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She heard a distant helicopter, a deep flick-flick-flick high above the desert, and this time there could be no doubt. Shaking her head, she gave a harsh laugh.
“For a man with your sense of honor,” she said, fighting back tears, “that makes you less free than the lowliest servant in your palace.”
“Jasmine…”
“No!” she shouted. “I cannot back out of my engagement. Umar would be humiliated. My family’s reputation would be destroyed. First my scandal, then Nima’s pregnancy—my parents would never be able to leave their house again!”
“Why do you even care, after the way they’ve treated you?”
“Because I love them. Because—” she lifted her head as tears filled her eyes “—they are the only family I’ll ever have. They, and Umar and his children. I cannot be the cause of their ruin by becoming your whore!”
“Don’t use that word! I would kill any man who called you that!”
“All of them?” Her throat tightened as a hoarse laugh escaped her. “You would kill your own subjects for speaking the truth?”
His hands clenched her shoulders. “It’s not the truth, and you know it!”
She briefly closed her eyes, trying to regain her strength, to catch her breath. “What else would you call an engaged woman who’s done what I’ve done with you?”
“You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re my wife.”
“Let me go, Kareef,” she whispered. “Set me free.”
He looked down at her, his eyes full of an impetuous mixture of autocratic male possessiveness and emotion that struck her to the heart. “I can protect you, Jasmine.”
“How?” she whispered, then shook her head. “Even you cannot work miracles—”
“It’s a miracle you’re here with me now.” Cupping her face, he looked down at her. “And I will not let you go. Not yet.”
She felt his rough fingertips against her skin. Felt his naked body, so warm and hard and fierce against hers. Felt how much he desired her. Felt the power of his savage strength as he lowered his mouth to hers.
His lips moved against hers with deep, exquisite tenderness. Persuading her. Mastering her, not just with his sensual power, but with the ache of her own body and heart.
When he finally released her, a low sigh rose from her throat. She gazed up at him, this man she loved, feeling dazed and warm, drenched by the soft sunlight of his nearness.
His kiss had conquered her as a thousand words could not.
Exhaling, he pulled her back against his bare chest, stroking her hair as he felt her surrender. “You’re mine, Jasmine,” he murmured into her hair, almost too softly for her to hear. “As I am yours.”
Distantly, a voice cried inside her that he wasn’t hers—that he could never be hers, not anymore. And that by going back to Shafar with him as his secret mistress, she’d be risking everything she held precious—everyone she loved.
But she could not let him go. Not yet. Not yet!
She closed her eyes as he held her in her arms. Let the future come as it will, she thought. Somehow, they could find a way to be together just for a little while longer without hurting anyone. Couldn’t they?
The helicopter was very loud now. She saw the swirl of sand outside the cave turn by the force of its rotor blades as it landed on the nearby plateau.
Jasmine pulled back with sudden alarm. “Get dressed. We can’t let your men find you naked…alone with me!”
He snorted a laugh. “That would be a most unexpected sight for them, wouldn’t it?”
Picking up his clothes from the ground, she shoved them into his arms. “Get dressed!”
He smiled down at her, and she couldn’t help smiling back. For one instant time hung between them, breathless with the anticipation of endless future joys.
Then she heard his men shouting, heard the pounding of machines against the earth. Heard a rush of heavy footsteps coming toward the cave, growing louder.
Sighing beneath her anxious, pleading gaze, he moved with rapid military precision, stepping into his boxers and black pants. As he pulled on his shirt, she peeked one last look at his handsome physique and marveled that she was the only woman who’d ever experienced the incredible pleasure of being in his bed. How was it possible? How was she so blessed?
She thought again of the reverent, hot, tender way he’d touched her in the night. And in the day…
“Sire? Sire!”
Kareef’s chief bodyguard peered over the piled sand at the mouth of the cave, then fell to his knee in gratitude and relief. Behind him were a dozen men, geared up as if for battle. “God be praised! That blasted mare returned riderless right before the storm hit the house. We thought…We feared…”
Buttoning his ragged white shirt, Kareef stood before them, tall and proud. He looked every inch a king.
“We are safe, Faruq. Miss Kouri and I were riding when we were caught in the storm and took shelter here. Thank you for finding us.” He gestured at the black stallion tied to the rock. “Please see Tayyib is cared for. He bore us well.”
“Yes, sire.”
“And my people? My home?”
“No injuries,” the bodyguard replied. “Little damage. A great deal of sand. We brought a doctor for you just in case.”
“I am unhurt. He will check Miss Kouri for injury.”
Faruq glanced at her uneasily, then bowed and backed away. She felt the other bodyguards giving her sideways glances, and her face grew hot.
“The helicopter will return us to the royal palace immediately,” Kareef said. He turned to her, holding out his hand. “Miss Kouri?”
As Kareef escorted her out of the dark cave, lifting her back into the hot white sun, he smiled down at her. And all her sudden anxiety disappeared as if it had never been.
He led her to the waiting helicopter, and she smiled at him, trying to ignore the grim-faced bodyguards trailing behind. They would manage to keep their affair secret for one more day. One more precious day before Kareef would be forced to realize he had no choice but to divorce her, and they each parted to face the separate lives that fate had decreed for them.
One more day, she thought desperately. No one would be hurt by one more selfish day. A single day could feel like a lifetime.
Kareef would find a way to keep it secret. She’d never seen a secret kept at the palace, but he could find a way. He was magic. He was power.
He was king.
Kareef’s shoulders were tight as he stormed through the corridors of the royal palace, scattering assistants in his wake.
Every minute of his schedule since his return to the city had been meticulously dictated by five different assistants and undersecretaries working in conjunction, overseen by the vizier. The king’s duties were endless. Treaties to negotiate. False smiles under cloak of courtesy. Diplomacy. Politics. Saying one thing and meaning another. What did Kareef know of those?
He growled to himself. He was already learning far more than he’d ever wished.
He despised keeping Jasmine a secret.
She’d slept against his shoulder on the helicopter journey from the desert. He could still feel her, somehow still smell her intoxicating scent of oranges and cloves against his body, though he’d showered and changed out of his clothes and into white robes at the royal palace.
The moment he’d set foot back at the palace, he’d wanted to take her to his bedchamber; but she’d demurred, glancing at the endless secretaries and assistants waiting for him in the hallways. “Later,” she’d whispered, and with a sigh, he’d let her go. He’d told himself he’d be able to cut his meetings short and return soon to her little room in the servants’ wing.
That was ten hours ago. His elderly vizier, Akmal Al’Sayr, was still tearing his beard out at the days Kareef had missed. It seemed even being lost and halfpresumed dead in the desert wasn’t enough to excuse a monarch from his duty.
It was now twilight, and he hadn’t seen Jasmine since they’d arrived at the palace. His entire day had been wasted. A day devoted to cold duty in a palace full of hidden corridors and sly whispers of gossip.
His hands tightened. He hated all this secrecy. He had to convince her to give up the marriage. He would smooth things over with Hajjar somehow. Once she agreed to call off her wedding, Kareef would be willing to divorce her. When she agreed to be his longterm mistress.
How could my parents ever hold up their heads in the street, if I let myself be branded as your whore?
The word made him flinch. No. Damn it, no! If any man dared insult her, Kareef would throw him into the Byzantine dungeon beneath the palace. He would exile him to the desert without food or water. He would—
You would kill your own subjects for speaking the truth? He heard the echo of Jasmine’s whisper in the cave. Let me go. Set me free.
Clenching his jaw, he pushed the thought firmly from his mind. He would keep her as long as he desired her—whether that took ten years or fifty. He was young yet, only thirty-one. He would keep her for himself, and put off his own marriage as long as he could.
He quickened his pace down the hall, growling at any servant who dared to look his way.
Was Jasmine awake yet? he wondered. Was she naked beneath the sheets, with her dark hair mussed across the pillow? He felt rock-hard, aching for her. He went faster, almost breaking into a run.
“Sire, a word?”
In the hallway near the royal offices, he saw his vizier hovering in the doorway.
“Later,” he ground out, not stopping.
“Of course, my king,” the vizier said silkily. “I just wanted you to know I’ve begun negotiations for your marriage. You needn’t worry about it. I will present your bride to you in a few weeks.”
Stopping dead in the hallway, Kareef whirled into the reception room and closed the door behind them.
“You will arrange nothing,” he said coldly. “I have no interest in marriage.”
“But sire, these things take time. And you are not getting any younger…”
“I’m thirty-one!”
“After all the chaos caused by your cousin’s abdication, your subjects need the comfort and security of seeing the line of succession continue. A royal wedding. A royal family.” He pulled on his graying beard. “It might be difficult to find the right bride, a young virgin with the correct lineage and a perfect, unsullied reputation—”
“Why must she be a virgin?” Kareef demanded.
“So no one can ever doubt that your children are yours,” he replied, sounding surprised. “You must have an undisputed heir.”
Kareef clenched his jaw. “You will not negotiate a bride for me. I forbid it.”
The vizier returned his look with gleaming, canny eyes. “Because your interests are elsewhere?”
Kareef looked at him narrowly, wondering how much he already knew. The vizier’s spies were everywhere. He cared so obsessively about the security of the country, personal privacy meant nothing to the man. “What do you mean?”
His dark eyes affixed on Kareef. “It would be a grave mistake to insult Umar Hajjar, my king,” he said quietly. “I’ve heard he is returning from Paris tonight.”
Paris. So Kareef’s suspicions had been right. Hajjar had been spending time with his French mistress.
And Kareef was expected to give up Jasmine to a man who did not even care enough to be loyal to her?
Too angry to be fair, he clenched his hands. “I have no intention of insulting Hajjar. He is my friend. He saved my life.”
“Yes. Quite.” The older man cleared his throat. “The royal banquet begins soon, sire. Ambassadors and foreign princes have come from all over the world to celebrate your impending coronation. You will not wish to be late.”
Kareef ground his teeth. Making small talk with people he didn’t care about? “I will attend in my own time.”
The vizier tugged his beard. “It’s just a pity you don’t have your future bride on your arm for such a social event,” he sighed, then brightened. “Princess Lara du Plessis is attending with her father. She is a possibility as well. She’s very beautiful—”
“No marriage,” Kareef barked out. His mind already on Jasmine, he turned to go.
“You will find her in the royal garden,” the vizier called sourly behind him. “Where she does not deserve to be.”
Kareef whirled to face him.
Jasmine was right. There were no secrets in the palace. Akmal Al’Sayr knew them all.
Except one.
He did not know Kareef was already married.
“You will call off your spies,” he said grimly. “Leave her in peace.”
Akmal’s mouth twisted sharply downward, his lips disappearing into his long gray beard as he fell into dutiful silence.
“And find her a place at the banquet.”
The vizier looked unhappier still, his slender body drooping like a frown. But he hung his head beneath his sovereign’s decree. “Yes, sire.” He looked up, his beady eyes glittering. “But she can never be more to you than a mistress. The people would never accept such a woman as your wife, a woman who’s had so many lovers she threw herself from a horse to lose her nameless, ill-gotten child—”
Red covered Kareef’s gaze. In two strides, he’d grabbed the other man’s throat.
“It was an accident,” he hissed. “An accident. And as for her many lovers, she’s had only one. Me. Do you understand, Al’Sayr? I was her lover. The only one.”
The older man’s eyes started to bulge before Kareef regained control. He let him go. The vizier leaned over, holding his throat and coughing.
“Never speak of her that way again,” he spat out. With a growl still on his lips, Kareef whirled away in murderous fury, striding down the hall in his robes.
His heart was still pounding with rage when he found Jasmine in the royal garden in the twilight, sleeping on a cushioned seat in a shady, quiet bower. A book was folded upside down unheeded in her lap. He stopped, staring down at her, marveling again at her beauty.
She slept peacefully, like a child. The wind blew softly through the trees, rattling the leaves, brushing loose tendrils of dark hair across her face. She was wearing a fitted black sweater over a high-necked white shirt and a long black skirt. And below that—red canvas sneakers.
Her lovely face was bare of makeup, and beautiful in its natural simplicity. Modest, simple, like a maid. She looked the part of a perfect wife and mother—the perfect heart of any man’s home. Of his home.
He took a deep breath, calming down beneath the influence of her sweet purity, of her innocence. He smiled down at her. Then his gaze fell upon her hand, and he saw she still wore Hajjar’s diamond upon her finger.
