Traded to the Desert Sheikh

by Caitlin Crews

  “Or perhaps I simply do not care for sand,” she said, and she laughed, then felt his hard muscles tighten all around her in reaction. “Not everything is a conspiracy, Kavian. Some things are simply statements.”

  “And some statements have consequences.” His eyes would be gleaming silver if she could see them, she was sure. “As I have been at some pains to show you.”

  “Is that what you call it? I rather thought you were putting on a grand show. Hauling me into the harem baths, then off to play queen of the desert tribes with no warning. It’s almost as if you don’t really want a queen at all, so much as a plaything.”

  “Surely not having to choose is a benefit of royalty,” he said, and there was no denying the laughter in his voice then. “I will have to consult the manual upon our return.”

  Amaya felt that as a victory, the rumble of laughter in his chest behind her. From the man who’d stood before her like marble to tell her the worst of himself, to this man who laughed with her, and it was all her doing. There were darker things that batted at her then, but she ignored them. She would bask in this, even if only for a moment. That she could do this for him. Take a stone and make him a man again. Even if only for a moment.

  Even if only for her.

  Kavian didn’t speak as they rode into the great courtyard. He swung from the horse’s back as they entered and led her the rest of the way toward the waiting stable hands. He lifted her from the saddle the way he had before, lowering her to the ground in a manner that only called attention to his superior strength.

  And made her wish they were alone so she could feel the drag of his mighty chest against hers again. Like the addict she knew she was.

  “We marry in two weeks, Amaya,” he said, the vastness of the desert in his voice and silver in his gray eyes, and she felt it like a caress. All of it. His command. His authority. Like a long, hot, drugging kiss. It made her feel alive.

  “Perhaps if you didn’t keep saying that like it was a dire threat, you’d get a better response,” she said, tipping her head back to meet his gaze.

  Her reward was that crook of his hard mouth. That gleam in his dark eyes.

  “You prefer the threat, I think,” he said, and ran a fingertip along the line of her jaw. There was no reason it should echo throughout the rest of her, making even the blood in her veins clamor for more. “You rise to meet it every time. You’ll make me an excellent queen, azizty.”

  And when she didn’t argue that away for once, when she only met his gaze and let her mouth curve instead, Kavian smiled.

  Amaya felt it deep inside her, warm and bright, like a song she told herself she’d let herself sing for a little while.

  Just a little while longer.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHEN THE WEEK of their wedding dawned, Kavian insisted upon greeting all of their guests in the most formal manner possible, and he didn’t much care that the idea of such pomp and circumstance made Amaya balk.

  “We’re not really going to sit in thrones and wave scepters about, are we?” she asked, her voice as baleful as her gaze as she stared at him from across the length of her dressing room. He’d instructed her attendants to prepare her for court, and the scowl on her face did nothing to take away from the breathtaking new gown she wore or the hair she wore up in a marvelous sweep of combs and braids, exactly as he’d wanted it. She looked exquisite. Deeply, irrevocably regal. The perfect queen.

  But Kavian thought he knew this woman well enough by now to know better than to point that out to her. She might have stepped into her role in the desert. But he wasn’t fool enough to think she’d accepted it entirely. He needed to marry her, tie her up in legal knots, make sure she understood what he’d known since their betrothal: this was for life. There was no escaping it, for either one of them.

  “There is only one throne,” he told her mildly. He remained where he was in the doorway as the women fussed over her skirts, his gaze trained on her lovely face and the hint of emotion he could see on her cheeks. “I sit in it. But if you wish to wield a royal scepter, I am certain we can have one made for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Kavian knew the exact moment she realized that was, perhaps, not the best way to address him in the presence of others. She straightened. Her dark chocolate eyes gleamed with more of that hectic emotion he’d seen more and more of the closer they got to their wedding date. “I don’t need a scepter. I have no desire whatsoever to play queen of the castle.”

  “That is the problem, azizty. No one is playing, save you. Because you are, in fact, the queen not only of this particular castle but of all the land.”

  Her scowl deepened as she dismissed her attendants and walked to him, and he took a moment longer than he should have to admire her. To soak her in. It wasn’t merely that she was so beautiful, or how she looked every inch a queen today. It was how perfectly she fit here. In this life. On his arm. At his side.

  Did she truly fail to see that? Or was this merely another one of the games she liked to play—her way of teasing him to a distraction? He reached over when she drew near and wrapped his hand around her upper arm, enjoying the way she swallowed. Hard. Because she could deny a thousand things, but never that fire that raged between them. Never that.

  “And if you look at me like that in the throne room, in public, in the presence of our guests,” he said softly, “you will regret it. I am only as civilized as it suits me to be. That can change in an instant.”

  She was warm beneath his hand, her skin supple, and he was tempted to ignore the people waiting for them and simply back her up against the nearest wall and—

  “You say that as if I do not regret everything already,” she murmured, but he heard a teasing note in her voice. He could see the sheen of it in her gaze. “Whether you threaten me with it or not.”

  “I don’t make threats, Amaya. I make promises.”

  She smiled. “And it should worry you, shouldn’t it, that one is indistinguishable from the other?”

  He dragged his thumb up, then down, enjoying the friction almost as much as the way her lips parted slightly at the sensation. She was his, he thought then, on every possible level. She was surely running out of ways to deny that—and their wedding would put an end to it, once and for all.

  But there were miles to go first. Kavian had the suspicion they might be the hardest yet, like any long siege in its final hours. Better to concentrate on the details and assume the rest would fall into place. He reminded himself of the reason he’d come into her dressing room.

  “Your mother arrived at the international airport in Ras Kalaat and is en route to the palace,” he said, watching her face.

  Amaya flinched slightly, so very slightly that had he not been studying her, he might have missed it entirely. She swallowed again, and he saw the pulse in her neck leap, though her face went blank. Panic? Fear? He couldn’t tell.

  He hated that he still couldn’t tell.

  “Now?” she asked.

  “She will be here in the palace within the hour.” He released her arm, straightening in the doorway, frowning down at her. “Were you expecting her? You have gone pale.”

  “I expected she would attend my wedding, yes,” Amaya said. Carefully, he thought. Much too carefully. He was reminded of the mask she’d worn when he’d first met her and it was like a howling thing in him, the urge to tear it off. “I’m her only child, after all, and she is my only remaining parent.”

  She blinked too hard, then looked around as if she was casting about for an escape route, and it hit him. He’d seen that look on her face before, heard that exact same note in her voice. It had been the night of their betrothal ceremony.

  And in the morning, she’d been gone.

  “What you did not expect, if I am to read between the lines, was that this wedding would ever come to pass,”
Kavian finished for her. He wanted to touch her again, but didn’t, and it hurt like a body blow. “Someday, Amaya, I hope you will come to understand that I keep the promises I make. Always.”

  She stepped back from him and he felt it like the deepest cut. It took everything he had not to haul her back where she belonged. He watched her pull in a deep breath, as if readying herself for battle.

  “It should matter to you that this is not what I want,” she said.

  It was laughable—and yet Kavian did not feel the least bit like laughing. “You don’t know what you want.”

  “That’s astonishingly patronizing. Even for you.”

  He shrugged, never shifting his gaze from her face. “You ran, I caught you. I will always catch you. That is the end of it.”

  “It should make a difference that I didn’t want to be caught,” she bit out, as if sobs lurked just there behind her eyes.

  “Did you not? It seems to me that if that were the case, you would not have returned to Canada at all, and certainly not to Mont-Tremblant.”

  Amaya jerked her gaze away from his then, but he didn’t stop.

  “And, of course, you could have fought me. Showed me how opposed you were to this union instead of merely making announcements.”

  “I’ve done nothing but fight you from the start.”

  “Yes,” he said, and she shivered at his tone. He almost smiled at that. “That is precisely how I would categorize the way you melted in my hands at our betrothal ceremony. And then all over me in that alcove. And then again, how you walked straight into the pools here to join me, wearing almost nothing. What fighting tactics were those, exactly? And to what end?”

  She couldn’t seem to make herself look at him, but he could see the impact of every word he said. They moved over her, making her tremble, and he’d already confessed his sins. She already knew he was a terrible man. He could not regret this. He did not try.

  “You seek my touch and respond to it, always.” His voice brooked no argument. It was a statement of flat, inconvertible fact. “Meanwhile, you have not been held here under lock and key or even under special guard. You were left to your own devices out in the desert. You could have made an attempt to leave at any time, yet you have not.”

  “You would have caught me.”

  “That is an inevitability, I grant you, but it is a question of where. After all, it took me six months the first time. Yet you have not tried.”

  “Do you want me to make an escape attempt, Kavian?” She turned to glare at him. “Because I thought the point of this was that you wanted a biddable little wife to live out her life at your beck and call.”

  He felt himself go still.

  “That is the first time you have used my name when I have not been touching you, Amaya,” he pointed out, and she shuddered. “Who knows? Someday you may even address me as if I am a man with a name, not a strategy to be employed toward your own increasingly convoluted ends.”

  “Isn’t that the point of this?” she asked, and he hardly recognized her voice. “We are nothing but strategies for each other. Cold and calculated. Surely that’s the point of an arranged, political marriage.”

  “You did not have to prove yourself to the villagers out in the northern territory. Where was the calculation there?”

  “It was politically savvy on my part, nothing more.”

  “You could have complained about your treatment here to your brother at any point over these last weeks and caused a major diplomatic incident.”

  “He is newly married with a small child.” She tipped that chin of hers up into the air, because this was what she did. She fought. She never simply surrendered. He admired that most of all, he thought. That indomitable will of hers, like the desert he loved. “He is somewhat busy, I imagine.”

  “You could have called me a monster when I showed you who I am,” he said quietly. She jerked at that, as if he’d hit her. “Others have before you. Will you call the fact that you did not political, too?” He did not let himself think about what he might do if she did. But her eyes were slick with misery and she didn’t say a word. “Do you know what it is you want, Amaya? Or do you fear that you already know?”

  “None of that means I want to marry you,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps it does not,” he agreed. “But it does suggest that the chances are very good that you will anyway.”

  “If you remove all the threats from this relationship,” she replied now, her voice revealingly thick, “we don’t actually have one.”

  “I will keep that foremost in my thoughts, azizty, the next time I am deep inside you and you are begging me for your release.” Kavian kept his voice low, because it was the only thing keeping his hands from her, and his court waited for them even now. “I will hold you on that edge until you scream and then I will remind you that we have no relationship. No relationship, no release. Is that what you had in mind?”

  He could hear her breathing, too loud and too fast. And her gaze was wild as it met his. But when she spoke, her voice was flat. Almost matter-of-fact.

  “They are waiting for us in the throne room,” she said.

  He didn’t believe her apparent calm for a moment. But once again, he admired her courage. The way she stood up to him, the way she gathered herself when he could see the storms in her. The more she kept trying to prove they did not suit, the more perfect he found her.

  “They can wait a little while longer.” He raised his brows. “Until we arrive, it is only a very large room with a dramatic chair no one is permitted to touch. By law.”

  “That I get to stand behind, yes,” she bit out. She moved then, sweeping past him toward the door, her spine rigid and her head high. “What a joyous experience that will be, I am sure. I can hardly wait.”

  He let her go, following behind her as she made her way from their suite and into the grand corridor that led toward the public wing of the palace and the ancient throne room that sat at its center. His aides converged upon him as they walked, and it was not until they’d entered the room and taken their places on the raised dais that dominated one end of the ornate hall that he focused on her once more.

  “You stand beside me, not behind me,” he told her. He could not have said what moved him to do so. That she was still pale. That her sweet mouth was set in a hard line no matter that defiant angle to her fine jaw. That she still seemed to imagine that this was something other than foregone conclusion. “A strong king holds the throne, Amaya, but a strong queen beside him holds the kingdom. So say the poets.”

  He saw something flicker in her gaze then. “And do you rule with poetry? That doesn’t sound like the man who dragged me out of that café in Canada.”

  “You walked out of that café in Canada of your own volition,” he reminded her. “Just as you walked into that encampment in the desert and just as you will walk down that aisle in a few days. My queen obeys me because she chooses it. That is her gift. It is my job to earn it.”

  An expression he couldn’t define moved over her face then, as the guards stood at attention down the length of the long hall and announced the series of guests who awaited their notice, and her mother’s arrival. Kavian eyed her as her mother’s name rang out, taking in Amaya’s too-stiff posture. The way she gripped her hands before her, so hard her knuckles hinted at white.

  “You are afraid of your own mother,” he murmured. “Why is that?”

  But the great doors were opening at the other end of the hall, and she didn’t answer him. Because her mother was walking in and Amaya sucked in an audible breath at the sight, as if she couldn’t help herself. As if she truly was afraid.

  Kavian turned slowly to gaze upon the person who could bring out this reaction in the only woman he’d ever met who had never seemed particularly intimidated by him.

  Elizaveta al Bakri looked
like every photograph Kavian had ever seen of her. She appeared almost supernaturally ageless. She was an icy blonde, her hair swept back into a ruthless chignon and her objectively beautiful face flawless, with only the faintest touch of cosmetics to enhance the high, etched cheekbones she’d passed on to her daughter. Her blue eyes were frigid despite the placid expression on her face, her carriage that of a prima ballerina. She looked tall and willowy and effortless as she strode down the long hall toward the throne, quite as if she hadn’t flown halfway across the world today, and yet as far as Kavian was concerned she was little more than a reptile.

  Much like his own, long-dead mother.

  “Breathe,” Kavian ordered Amaya in a dark undertone.

  He felt more than saw her stiffen beside him, then he heard her exhale.

  He kept his attention on the snake.

  Elizaveta made a beautiful, studied obeisance when she came before the throne, sweeping deep into a curtsey and then rising in a single, elegant motion that called attention to her lovely figure. But then, most snakes were mesmerizingly sinuous. That didn’t make them any less venomous.

  “Your Majesty,” Elizaveta murmured, her voice threaded through with the faintest hint of an accent that Kavian suspected she maintained simply to appear slightly exotic wherever she went. Then she shifted her attention to her daughter. “Amaya. Darling. It’s been too long.”

  “You may go to her,” Kavian said in an indulgent tone. It was over-the-top even for him and Amaya glanced at him, startled—but he trusted that the look in his eyes was savage enough to keep her from saying anything. Hers widened in response.

  Challenge me, he suggested with his gaze alone. I dare you.

  But Amaya merely moved toward Elizaveta, and Kavian was aware of too many things at once as she went. It was the same overly focused attention to detail that he experienced before an attack, whether while practicing the martial arts he’d trained in all his life or in an actual physical skirmish. The vastness of the great room as it echoed around his betrothed. The rustle of her long skirts as she descended the wide stairs. And the way this woman who was meant to be her mother looked at her as she waited, her expression still something like serene yet with nothing but calculation in her chilly gaze as far as he could tell.