Harlequin Presents January 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2: The Ruthless Caleb Wilde\Beholden to the Throne\The Incorrigible Playboy by Sandra Marton & Carol Marinelli & Emma Darcy

Author:Sandra Marton & Carol Marinelli & Emma Darcy [Marton, Sandra & Marinelli, Carol & Darcy, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 17064101
Publisher: Harlequin Presents
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

‘TOMORROW we leave for the desert.’

Natasha was irritating. She insisted on chatting as if they were old friends. And yet, Emir conceded, he would find any conversation annoying now, for his mind was only on Amy and what had just taken place.

Fool, he said to himself. Fool for not resisting. Fool for being weak.

And fool because tonight he would take her, only to lose her again in the morning.

Only to have her leave.

‘I’m looking forward to it.’ Natasha persisted with their one-way conversation. ‘After all the celebrations and pomp surrounding the birth, it will be nice to get some peace.’

Now Emir did respond—and very deliberately he chose to get things wrong. ‘I’m sure that the Bedouins will take good care of him.’ He saw the flare of horror in Natasha’s eyes.

‘Oh, it’s not for that. It’s way too soon to even think of being parted from him. That doesn’t have to happen until he turns one.’

‘Before he turns one,’ Emir said, enjoying one pleasure in this night.

Two pleasures, he corrected, his mind drifting to Amy again. But he must stay focussed. He must concentrate on the conversation rather than anticipating her arrival, rather then remembering what had just happened. And perhaps it was time to give Natasha a taste of the medicine he had so recently sampled.

‘I handed over the girls last week. Your husband was kind enough to grant a concession that they only stay in the desert for one night, given what happened to their mother.’ He watched Natasha’s lips tighten as he reminded her, none too gently, that her son would be in the desert for several nights—unless, of course, he lost his mother too. Unless he was forced to be weaned early, as Emir’s daughters had been.

‘How did the girls get on?’ Natasha attempted to make it sound like a polite enquiry, as if she were asking after the girls rather than about what she could expect for her own son.

Emir knew that—it was the reason he didn’t mollify her with his response. ‘They screamed, they wept and they begged,’ Emir said, watching as her face grew paler with each passing word. ‘But they are the rules.’ Emir shrugged. ‘My daughters have been forced to be strong by circumstance, and so they survived it.’

He stopped twisting the knife then—not to save her from further distress, but because at that moment it seemed to Emir that everything simply stopped.

He had wondered far too often what Amy might look like out of that robe—he had pictured her not just in her nightdress, or naked beneath him, but dressed as his Queen.

She stepped into that vision now and claimed it, and deep in his gut a knife twisted.

She was dressed in a dark emerald velvet gown, her lips painted red and her eyes skilfully lined with kohl. Her hair was down. But nothing, not even the work of a skilled make-up artist, could temper the glitter in her eyes and the blush of her cheeks that their kiss had evoked.

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