Royal Protector: Traded to the Desert Sheikh / Royal Captive / His Pregnant Princess Bride

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she said, forcing herself as close to an approximation of calm as she could get.

“Do you not? And yet you claimed you were no innocent. I’d have imagined that a woman of so much sordid experience would scarcely blink at the sight of a naked man in a pool.”

He was no longer touching her. He was no longer caging her between his masterful body and that pillar. He was no longer even near her. So there was absolutely no reason that Amaya should have been standing there at the edge of the pool, staring at him as if he were holding her fast in one mighty fist.

“Is this—do you really want to—right here? You dragged me straight off the plane without any discussion or—”

He was pitiless. He said nothing, only watched her as she cut herself off and sputtered off into nothing as if she really were the artless, naive little girl he seemed to think she was already. She hated it. She hated herself. But she stood there anyway, as if awaiting his judgment. Or his next command.

As if it didn’t matter what she felt, only what he did.

You know where that goes, she reminded herself with no little despair. You know exactly where that leads, and who you’ll become, too, if you let this happen.

But all the vows she’d made to herself—that she would never lose herself so completely, that she would never disappear into any man until she could not exist without him the way her mother had done, until the loss of his affection sent her staggering around the planet like some kind of grieving gypsy with a thirst for vengeance and a child she resented—didn’t seem to signify as she stood there in nothing but boy shorts and a T-shirt in the harem of the sheikh who had claimed her.

“This is a bath,” Kavian said evenly. Eventually. Long after she was forced to come to several unfortunate conclusions about how very much she was like her mother, despite everything. “I dislike flying. I want the recycled air washed off my skin as soon as possible. And I want the last six months washed off you.”

* * *

Amaya shivered, visibly, and Kavian tamped down the roaring beast in him that wanted nothing more than to put his hands on her and drag her to him, and who cared that she was anxious? He needed to be inside her. He needed her—and he had long since stopped needing a damn thing.

But he would not leap upon her like a feral thing, no matter the power of will it required to keep himself from doing so. This was no pretty diversion he was trying to lure into his bed for the night, not that he had ever needed much more of a lure than his name or his mere presence. Amaya was his queen. She would bear his sons, stand at his side, raise his heirs. She deserved what passed for a courtship here in this hard place he loved with every part of himself despite what he had done for it and no matter that there was only one possible, foregone conclusion.

This was a long game he played, with clear objectives. Like all the games he’d played in his time. And won.

So Kavian waited. He, who had not had to wait for much of anything since the day he reclaimed his father’s throne. He, who had already waited for this woman for half a year, unaccountably. He, who was better used to women throwing themselves at him and begging for his notice.

He, who had never had a woman run from him in his life, before now. Before Amaya.

It was of little matter. She was here. She would stay here, because he willed it so. The world would return to the shape he preferred and do his bidding besides, and he would be inside her soon enough.

“Each pool is a different temperature,” he said in the faintly bored tones of a tour guide, as if that fire in him didn’t threaten to consume him whole despite the water he stood in. “There are any and all bathing accessories you could possibly require, from handmade soaps crafted here in the old city by local women to the finest luxury products flown in from Dubai.”

She was beautiful even when she was obviously nervous, standing there in a small white T-shirt that she obviously wore nothing beneath and those stretchy little shorts that made her hips look nothing short of edible. Her legs were even longer than he’d imagined, and perfectly formed, giving her a bit more height than the average woman—which meant he would not dwarf her in bed or out. Her narrow feet were pale and delicate, and she’d painted her toes a cheerful, bright blue that made his chest feel tight and hit him as critically important, somehow. Though he knew that was foolish.

“Come in, Amaya,” he said, invitation and order in one. “You will be the happier for it.”

Her head canted slightly to one side. “Do you promise not to touch me?”

He let his gaze move over that full mouth of hers that he’d dreamed of, these past months, more than he cared to admit. That thick, dark hair he wanted to see swirling around her shoulders and that he wanted to feel slide across his own skin. Those small, proud breasts and the peaks he had yet to taste that he could see poking against the sheer fabric of her T-shirt, perhaps an invitation she didn’t mean to extend. The hint of that smooth, olive expanse of her belly between her panties and her shirt, which he wanted to spend a very long time learning with his mouth. And that tempting triangle where her legs met, that he wanted to lick his way into until he forgot his own name.

Kavian took his time dragging his gaze back up her tempting body, noting the goose bumps that marked her arms as he did, and then smiled when his gaze tangled with hers again.

“No,” he said. “I certainly do not.”

Her lips parted as if that threw her off balance, but then she moved—and not away from him, as he’d expected. Instead, she walked along the edge of the pool toward the wide steps that led down into it from one side.

“Well,” she said, with a certain primness that reminded him of that way she’d laughed at her brother in that long-ago video, and coursed through his veins like that same sweet wine. “I have nothing against hygiene, of course.”

“Merely against sheikhs?” Perhaps, he thought with some surprise, he had it in him to tease after all. Only Amaya. Only alone.

“Sheikhs and kings and desert palaces,” she agreed, her gaze touching his, then moving away again as she made her way down the wide stairs and on into the water, still wearing that shirt and those sexy little shorts as if they were some kind of swimming costume. “Awful things, I think we can all agree.”

“Your misfortunes are vast, indeed. Of all the princesses I have chosen to become my queen over the course of my life, your burden is by far the heaviest.”

Amaya moved farther into the water until it lapped at the sweet indentation of her waist, and skimmed her palms over the surface of the pool on either side of her, as if testing the water’s temperature. She kept herself out of his reach, which Kavian could not abide a moment more. He moved toward her.

She watched him with as much enthusiasm as if he were an approaching shark. It shouldn’t have been quite so entertaining, he supposed, but her various forms of defiance...delighted him. If that was what that sudden bright thing inside him was. He hardly recognized it.

“How many have there been?” she asked. When he didn’t speak, when he only closed the distance between them, she swallowed in a way that belied that light tone she used. “Princesses that you’ve turned into queens? Am I the last in a long line? A parade?”

He didn’t answer her. He liked the question too much, and what it told him of her, and she seemed to realize that. She danced back from him, then dropped abruptly, dunking her head beneath the water. For a moment she was a shimmer, the inky darkness of her hair obscuring her limbs from his view, and then she shot up again.

And the beast in him roared.

Her T-shirt was soaked through, showing him every contour of those glorious breasts, every mouthwatering detail. And better still, her hair had finally tumbled out of its braid and the dark mass of it coursed over her, framing her and presenting her like some kind of slick mermaid fantasy.

His mermaid fantasy, which Kavian hadn’t realized he had until that moment.

She was swiping water from her face and she let out a sharp, high noise when she opened her eyes and found him there, much closer to her than he’d been when she submerged—which he also found entertaining.

He slid his hands over her hips, those sweetly rounded hips that had been seared into his memory, so deep that the tactile memories had kept him awake some nights. And then he pulled her toward him with his pulse a wild thunder in his veins, almost in pain, his need for her was so intense.

She gulped, but she didn’t say a word, not even when he lowered his head and put his mouth just there, almost against her lips. Almost. He felt the fine tremors move through her, like an orchestra of want—a music that only she could hear. But Kavian could feel it. He felt the heat of her, let her scent—honey and rain—move in him like a blessing.

“I don’t think I can kiss a man who kept seventeen women,” she said, and he could feel each word against his mouth the same way he could feel the taut points of her nipples against his own chest, and neither was even close to enough. “I don’t think I can reconcile myself to it, whether you emptied your harem or not.”

“Then by all means, do not sully yourself,” he said against the lush seduction of her mouth. “You can stand there and suffer. I do not mind at all.”

And then he slid his hands up into the thick, wet glory of her hair, indulging himself. He dragged that smart mouth of hers the remaining millimeter toward his, and then finally, finally, he took her mouth with his.

CHAPTER FOUR

HIS KISS WAS like a bomb.

It detonated inside her, she burst into a shower of light and all the need and want and haunting desire that had been chasing her across the months she’d run from him slammed into her.

Amaya clung to him. She didn’t think. She didn’t want to think.

She kissed him back.

Just like six months ago, his kiss stormed through her. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t particularly kind. His kiss was carnal and dark, a blistering-hot invitation to a wickedness she’d experienced but once and still only vaguely understood.

But she wanted it. Oh, the things she wanted when this man took hold of her as if he had every right to her. As if her presence was all the surrender he required.

His hands moved from her hair to slide sleek against her skin, and she shuddered against him as he fit his hard palms to her breasts the same way he had done earlier to her cheek. But this was nothing like tender. This was pure, uncontainable wildness.

And it thrilled her, low and hot, dark and deep.

Amaya had never considered her breasts one way or the other. They were small, incapable of creating cleavage without help, and she’d have thought they weren’t the least bit sensual or enticing. But that low growl in Kavian’s throat, the one she felt inside her as he continued to take her mouth as if he truly did own her, made her think otherwise for the first time in her life.

Made her feel something like beautiful and cherished, all at once, which was as bright as another flame. And as dangerous.

When he pulled his mouth from hers, she let out a moaning noise she knew she’d later regret, which she almost regretted even as it happened—but in that moment, she didn’t care. She couldn’t.

There was that bright hot fire, dancing inside her. Whispering that she was as beautiful as he was, as powerful. Telling her that she was his. His mate, his match. His.

Amaya didn’t even care when he let out that very male sound of laughter, of sheer and unmistakable victory. She felt the same thing shudder through her, as if the more he won this intimate battle of theirs, the more she did, too. She only shook when he pressed his open mouth to the column of her throat, and then she simply gave herself over into his talented hands.

The way she’d done once before. He made her mindless with longing. He made her shake with need.

He made her feel more alive, brighter and wilder and hotter and right, than she’d imagined was possible.

And Kavian knew exactly what he was doing. He bent his head to her breasts and this time he took one taut peak in his mouth. Then he lifted her against him with another matter-of-fact display of his superior strength, settling her so that she straddled his leg. The bright hot center of her was flush against the rock-hard steel of his thigh, and she could tell by the way that his hands moved to press her there that it was no accident.

And then he sucked her nipple in, deep and hard despite the T-shirt she wore, and the world disappeared.

Heat. Delight. That impossible blaze she’d half convinced herself she’d made up over all these long months alone and on the run—

He never removed her T-shirt, and that made the whole thing feel more illicit, more wild. Amaya could hardly breathe. Her thoughts crashed into each other and flew apart, and there was only him.

Only Kavian. Only this.

He toyed with her through the sheer material, using his hot mouth, the edge of his teeth, his remarkable hands, all the while keeping her in place against his hard thigh, where she couldn’t help rocking herself with increasing intensity as the sensations stormed through her.

It was like being caught in a lightning storm, struck again and again and again.

Amaya couldn’t imagine anyone could survive this—and she didn’t care if she did. It was worth it, she thought. It was all worth it—

Harder and harder she moved herself against him, shameless and mindless at once, wanting only to do something about that wild need that shook through her and centered in her core. Wanting nothing more than him.

Kavian made a harsh noise, and that only lit her up all the brighter.

“You will be the death of me,” he growled, low and intent, as if he read her mind.

As if, she managed to think with no little wonder, she had the same affect on this hard, wicked man as he did on her.

He took one nipple deep into the heat of his mouth again while his fingers rolled the other between them, lazy and sure. The twin assaults were like a new flash of light, a new storm. He did it once, then again, her core molten against his thigh.

“Now, Amaya,” he ordered her, his mouth against her breast.

And Amaya shattered all around him, only aware that she screamed as she toppled straight over the edge into a wild oblivion when her own abandon echoed back from the walls as she lost herself completely in his arms.

When she came back to herself, Kavian had swept her up, high against his sculpted chest, and was carrying her out of the pool toward the central seating area. He wrapped her in a wide, soft bath sheet and sat her down on one of the lounging chairs. Amaya couldn’t breathe—but then he left her there while he claimed his own bath sheet and tucked it around his lean waist, which only seemed to call more attention to the mouthwatering perfection of his glorious form.

She should say or do something, surely. She told herself she would, just as soon as her head stopped spinning. Or when he came back over here and claimed her once again, as he was surely about to do.

But he didn’t.

Instead, Kavian went to the low table and the trays of food laid out for his pleasure. He took his time filling his plate with various local delicacies, and then sat in a lounge chair facing her where he could watch her as he ate.

Amaya didn’t understand what was happening.

Her heart still pounded. She could feel it in her temples, her throat, her belly. And hot and soft between her legs.

“Aren’t you going to...?”

She trailed off into nothing, irritated with herself. Why did this man turn her into the blushing, stammering fool she’d never been at any other point in her life? Why did he make her feel so foolish and so young with only the merest crook of his dark brow?

“If you cannot say it, Amaya, it does not exactly inspire me to do it,” he replied mildly. Almost reprovingly, she thought.

And then he carried on eating, as if he hadn’t left her in a spineless heap only moments before. As if that had all been a demonstration of some kind and he was entirely unaffected by the lesson he’d decided to teach her.

She didn’t know why that made her furious, but it did—in a shocking, searing wave from her head all the way down to her feet. And if the rush of temper felt like some kind of relief, she told herself that hardly mattered. She struggled to sit up, ignoring the aftershocks of all that pleasure that still stampeded through her, as if he really had made her body his own.

She didn’t want to think about that. She refused to think about that.

“I’m not a two-year-old,” she threw at him instead. “I have no idea what your expectations are. We had sex once, by accident, and you chased me all over the planet for six months. You rant about how I’m yours and how I gave myself to you. But then you give me an orgasm and break for a quick snack. Right here in a subterranean bathhouse where you kept seventeen women under lock and key until recently, or so you claim. I have no idea what reasonable is under these circumstances. I have no idea what you’re capable of doing.” She pulled in a breath that felt much too ragged. “I don’t have the slightest idea who you are.”

That gaze of his took on an unholy gleam, but he only lounged back in his seat, looking otherwise unperturbed. Remote, as if she were looking at a carving on the side of a temple, not a man. She thought of ancient kings and actual thrones, feats of chivalry and strength and drawn-out, epic battles better suited to Tolkien novels, and found her throat was dry again.

“No one was held here under lock and key,” he said after a moment, when she could feel anxiety like pinpricks all up and down her body, and was afraid she’d actually broken out in hives. “This is neither a prison nor a work of overwrought fiction.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time you start thundering on about promises.”

Something far too dangerous to be amusement moved across that face of his and did not make her feel in the least bit secure. It occurred to her then that she was wearing nothing but a soaked-through T-shirt and panties, and a towel. And that this man had absolutely no qualm using her body against her when he felt like it.

But he didn’t move toward her and prove that all over again, as she was far too aware he could. He stayed where he was, and Amaya couldn’t understand how that was worse. Yet it was.

“And this might come as a great surprise to you,” he said, his voice like smoke and temptation, “but thus far you are the only woman I have ever encountered who was not delighted at the prospect of sharing my bed.”

“As far as you know, you mean.” She glared at him, trying to be as furious with him as she should have been. Furious with herself that she was not. “People lie, especially to terrifying kings of the desert who threaten the very air they breathe.”

“Ask yourself why I am so sure,” he encouraged her, in a tone that made her stomach swoop toward the ground, though he could not have seemed more relaxed as he said it. No matter that glittering silver thing in his gaze. “Ask yourself how I can know this.”

Amaya had absolutely no desire to do anything of the kind. Because she could think of several ways a man could be that certain, and he’d already demonstrated it to her twice. Six months ago in an alcove of the Bakrian Royal Palace and right here in the large pool today.

And she had no idea what must have showed on her face then, but Kavian only smiled, an edgy and dangerous crook of that hard, hard mouth of his she could still feel, as if he were still touching her when he was not.

That didn’t help.

“You do not have to wonder about my expectations,” he said, the way other men might comment on the weather. Their favorite sports team. Unlike with other men, whole armies he could command with a wave of his hand lurked beneath his words and settled around her neck like a heavy choke collar. “I do not traffic in subterfuge. I will tell you what I want. I will tell you how I want it and when. You will provide it, one way or another. It is simple.”

“Nothing about that is simple.” But he only gazed back at her, implacable and resolute, and she felt a searing kind of restlessness wash through her. Hectic. Almost an itch from deep within. She couldn’t name it. But she couldn’t sit still, either, and so she let it take her up and onto her feet. “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.”

“If you wish it,” he said amiably enough, and everything stopped. Her breath. Her heart. Had he truly agreed—and so easily? But that smile of his was not the least bit encouraging. It made her feel...edgy. Edgier. “Which home do you mean?”

Amaya thought in that moment that she might hate him. That she might never recover from it. That it was stamped deep into her bones, like a different kind of marrow, as much a part of her as her own.

It had to be hatred. It couldn’t be anything else.

“You can return me to Canada,” she bit out. “Right where you found me. I’ll take it from there.”

“Canada is not your home.” Still he lounged there, as if this were a casual conversation. As if he weren’t holding her between his hands like a giant, malicious cat, and toying with her because he could. Because he felt like it. Because he enjoyed using his damn claws. “You were born in Bakri. You lived there until you were eight years old. Then you and your mother wandered for the next decade. Here, there. Wherever the wind blew her, that is where you went. The longest you stayed anywhere in that time was fifteen months at a family-owned vineyard in the Marlborough wine region of New Zealand’s South Island. Is that the home you mean? It pains me to tell you that the gentleman you stayed with then moved on from your mother’s much-vaunted charms some time ago and now has a new family all his own.”

Amaya remembered crisp mornings in a late New Zealand winter then, walking through the corridors of rich dirt and gnarled vines with the friendly man she’d imagined might make Elizaveta better. Happier, anyway—and he’d seemed to manage it, for a time. She remembered the long white-capped mountain range that stretched out lazily alongside her wherever she went, reaching from the vineyard she’d called home that year toward Blenheim and the sea in the east. The skittish sheep and curious lambs who marked her every move and bounded away from any signs of movement in their direction, real or imagined. The stout and orderly vineyards, set in their efficient lines all the way north to the foothills of the Richmond range.

Most of all she remembered the thick black, velvety nights, when the skies were so filled with stars they seemed messy, chaotic. Magic. Weighted down, as if, were she to blink, all that fanciful light might crush her straight down into the rich, fertile earth like nothing but another seedling. And yet somehow they’d made it impossible for Amaya to believe that she could really be as terribly alone as she’d sometimes felt.

She hadn’t thought about that period of her life in a very long time. Elizaveta had moved on the way Elizaveta always did and Amaya had stopped imagining anyone could fix what her father had broken. She felt something crack inside her now, as if Kavian had knocked down a critical foundation with that unexpected swipe—but he was still talking. Still wrecking her with every lazily destructive word.

“Or perhaps you are referring to your years at university in Montreal?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “While it appeared to be a city you enjoyed, in many respects, you left it as often as possible during your studies. You went to the mountains, as we have established. But also to Europe. To the Caribbean for sun in the midst of all those relentless winters. And you left Canada altogether shortly after your graduation for Edinburgh, where you took up a very unsuitable job in a local pub while you made the most feeble of gestures toward a master’s degree in some or other form of literature at the university there.”