Traded to the Desert Sheikh

by Caitlin Crews

  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.”

  She knew, distantly, that there were a hundred things she should say. She should challenge him. She should fight him. She should refuse to act like this simply because he wanted her to do it—but she knew, of course she knew, that he wasn’t the only one who wanted it. And she wasn’t sure she could face what that said about her, what it made her.

  So perhaps it was easier to simply do as he asked instead.

  “Kneel up,” he told her in that same low, knowing voice, as if he was already inside her. As if he was in her mind, as well. As if he knew all those dark, twisted things she couldn’t admit to herself. “Right where you are.”

  “I’m not going to kneel before you and beg you for— for anything,” she threw at him. But she didn’t sound like herself and he didn’t look particularly moved by her outburst.

 
“Of course not. You are so appalled by all of this, I am sure.”

  “I am.”

  “I can see that.” His head canted slightly to one side, and those slate-gray eyes gleamed silver. “Kneel up, Amaya. Do not make me ask you again.”

  This, right here, was the moment of truth. She didn’t entirely comprehend why she’d taken her clothes off when he told her to, but she couldn’t unring that bell. But this, here, now—this was where she had to draw the line.

  It was simple. All she needed to do was stand up. Climb off this bed and walk away. Kavian was many things, but she didn’t believe he was truly a brute. Hard, yes. The hardest man she’d ever met. But she understood on some deep feminine level of intuition she hadn’t known she possessed that while he might merrily shove away at her boundaries, he wouldn’t actually force her into anything. All she needed to do was get off this bed.

  She moved then, though her body hardly felt like hers. She could feel every part of her skin, as if every square inch of it was alive in a way it never had been before—a way she never had been until now. She felt so highly sensitive it was as if the air around them were a thick, padded thing, massaging her.

  Maybe that was why she didn’t really notice what she was doing until she’d already done it. And then she was kneeling there before him, precisely as he’d commanded her to do.

  That was bad enough. Worse, when he only looked at her, she arched her back again, pulling her shoulders back and presenting him with her breasts as he’d asked her to do before. Not only her breasts—her whole body. Right there before him.

  This was the silver platter, she understood then. She’d climbed up onto it and undressed for it and arranged herself on it, all for him.

  Her pulse skittered through her body, wild and erratic and much too fast.

  He waited.

  She didn’t know how she knew he was waiting, but she did. He was.

  And the air between them seemed charged. Spiked. She couldn’t see anything but that hard, oddly patient gaze of his. She couldn’t feel anything but hunger. A deep, dark, consuming hunger that made her knees feel so weak she was deeply, wildly grateful that she wasn’t trying to stand.

  She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him to take her the way he had done that night six months ago, the way he had today in that pool. She wanted him.

  “Then you must say the word, azizty, and you will have me,” he murmured, and Amaya realized to her horror that she’d said all of that out loud.

  Her throat was as dry as if she’d inhaled the whole of the desert outside. She shook, over and over, and she didn’t think she’d stop. She understood that this was a line she could never uncross. That there would be no returning to who she’d been before. That if she was honest, it had already happened six months ago and she’d simply been trying her best to deny it all this time. Running and running and ending up right back where she’d started.

  Worse, this time, because she knew not only what she was doing, but what he could do, too.

  “Please,” she whispered. But that wasn’t what he was looking for.

  “Say it,” he ordered her, his voice tight.

  She didn’t pretend it wasn’t a full and total surrender. But in that moment, she wasn’t sure she cared.

  You will use my name, he’d told her. Perhaps the begging part had been implied, even then.

  Amaya didn’t care about that, either.

  “Please,” she said again. “Kavian, please.”

  Kavian smiled. It was very male. Dark and satisfied. It made her whole body light up and burst into flame.

  And then he reached for her and made it all that much worse.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KAVIAN WANTED TO throw her down and sink deep inside her in that instant. He wanted to slake the white-hot burn of hunger inside him, made all the worse for the uncharacteristic restraint he’d showed these past months while he scoured the planet for her.

  He’d found to his great surprise that after he’d had Amaya, even in such a blind rush, no other woman would do.

  She would pay for that, too.

  But first he would bind her to him in a way she’d never untangle. First, he would make certain she saw nothing else in all the world but him. He would make her need him more than air and maybe then she would stop looking for exit strategies. He wanted to own her, body and soul. But first, he would worship her.

  Kavian told himself they were the same thing.

  And if the idea of having her completely at his command—the way she should have been since the day of their betrothal—made that tight thing in his chest feel easier, well, he told himself it was the conquest that fired his blood, nothing more. That tightness was about the injustice and sheer insult of the way she’d kept herself from him, that was all. She was his. It was time she behaved as if she knew that at last, as if she finally understood her place.

  Because Kavian was king of this harsh land, not a bloodhound who could roam the earth forever in search of his runaway bride. He had won back his father’s throne with his blood, his strength. He ruled Daar Talaas with his own cunning and his commitment to defend what was his no matter the cost. He’d had no choice but to chase down the woman who had tried to shame him in the eyes of his people.

  More than that, he’d wanted her. He thought he would always want her. She was his.

  But it was past time he got back to the intricate business of running this ancient, desert-hardened place, or he would lose it to someone who would do so in his stead. That was the law of Daar Talaas. That was the price of power—it belonged only to the man who could wield it.

  His relationship with this woman could be no different. He would not allow it.

  Kavian took Amaya’s sweetly rounded chin in his hand and held her there, though he knew he could hold her as easily with his gaze. He could feel the way she shivered at his touch. He could see emotion and longing in those dark eyes of hers, and he reveled in both. He could smell the delicate scent of her soft skin and the sweet fragrance that rose from the masses of her dark hair she finally wore down around her pretty shoulders.

  And beneath it all rose the far richer fragrance of her arousal.

  The only thing he’d ever wanted more, in all his life, was the throne he’d won back through his own fierce determination. He’d found the darkness within him; he’d become it. He’d used it to do what was necessary. He’d been raised on vengeance and he’d finally taken his when he was barely twenty. And even that—the achievement of his life—seemed far off just now, with Amaya naked and obedient before him, her gaze fixed to his.

  This is the way back to reality, he assured himself. Conquer her here, now, and you will never need to risk the throne for her again.

  He’d known that he wanted Amaya from the moment he saw that video of her. And he’d known precisely how he would take her, and how she would thrill to it, the moment he met her in her brother’s palace. He’d suspected then that she would fit him perfectly.

  Now he knew it as well as he knew his own name.

  Six months ago, the wild passion between them had been a burst of flame, unexpected and all consuming. They’d met for the first time when Kavian arrived with his entourage at the Bakrian Royal Palace to claim her as his betrothed and begin the official alliance between their two countries. It had been a formal and very public greeting of political allies, an elegant affair in a majestic salon, surrounded on all sides by ministers and aides, ambassadors and carefully selected palace reporters who could be relied upon to trumpet the appropriate information into all the correct ears.

  There had been all those contracts to sign, all those oaths to take, and this woman he’d agreed to marry had been dressed in a fine, formal gown that made her look every inch the untouchable desert princess. They’d talked with excruciating politeness while surrounded and
closely observed on all sides. They’d been feted at a long, formal dinner ripe with too many speeches from what seemed like every Bakrian noble in the whole of the kingdom. And for all that they’d sat next to each other during the endless evening, they’d never been out of that too-public fishbowl for even a moment. There had been no real conversation, no chance of anything but the loosest connection.

  Then they’d had their betrothal ceremony the following day, in the grand ballroom of the palace that had been draped in every shade of gold in the glare of too many cameras to count. Cameras and gossips and a parade of aristocrats to comment on every last bit of it. Like carrion crows, pecking away at them.

  “In my country,” Kavian had told her as they’d made their formal entrance together, touching only in that stiffly appropriate manner that befitted their respective ranks on such an occasion and before so many judgmental eyes, “there is no need for a wedding ceremony. It is the claiming that matters, not the legalities that follow. A wedding is all but redundant.”

  “My brother’s kingdom may not sit at the forefront of the modern age, exactly,” Amaya had replied, and he’d been lost in the bittersweet chocolate gleam in her eyes, the sweet lushness of her lips, that kick of deep, dark need that had haunted him since the moment he saw her face. To say nothing of the unscripted, less than perfectly polite thing she was saying then and that flashed in her gaze, giving him a hint of the woman beneath the high-gloss Bakrian princess adorning his arm. A glimpse of that defiance of hers that sang to him. “But he does prefer that any royal marriages be legalized. As do I, I will admit.”

  “As you wish,” Kavian had murmured. In that moment, he’d thought he’d give her anything she asked for another glimpse beneath her surface. His name, his protection, that went without saying. His kingdom, his wealth, his lands, certainly. His blood. His flesh. His life. Whatever she desired.