Bound to Her Desert Captor

by Michelle Conder

  ‘I haven’t bewitched anyone,’ Regan said vehemently, feeling sick. ‘It’s just... I mean... I can’t explain it to you but I’m really sorry this has happened to you.’

  ‘He loves you. It’s obvious by the way he looks at you.’ More tears leaked out of her eyes and she valiantly tried to hold them back. ‘The way he touches you.’

  Regan agreed that he had touched her a little too much. It had kept her in a heightened state of awareness all night. But she knew for a fact that he didn’t love her. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ Her own emotions felt as if they were being buffeted in a fierce wind. She was at once upset for this woman, who clearly cared for the King a great deal, and incredibly angry at Jag’s obvious insensitivity. Why hadn’t he told her about his engagement? Why hadn’t he warned her that his ex might show up and approach her? Because surely he had known Alexa was invited? He’d signed off the guest list.

  ‘There’s nothing you can say.’ The Princess raised her regal chin in a show of bravado that only made Regan feel worse for her. ‘I tried to tell my father that those photos didn’t matter, that you were nothing to the King, but I was wrong.’

  ‘You’re not wrong.’ Regan bit her lip, anger making her muscles rigid. ‘Look, I can’t be sure but...maybe things will still work out for you. Maybe you should keep your fingers crossed. You never know what can happen in a couple of days. But if I were you, and I wanted him as much as you seem to then I wouldn’t give up hope.’

  The Princess looked at her as if she was crazy. She wasn’t. She was just really angry.

  * * *

  ‘Are you going to talk to me at all about what’s bothering you or are you going to continue to give me frostbite?’

  Regan had been giving him the cold shoulder for the last hour until Jag had finally had enough and called it a night.

  ‘Why have we stopped here?’ she asked curtly, brushing aside his question and glancing along the unfamiliar corridor.

  ‘You’ve been moved from the garden suite to the one adjoining mine.’

  She glared up at him, her mouth tight. ‘I don’t want the room adjoining yours.’

  Growing more and more irritated because he’d actually enjoyed what was usually a tedious formal evening, he pushed the door to his room wide open. ‘Too bad. The garden suite is now occupied by the King and Queen of Norway. Feel free to join them if you like.’

  She looked at him with such venom he thought she’d decide to do it. But then she lifted her dainty nose in the air and swept past him into the room. Sighing heavily, he followed her into his private living room, wondering what had gone wrong in the last hour.

  ‘You don’t need to accompany me,’ she said; ‘I know how to undress myself.’

  Jag’s eyes dragged down over her lush body and all the way back up. A flush of colour tinged her cheeks and heat surged through his veins. Graphic images of her spread out on his elegant sofa wearing nothing but her delicate gold stilettos drove his frustration levels higher. ‘You sure about that?’ He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it across the back of said sofa. ‘I’d be happy to lend a hand if you need it.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you would.’ She folded her arms over her chest. ‘I’m sure you’ve helped many women out of their clothing in your time. Women like Princess Alexa perhaps. Your ex-fiancée.’

  Ah...suddenly the reason for her cool hauteur made sense. ‘Princess Alexa was not my fiancée. Whoever told you that is mistaken.’

  ‘She did,’ she said, challenge lighting her golden-brown eyes. ‘In between bouts of crying.’

  Jag stared at her. He’d spoken to King Ronan personally ahead of the opening dinner, reminding the elderly King that he had never actually committed to marrying his daughter and now he wouldn’t be.

  ‘Princess Alexa and I—’

  ‘Please.’ Regan held up her hand dismissively, cutting him off. ‘Don’t feel as if you have to explain anything to me. It’s none of my business. I’m only the stand-in. Lucky that you find women so interchangeable, no doubt it’s water off a duck’s back for you.’

  ‘I do not find women interchangeable.’

  ‘No, you just see them as part of a package deal to be moved about according to your needs and political machinations. Is this her ring?’ She tugged at the diamond he had given her earlier. ‘She stared at it long and hard when she saw it. Did you choose it together?’

  ‘Would you stand still and listen to me?’ Her pacing was starting to give him whiplash.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I find I can’t abide wearing another woman’s ring, even if it is just a prop.’

  She held it out to him and Jag gritted his teeth, locking his hands around her wrists and jamming the ring back on her finger. ‘That is not Alexa’s ring. It is yours. I never chose a ring for Alexa.’ Unused to explaining himself to anyone, Jag found himself in unfamiliar territory. ‘A few months ago King Ronan approached me about marrying his daughter. I believed the idea had merit and said I would consider it. In the meantime someone from the Berenian Palace has been feeding information to the Press to create speculation and, I suspect, a way to encourage me to seal the deal.’

  ‘As far as I could tell, it was definitely sealed for her. She sounds as if she’s in love with you.’

  ‘I met the woman twice. Do you really believe that’s enough time to fall in love with someone?’

  She hesitated a fraction of a second before staring down her nose at him. ‘Clearly it was for her.’

  ‘I doubt that. The woman is more in love with the idea of being Queen than being my wife, and her father wants easy access to Santara’s wealth.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe. She was incredibly upset.’ She tugged at her wrists and he released her to put some much-needed space between them. ‘But just say your version is the correct one and she’s only marrying you for political gain, I would have thought that was right up your alley. No messy emotions involved to muddy the waters.’

  His jaw ached from clenching it so hard. Tarik had pointed the same things out to him the day before. So why, with all the political advantages it also offered, had he killed the idea completely? ‘I have explained as much as I am willing to explain to you.’

  ‘Oh, right, because I’m just one of your minions. I suppose you’re about to clap your hands next to make me disappear.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he grated.

  ‘I think it was really insensitive of you not to tell me about her. You knew that I was nervous about meeting all those people and you just threw me to the wolves.’

  ‘I did not throw you to the wolves. I made sure you were by my side the whole night. And I am not happy that Alexa approached you, but in the end no harm was done.’

  ‘To you maybe,’ she said, clearly not placated by his response. ‘But that’s because you don’t care about people. You’re so caught up in your duty and your wheeling and dealing you’ve forgotten the human element. You should make sure you donate your body to science after you die—you’ll be the only person in the world who has been able to exist minus a heart.’

  ‘I am not heartless and at the end of the day this is not about you and me as a couple. We’re not a couple. We are a means to an end.’

  ‘Yes, my brother’s end.’

  Feeling an overload of emotion, Jag walked away from her. ‘I refuse to get into this with you.’

  ‘Why?’ she volleyed at him. ‘Because you’re selling Milena off the way King Ronan is his daughter?’

  ‘I am not selling my sister off.’

  She gave him a look as if to say ‘dream on’ and Jag’s hands balled into fists. This woman was driving him crazy. ‘I’m getting very tired of you questioning my decisions regarding my sister.’ He watched as her eyes widened when he paced towards her. ‘When Milena was sixteen she became infatuated with an international farrier that had come to work a
t the royal stables. I assumed it was harmless. I assumed he would be a gentleman, given her station and her age. I was a fool. He tried to seduce her even though he was married and he ended up breaking her heart.’ He took a slow even breath, anger returning along with his memories. ‘Not long after he left she stopped eating and lost an enormous amount of weight. Then I found her with a bottle of sleeping pills clasped in her hand.’ He still remembered that feeling of having his heart in his mouth when he’d realised how gravely ill his sister had become, and he’d do anything to ensure that she was never hurt like that again.

  ‘Oh, poor Milena. And poor you.’ Regan’s sympathy was a tangible force that threatened to wrap around him and never let him go. ‘No wonder you’re so protective of her. I assumed it was just for political reasons.’

  Jag moved away from her so that he couldn’t absorb any more of her warmth. ‘The political aspect is vital. But more than that Milena has always struggled with the need to feel wanted, to feel of value to anyone. She has always blamed herself for our mother’s defection. What she fails to realise is that our mother was never maternal. When this marriage arrangement was first presented to me I believed it would give Milena the stability and sense of purpose her life has always lacked. The last thing I need is you coming along and making me second-guess myself.’ Shocked to realise how much he kept revealing to a woman who was virtually a stranger, he strode to the windows and stared out at the black, starless night.

  ‘I’m sorry I probably brought back bad memories for you when I refused to eat the other day.’ Hearing the deep emotion in her voice, Jag couldn’t stop himself from turning to look at her. He’d never met a woman so open with her emotions and so willing to take ownership of her actions. ‘And I’m sorry for saying you were heartless. I can see that you really do care very deeply for your sister and it was wrong of me to suggest otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t need your sympathy.’ Put on the spot by the raw emotion in her voice that paradoxically tugged at his own, Jag put the brakes on the conversation. What he needed was her to get naked so he could work off some of the excess energy coursing through him, not to feel even more than he already did.

  He heard her murmur a soft goodnight before she disappeared through one of the closed doors. As he was about to tell her that she’d entered his bedroom instead of her own she returned, red-faced. ‘I think I just went into your room. It smells like you.’

  Jag’s jaw clenched. ‘You did.’ He pointed to the door on the far side of the room. ‘You can access your bedroom through there.’

  She ran her hands down the sides of her dress and threw him a nervous smile. ‘Okay. Take two.’

  Needing to lower his tension levels with something other than her, Jag headed for the bar. He’d just picked up the crystal decanter when she screamed.

  Striding through the connecting door, he pulled up short when he found Regan standing on the bed, holding a stiletto sandal in her hand and wearing nothing but a nude-coloured slip. A very short nude-coloured slip.

  ‘Sp-p-pider,’ she stammered, her lovely eyes as wide as dinner plates. ‘I swear it’s as big as a wildebeest.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the...in the wardrobe.’

  Finding the offending arachnid, he had to concede that the spider was indeed huge. Maybe not a wildebeest, but if you’d never seen a camel spider before it probably looked as bad as one. Retrieving an empty glass from her bathroom, he captured the spider and tossed it outside the window, closing it after him.

  ‘Technically it’s not a spider,’ he informed her, returning to find her still on the bed, her long, lithe legs braced apart. ‘It’s known as a Solifugae.’

  ‘As long as it’s technically gone I don’t care what it’s known as. Are there any more?’

  Jag checked around the bed, welcoming the diversion from her legs. ‘All clear. I’ll make sure the staff do a regular sweep of the rooms tomorrow. But rest assured, we don’t tend to see very many of them inside the palace. They prefer the open desert.’

  ‘This one got lost,’ she said, still warily eyeing the carpet as if she expected to see an army of them come out of the woodwork.

  ‘Come.’ He held his hand out to her, even though he told himself not to touch her. ‘I’ll help you down.’

  Still in a state of shock, she took his hand without argument, becoming unbalanced as she stepped off the bed.

  Jag caught her in his arms, her body fitting against his like a silken glove, her arms winding around his neck, her legs wrapping around his hips.

  Somehow her bottom, round and firm, was cupped in the palms of his hands.

  The kiss from the night before spiralled through his head, taking over.

  ‘You wanted to know what I tasted like and now you don’t want to repeat it.’

  At one point during the night he’d wanted to repeat it so badly he’d nearly cleared the grand ballroom. Part of the problem was that her taste was damned addictive.

  The air-conditioning whirred overhead.

  Was she breathing?

  He wasn’t.

  Her body was open to his, clinging, her scent winding him up. He was so aroused, he shook with it. All it would take was for him to bunch her silk slip a fraction higher, test her readiness with the tips of his fingers, release himself from his trousers and bury himself deep inside her.

  His hands moved to her thighs, tightening on the soft resilience of her skin, then he inhaled raggedly, letting her slide down his torso until her feet touched the floor, biting back a groan.

  She stared up at him, as dazed as he was, her eyes dark with unslaked lust. Her nipples were hard, her breathing as uneven as his, and he knew if he put his hand between her legs he’d find she was equally turned on.

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. She wasn’t here for this. He hadn’t asked her to pose as his fiancée so that he could satisfy a hunger for her he was barely able to comprehend. He’d done it to avert an international crisis; he’d done it to get his sister back. How would it look if he threw sex into the mix for the hell of it?

  If Chad James was out there having sex with his sister he’d kill him. He’d expect no less in return. He took a step back from her, called himself ten types of a fool and headed for the door before he could change his mind.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  REGAN WAS ALREADY up when breakfast arrived on the King’s private terrace. She’d showered and changed into her own clothes—jeans and a T-shirt—ignoring the beautiful items the King had provided for her, since she had no idea what would be expected of her today. She thought about the woman who had slipped him her phone number the night before and wondered if he had gone to find her after he’d walked away from her. And then reminded herself yet again that she didn’t care.

  She stared at the selection of local pastries and fruits and thought about his revelation concerning his sister the night before. She honestly hadn’t thought he had the potential to feel anything on a personal level, but after the disclosure about Milena was torn from his chest she could see that he did. He felt things incredibly deeply and she was coming to understand that the way he had coped with taking control of a family and a country so young was to close down his emotions and just get on with it.

  She recalled the way he had fed her in the garden suite when she’d gone on a hunger strike. At the time she’d assumed that he’d fed her for purely selfish reasons, but had he done it because deep down he was a nice person? Somehow she preferred the first option. It made it much easier to dislike him if she thought he was a hard-hearted tyrant.

  She spied the food now and tried to stop thinking about him so that she could figure out if she was hungry or not when he walked through the glass doors and joined her.

  Smoothing the napkin on her lap, she told her heartbeat to settle down.

  ‘You were right last night,’ he said quietly, his eyes on her fa
ce. ‘It was insensitive of me not to have informed you about the situation with Princess Alexa. I hadn’t looked at it from your point of view, and I also genuinely believed that Alexa would not be overly disappointed if the betrothal didn’t go ahead. I’m sorry I put you in that position.’

  Not expecting him to apologise, Regan felt taken aback. ‘I probably overreacted a little,’ she admitted, knowing that really, she had overreacted a lot because she’d been unexpectedly jealous of the other woman. Something that didn’t make sense at all given their circumstances. ‘But it’s okay.’ She forced a lightness into her voice. ‘I told Princess Alexa not to give up hope.’

  His brows drew together. ‘Why would you tell her that?’

  ‘Because I felt sorry for her. She was really upset and she’s perfect for you.’ That thought had kept her up a lot during the night. ‘She’s beautiful and poised and royal. In terms of matches you’d make beautiful babies together. You should definitely go ahead with it.’

  He moved towards the table and picked up a peach, testing it for ripeness. She hadn’t realised how much she wanted him to deny her advice until he didn’t. ‘You’re always looking for the silver lining, aren’t you?’

  ‘I prefer silver linings to thunderclouds. Life’s tough enough without always waiting to be rained on.’

  ‘That’s a romantic way of looking at the world. If you’re not careful you’ll be blindsided when you least expect it. And you hate surprises.’

  ‘I hate bad surprises.’

  ‘Is there any other kind?’

  Well, there was her reaction to his kisses. That was definitely a thundercloud because, as intoxicating as they were, as much as they made her burn for more, she would never be what he was looking for in a woman.

  ‘Good point,’ she agreed, frowning as a thought came to her. ‘You’re not going to say anything to Princess Alexa, are you? I wouldn’t want her to get into trouble for approaching me.’

  ‘First you protect my staff, and now the Princess? Who are you going to protect next? Because I don’t ever see you protecting yourself and you make yourself vulnerable in the process.’