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Aziza had wanted Nabil’s kiss. How could she deny it when it must have been written on her face … stamped into her eyes? But did she still want it?
Fool that she was, the answer was yes.
And, double fool that she was, he must have seen that truth in her eyes.
He pulled her towards him with a strength she could not resist, and the next moment his mouth came down hard on hers—brutal, ruthless, demanding, but in the same moment shockingly sensual. White heat flew through her veins, leaving her stunned that she actually didn’t go up in flames with the primitive nature of her unexpectedly wild response. Her legs seemed to melt in the heat. Her head was spinning in stunned delirium. With no control over her actions she opened her lips to his, let him plunder the soft interior of her mouth, met the invasion of his tongue with the dance of her own.
KATE WALKER was born in Nottingham, in the UK, but grew up in West Yorkshire. She met her husband at university in Wales and originally worked as a children’s librarian. After the birth of her son she returned to her childhood love of writing. Her first book was published in 1984. She now lives in Lincolnshire with her husband (also a writer), and two cats who think they rule her life.
Destined for
the Desert King
Kate Walker
This book has to be dedicated to my editor Pippa, who asked for Nabil’s story and so sparked off the idea for it.
And to my students—the wonderful Walker’s Stalkers—whose friendship and interest at our writing retreats more than encouraged me to finish it.
Contents
‘HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!’
Nabil bin Rashid Al Sharifa, Sheikh of Rhastaan, raised the glass in his hand high in a gesture of congratulation and angled it in the direction of the two honoured guests at the party. The couple who were celebrating today and who, in spite of everything in the past, were now his two greatest friends.
‘Congratulations on ten years together. Ten happy years.’
It was the last three words that caught in his throat and almost closed it off, choking them back from his tongue. Ten happy years they had been for his friends, but if he was given the chance there was no way he would want to live through the past decade over again.
‘To Clemmie and Karim,’ he tried again.
The elegant dark-haired woman, regal as the Queen she truly was in the scarlet robe, heavily embroidered in gold, turned a warm, generous smile in his direction while at her side, Sheikh Karim al Khalifa, like Nabil more sombrely but equally magnificently attired in the flowing robes and headdress of his country, lifted his own glass in acknowledgement of Nabil’s toast. It was a moment that no one could ever have anticipated happening ten years before, when Clemmie had been destined to be Nabil’s arranged wife, but his headstrong passion for the younger Sharmila had led him to reject her and marry his new, pregnant lover. No one then would have predicted that this huge party would be organised in the Rhastaanian palace to celebrate their ten years of love and marriage...
Of children.
Abruptly Nabil put his glass down on the nearest table, the fine crystal clattering harshly against the polished surface. Even if he hadn’t already been told the happy news, it was impossible not to notice the slight swell of Clemmie’s belly under the burnished red silk of the floor-length gown. Clementina had always been beautiful. Even when he had been in the throes of the foolishly righteous—or so he had believed—anger and mutiny that had driven him to reject her, he’d had to acknowledge that. But now, with her curvaceous form enriched by her early pregnancy, she had a glow about her that was positively incandescent.
‘Congratulations,’ Nabil repeated once more, forcing himself to smile at his friends.
He wanted to smile to show that he was happy for them. He was happy for them, deep down in his heart. But at the same time he couldn’t help contrasting the richness of their life when compared with his own.
What they had in abundance, and what he needed so badly now, but he didn’t see a way of discovering the same happiness for himself.
Ten years ago, when they had been starting out on their journey into married happiness, he had thought he had it all. A beautiful wife at his side, a child growing inside her, the future of his country secured against the swirling darkness of uprising that had threatened. Young fool that he’d been—young, blind, heedless, headstrong fool!—he’d thought only of his longing to rebel against the hand that fate had dealt him.
So he’d rebelled all right, and