Page 14 of Her Vow to Be His Desert Queen

But maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe she didn’t care for Paris these days.

Sidonie’s cool gaze met his. ‘So, is this all for my benefit?’

‘Yes.’ There was no reason to deny it. ‘Happy birthday,ya hayati.’

‘If you think a nicely set table and an endearment will make me more likely to agree to marry you, you need to think again, Khalil.’

That poisonous part of him stirred yet again, responding to the challenge. And itwasa challenge, whether she realised it or not. He forced it down. That part of himself could never be let out. It had to stay locked away. Not ever fully excised, because the day might come when his country needed it, and if that day came he’d have to embrace it.

Just as he’d had to embrace the battle of succession to determine his suitability to be heir. The battle was a ritualistic fight between the oldest children of each of the King’s wives for the right to be the heir to the throne, a historical leftover from another time.

Khalil hadn’t wanted to take part; he’d thought it medieval and outdated, but his mother had told him he couldn’t afford not to.

‘You have responsibilities, Khalil,’she’d said coldly when he’d voiced his reluctance. ‘If you do not fight, then Yusuf will be named heir, and you know what he would do to this country should he become King. Protecting Al Da’ira is all that is important. What you want doesn’t matter.’

What he’d wanted never mattered. His father’s blood ran too strong his veins, she’d told him, which made him more susceptible to the flaws of selfishness and vice than other people. He had to guard himself more strongly against them, never indulge his own needs. He had to learn how to place the greater good above them.

Well, he’d learned. He might have that old blood, but he didn’t let it rule him. He couldn’t. Not when the foundation of his kingship wasnotfollowing in his father’s footsteps.

‘So, what would make you marry me?’ he asked idly, since, although he had no intention of letting her walk away, everything would go much more smoothly if she wasn’t actively fighting him.

‘Nothing.’ Her gaze was sharp. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone.’ Before he could reply, she turned and moved across the terrace to stand at the stone parapet, her attention on the iconic shape of the Eiffel Tower in front of them. She was holding herself very stiffly, her back straight and her shoulders tense.

He studied her yet again, trying to puzzle out what she was thinking and what had happened to the woman he’d left behind five years earlier. Was she still there, hiding behind this woman’s cool, smooth veneer?

He’d lost his ability to read her, that was the problem. Or rather, he’d never had to read her, because the Sidonie he remembered had always been open with him. But not this Sidonie. She was far more guarded. Though, judging from her rigid posture, he’d say she was still angry.

That was obvious.

Yes, well, he would have to get hernotto be angry with him, and that was going to be tricky. If he wanted her agreement to be his queen, he would have to find a way, which meant some convincing was in order.

Khalil studied the stiff line of her back for a moment, then stalked over to the ice bucket and picked up the champagne bottle. He popped the cork, poured some of the fizzy liquid into two flutes, and carried both over to where she stood.

‘For you,’ he said, holding out the glass.

She glanced at him, her expression still guarded. She smelled of apples and cinnamon, and another sweet scent he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and it came almost as a shock that the scent was as familiar to him as his own name, despite the years. She’d changed, it was true, but she still smelled the same.

Desire stirred inside him, bright and sharp, which was another shock, since he’d thought he’d put that desire behind him.

Apparently not.

When he’d come to Oxford and become friends with Galen of Kalithera and Augustine of Isavere, his companion ‘Wicked Princes’ and two men who knew the unique demands of being an heir to the throne, they’d turned the university town upside down. There had been parties and wildness, and all kinds of beautiful women, and he’d indulged himself completely, using them to forget the terrible price he’d paid to be the heir, not to mention the doubt and the guilt that had followed him to England.

Yet no other woman had ever captured the unique combination of curvaceousness, sensuality and warmth that was Sidonie.

If he hadn’t been a prince, if he’d been an ordinary student, he’d have seduced her in minutes back then. But the life of an ordinary student had never been his destiny. He’d been intended for the isolation of command, the cold logic of difficult decisions and heavy scales to balance. A man in control of a country couldn’t be the same man who laughed in a pub or screamed at a football match or held a grieving friend on the anniversary of her parents’ death.

Friendship was all he had to give and so he’d never crossed that line.

Yet for some reason now, standing close to her, with the achingly familiar scent of her winding around him, reminding him of things he’d purposefully forgotten, all those reasons seemed pointless now.

If she agreed, she would be his wife and heirs would need to be conceived. He could have her naked beneath him, and then he could put his mouth to her throat, finally taste her skin the way he’d always fantasised about, breathe in that delicious scent...

His body hardened and yet again he was conscious of deep surprise. Nothing happened unless he willed it, especially when it came to physical reactions, and for baser parts of himself to react to her without his control...

He realised she was studying him, so he ignored the grip of desire and met her gaze. ‘Take the glass, Sidonie. I will not hold it for ever.’

She took the glass, and he observed that she didn’t let her fingers brush his.

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