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

nothing to her. He’d give her an order. The first of many.

      Inhaling a deep breath, his fingers flew over the keys. Two terse sentences flowed onto the screen.

      He stared at them for minutes before his gaze gravitated to the name in the address bar. Aliyah…

      How could it still wield such influence, strike such disturbance in a composure he’d thought unshakable?

      It had to be echoes of the weakness he’d once had for her. Echoes of an illusion. As unreal as everything they’d ever shared.

      He ground his teeth and hit Send.

      The phone slipped from Aliyah’s fingers, hit her lap.

      She leaned forward, fighting down a fresh wave of nausea.

      She’d almost forgotten how that malignant turmoil used to seize her, contort her emotions and reactions. She’d fought too long, too hard for control, and feeling it ebbing away again…

      She should cling to one thing. This time, her upheaval wasn’t being generated inside a chemically imbalanced mind. She had major-with-a-skyscraper-high-M reasons to thank for her current state. This was no overreaction brought on by drug residues, or worse, a resurrection of her old volatility, as had been implied.

      Oh, no. This wasn’t a pathological reaction. She’d bet every cent she’d ever made—and she’d made heaps—that no one would react differently if, after twenty-seven years of a turbulent enough existence on this planet they discovered that everything they’d thought they knew about their life was one convoluted lie.

      And what a lie. It had been perpetuated by the very people who’d been the pillars of her existence, who’d now brought it all down around her ears.

      Could she accept it all one day? That Randall Morgan wasn’t her father but rather her adoptive one, that Bahiyah Aal Shalaan wasn’t her mother but her paternal aunt, that King Atef wasn’t her uncle but her biological father, and her biological mother was some American woman she’d never met in her life?

      Yet everyone begrudged her her shock. They’d dropped the bomb on her and had expected her to gasp in surprise then shrug and carry on as if nothing had changed. They’d implied that her distress lasting for more than a couple of days indicated a return of her instability. They made her feel unreasonable for demanding time to grapple with the revelations, for resisting being shoved into this new persona and accepting her fate with a smile. That last call from her uncle/father/whoever-he-was had made her feel cruel for not rushing back to Zohayd to meet the woman who’d given her up for adoption, starting the chain reaction that had led to this point. This mess.

      Well, she was entitled to her freak-out time. As she was entitled not to see said woman, or any of them. Not just yet.

      And no, it wasn’t only because they’d managed to twist the course of her life, past and future. She would eventually come to terms with the rewriting of her history and her identity. What she couldn’t bear hearing or thinking about was the main disaster they were railroading her toward…

      A sharp ping startled her. She set her teeth as she sat up. She had to change that irritating “new e-mail” alert. But to what? All available alerts were equally aggravating.

      Sighing, she clicked the track pad and the laptop’s screen woke up. Her e-mail program window swam into view.

      It took three beats for her heart to stop.

      Just when she thought it wouldn’t restart, all the missed beats converged in a detonation that almost blasted the organ out of her ribs.

      She choked as the name rippled across her vision, passed through the barrier of shock, sank into her brain, into the brand it had long seared there.

      Kamal Aal Masood.

      She collapsed back, lungs burning, stomach churning.

      An e-mail. From him. The man she despised above all, the man who’d taken all the love and passion and dreams of her too-stupid-to-live twenty-year-old self and ripped them to shreds.

      The man everyone was insane enough to say she had to marry.

      Every muscle twitched with the enervation that followed the blow as her vision wavered over the screen again. There was nothing in the subject line. Just his name in the “from” area.

      Figured. What could the subject line be, from the man who’d thrown her out of his life like so much garbage? To Clinging Idiot? Re: Sickening Slut? Parting Threat Renewal Notice?

      There was nothing to say. He’d said it all then.

      So what had he sent her? More abuse? She’d welcome that now. It would be written proof of the ludicrousness of the political marriage everyone was talking about as fait accompli.

      Her hand trembled over the track pad. The cursor shook across the screen, missed its target. Hissing, she squeezed her hand to steady it, returned it to the track pad, clicked the e-mail open.

      She stared at the words for what could have been an hour.

       We will have dinner to discuss the situation. You will be picked up at 7:00 p.m.

      That was all. No closing. No signature.

      We will have dinner. You will be picked up. Picked up…

      Yeah, like he’d picked her up that night they’d first met.

      She’d been so deluded she’d thought him the embodiment of the best of her dominant half’s culture, a knight of the desert, with chivalry and nobility running in his blood. She’d thought him her counterpart, her soul mate, a man burdened with inherited status, struggling with its shackles, its distorting effect on people, overcoming its limitations while making no use of its privileges to become his own person and a phenomenal success. She’d done the same, even if her success had been nowhere as phenomenal.

      She’d thought he’d seen through her hyper surface to the vulnerable soul inside, struggling to conquer her weaknesses, the one man who wanted more than friendship from her, who’d valued her as a person, didn’t consider her as a means to access status and wealth or a pawn in royal games of pretense. She’d thought he’d never get enough of her. Then he had, had walked away without a word.

      She’d gone up in flames of desperation, begging for an explanation, a reconciliation. He’d walked away time and again, as if she’d ceased to exist to him.

      His dismissal had driven her over the edge. And she’d gotten what she deserved for disregarding all survival instincts. Kamal had smeared her face in the ugly truth. What she’d thought a powerful love affair with her perfect match had been nothing but the sick game of a twisted hypocrite who’d exploited her and reviled her for falling for it.

      And here he was, reinvading her life. Relegating her to being picked up like a pile of dirty laundry he didn’t deem to touch himself.

      That royal bastard. Literally royal. Regal even, in a matter of days, thanks to the weird game of musical chairs the heirs of Judar had played, leaving him the one poised to sit on the throne. Not that he needed a throne to be ruthless. He’d always swept through life like a scythe, cutting down anyone who didn’t make way for his advance. And she’d been pathetic enough to consider his cruelty a strength, one she’d been desperate to be close to, to absorb a measure of.

      And she was supposed to marry that bulldozer.

      Or so decreed some archaic tribal stupidity. Thanks to everything her two sets of parents had done before she’d been born, she was suddenly the main piece in that political game, her only purpose to make one move. Marry the crown prince of Judar—its king in a few days’ time—and produce heirs to the throne with Aal Shalaan blood in them.

      To that she said, like hell.

      And it seemed she’d get to say it to his face.

      She looked in fascination at her hand. It was no longer trembling. And that was only