His Queen by Desert Decree(17)

‘Have an energy bar while you’re thinking about it,’ Azrael urged, dropping one into her hand, long brown fingers briefly brushing her palm, sending the strangest frisson of awareness travelling through her unprepared body.

Involuntarily she collided with his smouldering dark gaze and it was as if fireworks broke out inside her, magnifying the leap of heat low in her pelvis that made her breasts tighten and her nipples peak. It unnerved her because she had never felt that way before and instantly she wanted to back away from him. It was attraction, of course, she realised that, but feeling that way even when she was angry with him unsettled her because she had always assumed that anger would be a defence against feeling anything she didn’t want to feel. Eager to lose that uncomfortable awareness of him, she turned hurriedly away and tore open the energy bar. Out of the corner of her eye as she ate she watched Azrael lead the horse to the pool, where it noisily drank its fill.

‘What do you call him?’

‘Spice.’ Azrael smoothed the stallion’s flank in a gesture of affection. ‘He is the best horse in my stable.’

‘I’ve never been this close to a horse before,’ Molly admitted. ‘I grew up in the country though. There were horses in the field next to the house but I was too nervous of them to get close.’

‘Come here...and meet him,’ Azrael urged, extending a long-fingered brown hand in a fluid invitation.

‘I’d really rather not.’

Azrael studied her in astonishment. ‘And yet you walked out into the desert without fear?’

‘That was different. Ignorance was bliss. I didn’t know what it would really be like. I’ve never even been abroad before,’ Molly heard herself confide as her feet moved her closer because, as soon as Azrael had recognised her fear, her pride had come into play and forced her forward.

‘Never? You’ve never visited another country?’ Azrael queried in amazement, for he had always assumed that in an era of cheap travel all Western people travelled widely.

‘I could never afford to travel,’ Molly advanced reluctantly. ‘It’s always been at the top of my wish list, though, but necessities come first, you know...although I suppose you don’t know what I’m talking about, given the wealth Tahir seemed determined to splash in my direction.’

‘Unlike his, my life has not always been one of wealth, comfort and security. Perhaps, had he had my experiences, he might have grown up a little faster than he has. For many months, when my mother and I were being hunted, we lived in this cave—’

‘You lived...here?’ she pressed in astonishment. ‘You were hunted? By whom?’

‘Hashem. He had executed my father and he wanted to remove me from my mother’s care. She lived here in very trying conditions for my benefit, a princess who had never known hardship in her life,’ he explained heavily. ‘She could have gone home to her family in Quarein but she was afraid that the man who was then ruling Quarein would insist on handing me over to Hashem.’

‘What age were you?’ Molly exclaimed, shaken by what she was learning about his past because it lay so far outside her naïve expectations.

‘Ten years old.’ Azrael had never before had to explain his background to anyone because all his people naturally knew his history, and he wondered why he was confiding in her. Was it the magnetic warmth of compassion in her eyes and her dismay on his behalf? He questioned why her reaction should break through his usual innate reserve.

‘Ten?’ Molly gasped helplessly. ‘What sort of horrible person would even consider handing over a child to the man who had executed his father?’

Azrael swallowed hard, for he was even less used to having to admit the relationship that had weighed him down with shame from birth. ‘Hashem was my father’s father, my grandfather, and had he sworn not to harm me his claim to me would have been acknowledged because after my father’s death, I became Hashem’s heir.’

Molly was poleaxed as she put those facts together. ‘Your grandfather executed his own son?’ she whispered in horror.

Azrael’s chin lifted in a grim nod of acknowledgement. ‘My father led the rebel forces before me,’ he proffered in a harsh undertone, emotion unconcealed in the flare of his nostrils and the narrowing of his amazing gold-tinted eyes. ‘But twenty years ago those forces were not strong enough to depose Hashem and the coup failed.’

‘And your father paid with his life,’ Molly completed for herself.

‘Out of respect for him and the many who died at Hashem’s hands, we prefer to refer to him as the dictator, rather than the King,’ Azrael completed, using the opportunity to clasp her hand and draw it down gently over Spice’s smooth, warm neck. ‘Hashem tarnished the throne with his hunger for absolute power.’