The Desert King's Secret Heir. Annie West

from street level.

      ‘Shakil was my family nickname. Ask Hamid.’ It meant handsome and was one he discouraged, but back then it had been a handy pseudonym. He heaved a deep breath, telling himself he didn’t care that the movement reduced the distance between them. Or that his nostrils flared as the scent of warm female flesh mingled with the fragrance of orange blossom. ‘I used Shakil on vacation to avoid being recognised. There’d been a lot of media speculation about me and I wanted to be incognito for a while. I was Shakil to everyone I met on that trip. Not just you.’

      He’d grown tired of people clamouring for attention because of his royal ties and wealth. Merging into the holiday throng in Greece as Shakil had been a delicious freedom. And it had been a heady delight knowing that when pretty little Arden had smiled at him in that bar on Santorini there’d been stars, not dollar signs in her eyes. She saw simply the man, not the shadow of his family connections and how she might benefit from them.

      Was it any wonder he remembered their affair as special?

      Still she didn’t look convinced.

      ‘As for not turning up at the rendezvous that last afternoon—you can hardly hold me to account. You didn’t show.’

      A phone call had hauled him out of Arden’s bed and back to the upmarket hotel room where he hadn’t spent a single night for the week since he’d met her. All he’d known at first was something important had happened and he needed privacy to talk with his uncle’s closest advisers. It was only when he was alone in his hotel that he’d learned about his uncle’s heart attack, the fact his life hung by a thread, and that he’d named Idris his heir.

      There’d been no question of returning to the rendezvous with Arden—three o’clock by the church—even if she had decided to accept his invitation to an extended vacation in Paris. There’d been no question of Paris or a lover, not when he was urgently needed at home.

      And if he’d been fleetingly disappointed that she’d thought better of accepting his offer, he’d known it made things easier given the enormity of what he faced. He had enough experience of clinging women to know severing ties could be tiresome.

      ‘You went to the church to meet me?’ Her words held a breathless quality and there was something in her eyes he couldn’t read.

      ‘I had to fly home urgently. I sent someone instead.’

      There was a tiny thud as her head rocked back against the door. Her eyes closed and her mouth twisted. Idris frowned at what looked like pain on her features.

      ‘Are you okay?’

      ‘Fine.’ Finally she opened her eyes. ‘Absolutely fine.’

      She didn’t look it. She looked... He couldn’t put a name to that expression, yet he felt an echo of it slap him hard in the chest.

      ‘He didn’t wait long.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Your friend. He didn’t stay long.’

      ‘You’re saying you did go to the rendezvous?’ To say goodbye or accept his offer of a longer affair? For a moment Idris wondered, until he reminded himself it was history, done and dusted.

      ‘I was late.’

      It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why. Second thoughts? A last-minute dash? He pictured her running through the narrow streets of Thera, between the whitewashed buildings she’d so enjoyed exploring. Her hair would be down like now, and her summer skirt floating around those lissom legs.

      He chose to say nothing. What was there to say now, after four years? What was done was done.

      Except, remarkably, it seemed that what they’d shared in that sultry week in Santorini hadn’t quite ended.

      Arden Wills wasn’t dressed to seduce. Her dark green pullover swam on her, just hinting at the curves beneath. Her old jeans were frayed and there was a patch on one knee. Her face was free of make-up. Yet her hair rippled around her like a halo on a Pre-Raphaelite model, beguiling and exotic. She made him want to forget duty, forget necessity, and tug her to him so she fitted between his thighs, cradling him with her hips.

      ‘So, what is it you want?’

      ‘Pardon?’ Idris shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets as he realised the direction his thoughts wandered. To whether she wore a bra beneath that bulky pullover and whether her pale skin was as petal-soft as he recalled.

      ‘Why did you come here, if not to see your cousin?’ She paused, her lips tightening. ‘Surely not to catch up on old times.’ Her breathing altered, drew short and jerky, as if she, too, remembered how it had been between them all those years ago.

      ‘Why not?’ Idris lifted his shoulders in a show of insouciance he was far from feeling. ‘I was...curious about you. It’s been, what? Four years?’ As if he didn’t know precisely how long it had been. His reign as Sheikh of Zahrat dated from that week. ‘There have been changes in both our lives.’

      Her face stilled, her eyes darting to the side almost furtively, as if tempted to look behind her but thinking better of it.

      Instantly Idris was on alert.

      He couldn’t read that look but instinct warned him something was afoot. Something she hid from him. His gaze lifted to the gleaming paint of the door behind her. What could she possibly feel the need to hide? She wasn’t living in squalor, not here. Something sordid? A lover?

      Adrenalin surged, coiling his tension tighter. He took another half step forward, only stopping when a small palm flattened against his chest. He felt the imprint of it through the fine wool of his suit. His skin tingled where she touched as if abraded. As if she’d scraped sharp nails over his bare flesh.

      Idris sucked in oxygen and forced himself not to react.

      ‘I don’t want you here.’ Those eyes were so huge in her face he felt he could dive into them.

      His hand covered hers and fire danced across his skin before burrowing deep inside. A judder of potent sexual hunger tightened his groin.

      ‘You need to say that as if you mean it.’

      The scent of her was so vivid he could almost taste her on his tongue. Sweet with a telltale hint of warm musk. No woman before or since had smelled like Arden Wills. How had he forgotten that?

      ‘I do mean it.’ Yet her voice had a soft, wondering quality that reminded him of the night they’d shared their bodies that first time. Her eyes had shone with something like awe. She’d looked at him as if he were a glorious deity opening the secrets of the heavens, until her eyes clouded in ecstasy and she’d shattered in a climax so powerful it had hauled him over the edge.

      His thumb stroked the back of her hand and she quivered. Her hand was small but strong. He recalled how, as her confidence grew, she’d been as demanding as he, exploring, stroking, driving him to the brink with her generous passion.

      She’d driven him to flout his self-imposed rules and invite her to France on holiday with him, because a week together hadn’t been enough.

      Idris hauled himself back to the present. To the slant of sunlight burnishing her hair and the distant sound of a car. London. His betrothal. The peace treaty between his nation and Ghizlan’s.

      He shouldn’t be here. His life was about duty, control and careful, deliberate decision-making. There was no room for spur-of-the-moment distractions.

      In another second he’d step away.

      But first he needed her to acknowledge what was between them. Even after all this time. Idris couldn’t countenance the idea that he alone burned. Pride demanded proof that she felt this undercurrent of hunger. This electricity simmering and snapping in the air. The charge of heat where they touched.

      ‘You need to leave. Don’t make me scream for help.’ Her head tipped back against the door, as if to increase the distance between them, yet her