The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess: The Desert King. Michelle Celmer

      

       The Desert King by Olivia Gates

       What was she doing, coming here? Answering his summons like one of his subjects?

      Aliyah made up her mind to leave in a heartbeat, and spun around to face the guards who’d escorted her to Kamal’s mansion. “On second thoughts, tell your boss…or prince…or king…or whatever he is that I won’t see him, since I know what’s good for me.”

      They gaped at her as if she’d grown another head and remained standing there like a barricade when she tried to go back through the door.

      “OK, if you know what’s good for you, move out of my way.” At her growl, they exchanged anxious glances, then rushed away.

      Suddenly that ominous sense of oppression expanded. It seemed to impale her between the shoulder blades just before a deep, rough-velvet caress of a voice did the same.

      “It seems you’ve forgotten how things work. You can go only when I tell you to.”

       An Affair with the Princess by Michelle Celmer

       “You’re every bit as beautiful as you were ten years ago…” Alexander murmured. “I remember…”

      She wondered if he was remembering the way they’d stood here on the balcony, talking for hours. The first time he’d drawn her to him and kissed her.

      The first time they’d made love.

      “I remember this,” he said, gazing around at the palace gardens. “You know what else I remember?”

      “What?”

      He turned to her, reached out to touch her arm. “This…”

      It happened so quickly that she barely had a chance to think. One second she was standing beside Alex. The next, his lips were on hers and she was in his arms, the only place in the world where she’d ever truly felt she belonged…

       Available in September 2009 from Mills & Boon® Desire™

      The Magnate’s Takeover by Mary McBride

      &

      The Tycoon’s Secret by Kasey Michaels Dante’s Wedding Deception by Day Leclaire & Mistaken Mistress by Tessa Radley The Desert King by Olivia Gates & An Affair with the Princess by Michelle Celmer

      THE DESERT KING

      BY

      OLIVIA GATES

      AN AFFAIR WITH THE PRINCESS

      BY

      MICHELLE CELMER

       MILLS & BOON^®

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE DESERT KING

      Olivia Gates has always pursued creative passions – painting, singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career. Writing.

      She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

      When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

      Dear Reader,

      When the throne of a phenomenally prosperous desert kingdom is at stake, what will its heirs do to secure it? Anything, of course! In The Desert King, Kamal has to secure the throne by marrying the lover he’d scorned years ago – a woman who seems to despise him as much as he does her. But duty soon transforms into intense pleasure, and passion reawakens love and the need to resolve the heartache of the past…

      The Desert King wraps up THRONE OF JUDAR, my first mini-series for the Desire™ line, where I feel at home writing what I love best – irresistible heroes who meet their destinies in passionate heroines, experiencing tempestuous journeys of pleasure and heartache until they reach their gloriously satisfying happy ending.

      I would love to hear from you, so please visit me at http://www.oliviagates.com.

       Olivia

      At the end of my first-ever mini-series,

      I again dedicate it all to the two ladies

      who helped me bring it into existence.

      My phenomenal editor Natashya Wilson

      and wonderful senior editor, Melissa Jeglinski.

      Thanks, ladies, for the incredible experience.

      Prologue

       Seven years ago

      “Did you think I could just let you walk away, Kamal?”

      Kamal froze. It was either that or stagger with the impact of that voice, that challenge. That presence.

      Aliyah. Here. From the direction of her voice, on his bed.

      So this was why his agitation had spiked the moment he’d stepped into his mansion. He’d felt her, even when logic had kept telling him it was the one place she couldn’t ambush him.

      But she’d done so already everywhere else. Why had he thought anywhere beyond her reach, her persistence? Her invasion?

      He kept his unseeing eyes cast downward. It was only because they’d been focused there, crowded with inner visions of her, that he hadn’t seen her in the flesh as soon as he’d entered his bedroom.

      It was no use. He didn’t have to see her for her to work her black magic. To turn him from the twenty-eight-year-old man who daily managed thousands of people, defeated moguls twice his age and assimilated their achievements on his ascent to global power into the idiot she’d enslaved the moment he’d laid eyes on her…

      Ya Ullah, how had she gained entry here?

      Did he need to wonder? She must have conned his men. Maybe even seduced them. What else could have made them risk his wrath?

      More visions assailed him, images of Aliyah slithering over other men before she ran back to him, threw herself in his arms reiterating her longing and love, draining him of coherence with the force of her hunger. Her insatiable, indiscriminating hunger.

      And she was here, gambling on the force of his own hunger, on his inevitable surrender to it, against all reason and pride.

      “Don’t you know I can’t let you go? I can’t, ya habibi.”

      The endearment, my love, gasped in a hot, entreating tremolo, broke him. He gave in. Looked at her. He knew he shouldn’t have.

      She was spread on his bed, encased in lingerie designed to turn men into testosterone-driven dolts, her honeyed mahogany silk hair fanned around her thin shoulders, her endless legs arranged in a demure pose calculated to make him want to charge her, spread them, guide them high over his back and plunge into what they so maddeningly pretended to guard: the scorching center of her femininity.

      This was how he’d dreamed of her, dreams that paled in comparison to reality. A reality she must have saved to use as an overpowering weapon during hardball bargaining, like now.

      She’d