The Royal House of Karedes: The Desert Throne: Tamed: The Barbarian King / Forbidden: The Sheikh's Virgin / Scandal: His Majesty's Love-Child

“Later,” he ground out, not stopping.

“Of course, my king,” the vizier said silkily. “I just wanted you to know I’ve begun negotiations for your marriage. You needn’t worry about it. I will present your bride to you in a few weeks.”

Stopping dead in the hallway, Kareef whirled into the reception room and closed the door behind them.

“You will arrange nothing,” he said coldly. “I have no interest in marriage.”

“But sire, these things take time. And you are not getting any younger…”

“I’m thirty-one!”

“After all the chaos caused by your cousin’s abdication, your subjects need the comfort and security of seeing the line of succession continue. A royal wedding. A royal family.” He pulled on his graying beard. “It might be difficult to find the right bride, a young virgin with the correct lineage and a perfect, unsullied reputation—”

“Why must she be a virgin?” Kareef demanded.

“So no one can ever doubt that your children are yours,” he replied, sounding surprised. “You must have an undisputed heir.”

Kareef clenched his jaw. “You will not negotiate a bride for me. I forbid it.”

The vizier returned his look with gleaming, canny eyes. “Because your interests are elsewhere?”

Kareef looked at him narrowly, wondering how much he already knew. The vizier’s spies were everywhere. He cared so obsessively about the security of the country, personal privacy meant nothing to the man. “What do you mean?”

His dark eyes affixed on Kareef. “It would be a grave mistake to insult Umar Hajjar, my king,” he said quietly. “I’ve heard he is returning from Paris tonight.”

Paris. So Kareef’s suspicions had been right. Hajjar had been spending time with his French mistress.

And Kareef was expected to give up Jasmine to a man who did not even care enough to be loyal to her?

Too angry to be fair, he clenched his hands. “I have no intention of insulting Hajjar. He is my friend. He saved my life.”

“Yes. Quite.” The older man cleared his throat. “The royal banquet begins soon, sire. Ambassadors and foreign princes have come from all over the world to celebrate your impending coronation. You will not wish to be late.”

Kareef ground his teeth. Making small talk with people he didn’t care about? “I will attend in my own time.”

The vizier tugged his beard. “It’s just a pity you don’t have your future bride on your arm for such a social event,” he sighed, then brightened. “Princess Lara du Plessis is attending with her father. She is a possibility as well. She’s very beautiful—”

“No marriage,” Kareef barked out. His mind already on Jasmine, he turned to go.

“You will find her in the royal garden,” the vizier called sourly behind him. “Where she does not deserve to be.”

Kareef whirled to face him.

Jasmine was right. There were no secrets in the palace. Akmal Al’Sayr knew them all.

Except one.

He did not know Kareef was already married.

“You will call off your spies,” he said grimly. “Leave her in peace.”

Akmal’s mouth twisted sharply downward, his lips disappearing into his long gray beard as he fell into dutiful silence.

“And find her a place at the banquet.”

The vizier looked unhappier still, his slender body drooping like a frown. But he hung his head beneath his sovereign’s decree. “Yes, sire.” He looked up, his beady eyes glittering. “But she can never be more to you than a mistress. The people would never accept such a woman as your wife, a woman who’s had so many lovers she threw herself from a horse to lose her nameless, ill-gotten child—”

Red covered Kareef’s gaze. In two strides, he’d grabbed the other man’s throat.

“It was an accident,” he hissed. “An accident. And as for her many lovers, she’s had only one. Me. Do you understand, Al’Sayr? I was her lover. The only one.”

The older man’s eyes started to bulge before Kareef regained control. He let him go. The vizier leaned over, holding his throat and coughing.

“Never speak of her that way again,” he spat out. With a growl still on his lips, Kareef whirled away in murderous fury, striding down the hall in his robes.

His heart was still pounding with rage when he found Jasmine in the royal garden in the twilight, sleeping on a cushioned seat in a shady, quiet bower. A book was folded upside down unheeded in her lap. He stopped, staring down at her, marveling again at her beauty.

She slept peacefully, like a child. The wind blew softly through the trees, rattling the leaves, brushing loose tendrils of dark hair across her face. She was wearing a fitted black sweater over a high-necked white shirt and a long black skirt. And below that—red canvas sneakers.

Her lovely face was bare of makeup, and beautiful in its natural simplicity. Modest, simple, like a maid. She looked the part of a perfect wife and mother—the perfect heart of any man’s home. Of his home.

He took a deep breath, calming down beneath the influence of her sweet purity, of her innocence. He smiled down at her. Then his gaze fell upon her hand, and he saw she still wore Hajjar’s diamond upon her finger.

Jasmine’s dark brown eyes fluttered open. A smile lit up her face when she saw him. Her smile struck through his soul.

“Kareef.” The sweet lilt of her voice washed over him like a wave of water. “Oh, how I’ve missed you today!”

He sat next to her, taking her hands in his own. “I thought the day would never end.”

“And once again, you’ve caught me in the royal garden.” Her expression became bashful, apologetic. “Where I should not be.”

“The garden is yours,” he said roughly. “You have the right.”

She tried to smile at him, but her expression faltered. She looked down at her hand, twisting the ring on her finger. “For now.”

A spasm of unexpected jealousy went through him as he looked at that ring, the physical mark of another man’s ownership. “Take that off.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Why?”

“Take it off.”

“No.”

“You’re not going to marry him tomorrow.”

Her expression became mutinous. “I am.” She rose to her feet. “And if you can’t accept that—”

“We won’t talk about it now, then.” He caught her wrist. “Just come to the royal banquet with me tonight.”

She looked down at his hand on her wrist.

“This is how we would be discreet?” she said. “Beside each other at the banquet, as lovers for all the world to see?” She shook her head. He saw tears in her eyes. “Admit I was right,” she whispered. “The palace separates us already. Let’s end this cleanly. We must part.”

He looked at her with a heavy heart. How could he change her mind, when he himself could feel the truth of her words?

But taking a deep breath, he shook his head. “One more night.”

“It won’t change anything.”

“Attend the banquet with me. Give me one last chance to change your mind, to convince you not to marry him. One last night.” He set his jaw. “Then, if you still wish to wed him—I will say farewell.”

He watched her face as her expression struggled visibly between desire and pain. “You will divorce me?”

“Yes.”

“On your honor?”

“Yes,” he bit out.

She gave him a slow nod. “Very well.” She reached out to caress his cheek, then hesitated. She glanced wryly at her red high-top sneakers. “I will go get dressed.” She bowed her head, then looked up. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Until tonight, my king.”

A half hour later, Kareef arrived alone to thunderous applause at the grand ballroom. Five hundred illustrious guests clamored for his attention, clamored for his gaze—and he still hadn’t thought of a way to convince Jasmine to remain his mistress. Because there wasn’t a solution.

Jasmine wanted respectability. She wanted a family of her own. She wanted children.

As king, what could he offer her—except disgrace?

Greeting his honored guests, Kareef walked to the end of the long table, looking for one beautiful face. Where was she? Where had the vizier placed her? Without her calming presence, he felt like a trapped tiger in a cage, half-mad in captivity. He prayed to find her beside him at the table.

But when he reached his place, he stopped.

Seated on his left he saw the elderly king of a neighboring nation.

Seated on his right was a beautiful blonde of no more than eighteen, bedecked in diamonds and giggling behind her hand as she stared up at him with big blue eyes. He instantly knew who she must be: Princess Lara du Plessis.

Silently cursing his vizier, Kareef sat down. His hands clenched on the fine linen tablecloth of the table. He stared dismally at his plate setting of 24-karat goldpatterned china and crystal stemware filled with champagne. Where was Jasmine?

As the meal was served, the elderly king on his left complained at length about some unfair customs tax between Qusay and his own country, and it was all Kareef could do to keep from turning his ceremonial dagger on himself, like a wolf chewing off his own paw to escape a trap.

Then he felt the prickles rise on the back of his neck. And he looked up.

Jasmine looked at him from the other side of the ballroom, as far away as she could possibly be. She’d been seated beside some plain woman dressed in brown and the fat, balding secretary of the Minister of the Treasury. No doubt a location that the vizier had arranged for her personally.

She tried to give him an encouraging smile, but her eyes were sad. The shadows of the darkening ballroom beneath the candlelit chandeliers made everyone else disappear.

She was so beautiful. And so far away.

His heart turned over in his chest. Was this all it was to be, then? Was this all he could offer her? To be his secret mistress, fit only for clandestine trysts in his bedroom—instead of be the honored companion by his side?

Kareef ate quickly and spoke in monosyllables to the elderly king and the giggling young princess when they forced a direct question upon him. The instant the musicians and fire dancers arrived in the ballroom, signaling the end of the banquet, the candles were put out to highlight the magic of the performance.

Kareef threw his linen napkin on his plate and went to her.

The shadows were dark and deep as he made his way through the ballroom. All the audience was mesmerized by the intricacies of a dance with flames and swords, set to the haunting melody of the jowza and santur. Kareef was invisible in the darkness. He passed many whispered conversations that he knew would never be spoken before the king.

“…Jasmine Kouri,” he heard a woman hiss, and in spite of himself, he slowed to listen. “Spending every day with him at the palace—and nights, too, I wager. The king’s a good, honorable man but when a woman is so determined to spread her legs…”

“And her an engaged woman!” came the spiteful reply. “She’s made a fool out of Umar Hajjar for wanting to marry her. You remember that scandal when she was young? She was bad from the start.”

“She’ll get her comeuppance. Wait and see.…”

Hands clenched, Kareef whirled to see who was speaking, but the women’s voices faded and blended into the rest of the crowd. He saw only moving shadows.

Oh God, give him an honest fight! A fight where he could face his enemy—not the whisper of spiteful gossips in the dark!

He was still trembling with fury when he reached the lower tables of the ballroom. He whispered Jasmine’s name silently. He craved her touch, yearned to have her in his arms. He yearned to keep her safe, to somehow give her shelter from the cruel words.

But when he reached for her chair, it was empty.

The instant the musicians entered the ballroom with their guitars, dulcimers and flutes in an eerie, haunting accompaniment to dancing swords of fire in the abruptly darkened ballroom, Jasmine bolted from her seat.

The banquet had been hell. She’d heard whispers and caught stares in her direction—some curious, some envious, a few hateful. It was clear that in spite of the fact that she and Kareef had neither kissed nor slept in the same bed since they’d returned to the palace, everyone already believed she was his lover. And they blamed her—only her—for that sin.

On her right side at the table, a fat, balding man had leered at her throughout the meal. On her left, a plain woman had stiffened in her mousy brown suit and pointedly ignored her for a solid hour.

Jasmine had watched Kareef across the ballroom. He was clearly adored and praised by his subjects, and he accepted their attention carelessly, as his due.

Kareef didn’t need her in his life, whatever he might say. He was surrounded by people begging for his attention, including the virginal blonde princess seated beside him. She was the type of woman he no doubt would marry—very soon.

She’d fled as soon as the ballroom went dark. She’d been desperate to escape before anyone could see her tears. But as soon as she was in the hallway, she felt a hand on her shoulder and whirled around, her hands tightened into fists.

Then her hands grew lax. Her body went numb.

“Father,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”

Yazid Kouri seemed to have aged in just the last few days, his once-powerful frame grown stooped and thin. He looked her over from her careful chignon to the black formal dress she’d borrowed from her old friend Sera for the occasion.

He gave a harsh laugh. “Why did you come back here?”

“You know why—”

“I thought you’d at last become a respectable, dutiful girl.” He shook his head, his black eyes suspiciously bright. “Why would you agree to marry a respectable man, only to betray him with the king before you have even spoken your vows?”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand!”

“Tell me you’ve never lain with the king,” he said. “Tell me it’s just an ugly rumor, and I’ll believe you.”

Blinking fast, she looked away. Her father’s disappointment hurt her so badly she could hardly bear it. “I’ve betrayed no one except myself. There is no shame if I am with the king, not when he…not when we…”

Not when we’re married. But the words caught at her throat. She couldn’t reveal their secret. The king’s word of honor was admired around the world. How could she reveal that he’d hidden such a secret for thirteen years?

As a girl, she’d remained silent to protect him.

As a woman, she still would.

“You see nothing wrong in sleeping with a man who is not your husband?” her father continued, his voice sodden with grief. “That sort of behavior might be acceptable in the modern world, but not in our family. Your sister needs you. Marry Umar. Return to New York with your new husband and family. Help Nima raise her child!”

Jasmine’s jaw dropped. “You’ve spoken to her?”

“She called us two hours ago.” He looked away, his jaw clenching. “She says she doesn’t know how to be a mother. She’s threatening to give the child to strangers when it’s born! She’s scared. She’s so young.”

Fury suddenly raced through Jasmine, fury she could not control. She raised her head.

“Just as I was!” she cried. “I was sixteen when you threw me out of our family, out of our country!”

“I was angry,” he whispered. Tears filled his bleary eyes. “I had different expectations of you, Jasmine. You were my eldest. You had such intelligence, such strength. I took so much pride in you. Then…it all fell apart.”

Her heart turned over in her chest.

“Go back to New York as a married woman. Steady Nima with your strength.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Tomorrow, I will be in Qais, expecting to see a wedding.”

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