The Sultan Demands His Heir by Maya Blake

Author:Maya Blake [Blake, Maya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2017-09-30T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THE NEXT TIME I have you in my arms...

For some stupid, sleep-depriving reason, Esme had assumed those words carried with them a very imminent time stamp.

She’d spent the next several nights after their departure from Ja’ahr City and the Royal Palace vacillating between the urge to give in and reiterating stern warnings of why she couldn’t. Every night in the breath-taking beauty of her surroundings, be it in a camp made up of giant Bedouin tents or a hut in a desert village as they travelled north towards the oil fields that were the life blood of Ja’ahr, was spent wondering if that would be the night Zaid made his move.

Before she knew it, three weeks had passed.

Three weeks, when he’d treated her like a respected member of his travelling staff, each night reading the detailed reports she’d made on the social care needs of the communities they’d visited and peppering her with questions on points she’d made as they’d shared a simple dinner in the community tent or a mini-banquet in a chieftain’s dining room, depending on which host they’d been blessed to spend the evening with.

Each night she’d retreated to her sleeping quarters with Nashwa and Aisha as her constant companions. The two had proved themselves invaluable sources of information, with Nashwa acting as an informal translator when needed. Esme had even learned to accept the presence of the two bodyguards who shadowed her at all times.

Had she not been thoroughly enjoying her new role, Esme was sure she would have gone completely out her mind. But the joy she’d gained from knowing she was making a difference went a long way towards helping her sleep at night, despite being dogged by thoughts of Zaid.

Because it wasn’t as if Zaid had lost interest in her. Many times, she’d looked up from a conversation with a matriarch of a community, or a group of teenagers, to find his intense gaze on her. At those times, the depth of his hunger had been plain to see, although those long, lush eyelashes would all too soon sweep away the glimpse into his emotions as he returned to whatever conversation he was engrossed in.

The breathless yearning those looks left behind would leave her feeling needy and bereft for hours, a part of her hating him for eliciting such a devastating craving, and the other part admonishing herself for falling beneath his spell in the first place.

It wasn’t surprising therefore then that she was feeling irritable as the sun set on another glorious day on their second night in Tujullah. The northernmost settlement of Ja’ahr was little more than a desert encampment, although the permanent tents were huge and contained an assortment of rooms.

As usual, she’d been allotted her own tent far from the one Zaid occupied—she knew that because she’d watched him disappear with Fawzi into his twenty minutes ago after he’d grilled her on her latest report. Her answers had grown increasingly short until he’d looked up from the document,

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