Traded to the Desert Sheikh by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

IF HE WAS a good man, Kavian reflected the following day, he would not have set up his betrothed for this particular day of tests. He would not have tested her at all. Had it been about what he wanted, he simply would have kept her in his bed forever. He would have lost himself there in the sweet madness of her scent, the addiction of her smooth skin. The glory he’d found in her arms that shook him far more than he cared to admit.

But this was Daar Talaas and Kavian had never been good. He’d never had the chance to try. He was the king, and thus he did what was necessary for his people. If that happened to align with what was good, so be it. But he would not lose sleep over it if it did not.

He would sleep like an innocent, he assured himself, whatever happened in the desert that had forged him. It would be the making of Amaya, too, he knew. There was no other way.

After all, she had already taken the news of her mother’s true treatment of her in stride. Kavian dared to allow himself a shred of optimism that she would rise to whatever occasion presented itself.

They’d left the palace in the morning, taking a helicopter out to the stable complex on the far side of the treacherous northern mountains. They’d stood together in the center of the courtyard while his men, a sea of servants and stable hands, and a selection of his finest Arabian horses hurried all around them.

“Do you ride?” he’d asked, almost as an afterthought.

She’d been dressed like a Daar Talaasian noblewoman, in an exquisite dress that adhered to desert custom with her arms and legs covered and her head demurely veiled. It only made her every graceful movement that much more intoxicating, to Kavian’s mind, because he had the pleasure of knowing what was beneath. All her soft skin, the temptation of her hair, the sweet taste of her, woman and cream. But there’d been no veiling that cool gaze of hers, dark chocolate mixed with ice as it met his.

“I’ve ridden a horse before, if that’s what you mean. I’m sure you already know that my mother and I spent several summers on a ranch in Argentina.”

What he knew was far less interesting to him than what she chose to tell him. “Did you fall off a great deal?”

She stiffened almost imperceptibly, and those marvelous bittersweet eyes of hers narrowed. “Are you asking me if I’ve suffered a head injury?”

He’d kept himself from smiling by sheer force of will, and it was much harder than it should have been. Much harder than he could recall it ever having been before. “I am asking if I can expect you to topple off the side of a horse while you are meant to be riding it.”

“Not on purpose,” she’d retorted, and it had only occurred to him then that they weren’t in private any longer.

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