Heir to a Desert Legacy - By Maisey Yates Page 0,19

neck. He wanted to put his lips over that spot, taste her skin. “Well, can you blame me? The love of power is the inspiration for most of life’s atrocities.”

“Perhaps, but this,” he said, sweeping his hand in front of him, indicating the palace, “is not the kind of power I crave.”

She blinked. “And...what kind of power do you crave?”

“Simple,” he said, his eyes blank. “I don’t crave anything.” A hard claim to make considering the current direction of his thoughts.

“That’s impossible.”

He shook his head. “Craving anything, in my position, would be dangerous. Something easily exploited.”

She arched a pale brow, the expression of utter disbelief plain in her clear blue eyes. His eyes drifted lower again, to the curve of her full breasts, the intoxicating shape of her body.

“Everybody wants something,” she said.

“I’m above such things.”

It was almost impossible to keep himself from making a move toward her. It had been months since he’d been with a woman, time and circumstance not permitting it, and he was starting to feel the effects of his celibacy. But there was no time to deal with it now, and certainly not with her.

Another thing he needed power over. The strong, strange craving that was making its way through him, heating him from the inside out, making him burn. It was as if the Attari sun had penetrated his skin, as if cool blue eyes had the power to cover him in fire.

“High opinion of yourself.”

“I am a sheikh,” he said, “I expect to have a certain amount of power, as is my birthright. I was never the heir, but I have always been a leader. I ask for nothing. I demand it, and it is so.”

A lie. Throughout his life, if he had demanded something that had not fallen into line with his uncle’s vision for him, he had been denied it. Or it had been taken from him, ruthlessly.

He had spent years having any royal arrogance stripped from him, leaving him exposed. A man, simply a man, with no power but what he found inside of himself. No defense beyond the walls he built around his emotions. It had spurred him to make them stronger, to take everything his uncle had taught him and use it as a shield against those who sought to break him.

“I am the final authority,” he said, reinforcing himself.

Her eyes shuttered, going cold and dim. “I see. Was there something you wanted or were you just informing me about the celebration?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice getting rough, his body tightening in reaction to her words. He put his power into mastering it, into overcoming the inconvenient, unnecessary attraction to her that seemed to be intent on taking him over. “I came to issue you an invitation to the proceedings.”

* * *

Unsurprisingly, “invitation” had meant that she was required to go. Aden was tucked safely in his bed, back at the palace with both of his nannies standing by.

And she’d had to put on the only dress that fit her and her newly expanded figure, again, and get into Sayid’s limousine. Not that she had a direct complaint with the limo. Under any other circumstance, she would have thought it was really cool to ride in a limo. But his heavy-handed tactics, combined with the disturbingly close confines of the vehicle, were dampening her glee.

The fact that a car the size of this one gave the impression of close quarters said a lot about the disturbing effect Sayid seemed to have on her.

It was all that power, and the unapologetic enjoyment of it. He was so comfortable with it, so clearly in need of it. It made her fear what might happen if it was denied him. If he felt it was threatened.

What lengths would he go to in order to get it back?

Would he find it in the use of his fists against someone weaker than him? In a woman’s pleading? Would he find it in holding the life or death of someone weaker than him in his hands?

Her father had. And while she knew that all men weren’t abusers...men who prized power, men who were so unashamedly dominant, were the ones who set off her internal alarms.

And Sayid was certainly creating a strange effect in her. A kind of restless edginess. Nerves that cramped her stomach and made breathing difficult. A warning from her body, she was certain.

“See the hope they have now?” Sayid’s voice was surprisingly soft.

Chloe looked out the window. It was no wild