The Desert Sheikh's Innocent Queen: King of the Desert, Captive Bride

She looked up at him, scared, so very scared, and bundled her arms more tightly across her chest. “Why are you doing all this? Why are you helping me?”

“Your brother posted a message for help on the Internet. His message came to my attention.”

Her chest felt so hot, and her emotions felt ragged. She didn’t know if she could—should—believe him. “You did all this just because you saw a message on the Internet?”

“Yes.”

Who did things like this? Who broke into prisons and rescued people? “Why?”

His shuttered gaze rested on her face, his expression as blank as the tone of his voice. “Your brother said your family was frantic.” He paused for a split second before adding, “It touched me.”

Her brow wrinkled as she digested his words, thinking it was odd to hear him use the word touched when he struck her as emotional as one of the limestone statues she’d seen carved into the wall of the Ozr fortress turned prison. “And you acted alone?”

“Yes.”

“But if you weren’t working with an embassy or government, how did you get me released?”

He made a rough, mocking sound. “The old-fashioned way. Power. Blackmail. Intimidation.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked, trying to keep the horror from her voice.

“Blackmail is never pretty,” he answered. “But it was you or them, and it’s not as if the guards were good to you. The doctor told me she found bruises on you, bruises I’m certain you didn’t inflict on yourself.”

She just looked away, towards the window with the spectacular view of the pyramid.

Khalid dropped to his haunches, crouching before her, and turned her face to him. “No diplomatic measure would have ever gotten you freed from Ozr. Jabal doesn’t care about diplomacy. They don’t recognize diplomacy. They only recognize power and money. I did what I had to do, and I don’t apologize for it. At least you’re here, safe and alive.”

Liv felt his fingers on her chin, felt the fierce heat in his eyes and the coiled tension in his powerful frame. She was simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the fire in his dark eyes. He intrigued her and yet intimidated her. He was hard and fierce and remote, and yet he’d also come to rescue her when no one else had, or would. “But not free,” she whispered.

“Are you free to go home, back to Pierceville, Alabama? No. Are you free of the prison cell?” He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then stood again. “For now.”

For now. The words echoed loudly in her head. She was free only for now.

“But money alone didn’t buy your freedom,” he added. “It required honor. My honor.”

She gave her head a slight shake. His honor. It was such an archaic-sounding word, so old-fashioned it didn’t even make sense to her. “I don’t understand.”

“I vouched for you,” he said bluntly. “I told them you were mine.”

She blinked at the word mine, heat flooding through her, heat and shyness and shame. Mine was such a possessive word, a word implying ownership, control. It was a word two-year-olds loved, but not one she would have expected to come from a man. At least in the United States you’d never hear a man refer to a woman as his. “How could being … yours … free me?”

“By claiming you, I have personally vouched for you.”

She was even more confused than before. “Claimed me … how?”

“I said you were my betrothed.”

Betrothed? The archaic word didn’t make sense for a moment and then it hit her. “Engaged?”

Appalled, she saw him nod.

“Because of our … relationship … you are protected for the time being.”

Liv’s mouth opened but she couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Instead shock washed over her in gigantic mind-numbing waves, and before she could think of anything to say, the butler materialized with a tray of small sandwiches, pastries and a large pot of tea. He placed the tray on the low table in the living room and served them both sandwiches, pastries and tea, before departing.

Liv stared at one of the small open-faced sandwiches on her plate. “We’re not really engaged,” she said at last, finally finding her voice.

“I gave them my word,” he said bluntly.

“Yes, but that was to get me out. That was to free me—”

“And I did, but we had complications on the way out of Jabal. Remember that police stop earlier today? They’d come for you. They’d learned that you’d been released from Ozr and they’d been given instructions to seize you. The only way I could protect you was by claiming you. And once I claimed you, they couldn’t touch you.”

“But you will still send me home, right? You are going to put me on a plane first thing in the morning….” Her voice trailed off as she stared at his face, his expression hard and unyielding.

She tried again. “If you were going to send me home earlier, what has changed?”

“Everything. It has been announced by the Jabal government that we are engaged. They cannot be faulted. It is what I told them, and my honor is based on my word. My word is central to who I am, and to who my family is. I … we Fehrs … do not break our word.”

“We’re not really going to get married.”

“Today at Ozr you said you wanted out, you begged me to get you out, and I did what you asked me to do.”

It was just beginning to hit her that she’d celebrated her release from the Ozr prison far too soon.

Her panicked gaze searched the fierce lines of his face, the high brow, the long aquiline nose, the generous but unsmiling mouth, as tremors of fear coursed through her. “There must be another way. There must be some other way….”

He didn’t answer and his silence terrified her. “Sheikh Fehr,” she pleaded. “Don’t tell me we have no other options. I can’t believe there aren’t any other options.”

“There is another option,” he said flatly. “And you’re right. It’s not a done deal yet. You can choose to return to Ozr—”

“To Ozr?” she interrupted, stunned. It’d been hell, sheer hell, locked up there. No sunlight, no bathroom facilities, no running water to speak of. “People die there all the time!”

“It isn’t a good place,” he agreed.

She bolted up from her chair, nearly upending her plate. “So why would you think I’d want to go back there?”

“Because as of now, those are your only two options. Marriage to me or a return to Jabal.”

She sank back down, her legs suddenly impossibly weak. Her gaze clung to his, trying to see, trying to understand if he was absolutely serious. “But you don’t want to marry me. There can’t be any possible benefit for you!”

His upper lip curled. “None that come to mind.”

“So why?”

His features hardened, his dark eyes almost glittering with silent anger. “What would you have me do? Let you rot in prison for the rest of your life? Tell your brother to be glad you’re in prison because you’re at least not dead?”

She dropped her gaze, her cheeks flaming. Jake would have been desperate, too. He’d always been so protective of her, the quintessential big brother. “You don’t have to do this. You didn’t ask for any of this—”