Scandal: His Majesty's Love-Child

A shadow. More than a shadow. A man. She made out broad shoulders and dark clothes. Remarkably, for this place, he was wearing what looked like a suit as he took a step down the dune, letting the slip of sand carry him several metres.

Automatically Annalisa reached for her towel and wrapped it close, her actions slowing when she registered his strange gait. He didn’t use his arms to keep his balance on the treacherously steep slope and his movements were oddly uncoordinated.

Caution warned her to take no chances with a stranger.

No local would harm her. But this man clearly didn’t belong. Who knew how he’d react to finding a lone female?

But as she knotted the towel and watched his slow progress she realised something was wrong. Instincts honed by years of helping her father tend to the sick overrode her wariness. The stranger was no threat. He looked as if he could barely stay upright.

Moments later she was racing up the other side of the wadi towards him.

Her steps slowed as she neared and took in the full impact of his appearance.

Her breath hissed in her throat. Disbelief filled her. She blinked, but the image was clear and unmistakable.

A tall man, dark-haired, wearing a tuxedo and black leather shoes, was slipping down the dune towards her. His dress shirt was ripped open and filthy, revealing bronzed skin and the top of a broad chest. A dark ribbon, the end of a bow tie, fluttered against his collarbone.

His face was long and lean and so caked in sand she could barely make out his features. Yet the solid shape of his jaw and the high angle of his cheeks hinted at a devastating masculine beauty. His temple was a mass of dried blood that made her suck in a dismayed breath.

But it was his eyes that held her still as he slithered down the slope. Piercing blue, they mesmerised her. Such an unexpected colour here in a desert kingdom.

Even as he staggered towards her his tall frame looked improbably elegant and absurdly raffish. As if he’d drunk too much at a society party and wandered unsteadily off.

Then she registered the way he cradled his arms across his torso and fear escalated. Chest wounds? She could deal with cuts and abrasions. She was her father’s daughter after all. But they were days away from medical help and her skills only went so far.

Clumsily Annalisa raced up the dune, hauling the flapping towel tighter. Her heart thudded painfully as she fought to suppress panic.

She’d almost reached him when he stumbled and dropped to his knees, swaying woozily.

He stretched out his arms and looked up from under a tangle of matted dark hair.

‘Here, sweetheart.’ His voice was a hoarse whisper, thick and slurred, as if his tongue didn’t work properly. She leaned closer to hear. ‘Take care of it.’

His arms dropped and something, a small scruffy animal, rolled out as the stranger pitched to one side, seemingly lifeless, at her feet.

CHAPTER TWO

ANNALISA sat back on her heels and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear with shaky fingers. She trembled all over, her arms weak as jelly from exertion. Her pulse was still racing from shock and the fear she mightn’t be able to save him.

After a quick check she’d decided to risk moving the stranger to her campsite. His temperature was dangerously high and a night on the exposed dune could prove fatal.

But she hadn’t reckoned on the logistics of transporting a man well over six feet and at least a head taller than her.

It had taken an hour of strained exertion and all her ingenuity to get him down, dragging him on a makeshift stretcher. Most frightening of all he’d been a dead weight, not stirring.

‘Don’t you die on me now,’ she threatened as she checked his weak pulse and began cleaning the wound on his temple.

Head wounds bled prolifically. It probably wasn’t as bad as it looked, she told herself. Yet she found herself muttering a mix of prayer and exhortation in mingled Arabic, Danish and English, just as her dad had used to when faced with a hopeless case.

The familiar words calmed her, made her feel slightly more in control, though she knew that was an illusion. It would be a miracle if her patient pulled through.

‘It’s okay.’ A slurred voice broke across her thoughts. ‘I know I won’t survive.’ His eyes remained closed, but Annalisa watched his bloodied, cracked lips move and knew she hadn’t imagined his voice.

Hope surged, and a spark of anger born of fear.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! Of course you’ll live.’ He’d echoed her fears so precisely she lashed out, heart pounding in denial.

After a moment his lips moved again, this time in a twitch that might have signified amusement.

‘If you say so.’ Now his voice was weaker, a thready whisper. ‘But don’t fret if you’re wrong.’ He drew a shaky breath that rattled in his lungs. ‘I won’t mind at all.’

The words trailed off and he lay so still in the lamplight Annalisa couldn’t make out his breathing. Frantically she fumbled for his pulse. Relief pounded through her when she felt it.

She told herself it was better he’d slipped into unconsciousness again. He wouldn’t feel pain as she tended his wounds.

It was only later, as she placed a damp cloth on his forehead, trying to lower his temperature, that she realised the man had spoken to her in perfect English.

Who was he? And what was a lone foreigner doing in Qusay’s arid heartland dressed like some suave movie star?

Tahir ached all over. His head hammered mercilessly, as if a demolition squad had started work inside his skull. His mouth and throat were parched and raw. Swallowing felt like his muscles closed over broken glass. His body was stiff and weighted, bruised all over.

It was one hell of a beating this time, he realised vaguely. Had the old man finally gone too far?

Tahir couldn’t bring himself to struggle out of the blackness to take in his surroundings. Instinctively he knew the pain would be overwhelming when he did. Right now he didn’t have the strength to pretend he didn’t care.

His only weapons against his father were pride and feigned unconcern. To meet the old man’s eyes steadily and refuse to beg for mercy.

It drove his tormentor wild and robbed him of the satisfaction he sought from lashing out at his son.

No matter how bad the thrashing, how prolonged or vicious, Tahir never begged for it to end. Nor did he cry out. Not a murmur, not a flinch, no matter how remorseless his father’s ice-cold eyes or how explosive his temper. Even when Yazan Al’Ramiz brought in thugs to subdue Tahir and prolong the punishment, Tahir refused to give in.

There was triumph in facing down the man who’d hated him for as long as he could remember. That was little recompense for not knowing why Yazan loathed him, but it gave him something to focus on rather than go crazy seeking an explanation the old man refused to give.

Obviously Tahir wasn’t the sort to inspire affection.

Far better to be alone and self-contained.

He was stubborn and contemptuous enough never to give in. It was a matter of honour that every time, when it was over, he gathered his strength and walked away. Even if his steps were unsteady and his eyes clouded. Even if he had to haul himself along using furniture or a wall to keep upright.

Sheer willpower always forced him on. He refused to lie broken and cowed at the old Sheikh’s feet.

Tahir drew a shaky breath, awake enough to register the constriction in his chest and the pain ripping across his side. Broken ribs?

He couldn’t walk away this time. The realisation tore at his pride and ignited his stubbornness.

Something fluttered at his neck. A touch so light that for a moment his dazed brain rejected the notion.

There it was again. Something cool and damp slid from his jaw down his throat, then lower, in a soothing swipe over his chest. And again, from under his chin, the caress edged down, tracing blessed coolness across burning skin.

It stopped and, straining his senses, Tahir heard a splash. A moment later the damp cloth—he was aware enough now to realise what it was—returned, trailing across his pounding forehead and brushing damply at his hair.

He swallowed a moan at the pure pleasure of that cool relief against the searing ache in his head.

Was this some new torture devised by his father? A moment’s respite and burgeoning hope to rouse him enough only so he could feel more pain when the beating recommenced?

‘Go away.’ He moved his lips, worked his throat, but no sound emerged.

The cloth paused, then slid down his cheek in a tender caress that was almost his undoing. He couldn’t remember feeling weaker.

His skin burned and prickled, as if stung by a thousand cuts, yet the bliss of that touch made him suck in his breath. That sudden movement scorched his battered torso with a fiery ache.

‘Go away.’

He didn’t have the strength to withstand the lure of this gentle treatment. It would break him as the pounding fists never could.

‘You’re awake.’ Her voice was a whisper, soft as a soughing breeze. He racked his brain to place it. Surely he couldn’t forget a woman with a voice like that? Low and sweet, with a seductive husky edge that set it apart.

He didn’t know her. In his foggy brain that fact stood out.

She must be one of his father’s women. A new one.

Bitterness flooded his mouth, ousting even the rusty taste of blood. He should have guessed Sheikh Yazan Al’Ramiz would try something new to break his obstinate son. What better than the soft touch of a woman?

‘Leave me,’ Tahir ordered. But to his shame his voice emerged as a hoarse whisper. Almost a whimper.

‘Here.’ A firm hand slipped beneath his shoulder and a slim arm supported his skull, lifting him slightly.

Instantly pain shot through him. A stabbing spike of lightning shattered the blankness behind his closed lids and he stiffened against the need to gasp out his agony.

‘I know it hurts, but you have to drink.’ He heard the voice vaguely, as if through a muffling curtain. Then water, blessedly cool, trickled over his lips. Thought fled as he gulped the precious fluid.

Too soon the flow stopped.

He opened his lips to ask for more, heedless now of pride. But she forestalled him, her voice soothing.

‘Be patient. You can have more soon.’ She leaned close. He felt her warmth beside and behind him as he lay in her lap. Her scent, wild honey and cinnamon and warm female flesh, teased his nostrils and unravelled his thoughts. ‘You’re dehydrated. You need fluids, but not too fast.’

‘How long before he returns?’

‘He?’ Her voice was sharp. ‘There’s no one else. Just you and me.’

Tahir listened to her husky voice, a voice of untrammelled temptation, and suppressed a groan of despair. How could he hold out against the promise of that voice, those gentle hands?

In his weakened state Tahir had no reserves of strength. All he wanted was to have her hold him, nurse him against her undoubtedly soft bosom and pretend there was no such thing as reality.

How long before he begged for the first time in his life?

Damn his father for finally finding a way to break his resistance. She’d sap his willpower as no beating could.

‘Tell me.’ He struggled to sit higher, but was so weak the press of her palm against his bare chest stopped him. ‘When will he be back?’

‘Who? Was there someone with you in the desert?’ Urgency threaded her voice.

‘Desert?’ Tahir paused, his brows turning down as he fought to remember. Sheikh Yazan Al’Ramiz enjoyed the luxuries of life too much to spend time in the desert, even if it was the traditional home of his forebears.

She was trying to distract him.

‘Where is my father?’ he whispered through gritted teeth, as pain rose in an engulfing tide. ‘He’ll want to gloat.’

‘I told you, there’s no one here but us.’

His face hurt as he grimaced. ‘I may have been beaten senseless but I’m not a fool.’ He raised a hand and unerringly encircled her wrist where her palm rested against his chest.

She was young, her skin supple and smooth. He felt her pulse race against his fingers, heard her breath catch in the resounding silence that blanketed them.

‘Someone beat you? I thought you’d been in an accident.’

Finally, against his better judgement, he forced his weighted eyelids open. The world was dark and blurred. It took a long time to focus. When he did his breath seized in his lungs.

Damn the old man. He knew Tahir too well. Knew him better than Tahir knew himself.

She glowed in the wavering light, her smooth almost oval face pale and perfect. Her nose was neat and straight. Her lips formed a cupid’s bow that promised pure pleasure. His pulse leapt just from looking at it and, despite his pain, heat coiled in Tahir’s belly when she furtively swiped her tongue along her top lip as if nervous.

The slightly square set of her jaw hinted at character and a determination that instantly appealed to Tahir. And her eyes…He could sink into the rich sherry-tinted depths of those wide eyes. They looked guileless, gorgeous, beguiling.

Glossy dark hair framed her face. Not a stiff, sprayed coiffure but soft tresses that had escaped whatever she’d done to pull her hair back.

She looked fresh, without a touch of make-up on her exquisite features. She blinked, eyes widening as she met his gaze, then long lush lashes lowered, screening her expression.

She was the picture of innocent seduction.

His poor battered body stirred feebly.

If he’d had the energy Tahir would have applauded his father’s choice. How had he known that façade of innocent allure would weaken his son’s resolve more than the wiles of a glamorous, experienced woman?

Tahir remembered the first time he’d fallen for the mirage of sweet, virginal womanhood and scowled. Who’d have thought after all this time he’d still harbour a weakness for that particular fantasy? He’d made it his business to avoid falling for it again.

His hand firmed around hers, feeling the fragility of her bones and the thud of her pulse racing. Her face was calm but her pulse told another story.

Did she fear his father? Had she been coerced?

He grimaced, searching for words to question her. But his eyes flickered shut as the effort of the last minutes took its toll. His fingers opened and her hand slid away.

‘Go! Leave before he hurts you too.’ Even to his own ears his words sounded slurred and uneven. Tahir groped for the strength to stay awake.

‘Who? Who are you talking about?’

‘My father, of course.’ Walls of pain rose and pressed close, stifling his words, stealing his consciousness.

Annalisa lowered his head and shoulders to the pillow.

Shock hummed through her.

Looking into his searing blue eyes was like staring at the sun too long. Except watching the sky had never made her feel so edgy or breathless.

Even the sound of his deep voice, a mere whisper of sound from his poor cracked lips, made something unravel in the pit of her stomach.

Belatedly she looked around, past the lamp and the lowburning campfire, towards the dune where he’d appeared.

Had he been attacked? If so, by a stranger or by his father, as he’d claimed? Or was that a figment of a mind confused by head wounds? As well as the gash at his temple Annalisa had found a lump like a pigeon’s egg on the back of his skull.

For hours she’d been checking his pupils. Though what she’d do if he had bleeding to the brain she didn’t know. She couldn’t move him. It would be days before the camel train returned and this part of the country’s arid centre was a telecommunications black spot.

Fear sidled down her spine and she shivered. All night she’d told herself she’d cope, doing her best to rehydrate the stranger and lower his temperature.

Now she had more to worry about.

She got to her feet and searched her supplies. Her hand closed around cool metal and she dragged it out.

The pistol was an antique. It had belonged to her mother’s father, been presented to Annalisa’s father on the day he’d wed. A traditional gift from a traditional man. All the men of Qusay knew how to shoot, just as they knew how to ride, and many still had skills in the old sports of archery and hawking.

Annalisa’s father, an outsider, had never used the gun. As a respected doctor he’d never needed to protect himself or his family. But she felt better with it in her hand.

She’d brought it for sentimental reasons, remembering how he’d carried it on their trips into the wilderness.

Once more that dreadful sense of aloneness swept over her, pummelling her stomach and stealing the calm she’d worked so hard to maintain.

What if someone else was out there, lost and injured or angry and violent? She bit her lip, knowing she couldn’t search. If she left the oasis her patient would likely die of dehydration and exposure.

She returned to his side. His temperature was too high. She picked up the cloth but was loath to touch him again.

Despite the nicks and abrasions marring his face he was a handsome man. More handsome than any she’d met before. Even with deep purple shadows beneath his eyes and the wound at his temple. Dark stubble accentuated a lean, superbly sculpted countenance. Even his hands, large and strong and sinewed, were strangely fascinating.

Annalisa remembered the feel of his fingers encircling her wrist and wondered at the sensations that had bombarded her. She’d felt wary yet excited.

Her gaze slipped to his bare chest. She’d spread his shirt open to bathe him and try to reduce his fever.

In the mellow light from the lamp and the flickering fire he looked beautiful, despite the bruises marring his firm golden skin. His chest was broad and muscular but not with the pumped-up look she’d seen on men in movies and foreign magazines. His latent strength looked natural but no less formidable for that. As for the way his powerful torso tapered to a narrow waist and hips…Annalisa knew a shameful urge to sit and stare.

Even the fuzz of dark hair across his pectoral muscles looked appealing. She wanted to touch it. Discover if it was soft or coarse against her palm.

Her gaze strayed to the narrowing line of hair that led from his chest down his belly.

Annalisa’s pulse hit a discordant beat and staggered on too fast. Heat washed her cheeks and shame burnt as she realised she’d been ogling him.

Determined, she squeezed the cloth, took a fortifying breath and wiped the damp fabric over him.

She refused to think about how her hand shook as it followed the contours of his body, or about the alien tingle in her stomach that signalled a reaction to a man who, even asleep, was more potently virile than any male she’d encountered.

Tahir woke to pain again. At least the throb in his head didn’t threaten to take the back off his skull, as it had before. Only one jackhammer was at work there now.

His lips twisted in a rueful smile that felt more like a grimace from scratched, sore lips. He stirred, opening his eyes a fraction. Not darkness. Not bright daylight either. The light filtering through his lashes was green-tinged and shadowed.

He heard the soft stirring of the wind, breathed deep and inhaled the unique scent that was Qusay. Heat and sand and some indefinable hint of spice he’d never been able to identify.

A searing blast of confused feelings struck him, roiling in his gut, rising in his throat.

‘I’m not dead, then.’ The words, hoarse as they were, sounded loud.

‘No, you’re not dead.’

His muscles froze as he heard a voice, half remembered. Soft, rich, slightly husky. The voice of a temptress sent to tease a man too weak to resist.

She spoke again, ‘You don’t seem particularly pleased.’

Tahir shrugged, then stiffened as abused muscles shrieked in protest.

He didn’t explain his innermost thoughts to anyone.

‘Why is it green? Where are we?’ He kept his head averted, preferring not to face the owner of that voice till he had himself in hand. He felt strangely at a loss, unable to summon his composure, as if this last beating had shattered the brittle shell of disdain he used to maintain distance from the brutality around him.

Tahir blinked, amazed at how vulnerable he felt. How weak.

‘We’re at the Darshoor oasis, in the heart of Qusay’s desert.’ Her voice slid like rippling water over him and for a moment his hazy mind strayed.

Till her words sank in.

‘The desert?’ He whipped his head round then shut his eyes as a blast of white-hot pain stabbed him.

‘That’s right. The light’s green because you’re in my tent.’

A tent. In the desert. The words whirled in his head but they didn’t make sense.

‘My father—’

‘He’s not here.’ She broke in before he could cobble his thoughts together. ‘You seemed to think he was here too but you’re confused. You were…disturbed.’

Tahir frowned. None of this made sense. His father lived in the city, with easy access to his vices of choice: women, gambling and brokering power and money corruptly.

‘You seemed to think you’d been beaten.’

Instantly Tahir froze. He would never have admitted such a thing, especially to a stranger! Not even to his closest friends.

Who was this woman?

He forced his eyelids open again and found himself sinking into warm sherry-tinted depths.

By daylight she looked even better than she had the first time. For he remembered her now, this woman who’d haunted his thoughts. Or were they dreams?

‘Who are you?’ A swift glance took in hair scrupulously pulled back from her lovely face, an absence of jewellery, a long-sleeved yellow shirt and beige cotton trousers. She didn’t dress like a local in concealing skirts. Yet surely only a local would be here?

From where he lay, looking up, her legs looked endless. She moved and he watched the fabric pull tight over her neatly curved hip and slim thighs. A moment later she sat on the floor beside him, her faint, sweet fragrance tantalising his nostrils. Her shirt pulled across her breasts as she leaned towards him.

A jolt of sensation shot through his belly.

No. He wasn’t dead yet.

Perhaps there were some compensations after all.

‘My name is Annalisa. Annalisa Hansen.’ She paused, as if waiting for him to say something. ‘You arrived at my campsite days ago. Just walked out of the desert.’

‘Days ago?’ How could he have lost so much time?

‘You’re injured.’ She gestured to his head, his side. ‘My guess is you were in the desert for quite a while. When you reached me you were seriously dehydrated.’ She lifted a hand to his brow. Her palm was cool and curiously familiar.

He had a jumbled recollection of her touching him earlier. Of blessed water and soothing words.

‘You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness.’ She leaned back, lifting her hand away, and Tahir knew a bizarre desire to catch it back.

‘Your little friend has been worried.’

‘Little friend?’ Automatically he looked past her, taking in the cool interior of the tent, the neatly stowed gear in one corner. A ripple of pages as a furtive breeze played across a book left open a few metres away.

‘You don’t remember?’ She surveyed him seriously.

‘No.’ He remembered just in time not to shake his head. He was no masochist and the pain was already bad enough. ‘I don’t recall.’

It was true. His thoughts were fluid and incomplete. He was unable to fix anything in his mind.

‘That’s all right,’ she said with the calm air of one who’d perfected a soothing bedside manner. Vaguely he wondered who this woman was, caring for him at a desert oasis. ‘You’ve taken a nasty knock to the head so things could be jumbled for a while.’

‘Tell me,’ he murmured, forcing down rising concern at his faulty memory. He recalled a casino. A woman all but climbing into his lap as the chips rose before him. He remembered a cruiser in a crowded marina. A party in a city penthouse. A meeting in a hushed boardroom. But the faces were blurred. The details unclear. ‘What little friend?’