The Desert King's Virgin Bride

‘Why is everyone staring?’ she hissed at Jane, rubbing her finger underneath first one eye and then the other—in case her supposedly smudge-proof mascara hadn’t lived up to the extravagant claims made on the packet.

‘Oh, come on!’ reprimanded her friend acidly. ‘You look a knockout—that’s why. Charlie—get Sorrel a drink, will you?’

Sorrel accepted the glass of white wine Charlie pushed into her hand and took a sip. And here was another problem. Alcohol was not taken freely in Kharastan—although it was always provided in the palace for foreign dignitaries. But Sorrel had only ever tasted champagne at the royal weddings of Xavier and Giovanni—Malik’s two half-brothers—and she hadn’t been mad about it. It had made her feel a bit too dreamy on two dangerously romantic occasions, and she had looked up and found Malik glaring at her and had hastily put the glass down.

Well, not any more! Why shouldn’t she have a drink like any other person in the civilised world? It wasn’t as if she was knocking it back—not like some of Jane’s friends.

But a couple of large glasses of rough wine bar plonk was having a profound effect on a someone who wasn’t used to drinking and who hadn’t eaten anything since lunchtime. The wine bar had started to get hot and stuffy, with smoke drifting in from outside, where all the smokers were gathered, and Sorrel felt herself swaying slightly.

‘You okay?’ questioned Jane.

‘I need to eat something,’ said Sorrel woozily.

‘Yeah. Me, too. Tell you what—let’s get a curry and take it back to your place.’

It seemed churlish to object—especially when Jane had gone out of her way to help her buy clothes—and Sorrel didn’t even protest when several of the others they’d been talking to decided to tag along. They seemed a nice, if slightly noisy bunch, and she was going to have to learn about entertaining sooner or later, wasn’t she?

In the end, twelve people stumbled into her beautiful flat and took silver cartons of curry into the kitchen—ladling out heaps of yellow rice and chicken in shiny sauces and great wodges of bread. There weren’t enough plates to go round, so some people were eating out of cereal dishes and pouring wine into mugs. After they’d eaten someone found a non-stop music station on the radio—and what Sorrel would have loosely described as dancing began.

Jane was swaying with her arms locked around someone whose name Sorrel thought was Scott, though she couldn’t be sure, and then another couple flopped down onto one of the sofas and began kissing quite openly. Sorrel started wishing that everyone would leave so that she could go to bed. And what was that sickly sweet smell of the smoke drifting in from the balcony when she had most definitely said that there was to be no smoking?

It should have been wonderful—especially as outside the uncurtained windows the moon was beginning to illuminate the sky with a pale terracotta sheen. But it was the opposite of wonderful—particularly when Scott stumbled up to Sorrel and tried to pull her into his arms.

‘Come and dance with me,’ he mumbled.

‘I can’t…Scott, will you please let go? I happen to be holding a plate of curry—’ And then the doorbell rang, and Sorrel felt a mixture of relief and alarm at its piercing shrill—relief because it meant that she could extricate herself from Scott’s arms, and alarm because she wasn’t expecting anyone. She didn’t know anyone.

Apart from the landlord!

Heart pounding, and a chilly, clammy feeling in her hands, Sorrel put the plate down and made her way out into the hall. When she pulled the door open her knees threatened to give way.

Because there—with a small phalanx of bodyguards standing clustered around him—stood the formidable and disapproving figure of Malik.

CHAPTER THREE

FOR a moment Malik and Sorrel just stood staring at one another, and for a couple of moments longer she almost didn’t recognise the Sheikh, yet wasn’t sure why. But there was no time to deal with that—not when she was having to confront the burning look of rage which sizzled black fire from his angry eyes. His narrowed gaze was sweeping over her dishevelled appearance, and she realised what a sight she must make.

‘What is this?’ he choked, in a disbelieving voice she had never heard him use before.

‘Malik—’

But he silenced her with an imperious wave of his hand and a terse command made in Kharastani as he glanced over her shoulder to the scene behind and flinched as if someone had punched him.

‘What is this scene of utter debauchery?’ he iced, in disgust.

He didn’t seem to want a reply to his question, because he uttered a few more terse commands in his native tongue and the burly-looking men who were with him moved quickly into the apartment and took control.

It was like watching a team of soldiers going into enemy territory, Sorrel thought weakly, as she watched one of the guards march over to the radio and silence it. With the cessation of music everyone in the room froze, and then stared in disbelief at the group of dark-skinned men with black eyes and a shimmer of strength about them which seemed so at odds with the men who were partying.

‘What the hell?’ Scott lurched over towards Sorrel, and she wanted to yell at him to stop, to go away—to not let himself be annihilated by Malik’s strength and power.

‘Want a hand, baby?’ he slurred.

Sorrel could feel the disgust emanating from every pore of Malik’s impressive frame as he stepped into the hallway.

‘Get rid of him,’ he bit out.

She knew that there was no point in arguing with him, and she hoped that Scott and company would have the sense to realise the same.

‘Now!’ Malik roared.

Scott scuttled away like an insect who had just been revealed beneath a stone.

‘Can you all go, please?’ urged Sorrel quickly, and she could see that they needed no second bidding as they scurried round to find handbags and shawls which had been deposited around the flat, and then started trooping out.

Only the couple standing smoking the sickly sweet substance on the balcony seemed oblivious to the uproar in the apartment, and Malik’s eyes narrowed in their direction before he nodded briefly to one of his guards.

If she hadn’t already been panicking about just what Malik would do when the flat was emptied, it would have been almost comic, thought Sorrel, as she watched the guard striding towards them, whereupon he plucked the joint from the woman’s fingers and crushed it between his own.

‘Call the police!’ ordered Malik imperiously.

‘Malik, no, please—’

‘You have been taking drugs?’ he hissed.

‘No!’

‘Drinking, then?’

‘Two or three glasses, that is all.’

‘All?’ With an effort Malik steadied himself, sucking in a deep draught of air and only just preventing himself from hauling her into his arms and…and…He watched as the last of the pathetic-looking men shuffled sheepishly from the flat, and then he barked out an order to his guards. In a daze, Sorrel watched as they too disappeared—until it was just her and Malik alone in the flat.

‘Shut the door,’ he said softly.

‘Malik—’

‘I said, shut the door.’

There was something in his tone which was making her feel quite peculiar but it was also a tone which broached no argument—and at that precise moment Sorrel felt about sixteen again.

Until she looked into the dark mastery of his eyes and realised that he had never looked at her like that when she was sixteen—with a combination of simmering fury and something else which she didn’t dare start to analyse, because it was only threatening to make her light-headedness worse.

So she closed the door and then stood looking up at him, a hopeful expression on her face. Maybe he had finished venting his wrath, and now that he had would quietly forgive her.

But there was no forgiveness on the dark, rugged face with its alluring shadows cast by his amazing bone structure—nor in the almost fevered glitter of his ebony eyes. His features were set in a stony mask, and then Sorrel realised what it was about him which had made him look so different when she’d first opened the door.

He was wearing a suit!

Sorrel swallowed. She had never seen him wearing anything other than his traditional robes—which seemed less like clothes and more like an extension of him—and this new and different Malik took a little getting used to. Somehow it made her feel uncomfortable to look at him in such traditionally Western clothing, and at first she couldn’t quite work out why.

The pale grey trousers did not exactly cling to the hard sinew of his legs, but they certainly emphasised the muscular length of his thighs—just as the jacket highlighted the broad shoulders and torso, tapering to a narrow waist and hips.

An open-necked shirt gave her the faintest glimpse of a whorl of crisp black hair at his chest, and Sorrel felt faint as she realised just what it was that was making her feel so uncomfortable—the Western clothes accentuated his masculinity in a way which his Kharastani robes never had. Those merely hinted at the body which lay beneath—but now, for the first time ever, she could actually see it.

‘Look at you,’ he said softly, and Sorrel’s eyes widened—for it seemed that he was as taken aback by her appearance as she was by his. Was he actually going to compliment her? she wondered, as she heard that husky note in his voice. But from the oblique look in his black eyes it was impossible to tell.

He let his gaze rake over her—slowly—in a way he had never done before. But then she had never provided him with the inclination to. Yet the outfit she wore tonight virtually screamed Look at me!—so who could blame him if he did?

It was not a Sorrel he recognised—in a dress that skimmed her tanned thighs, which gleamed faintly like oiled silk, and beneath the filmy fabric he could see the lush movement of her breasts. The shimmer of her hair—like pale, spun gold—cascaded in a gleaming waterfall down her back. But it was not simply the blatant display of her body which had made him stare at her in disbelief—but the make-up which so marred her beauty.

Yes, the sweep of black mascara curving her long lashes made her blue eyes look enormous in her heart-shaped face, and the gleam of lipstick made the petal-softness of her lips even more provocative. But where was her innocent beauty gone?

Had it gone?

Malik felt his heart slam against his ribcage, and a feeling halfway between rage and despair as he moved his face closer to hers.

‘So, did you achieve your aim, Sorrel?’ he questioned unsteadily.

What riddle was this he was testing her with? Sorrel wondered. But she wanted to do something—anything—to remove that obdurate look of anger from his face, and so she played along.

‘What aim?’ she questioned back.

The slam of his heart increased. ‘Did you dress like a…tramp in order to lose your virginity to the first man who would take you?’

Lose her virginity? Sorrel swayed. Only this time it had nothing to do with the wine but with sheer, disbelieving anguish that Malik could utter such damning words of criticism against her and look at her with such contempt.

Fiercely, she bit her lip, and the self-inflicted pain brought her up sharply—what right did he have to chastise her in such a way? He had been her guardian, yes, and a remarkably good one for many years. But the years had now passed and his little bird had flown the nest—and she would not be insulted like that for behaving just as any other young woman of the same age would do.

‘I am not dressed like a tramp!’ she defended.

‘Really? That is a matter of opinion.’ He saw the way her breasts jiggled when she moved—like some damned belly dancer! Controlling his angry breathing only with a monumental effort, he flicked her a disdainful look. ‘And you haven’t answered my question!’

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