Royal Families Vs. Historicals

“You left Leyla behind.”

Sterling couldn’t let herself think about that.

“She’s better off,” she gritted out. She swallowed back the anguished sob that threatened to pour out of her, to tear her open. “Divorced couples share custody all the time. There’s no reason why we can’t. And that means Leyla can grow up here, where she’ll be safe.”

“I can hear the words that come out of your mouth.” His voice set every hair on her body on end. It prickled over her, harsh like sandpaper and a darkness beneath it. “Yet not one of them makes the slightest bit of sense.”

“All I ask is that you find a good woman to help you raise her,” Sterling pushed on, determined, despite the way everything inside of her lurched and rolled as if she was about to capsize herself. She couldn’t let that happen. “Someone who is—”

“What?” Rihad asked brutally. “Not as dirty and ruined as you are?”

There it was.

It was shocking to hear someone else say that out loud after all these years. It was soul-destroying to hear it from him.

But Sterling wasn’t running away from the only man she’d ever loved like this, or ever would, because it was easy. She was doing it because it was right. Which meant she couldn’t collapse at that. She couldn’t let all that wild darkness inside of her take her down to her knees. It was too important that he accept this.

“You know, then.” She couldn’t process it.

He looked furious. Impatient. Darkly focused on her.

“I have an idea what those terrible people must have told you. It doesn’t make it true.”

“If you know,” she managed to say, “then there’s no reason for this to be so dramatic. I’m doing you a favor.”

His expression shifted into something incredulous and arrogant at once.

“I do not want a favor, Sterling,” he threw at her. “I want my family.”

And that easily, he broke her heart.

“You can make yourself a perfect family,” she told him, and she only realized as she spoke that her throat was constricted. That tears were welling up and pouring over, splashing down her face. It was as if he hadn’t simply broken her heart—he’d broken her into a thousand tiny pieces and she couldn’t keep them all together any longer. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to do it again. “You can have more babies and a sweet, biddable wife who follows your commands and never shames you in public. You can—”

“You are my family!” he roared at her, and when she jumped back an inch he followed, taking her arms in those hard, surprisingly gentle hands of his. “You are my wife, my queen. We have a daughter. This is your family, Sterling. I am your family.”

“Rihad—”

But her voice was choked and her words were lost somewhere in a great, wild tangle that swamped her then. Far greater than fear. Far more encompassing.

“And I know that you love me, little one,” he told her then, his voice lower, but still so raw it almost hurt to hear it. Almost. “Do you think I can’t tell? When I do nothing but study you, day after day?”

“I don’t,” she managed to respond, though she couldn’t stop shaking. “I can’t. Nothing good ever comes of my loving something.”

His hands tightened slightly on her arms, but his expression softened. He pulled her even closer. His dark gold eyes searched hers.

“Sterling.” He said her name as if it was as beautiful as she’d thought it was when she’d picked it as a teenager. “I know that love for you means a hit must be forthcoming. I know you expect nothing but pain and misery when you dare to hope.” He moved, rubbing his palms along her arms as if he was trying to warm her. Soothe her. Love her. “But I am a man of honor. My word is law. And no one will ever hit you again as long as you live. Especially not me.”

She shook her head, hard, though shivers chased through her, one after the next as if she really was being torn apart. She could feel the tearing, deep inside of her.

“I’m your duty, nothing more,” she said fiercely. “But your duty is to Bakri, not to me. And they deserve better. You deserve better.”

“And you deserve to believe that you do, too.”

She couldn’t breathe past those words. She whispered his name again then, but she couldn’t seem to stop crying. And then he let go of her, which was worse than a hit. Worse than a kick or two. She reached out a hand despite her intention to make him let her go, but then froze, because he wasn’t walking away from her.

Rihad al Bakri, reigning sheikh, Grand Ruler and King of the Bakrian Empire, sank to his knees on the sand before her, never shifting that proud, stern gaze of his from hers.

He reached over, but he didn’t take her hands. He took her hips in his powerful grip instead, as if he could lift her up if he wished. As if he could carry her forever, if she would only let him.

“I ordered you marry me once,” he said in that low, dark, powerful voice of his. “Now I am asking you to stay with me. To live with me, love me, and who cares what the papers say. There are men watching us right now. Does it look as if that bothers me?”

“Rihad. You can’t.” But she didn’t know what she meant to say and he wasn’t listening to her anyway. His hands gripped her hips.

“I want to make more babies with you and this time, I want to hold them in my own hands as they enter this world. I want to make love to you forever. You are worth a thousand kingdoms, and mine is nothing but a pile of sand without you.” His gaze was part of her, inside of her. “Be my wife in every possible way, Sterling. Not because it is my duty, but because it is my deepest wish. You are my heart. My love. I want you to be mine.”

And she understood that vast, unconquerable thing that slammed down on her then. It wasn’t fear—it was so much bigger. It was love. Real love, without conditions or qualifiers. Without lies. Love that might incorporate pain and darkness, as all life must in its time, but wasn’t made of it.

She’d expected him to hurt her because that was all she knew. She’d assumed she would ruin him the way she ruined everything, because that was what the people who’d hurt her had told her to justify their actions.

Terrible people, he’d called them.

But that was the past.

This man, here and now, on his knees before her in a way she imagined he’d never been before and never would be again, was the future.

She had to give herself over to the only thing she’d ever encountered that could beat back the darkness.

Love.

And within that, wrapped up so tightly it was nearly indistinguishable, hope.

“I’m already yours, Rihad,” she whispered, fierce and hopeful at once. “I’ve been yours all along.”

He wrapped his arms around her hips, resting his head against her stomach. She felt the press of his perfect mouth against her flesh and the deep shudder that went with it, as if she was accepting him into her bones.

“I love you,” he told her, dark and imperious against the belly where she would bear his children. She knew she would, and not only because he’d decreed it. “Never doubt that.”

“I love you, too,” she said, her tears falling freely, but this time, they were made of joy. This time, she recognized it for what it was. This time, she believed it really would last forever. That they would, together. “I always will. And always is a very long time, I’m told.”

“It had better be,” he muttered, every inch of him the king.

And then she sank down beside him, and he took her in his arms, and for the first time in her life, Sterling let herself believe in forever.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ten years later…

“HE IS VERY annoying, yes,” Rihad told his furious daughter out in the private family garden that morning, and took care to hide his laughter from her. “But if you drown your brother in that pool, Leyla, there will be no party on Saturday and you may, in fact, spend your birthday in the dungeons.”

“There aren’t any dungeons in the palace,” his ten-year-old replied, hotly. “Mama said you made that up.”

He only smiled when she scowled at him. “There are dungeons if I say there are. I make the rules.”

“Brothers are stupid,” Leyla told him with a hint of imperiousness he thought she’d gotten directly from her mother.

Rihad thought of his own brother, lost so long now.

“I cannot forgive myself,” he’d told Sterling on Omar’s last birthday. As they did every year, they’d visited his grave on the palace grounds, together. “I doubt I ever will.”

She had been wrapped in his arms, her back tucked against his front, his chin resting on her head.

“He’d already forgiven you,” she’d said. She’d shifted when he tensed. “He loved you, Rihad. He always loved you.” She’d smiled up at him. “I was the one who hated you, for the both of us.”

“Brothers might be stupid,” he told Leyla now, “but you must love them anyway.”

“Love sounds stupid, too,” Leyla retorted, but she helped six-year-old Aarib continue to jump up and down on the wide lip of the pool near the waterfall anyway.

Though not without a very deep, long-suffering sort of sigh that did not bode well for her upcoming adolescence. Rihad repressed a shudder at that unhappy thought, given how stunning a child she already was, God help him. He returned his attention to the matters of state that awaited him on his tablet, a far more appealing prospect than his little girl growing up.

The papers hadn’t always left them alone, but it was nothing as it had been. Rihad had seen to the dismissal of the particular reporters who dared hound his wife so relentlessly—just as he’d seen to the immediate exile of some of his courtiers when he’d finally seen the way they’d treated her.

The Queen of Bakri, by definition, was a woman without peer, spotless of reputation and widely beloved by all.

Ten years on, Rihad had the distinct pleasure of knowing that wasn’t merely a decree he’d made, but the simple truth.

He knew the moment Sterling walked outside to join them in the garden. He always knew. She changed the air, he’d often told her, simply by breathing it, sharing it.

Those vicious, repulsive people she’d left behind in Iowa hadn’t ruined her. She wasn’t ruined. He thought that these days, she believed that without question at last.

His beautiful Sterling. His perfect wife.

He took a moment to marvel at her as she walked toward him across the stones while the world stilled all around him the way it always had. The way he thought it always would. She still dressed like the model she’d been, too elegant and so easily, offhandedly chic. That copper-blond hair of hers that still fascinated him beyond measure. Those long, long legs that had only this morning been draped over his shoulders as he’d driven them both to a hard, wild finish in the murky dark before dawn.

Ten years later and he was still hard at the thought of her.

“Are the monsters asleep?” he asked as she drew near.

“More or less.” She smiled as she looked at Leyla and Aarib, as if she truly enjoyed the particular music of their young voices, scraping holes in the sky. He knew she did. Despite himself, so did he.

“God bless the morning nap.”

Rihad thought of their younger boys, four-year-old Jamil and two-year-old Raza. Little hellions in every possible way, far louder than the older two combined, and they both demanded their mother’s personal attention as only younger children could. “Indeed.”

She moved as if to sit in her own seat but he pulled her down into his lap instead, nuzzling her neck until her breath caught. He pressed himself against the seam of her bottom, and she laughed.

“You’re insatiable.” But she sounded proud.

Content, he thought. They were content, and it was nothing like settling. It was like flying. Soaring through ten years and headed for ten more. Headed straight for forever.

“Only for you, my little one,” he murmured against her ear. “Always for you.”

They had not always had it easy, these past ten years. They had failed each other, hurt each other. The world was not always gentle and it was easy to lose each other in the whirl of children and responsibilities, even in a palace with fleets of nurses and around-the-clock staff.

But they had always had love. And love brought them back to each other, over and over again.

Rihad had learned to treat her less as a subject and more like a partner. Or he tried. She, in turn, had learned how to trust him.

This was intimacy, in all its complicated glory, of the soul and of the flesh. Lovers become parents, a king and his queen, a man and his woman. This was the magnificently double-edged sword of truly being known by another, across whole years.

In truth, he loved every bit of it.

And he still liked to show her how much.

“They’re kissing.” It was Aarib’s disgusted little-boy voice, more piercing than usual, or perhaps Rihad wanted to be interrupted less in that moment.

“They do that a lot,” replied Leyla, in her world-weary older-sister voice. “A lot.”

“Why did we have more children?” Sterling asked him, laughing. “Whose terrible idea was that?”

But then she kissed him once more, and he saw moisture glistening in her lovely blue eyes. He ran his hand over her cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much, Rihad.”

“For what?” he asked quietly.

“For everything,” Sterling said, fiercely. “For giving me our family. For being my family.”

She rose to go to the children then, and he let her leave, fully aware that she had no reason to thank him. She was the heart of this wondrous little tangle of theirs, love and trust and wonder, tears and scrapes and sudden furies.

Their heart. His heart.

His, Rihad thought. Forever.

And he was the king. His will was law.

Pursued by the Desert Prince

Dani Collins

To my sisters, who often live far away,

but remain close, close, close in my heart.

Love yous. xoxo

CHAPTER ONE

ANGELIQUE SAUVETERRE PICKED up a call from her exterior guards informing her that Kasim ibn Nour, Crown Prince of Zhamair, had arrived to see her.

She slumped back in her chair with a sigh, really not up to meeting someone new. Not after today.

“Of course. Please show him up to my office,” she said. Because she had to.

Hasna had said her brother would drop by while he was in Paris.

Angelique didn’t know why the brother of the bride wanted to meet the designer of the bride’s wedding gown, but she assumed he wanted to arrange a surprise gift. So she didn’t expect this meeting to be long or awful. Her day with Princess Hasna and the bridal party hadn’t been awful. It had actually been quite pleasant.

It was just a lot of people and noise and Angelique was an introvert. When she told people that, they always said, But you’re not shy! She had been horribly shy as a child, though, and brutally forced to get over it. Now she could work a room with the best of them, but it fried her down to a crisp.

She yearned for the day when her sister, Trella, would be ready to be the face of Maison des Jumeaux. An ironic thought, since her twin wore the same face. As she freshened “their” lipstick, Angelique acknowledged that she really longed for Trella to be the one to talk to new clients and meet with brothers of the bride and put on fetes like the one she’d hosted today.

She wanted Trella to be all better.

But she wouldn’t press. Trella had made such progress getting over her phobias, especially in the past year. She was determined to attend Hasna and Sadiq’s wedding and was showing promise in getting there.

It will happen, Angelique reassured herself.

In the meantime… She rolled her neck, trying to massage away the tension that had gathered over hours of soothing every last wedding nerve.

At least she didn’t look too much worse for wear. This silk blend she and Trella had been working on hadn’t creased much at all.

Angelique stood to give a quick turn this way and that in the freestanding mirror in the corner of her office. Her black pants fell flawlessly and the light jacket with its embroidered edges fluttered with her movement while her silver cami reflected light into her face. Her makeup was holding up and only her chignon was coming apart.

She quickly pulled the pins out of her hair and gave it a quick finger-comb so her brunette tresses fell in loose waves around her shoulders. Too casual?

Her door guard knocked and she didn’t have time to redo her hair. She moved to open the door herself.

And felt the impact like she’d stepped under a midnight sky, but one lit by stars and northern lights and the glow of a moon bigger and hotter than the sun could ever hope to be.

Angelique was dazzled and had to work not to show it, but honestly, the prince was utterly spectacular. Dark, liquid eyes that seemed almost black they were such a deep brown. Flawless bone structure with his straight nose and perfectly balanced jawline. His mouth—That bottom lip was positively erotic.

The rest of him was cool and diamond sharp. His country was renowned for being ultraconservative, but his head was uncovered, his black hair shorn into a neat business cut. He wore a perfectly tailored Western suit over what her practiced eye gauged to be an athletically balanced physique.

She swallowed. Find a brain, Angelique.

“Your Highness. Angelique Sauveterre. Welcome. Please come in.”

She didn’t offer to shake, which would have been a faux pas for a woman in Zhamair.

He did hold out his hand, which was a slight overstep for a man to demand of a woman here in Paris.

She acquiesced and felt a tiny jolt run through her as he closed his strong hand over her narrow one. Heat bloomed under her cheekbones, something his quick gaze seemed to note—which only increased her warmth. She hated being obvious.

“Hello.” Not Thank you for seeing me, or Call me Kasim.

“Thank you, Maurice,” she murmured to dismiss her guard, and had to clear her throat. “We’ll be fine.”

She was exceedingly cautious about being alone with men, or women for that matter, whom she didn’t know, but the connection through Hasna and Sadiq made the prince a fairly safe bet. If a man in the prince’s position was planning something nefarious, then the whole world was on its ear and she didn’t stand a chance anyway.

Plus, she always had the panic button on her pendant.

She almost felt like she was panicking now. Her heart rate had elevated and her stomach was in knots. Her entire body was on all-stations alert. She’d been feeling drained a few seconds ago, but one profound handshake later she was feeling energized yet oddly defenseless.

She was nervous as a schoolgirl, really, which wasn’t like her at all. With two very headstrong brothers, she had learned how to hold her own against strong masculine energy.

She’d never encountered anything like this, though. Closing herself into her office with him felt dangerous. Not the type of danger she’d been trained to avoid, but inner peril. Like when she poured her soul into a piece then held her breath as it was paraded down the catwalk for judgment.

“Please have a seat,” she invited, indicating the conversation area below the mural. There were no pretty views of actual Paris in this windowless room, but the office was still one of her favorite places for its ability to lock out the world. She spent a lot of time on her side of its twin desks and drafting tables.

Trella’s side was empty. She was home in Spain, but they often worked here in companionable silence.

“I just made fresh coffee. Would you like a cup?”

“I won’t stay long.”

That ought to be good news. She was reacting way too strongly to him, but she found herself disappointed. So strange! She took such care to put mental distance between herself and others. The entire world would have this effect on her if she didn’t, but he only had to glance around her private space and she felt naked and exposed. Seen. And she found herself longing for his approval.

He didn’t seem to want to sit, so she pressed flat hands that tremored on the back of the chair she usually used when visiting with clients. “Was there something particular about the wedding arrangements you wanted to discuss?”

“Just that you should send your bill to me.” He moved to set a card on the edge of Trella’s desk.

She turned to follow his movement behind her. So economical and fascinating. And who was his tailor? That suit was pure artistry, the man so obviously yang to her yin.

He caught her staring.

She tucked her hair behind her ear to disguise her blush.

“Her Majesty made the same offer and you needn’t have troubled yourself. It’s a wedding gift for Sadiq and the princess.”

He noted the familiarity of her using Sadiq’s first name with a small shift of his head. “So Hasna said. I would prefer to pay.”

His gaze was direct enough to feel confrontational, instantly amplifying this conversation into one of conflict. Her pulse gave a reflexive zing.

Why would he be so adamant—?

Oh, dear God! He didn’t think she and Sadiq were involved, did he?

Why wouldn’t he? According to the headlines, she’d slept with half of Europe. When she wasn’t doing drugs or having catfights with her models, of course.

“Sadiq is a longtime friend of the family.” She retreated behind the cool mask she showed the world, ridiculously crushed that he would believe those awful summations of her character. “This is something we want to do for him.”

“We.” His gaze narrowed.

“Yes.” She didn’t bring up her sister or what her family owed Sadiq for Trella’s return to them. The fact that Sadiq had never once sought any glory for his heroism was exactly why he was such a cherished friend. “If that was all…” She deliberately presumed she’d had the last word on the topic. “I should get back to the final arrangements for your sister’s things.”

* * *

Kasim had to applaud his future brother-in-law’s taste. Angelique Sauveterre had grown from a very sweet-looking girl into a stunning young woman. In person, she had an even more compelling glow of beauty.

Her long brunette hair glimmered and shifted in a rippling curtain and what had seemed like unremarkable gray eyes online were actually a mesmerizing greenish hazel. She was tall and slender, built like a model despite being the one to dress them, and her skin held a golden tone that must be her mother’s Spanish ancestry.

Cameras rarely caught her with a smile on her face and when they did, it was a faint Mona Lisa slant that allowed her to live up to the reputation of her father’s French blood: aloof and indifferent.

She wore that look now, but when she had first greeted him, she had smiled openly. Her beauty was so appealing, Kasim had forgotten for a moment why he was here and had been overcome with a desire to pursue her.

Perhaps this captivating quality was the reason Sadiq was so smitten?

“About those arrangements… Today went well?” He had understood it to be the final fitting of his sister’s wedding gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses as well as a private showing of other clothes made for Hasna, all taking place on the runway level of this building. Once the last nips and tucks were completed, the entire works would be packaged up and shipped to Zhamair for the wedding next month.

“You would have to check with the women who were here, but they all seemed pleased by the time they left.” So haughty and quick to keep the focus on his sister.

From what he’d heard around his penthouse, the consensus had been a high level of ecstasy with everything from the clothes to the imported cordial to the finger sandwiches and pastries.