sun had set on a very different Zazinia from the one they knew and the presentation had ended, it was Omar who stood and opened up the drapes.
Still he offered no comment. Omar just stared out to the golden desert beyond and it was Kedah who spoke.
‘That is what you deny your people. All this is achievable and yet you do nothing...’
‘No—’
‘Yes,’ Kedah refuted. ‘Turn around and tell me that Mohammed would make the better Crown Prince.’
Omar did not.
‘Turn around and tell me that you don’t want a glittering future for our people.’
‘That is enough, Kedah,’ Omar said, but Kedah had not finished yet.
He picked up the files and held them out for his father. ‘As I said to you when I was eighteen, you shall not force me to take a bride. I will never be pushed into something that is not of my choice. If you want me gone then say so, but let us stop pretending that it has anything to do with my choosing a wife.’
Kedah tossed the files down on the desk in frustration as again his father said nothing. He simply walked out.
He had shown his father his best—the very best of his vision, all that he hoped to achieve—and his father had offered no comment.
* * *
Felicia was startled when the office door opened unexpectedly. She did not receive any greeting from the very angry King who stalked past.
She had been seated at the very desk where years ago Kedah had once hidden, and now she took the same steps that he had at three years old—though she opened the door with greater ease.
‘How was it?’
Kedah shrugged. ‘Hopeless.’
‘He didn’t have a drink?’ Felicia checked, and then Kedah remembered the real reason for the meeting.
He looked over to his father’s glass, which was empty.
‘I meant that the presentation was hopeless. He’s never going to change his mind.’
Felicia pulled on her gloves and popped the glass into a clear bag, and then another, then placed it in her purse. On the desk she saw that there were some photos of dark-haired and dark-eyed beauties. One of them, no doubt, would be his bride.
Kedah was too incensed by his father’s lack of response to notice where her gaze fell. His mind was on other things. ‘What am I fighting for?’ Kedah asked, and for the briefest moment he wavered where he had always been resolute. ‘Am I the only one who wants change?’
‘Your people want it also,’ Felicia said. ‘I heard them cheering you, Kedah.’
She was right—it wasn’t just his ego that insisted he could do things better than his brother. And after his father’s pale reaction to the presentation it was as if she blew the wind back into his sails.
‘I am going to speak again with Mohammed,’ Kedah said.
‘Do so,’ Felicia agreed. ‘I’m going to head back to London.’
She was meeting a courier at Heathrow, who would take the glass to a laboratory where the samples would be analysed.
‘I’ll call you as soon as I get the results.’
And this was it, she realised. It was the very last time she would be in Zazinia—for certainly she would not travel here as his PA once Kedah had chosen his bride.
‘Don’t leave now.’
Kedah stood and came around the desk. He felt her resistance when he took her in his arms.
His fingers went to her chin and he lifted her face to meet his gaze. He was going to kiss her, she realised. Right now, when she was doing all she could not to break down.
‘I have to go.’
‘Not yet.’
His mouth was fierce and claiming, and she tasted salt at the back of her throat as she squeezed her eyes closed and held on to the tears he must never see her shed.
‘Not here,’ she said.
‘Yes, here.’
He did not want her gone.
He could not picture the future. He just wanted a moment of the oblivion that they created together. So he did what Abdal should have done all those years ago.
Felicia stood as he walked over and turned the lock on the door.
Kedah turned her on in a way no one else ever had or ever would. He tossed his sword to the floor and was opening his robe as he walked back towards her.
His passion was so fierce and overpowering. His hands were at the buttons of her robe and he was holding back from tearing it open.
And she loathed herself for wanting him so badly.
Even with his future wife’s photo on the desk she would do this. She would, Felicia decided as he lifted her onto the desk. Now, while she didn’t know his wife’s name, she would be taken for the last time.
His hands ruched up the skirt of her robe and lifted it over her thighs, and perhaps Kedah was aware that this was the last time because impatient fingers were tearing at the buttons.
She had to walk out of this office soon, so she tried to assist him. But the buttons gave way so that her legs and chest were exposed and he pulled down the cups of her bra. There was no time to take off her knickers. His erection moved the slip of fabric aside and he stabbed into her.
Felicia sobbed as he filled her.
Their mouths were frantic and bruising in their fast, urgent coupling.
He thrust hard, then pressed her so the desk was hard against her back and her hair splayed out. Now he tore at her knickers, and the sight of them, of himself deep inside her, almost made him come. It was intense, it was fast, and as he scooped her up her legs wrapped around him and she bit his shoulder to fight the scream as her body beat with his.
And it could never be over—and yet it was.
He was lowering her down, and she rested her burning face against his chest and listened for the last time to his heart. She told herself that she would never succumb to this bliss again.
‘Felicia...’
She peeled herself from him and started to do up her robe. She wanted to be away from Zazinia, in the safety of the plane and then back in London. There she could sort out her head.
‘I’d better get going.’
‘In a moment. But first...’
‘Kedah, the plane is waiting—there’s a courier at the other end. If there’s to be any hope of getting the results back in time...’
‘Can’t you stop thinking about work?’
‘You are work, Kedah.’
Felicia took a mirror from her bag and ran a comb through her hair, and she saw her own lips start to tremble as he spoke on.
‘In that case, if all goes well, then I am going to be spending a lot more time here in Zazinia. I will need someone to help with my overseas investments, and there will be an opening for an executive assistant...’
And briefly she allowed herself to glimpse it—an amazing career, a stunning flat and a night with Kedah whenever time allowed. A part-time father...yet she would be his full-time mistress...
She snapped the compact mirror closed and managed to sneer as she faced him ‘You mean an executive whore?’
‘Felicia...’
‘I have to go.’
She really did—because otherwise she would say yes to him. If she stayed for