Ash stared at his cousin Syed long and hard. Only four months separated them in age – they were more like twins than cousins. But in some ways they were at odds.
“Your father wishes it,” Ash pointed out, sipping his coffee and taking in the view of the Old City. It spread in all directions; beautiful, ancient, glorious. Beyond it were the desert plains that surrounded Kalastan, and in the far distance, the ocean. Across that sea was the Kingdom of Falina and Syed’s intended bride.
“My father wishes peace with Falina. Falina wishes peace with us. The marriage is unnecessary where both rulers are minded for harmony.”
Ash placed his cup down slowly. “How long have you been preparing that little speech?”
Syed made a sound. “Come on! You know I’m right.”
Ash grinned. “What I know is that I have the betrothal papers here. I’m expected in Falina tonight. Do you want me to cancel? To avoid going?”
“No, that won’t work,” Syed shook his head. “I am sick of delays. I want this matter settled once and for all.”
“So? What do you suggest?”
Syed’s smile showed that he’d given the matter a lot of thought. “I don’t know much of Charlotte. I’ve met her only once or twice.”
“And you didn’t like her?” Ash prompted curiously.
“Whether I liked her or not is besides the point. I do not want to enter into a marriage just because my father would like the question of Falina and Kalastan nicely stitched up.”
Before he dies.
The end of the sentence hung in the air between them, like a heavy foreshadowing of a grief neither knew how to process.
“There’s someone else?” Ash prompted.
“No.” Syed compressed his lips. Images of Sarah came to him out of nowhere. He would not let himself think of her. She was a distraction he didn’t need.
“So? Why not marry Charlotte? I have seen photographs of her. She’s stunning.”
“Do you think so?”
Ash nodded, remembering the dark hair, red lips, brown eyes, pale skin. “I don’t believe her beauty subjective.”
“We are talking about marriage! A woman I tie myself to for life. Bring to my bed! I would like some damned say in the matter.”
Ash laughed. “You are a Sheikh, as am I. There is a long precedent of our marriages being organised for political gain. Why do you not go to Falina yourself? Meet with Charlotte, see if you can imagine her as your wife?”
“And if I don’t? Rejecting her having spent time courting her is an insult that could lead to war. No, Ash. There is only one way to put this marriage off. And I need your help.”
“You know I would do anything for you,” Ash said, though he was dubious that Syed’s scheme would have any merit. “What do you suggest?”
“Go to Falina, as planned. But stay. Stay long enough to learn something of Charlotte that would make her unsuitable as my bride.”
Ash felt a rumbling of discontent roll through his gut. “And if there is nothing?”
Syed shook his head, a smile on his lips. “There will be. No one can be as perfect as she’s purported to be. Find some dirt, and I will use it to put an end to this betrothal.”
“But if there’s really nothing?” Ash insisted, nowhere nearly as confident as Syed.
“Then I will marry her.” Syed squared his shoulders and stared out at the Old City, thinking of the thousands of lives that had been lived within its walls. “Please, Ash. Do your best. I’m counting on you.”
CHAPTER ONE
“Your Highness?”
Ash lifted his head from the laptop, ignoring for a moment the emails he was wading through.
“Yes?” It was a curt abrasion for the intrusion. He had left strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed. In the two days since arriving in Falina, he’d achieved precisely nothing on Operation Betrothal Break. A few emails with the Falina palace, but other matters had more urgently commanded his attention.
Or was it that he was wasting time, dreading the very idea of looking to discredit an innocent woman just to save his cousin from a marriage he found unpalatable?
“There is a visitor for you, from the palace.”
“Is there?” He put his pen down and stood. It had been a fantasy to imagine he could put this off indefinitely.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who is it?”
“Her Royal Highness Charlotte Shareef.”
Ash paused, midway through straightening his robes. “Herself?” He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw, curiosity overriding any other emotion.
“May I allow her to enter?”
“Of course. She is the Heir to the throne of Falina and you have left her waiting in the hallway?”
The servant, fearing he’d erred in some crucial way, bowed extra low as he backed out of the room. Ash had only a moment to organise his thoughts before the door was pushed inwards once more.
The woman who entered was almost exactly like the photographs Ash had seen. Her silky, dark hair had been plaited and wound around her head, and a jewelled ribbon was weaved through the plait, creating a shimmering effect. She wore a dark ruby red dress that covered her body from neck to the floor, and all the way down to the wrists, and yet somehow it was floaty and gauzy enough to hint at the curves it concealed in a way that Ash hadn’t expected. Her eyes were brown, yes, but there were flecks of honey and caramel in them, and they were enormous and round, with curling black lashes. Her skin was a pale golden, like melted butter, and there were several dark freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her lips were cherry red, almost the exact same tone as the dress.
She was just like the picture, but so much more beautiful. A picture couldn’t convey the depth of her features, the fragrance of citrus and lavender that seemed to accompany her, and it certainly couldn’t convey her emotions, which Ash could clearly see were firing in that moment.
“Your Highness,” he murmured, bowing his head forward before moving towards her. His curiosity increased as he wondered at this unexpected, unaccompanied visit, and the sense he had that she was annoyed.
She compressed those full red lips and her eyes sparked with his, as though she was running through a thousand things she wanted to say and trying to select the one that was suitable.
“You are Sheikh Ashad Al’Eba?”
“Guilty,” he murmured. Ordinarily, he would have shaken her hand, but the princess was obviously riled about something and he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t reject the gesture. “Please, have a seat.”
She sent him a barbed look, and he knew, somehow, that she was contemplating saying ‘no’, but apparently she thought better of it and crossed to the set of armchairs to the side of the desk.
“Would you like a tea? Coffee?” His lips twisted into an expression of amusement. “Something stronger?”
Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
He suppressed a grin as he moved towards the seats but did not join her. “You wish to speak to me?”
She nodded, her hands clasped neatly in her lap. Why the hell was Syed balking at the idea of marrying this princess? True, he’d spent less than two minutes in her company, but there was no denying how utterly beautiful she was.
“You are here to negotiate the terms of my marriage.”
Ash nodded, revealing nothing of his true purpose for coming to Falina.
“And yet you email palace officials and my father, rather than me?”
The sharpness of her response fascinated him. “The arrangement has been made with your father,” he murmured, crossing to the buffet beside his desk and arranging some fruit in a bowl; berries, citrus, melon and passionfruit. He placed it in front of her then took a seat opposite.
“Yes, well, he understands that I want to be involved at this stage of negotiations,” she said, her voice flattened of any emotion. But he saw it. He saw it in the tense lines of her body, the brightness of her eyes.
“My apologies, Your H
ighness.”
She reached for a single red berry and held it for a moment. She had lovely hands. Small and fine boned with rounded nails that had been painted red, to match her lips. Were her toenails similarly painted? Unconsciously, his eyes dropped lower, checking his hypothesis. Only in order to arrive at her feet, his gaze had to travel the length of her body, and he found his eyes lingering on the swell of her breasts and the hips he could see beneath her dress.
She wore closed toe shoes.
When he lifted his eyes to her face, her cheeks had two bright pink spots in them that showed she’d been all too aware of his inspection. He wondered why he didn’t feel sorry for that? Why he didn’t feel that he’d been inappropriate?
“It is my marriage we are to discuss,” she continued. Was her voice breathy because she was discussing an event of such gravity? Or had his appraisal made her pulse hammer?
His dick hardened and Ash was grateful he was sitting, covered by the folds of his robe. The reaction was unwanted, though. This woman was, more than likely, to be his cousin’s bride, but biology was biology.
He was only human, and whatever Syed might think, Charlotte Shareef was, hands down, the most stunningly desirable woman he’d ever met. She lifted a hand and toyed with her earring; it was an enormous diamond. Higher up her ear she had a slim gold band and he found himself fantasising about removing it, removing all the jewellery she wore, the clothes too, until it was just her and her sexy red fingernails and the toes he imagined were painted to match.
“My uncle has always dealt with your father,” Ash murmured, his eyes dropping to her lips as she pulled the lower between her teeth and massaged it distractedly.
“Yes, well. Now it is you, apparently, in your uncle’s place, and me in my father’s.”
Ash was more than happy to deal with Charlotte, except for one troublesome point. He wasn’t sure how the hell he was going to keep a lid on a very unexpected and unwelcome desire.
He needed to get laid.
And not by Charlotte.
Damn it! The thought alone conjured images he didn’t want. Her, straddling him, taking him deep inside of her, her dark hair falling over his naked chest as she dropped her mouth to run her tongue over his flesh. He groaned inwardly.
This was a disaster.
Were it not for the pledge he’d made Syed, he would have walked out of the whole thing then and there.
“Do you think your father won’t act in your best interests?” He prompted.
She rolled the berry between her fingers and finally lifted it to her mouth.
Great, just what he needed. Seeing it poised for a moment between her lips before she sucked it in and savoured the sweetness had him at a tipping point.
He stood uneasily and moved to the window, staring out at the ocean and thinking of anything unsexy he could fathom. Maggots, infected sores, his dying uncle.
She didn’t answer and that inspired curiosity deep within him.
The silence stretched like elastic. It pulled and pulled until finally Ash turned around and looked at her. In a moment of privacy, when she thought herself unobserved, Charlotte had dipped her head forward and caught it in her hand. He studied the gesture long and hard, his mind trying to comprehend her situation. Was it possible that she didn’t want to go ahead with this marriage?
That would solve Syed’s problem, surely. If both parties didn’t want the union, it couldn’t go ahead. Could it?
“Is something the matter?” He prompted, hoping for selfish reasons that he was right.
“I don’t want my father to be bothered by this,” was all she said.
Ash frowned. “The King isn’t well?”
“He’s fine. He’s just … busy.”
Ash rubbed his hand across his jaw; it was a gesture he did often when deep in thought. The sense that she wasn’t telling him something was growing. “Too busy to be bothered with his only daughter’s marriage?”
“He will see the contract before we agree to the final terms. I imagine there will be a great many points for you and me to discuss before it reaches that stage.”
“I see,” Ash murmured, thinking that ‘a great many points’ gave a great many options for things to go awry. Which is what Syed wanted. Hope that he might not have to bother worrying about Charlotte’s past, and discovering a means with which to discredit her, flared inside of him.
“I don’t intend to be difficult,” she murmured, reaching for another berry and holding it between her fingers for a moment. It was softened – whether by the heat of the day or the transport to the embassy – and it stained her fingertips. “But I refuse to marry a man I don’t know without having at least some say over the type of marriage we’ll have.”
Ash felt a twist in his gut, something foreign and uncomfortable. It caught him completely unawares.
“And what terms are important to you, Your Highness?”
Her lips twisted in a mocking smile. She seemed to realise that her fingers were dark red. She lifted the berry to her lips and ate it, then placed her finger in her mouth for a moment. He stared at the gesture, his stomach churning with a desire he could no longer ignore.
But he knew what his duties required of him, and that certainly didn’t include fantasising about Charlotte Shareef.
“I don’t think we need to refer to one another by our titles, do you? We are, after all, going to be family.”
Family.
There it was again. That strange stitch inside of his chest.
“The terms?” He heard himself ask, his voice far more scathing than he’d intended. But he was impatient, and his anger was all self-directed.
She seemed to recollect herself. “Where we’ll live. How often we’ll need to see one another.” Her cheeks flushed. “The expectation of intimacy.”
His arousal was threatening to come back to life. He felt it kick and internally he muttered every curse word he knew.
“I see. Anything else?”
She nodded. “I know there is to be a financial settlement – of course that needs to be finalised. The political agreements that come into place as a result of the wedding,” she paused, knowing the value of these agreements and their importance to the kingdom.
Ash nodded. These were all valid terms, and he had expected to deal with each and every one. Though he’d imagined sitting in a boardroom, facing off against several palace officials and lawyers, as well as Charlotte’s father, King Rama. Not alone in a room with the beautiful, distracting Charlotte.
“This will take some time.”
She nodded. “I’m prepared to meet as often as necessary. I do not want to marry until I know every issue has been laid out in this document. Understood?”
God, he’d have to meet her a lot to get it sorted. He was torn between a sense of warm anticipation and dread.
“Okay. Shall we get started immediately?”
“Fine by me.” She reclined in the chair a little. “Mind if I get comfortable then, Ashad?”
Even the way she said his name made him want her. A whisper against his flesh. Ashad, Ash-ad, with a breathy pause between the syllables. He nodded. “Make yourself at home,” he invited, taking two bottles of mineral water.
As he walked towards the chairs again, he froze.
She was in the process of removing her shoes. They were leather slippers, a burgundy that matched the dress. And beneath them, her dainty, pale toes were topped in a bright red paint that might as well have sealed Ash’s fate.
He took the seat opposite, catching a hint of her distracting fragrance. “You have met Syed?”
She nodded, reaching for a grape. “Only twice, I think.”
Ash studied her thoughtfully. “I know him well. Do you have any questions about your groom?”
Colour stole across her cheeks. She shook her head, her eyes not quite meeting Ash’s.
Curious at her reaction, his eyes narrowed. “Not a single question about the man you’re to marry? Despite the fact you’ve j
ust said you hardly know him?”
“Oh.” She fluttered her lashes as though she realised that she’d made some vital misstep. Why? And what? “What would you have me ask?”
She was adept at dodging questions, that much was apparent. His interest in her increased. “Let’s try this another way,” he murmured thoughtfully. “What is there about you that you think my cousin should know?”
Her heart was racing. He could see it from the way the delicate pulse point at the base of her neck was hammering against her soft skin. He clasped one hand over the other to stop from reaching forward and touching the tell-tale sign of emotion.
“I think knowing one another is less important than knowing what our marriage will be,” she said after a small pause. “Does your cousin envisage us … sharing a room? Once we are married?”
Straight to it, Ash thought with admiration. “An heir will be required.”
She frowned. “Even though Zahir has married?”
Ash shrugged. “The expectation of children is carried by both Syed and Zahir equally. And by me, also,” he added as an afterthought.
“Why?”
His lips twisted in a smile. “It is the way of our people. The royal family’s prosperity and power is measured by its number.”
“Fine,” she said, moving past the point. “We’ll have to cross that bridge at some point.”
Her reticence fascinated him. “Do I take it that’s something that worries you?” He asked softly, leaning forward a little in his chair.
A pale pink spread through her cheeks and he was entranced by her innocent beauty. “It’s something I can’t quite imagine,” she answered frankly despite the awkwardness she was feeling.
“You are inexperienced,” he murmured.
“Really?” She swallowed, her fine neck knotting visibly. Memories she wanted to suppress were clouding her mind. She kept visibly calm with effort. “You really want to ask if I’m a virgin?”
He ignored what he took as her indignation – which she had every right to feel. “It is something that I would be discussing with your father’s aides if you weren’t here,” he reminded her gently.
She nodded, her fingers fidgeting in her lap. Then, her eyes locked to Ashad’s and it was as though he’d been punched in the gut. An electric charge moved between them, arcing with heat and emotion. “Is he?”
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