Stolen by the Desert King Read online

  His laugh was like treacle on her fraught nerves. “Hungry?”

  She blinked up at him, the double entendre not lost on her. She nodded, flicking her attention back to the table with cheeks that were stained cherry red. “Yep.” Embarrassment made her continue, “Mel and I were going to go for brunch when you arrived.”

  “You haven’t eaten today,” he said thoughtfully.

  Kylie nodded.

  “Is this normal for you?”

  Kylie couldn’t help the laugh that tinkled from her lips. She didn’t see the way Khalifa stiffened beside her. “No. Nothing about this is normal.”

  He moved ahead of her to the table, pulling a chair out for her to take. His intake of breath as she stepped into the space he’d created did flip flops in her belly. Because it was a sound of awareness and surprise, like he too had been unprepared for the way the air around them would crackle with heat and need.

  Good.

  Kylie didn’t like the idea of being the only one totally thrown off course by desire and lust.

  “I did not mean the boat. I referred to not eating breakfast.”

  “Oh.” Kylie shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  An army of servants descended upon them, lifting the lids, removing them momentarily so other staff members could serve portions of the delicacies onto their plates. Kylie sat back, her eyes drawn to the Sheikh’s face with an invisible magnetic force.

  A servant filled her wine glass with sparkling water and she pulled a face. “I think I need something stronger.”

  His eyes showed amusement but he shook his head. “No.”

  “No?” She arched a brow, the command sitting heavily around her heart. The fear that she’d done her best not to feel, even as a girl, beat like a bongo drum inside of her. Fear of the unknown. Of going to live at the heart of a patriarchal society. Fear of being controlled.

  Beneath the table, his foot found hers and she gasped at the need the simple contact aroused.

  “I do not want your senses to be even slightly dulled.” His smile was haunted though and she suspected there was more to it – something he wasn’t telling her. The fear swirled in her chest.

  “Is that what my life will be like in Argenon? Will I not have any say in my own choices?”

  His laugh was a short sharp rejection. “You think because I want to bring you to my bed sober I intend to take away your choices?”

  She bit down on her lip and turned away, angling her head towards the sparkling Sydney Harbour.

  The boat was moving! How had she not realised that in the time it had taken them to take their seats and admire the food that the crew had set to work on freeing the enormous vessel from its mooring and were rolling it away from land?

  “We’re moving!”

  He laughed again, a softer sound now. “This is the point of boats, I think.”

  “Yes, but …” she gaped, turning back to him. “Where are we going?”

  “You do not like surprises,” he surmised.

  Kylie shook her head, reaching for an oyster on autopilot. “On the contrary, I love them. But … I think I’ve had enough surprises today.”

  His eyes showed amusement, a swirling in their dark depths that spoke to her on an instinctive level. She ate the oyster, its salty pungency jolting her senses in a way she certainly welcomed.

  “You will have plenty of agency in Argenon,” he returned to her original question. “I have no interest in micro-managing your life.”

  The reassurance was brief but it did what he had intended. She relaxed a little, not stopping to question why she felt such inherent trust for a man she had just met.

  “What’s it like?”

  “Argenon?” He frowned, reaching for a strawberry and popping it into his mouth. “Surely you’ve been?”

  “Once. As a young girl. Before my parents … before they … before I lost them,” she finished weakly, a twist of her lips showing that she’d prefer not to speak of her family.

  He saw the emotions that crossed her delicate features and he pitied her. Pitied her for the parents who had sold her to the Haddad family, who would have seen her married to a man who would hurt her and hate her in equal measure, pitied her for their deaths, too, for no child should have to endure being orphaned.

  And he pitied her for his actions, perhaps most of all, though he knew he had chosen the only course before him. How easy it was to ignore one small woman’s needs and interests when the whole country looked to him to act! Still, his duplicity was not something he felt overly comfortable with. And it was duplicity – a knowing deception. He had ordered his staff to remove any hint of royal signage from the yacht. While his power and wealth were obvious, his exact position in Argenon society was something he intended to protect. The sooner his body had possessed hers, the better.

  His job was to destroy her betrothal – to make the marriage impossible. His kingdom needed that.

  “What do you remember?” He prompted.

  She scrunched up her nose in a gesture that made her look about five years younger than she was. “It was hot, like this, when we visited.”

  “Was it just a holiday or do your parents have family there?”

  “No, no family. I think it was to see your family, actually,” she tilted her head to one side, trying to make sense of the memories. “There was a party and a celebration, and they were very excited. My mother looked beautiful. She always did,” Kylie sighed, remembering the smell of roses that had accompanied Sophie everywhere she went, and the long, flowing dress she’d worn that night.

  Beneath the table, Khalifa dug his fingers into his knee. The million dollars Sophie and Brent Mathison had been paid for Kylie’s betrothal was obviously a small fortune to the bordering-on-bankrupt property developers. Sixteen years earlier, when they’d received the payment, it would have been an incomprehensible sum.

  But to sell their daughter?

  He despised their actions though he took an unusual degree of care not to show it.

  “You don’t remember?” She prompted. “You’re older than me. You must have been, what? Ten?”

  He concealed a smile at her attempt to flatter him by rounding down his age. “I wasn’t there.”

  She nodded slowly. “Anyway. It was hot and there were lots of people. I remember the colours,” she said, running a finger over the swollen base of her fork – it was gold, too, with a jewel embedded in the base that looked worryingly like a diamond – feeling its plumpness as her mind travelled back in time.

  “Colours?” He prompted.

  “Oh, colours everywhere. The flowers, the buildings that were all a similar design, joined together in long higgledy piggledy rows and painted different colours. Some orange, some blue, some yellow. It was striking.”

  “You must have gone to Mesathinî,” he said with a nod. “A coastal town with a tradition of using colour to ward off sea monsters.”

  Kylie wiggled her brows in amusement. “Does it work?”

  “The town is almost a thousand years old. So it must.”

  She laughed. “That’s science, right there.”

  His grin was just a flicker on his face and yet it filled her up with a warmth she hadn’t known she needed.

  “The women wore bright clothes,” she said, still floating through her memories. “Beautiful dresses and headscarves that had jewels stitched through them.”

  Her description fitted with an encounter with Argenon nobility. The Haddad family certainly wore headscarves that often had diamonds and rubies set into the stitching.

  “Will I wear a headscarf?”

  “Only for religious events,” he said with a shake of his head. “Argenon is a progressive society and the ruling family makes a point of allowing religious autonomy.”

  “I’m glad.” She nodded. “The nannies and tutors your family engaged for me over the years have almost always been formidable and sometimes I worried that I might be moving to a co
untry where I would be oppressed or…”

  “No.” His eyes flashed with determination. So long as she didn’t marry the bastard Fayez Haddad, she’d be just fine. That same determination flittered in his gut, reassuring him that he was doing the right thing. This course of action was best for everyone. “You will be happy in Argenon.”

  “Thank you.” She hadn’t realised until then just how badly she’d needed to hear that.

  “When you say formidable…?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. That must sound incredibly ungrateful.”

  He frowned in response. “No.”

  “Good. Because I am. Grateful. After my parents died, I would have gone into foster care, or been adopted, and I think I would have lost all this. My heritage. My parents’ wishes…”

  “Your heritage,” he repeated. “Your family left Argenon many generations ago. Do you really feel such a connection to our people?”

  Her smile was weak. “Are you trying to change my mind about our wedding.”

  He didn’t answer, simply lifted his own water and sipped it, his eyes locked broodingly to hers over the rim of the glass.

  But the seed had been planted inside Kylie and doubts grew easily in the furtive soil of her gut. “Do you resent this marriage?”

  “Yes,” he said, an answer so immediate and so honest that he had to backpedal swiftly. “But your body offers some compensation.” His smile showed that he was joking, but Kylie’s confusion was growing.

  And he saw it.

  He recognised it.

  Damn it. Khalifa stood, not taking his eyes off Kylie’s for even a moment. But when he spoke it was in his own language. Words she could only catch one or two of, and loudly, not for her benefit.

  The effect though translated for her. The servants that were dotted over the deck dispersed instantly, forming a line that disappeared below deck. Within seconds, they were alone.

  “Come here.”

  Kylie’s face wore a mask of bravado but her heart was rabbiting hard and fast in her chest, the tattoo urgent and overpowering. She stared at him, immobilised not by a lack of desire but rather an over-surge of it. Her limbs were weakened by lust. She stared at him, a question in the depths of her irises – a question he instinctively understood.

  With a noise heralding from deep in his throat, he stood first, moving around the table to where Kylie sat. She was frozen.

  He knelt beside her, curling an arm around the back of her chair, so that her body was wrapped in his strength and his masculine scent assaulted her nostrils.

  “I want you,” he said simply, and the reassurance was so perfect that she sucked in a breath. “Do not doubt it.”

  “I do doubt it…”

  “Why?” The fingers of one hand curled around her ankle and then lightly ran upwards, teasing the soft flesh of her calf, making her suck in a sharp breath of surprise. His eyes were locked to her profile and she had the sense that she couldn’t hide from him.

  “How can you not see how badly I want this; how badly I want to teach your body its limitations.”

  She gasped as his hands moved higher, to her inner flesh.

  “I want to make you beg for me, for more.” He grinned as his fingers moved higher and she froze, finally turning her face to his. “Starting with this.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS AN INVASION that took her breath away completely, obliterating everything she’d thought she’d known about sex, attraction, desire and need. A man she had met less than an hour earlier had breached her most intimate spaces and she was putty in his hands, literally. She sank lower in the chair and his finger swirled the entrance to her womanhood, easily passing the cotton pants she wore.

  Kylie shuddered in the seat, grateful for the sunglasses she had on her head that she could drag lower, to cover her eyes.

  “No.” A growl. A gruff commandment. “Don’t hide yourself from me.”

  “I’m…” She sucked in a deep breath, a shaking breath, turning to face him. With his spare hand, he removed her glasses, his eyes searching hers as his finger moved deeper, teasing her sensitive nerve endings.

  “This is …” She tilted her head back, her hair falling like a blonde wave down her back. “It’s…”

  He studied her from hooded eyes as pink spread across her face.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s crazy,” she ground out, thought barely possible. “It’s crazy.”

  “Why?” He began to slide his finger out then thrust into her and she made a keening noise from low in her throat.

  “I don’t … know you…”

  “You agreed to marry me,” he pointed out, the lie only a small one. After all, she had agreed to marry a man she’d never met.

  “But this … isn’t … marriage…” A whirlwind of feeling was wrapping around her, digging into her back, her spine, her heart, her core. She was quivering and her hand dropped lower, to push his away but he caught her wrist and paused her action.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, his finger so close to tipping her over the edge. She dug her nails into her palm.

  “I’m terrified,” she admitted freely, her eyes huge. “What are we doing?”

  Her admission surprised him and more than that, too. It did something odd to his assurance. He ignored the doubts. Worked beyond them. Khalifa had spent a lifetime serving Argenon and he did so now. At least, that’s what he told himself. The ancient grudge he carried towards the Haddads, the hatred he felt for Fayez Haddad, were strengthened by his own feelings and grievances. But he told himself he was being noble. That seducing this woman served his country – even as it served his own selfish need for revenge more.

  He kissed her though, kissed away her doubts as her body surrendered itself to him, trembling against him as he found her most sensitive cluster of nerves and stoked them to fever pitch. Kylie lifted a hand and gripped his shirt, holding him tight, holding her breath as his tongue duelled with hers and then, in an explosion of heat and sensation, she cried out, the intensity of release overpowering her completely.

  She kept her head pressed to his chest, riding the waves, holding him tight, eyes squeezed shut as feelings eclipsed common sense and reality.

  “What was that?” She whispered, not moving, holding him tight, breathing him in. His finger was still inside her; her muscles squeezed him and he smiled against her hair.

  “Inevitable.”

  “But…”

  “Hush.” He withdrew slowly but the pain was no less intense. Not a physical pain, but a separation that she didn’t want to bear.

  “I don’t know you.”

  He smiled, a grim smile of acceptance. “You will.”

  “I never expected…” she swallowed, trying desperately to get to grips with her wayward emotions. “I never expected that I would feel this. For you.”

  He stood, and again, the sense of absence invoked desolation in her soul. She watched as he moved back to his seat, settling himself opposite her and relaxing back in his chair.

  “Eat.”

  Kylie blinked her eyes, focussing on the plate in front of her. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat.” More of a command, her gaze skidded to his.

  “I thought our marriage wasn’t going to involve your ordering me around.”

  “We are not married yet.”

  She arched a brow and made no effort to lift her fork. Her hands were still shaking; she kept them clasped in her lap. “So you can boss me around until we are.”

  “You have not eaten all day. Eat now.”

  Kylie nodded jerkily but still made no effort to lift a finger.

  He stared at her, only the sound of the ocean lapping gently against the boat keeping them company.

  “What if you hadn’t desired me,” he prompted thoughtfully, thinking of her betrothed with distaste. Though Fayez had never had difficulty making himself attractive to women, he supposed begrudgingly, and out of nowhere, he thought of Selena, rage bursting through him. She had
deserved better than to fall in love with a piece of scum like Fayez Haddad.

  “I never thought about it,” she said simply.

  “How can you say that? You agreed to marry … me,” he fudged slightly. “Knowing nothing about me? Least of all if you would want me?”

  “I didn’t agree to marry you,” she said quietly, her eyes flicking to his for the briefest second before returning to the empty plate before her. “My parents did. I just never questioned it.”

  “I find that impossible to believe.”

  She nodded slowly. “I know.”

  “You are twenty two. At some point, surely…”

  Another nod, and now she focussed her swirling gaze on the ocean, passing beneath their boat. “When I was a teenager,” she confirmed softly. “But I was told the contracts were legally binding.” She shrugged.

  “You didn’t question that?” He couldn’t keep the scorn from his voice.

  Kylie’s eyes were huge. “No. Why should I? The lawyer was nothing to do with your family…”

  Khalifa highly doubted that. “No one can be forced into marriage.”

  “No,” she agreed softly. “That’s true. Only by that point I was millions of dollars in debt to your parents.” She gnawed at her lower lip. “The alternative to our marriage is bankruptcy.”

  “So?” He arched his brows. “You’d choose marriage to a stranger for financial reasons?”

  She expelled a sigh, her mind still not able to focus properly. “You’re making it sound … it wasn’t just that.” She lifted the knife again, running her nail over the bumps caused by the gemstone. “My parents left surprisingly few instructions for me. Then again, I suppose they weren’t expecting to die.” She shrugged her slender shoulders and Khalifa tried not to notice how fragile she looked – like a beautiful porcelain person he might break if he didn’t take care. “This is the one thing I know they wanted. Does that make sense?”