The Last Prince of Dahaar(30)

                “I think it will be recorded as one of the most significant events in the history of Al-Sharifs.” He stretched his hands wide, announcing the title. “Princess Zohra and the Tale of the Burned Halwa.”

                “As if this was the first humiliating ritual I have been forced to endure.” She slid lower on the couch. “Even the ritual where I have to spend a week with you in the desert is—”

                Cold skittered down his spine and Ayaan looked away. He had lost everything in the desert the night they had been attacked. He couldn’t bear to go there again, not even for his mother and one of her rituals. “We are not going.”

                Noticing the shadows that entered his gaze, Zohra wondered what it was that she had said. Standing up from the divan, she tugged the pearls again, cursing the elaborate hairstyle.

                “Stop that,” came Prince Ayaan’s voice closer than she had expected.

                “I need to—”

                His hands were suddenly in her hair, and Zohra’s breath caught. The companionship of their shared laughter left the air around them and was replaced by something else. Her scalp prickled as Ayaan’s long fingers untangled her hair with sure movements. She held herself rigid, so rigid that her back ached. The heat of his body behind her became a beckoning caress.

                Closing her eyes, she took a bracing breath. How was she going to spend the next few years with this man when his simplest touch provoked this kind of reaction in her?

                She was about to move away when his hands landed on her shoulders and pressed her toward him. Her pulse drummed in her ears, her skin shivering with a new awareness. Zohra gasped and turned around. His touch had been there one minute and gone the next, the pressure infinitesimal. But in that second, she had felt the shudder that had passed through his lean, hard body, heard the long inhale of his breath, as if...

                “Forgive me, Princess,” he said stepping back, color riding those sharp cheekbones. “I shouldn’t have touched you.”

                She clutched her arms against her body, frowning. His beautiful eyes were darkened like she had never seen before, his jaw tight. “Why did you?” she blurted out.

                “You have known a man’s touch, understand a man’s hunger. Do you not know what a temptation you present, especially to one who hasn’t been near a woman in six years?”

                He muttered the last part softly, almost to himself. Yet the words landed in Zohra’s ears with the same force of an earthquake. He was attracted to her and she’d had no idea.

                “Six years?” she said, still reeling at the impact of his words.

                There was a banked fire in his gaze, but the heat of it was still enough to send a delicious, feverish tremble into every muscle in her body. No wonder she felt so drawn to him, no wonder the air charged the moment they laid eyes on each other. “I never had a chance to fully explore what life had to offer a prince seeing that I was captured just before my twenty-first birthday.”

                Fierce heat tightened her cheeks. “Does that mean you’ve never...”

                He frowned. “I was twenty-one when I was captured, not sixteen. I was never the one that women flocked to, like Azeez had been, but I have vague memories. The first time, it was...”

                She slapped her palm over his mouth, loath to hear all the details. Desire bloomed at the sensitive skin of her palm, spreading through her entire body. “I don’t want to know,” she whispered, past a dry throat.