Modern Romance September 2015 Books 5-8. Chantelle Shaw

      Everything is different, Amaya thought.

      She sat between Kavian’s legs again, with all his lean strength and male heat wrapped around her, hard against her back as the sleek Arabian stallion galloped so smoothly south. She couldn’t understand the things that moved in her without name, making her feel as if she hardly knew herself any longer.

      The desert stretched out before them and around them, shimmering in the heat, immense and treacherous. Amaya had always hated the desert. The stifling heat. The sheer barrenness and lack of life. The profound emptiness. Its inescapable presence, vast and creeping closer all the time...

      Yet that was not at all what she felt today. She wanted the desert to go on forever, vast and unknowable, as immense and beckoning as the sea. Or maybe it was this trip that she wanted never to end. And she had no earthly idea how to feel about that. About any of it. About what had happened out there between them, making the world itself feel altered around them.

      It had something to do with how Kavian had woken her that morning, lifting her into his arms and then settling them both into a great tub she hadn’t seen the night before, tucked away behind a screen in the far reaches of the tent. She’d winced as she tried to move in the warm, fragrant water, and he’d made a low, rumbling sound that had not quite been a growl.

      “Behave,” he’d ordered her. “You must let your muscles soak or you will find the ride back sheer agony.”

      And she’d tried to behave. Truly she had.

      But he’d been so hot and hard behind her, his strong arms so perfectly carved as they’d stretched out along the high sides of the bath. The hardest part of him had been like steel, pressed tight against her behind. She’d only shifted position once. Then twice, without really meaning it. Then again, to test the little thrill that had washed through her, before he’d let out a sound that had been something between a laugh and a curse. Both, perhaps. His big hands had gripped her around the waist and he’d lifted her up before settling her on him again, but this time he thrust hard and deep inside her while he did it.

      He’d angled them both back again into their original positions, so she’d been lying sprawled over his chest again, her back to his front. And his hardness buried so deep inside her she almost climaxed from that alone.

      And then he’d done nothing.

      “Is that better?” he’d asked mildly after a moment, and it had been exquisite, to have him so deep within her and to feel his voice like that, a rumble against her spine, the tease in it like a drug. “I plan to sit here and soak myself, Amaya. If you wish to do anything else, you must do so all on your own.”

      But even as he’d said that, his big hands, even warmer now from the water, moved to cover her breasts, sending a kind of delirious electricity rocketing through her as he cupped them, then brushed his thumbs over the tight peaks.

      Amaya had tipped her head back so it had been cradled on his wide, hard shoulder, the urge to poke at him as impossible to ignore as his hardness snug inside of her. “I thought you liked to be in charge. That you insisted upon it. I thought that went with the kingly territory.”

      “I think I can handle a single bath,” he’d assured her in that dark, stirring way that made her stomach flip and her core clench hard against the length of him deep within her. “Do as you like, and we’ll test that theory.”

      So that was what Amaya did.

      She’d quickly discovered that he’d severely limited her range of motion—but that maybe that was the point. The delicious challenge of it. She’d moved her hips in a sinuous, rocking motion that had them both breathing hard in only a few strokes, and then she’d given herself over to it. She’d learned the beauty in the sweet, slow slide. The lazy circle, all white-hot sensation and endless pleasure.

      And all the while his wicked hands had moved between the tight peaks of her breasts and the hot center of her need, helping her build that fire between them, and pouring his own kind of gas on the flame. Until she hadn’t been sure who was in charge and who was simply reveling in the heat between them, or why such a thing should matter.

      Until she’d forgotten to care.

      She had ridden them both to a slow, hot, shattering finish that she’d been sure had left her completely boneless. Destroyed inside and out. And she’d been fiercely glad that they hadn’t been facing each other, because she was terribly afraid Kavian would have seen too easily all the ways she was ripped wide open. That her vulnerability was written right there across her face.

      But she thought he knew, even so.

      When it had come time to climb back on the horses and head south toward the palace, she was grateful. It had meant long hours for her to put herself back together before anyone could study the ways she’d fallen apart. Before she had to admit it to herself, how broken she’d become out there. Or, far worse, how much she’d liked it. Hours to hide herself away again, behind a mask she hadn’t understood she was wearing until he’d torn it off.

      “I’ve never understood the appeal of the desert,” she said now, forgetting to censor herself as the sprawling royal stables came into view before them. Was that relief she felt that this ride—this odd interlude—would soon be over? Or something far more complicated?

      “Never?” He made that low sound that was his form of laughter, that she found she craved all the more by the day. “But you are the daughter of a mighty desert king. It is deep in your blood whether you understand it or not. It is your birthright.”

      “I’ve never cared much for sand,” Amaya said.

      “Is this where you try to put up all your walls again, azizty?” His mouth was right there at her ear, and his voice was a dark flame that lit her from within, that dark current of amusement ratcheting the heat in her even higher. “How many ways must I take you before you understand that there will be no walls between us? There will be nothing but surrender. It would be better by far if you accepted this now.”

      “Or perhaps I simply do not care for sand,” she said, and she laughed, then felt his hard muscles tighten all around her in reaction. “Not everything is a conspiracy, Kavian. Some things are simply statements.”

      “And some statements have consequences.” His eyes would be gleaming silver if she could see them, she was sure. “As I have been at some pains to show you.”

      “Is that what you call it? I rather thought you were putting on a grand show. Hauling me into the harem baths, then off to play queen of the desert tribes with no warning. It’s almost as if you don’t really want a queen at all, so much as a plaything.”

      “Surely not having to choose is a benefit of royalty,” he said, and there was no denying the laughter in his voice then. “I will have to consult the manual upon our return.”

      Amaya felt that as a victory, the rumble of laughter in his chest behind her. From the man who’d stood before her like marble to tell her the worst of himself, to this man who laughed with her, and it was all her doing. There were darker things that batted at her then, but she ignored them. She would bask in this, even if only for a moment. That she could do this for him. Take a stone and make him a man again. Even if only for a moment.

      Even if only for her.

      Kavian didn’t speak as they rode into the great courtyard. He swung from the horse’s back as they entered and led her the rest of the way toward the waiting stable hands. He lifted her from the saddle the way he had before, lowering her to the ground in a manner that only called attention to his superior strength.

      And made her wish they were alone so she could feel the drag of his mighty chest against hers again. Like the addict she knew she was.

      “We marry in two weeks, Amaya,” he said, the vastness of the desert in his voice and silver in his gray eyes, and she felt it like a caress. All of it. His command. His authority. Like a long, hot, drugging kiss. It made her feel alive.

      “Perhaps