by Pippa Roscoe
Something red flashed in his eyeline and he knew that Star had undone the long thick plait of her hair. He clenched his jaw against the need to turn and look. Instead he worked on building a fire, ignoring the way ripples of water lapped against the fertile green border of the pool.
While his imagination painted images of mermaids with flowing red tresses and mystical creatures, he unpacked the food he had brought, placing it in the cool fridges running from the almost silent generator behind the tent.
The staff from Alhafa had worked through the night to make this happen, happy to do a kindness to the woman who had brought life back to the palace. He marvelled at how quickly, readily and easily she had become their Queen. But would it make her happy? Would being royal, being a princess in a foreign land, be right for her? Becoming a spectacle for the world to investigate, judge and find wanting, no matter how perfect she was. Her life would be on display and at risk and he knew that he could not do that to someone as pure and beautiful as her.
The fire took, the crackle and burn mixing with the chirps of the cicadas and the cry of the birds that stopped at the oasis on their journey across the desert. Wind gently rustled the leaves in the trees and water rippled and in his mind’s eye he could see Star in the lake, her hair splayed on the surface and her body hidden from his gaze by the distortion of the liquid, no matter how pure.
His pulse pounded in his ears, blocking out the sounds of the desert. He cursed the wood beneath his hands because it wasn’t smooth, freckled skin, soft as satin. A swift inhale followed a pinprick and he looked down to find a splinter in his thumb. Frowning, he removed the sliver of wood, watching the tiny bloom of blood before pressing it to his lips.
He’d never wanted a woman like this.
And he never would again.
‘What happens if I’m not pregnant?’
Her voice, a little shaky, a lot tentative, came from behind him.
‘You’ve only told me about what happens if I am.’
Because he’d not wanted to let her go.
He cleared his throat from his emotions’ tight hold. ‘You will return to Norfolk. I will return to the throne.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘I’ll never see you again?’
She had posed it as a question that he chose instead to take as a statement, unable to bring himself to answer. Silently he roared his fury. Everything in him wanted to reach for her, just one last time. Not damning the consequences, but fully understanding them and facing them. His mind taunted that it was a gift, this one night, more than either he or she should have ever expected, but his heart berated him. Maybe unconsciously he’d known that coming here wasn’t just for her, but for him—to have this, to have her. He was selfish and she deserved so much more.
‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ The finality of her tone ate at him. It was as if she were saying goodbye.
‘It was the least I could do.’ He paused, knowing that his next words would open up a path neither should take, but both seemed powerless to resist. ‘It may be the only thing I can do.’
‘I understand,’ she said quietly.
He spun around and pierced her with his gaze. ‘Do you?’ he demanded, furious with her, with himself. There wasn’t anything about this that he understood.
‘I do.’
It was then he took her in. Long red tresses soaked into ropes, lying flat against her skin. The long-sleeved white top almost transparent, revealing more than it concealed, pressed against her body the way he wanted to be.
His hands itched to reach for her, to take her, to pull her to him.
He was shaking his head as she took a step forward and stopped, but he caught the way she masked her hurt in an instant and he cursed. She turned to walk away, but he was up and reaching for her before she could take a second step, turning her in his arms before she could take another breath, and punishing her with a kiss—punishing them both—before he could think again. She gasped into his mouth and he took it within him, locked it away because that was how she made him feel. Shocked, awed, thrilled... He wanted her to remember this moment for the rest of her life, because he already knew he would.
Her arms came up to his shirt, her hands fisted the cotton, pulling him to her, their passion frantic, needy and desperate.
His hands flew over her wet T-shirt, lifting and pulling to reach her skin, as if only that would soothe the burning need within him. Hand flat against the base of her spine, he pressed her into him, her taut nipples pebbling into his chest, her neck beneath his tongue and teeth, all the while her nails scratched trails of fire into his skin.
This was madness, utter madness, but neither seemed able or willing to stop.
He pulled back, long enough to let her lust filled gaze clear, having never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life. ‘Star,’ he warned as he took her in, pupils wide with desire, breath heaving. She looked utterly gorgeous.
* * *
Her name felt like an apology on his lips and she wanted to shout at him, yell and scream that she didn’t want apologies, she wanted this. She wanted him. Needed him almost as much as her next breath. Before he could say another word, she pulled him to her, kissed him with all the passion she was capable of. All the surety she felt that, no matter the reality, no matter what happened tomorrow, he was the man she was supposed to love for the rest of her life.
His hands came around her waist, pressing against her hip and ass, and she lifted herself into them, wrapping her legs around his waist, glorying when she felt his erection at her core.
‘Please,’ she begged against his lips. ‘Please, just tonight. Just this.’
He raised a hand to sweep her hair from her face, holding her there, looking into her heart and soul. ‘Of course.’
That night, Star was lost in a sea of pleasure. Fingers tangled, tongues danced, her skin was alive beneath his touch. She felt a fire building deep within her, expanding and filling her until the point where she couldn’t contain it any more and an explosion of the most intangible beauty scattered her being across the star-covered desert.
Again and again he broke her into pieces, only to put her back together as something new, something different, and in that moment she knew she would never be the same again.
By the time the sun’s rays cut a path through the tent’s awning to rest against her skin, Star was aware that Khalif was no longer there. She dressed, her clothes feeling as if they didn’t quite fit, and a sense that the morning—and the day—wouldn’t quite be right fell against her soul.
She found him looking out across the desert.
‘What are you...?’ Her voice broke a little, her throat raw from screaming her pleasure through the night-time hours.
‘I was making a wish. I—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ she rushed out. ‘It won’t come true,’ she warned.
‘I was wishing not to be a prince.’
She swallowed the emotions begging to be released. It was a wish they knew couldn’t and shouldn’t come true.
‘You are a wonderful prince. Conscientious, careful about others and what they think, thoughtful about doing the best thing possible for the greatest number of people. You will make a good ruler. Fair, strong, determined.’
Still looking out into the desert, he quirked his lip into a wry smile. ‘Why do I hear a “but”?’
Star hurt for him, shook her head, but determined to say this to him. For him. ‘You are not being you. You are being the Prince you think they want.’
‘I am not my own any more. I am theirs,’ he said, as if trying to explain himself to someone who refused to see his truth. When in reality he was simply refusing to see hers.
‘You could be the ruler you want to be, if you are willing to stand by the consequences.’
She knew how that sounded,
but Star really wasn’t thinking of herself. She was thinking of the man who had already begun to lose himself under the weight of the crown. ‘I wish I could have seen you before.’
‘What,’ he scoffed, ‘as the disreputable playboy?’
‘No. Just the boy.’
Khalif reared back as if she had struck him. He was about to reply when the roar of a Jeep’s engine cut through the desert.
They were out of time.
CHAPTER TEN
‘SO, STAR’S APPOINTMENT with Maya is tomorrow?’ Amin asked for the hundredth time that day. Even Khalif’s other members of staff glared at the bespectacled man.
Reza leaned against the wall of the meeting room, refusing to take his eyes from Khalif, who was spending an unnecessary amount of time trying to ignore that fact.
‘And you know she can’t attend the event tonight?’
Khalif was going to have to see a dentist before the week was out. And Amin might be paying a visit to the doctor. He opened his mouth to speak when he felt Reza’s hand on his shoulder, as if holding him back from the violence he wanted to inflict.
‘I think we all understand that. In the meantime, let’s take a short break before reconvening for the run-through for tonight’s event.’
The quiet authority of Reza’s tone had the desired effect on his staff and the opposite effect on Khalif.
‘I don’t need you to speak for me,’ he growled.
‘Of course you don’t. But you also don’t need a mutiny on your hands, which is what will happen if you push your staff any harder.’
‘It is no harder than I push myself.’
‘You’re right. It is considerably less. But that doesn’t mean either is manageable.’ His best friend let go of the hold on his shoulder as the last staff member left the room. ‘What are you more afraid of? That she is pregnant or she isn’t?’
‘Does it matter? I couldn’t do this to her,’ he said, finally saying it out loud. ‘I know what it is like to have that freedom taken away and I can’t...’ Khalif shook his head.
‘I know the sacrifices you have—’
‘Sacrifices? I changed everything! I stopped everything.’ Khalif stared at his best friend in disbelief. Finally, after three years, it poured forth. ‘I gave up an international business I had built from scratch, I dropped everything and came home. I buried my brother and Samira in front of the world’s press. I made phone calls and shook hands within hours of their funeral... I did what I had to and would do it again. But Reza, I couldn’t breathe, let alone grieve in the way I wanted.’ And for who I wanted, he finally admitted to himself. ‘This? It’s like being in a straitjacket, folded in on yourself, cramped, confined. The expectation of everyone, the watching, the pressure. How on earth can you think I would willingly put that on someone as innocent as Star?’
Reza stared at him with deep understanding and sympathy. He placed his hand on Khalif’s shoulder, the weight both comforting and steadying. He nodded once and Khalif knew that his best friend understood.
‘Okay,’ Reza said simply. ‘Then let’s talk about how this holographic presentation is going to work, because that is going to blow their minds.’
* * *
It felt strange to be back in Khalif’s suite. Especially since everything that had happened between then and now had begun to feel like a dream. She was on the balcony, the late afternoon sun sinking into her skin, warming her pleasantly...but not quite enough.
She rolled her shoulders, bracing her hands against the balustrade, eyes searching the horizon. The view of the city looked a little different now that she knew out there, beyond the stretches of golden sand, the sloping dunes and hazy blue skies, was a desert palace seen only by a few and an oasis that would always be in her heart.
She glanced at the rucksack containing everything she had brought with her and one new item. She had returned the connected pendants to the velvet bag and was yet to be able to wear them, putting off the moment until she truly knew that she would be going home. The necklace now had a double chain, as if it would always acknowledge that it had needed two people to come together to make it whole.
She felt a tide of anxiety washing against her soul, back and forth like the sea. She was nervous for Khalif, knowing how much the reveal of his plans for the memorial meant to him. So much so that she’d borne the look of guilt he’d worn as he’d explained why she couldn’t come to the event that night with understanding and acceptance. Both of which she truly felt. But it had hurt nonetheless.
Yet it hurt in a different way to how she had felt alone in the palace in the desert. This was not the sense of shame and rejection she had felt because of her grandparents, it was more a sense of inevitable ache. A sense of loss that was down to fate rather than intention. Where once Catherine had been forced to do her duty, now it was Khalif’s turn—and Star honestly couldn’t have argued against either.
He’d offered her a way that she could still see the presentation, which she would take, because it was his moment and she wouldn’t take that away from him. Which was why there, on the balcony, facing the desert, she sent a prayer to Catherine and Hātem, and Faizan and Samira, to look out for him that night.
There was a knock on the door. Star had been expecting it, but it still made her jump. She turned back into the room to find Maya closing the door behind her. She smiled at Star, who braced herself.
‘I was hoping you could help me with something. Do you think it’s possible to take the test today and for it still to be accurate?’
* * *
Khalif flexed his jaw, hoping to relieve the ache in his cheeks from the perfunctory smiles he’d masked himself in.
Samira’s father, Abbad, had been casting grim glances his way since the first guests had arrived and his wife’s vacant gaze wasn’t any better. The only time he’d felt himself relax was when Nadya had winked at him and run off to play hide-and-seek amongst the legs of the guests. His parents were thankfully preoccupied by small talk with dignitaries and international diplomats.
‘It is a stunning design,’ Reza said quietly, having stuck by his side the entire afternoon.
‘I know.’
‘You should be proud.’
‘And she should be here,’ he growled, his tone grating his throat.
‘There are three hundred people present, the Duratrian press both inside and outside the palace, along with more than a few representatives of the international newspapers. You think that a woman with hair like the sun would go unnoticed in here?’ Reza reminded him. ‘Tonight is about Faizan, Samira...and you. After tonight,’ he pressed, ‘is another matter entirely.’
You are wrong, my friend, Khalif thought, no matter how much he wished it weren’t the case.
Khalif stepped up to the podium and the audience grew quiet and turned to face him. He looked out across the faces he could see beneath the bright powerful glare of lighting trained on the stage. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift, his heartbeat stumbled and while he didn’t know how, or where, Khalif knew that Star was here. He took a breath.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. My family and I are honoured that you could be here tonight. For some, it may have seemed like a long time coming,’ he acknowledged to the gentle murmur rippling across the guests. ‘However, I truly believe that my brother and Samira deserved such consideration. The...hole they left in the lives of their family and friends is immeasurable and it was important to respect that grief. Faizan and Samira touched so many lives. They didn’t just merge two families, but they brought two countries together and two beautiful princesses into this world.
‘Growing up with Faizan was no mean feat,’ he said, to the slight laughter of the crowd. ‘He was focused, driven, bright, intelligent, compassionate. And I can see those qualities already in Nadya and Nayla. Faizan always knew what legacy he wanted to leave behind him. One of peace in the present
and hope for the future. Hope not just for his people, but his planet. And Samira? She was always smiling, always ready to be the balance in disagreements, always ready to bridge the gap between her husband the Prince and the man who loved his family and his people above all else. Samira and Faizan were proud, loving and very conscious of their countries.
‘She was the bridge and he the river that ran deep beneath it and that is how I, and I hope all of you, will remember them.’
He stepped back from the stage and allowed the lights to dim. The gentle hum of excitement building from the crowd momentarily stopped in awe when they saw the first images from the holographic display.
Khalif heard the words of his pre-recorded voice-over explain about the area between Duratra and Udra that had long since been abandoned. It was a kind of no man’s land where the river, coming from the Red Sea, cut between Duratra and Samira’s home country.
The hologram showed images of what the country looked like now and slowly how the area would be cleared, cleaned and prepared for what was to come. Over the next few minutes, the graphics showed a bridge being built over the river between the two neighbouring countries. Beautiful plants and lush greenery developed along both sides of the banks as well as each side of the wide bridge. Oohs and aahs came from the audience as they could see the trees grow, healthy and strong and high on top of the bridge.
‘There will be no cars or vehicles in the area. It will be completely pedestrianised. Wildlife will be introduced—birds, insects and eventually larger animals—all cared for by specially trained staff who will provide guided free tours for any visitor.
‘It will be a sanctuary. A place for people to come and honour the memory of Faizan and Samira, and the investment in the future that was always so very important to them. It is the paradise they would have wanted for their children, and it is what their children wanted to honour and remember their parents.’
