Midnight in the Desert: Jewel in His Crown / Not Fit for a King? / Her Desert Prince. Jane Porter

stuck with each other for the foreseeable future so there’s no sense in fighting every step of the way.’

      ‘You make a good point,’ Raja responded although outrage had shot flames of gold into his gaze when she declared that she didn’t care what he did.

      ‘And I’m not asking you to sleep on the sofa tonight and I’m not sleeping on it either. We’re adults. I’m asking you to respect that agreement you think is so foolish and forget that we ever had sex.’

      Wonderment consumed Raja as she spoke. Forget about the sex? She stood there looking like every fantasy he had ever had in her little black dress with her beautiful eyes, sultry pink mouth and glorious legs tempting him and she thought he could easily return to treating her like a sexless stranger? He had deceived her by cloaking his true intentions, he reminded himself fiercely. This was the punishment, the payoff. He had to give her time to adjust to her new role.

      ‘I will do my best,’ Raja replied flatly.

      He emanated angry vibrations and she wondered why that was. The need to get inside Raja’s head and understand what made him tick was, Ruby was discovering, a constant craving. Did he only want to make love to her because he thought that should be his right as a husband? Or would he have wanted her anyway just for herself? And why, when she had never planned to become intimate with him, should that distinction matter to her?

      Later he did up the zip on the blue dress and it fit her like a tailor-made glove, the rich colour flattering her fair colouring. As she sat at the dressing table straightening her hair Raja came to her side and handed her a jewellery box. ‘It is a small gift.’

      Ruby lifted the lid and stared down dumbstruck at the flawless glittering teardrop diamond on a pendant. Small wasn’t the right word. It was a big diamond and, although she knew next to nothing about the value of jewellery because she had never owned any beyond a wristwatch, she guessed that a diamond that large had to be worth a small fortune.

      ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled in shock.

      ‘Allow me.’ While she lifted her hair out of the way, Raja clasped the pendant at the nape of her neck. She shivered as his fingertips brushed her sensitive skin and that little knot of sexual hunger in the pit of her stomach tightened up a notch. ‘I would’ve given you earrings but your ears aren’t pierced.’

      ‘No, I’m a total unbelievable coward. I once went with a friend and she fainted when they did her ears. She bled all over the place too—it put me right off!’ Ruby confided, suddenly desperate to fill the awkward silence.

      His shrewd, dark eyes screened in his reflection in the mirror, Raja rested a hand on her taut shoulder. ‘Ruby …’

      ‘My mother said my father chose my name, you know,’ she volunteered abruptly. ‘He said that a virtuous wife was worth more than rubies. It’s kind of insulting that the only future he could see for me was as someone’s wife.’

      ‘But I am grateful to have you as my wife.’

      ‘Only because I was part of the peace treaty,’ Ruby fielded, flatly unimpressed by that declaration. ‘Spoils of war and all that.’

      Two weeks later, the night before Ruby’s first visit to Najar, Raja was enjoying a pleasant daydream. A century or so earlier had he acquired Ruby as the spoils of war, she would have belonged to him … utterly. It was a heady masculine fantasy to toy with while he was being driven to the orphanage that his wife had contrived to visit alone almost every evening since her initial official visit there. He had Wajid to thank for that information, for Ruby had kept very quiet about where she took off to during their rare moments of leisure.

      Ruby took care not to share that time with him. It was yet another vote of no confidence from his wife, who was not his wife in any way that mattered, Raja conceded grimly. They might still share the same bed but she had placed a bolster pillow down the middle of it. That had made him laugh the first night, but within a week the comedy aspect had worn very thin.

      His cell phone pinged with a message and he checked, frowning as the snap Chloe had put in of herself shone up at him, all blonde hair and a wide, perfect smile. Ruby did not possess that perfection of feature. Her nose turned up at the tip and she had the cutest little gap between her front teeth. Yet whenever he saw Ruby there was no one else in the room capable of commanding his attention. His handsome mouth curled as he read the suggestive text from his mistress. He had no desire to exchange sexy texts. That didn’t excite him. Chloe was becoming a liability. On the other hand if Ruby had felt the urge to send him a suggestive text he would have responded with imagination and enthusiasm, he acknowledged with self-derision. Unfortunately there was as much chance of a sext coming from Ruby as of Ashur sending a rocket to the moon.