She hadn’t meant to say that, certainly, and could have bitten her tongue once she did. Kavian only gazed down at her for a brief, electric instant—but that glimmering moment of contact seared through her.

“I know exactly who and what you are,” he said as he strode through the far door into his bedchamber, a stately affair in dark woods and richly masculine shades of red and gold. “Whether you stage melodramatic displays in my closet or race across the planet in a bid to humiliate me in front of the world, it is all the same to me. It will all end right here.”

And then he set her down on his bed.

As punctuation.

Amaya expected him to leap on her, but of course he didn’t do that. He simply stood there before her, a part of the magnificence of the room, the palace—and at the same time its intensely masculine focal point. He’d donned a pair of very loose white trousers that flowed around him and somehow made him look even more like the desert king he was than anything else she’d ever seen him in. And that was it. He folded his arms over the golden expanse of that carved and battered chest of his that shouldn’t have been half so appealing, and watched her.

And she wanted to run. In her head, she threw herself to the side, she scrambled across the slippery gold coverlet and leaped from the mattress, she threw herself off the side of the terrace into thin air to escape him—

But in reality, she did none of those things. She was frozen into place. She was too tense and she couldn’t quite breathe and she hurt... Except she realized, one shuddering, shallow breath after the next, that it was a very specific kind of ache, located in a very particular place.

And worse, that the knowing expression on his hard face and that silvery awareness in his gaze meant he knew it.

How could he know it? But he did.

“You didn’t have to chase me.” Amaya hardly knew what she was saying. “You could have let me go.”

His hard mouth flirted with the possibility of a curve. But then didn’t give in to it.

“Are you wet?” he asked.

For a moment, Amaya didn’t understand. The baths had been hours ago and she’d dried off with the towel—

Then she got his meaning, and she simply ignited.

The flush lit her up, inside and out. She was certain she was bright red, searing and glowing, neon , and she could neither pull a full breath into her lungs nor look away from him. Much less control the surge of desire that pooled between her legs.

“I will take that as a yes,” he said, sounding darkly amused and something far more dangerous besides. “You already came apart in my hands today, Amaya. Do you doubt that you are mine? I wasn’t even inside you.”

She should have leaped to her feet then. Slapped him. Screamed at him. Made it clear to him that this kind of behavior was completely unacceptable—that he couldn’t treat her like this. That she wouldn’t let him.

But Amaya did none of those things. She only stared back at him, that ache in her growing hotter and more desperate by the moment.

“I want you naked,” he said, and there was a certain gruffness to his voice then. A certain edge that told her that perhaps he wasn’t as unaffected by this as he was pretending he was.

“I don’t want—”

“Now, Amaya.” That gruffness turned to granite and pounded through her veins. “I already stripped you once today. Don’t make me do it again.” His gaze moved over her face, and she was sure there was something wrong with her, that she should feel it like a caress. That she should long for more. “Show me, azizty . Show me you are as proud of your beauty as I am.”

Something shifted deep inside her, then turned over. It was like a dream, she told herself. And the truth was, she’d had this dream. Again and again. This, or something like this, all across the long months since she’d fled the Bakrian Royal Palace on the night of their betrothal. It always starred Kavian in some or other state of undress, so that part was familiar, though he was far more magnificent in reality. And it always involved this same roller-coaster sensation inside her, hot and then cold, high and then low, a longing and an ache and a need.

This is just another dream , she assured herself.

And in a dream nothing she did mattered, so she could do as she liked in the moment. It had no meaning. It held no greater significance. She could lose herself in that calm, ruthlessly patient gray gaze of his as if it was a way home. She could let that become what mattered instead.

So that was what she did.

Amaya pulled the wrapper off her, letting it slide over the skin it bared, in an almost unconscious sensual show. Then, before she could question her motives, she pulled the silken little scrap she wore beneath it up and over her head, tossing it with the wrapper so they sat there in a slippery heap of deep blue against the gold coverlet.

Then she swallowed, hard, and simply sat there.

Completely naked, as he’d commanded.

And she knew that it didn’t mean anything. That it was nothing more than a psychological trick to imagine it was the crossing of a very serious line. She’d lost her virginity to this man in a shocking rush six months ago. He’d had his mouth and his hands on her in the palace pools only today. But both of those times, she’d had clothes on.

It was amazing how different it was to sit before him, utterly naked, for the very first time.

“Why are your shoulders rounded like an ashamed teenager’s?” he asked her, so mildly that she’d have thought that he hadn’t noticed her nudity at all were it not for that near-hectic glitter in his gaze. “Why are you slumped before me as if you do not know your worth? Is this how you offer yourself to me, Amaya? In apology?”

“I’m not apologizing.” She didn’t think she was offering herself to him, either, so much as following his orders for reasons she didn’t care to examine too closely—but somehow that part got tangled on her tongue and stayed in her mouth.

“Are you certain? I have seen more tempting sea turtles, tucked away in their shells where no one can see them.” As if he’d said that purely to make her flush with temper, his mouth curved slightly when she did. “Sit up. Arch your back as if you are proud of your breasts.”

“I think we both know perfectly well that they’re nothing to be proud of. Why flaunt what I don’t have?”

“I am not interested in your opinion of them.” His eyebrows edged higher on his forehead, as if he was amazed at her temerity. “I am recalling how they felt in my mouth. More, please.”

She hadn’t realized that she’d done as he asked until then. But she had. She’d sat up and let her back arch invitingly. That presented her breasts to him, yes, and it also made her hair move around her shoulders, and she knew, somehow, that he liked that, too.

And for a long moment—it could have been years, for all she knew—he simply looked at her.

It should have been boring. She should have felt awkward. Exposed. Embarrassed. Cold, even.

But instead, Amaya burned. She ached. She wanted.

“Look at you,” Kavian said softly. “Your breath comes faster and faster. You are flushed. If I were to reach between your thighs, what would I find?”

She couldn’t answer him.

“It would take so little,” he continued, his voice almost soft. “Your nipples are so hard, aren’t they? Think of all the things I could do with them. Think how it would feel.” She shifted against the bed beneath her, pressing herself against it and hardly aware of what she was doing, and he laughed. “None of that. You will come for me or not at all, Amaya. Remember that, if you please.”