Protecting the Desert Heir

And Rihad. The king. Her husband. The man who had just kissed her. He looked every inch the wealthy sheikh today, in his traditional garments that only emphasized his strength, his power. The sheer intensity he carried with him like a sword, and now she knew he could wield it, too.

His expression was like stone as he gazed back at her, though his dark gold eyes burned the way she still did with the aftereffects of that kiss stampeding all over her, and Sterling couldn’t bring herself to look away.

“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.” Her voice hardly sounded like hers, and she understood that it was far too revealing. That it told him far too much, and in far more depth. But she couldn’t seem to help herself. “Not today.”

Rihad’s nostrils flared as if he was pulling in a deep, deep breath, or fighting for control. As if he was as thrown by this as she was. As if the addictive taste of that wildfire that still crackled through her was too sharp, too dangerous, in him, too.

“I’m touched,” he said, and she understood that was all wishful thinking on her part, thinking this was difficult for him. Nothing was, after all. Not for the king. “I had no idea our wedding meant so much to you, considering how bitterly you complained throughout it.”

His voice was rough and sardonic, but Sterling was sick, she understood then, because she still felt the kiss like a caress. Her oversensitive breasts ached as if it had been that faintly calloused palm of his all over her bare skin. A little flicker of sensation skated from the tight peaks of each of them down through the center of her body to pool deep in her core. Then pulsed.

She’d always had a vivid imagination. But now what stormed in her was need.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said, with what she thought was admirable calm, given the fact she now knew what that hard mouth of his felt like against hers, so hot and so male she might never recover from it.

“The trouble is, I know entirely too much about you,” he said after a moment, his tone harsh and cool, while his golden gaze seemed to tear into her. “And despite the temptation, I can’t overlook the fact that you were my brother’s low-class tramp of a mistress for over a decade.”

“And I am now also your wife,” she pointed out, amazed that her voice sounded so much calmer than she felt, if not quite as regally cool as his. She tipped up her chin. “Congratulations on your choices.”

“Let me be clear about how this marriage will work,” he said, and something curled up inside of her at the way he said it. “You will stay here in the palace until you deliver the baby. Will you wish to nurse it?”

“I...” She felt as if he’d tossed her over the side of that terrace after all. One moment he was kissing her, all carnal longing and impossible heat, and the next he was interrogating her about her plans for the baby’s feedings?

“I don’t care if you do or do not,” he said when she only blinked at him. “But if you do, you will stay here until the child is weaned. You will receive all the care and help you could require, of course. For all intents and purposes, that is now my child.”

“Never,” she said at once. Softly enough, but with feeling. “This is Omar’s baby. My baby. Nothing you do can change that.”

“Yes.” And his voice was ferocious. “Omar’s baby. Omar’s mistress. Omar’s many problems. This is nothing new for me, Sterling. I have been cleaning up after my brother all my life—why should it change now that he is dead?”

It was all too easy to remember how much she hated him then, and she clenched her hands so tightly into fists that her nails dug into her palms.

“What happens after the child is weaned?” she asked in a clipped voice as a tsunami of self-loathing crept ever closer, reminding her that she’d not only let this callous man touch her, but she’d also liked it. More than liked it.

She’d wanted more. Maybe she really was the whore Rihad thought she was. Maybe the fact she’d never touched anyone had concealed the essential truth about her.

“That is entirely up to you,” he said curtly. “Behave, and I may let you stay here, as long as you do not make a nuisance of yourself. Misbehave, and I will have you locked up in a remote part of the kingdom, a prisoner in fact and deed. I don’t care which it is.”

“I don’t want this,” she blurted out, because she was suddenly light-headed, and the thought that this was really her life now, that this had really happened, made the world spin.