grace, dark eyes glittering a warning in the subdued light.
‘Why should I be willing to compromise?’ Molly demanded stormily, for throughout her childhood and adolescence she had been forced to make continual compromises. Unpleasant realities had limited her and removed her choices. She hadn’t been able to change the truths that her mother was dead, her father was indifferent and her stepmother disliked and mistreated her. As soon as she had attained adulthood and independence she had sworn never to be forced into compromises again and to put her own wants and wishes first. These days only Maurice’s needs came before her own.
‘Have an energy bar while you’re thinking about it,’ Azrael urged, dropping one into her hand, long brown fingers briefly brushing her palm, sending the strangest frisson of awareness travelling through her unprepared body.
Involuntarily she collided with his smouldering dark gaze and it was as if fireworks broke out inside her, magnifying the leap of heat low in her pelvis that made her breasts tighten and her nipples peak. It unnerved her because she had never felt that way before and instantly she wanted to back away from him. It was attraction, of course, she realised that, but feeling that way even when she was angry with him unsettled her because she had always assumed that anger would be a defence against feeling anything she didn’t want to feel. Eager to lose that uncomfortable awareness of him, she turned hurriedly away and tore open the energy bar. Out of the corner of her eye as she ate she watched Azrael lead the horse to the pool, where it noisily drank its fill.
‘What do you call him?’
‘Spice.’ Azrael smoothed the stallion’s flank in a gesture of affection. ‘He is the best horse in my stable.’
‘I’ve never been this close to a horse before,’ Molly admitted. ‘I grew up in the country though. There were horses in the field next to the house but I was too nervous of them to get close.’
‘Come here...and meet him,’ Azrael urged, extending a long-fingered brown hand in a fluid invitation.
‘I’d really rather not.’
Azrael studied her in astonishment. ‘And yet you walked out into the desert without fear?’
‘That was different. Ignorance was bliss. I didn’t know what it would really be like. I’ve never even been abroad before,’ Molly heard herself confide as her feet moved her closer because, as soon as Azrael had recognised her fear, her pride had come into play and forced her forward.
‘Never? You’ve never visited another country?’ Azrael queried in amazement, for he had always assumed that in an era of cheap travel all Western people travelled widely.
‘I could never afford to travel,’ Molly advanced reluctantly. ‘It’s always been at the top of my wish list, though, but necessities come first, you know...although I suppose you don’t know what I’m talking about, given the wealth Tahir seemed determined to splash in my direction.’
‘Unlike his, my life has not always been one of wealth, comfort and security. Perhaps, had he had my experiences, he might have grown up a little faster than he has. For many months, when my mother and I were being hunted, we lived in this cave—’
‘You lived...here?’ she pressed in astonishment. ‘You were hunted? By whom?’
‘Hashem. He had executed my father and he wanted to remove me from my mother’s care. She lived here in very trying conditions for my benefit, a princess who had never known hardship in her life,’ he explained heavily. ‘She could have gone home to her family in Quarein but she was afraid that the man who was then ruling Quarein would insist on handing me over to Hashem.’
‘What age were you?’ Molly exclaimed, shaken by what she was learning about his past because it lay so far outside her naïve expectations.
‘Ten years old.’ Azrael had never before had to explain his background to anyone because all his people naturally knew his history, and he wondered why he was confiding in her. Was it the magnetic warmth of compassion in her eyes and her dismay on his behalf? He questioned why her reaction should break through his usual innate reserve.
‘Ten?’ Molly gasped helplessly. ‘What sort of horrible person would even consider handing over a child to the man who had executed his father?’
Azrael swallowed hard, for he was even less used to having to admit the relationship that had weighed him down with shame from birth. ‘Hashem was my father’s father, my grandfather, and had he sworn not to harm me his claim to me would have been acknowledged because after my father’s death, I became Hashem’s heir.’
Molly was poleaxed as she put those facts together. ‘Your grandfather executed his own son?’ she whispered in horror.
Azrael’s chin lifted in a grim nod of acknowledgement. ‘My father led the rebel forces before me,’ he proffered in a harsh undertone, emotion unconcealed in the flare of his nostrils and the narrowing of his amazing gold-tinted eyes. ‘But twenty years ago those forces were not strong enough to depose Hashem and the coup failed.’
‘And your father paid with his life,’ Molly completed for herself.
‘Out of respect for him and the many who died at Hashem’s hands, we prefer to refer to him as the dictator, rather than the King,’ Azrael completed, using the opportunity to clasp her hand and draw it down gently over Spice’s smooth, warm neck. ‘Hashem tarnished the throne with his hunger for absolute power.’
‘But your people obviously don’t hold that against you or you wouldn’t be King now,’ Molly said for herself, taken aback when the horse nudged her shoulder, evidently enjoying her attention and wanting more of it.
‘I must always be careful not to betray their trust.’
And an international scandal unleashed by the King’s half-brother could well cause a lot of trouble, Molly found herself thinking with regret, and then she was annoyed with herself for thinking along such lines. After all, she was British, not Djalian, and Azrael’s dysfunctional family history should have no bearing on her righteous wrath over what Tahir had done to her. She petted the horse, striving to suppress a fresh leap of anger at her predicament.
‘I could’ve had an adverse reaction to that drug Tahir used on me and been injured. Many things could have gone wrong,’ she pointed out.
‘But luckily they didn’t,’ Azrael interposed softly.
‘I’m afraid I still want Tahir to face the full consequences of what he did,’ Molly murmured thinly.
‘I would agree if he were an adult, but he’s not.’
Molly’s brow furrowed, her eyes widening. ‘What do you mean...he’s not an adult? Of course, he is! How old is he? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?’
Azrael stared back at her, his stunning dark golden eyes frowning at her question. ‘I assumed that you knew his age. How could you mistake Tahir for an adult? My brother is sixteen years old—’
‘Sixteen?’ Molly yelped in rampant disbelief as she whirled away from the horse. ‘You can’t be serious! I was kidnapped by a teenager?’
‘You really didn’t know,’ Azrael registered in wonderment as he scanned her incredulous face.
‘Of course, I didn’t know!’
