Closing her eyes, she took a bracing breath. How was she going to spend the next few years with this man when his simplest touch provoked this kind of reaction in her?
She was about to move away when his hands landed on her shoulders and pressed her toward him. Her pulse drummed in her ears, her skin shivering with a new awareness. Zohra gasped and turned around. His touch had been there one minute and gone the next, the pressure infinitesimal. But in that second, she had felt the shudder that had passed through his lean, hard body, heard the long inhale of his breath, as if...
“Forgive me, Princess,” he said stepping back, color riding those sharp cheekbones. “I shouldn’t have touched you.”
She clutched her arms against her body, frowning. His beautiful eyes were darkened like she had never seen before, his jaw tight. “Why did you?” she blurted out.
“You have known a man’s touch, understand a man’s hunger. Do you not know what a temptation you present, especially to one who hasn’t been near a woman in six years?”
He muttered the last part softly, almost to himself. Yet the words landed in Zohra’s ears with the same force of an earthquake. He was attracted to her and she’d had no idea.
“Six years?” she said, still reeling at the impact of his words.
There was a banked fire in his gaze, but the heat of it was still enough to send a delicious, feverish tremble into every muscle in her body. No wonder she felt so drawn to him, no wonder the air charged the moment they laid eyes on each other. “I never had a chance to fully explore what life had to offer a prince seeing that I was captured just before my twenty-first birthday.”
Fierce heat tightened her cheeks. “Does that mean you’ve never...”
He frowned. “I was twenty-one when I was captured, not sixteen. I was never the one that women flocked to, like Azeez had been, but I have vague memories. The first time, it was...”
She slapped her palm over his mouth, loath to hear all the details. Desire bloomed at the sensitive skin of her palm, spreading through her entire body. “I don’t want to know,” she whispered, past a dry throat.
He pulled her hand off his mouth. “I didn’t realize what else my madness had robbed from me until you showed up, Princess.” He slowly peeled his fingers off her skin. And Zohra realized with a thudding heart how much he didn’t want to, what it cost him to let go of her.
A shiver shook her from within. For the first time a tendril of fear uncurled itself. A fear of the tightly leashed desire in him, and worst of all, her own reaction to that all encompassing hunger.
Tugging her hand back, she stepped away from him. And his unblinking gaze took in everything.
He moved toward the door, coming to a stop and turned back. The right corner of his mouth tilted up into a lopsided smile that wound itself around her. “I recommend a bath to get rid of that burned smell, Princess. Probably a rose-scented one.” He looked gorgeous, the ever-present shadows of pain and grief temporarily gone. The tension in the room broke even as her body still remembered the imprint of his fingers on her. “As for all the rituals you have to suffer through, I appreciate you humoring my mother. The last few months...have not been easy on her.”
Zohra had to grip the bed behind her to steady her legs. “I must admit, it’s worth smelling like burned carrots to see you smile, Prince Ayaan. I see why the queen mentions it so much.”
“Does she?”
There was such naked hope, such a hunger for more, in his gaze that Zohra couldn’t draw breath for a second. It was a glimpse into the boy he must have been, the one his mother couldn’t stop talking about. “Why do you sound so surprised? You are all she talks about.”
He gave a tight nod, and leaned against the closed door, the levity gone from his face.
Hundreds of questions pummeled through her head. “Did she not know you were alive?”
The look he shot her was scorching.
She pushed off the bed.
The quiet swirled and snarled around them. His jaw tightened; his hands turned into white-knuckled fists. The silence went on for so long that she wondered if he would answer. It felt as if she was standing on the shifting, sinking floor of a desert. The more she tried to hold herself at a distance, the more Prince Ayaan and Dahaar wove into the fabric of her very life.
“Only my old bodyguard, who found me, and my father knew that I was alive. Khaleef roamed the desert for months without giving up. Even after the rescue efforts had been called off. I think he wanted to find our bodies for my parents.”
The image those words conjured twisted her gut. “Did he?”