A Cinderella for the Desert King

by Kim Lawrence

  How had Zain’s meeting with his father gone—was the sheikh angry that his son had been secretly married? Was Zain telling Kayla all about it over dinner? Was she making him feel better? Abby couldn’t figure out if she had imagined or over-egged the intimacy she sensed between Zain and the widow...in Abby’s head she had become the black widow, thought that might have just been her jealousy talking.

  ‘Jealousy!’ she yelped out loud, sinking under the scented water before coming up gasping and spluttering a second later.

  ‘Do not go there, Abby,’ she told her fogged reflection in one of the many mirrors. So yes, she was attracted to Zain—all right, attracted didn’t really cover it... Zain had woken up a dormant sensual side of her that she hadn’t even known existed—but she couldn’t lose sight of the fact that she was here to do a job, a job that meant they spent a lot of time together in close proximity. But she would be vigilant not to confuse that closeness with real intimacy and in eighteen months she was out of here.

  Easing herself out of the warm water, she scrubbed the mist off the mirror and pushed the wet hair back from her face. ‘Do you want sex if it’s just cheap and meaningless?’

  It kind of depends on who’s offering it...

  Her eyes widened before she closed them with a groan. Sometimes honesty was definitely not the best policy. Standing up, she reached for one of the neatly folded bath sheets, muttering, ‘Just as well he’s not offering,’ and keeping her eyes on the floor as she padded back through to the bedroom, afraid the mirrors might evoke some more unwanted insights. She just had to keep reminding herself that she was here to provide a smooth transition of power and nothing else.

  * * *

  The two men who had shadowed him at a respectful distance stopped when Zain halted and waited. It was the fourth such pause he had made since he left his father’s apartments, still in a state of shock. As he walked past the two uniformed guards who flanked the entrance to his own private section of the palace he nodded to the men behind him, who peeled away as he shut the door.

  He leaned against it. Zain was not a man easily shocked but he was... He closed his eyes as the relevant section of his conversation with his father continued to play on a loop in his head.

  ‘Several members of the council have come to me to express their...concern over this marriage, and your choice of bride.’

  Zain, who had expected this, had only half listened while his father recited the names, and none had surprised him. But then his father had said something that did surprise him.

  ‘I told them that you have my total support.’

  Zain had not doubted his ability to gain his father’s support by appealing to his sentimental nature, but to receive it totally unprompted had surprised him.

  ‘I am glad you have found someone,’ his father had continued. ‘Leading this country can be a lonely job and it’s not one I would inflict on my worst enemy, let alone my son, without a great deal of thought.’

  ‘It will not be my job for a long time, Father.’

  ‘It will; I intend to step down and let you take control, Zain. It is something I would have done sooner but your brother...well, let us not speak ill of the dead.’

  Repetition did not lessen the shock value, Zain realised as he began to pace the room.

  He had never needed a shoulder to lean on or someone to confide his fears to—there was no one in his life to let him down, to leave. But both his father and Abby had spoken about the loneliness of the role.

  To Zain, being alone was a positive, but it was not a point of view he imagined he stood any chance of converting Abby to—she rather unexpectedly turned out to have a romanticised view of life which even a profession not known for sentiment had not knocked out of her—and she was stubborn.

  One corner of his mouth half lifted as, in his mind, the lines of her face quivered and solidified, becoming so real that for a moment it was as if he could reach out and touch her, but when he blinked and his vision cleared there was just the door she lay behind.

  He walked across to it, hand outstretched, only to let it still on the heavy handle for a long time before he dropped it back to his side and walked away, reminding himself that alone was an advantage not a disability.

  * * *

  Unlike the previous night, Abby didn’t fall asleep the moment her head hit the pillow—she tossed and turned as her thoughts went around in dizzying circles, bits of conversation from the last couple of days drifting through as her mind disconnected thoughts and images.

  Occasionally her eyes would go to the hidden door to Zain’s rooms as she wondered about past times when it had been used for illicit liaisons, about the mistresses and wives of powerful men who had lain in this bed before her, though she was not a mistress...and a wife in name only.

  A wife who frequently felt as if she were the only twenty-two-year-old virgin on the planet. It wasn’t deliberate; in her teens she had been the butt of male jokes—too tall, too thin, too gawky...too weird—so she had focused on her books and read about true romance. Not the fumbling sort her contemporaries boasted of enjoying, but grand passions, soulmates.

  The irony was that now, even though she was essentially the same person, she had plenty of men lusting after her, to the point that she’d had to adopt an aloof reputation to put them off. The last thing she actually wanted to be was untouchable so Abby had decided she was setting the bar too high, which was the reason she’d taken a chance on Greg, working on the theory that, while he didn’t set her on fire, she recognised the strong possibility that nobody would, and he was so nice—irony didn’t get much darker really.

  Maybe it was an evolutionary process and she was a slow starter; she had found unrequited lust now—and frankly she wouldn’t have recommended it to anyone—so maybe one day she might discover what love felt like too...she just hoped it was better than this!

  This reflection drove her from her bed. Barefoot, she walked across to the windows. She hadn’t closed the curtains—there was no one to see in, considering her room and the entire private section belonging to Zain was situated in one of the highest of the three towers the palace boasted.

  She could see the paved herb garden far below, the fragrance drifting up on the warm night air, the sound from the series of fountains a distant trickle. It was soothing and as she lifted her face towards the warm breeze it caught the folds of the nightdress that she had taken from the selection neatly folded in one of the drawers; soft chiffon silk in a pale shade of blue, it reached mid-calf and gathered under her breasts. One of the ribbon straps slipped as she pushed her hair back from her face.

  She froze, one hand pressed to her head, fingers deep in the lush red curls, the other hand on the intricate wrought-iron rail of the Juliet balcony, as a disturbing sound broke the dark silence.

  The sound was almost feral...an animal, perhaps, but what sort of animal would be roaming the palace grounds at night? Then the terrible lost sound came again. It was not, she realised, coming from the grounds, but from the room next door and from the throat of a person.

  She didn’t think, she just raced to the secret door and rushed through. Like her, Zain had not closed the curtains. The moonlight was streaming into the room, giving the illusion that carved wooden bed in the centre of it was spotlit.

  The feral-sounding wail that emerged from the figure in it sent a chill through her blood. Heart pounding, she raced across the room and, climbing onto the bed, crammed forward to kneel beside the hunched figure on his knees, the tangled sheet over his body covering him only to waist level, leaving his head, his heaving shoulders and back exposed to the moonlight. The skin gleamed like oiled gold as every individual muscle tensed, tautly defined like an anatomical diagram displaying the perfection of the human form.

  The only sound now, to her relief, was Zain’s laboured dragging in and sighing out of deep, drowning breaths and the heavy thud-th
ud of her heartbeat as the blood pounded in her ears.

  ‘Zain...?’

  His head lifted fractionally at the sound of her voice. ‘Go back to bed, Abigail,’ he shook out in a muffled, raw voice that pained her ears like nails on a chalk board.

  It was good advice and she knew it.

  She reached out, hesitating a moment before she touched his shoulder and felt his muscles tense in rejection. Under the slick of sweat his skin felt cold to the touch.

  ‘Get the hell out!’ he growled.

  Logic said she should do just that, but in the same way as her physical response to him was something elemental, the response to his obvious suffering was equally instinctive and strong. It went beyond empathy and easily drowned out the voices of self-preservation in her head.

  She tucked her legs underneath her and sat there. ‘Well, you can be as rude as you like, call the guards to cart me off to the dungeon if you want, but I’m not moving until you tell me what the hell was going on—that was no dream, that was...’ She thought of the nerve-shredding sound and shuddered. ‘You might as well talk to me. I’m vastly cheaper than a therapist and my confidentiality is guaranteed.’

  After a moment he sighed and flipped over onto his back, eyes closed. In the moonlight the angles and planes on his face took on the aspect of a beautifully carved statue.

  The seconds dragged and his silence continued to contrast with the emotions she could feel rolling off him.

  She could see the waistband of a pair of boxers just below the crest of his hip bone, his belly flat and ridged, showing each individual muscle with every inhalation. The multi-coloured bruises down one side of his ribcage and upper torso shone through the light triangular dusting of body hair on his chest. His body had a power and beauty that dragged an emotional response from some previously unknown portion of her heart.

  ‘Go away, Abigail Foster. I am not...safe.’ His smoky blue gaze slid from her face and down her body, betraying the sinful thoughts in his mind.

  He closed his eyes as if fighting against a surge of primal possessiveness.

  ‘I’m not prying... I just want...’ she began, framing her words carefully before stopping and straightening her shoulders. ‘I just want to help and it’s no use trying to scare me. I’m not afraid of you.’

  His eyes opened and she nodded, smiling serenely down at him as she realised that she was telling the truth. She never had been afraid of him—even that first time when she had not known if he was one of the good guys, she had felt safe with him.

  ‘Is it the accident? Is your memory coming back?’

  He huffed out a dry laugh. ‘It never went away, cara.’

  ‘I know you said you didn’t get on with your brother.’ Her lips tightened as she recalled the dead man’s idea of a birthday present. ‘But you were brothers...and I know that people feel guilty when they survive and—’

  He lifted a hand and touched a finger to her lips.

  Abby inhaled and forgot what she’d been about to say as a deep tingle surged through her body from the point of contact.

  He took the finger away and she breathed out, watching as he curved his arm on the pillow above his head; the stretch involved a contraction of muscle that inflamed the tingling she was already feeling inside.

  ‘I am not suffering survivor guilt...surviving is my way of...’ He broke off, as if at a loss to explain his relationship to someone like her. ‘I wish the world were the way you think it is, cara—you think that blood is thicker than water, but the brutal reality is that brothers do not always love one another. Some brothers hate...my brother hated me.’

  Assailed by a sense of helplessness, she felt the lump of emotion in her throat swelling. She hated to see him hurting like this and beating himself up...guilty for something that no one could have prevented.

  ‘You can’t blame yourself, it was an accident, you argued...that is what families do—’

  ‘I really don’t feel guilty,’ he cut back with savage, biting emphasis that made her wonder if she was missing something.

  ‘Well, then, that’s good.’

  ‘Good!’ he spat before closing his eyes and clapping a hand heavily to his head. A moment later his hand fell away and he raised himself on one elbow, his free hand going to her chin, drawing her face around to look at him. ‘The truth is it was no accident. It was planned.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘It’s possible because...’ He paused, a battle waging across his face as he struggled to force the words out. ‘You have that wholesome, shiny, dewy-eyed belief that goodness will overcome, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not that naive, Zain, but yes, I do think that if you give people a chance they will mostly do the right thing...yes, I do.’

  ‘The right thing!’ he echoed. ‘Do you think it was the right thing that my brother invited me there that day with the intention of ending both our lives?’ He must have heard her sharp intake of breath, seen her pale, shocked face, but he ignored both. ‘Khalid had found out that his life was ending—he had terminal cancer, the autopsy after the accident confirmed it—and he decided to put his—what do they say?—yes, his “affairs” in order.

  ‘He took great delight in telling me he was going to take me with him—his last revenge. Khalid’s last I love you, brother moment.’ His bitter laugh cut her like a shower of glass shards.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident.’ Her horrified whisper sounded loud in the silent room. ‘It was attempted murder.’

  ‘And he very nearly succeeded. I would be dead if that door had not given at the last moment and every time I close my eyes I see my brother’s face and know how much he hated me.’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry. Have you told anyone?’

  Something flashed in his eyes as he looked at her and shook his head.

  Shock vibrated through him; he had never intended to share the knowledge with anyone, let alone a woman he barely knew. There was nothing between him and this woman except a sexual attraction, he told himself, refusing to examine the suspicious knot of emotion that lay like a lead weight behind his breast bone. She had awoken in him something stronger than anything he had ever experienced and for the first time he realised how some men mistook this sort of primal connection for love.

  ‘My father must never know—it would... Khalid put him through hell over the years. I don’t want him to know the truth behind his death...what my brother tried to do. It would kill him.’

  She pressed a hand to her heart as though making a vow as she held his eyes and shook her head. ‘I won’t tell him... I won’t tell anyone.’

  Their eyes were locked, the silent, deep connection stretching as he reached up his long fingers, digging into the deep, silky mesh of waves at the back of her head.

  Her heart thudding audibly, Abby rose up on her knees and placed her palms flat on either side of his head as he dragged her face slowly down to his.

  The first brush of his lips sent a jolt of shock fizzing through her body. She tensed and then, with a sigh, relaxed into the pressure of his slow, seductive exploration. Her body arched over him as his hands slid down her shoulders, moving slowly over the thin silk of her nightdress. By the time they reached the curve of her taut bottom she was quivering with need.

  ‘I have wanted you from the moment I saw you,’ he said thickly, easing her onto her back and rising over her.

  * * *

  The raw desire in his voice excited her more than Abby would have believed possible. She ran her hands down his back—it was all hard muscle and silky skin—but stopped suddenly, remembering his injures.

  In the act of sliding down her body he stopped and lifted his head. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I want you, Zain, I want to touch you...taste you...’ She shocked herself with the bold admission before adding a half-whispered, ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

&
nbsp; His laugh held relief and warmth. ‘Let me show how much you’re hurting me, angel.’

  He took her hand and fed it down his body, sliding it under the waistband of his shorts, watching her face as he curled her fingers around the smooth, hard shaft of his erection.

  She gasped, her heart pumping as her smoky stare connected with his. The carnal image that flashed into her head of him inside her so hot and hard made her fingers tighten, and she felt rather than heard the feral moan that vibrated deep within the vault of his chest as he took her hand away and held it on the pillow beside her face. With his free hand he stroked down her cheek and, holding her eyes, slid one and then the other thin strap of her nightdress off her shoulders.

  He leaned in close, his breath warm on her cheek. ‘Your skin is like silk,’ he rasped, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the blue-veined hollow at the base of her throat. ‘I want to see you.’

  The erotic statement took her breath away and tightened the hard knot of desire low in her belly but also released a flicker of fear that spoilt the moment.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You do realise that my photos are airbrushed, right?’ She looked at him through her lashes, her body language defensive as she pushed out, ‘I’m not perfect...and I’ve never really felt this way before...’

  He caught her two clenched fists and brought them up to his lips. ‘You are beautiful.’

  Her lashes lifted from her cheek.

  ‘And I want... I need you.’

  The raw, driven quality of his admission started to melt away her doubts and the hungry kiss that followed it completed the job.

  She lay there breathing hard as he levered himself far enough away to pull her nightdress down to her waist. His eyes made her think of blue molten fire, and they left a burning trail on her skin as he hungrily absorbed her quivering breasts, cupping one in his hand. When he ran his tongue across the engorged peak, she stopped thinking at all.