Royal Affairs by Sarah Morgan

Author:Sarah Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742903095
Publisher: Mills & Boon Special Release

Chapter Six

THE NEXT morning, Sorrel wondered if she had dreamt it all. Malik gate-crashing her party and then whisking her away from it and telling her that he would teach her everything she needed to know about love. But then she touched a finger to her kiss-bruised lips and knew it had all been real.

She’d woken with the scent of the Sheikh on her skin—tasting him on her lips—and she shivered as she showered herself with a brand-new self-awareness. As she pulled on her underwear and fished out the one long silk Kharastani tunic she’d brought to England with her she wondered if she was doing the right thing.

But who could she possibly ask?

There was no one. She was—and always had been—a lone agent. Even when her parents had been alive she had felt very much in the background. They had loved her as best they could—but had been consumed by their passion for foreign culture and the adventure of exploring inaccessible terrain.

She looked around the rented flat. In a neat pile on the desk was her passport and a few papers. Her clothes filled two suitcases, and a bag of rubbish containing a few yoghurts and some mouldy fruit was waiting to be dumped in the bin outside. Not much to show for her new-found and independent life, was it? And any minute now…

The doorbell trilled and Sorrel went to open it. Another aide, most probably.

But it was not an aide. It was Malik himself. And it was Malik looking like the man she knew—dark, elemental man of the desert, more at home on horseback or holding out one iron-hard arm to greet the returning falcon.

Gone was the immaculate Western suit he had been wearing yesterday—today he was in traditional Kharastani attire. A flowing tunic, made from the very finest silk, which shimmered as he moved and hinted at the hard body beneath. He looked as out of place on the doorstep of this very English building as a bird of paradise would appear if it landed in the centre of a city square.

‘Malik,’ she breathed.

‘I see that you are dressed more appropriately today,’ he murmured—and yet wasn’t it typical of human nature that you always wanted what you hadn’t got? Yesterday, he had been outraged to see those long, slender thighs on display, and yet today, when they were demurely covered, he found himself missing them.

Sorrel smoothed a rueful hand down over the flat of her hip. ‘It’s the only one I’ve brought with me. It’s very old.’

‘Yes. I can see that.’ He frowned. ‘But you had the services of the palace dressmaker—why did you not use her more?’

Sorrel met the narrowed black eyes. ‘I did not feel it was appropriate.’

‘Why not?’

Would it sound pathetic if she told him that she hadn’t felt comfortable about dressing up for palace events? ‘I was there as a functionary, Malik. To blend into the background, rather than stand out from it.’

Such an unassuming point of view had simply never occurred to him—even before he had acceded to the throne.

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