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“It will be far more useful if she stays at the palace, my king.”
Ah, so this was about status. Kareef’s lip twisted with scorn.
“For Jasmine’s sake,” the other man added in a low voice. “Your attention will go far to negate her old scandal. People will forget the whispers beneath the weight of your honor.”
Staring at him, Kareef frowned in sudden indecision.
Umar lowered his head. “My king, if I have ever done anything worthy of your esteem, I beg you this one favor. Place my bride formally under your protection until the day of the Qais Cup, when I will return to marry her.”
If he’d ever done anything worthy of Kareef’s esteem?
He’d helped Kareef bring prosperity to the desert. Made him the godfather of two of his four young sons. And most of all—he’d found Kareef in the desert, half-mad and dying of thirst thirteen years ago. He’d brought him home, brought him back to health. He’d saved Kareef’s life.
“Perhaps…” Kareef said grudgingly, and Umar pounced.
“Your mother is at the palace, is she not, sire? She will make a fine chaperone, if you are concerned about propriety.”
“No,” Jasmine whimpered softly. “I won’t do it.”
Umar ignored her. He kept staring at Kareef with hope—almost desperation.
If the bride had been any other woman, Kareef would have immediately agreed. But not this woman. He cursed beneath his breath. Damn it, didn’t the man see the risk?
No, of course he did not. Umar had no idea Kareef was the one who’d taken her virginity and caused her accident in the desert thirteen years ago. No one knew Kareef was the man who’d been her lover, her partner in the scandal. Jasmine had made sure of that.
She still hated him. He saw it in her eyes. But he had no choice.
Slowly, Kareef rose to his feet. His voice was loud, ringing with authority beneath the white pavilion.
“As of this moment, and until the day of her marriage, Jasmine Kouri is under my protection.”
Another buzz rose across the crowd. They stared at Jasmine with awe. Even her old father cracked an amazed smile.
If only he knew the truth, Kareef thought grimly.
Nodding in relief, Umar turned to go.
“Wait,” Jasmine cried, grabbing her fiancé’s slender wrist. “I still don’t know what’s happened! Are your children sick? Is it the baby?”
“The children are well. I cannot say more.” The older man’s eyes were narrow and tight. “I will call you if I can. Otherwise—I will see you at the race. On our wedding day.”
And he was gone. Kareef and Jasmine sat alone on the dais, with two hundred pairs of eyes upon them.
Keeping his face impassive, Kareef threw down the linen napkin across his empty plate and glanced at Jasmine’s untouched dinner and stricken, forlorn face. “Are you finished?”
“Yes,” she whispered miserably, as if she were trying not to cry.
He held out his hand. “Then let us go.”
She focused her eyes on him. “Forget it. I’ve been under my own protection for years. I do not need or want yours.”
He continued to hold out his hand. “And yet you have it.”
“I will go stay at my family’s house.”
“Your betrothed wishes otherwise.”
“He is not the boss of me.”
“Is he not?”
She tossed her head. “I will stay at a hotel.”
She was trying her best to be insolent, making it clear she did not respect him. He should have been insulted, but as he watched the tip of her pink tongue dart out to lick her lips, he couldn’t look away from the lush, sensual mouth he’d kissed long ago. It seemed like only yesterday. His lips tingled, remembering hers.
With a deep breath, he forced himself to look up. “You will find no available hotel room, anywhere on this island. All the world has come for my coronation.” He tightened his jaw. “But that is not the point.”
“And that is?”
“I gave my word to Hajjar,” he ground out. “And I keep my promises.”
“Do you?” Her eyes glinted at him sardonically. “A new skill?”
Anger flashed through him. But he held it back, dousing it with ice. He deserved the jibe. He would accept it from Jasmine as he would from no other person alive.
He would still prevail.
“Are you afraid to be near me?” he quietly taunted.
“Afraid of you?” Her voice shimmered with hatred like moonlight on water. “Why should I be?”
He held out his hand. “Then come.”
Narrowing her eyes at him in fury, she pushed her hand into his. She never could resist a dare. But the same instant he knew he’d won, he felt the electric shock of her touch. And realized he was the one who should be afraid.
He, Kareef Al’Ramiz, the prince of the desert, soon to be absolute ruler of the kingdom of Qusay, should be afraid of what he’d do when left alone with this woman he craved. This woman he could not have. His friend’s betrothed. Because Jasmine wasn’t simply a woman to him.
She was the only woman.
CHAPTER TWO
TWILIGHT was falling over the gleaming towers and spires of the royal palace overlooking the city. Built over the ruins of a Byzantine citadel, the palace had been modernized in the last century and could be seen for miles across the Mediterranean, shining like a jewel.
So strange to be back here, Jasmine thought, in the place she’d grown up when her father had been the old king’s favored counselor. Although this was the first time she’d ever been in this particular wing. The maid had left her in a shabby garret in the oldest wing of the palace, where the servants lived.
Jasmine looked out through the grimy window toward the garden. This room was smaller than the walk-in closet of her Park Avenue penthouse, but all she felt was relief to be alone.
Her knees were still weak with shock as she hefted her small rolling suitcase on the single bed. When Kareef had led her away from the white pavilion to his waiting limousine, she’d been half-terrified that he would take her straight to his bedroom in the palace. Would she have been able to resist—even hating him as she did?
The thought was still staggering. After so many years, she’d seen Kareef again. Heard his voice. Felt his touch.
The air in the room felt suddenly stifling. She punched buttons on the control panel of the air-conditioning, then gave up and tried to open the window, but the glass wouldn’t budge.
Cursing aloud, she covered her face with her hands. Why had she ever come back to the palace? Because she was obeying Umar’s orders? She’d survived on her own in New York City for thirteen years. She did not need or want Kareef’s protection!
Or did she?
Against her will, she remembered the touch of Kareef’s hand against her own and felt like she was burning up with a fever. Sweating, she yanked off the chiffon dress. She wrenched off her stockings and sandals. Standing in just her white bra and panties, she felt relief.
Until there was a hard knock and the door swung open.
“Jasmine—”
Kareef stood in the door. He sucked in his breath when he saw her in the middle of her bedroom, halfnaked.
With a stifled scream, she grabbed the chiffon dress off the floor to cover herself. “What are you doing here?”
He stared at her, clenching his hands into fists at his sides. He was no longer in white robes, but more casually dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and black pants. He looked more devastating than ever, and his towering body was taut. “I want…I want you to join me for a late supper.”
“So call me on the phone and ask!” she cried. A servant passed by in the hallway, trying not to gawk. Frowning, Kareef stepped inside the room, closing the door behind him.
“You can’t come in here!” she said, scandalized.
“I can’t let anyone else see you like this.”
“Anyone? What about you?”
Lifting a dark eyebrow, he looked her over slowly. “I’ve seen far more of you than this.”
Her cheeks flamed red-hot—and she truly wanted to kill him! “We can’t be alone in a closed bedroom! In some parts of the country, you would be required to marry me!”
He gave a low laugh. “It’s a good thing we’re in the city, then.”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you realize how gossip can spread?”
“My servants can be trusted.”
She shook her head fiercely. “How do you know?”
“One servant betrayed us, Jasmine. One.” His eyes glinted. “And I made him pay. Marwan—”
“I’m not going to argue with you!” she nearly shrieked, grabbing a pillow off her bed and lifting it over her head. The dress fell to the floor but she barely noticed. Modesty was inconsequential compared to the blaze of her fury. “Just get out!”
He looked at her body in the white cotton bra and panties. She felt his gaze upon her bare skin from her collarbone to the curve of her breasts, down her flat belly to her naked thighs. Her mouth went dry.
Then, slowly, he met her gaze. “You’re threatening me with a pillow, Jasmine?”
Since he was a foot taller and probably eighty pounds heavier than her, she could see why that would seem like a joke. It only made her more angry. “Do you need a handwritten request? Get out!”
“When you agree to join me for dinner.”
Staring at him, a jittery nervousness pulsed through her. The last time she’d seen Kareef, he’d been barely eighteen, the king’s eldest nephew, slender and tall and fine. She’d been the bookish eldest daughter of the king’s adviser; he’d been a wild, reckless horse racer with a vulnerable heart and joyful laugh.
But he’d changed since then. He was no longer a boy; he’d become a man. A dangerous one.
His once-friendly blue eyes were now ruthless; the formerly vibrant expression on his handsome, rugged face had become tightly controlled. His once-lanky frame had gained strength. Even the muscle of his body proclaimed him a king. He could probably pick up someone like Umar and toss him through the air like a javelin. She’d never seen any man on earth with shoulders like Kareef’s.
But the biggest change was the grim darkness she now saw beneath his gaze. She could sense the cold warrior hidden beneath his deeply tanned skin. He had only the thinnest veneer of civilization left. The danger both attracted her…and frightened her.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself desperately. In a few days she would become Umar’s wife and she would never have to see Kareef again. If she could just make it to her wedding…
“So you’ll join me?” he said coldly.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Come anyway. We have…something to discuss.”
“No,” she said desperately. “We don’t.”
He lowered a dark eyebrow. “Do I really have to say it?”
She swallowed. No. She knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d just told herself many times that it didn’t matter, that it didn’t count, that it had just been a few whispered words between kisses.
The pillow dropped from her hands. She wrapped her arms around her body, glancing toward the deepening shadows of the garden. She whispered, “It’s all in the past.”
“The past is always with us.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him take a single step toward her. “You know you cannot marry him.”
Oh my God, Kareef was going to touch her! If he did—if he reached out and took her hand—she was afraid of how her body would react. Only her anger was keeping her hands wrapped around her own waist, when some uncivilized part of her longed to stroke the dark curl of his hair, the roughness of his jawline, to touch the hard muscles and discover the man he had become…
With a harsh intake of breath, she held up her hand sharply, keeping him at a distance.
“All right!” she bit out. “I’ll join you for your fancy dinner if you’ll just leave!”
His blue eyes held hers. “It won’t be fancy. Simple and quiet.”
“Right.” She didn’t believe him for a second. She’d never seen any Al’Ramiz king dine with fewer than fifty people and ten courses of meat and fish and fruit.
“The blue room.” He looked her over, and she felt that same flush of heat as his gaze touched her naked skin. “Ten minutes.”
The blue room? Now she knew he was lying. The blue room was for entertaining heads of state! But she’d worry about that later—when she wasn’t naked and confined with him in such a small space! Unwillingly, her eyes fell on the tiny bed between them.
He followed her gaze.
Suddenly, her heart was pounding so loud she could almost hear it. Then he turned toward the door.
“See you at dinner.”
“Yes.” She could suddenly breathe again.
