of the Narabian desert she was hoping to get funding for.
The intimacy of what they had shared would be tarnished for ever by his callous demand that she succumb to his will. And for what? To maintain his honour? What about hers? She was a person, an individual, with her own free will. He couldn’t ride roughshod over her future, her choices, because she’d been too caught up in the moment to warn him of her virginity.
She’d always promised herself that when she married, if she married, she would marry for love. She wanted the kind of fairy-tale romance Cat and Zane shared. She would never marry for duty or honour. And especially not to a man who didn’t seem to know the difference between honour and duty and love.
She tugged on her shorts, suddenly desperate to escape the stifling tent, and the scene of her downfall, the lingering scent of sex only emphasising her stupidity.
If you slept with a man you didn’t know, what the heck did you expect?
That had been her mistake. Not just trusting him, but trusting her own judgement. Because there was an element of what she’d done that made her remember her mother. The woman she hadn’t seen since she was a girl.
‘I can’t be your mother any more, Kasia. Your grandmother will take good care of you.’
Her mother had abandoned her—because she could no longer bear the shame of having a child out of wedlock. Of being ostracised, vilified, damned for her pregnancy when she was alone. But Kasia had paid a far greater price, forced to grow up without her mother and battle for years the insecurities her absence had wrought—and all because of customs that punished people for loving in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
She did up the buttons of her shorts with clumsy fingers.
But as she went to leave the tent, he grasped her elbow.
‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.
‘I need some air, and some time to think. And to wash.’
He’d put on his pants, thank goodness, but even so desire echoed in her sex as her gaze connected with his broad chest. She could see the red marks etched into the tattoo covering his shoulder where she had held him in the throes of passion.
What had she been thinking? Giving herself to him, without a thought to any of the consequences?
‘Kasia, you must not panic,’ he said. ‘This is frightening, I understand that. It is not a choice I would have made either,’ he added, and she heard it then, the brittle note of judgement. Of accusation. Because she had been the one to keep her virginity a secret. ‘But we are bound now.’
She could hear the steely determination in his voice.
But this was madness.
Why should they honour a code that had been set down hundreds of years before they were even born?
‘I need to be alone for a bit,’ she said. ‘To consider all this. It’s a lot to take in.’
He let his hand drop. Then he nodded. ‘Okay, go to the pond and bathe, I will pack up here. We must travel to the Golden Palace before nightfall. Speak to your relatives.’
What? Panic clawed at her throat. ‘But I don’t have any relatives. Not since my grandmother died. Maybe if we just don’t tell anyone about…’
‘We cannot lie, that would be an even greater breach of honour,’ he interrupted her, his frown deepening. ‘If you have no relatives, then I will make the request for your hand to my brother. He is your employer, yes?’
He was moving too fast. She didn’t want Zane and Cat to know what she’d done. She certainly didn’t want to put them in the middle of this situation. They would, of course, support her decision. They weren’t barbarians like Raif. But from the few times Prince Kasim had mentioned his half-brother it was obvious their relationship was problematic at best, and probably delicately balanced politically.
Good grief, her stupidity could start a new war.
The panic started to consume her.
Breathe—just breathe. And don’t add any more drama than you absolutely have to.
She forced her lungs to function. Struggled to think. ‘How far are we from the palace?’ she asked, as a plan began to form in her head.
‘A day’s ride, to the north,’ he said.
Oh, thank goodness.
‘Okay,’ she said as a strange calmness descended. ‘I won’t be too long.’
He grasped her arm. ‘Do not despair, Kasia,’ he said, his voice strained.
Her heart beat heavily against her ribs.
‘We will find a way to make this work,’ he said.
She nodded. Because she couldn’t bring herself to speak.
Arguing with him was pointless. And she’d never been very good at disguising her feelings. If he knew how frantic she was, and how determined not to go through with this madness, he might not let her leave. But as she left, she couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder.
He stood, tall and proud and indomitable, trusting her to return.
She couldn’t help hating herself a little as she headed towards the oasis, then doubled back through the trees. She didn’t take any time to saddle his horse, simply used the corral’s railings to mount the huge beast.
She hadn’t ridden a horse for five years. But she had been an accomplished rider, as happy riding bareback as with a saddle. She prayed the ability hadn’t left her as she kicked her bare heels into the horse’s flanks. It snorted and reared, but she clung to its mane, her thigh muscles straining, the tenderness in her sex rubbing against the ridge of its spine.
She heard a shout and saw Raif run out of the tent, his face a mask of surprise and then fury as his stallion cleared the fence in one bound.
She dug her heels into the horse’s sides, bent her head low over its neck and allowed the beast to have its head, managing to direct it towards the north as it flew over the rocks and towards the dunes.
Tears blurred her eyes, but she didn’t look back this time.
She couldn’t.
‘KASIA, IF SOMETHING happened to you, however traumatic, you know you can tell me, right?’
Kasia stopped folding her recently unpacked clothes back into her suitcase. Her best friend, Catherine Ali Nawari Khan, stood with her back pressed against the door of Kasia’s chamber, her face a picture of concern and distress.
Kasia nodded, determined to keep her voice calm and even. Or as calm and even as she could while the shame threatening to choke her since she’d arrived back at the palace an hour ago—heck, the shame
