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But as her would-be lover pressed her to the stones that had barely cooled in the hours since sundown, she forgot her misgivings. Her hands found the heat of his neck and she parted her lips, moaning as he kissed her again.
He transported her to that place of magic they seemed to create between them.
As she lost herself to his kiss again, he stroked her hip and thigh, urging her to pick up her knee and make space for him between her legs. Cool air grazed her skin as he shifted her skirt up, up and out of the way, touching—
She gasped at the first contact of fingertips against the back of her thigh. Arrows of pleasure shot into her core, making her yearn so badly her eyes grew damp along with her underthings. She arched her neck as he trailed his mouth down her throat.
It was exquisite and joyful and...
Wait.
He was hard where he pressed between her legs, but something was off.
She touched the side of his face, urging him to lift his head. There was heat in his glittering eyes, but it was banked behind a cooler emotion. Something deliberate. His skin might have been flushed with arousal, but his expression was dispassionate.
He wasn’t as involved as she was.
Hurt and unease began to worm through her, but before she could fully react, she heard a gasp and a giggle above them. Someone said a pithy, “Get a room.”
“That’s the princess!” a female voice hissed.
“With who?” She knew that demanding masculine voice. She looked up to see several faces peering down at them over the wall of the balcony, one of them her brother’s. He did not look pleased.
Did her lover release her leg to find a modicum of decorum? Not right away. Not before she caught a dark look of satisfaction in his hard features.
Gaze solely on her, he very slowly eased his hold on her leg so his touch branded into her skin as she lowered her thigh. Humiliation pulsed in her throat, made all the more painful by the way he had gone from passionately excited to...this. Remote. Unaffected. Perhaps even satisfied by her public set down.
Angry and embarrassed as she was, her abdomen still tightened in sensual loss as he drew away from their full-frontal contact, which only added to her mortification.
“You were right,” he said. “We should have gone to your room.”
She had no choice but to take refuge there. Alone and fast.
CHAPTER TWO (#u053bef14-de39-5370-8ad0-dc251997dd21)
GALILA WOKE TO a dull headache, some low-level nausea that was more chagrin than hangover and a demand that she present herself to her brother immediately.
Despite what she would have hoped was a fulfilling wedding night, Zufar was in a foul mood and fifteen minutes in, didn’t seem to be tiring of tearing strips off her.
“You can’t bring that sort of shame down on the palace and think it doesn’t matter.”
“What shame?” she cried, finally allowed a word in edgewise. “A few people saw us kissing. Malak behaves far worse all the time.”
“And you hate it when he gets the attention! You couldn’t put your own silly need to be in the spotlight on hold for one night? The night of my wedding? Is anyone talking about our ceremony or my bride? No. The buzz is all about the fact you were seen behaving like a tart.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with a glance at her manicure. “Because the things they were saying about your marriage to the maid weren’t all that flattering.”
“Mind how you talk to your king, little sister,” he said in a tone that should have terrified, but she refused to take him seriously. It was just the two of them in here and he was behaving like a Neanderthal.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said, throwing up her arms. “I can’t undo it.”
“You could start by promising you’ll show more decorum in future. This shouldn’t even be happening. Why Mother let you go this long without marrying you off to someone who can control you, I will never understand.”
“Can’t you?” she bit out sharply.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“She saw me as competition, Zufar.” It was plain as day.
“Get over yourself, Galila. You are the one who sees everyone as competition. Take heed now. I won’t have you upstaging my queen. You will learn to take a back seat.”
“I wouldn’t—”
They were interrupted by a servant. He entered after a brief but urgent knock and hurried to lean into Zufar’s ear. All Galila caught was “...very insistent...”
Zufar’s expression hardened. “Show him in.” As she turned, Zufar added, “Where do you think you’re going?” He glared at Galila’s attempt to exit.
“I assumed we were done.”
“You wish. No, I have no idea why he insists on speaking to me, but I imagine it concerns you, so you’ll stand here while he does.”
“Who?” She looked to the door the servant had left through.
“Sheikh Karim of Zyria.”
“Is that his name?” She had imagined he was one of their more illustrious guests but hadn’t realized—
Zufar slammed his hand onto his desktop, making her jump. “Do not tell me you didn’t even know the name of the man who had his hand up your skirt.”
She looked to the corner of the ceiling, biting the insides of her cheeks.
“Do you honestly think my life has room for your childish antics?” Zufar demanded.
She started to scowl at him, but he came in. Sheikh Karim of Zyria. He had exchanged his ceremonial garb of last night for a Western-style bespoke suit in slate gray sans headdress.
If possible, he was even more knee-weakeningly handsome. The crisp white of his shirt and blood-red tie suggested a man who commanded any world he occupied. He stole the breath from her body in a psychic punch, utterly overwhelming her.
His gaze spiked into hers as though he’d been waiting to see her again, but before her heart fully absorbed that sensation, he offered a terse nod and turned his attention to her brother, leaving her feeling promptly dismissed and inexplicably bereft.
* * *
After ensuring Princess Galila had indeed retired for the night, Karim had gone to his own guest apartment, somewhat disgusted with himself. He had been telling the truth when he’d claimed not to take advantage of women in a weakened state. He considered himself an honorable man.
But he hadn’t been able to take the chances that she would leak his secret to someone else after her next sip of brandy.
He had been wrestling with his conscience over whether he should seduce this tipsy woman to his room, where he could at least contain her, when she had thrown herself against him in the darkest corner of the garden.
Their kiss had been the most potent drug imaginable, jamming into his veins and bringing him throbbingly alive at the first taste of her. As if he’d been dead for three decades. Existing, yet not seeing or tasting or smelling. Not feeling.
Then, for heart-stopping minutes, he had been resurrected. Sunlight had dawned upon him, shaking him awake from a long freeze. Everything in him had wanted to plunge into that world and never leave it.
Somehow, he had pulled back, much the way any sane man would catch himself before teetering like a crazed addict into a hallucinogenic abyss.
That shockingly intense reaction had been a lesson. One he would heed. Now he knew exactly how dangerous she was. It meant he was now prepared to withstand the power of her effect on him.
He kept telling himself his abominable actions were for honorable ends. He was protecting her family as much as his own. His deliberately public display had worked beautifully to put an end to any inquiries she might have made about the man who had impregnated her mother.
Temporarily.
The rest of his strategy would play out now.
With one brief glance, he took in her suitably demure dove-gray skirt and jacket with a flash of passion-pink blouse beneath. Her hair was rolled into a knot behind her head, but she was every bit as beautiful as she’d been last night, if looking a little haunted around the eyes and pouty around the mouth.
He didn’t allow his gaze to linger, even though the flush on her skin was a sensual reminder of her reaction to him last night. She had worn a similar color when their kisses had sent the pulse in her neck racing against the stroke of his tongue. That response of hers had been as beguiling as the rest, and not something he could allow himself to recollect or he’d embarrass himself.
For the most part, Karim kept his emotions behind a containment wall of indifference. It wasn’t usually so difficult. He’d been doing it his whole life.
Last night, however, this woman had put more than one fracture in his composure. Those tiny cracks had to be sealed before they spread. His reaction to her would be controlled. His command of this situation would be logical and deliberate. Effectual—as all his actions and decisions were throughout his life.
He started by refusing to react with any degree of emotion when her brother offered a blistering, opening attack.
“I expected better of a man in your position, Karim.” Zufar didn’t even rise, lifting only one sneering corner of his mouth. “You should have had the grace to be gone by now.”
“Allow me to make reparation for any harm to your family’s reputation,” Karim said smoothly. “I’ll marry her.”
Galila gasped. “What? I’m not going to marry you.”
Karim flicked a glance to her outraged expression. “Do not tell me you are promised elsewhere.” He had to fight to control his reaction, never having experienced such a punch of possessiveness in his life. He would shed blood.
“No.” She scowled. “But I’m not ready to marry anyone. Certainly not a stranger. Not just because I kissed you. It’s ridiculous!”
“It’s highly practical and a good match.” He had spent much of the night reasoning that out, determined emotions wouldn’t enter into this arrangement. “You’ll see,” he assured her. Her flair of passion could wait for the bedroom.
“I will not see!”
“Quiet.” Zufar held up a hand, rising to his feet.
Galila rushed forward and brushed it down.
“Don’t tell me to be quiet,” she hissed. “I will decide whom I marry. And while it’s a kind offer—” she said in a scathing tone that suggested she found Karim’s proposal anything but, she stared Karim right in the eye as she said emphatically, “No.”
Her crackling heat reached toward him, licking at the walls he forced himself to keep firmly in place.
“Clearly your sister has a mind of her own.” She was the kind of handful he would normally avoid, but greater things were at risk than his preference for a drama-free existence. “Was that the problem with your first bride?” Karim asked Zufar with a blithe kick below the belt. “Is that why she ran off with your brother?”
“What?” Zufar’s voice cracked like a whip, but Karim kept his gaze on his intended bride, watching her flush of temper pale to horror.
“Half brother, I mean,” he corrected himself very casually, despite feeling nothing of the sort. This was high-stakes gambling with a pair of twos he was bluffing into a straight flush.
“Galila.” Zufar’s tone was deadly enough that Karim shifted his attention—and the position of his body—to easily insert himself between the two if necessary.
Incensed as her brother looked, he didn’t look violent. And culpable as Galila grew, she didn’t look scared. She was glaring blame at Karim.
“Why are you doing this?” Her voice was tight and quiet.
“I am in need of a wife. Or so my government takes every opportunity to inform me.” It wasn’t a lie. “You are of suitable... What was the word you used when describing your mother’s lover? Station? Stature. That was it.”
“This goes beyond even your usual nonsense,” Zufar said in a tone graveled with fury. “A moment ago, you didn’t even know his name, yet you talked to him about our family’s most intimate business?”
“I was drunk.” She looked away, cheeks glowing with guilt and shame. “That’s not an excuse, but it’s been a very trying time, Zufar. You know it has. For all of us.”
Zufar’s eyes narrowed on her and his cheeks hollowed, almost as if he might accept that as reason enough for her imprudent behavior.
“Allow me to assure you,” Karim said with scalpel like precision, “that if you agree to our marriage, your family’s secrets will stay between us.”
The siblings stood in thunderous astonishment for a few moments.
“And if I don’t agree to the marriage?” Zufar asked, but Karim could see they both already knew the answer.
“Blackmail?” Galila asked with quiet outrage. “Why would you stoop so low? Why do you have to?” she challenged sharply.
He didn’t. He hadn’t made marriage a priority for a number of reasons, most of them superficial and convenience-related. He was a workaholic who barely had time for his mother, who still very much needed him. Women expected things. Displays of emotion. Intimacy that went beyond the physical.
“I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Karim scoffed. “I’ll treat you as gently and carefully as the pretty little bird you are.”
“In a gilded cage? You know, you could ask me to marry you, not trap me into it.”
“Will you marry me?”
“No. I would never have anything to do with someone as calculating and ruthless as you are.”
“You already know me so well, Princess, you’re practically made for me. It certainly seemed that way last night.”
Zufar made a noise of outrage while Galila stomped her foot, blushing deep into her open collar.
“Stop talking about that! There are other women,” Galila insisted. “Pick one.”
“I want you.”
“I won’t do it.”
Karim only swung his attention back toward her brother. “I’ve made it clear what I’m prepared to do to get her.”
“Why? What else do you want?” Zufar flared his nostrils in fury.
Above all, Karim wanted to forestall any speculation about who might be the mysterious man their mother had fallen for. If it became known that Queen Namani’s lover had been his father, King Jamil, the news would not only destroy his mother, but it would rock both kingdoms right down to their foundations. Not to mention what this newly discovered half brother might do with the knowledge.
So Karim only asked, “Is it so remarkable I might want her?”
