was a long game he played, with clear objectives. Like all the games he’d played in his time. And won.
So Kavian waited. He, who had not had to wait for much of anything since the day he reclaimed his father’s throne. He, who had already waited for this woman for half a year, unaccountably. He, who was better used to women throwing themselves at him and begging for his notice.
He, who had never had a woman run from him in his life, before now. Before Amaya.
It was of little matter. She was here. She would stay here, because he willed it so. The world would return to the shape he preferred and do his bidding besides, and he would be inside her soon enough.
“Each pool is a different temperature,” he said in the faintly bored tones of a tour guide, as if that fire in him didn’t threaten to consume him whole despite the water he stood in. “There are any and all bathing accessories you could possibly require, from handmade soaps crafted here in the old city by local women to the finest luxury products flown in from Dubai.”
She was beautiful even when she was obviously nervous, standing there in a small white T-shirt that she obviously wore nothing beneath and those stretchy little shorts that made her hips look nothing short of edible. Her legs were even longer than he’d imagined, and perfectly formed, giving her a bit more height than the average woman—which meant he would not dwarf her in bed or out. Her narrow feet were pale and delicate, and she’d painted her toes a cheerful, bright blue that made his chest feel tight and hit him as critically important, somehow. Though he knew that was foolish.
“Come in, Amaya,” he said, invitation and order in one. “You will be the happier for it.”
Her head canted slightly to one side. “Do you promise not to touch me?”
He let his gaze move over that full mouth of hers that he’d dreamed of, these past months, more than he cared to admit. That thick, dark hair he wanted to see swirling around her shoulders and that he wanted to feel slide across his own skin. Those small, proud breasts and the peaks he had yet to taste that he could see poking against the sheer fabric of her T-shirt, perhaps an invitation she didn’t mean to extend. The hint of that smooth, olive expanse of her belly between her panties and her shirt, which he wanted to spend a very long time learning with his mouth. And that tempting triangle where her legs met, that he wanted to lick his way into until he forgot his own name.
Kavian took his time dragging his gaze back up her tempting body, noting the goose bumps that marked her arms as he did, and then smiled when his gaze tangled with hers again.
“No,” he said. “I certainly do not.”
Her lips parted as if that threw her off balance, but then she moved—and not away from him, as he’d expected. Instead, she walked along the edge of the pool toward the wide steps that led down into it from one side.
“Well,” she said, with a certain primness that reminded him of that way she’d laughed at her brother in that long-ago video, and coursed through his veins like that same sweet wine. “I have nothing against hygiene, of course.”
“Merely against sheikhs?” Perhaps, he thought with some surprise, he had it in him to tease after all. Only Amaya. Only alone.
“Sheikhs and kings and desert palaces,” she agreed, her gaze touching his, then moving away again as she made her way down the wide stairs and on into the water, still wearing that shirt and those sexy little shorts as if they were some kind of swimming costume. “Awful things, I think we can all agree.”
“Your misfortunes are vast, indeed. Of all the princesses I have chosen to become my queen over the course of my life, your burden is by far the heaviest.”
Amaya moved farther into the water until it lapped at the sweet indentation of her waist, and skimmed her palms over the surface of the pool on either side of her, as if testing the water’s temperature. She kept herself out of his reach, which Kavian could not abide a moment more. He moved toward her.
She watched him with as much enthusiasm as if he were an approaching shark. It shouldn’t have been quite so entertaining, he supposed, but her various forms of defiance...delighted him. If that was what that sudden bright thing inside him was. He hardly recognized it.
“How many have there been?” she asked. When he didn’t speak, when he only closed the distance between them, she swallowed in a way that belied that light tone she used. “Princesses that you’ve turned into queens? Am I the last in a long line? A parade?”
He didn’t answer her. He liked the question too much, and what it told him of her, and she seemed to realize that. She danced back from him, then dropped abruptly, dunking her head beneath the water. For a moment she was a shimmer, the inky darkness of her hair obscuring her limbs from his view, and then she shot up again.
And the beast in him roared.
Her T-shirt was soaked through, showing him every contour of those glorious breasts, every mouthwatering detail. And better still, her hair had finally tumbled out of its braid and the dark mass of it coursed over her, framing her and presenting her like some kind of slick mermaid fantasy.
His mermaid fantasy, which Kavian hadn’t realized he had until that moment.
She was swiping water from her face and she let out a sharp, high noise when she opened her eyes and found him there, much closer to her than he’d been when she submerged—which he also found entertaining.
He slid his hands over her hips, those sweetly rounded hips that had been seared into his memory, so deep that the tactile memories had kept him awake some nights. And then he pulled her toward him with his pulse a wild thunder in his veins, almost in pain, his need for her was so intense.
She gulped, but she didn’t say a word, not even when he lowered his head and put his mouth just there, almost against her lips. Almost. He felt the fine tremors move through her, like an orchestra of want—a music that only she could hear. But Kavian could feel it. He felt the heat of her, let her scent—honey and rain—move in him like a blessing.
“I don’t think I can kiss a man who kept seventeen women,” she said, and he could feel each word against his mouth the same way he could feel the taut points of her nipples against his own chest, and neither was even close to enough. “I don’t think I can reconcile myself to it, whether you emptied your harem or not.”
“Then by all means, do not sully yourself,” he said against the lush seduction of her mouth. “You can stand there and suffer. I do not mind at all.”
And then he slid his hands up into the thick, wet glory of her hair, indulging himself. He dragged that smart mouth of hers the remaining millimeter toward his, and then finally, finally, he took her mouth with his.
HIS KISS WAS like a bomb.
It detonated inside her, she burst into a shower of light and all the need and want and haunting desire that had been chasing her across the months she’d run from him slammed into her.
Amaya clung to him. She didn’t think. She didn’t want to think.
She kissed him back.
Just like six months ago, his kiss stormed through her. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t particularly kind. His kiss was carnal and dark, a blistering-hot invitation to a wickedness she’d experienced but once and still only vaguely understood.
But she wanted it. Oh, the things she wanted when this man took hold of her as if he had every right to her. As if her presence was all the surrender he required.
His hands moved from her hair to slide sleek against her skin, and she shuddered against him as he fit his hard palms to her breasts the same way he had done earlier to her cheek. But this was nothing like tender. This was pure, uncontainable wildness.
And it thrilled her, low and