Stolen by the Desert King

by Clare Connelly

  He took up too much real-estate and all the air.

  Breathing was no longer something she could do without concentrating.

  “I am glad,” she heard herself say, the words high-pitched. “That we have a chance to get to know one another.”

  He said nothing, but the intensity of his gaze was a silent entreaty for her to continue.

  “I mean, I’ve never questioned this whole… arrangement… as strange as that might seem. But I’ll admit the idea of turning up on my wedding day and marrying a man I know nothing about…” she shivered at the idea, and her breasts strained against her dress.

  Khalifa’s eyes dropped deliberately to her chest, and Kylie felt as though she might as well have been naked. He stared at her long and slow, and every beat of time that passed made her awareness of him skyrocket. His gaze alone was enough, as though he were touching her with his hands and fingers and mouth, not just examining her from a distance.

  The air in the limousine crackled with awareness and Kylie cursed her lack of sexual experience. While virginity had been demanded, surely she could have done at least some experimenting, to give herself a little more knowledge in situations like this?

  Situations like this, her brain prompted with disbelief. As if this is anything that ever happens to anyone!

  Self-consciously, she crossed her arms over her chest and she saw the flicker of his smile once more as he lifted his attention back to her face.

  “It does seem strange.”

  Kylie had no idea what he was talking about. She was lost, stranded in the middle of the desert, no clue which way was right or left. “What does?” A husky question as her brain tried to process what was happening to her body. Moist heat had flooded her abdomen and she could feel it between her legs now, a slick of arousal that was new and foreign and dangerous.

  “That you have never questioned this arrangement. Even in Argenon, arranged marriages are no longer common.”

  Conversation. Conversation was good. It was something she could do, to give her body time to process the overwhelming flood of awareness it was deluged by. She crossed her legs unconsciously, revealing much of her thigh to his scrutiny, but she was distracted now, and didn’t notice the way he raked his attention downwards.

  “I know. But I’ve always known this would be my fate. My parents spoke about my destiny often, and when they died, my nannies took up the baton.” A frown tugged at her lips as she ran a finger over the upholstery of the luxurious car. Outside, Sydney passed in a darkly-tinted blur that she didn’t see. Her mind was in the past.

  “I guess as a teenager, I went through a phase of wanting to rebel. But it was brief, and ultimately pointless.” She turned her focus back to the man opposite and her whole body lurched with undeniable awareness. His legs were wide – a classic case of man-spreading if ever she’d seen one! The kind of pose that would have made her furious on a bus was so unbelievably sexy on this man. He’d leaned forward a little, his fingers laced beneath his chin.

  Out of nowhere, Kylie imagined crossing the distance and straddling him, sitting on his lap and kissing those hard, gorgeous lips. And almost burst out laughing. What would he say to that?

  It was a relief to laugh, even if only inwardly. It centred her.

  “Why pointless?”

  “Our betrothal is set in stone,” Kylie reminded him with only a hint of acidity. “Even if I wanted to pull out of it, there’s no means for me to do so.”

  His lips twisted and she couldn’t interpret the gesture, though she would have been tempted to call it disdain.

  “You don’t believe me?” She challenged, surprising them both.

  He lifted his shoulders infinitesimally. “I look around me and see a western city, where there are lawyers and opportunities and where you have lived your whole life. I wonder why a woman would marry a man she does not know, and move to the other side of the world, to a country that is so very different to this.”

  His accent was thick, though his English impeccable.

  Kylie nodded, the gesture gentle and considered, and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth, pressing it from side to side in a way Khalifa found utterly distracting. “It’s strange, I know.”

  He didn’t answer, and the silence simply encouraged Kylie to keep talking.

  “My parents wished it.” She bit down on her lip some more, as though that fully explained her view point.

  “They died fifteen years ago.”

  She winced at his clinical way of discussing their deaths, like it hadn’t ripped a hole in the middle of her chest that had never healed.

  “The contracts were not contingent on their living,” Kylie muttered. “It’s legally somewhat irrelevant.”

  He shifted slightly, his manner more focussed; more serious. “And if it weren’t? If there were a way to escape this betrothal? Would you take it?”

  For a moment, the possibility launched into Kylie’s mind, exploding like fireworks, filling her with an endless array of possibilities. If she didn’t have to go through with this wedding? What would she do? As always, she sought to transform this into an equation but there was no answer to it. She didn’t know what she would do, for she had never expected to do anything other than this. Her fate in life had long since been determined and her job was simply to meet it unflinchingly.

  She met his gaze with a strength that surprised him. “No.” Her attention shifted to the window beside her. “I made my peace with it a long time ago.”

  “But it is not what you wish.”

  Kylie considered that, sighing. “It’s who I am.”

  Khalifa rubbed a hand over his stubble as the car pulled to a stop. Kylie’s gaze, still held by the view beyond the window, caught a restaurant that she vaguely recognised. The water was on her right. She craned forward in her seat and her eyes landed on an enormous boat at the end of the wharf – the wharf utterly dwarfed by the size of this thing.

  “Yours?” She turned to her betrothed, a brow lifted at the opulence of his boat.

  “Yes.”

  Though the car was stopped, the doors didn’t open.

  “Isn’t this breaking the rules?” She said after a moment.

  He shrugged. “Rules are made to be broken. I have no intention of marrying a woman I don’t know.” He closed the distance between them and she sucked a breath in, her eyes held by his as if by an invisible force. “Nor do I wish to marry a virgin.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  HIS STATEMENT HAD flooded the air around them with a strange, prickling awareness. Different from how Kylie had been feeling before, because now he was a part of it. He’d addressed the fantasy; the need.

  “What?”

  He didn’t touch her, but her body was fizzing as though he had. “I have no intention of taking a bride that doesn’t … satisfy me.”

  Kylie’s jaw dropped, and her eyes did too, falling to the floor between them.

  “So this is what? A trial?”

  His laugh was roughened by genuine amusement. “It is… an opportunity.” He reached up and tapped the glass and immediately the door was opened. Kylie wondered, later, why she didn’t see the signs then – the signs of a man who had a kingdom beneath him. A kingdom whose subjects would not breathe without his consent. But in that moment, her brain was so consumed by what he’d intimated was about to happen that she was utterly stricken.

  “And if I don’t want that?” She demanded, the question blocking him from stepping out of the vehicle.

  His look was droll as he turned to face her and his hands curled around the handle of the door. He pulled on it, shutting them back into the privacy of the limousine once more.

  “Yet you do.”

  She glared at him, even as desire swarmed her body, weakening her bones and over-heating her flesh. “Oh, yeah?”

  His laugh was low. A throb of noise that almost elicited an audible groan. His hand lifted to her breast, his eyes locked to hers, challenging her to stop him. To put an end to wh
at he was doing – a point he was proving.

  She didn’t.

  It was a strange feeling, his palm heavy as it curved around her flesh, and when his thumb padded over her tight nipple she did groan, a soft sound in the back of the limousine that was tantamount to her surrender.

  “You have never been touched.” It was a statement more than a question, and yet she shook her head.

  “No.”

  “Kissed?”

  She shook her head again. “No.”

  Her eyes had swept shut, so she didn’t see the way his expression flared with something like victory.

  “It was in the contract,” she reminded him on a soft moan. “The purity clause.”

  “So it was.” The Haddad family were relics. Throw-backs. To prohibit a woman from becoming acquainted with something as natural as her physical needs was an antiquated notion, yet in that moment, being the man to touch her for the first time, Khalifa had a barbaric sense of gladness.

  He would make her completely his. And she would remain, for always, his.

  “This is to our mutual advantage,” he said throatily, bringing his mouth to the base of her neck and flicking his tongue against the pulse point that was hammering frantically. “You may find you are not attracted to me.”

  She blinked her eyes open, and the obvious sarcasm in their depths stirred something unexpected in his soul.

  “Yeah, okay.” She rolled her eyes, her breathing rushed.

  His laugh was a reward. She liked it. Liked the way it sounded.

  “It might surprise you to know, I’m more worried about if we’ll have anything in common than I am if we’re sexually compatible.” The sentence sounded prim – making a mockery of the way her body was over-sensitised and her every nerve was screaming out for his attention.

  “Both are important,” he said with gentle insistence, dropping his mouth to her breast. And through the fabric of her dress, he clamped his lips over her nipple, and Kylie swore softly, arching her back and almost pushing him away at the same time. The pleasure was almost too much to bear. She could never have imagined her body to be capable of such wild, uncontrollable need, but it flamed through her now, shooting like just-cast arrows through her blood, into every inch of her body.

  “But sex matters most?” She pushed, though thought was becoming difficult and her tongue was thick in her mouth.

  “It matters,” he agreed gruffly, and then, he lifted his mouth higher, so that she let out a wisp of complaint before he brought his mouth to hers, crushing her with his kiss, his lips pressed to hers. What he didn’t say was that it mattered particularly to him. Sex to null her betrothal. To make her an unsuitable bride to the Haddad family.

  Her mouth parted on a note of surrender as his tongue delved into her depths, tormenting her. She froze, every fibre of her being paralysed by the shock of what his kiss was doing to her and then she kissed him back fiercely, her mouth moving with his, her body lifting off the seat so that she could be closer to him as he demanded more and more of her. His hands found the hem of her dress and pushed it upwards, his fingers curving around the softness of her inner-thighs so that she bucked at the foreign but welcome touch.

  “I do not think we will have problems in this department,” he said against her mouth, and she shook her head, not wanting him to stop. She sucked him back, needing his kiss, needing this not to stop.

  But Khalifa moved further away, placing vital distance between them. “Not here.”

  “I… But …”

  “You want me,” he agreed knowingly, his confidence making her flush to the roots of her hair. “I want that too. But I am not going to take your innocence in a limousine.”

  A tremor of anticipation crept down her spine. “But you are…”

  His smile was a seduction; it transfixed her and distracted her. She stared at it, at him, until her heart was beating so fast she could hardly breathe.

  “Yes, azeezi. I am going to take you to bed.”

  “Take me to bed,” she repeated, murmuring the words with a small shake of her head. “Such a bland description for what I think we’ll do.”

  His smile broadened. “Indeed. Are you ready?”

  She nodded, even when she wasn’t entirely sure that she was.

  Again, he tapped on the window and the door was immediately opened, giving Kylie only a moment to run a hand over her hair, straightening it down, neatening her appearance before emerging into the heat of the day once more.

  The Sheikh looked unaffected by the day’s mugginess – even in his suit, he was magazine-ad-handsome.

  Kylie took care when she stepped out of the vehicle to keep her dress as low over her hips as possible, but she sensed more disapproval from this small army of guards. Her husband-to-be was clearly a very important man. Or maybe just very rich, if the size of his yacht was anything to go by. Her eyes moved over the glamorous boat, taking in the several levels, the glass windows, the enormous entertaining deck at the back and the more private deck at the front, and finally the rooftop area, with a small intake of breath. It was beautiful, and obviously the last word in luxury. He turned to her, his expression impenetrable, his impatience perceptible so that she sped up a little, to stand by his side, and then, when he strode towards the boat, she moved beside him, her heart racing, her pulse pounding.

  There was a plank extended, wide enough for them to move side by side onto the deck of the boat. At the top, he paused, holding a hand out for Kylie and she took it, though there was no instability in the boat. It was contact, and contact she suddenly craved. Curiosity made her do it.

  Had they really just … she looked down and saw that her dress was marked with where he’d tasted her flesh through the fabric and heat rose in her cheeks. Her eyes skidded to his and his smile was arrogantly knowing.

  “You are to be mine,” he said with quiet determination and though the words were carried away on the heat of the breeze, they sent a shiver down Kylie’s spine. A brace of anticipation.

  “People don’t own people,” she retorted with the same care to speak sotto voce so as not to be overheard.

  But he was still holding her hand and he pulled her closer, his finger stroking the flesh of her palm as his eyes locked to hers. “You know nothing of people and ownership, lanaria.” He lifted her hand then, haunting a kiss across her fingertips that spread stardust over her skin. “But I will teach you what it is to own someone completely. And to be owned.”

  The shiver at the base of her spine turned into a full-blown tremble now but she was powerless to look away. And he knew it. His smile had a hint of mockery – he was in control, completely. “But first, lunch.”

  She blinked at the strangely discordant directive, and worse, the betraying groan of disagreement deep in her body. She didn’t want lunch. She wanted … this man.

  This.

  What his body had promised to hers. She was on tenterhooks now, needing something she hadn’t even really known she’d been depriving herself of.

  And he knew. His all-too perceptive eyes crinkled at the corners as he leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “Or would you rather come straight to my bed?” He asked and Kylie bit down on her lip, self-doubt as foreign to her as it was unwelcome.

  Where had her strength gone? Her confidence?

  It had been sucked out along with her certainty about life. Marry this man? On the one hand, he was the embodiment of every single one of her fantasies. But on the other … he spoke about ownership and she didn’t, for a second, doubt the truth of those words. This man would own her, utterly and completely, and she would be rendering herself powerless to some extent.

  Could she live a life such as that?

  “I want to feel more,” she muttered, dropping her eyes to the highly-sheened deck with a mix of self-disgust and frustration.

  “I know.” He lifted his hands to either side of her face, his fingers splayed wide across her cheeks. “And you will.” His lips crushed hers once more – did this man
have the capability of being gentle? He was such a cave man and she’d never been more turned on. His kiss was possession and power and she succumbed to it with shameful willingness. She clung to his shirt front as her knees weakened and her back swayed forward and perhaps it was only his hands on her face that held her upright. That, and the kiss she would chase to the ends of the earth.

  She was not mindful of the servants that were all around them. She didn’t care that this public display of affection was as unorthodox as it was condemnatory. She wanted this man with a ferociousness that resigned all common sense to a locked box of her mind.

  “After.” He used the word to lever himself away from her, straightening as though it wasn’t ripping a part of him in two. Kylie stared up at him, her breath dragged from her body, her fingers still tangled in the fine fabric of his suit. “Soon.” He softened the promise with the hint of a smile and her heart flopped over.

  He stepped away, effectively dislodging her contact and began to move further along the deck. Kylie followed, oblivious to the glances from the security team and ship’s crew. Had she looked, she would have seen some were filled with idle curiosity, others with disapproval.

  But Kylie didn’t see – she was floating somewhere above the yacht, way up on cloud nine.

  “What is lanaria?” She repeated the strange sounding word he’d said – though she had been taught Argenon, she hadn’t had much occasion to speak it and she certainly didn’t know this word.

  He tilted his head to face her and then looked away. “It means little princess.”

  “Little princess?” Her stomach squeezed. She hated how much she liked that moniker.

  He stopped walking abruptly and she almost bumped into him. Her eyes lifted to him, and then beyond him, to the front of the ship. The bow? The stern? She was not naturally a nautical person and this was only about the fifth time in her life she’d been out on the water.

  A table had been set and it was no less luxurious than the boat and the limousine and the man himself would have led her to expect. A crisp white cloth covered the table and fell all the way to the floor and the dishes placed at the centre of the table were gold. Or gold-plated, she amended, but somehow she suspected they might actually be full, solid gold. There were crystal lids over each plate and comport so she could see the array of delicacies that was awaiting them. Oysters, prawns, fruit, sweets, salad, cheese. As if on cue, her stomach gave a little groan and she pressed a palm to it with a grimace.