Traded to the Desert Sheikh

by Caitlin Crews

  But she’d kept her gaze trained on the ceremony, not on him.

  He’d hated it.

  They’d exchanged their initial vows, there before the kings of the surrounding realms, sheikhs and rulers and sultans galore. Officials and ministers, the ranks of Bakrian aristocrats and the high-placed members of his own cabinet. Her brother. His men.

  And then, once it had been finished and all the rest of the formal speeches about unity and family had been made for the benefit of their enemies in the region, Kavian took his betrothed aside so they could finally, finally, have a moment to themselves.

  Merely a moment, he’d thought. He hadn’t had anything planned. He’d only wanted a little bit of privacy with her, with no eyes on them and nothing but their real faces. He’d wanted to see what was between them then, when there was no one but the two of them to judge it, pick over it, analyze it.

  He had congratulated himself on his magnanimity, proud of himself that he was not like his own forefathers, that he had every intention of winning this woman slowly and carefully—instead of throwing her over his saddle and riding off into the desert with her like the Bedouin chiefs of old who made up a sizable portion of his family tree. He’d had absolutely no intention of playing the barbarian king to a deeply Westernized woman like Amaya, who no doubt had all sorts of opinions about what civilized meant. Oh, no. He’d planned to wine her and dine her like all the urbane sophisticates he’d imagined she’d known all her life, in all the cities she’d visited in all those concrete and glass places he abhorred. He’d planned to do what he had to do, whatever it took, to bind her to him in every way.

  She’d led them to that alcove, tucked away out of sight in a far-off corner of the ballroom’s second-floor balcony while the rest of the assembled throng moved about far below, reveling in Rihad al Bakri’s lavish hospitality. Kavian had stared down at her when they were finally alone. He hadn’t smiled. He’d been trying to see inside her, trying to match her exquisite beauty in person to the image he’d carried around with him in his head. He’d been trying to process the fact that she was well and truly his already, no matter how he approached her.

  It had felt like sunlight, deep inside him, warm and bright. He hadn’t known what to make of it.

  “Well,” she’d said with false brightness. “Here we are. Officially betrothed and still total strangers.”

  “We are not strangers,” he’d corrected her, with far more gruffness than he’d intended. He hadn’t meant to speak. He’d found those intricate braids that she’d worn like a crown of her own glossy hair an enchantment, and he’d been deep in their spell. He’d felt her gaze like a caress, an incantation. “I will soon be your husband. You are already mine.”

  “I’m not yours yet,” she’d said, and then she’d lifted her chin in a kind of challenge that he’d only understood, in retrospect, had been a bit of foreshadowing he should have heeded. Back then, he’d simply enjoyed it. “And you should know that I can’t marry a man with a harem. A betrothal for political purposes is one thing, especially if it helps my brother, but a marriage under such circumstances? No. I refuse.”

  Kavian had only continued to watch her, as if it was a deep thirst he felt and she the only possibility of ever quenching it. Most people caved under his regard, and quickly. Amaya had only squared her shoulders and held his gaze.

  He’d liked that. Far too much, truth be told.

  “For you,” he’d said, as if she had any choices left, as if she hadn’t just signed herself over to his keeping in full view of two countries and by now, the better part of the world, “I will empty mine. Is that what you require? Consider it done.”

  He’d stopped restraining himself then. He’d looked at her with all that fire, all that dark longing, right there on the surface. He hadn’t hidden a single bit of the beast inside him. He hadn’t tried.

  And Amaya had done the most extraordinary thing. She’d flushed, hot and red and flustered—but not frightened. Not horrified. Not even particularly scandalized—all of which he’d expected, on some level. Just...hot. Then she’d looked away as if the heat was too much. As if this was too much. As if he was.

  As if she felt exactly as he did.

  Everything in him had roared, approval and acknowledgment.

  Mine, he’d thought, with every cell in his body. With every breath.

  And he’d taken her head between his hands, those braids warm and soft beneath his palms, and he’d tasted her for the first time. It had changed everything.

  It had blown them both up, right then and there.

  That flame had only intensified in all the months since, while he’d had nothing to do while he chased her but imagine her right here, naked before him in his very own bed, the way she was right now. Finally.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” Amaya asked, and he could hear the nerves in her voice. The hunger and the heat.

  He’d been right about her—about this magnificent chemistry between them—six months ago. He was right now, too.

  “I keep telling myself I am going to take this slow,” he said, dropping his hand from her chin but moving closer to her. “Act like the sophisticated gentleman I am not. But that is unlikely, azizty. Very, very unlikely, the longer you look at me with those big, innocent eyes of yours that are nothing but a temptation.”

  “My eyes aren’t innocent.” It was as if she couldn’t help herself, when she must know he knew she lied. “They’re wicked. As dirty and debauched as the rest of me. I keep trying to tell you.”

  He only gazed back at her until he saw that flush again, warming her skin, prickling over all the soft flesh on display before him. Just as he recalled it. Then he smiled. Slightly.

  “I want you to take it slow,” she whispered.

  “No,” he said, gathering her into his arms and pulling her against the wall of his chest, exulting in the way she slid against him, then melted into him, as if she really had been made to his precise specifications. “You do not.”

  And then he settled his mouth over hers, at last, and let the fire break free, searing both of them.

  * * *

  Kavian consumed her.

  There was no other word for it.

  His kiss was a slick addiction. A wild, impossible ride, and she couldn’t get enough. He held her against him and he angled her head where he wanted it and he simply feasted.

  And Amaya loved it.

  The more he took, the more she gave, meeting every slide of his tongue against hers. She arched into him, pressing her aching breasts against the dizzying wonder of his hard chest, reveling in the sensation of that strong hand of his on her bottom, kneading her. Guiding her.

  Driving her crazy with need.

  He pulled his mouth away from hers, letting out a very male sound of satisfaction at the small, disappointed noise she couldn’t keep herself from making.

  “Be patient, azizty,” he said in that dark way of his, and she didn’t know how she knew that he was teasing her. That he was deliberately drawing this out to make that ache in her intensify.

  Or that he would continue to do it until he felt like stopping; that what she wanted would have nothing to do with it.

  She loved that, too. She had the sense he’d known she would.

  Kavian took his time, lazily tracing a path down her neck to taste every inch of her collarbone. Then he dropped his head to play with her breasts again, making her moan and shake against him as he tested the plumpness of each of them, then tasted and tugged each proud peak.

  This time, he didn’t let her topple over that edge. This time, he had more on his agenda. He swept her up and then he laid her out on that big, wide bed, stretched himself out beside her, and kept going.

  He licked his way over her navel, then lower, laughing as she bucked against him, lost somewhere between desi
re and delirium, and she didn’t much care which as long as he kept touching her. Tasting her. Making her feel more beautiful, more precious, than she’d had any idea she could feel.

  “Kavian.” She didn’t mean to say his name. She hardly knew what she was doing as he took her hips in his big hands and held her there before him as if she truly were a feast and he was nothing but hungry. “Please.”

  “I like that,” he said approvingly, and she could feel his voice against that most private part of her that was molten and aching and already his. It made her shudder, deep within, the feeling radiating out everywhere, coursing in her veins and washing over her whole body. “Beg me.”

  And then he licked his way straight into the core of her.

  Amaya exploded.

  She thought she screamed his name, or maybe that was only what it felt like inside her, and either way she was lost in the storm of sensation. Lost completely. It swept her away. It altered her very being.

  It was like dying, and the crazy part was how much she loved it. All of it.

  She felt like someone else entirely when she came back to that bed with a jolt and found Kavian propped up above her and entirely naked, holding his weight on his elbows while the hardest part of him probed at her entrance.

  He looked harsh. Unsmiling, as ever. And incredibly, impossibly beautiful.

  Amaya couldn’t seem to breathe. She was falling, she realized—tipped off the side of the world and tumbling end over end without any hope of stopping, washed out to sea forever in that dark gray gaze of his.

  He looked at her as if he wanted to eat her alive. He looked at her as if he already had done so.

  She wanted to say a thousand things. She wanted to tell him of that mess inside her that was all his doing, that she hadn’t known could exist. She wanted, and yet she couldn’t seem to do it. Instead, she held that terrible and wonderful gaze of his, and she only reached up and slid her hand along his proud jaw, holding his lean cheek in her hand.

  His gaze burned. And then he pushed himself into her, easy yet ruthless at once, sheathing himself to the hilt.

  For a moment—or a year, a lifetime, more—they only stared at each other, stretched out to near breaking on the edge of all that impossible sensation.

  “Last time, I hurt you.” His voice was gruff. Raw. Not apologetic in any way and yet it made a wet heat prick the back of Amaya’s eyes. She pressed her hand that little bit harder against his face.

  “Only for a moment,” she whispered, as if he’d asked for her forgiveness. As if she was giving it.

  And more, it was true. It had only been an instant of pain, easily forgotten and soon forgiven in the wild tumult that had followed. Even if she still didn’t understand how any of that had happened. One moment they’d been talking while officially betrothed; the next their mouths had been fused together as if there was no other possibility, and the moment after that her skirts had been pulled up to her waist and he’d been buried deep inside her.

  Inside her.

  Amaya had understood with a vivid shock that she had no control around him—over herself. She’d managed not to have sex for twenty-three years because she’d never felt that kind of connection with anyone, and then Kavian had come along and wrecked that in a day and a half. She’d been as shocked at herself for allowing it as she had been at what had actually happened.

  He was inside her again now, and this time she was far less shocked. But no more in control of either one of them. He waited, still propped there on his elbows, an enigmatic curve to that hard mouth of his.

  “Go on,” he murmured, as if he knew that she didn’t know what to do with herself and didn’t know how to do it anyway. Any of it. Last time had been like careening over the side of a cliff into a brilliant, cataclysmic explosion. This was no less vivid, no less overwhelming. But the explosion hovered out of reach. She thought perhaps that was his doing. His iron control. Because it certainly wasn’t hers. “Find out what feels good to you, azizty. I want to know.”

  Dimly, Amaya thought that she should find this all deeply embarrassing. He seemed to read her far too well. He seemed to know too much.

  He always has, a little voice whispered. He always will.

  But Amaya ignored it, and took him at his word. She circled her hips, tentatively at first. Then, when Kavian growled in stark male approval, with more deliberation. It made a whole new fire sear its way through her as she tested out the deliriously hot sensation, the drag and the friction. She ran her hands along those delectable ridges in his torso, learning the flat, hard muscles and the carved perfection of his form, crossed here and there with scars that spoke to a life of action, lived hard. She tested the shape of his strong neck, teased his flat male nipples and licked the salt from his skin.

  She pulled back, then surged forward, testing his length deep inside her, so hard in all her quivering, melting softness. Again and again and again. Until she shivered all over with a new crop of goose bumps, and looked to him, feeling something like helpless. Vibrant and electric, and still unsure.

  “Allow me,” Kavian said then, his voice hoarse and dark, and rich with satisfaction.

  And then he dropped down closer to her, slid his hands beneath her bottom and took over.

  It was the difference between the light of a candle and the blaze of the desert sun.

  He took her the way he’d kissed her—all-encompassing, almost furious, dark and sweet and necessary. And Amaya could do nothing but wrap her arms and legs around him, hold him as tightly as she possibly could and surrender to the glory of it.

  He reached between them and pressed hard at the juncture of their bodies, right where she needed it most, and she thought she heard him laugh as she shattered all around him.

  But then he followed after her, right over the side of the world, and the only thing Amaya heard him call out then was her name.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT SHOULD NOT have surprised Amaya that Kavian was a man of very definite opinions, all of which he had no trouble sharing with her as he saw fit. After all, he’d never pretended otherwise.

  What Amaya should wear, and when, and with whom. How she should spend her time in the palace when he was not with her, and certainly what she should do when he was. What she should eat, how often she should take walks in the extensive, terraced gardens, how much coffee she should drink and so on. There was no detail too small to escape his attention. Not because he was so controlling, he’d told her, but because they were making her his queen. A role that would be dissected by the masses of his people and a thousand tabloids the world over, so they could not gloss over the details.

  “You can’t really care about that,” she’d said one afternoon, a bit crossly.

  He’d come upon her in one of the gardens, bursting with bright pink-and-purple blossoms beneath the blue fall sky, and told her flatly that he didn’t like her hair up in a ponytail. That he preferred the braid she wore over one shoulder sometimes or it loose and flowing around her as she moved.

  He’d reached over and pulled the elastic from her hair himself, then tucked it into one of his pockets, as if he couldn’t bear to so much as look upon the offending ponytail a moment longer than necessary. “Can I not?”

  “You have a country to run, Kavian.” She’d scowled at him, and had wondered as she did where the courage to defy him so openly came from. When he still made her quake deep within. When it took everything she had. “What I’m doing with my hair should be the least of your concerns. Literally, the very least.”

  “I find nothing about you insignificant, azizty.” That hint of a smile on that hard mouth of his, and it spilled through her like the desert sun above them, hot and bright, and made her think she’d do anything to see it again. Stand up to him, run, submit—whatever it took. The rush of that realization had stunned her. “None of it is benea
th my notice. You are my queen.”

  And then he’d taken her in his arms, right there in the gardens, and kissed her until she’d decided that she had no particular allegiance to wearing her hair in a ponytail after all.

  But it occurred to her—as she sat with the group of advisers who were tutoring her each day on a selection of subjects Kavian felt it was important his queen know, like proper palace protocol and the intricate social hierarchies of Daar Talaas—that she always gave in. Or he caught her and then she gave in. That it wasn’t only Kavian—that her life was a series of similar surrenders that had led her straight here.

  Because it had always seemed easier to bend than cause a commotion.

  “You don’t have the right to make that decision for me,” she’d told her own father some years back. She’d wanted to take a few years off from her studies; he’d wanted her to get her degree—and he’d wanted her to stay in one place so that he’d be able to more closely monitor her, she’d suspected. She’d been very brave indeed on a mobile phone from Paris, far away from him. Polite, yet firm.

  “I beg your pardon,” the old sheikh had replied, and his voice had boomed down the phone line as if he’d been delivering a new edict he’d expected would become law within the hour. “I am your father and your king, Amaya. More than this, I pay your bills. Who has the right if I do not?”

  And she’d acquiesced. She’d told herself that she’d simply made the practical choice. That she’d done what she had to do in the space that she’d been given. That she’d always done so as a purely rational survival tactic.

  Or perhaps it’s that you are a weakling, she’d snapped at herself back then, more than once, and again now as the dry and surpassingly dull vizier in front of her launched into a lecture on the importance of learning the appropriate address for visiting ambassadors. Or you’d stand up for yourself.

  But the only person she’d openly defied in all her life was Kavian when she’d run from their betrothal—and she couldn’t understand how everything had gotten so twisted since then, that she could still want to defy him with every atom in her body, fear him as much as hunger for him with every breath and yet melt at his slightest touch.