“So much for discretion,” she said, wiping her eyes.
Kareef’s eyes couldn’t look away from her face as she laughed. Her sparkling eyes, her white teeth, the sound of her laugh. “He will never tell,” he promised. But he couldn’t stop smiling at her.
He’d never heard anything more beautiful in his life than her laugh. He’d never thought he’d hear it again.
Many hours later, after the doctor had given her scalp two stitches, bandaged her other cuts and pronounced her well, they made love several times more before they lay sleeping in each other’s arms. Or rather, Kareef held her as she slept.
He couldn’t stop looking at her.
Now, outside the window of his bedroom, he could see dawn rising over the desert, and his stomach growled. Time for breakfast, his body insisted. He realized he hadn’t eaten at all yesterday. He smiled down at Jasmine sleeping in his arms and softly caressed her cheek. He’d been distracted.
He could hardly believe he already wanted her again. They’d barely slept at all last night. They’d made love at least four times, possibly four and a half, depending on what counted and what did not.
He should just hold her and sleep. He closed his eyes. Jasmine was the only woman he’d ever wanted close like this. He suddenly realized she was the only woman he’d ever slept with, in any sense of the word.
His arms tightened around her. Then his stomach growled again, louder this time. He glanced at her, surprised the sound hadn’t startled her.
Kareef gave a resigned sigh. Careful not to wake her, he moved his arm from beneath her head and quietly dressed before he left her.
When she woke, he would surprise her. First with breakfast. He allowed himself a wicked smile. Then with dessert.
He went down the hallway to his modern kitchen and turned on the gas stove. Pulling pans off their hooks, he prepared eggs scrambled with meat, then toast and fruit. He got two plates from a cupboard and arranged them on a tray. As an afterthought, he went outside and picked a flower from the small pot of roses beside the front door.
When he came back into the house, he found Jasmine standing in the middle of the gleaming kitchen, wearing only an oversized T-shirt emblazoned with the name of some 1980s rock band.
“I couldn’t find you,” she said accusingly.
Leaning forward, he placed the rose in her hair, tucking it behind her ear as he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “I was hungry.”
She smiled, looking somehow like a fairy princess in the large T-shirt with the flower in her mussed hair. “You’re hungry an awful lot,” she murmured.
Giving her a sensual grin, Kareef lifted a dark eyebrow. “You bring it out in me.”
Her forehead furrowed as she searched his gaze. Then with an intake of breath she looked down at the tray. Her voice was soft, almost impossible to hear. “It looks delicious. Who made it?”
“I did.”
She laughed, looking around the kitchen as if she expected to find three sous chefs hidden behind the huge refrigerator. “No. Really. Who made it?”
“I have no live-in staff here, Jasmine,” he said. “I told you. I don’t like being fussed over.”
She looked at him skeptically, wrinkling her nose. “You mean to tell me—” she indicated the spotless, sparkling tile floor “—you mopped that yourself?”
“I’m independent—not insane,” he said with a laugh. “I do have a housekeeper, as well as gardeners and my veterinary staff and stable workers. But they have their own cottages on the edge of my land. I live in this house alone. I prefer it that way.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s go outside.” Taking two cups of steaming Turkish coffee, he placed them on the tray beside the breakfast plates. Holding the patio door open with his shoulder, he carried the tray in one hand. “We can watch the sun rise.”
She followed him out to the wooden deck behind the kitchen. Leaning against the railing, she looked out at the vast expanse of desert stretching beyond the valley.
“You said you someday wanted to build a house out here,” she whispered. “But I never imagined anything so beautiful as this.”
Setting the tray down on the table, he looked at the dark, curvy silhouette of her body in front of the vast wide desert now glowing pink in the sunrise.
“Beautiful indeed,” he said quietly.
She turned to face him. “It must be hard for you to leave this all behind.”
A dull throb went through his head, in the back of his skull. “Yes.”
He’d briefly forgotten the royal palace, forgotten the endless, unsatisfied crowds of people hemming him in, making demands of their king. Forgotten the fact that in just a few days, he would formally and forever renounce all right to be a private citizen with his own selfish desires. He would be king, sacrificing himself forever for the good of his people.