Inherited For The Royal Bed. Annie West
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To her aunt and uncle an inconvenience. To the Emir a problem to be solved.
Tangled emotions knotted Lina’s stomach. Anxiety definitely. Though she’d survived and eventually thrived in her Swiss school, she knew what it was to be utterly alone. She longed for connection. To belong, to a place and to people, or at least one person.
Savagely Lina cut off that thought.
She’d daydreamed of the Emir, so tall and handsome, for too long. She was no teenager now. There’d be no swooning over him, or for that matter, any man.
Once her obligation to the Emir was fulfilled, she had a career to build. An income to earn. A life to enjoy.
The limousine turned off the teeming street and onto the private road that led up from the old town to the citadel. Above, its coral-coloured walls rising from the sheer rock, rose the Emir’s palace. A silver and blue banner over the gate whipped in the breeze, proclaiming the Emir was in residence.
Lina clasped her hands tight in her lap, trying to still the rising tide of excitement and trepidation that quickened her pulse.
She’d thank him for the wonderful thing he’d done in giving her an education. She’d throw herself into whatever PR tasks he devised to promote education and, as soon as she could, remove herself from his orbit.
She smiled. That was settled.
Except, as so often in life, it didn’t work out that way.
* * *
Sayid exchanged farewells with the fiercely bearded provincial leader then watched him and his entourage bow themselves out through the wide doors of beaten copper.
Rolling his head back, he tried to relieve the stiffness of too many hours sitting in the formal audience chamber. It had been a long afternoon.
He disliked this echoing room with its lavish decorations and raised dais that set him apart from everyone. But he’d made so many reforms in such a short time, he listened when his aides advised he should retain the traditional space for meetings with provincial sheikhs. He worked hard to steer them into change on significant issues. Where he worked was not, to his mind, important. If retaining a show of the old customs made them more comfortable, so be it.
He was getting to his feet when the chamberlain appeared in the doorway. He wasn’t alone.
Sayid sank back on the jewelled throne, his hands curling over the gilded lion heads on the arms.
Suddenly alert, his eagerness to go dissipated as he took in the figure walking beside the chamberlain. Slim, curvaceous, delectably feminine, though her fitted skirt and jacket in jade green covered her from neck to knee.
Late afternoon sun lit her from behind, which had the twofold effect of making it difficult to read her features while highlighting her lush curves in loving detail.
High heels tapped demurely across the inlaid floor and Sayid had time to note her glossy dark hair was pulled severely back and up.
She halted in the middle of the room. Her eyes were downcast, as was traditional in Halarq on meeting the Emir. Yet it was rare for westerners to know that. She was well-prepared.
He sat forward, intrigued that a lone western woman should seek an audience.
‘You may approach.’
The pair walked slowly towards him and Sayid found himself watching with appreciation the gentle undulation of her hips as she paced in those high heels. She wore no jewellery but that only accentuated the purity of her sculpted beauty. High cheekbones, eyes set on an intriguing slant, full lips, slender throat.
Heat crawled up from Sayid’s belly to clog his chest. A blast of fire shot straight to his loins. His hands tightened on the carved chair as she stopped before him, still with downcast eyes. She was one of the most beautiful, elegant women he’d ever seen. And Sayid had known many.
Yet something about her feathered his nape with a cold brush of warning.
Here, he sensed, lay trouble.
The chamberlain spoke. ‘Sire, I am pleased to bring before you...’
The woman’s jaw tipped high, her gaze rising to meet his and the chamberlain’s words were lost in the heavy thrum of Sayid’s pulse as he looked down into eyes as velvety as a drift of mountain violets. Holding his gaze, she dipped into a curtsey that was the epitome of grace.
Shock hammered. His blood rushed, drowning all noise.
Lina. Little Lina.
Sayid remembered her as pretty. Had told himself imagination had embroidered her charms. It had been the forbidden piquancy of finding himself her master, free to do as he wished with her, that had turned a passably attractive teenager into something special in his mind.
He’d been wrong. She was something special. More, she was extraordinary.
Not just because of her beauty. The way that clear-eyed stare met his, the hint of boldness behind the mask of politeness, communicated directly with him on a personal level. A level that made his belly tense and his calm crack.
‘Welcome back to Halarq.’ He kept his voice as grave as his expression. She might have knocked him sideways for an instant but Sayid would never let that show.
‘Thank you, sir.’ She bowed low in a move as formal and graceful as that of any courtier.
He refused to let his eyes track her trim frame, but it was too late. Her image was imprinted on his brain. ‘You’ve grown up.’
Her gaze met his, setting off a buzz of response at the base of his spine. Then her lips twitched into a far too appealing half-smile and she shrugged. ‘It happens to all of us.’ She paused, as if waiting for him to respond. ‘I just turned twenty-two last week.’
Better, far better than seventeen.
The sly voice in his mind was full of insinuation. Of anticipation. But he’d set himself up as her protector, her guardian. Because she had no one else.
Sayid knew what could happen to women who had no one to champion them. Especially beautiful, desirable women.
It was why he’d sent Lina away. Not only to pursue her education, but to keep her out of reach. He might be changing his country, one step at a time, to ensure all his people had the rights of free citizens, but he was still a man.
A man with a formidable appetite for pleasure.
Knowing that was a family trait, seeing its devastating effect on his uncle, who’d never learned to resist temptation, Sayid had striven to contain that side of his nature.
Yet he looked at Lina and something raw and ravenous stirred in his belly. Something uncivilised and unrepentantly greedy that spoke of want and the need to possess. It was a burn in his gut. A sharpness on his tongue. A tightening of his body.
Just like that! As if the rules he’d set for himself no longer existed. As if she wasn’t in his care.
Damn!
Years before he’d done what he could to protect her. According to Halarqi custom, since she’d been given into his keeping, Lina belonged to him. From that moment he was the head of her family. In his people’s eyes, and the law’s, he was her lord. Her master. Potentially her lover.
To his shame, the idea still sent an illicit thrill through him.
Yet, to his credit he’d done what a decent, civilised man would do—embracing his responsibility and becoming her guardian, sending her away.
He’d forgotten she was due to return today. Plus he’d assumed the years would be enough to sever this startling, impossible tug of desire. That he’d have become immune or she’d have grown ordinary.
Neither had happened.
Surely it was a malicious, mocking Fate that had allowed him