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Her arms came up to his shirt, her hands fisted the cotton, pulling him to her, their passion frantic, needy and desperate.
His hands flew over her wet T-shirt, lifting and pulling to reach her skin, as if only that would soothe the burning need within him. Hand flat against the base of her spine, he pressed her into him, her taut nipples pebbling into his chest, her neck beneath his tongue and teeth, all the while her nails scratched trails of fire into his skin.
This was madness, utter madness, but neither seemed able or willing to stop.
He pulled back, long enough to let her lust filled gaze clear, having never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life. ‘Star,’ he warned as he took her in, pupils wide with desire, breath heaving. She looked utterly gorgeous.
Her name felt like an apology on his lips and she wanted to shout at him, yell and scream that she didn’t want apologies, she wantedthis. She wanted him. Needed him almost as much as her next breath. Before he could say another word, she pulled him to her, kissed him with all the passion she was capable of. All the surety she felt that, no matter the reality, no matter what happened tomorrow, he was the man she was supposed to love for the rest of her life.
His hands came around her waist, pressing against her hip and ass, and she lifted herself into them, wrapping her legs around his waist, glorying when she felt his erection at her core.
‘Please,’ she begged against his lips. ‘Please, just tonight. Just this.’
He raised a hand to sweep her hair from her face, holding her there, looking into her heart and soul. ‘Of course.’
That night, Star was lost in a sea of pleasure. Fingers tangled, tongues danced, her skin was alive beneath his touch. She felt a fire building deep within her, expanding and filling her until the point where she couldn’t contain it any more and an explosion of the most intangible beauty scattered her being across the star-covered desert.
Again and again he broke her into pieces, only to put her back together as something new, something different, and in that moment she knew she would never be the same again.
By the time the sun’s rays cut a path through the tent’s awning to rest against her skin, Star was aware that Khalif was no longer there. She dressed, her clothes feeling as if they didn’t quite fit, and a sense that the morning—and the day—wouldn’t quite be right fell against her soul.
She found him looking out across the desert.
‘What are you...?’ Her voice broke a little, her throat raw from screaming her pleasure through the night-time hours.
‘I was making a wish. I—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ she rushed out. ‘It won’t come true,’ she warned.
‘I was wishing not to be a prince.’
She swallowed the emotions begging to be released. It was a wish they knew couldn’t and shouldn’t come true.
‘You are a wonderful prince. Conscientious, careful about others and what they think, thoughtful about doing the best thing possible for the greatest number of people. You will make a good ruler. Fair, strong, determined.’
Still looking out into the desert, he quirked his lip into a wry smile. ‘Why do I hear a “but”?’
Star hurt for him, shook her head, but determined to say this to him.Forhim. ‘You are not beingyou.You are being the Prince you think they want.’
‘I am not my own any more. I am theirs,’ he said, as if trying to explain himself to someone who refused to see his truth. When in reality he was simply refusing to see hers.
‘You could be the ruler you want to be, if you are willing to stand by the consequences.’
She knew how that sounded, but Star really wasn’t thinking of herself. She was thinking of the man who had already begun to lose himself under the weight of the crown. ‘I wish I could have seen you before.’
‘What,’ he scoffed, ‘as the disreputable playboy?’
‘No. Just the boy.’
Khalif reared back as if she had struck him. He was about to reply when the roar of a Jeep’s engine cut through the desert.
They were out of time.
CHAPTER TEN
‘SO, STAR’SAPPOINTMENTwith Maya is tomorrow?’ Amin asked for the hundredth time that day. Even Khalif’s other members of staff glared at the bespectacled man.
Reza leaned against the wall of the meeting room, refusing to take his eyes from Khalif, who was spending an unnecessary amount of time trying to ignore that fact.
