Crowned at the Desert King's Command

by Jackie Ashenden

  She could feel her own need start to rise, ignited by the way he looked at her. It didn’t take much to set her burning these days—not when he was around. But she couldn’t let it get to her, not right now. She needed to say something first.

  ‘Wait.’ She took a steadying breath. ‘I have something to say.’

  His gaze narrowed. ‘What?’

  Okay, good. He was prepared to listen. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said at the oasis. About your childhood.’

  His inky brows pulled down in a scowl. ‘That has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Yes, it does. You’re my husband. You told me once that everything about me is your business, which also must mean that everything about you is mine.’

  A certain kind of energy was gathering about him now, dark and electric and absolutely mesmerising. His golden stare held her fast, frozen where she stood, and the warning glitter in it made it obvious that he didn’t like what she’d said.

  But that was too bad. She hadn’t let herself be intimidated by him since she’d arrived here and she wasn’t about to start.

  ‘I do not want to hear about this now,’ Tariq growled, advancing on her. ‘I have other needs first.’

  But she knew what those needs were, and she had a suspicion that they weren’t only to do with sex. That it was the forbidden connection he came in search of whenever he was in this mood. He would accept it if she offered it without strings. Without any need for him to return it.

  ‘Or we could sit and talk.’ She lifted her chin, looking him in the eye. ‘Conversation, Tariq. You remember how to do that?’

  He didn’t stop, his lean-hipped hunter’s stride closing the distance between them, his tiger’s gaze on hers. ‘I do not want to talk.’

  She didn’t have any time to evade him. One minute he was nowhere near her, the next he was gripping her hips and pulling her close.

  She flung up her hands, pressing her palms against his hard chest, holding him away. ‘I’m not trying to take anything from you or make you give me something in return,’ she said, trying to master her own helpless physical response to him. ‘I’m not going to demand anything from you. Just... If you need a friend, I can be one for you.’

  He went very still, staring down at her, his eyes glittering. ‘A friend?’ He said the word as if he had no idea what it meant. ‘Why would I need a friend?’

  ‘Everyone does.’ His chest was hot beneath her palms, his muscles like iron, stiff with tension. ‘Even kings.’

  ‘You are mistaken.’ His fingers tightened on her. ‘I have no need of a friend. Ever.’

  But she could see behind the desire in his eyes and she knew what drove him. Because she felt it in herself. He wanted a connection just as badly as she did.

  ‘How would you know?’ she asked softly. ‘When you’ve never had one?’

  He made a deep, dismissive sound, pulling her closer, fitting her hips against his so she could feel the hard, demanding length of him through the silk of her robes.

  ‘I have Faisal. And I have other advisors.’

  Her heart clenched tight. Was that what he truly thought friends were? His royal advisors? An old family servant? But of course he would. He had no other reference, did he?

  ‘They’re not friends, Tariq.’ She pressed her fingertips to the warm cotton of his shirt. ‘They are employees. And that’s not the same thing.’

  He ignored her, taking her mouth in a hot, hard kiss that left her breathless and unsteady on her feet.

  ‘You should sit down,’ he growled. ‘And stop talking.’

  The kiss left her lips tingling, with the dark, rich taste of him on her tongue, and it would have been easy to let him keep going. To stop pushing him, to let him do what he wanted and make her mindless with pleasure right here in the library.

  But that, in essence, would be running away again. That would be hiding under the table the way she’d used to do, or running into the woods. Curling around her pain like a wounded animal and keeping it inside, not letting it leak into the atmosphere and make everything worse.

  Yet running hadn’t solved anything. It had only caused her even more pain. She couldn’t do that again. She had to make a stand.

  Her hand slid from his chest and up, to cup his strong, beautiful face. ‘You do know what a friend is, don’t you?’

  The gold of his eyes was like a sword spearing through her, full of sharp edges. ‘Of course I do not,’ he snapped. ‘As you said before, I have never had one.’ He pulled away from her suddenly and gestured to the low couch nearby. ‘Sit down, Charlotte.’

  Another order. And calling her ‘Charlotte’ meant he was displeased with her.

  She studied the look on his face. He was angry, that was clear, and he didn’t want her pushing him. Didn’t want her reminding him of the past that still so obviously hurt him and the mistake he’d made because he was human, because he’d been a boy who’d desperately wanted someone.

  She could show him that, couldn’t she? She could show him what it was like to have someone. A friend and a lover. A wife. A support. It would mean opening herself up and not demanding anything from him. But that was what you had to do when you wanted to tame a beast, wasn’t it?

  Slowly and carefully you fed it your heart.

  ‘Charlotte,’ he repeated, low and dark. ‘I gave you a command.’

  His eyes glittered like golden flames burning behind glass and she was reminded of what she’d thought weeks ago: this man was a volcano. Harsh and cold on the outside, while underneath he seethed, molten with rage and passion, burning up inside because all those emotions had nowhere to go.

  Well, maybe she would give them an outlet. That was what a friend would do.

  ‘Your father was wrong, by the way,’ Charlotte said steadily, moving over to the couch Tariq had indicated. ‘He shouldn’t have brought you up the way he did.’

  She sat down, arranging her robes around her and folding her hands in her lap. Then she looked up at him.

  ‘No one can live in a vacuum, let alone a child. They’d suffocate.’

  His face was impassive as he moved to where she sat, standing in front of her, hard and cold as granite. Yet the heat in his eyes was as unyielding and merciless as the desert sun.

  ‘This conversation, wife, is over.’ His voice was rough and hot, full of lava and gravel. ‘Spread your legs for me.’

  * * *

  Tariq’s heart was beating far too fast, and it felt as if the hungry animal in his chest, the one he kept caged and leashed, was sinking its claws into him once again. If he wasn’t careful it would claw him to pieces entirely—and who knew what would happen then?

  He remembered the disgust in his father’s eyes as he’d looked at Tariq from across his desk...

  ‘You are a disgrace,’ Ishak had said angrily over the constant ringing of the phone, with the consequences of Tariq’s betrayal already reverberating through Ashkaraz. ‘After everything I have taught you, you have learned nothing.’ His father’s expression had twisted. ‘You are unworthy, Tariq. Unworthy of being my heir. Unworthy of being my son.’

  The memory shuddered through him and he shoved it aside, concentrating instead on the woman sitting calmly on the couch in front of him, her blue gaze steady on his.

  His chest ached, and a strange and molten anger was seething inside him. He didn’t know what she was talking about. A friend? That was nonsense. What did he need a friend for? He’d never had one, it was true, but then, he’d never needed one.

  He didn’t need anyone.

  A lie. You need her.

  But only for sex. In fact, since coming back from the oasis it seemed as if sex with his wife was all he thought about. He couldn’t concentrate on his duties, on the work he needed to do. Instead he found himself stalking the corridors of the palace in search of her, hard and aching. She wou
ld always give him what he wanted. And yet afterwards, when he should have been well sated, all he felt was hollow. Empty. Like Tantalus, for ever drinking and for ever thirsty.

  It was inexplicable.

  He felt it now as he looked down at her, sitting on that couch in a spread of sky-blue silk. An aching emptiness. A hunger. A thirst.

  She was wrong about suffocating in a vacuum. You’d only suffocate if you needed air to breathe, and he didn’t. He’d trained himself to live without it. In fact, he’d prove it to her.

  ‘You heard what I said.’ His voice was too low and too rough. ‘Do as you are told.’

  She didn’t protest, spreading her knees, her blue eyes full of the same understanding he’d seen in the firelight that night at the oasis.

  ‘Did you know that one night I ran away from home?’ she said quietly. ‘My parents had been arguing more than usual and I couldn’t stand it. I stayed out all night and they ended up calling the police.’

  Tariq ignored her, dropping to his knees in front of her. He put his hands on her thighs and pushed them apart, spreading her wider.

  ‘They searched for hours,’ Charlotte went on. ‘I heard them calling my name but I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to go back home and listen to all that shouting. They found me, though, and dragged me back.’

  Why was she telling him this? He didn’t want to hear it. He wanted to hear nothing but her gasps of pleasure and her sighs. The way she called his name just as she was about to come.

  He took the hem of her robes in his fists.

  ‘My parents were so angry. And my mother decided that I was too much trouble to fight over, so she let Dad have custody of me.’ Her voice wavered slightly. ‘Even though he didn’t really want me.’

  The material was soft in his hands, the scent of her body sweet. His hunger was pulsing in time with his heartbeat and he didn’t know why he’d stopped. Didn’t understand why that tremble in her voice had made his chest ache.

  ‘I know you may not want me either,’ she continued. ‘Not for anything more than sex. But if you need someone to talk to or just...be with, I will be that person for you.’

  The words hurt—sticking inside him like thorns, piercing him right through. Which was ridiculous.

  He didn’t want someone to talk to or ‘be with’—whatever that meant. He had Faisal. He had his council. And as for her—well, he needed her for one thing and one thing only.

  ‘Be silent,’ he growled.

  Understanding glowed in her eyes, as if she could see those thorns in his heart. As if she knew how much they hurt and how hard he was fighting them.

  She said nothing, only looked at him. And for some reason her silence made him feel even worse, so he jerked her robes up to her waist, uncovering her, not caring if the fabric ripped.

  He had to do something to take away the terrible understanding on her lovely face. To strip it from her, turn her pretty eyes dark, make her blind to everything but pleasure. Make her need him.

  Prove that you do not need her?

  Yes, and that too. Because he didn’t. He needed nothing from her but her body.

  Under her robes was a pair of loose trousers in the same fine silk, and the material parted without any resistance as he tore them from her, along with the lacy knickers she wore underneath.

  She didn’t stop him, but he felt her tremble as she was finally bare under his hands, her skin warm and as fine as the silk he’d ripped from her.

  His heart was beating so loudly he couldn’t hear a thing, and the edge of hunger inside him was made sharper by the scent of her arousal.

  He looked down at the soft, damp nest of curls between her thighs, her skin pink and slick. His hands on her pale flesh looked rough and dark—as if they would tear her as he’d torn the fabric of her robes.

  You are unworthy. A disgrace.

  He growled again, shoving her thighs wide, wanting to look at her and not listen to his father’s voice in his head.

  She was so pretty. So delicate. And this was all he needed from her—nothing more. Certainly not friendship. Nothing that would threaten the walls he’d built around himself. Nothing that would threaten his detachment. He was perfectly fine, here in his vacuum.

  He slid his hands up her thighs, losing himself in the feel of her beneath his fingertips. Then higher still to the heat that lay between. She sighed as he touched her, parting her wet flesh gently, and the soft, needy sound shivered through him.

  Yes, this was how it should be. Her needing him. Her desperate for him. Not the other way around. Never that.

  Yet his hands were shaking as he held the soft folds apart, and he was breathing so fast it was as if he couldn’t get enough air. And he was ravenous, suffocating in his vacuum, and she was the air he needed to breathe.

  He should have stopped then—if only to prove to himself that he could hold himself apart from her. But he couldn’t. The hunger was too much to bear.

  Leaning forward, he bent his head between her thighs, running his tongue directly up the centre of her sex, desperate for a taste.

  She jerked, a soft cry escaping her, but he didn’t stop, The hunger was sinking its claws deep into him. He slid his hands to her hips and held her still as he began to explore her, the taste of her exploding in his head, a salty-sweet burst of flavour that made him even harder and more desperate.

  ‘Tariq...’ she gasped, twisting in his grip. ‘Oh...’

  The pleading note in her voice was exactly what he’d been hoping for, so he didn’t stop then either, teasing the hard little bud with his tongue and then dipping down, circling the entrance to her body, before pushing inside to taste her deeper.

  He wanted her as hungry as he was. As desperate. As frantic. He wanted that terrible knowledge in her eyes gone. She looked at him as if she’d seen inside him and seen the lonely little boy he’d once been. The boy who’d broken under his father’s lesson.

  The boy who was unworthy, a disgrace to his name.

  He would never let himself be that boy again.

  She cried out, her fingers tangling in his hair, her grip on him bordering on pain. But that only sharpened everything deliciously, making him growl yet again against her wet flesh and loosen his grip on her hip, sliding his hand beneath the soft curve of her buttocks. Then he tilted her so he could taste her even deeper, making her groan and arch in his hold.

  A dark satisfaction at the sound of her cries unwound inside him, along with a deep possessiveness that he couldn’t hold back. He would make her forget all this friendship nonsense. Make her forget so completely she’d never think of it again. Yes, and he’d make her forget that her father hadn’t wanted her, that her mother hadn’t fought for her. He’d make her forget about everything but him and what he could give her. She wouldn’t need anything else and neither would he.

  He pushed deeper with his tongue and she writhed, her body trembling harder as he brought her to the brink. And then he pushed her over with another wicked lick, holding her tightly as she sobbed and twisted between his hands, the climax riding her hard.

  Her scent was all around him, her taste on his tongue, her heat so close, and abruptly his own need tightened its grip around his throat, threatening to choke him.

  He let her go, pushing himself back from her. She made a glorious picture, leaning against the back of the couch with her face a deep rosy colour, her eyes glittering and dark with the after-effects of pleasure. Her legs were spread wide, there was the sheen of moisture on her inner thighs, and her sex was open and wet and ready for him.

  He reached for the rest of her robes, pulling them away from her until she was sitting there naked, surrounded by blue silk, like a jewel in the middle of fine tissue paper.

  ‘Lie down,’ he ordered hoarsely, and rose to his feet, not taking his gaze from her as she did as she was told, lying back on the couch, naked and
beautiful and ready for him.

  He couldn’t wait to undress. He simply undid his trousers and freed himself, then joined her on the couch, settling himself between her spread thighs. She reached for him but he pushed her hands away, guiding himself to the entrance of her body and thrusting home.

  Charlotte gasped and arched beneath him, her silky thighs closing around his hips, her breasts lifting. Her silvery lashes came down, lying on her cheeks, her mouth was slightly open. For a second he couldn’t move. Could only gaze down at her beneath him, the grip of her sex around him and the heat of her body blanking his mind utterly.

  And it should have been enough. It shouldn’t have made him feel so hollow, as if there was something more. Something so close he could almost touch it.

  ‘Look at me,’ he demanded roughly, before he could stop himself. ‘Look at me, Charlotte.’

  Her lashes lifted at his command, her gaze meeting his, and a hot, intense electrical charge pulsed straight through him. For a moment it felt as if he held something in his hands, something ineffable and beautiful, that would break if he gripped it too hard.

  There was tenderness in Charlotte’s eyes, a warmth that had nothing to do with sexual heat, and she put out a hand, cupping his cheek as if he was the precious thing, the thing that might break.

  His chest ached, a heavy weight pressing on it. The consequences of the vacuum in which he’d been trying to breathe for so long. The vacuum that seemed to be suffocating him, after all.

  Yet not when she touched him. The contact of her fingers on his cheek, the clutch of her sex around his, the heat of her body and the warmth in her silver-blue eyes were all lifelines containing oxygen.

  It felt as if they were the only things keeping him alive.

  He took a shaken breath, then another, and when her fingers trailed along his jaw the pressure on his chest lifted. He took another breath, right down deep into his lungs, and it felt like the first breath he’d ever taken.

  And when he moved inside her, deep and slow, it felt as if the pleasure was another lifeline too, another strand connecting him to her.