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Even as the mortification threatened to engulf her, she dismissed the idea. This was just her guilty conscience talking, because she’d left his room last night without saying goodbye.
She was a grown woman. While her father might dress her down for risking her neck on what he thought was an untrained horse, her parents would never judge her for her personal choices.
Even so, the heated blush refused to subside.
After Aisha had disappeared, Liah flung off the sheet and shot across the room, ignoring the discomfort between her thighs. Whatever this was about, she needed to get it out the way before she could flee to the Aleaza Oasis, the special place where she always went when she needed a time-out from palace life.
Notflee, she corrected herself, locating an outfit while simultaneously trying to tame her epic bed-hair. She wasn’t fleeing the palace, or Prince Kamal. She was simply taking a break for three days, while her one-night lover returned to his own kingdom, so she could lock the disturbing intimacy they had shared last night into a box marked ‘no biggie’.
Twenty minutes later, as she tapped on her father’s study door, she was still struggling to get the stupid blush under control.
‘Come in, Liah,’ her father called.
Stepping into the room, she spotted her father seated at his desk and her mother standing behind him, her vivid chestnut eyes rich with...what was that?
Because her mother was wearing the sort of concerned expression Liah remembered from her childhood, when she’d done something reckless, or dangerous...or both.
Her gaze darted to her dad. But he didn’t look mad, he looked concerned too.
‘Liah, sit down. We have a situation we need to discuss,’ her father said, his voice so grave she began to panic.
But then another far too familiar voice rumbled from behind her. ‘There is no discussion necessary, Your Majesty. We must be married. The Crown Princess was a virgin when we slept together last night. It is the honourable course, and also the responsibility of every sheikh, to offer marriage to any woman whose virginity he takes. Is this not written in the Law of Marriage of the Sheikhs?’
The humiliating blush napalmed Liah’s cheeks as she swung round and her horrified gaze landed on the man she hadn’t spotted sitting behind the door.
His tall, indomitable frame rose like a phoenix from the ashes of her memory—or more like a dragon from its lair—incinerating the last of her composure in the process as he strode towards her.
Conflicting emotions charged through her system at warp speed—shock, embarrassment, mortification—but worse was the wave of something rich and fluid as all the sore, tender spots began to throb.
But then she registered his grim expression. He looked even less pleased to see her than she was to see him—which, on the scale of not being pleased was on a par with getting kicked in the gut by Ashreen. Then his outrageous proposal registered and the choking rage rose up her throat like acid.
He’d told her parents about their one-night stand—theirprivate, secret, never-to-be-repeatedone-night stand—and the fact she had been a virgin... And now he expected her tomarryhim because of some arcane law.
She spluttered. The only thing shocking her more than Kamal’s unbelievable gall was the fact her head hadn’t exploded.
Then the outrage spewed out of her mouth, like lava erupting from a volcano.
‘Are you completely and utterly nuts?’
Kamal clenched his fists so hard, he could feel his fingernails cutting into his palms as he battled the desire to grab the infuriating woman in front of him and throw her over his lap so he could give her the spanking she so richly deserved.
He had never laid a hand on a woman without her consent in his entire life—and certainly not in anger—but right now he could feel every fibre of his being straining to maintain the cast-iron control he had acquired, after a childhood of abuse and an adulthood of having every one of his desires and ambitions questioned and judged.
He would not lose his temper, or his civility. But it was a hard-fought battle. Harder than any of the many others he had fought in his twenty-nine years. She had left him in the night, without a word, like a thief. But, worse, she had not told him of her virgin state.
‘Do you deny I am your first lover?’ he asked, to be absolutely sure he had not jumped to the wrong conclusion when he had awoken, heavily erect and aching to sink inside her again, to find the bed beside him empty and speckles of blood on the sheets, probably evidence of her virgin state.
The vivid blush on her face darkened and her breasts rose and fell beneath the fitted T-shirt she wore with jeans and boots which displayed her slender frame far too effectively.
‘That is absolutely none of your business,’ she said.
Which was not a denial.
He was right—shehadbeen a virgin—which meant she had put them both in an impossible position for which there was only one solution. This wayward, reckless, infuriating woman would have to become his wife.
His honour demanded it, as a man and a prince. And so did hers as a member of Narabia’s royal family.
The Law of Marriage of the Sheikhs was an important responsibility for every ruling male in all the kingdoms of the region. If a man in his position took a woman’s virginity, he was compelled to offer marriage. He had been taught as much during the lessons on Zokari cultural traditions and institutions he had been required to take to prepare him for the throne.
