âI told you to remove your clothes, azizty.â
Kavianâs mouth was so close. Amaya could feel his breath against her lips, particularly when he said the unfamiliar word she was terribly afraid was some kind of endearment. She was afraid that she wanted it to be an endearmentâthat she was starting down that slippery slope. She could taste him if she only tipped forwardâand she would never know how she managed to keep herself from doing exactly that.
She wanted it as much as she feared it. The push and pull of it made her feel something like seasickness, though it certainly wasnât nausea that pooled in her. Not even close.
âIâm not very good at following orders,â she managed to say.
There was the faintest suggestion of a curve to that grimly sensual mouth, still entirely too near her own.
âNot yet, perhaps,â he said. âBut you will become adept and obedient. I will insist.â
And the powerful men who claim them!
In their rival desert kingdoms the word of Rihad al Bakri and Kavian ibn Zayed al Talaas is law.
Nothing and no one stands in the way of these formidable and passionate sheikhs.
Until two exceptional women dare to defy them and turn their carefully controlled worlds upside down.
These men will do whatever it takes to protect their legaciesâincluding claiming these women as their brides before a scandal ensues!
Read Rihadâs story in
Protecting the Desert Heir June 2015
And Kavian and Princess Amayaâs story in
Traded to the Desert Sheikh September 2015
CHAPTER ONE
SHE HAD NO WARNING.
There had been no telltale men with grim, assessing eyes watching her from the shadows. No strange gaps in conversation when she walked into the small coffee shop in a tiny lakeside village in British Columbia. There hadnât been any of the usual hang-ups or missed calls on her latest disposable mobile phone that signaled her little noose was drawing tight.
She had a large mug of strong, hot coffee to ward off the late-autumn chill this far north, where snow was plastered across the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the thick clouds hung low. The pastry she chose was cloyingly sweet, but she ate all of it anyway. She checked her email, her messages. There was a new voice mail from her older brother, Rihad, which she ignored. She would call him later, when she was less exposed. When she could be certain Rihadâs men couldnât track her.
And then she glanced up, some disturbance in the air around her making her skin draw tight in the second before he took the seat across from her at the tiny little café table.
âHello, Amaya,â he said, with a kind of calm, resolute satisfactionâwhile everything inside her shifted into one great big scream. âYouâve been more difficult to find than anticipated.â
As if this were a perfectly casual meeting, here in this quiet café in an off-season lakeside village in a remote part of Canada sheâd been certain he couldnât find. As if he werenât the most dangerous man in the world to herâthis man who held her life in those hands of his that looked so easy and idle on the table between them despite their scars and marks of hard use, in notable contrast to that dark slate fury in his too-gray eyes.
As if she hadnât left himâHis Royal Highness, Kavian ibn Zayed al Talaas, ruling sheikh of the desert stronghold Daar Talaasâif not precisely at the altar, then pretty damn close six months ago.
Amaya had been running ever since. Sheâd survived on the money in her wallet and her ability to leave no trail, thanks to a global network of friends and acquaintances sheâd met throughout her vagabond youth at her heartbroken motherâs side. Sheâd crashed on the floors of perfect strangers, stayed in the forgotten rooms of friends of friends and walked miles upon miles in the pitch dark to get out of cities and even countries where sheâd thought he might have tracked her. She wanted nothing more than to leap up and run now, down the streets of the near-deserted village of Kaslo and straight into the frigid waters of Lake Kootenay if necessaryâbut she had absolutely no doubt that if she tried that again, Kavian would catch her.
With his own bare hands this time.
And she couldnât repress the shiver that swept over her at that thought.