Annie West - The Sultan's Harem Bride

Though according to Imran plenty of women had already thrown themselves at His Royal Highness.

Imran.

Jacqui pressed a hand to her swooping stomach.

‘You should sit.’ It wasn’t a suggestion but an order, cracking through the tension in the room.

Jacqui pushed back her shoulders and opened her mouth to tell him she was fine.

‘The dream was disturbing. You shouldn’t exert yourself yet.’

‘You know about that?’

‘Why do you think I’m here?’ His lofty expression made a joke of her fear he might be a sexual predator. What would a man like Sultan Asim want with a woman as plain as Jacqui Fletcher?

Awkwardly, the long coverlet almost tripping her, she subsided on the bed. Silly, how weak her knees felt. But the dream had been so real.

‘Are you all right?’ He’d moved from the door but kept his distance. Clearly he had no desire to get close.

Grimly Jacqui acknowledged she wasn’t in the same league as the sort of women rich, sexy potentates entertained. Nature had skimped on her curves, for a start. Was that why she accepted so easily that his interest wasn’t personal?

‘I’ll be fine soon,’ she lied. Experience told her it would take far longer to shake the miasma of that dream. She tugged the covering close.

‘Do you get them often?’

Her head snapped up. What did he see as he scrutinised her so closely? Terror? Grief? Guilt?

Instinct urged her to protect her privacy. ‘Occasionally.’

‘You should see someone about them.’

‘You seem awfully interested in my sleeping habits.’

Was that a flush of colour across his cheekbones or a trick of the multi-coloured light?

Jacqui tensed and rubbed her forehead; a headache was beginning. Nerves and stress made her snap at the man who had the power to make or break this venture.

How could she? Everything rode on the Sultan’s goodwill.

She wished she could blame her stupidity on being disorientated after the nightmare. Yet Jacqui had an awful suspicion her reaction to the Sultan himself was to blame. He was just...too big, too masculine, too close, though he stood metres away. It was as if the spacious room had shrunk and couldn’t accommodate the two of them.

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured huskily. ‘I apologise.’

‘No need. I understand.’ His voice was a deep burr that worked its way under her skin and turned her insides to mush. ‘The circumstances are...unusual. I should apologise for breaching your privacy. Finding a stranger so close on waking must be disconcerting.’

No mention of her nudity, or his hands on her body.

Yet she had trouble thinking of anything else.

She should be relieved he clearly didn’t want to be in her bedroom. What she’d thought was a gleam of sexual interest in those hooded eyes was nothing of the kind.

Yet for some reason tension still eddied between them.

‘Now we’ve got the apologies out of the way...’ he paused, as if waiting to be sure they had ‘...you can answer my question.’

‘Your question?’ Jacqui felt like a parrot, repeating the word, but her foggy brain was a mess of impressions. Imran. The barely familiar room. The shock of meeting the Sultan. The curious ripple of reaction deep inside when those dark eyes rested on her.

He folded his arms and Jacqui was momentarily distracted as the movement moulded his long robe to a body that was even larger and more powerful than she’d imagined.

‘Exactly who are you?’

* * *

Amber. Her eyes were a luminous shade of amber. A warm, enticing shade that made him think of sunrise over the desert, or the peachy reflection of late-afternoon light in the pool at his favourite oasis.

Asim had been stunned by that glowing brightness when she’d looked up at him. Those wide-spaced, slightly slanted eyes gave her an intriguing feline look.

He found himself staring.

Better staring at her eyes than her naked flesh , his conscience taunted. He was the lion of Jazeer, ruler, law-giver and leader. He did not ogle defenceless women.

Yet the image of her lithe, streamlined body had lodged in some unrepentant part of his brain and he couldn’t shift it.

She hunched her bare shoulders and he realised he was scowling.

‘I’m Jacqui Fletcher.’ She sat straighter, meeting his eyes directly, as few in his kingdom did. His pulse pounded as their gazes meshed. That was unprecedented.

Asim waited but she appeared to be pausing for his response. Was he supposed to know her? Something about the name rang a bell but he was sure they’d never met.

She understood his language, had responded in it, though she’d switched to English once she’d become aware of her nudity. Presumably shock had made her revert to her mother tongue.

‘How do you come to be here?’ His security staff had questions to answer. This section of the palace was well beyond the public audience rooms.

‘I was invited.’ Her head tipped up, though her gaze slid from his. Instantly he sensed she withheld something.

‘Indeed?’

She flushed and Asim watched, fascinated, as colour washed her cheekbones and throat. With her tousled, tawny hair around her shoulders, flushed skin and flimsy covering, she looked alluring yet strangely innocent.

Damn! He needed to focus.

‘I don’t recall issuing any invitation.’

Again that lift of the chin, baring her slender throat. Did she realise how sexually provocative she looked with all that cream and rose flesh on display and her cover slipping low over her pert breasts?

‘It was from the Lady Rania.’

‘My grandmother?’ What was the old schemer up to now, inviting strange women into the palace? Not just into the palace but deep into the long abandoned heart of it that hadn’t been modernised in a century.

Asim sensed intrigue. He had an instinct for it, given the poisonous environment in which he’d grown up.

‘Strange she didn’t mention this invitation to me.’

A shrug drew his attention back to those bare shoulders, milk-white above the embroidered silk. A dart of heat jabbed low but Asim ignored it. He had more important issues to deal with than sexual awareness.

‘Really? I wouldn’t know.’

He told himself the husky, nervous voice proved she hid something. But his wayward body was too busy responding to the eroticism of that rough velvet tone.

Asim stood straighter, infuriated by his inability to focus. His day had turned to disaster because of one unwanted female. His night was rapidly going the same way. He fast lost patience.

‘Why are you here, Ms Jacqui Fletcher?’ A thread of memory tugged in his brain. He knew that name. ‘You should be in a guest apartment near my grandmother.’

Something was going on behind his back and he didn’t like it. He should have known when the old lady had been so uncharacteristically quiet this last week. His beloved grandmother was many things—opinionated, capable and clever—but never meek. He’d begun to worry she was unwell, that age and grief had finally caught up with her. He should have known better.

‘I’m here to research a book. I’m a writer.’

Asim frowned. ‘A writer?’

In a blast of realisation, it came to him. He knew where he’d heard of her. He froze, every nerve and sinew stiffening. Incredulity widened his eyes.

‘Not Jacqui, but Jacqueline Fletcher. Am I right?’ He watched her gulp and knew he wasn’t mistaken. ‘And not a writer, a journalist. Isn’t that so?’

Anger spurted in his veins. What was the old woman thinking, bringing a journalist into their midst? Bad enough at any time but now? Sheer lunacy! They had too much to lose.

And this wasn’t just any journalist. Anger turned to white-hot fury. She’d been there the day Imran died.