make decisions later, could work things out then. Right now she simply had to have him.
And she would have.
He would have had her.
Had the bell not rung again.
He looked down at where she lay, a breath away from coming. Regret was in both their eyes—not just at the interruption, but at what had taken place.
‘That didn’t just happen,’ Amy said. Except it had. And now, even more so than before, it was impossible for her to stay.
No longer could their night in the desert be put down to a one-off. The attraction between them was undeniable and yet soon he would be taking a wife.
‘It won’t happen again,’ Emir said.
They both knew he was lying.
He buckled up his belt, took her by the hand and led her to the bathroom. He checked his appearance in the mirror and then called to open the door. He watched as maidens bought in an array of clothing. He told them that Amy was in the shower and they must quickly prepare her to be brought down, and then he called out to her where she sat, crouched and shivering on the bathroom floor.
‘You will get ready quickly.’ He spoke as a king would when addressing a belligerent servant. He tried to remember his place and so too must she. ‘Queen Natasha is waiting for you.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘TOMORROW we leave for the desert.’
Natasha was irritating. She insisted on chatting as if they were old friends. And yet, Emir conceded, he would find any conversation annoying now, for his mind was only on Amy and what had just taken place.
Fool, he said to himself. Fool for not resisting. Fool for being weak.
And fool because tonight he would take her, only to lose her again in the morning.
Only to have her leave.
‘I’m looking forward to it.’ Natasha persisted with their one-way conversation. ‘After all the celebrations and pomp surrounding the birth, it will be nice to get some peace.’
Now Emir did respond—and very deliberately he chose to get things wrong. ‘I’m sure that the Bedouins will take good care of him.’ He saw the flare of horror in Natasha’s eyes.
‘Oh, it’s not for that. It’s way too soon to even think of being parted from him. That doesn’t have to happen until he turns one.’
‘Before he turns one,’ Emir said, enjoying one pleasure in this night.
Two pleasures, he corrected, his mind drifting to Amy again. But he must stay focussed. He must concentrate on the conversation rather than anticipating her arrival, rather then remembering what had just happened. And perhaps it was time to give Natasha a taste of the medicine he had so recently sampled.
‘I handed over the girls last week. Your husband was kind enough to grant a concession that they only stay in the desert for one night, given what happened to their mother.’ He watched Natasha’s lips tighten as he reminded her, none too gently, that her son would be in the desert for several nights—unless, of course, he lost his mother too. Unless he was forced to be weaned early, as Emir’s daughters had been.
‘How did the girls get on?’ Natasha attempted to make it sound like a polite enquiry, as if she were asking after the girls rather than about what she could expect for her own son.
Emir knew that—it was the reason he didn’t mollify her with his response. ‘They screamed, they wept and they begged,’ Emir said, watching as her face grew paler with each passing word. ‘But they are the rules.’ Emir shrugged. ‘My daughters have been forced to be strong by circumstance, and so they survived it.’
He stopped twisting the knife then—not to save her from further distress, but because at that moment it seemed to Emir that everything simply stopped.
He had wondered far too often what Amy might look like out of that robe—he had pictured her not just in her nightdress, or naked beneath him, but dressed as his Queen.
She stepped into that vision now and claimed it, and deep in his gut a knife twisted.
She was dressed in a dark emerald velvet gown, her lips painted red and her eyes skilfully lined with kohl. Her hair was down. But nothing, not even the work of a skilled make-up artist, could temper the glitter in her eyes and the blush of her cheeks that their kiss had evoked. A riot of ringlets framed her face.
The world was cruel, Emir decided, for it taunted him with what he could not have. It showed him exactly how