A Virgin for the Desert King by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-06-16T14:58:55+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN HE WOKE in the dark, everything was soft. There was a soft mattress beneath him, and a soft woman lying against him.

His body did not hurt. He was not cold.

And he woke all the same. Yet wholly different too.

It was quite unlike anything he had ever experienced before. And for a moment, he resisted opening his eyes. Resisted rousing at all. He had never even dreamed anything this nice.

But soon, the sunshine beckoned, and when he opened his eyes, it was Brianna.

“Good morning,” he said. “That was fantastic sex.”

She opened her eyes, and looked at him. “That’s quite a greeting.”

“I do not see the point in denying what it was.”

“Yes. But maybe you should work on your poetry.”

“I can do that,” he said, taking himself back to books he had read. To romance. To the way that men talked to women in those books. “The heat of your body warmed me in ways nothing else ever could. But that should not surprise me. You are the sun, after all.”

“I’m what?”

“The first time I saw the sun... You were standing in it.”

She shifted, and he looked into her lovely face.

“What?”

“That day in the palace. I had not come upstairs yet. I had not seen the sun. It was only with you that I saw it for the first time.”

“Oh. Well. That is adjacent to poetry. I am impressed.”

“I do try. Or maybe not.”

“Riyaz,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”

“And so you have to tell me you want to ask? Can you just ask?” He moved his hand over her bare arm. But he found he would rather touch her bare breast, so he did just that.

“I can’t concentrate when you do that.”

“Well, the question is important to you, but I did not say that it was important to me.”

“Do you want any of this? Do you want to be king? Do you want to rule this country?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Has anyone ever asked what you wanted? Do you want to marry Ariel Hart, or is it just...? Is it just something that you were told you would do? And now that you’re back on the path...”

“You must understand, that when you are royalty... What you want is not part of the conversation. Not in the same way it is in these normal houses. I read about them too. Where they ask children what they want to be when they grow up. It is a thing that you choose. That is not true when you are a royal. When you are a royal, then it is all decided for you. Before your birth. There is a line that carries back thousands of years. In many ways, it made being a prisoner easier. My job is to endure. That is all. And so I did.”

“What about your happiness?”

“I have never thought about my happiness one way or the other. My appetites, certainly. But not my happiness. My job was to survive to take the throne. It is not about what I want.

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