Free The Last Prince of Dahaar by Tara Pammi Page A

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.
    He pulled her hand off his mouth. “I didn’t realize what else my madness had robbed from me until you showed up, Princess.” He slowly peeled his fingers off her skin. And Zohra realized with a thudding heart how much he didn’t want to, what it cost him to let go of her.
    A shiver shook her from within. For the first time a tendril of fear uncurled itself. A fear of the tightly leashed desire in him, and worst of all, her own reaction to that all encompassing hunger.
    Tugging her hand back, she stepped away from him. And his unblinking gaze took in everything.
    He moved toward the door, coming to a stop and turned back. The right corner of his mouth tilted up into a lopsided smile that wound itself around her. “I recommend a bath to get rid of that burned smell, Princess. Probably a rose-scented one.” He looked gorgeous, the ever-present shadows of pain and grief temporarily gone. The tension in the room broke even as her body still remembered the imprint of his fingers on her. “As for all the rituals you have to suffer through, I appreciate you humoring my mother. The last few months...have not been easy on her.”
    Zohra had to grip the bed behind her to steady her legs. “I must admit, it’s worth smelling like burned carrots to see you smile, Prince Ayaan. I see why the queen mentions it so much.”
    “Does she?”
    There was such naked hope, such a hunger for more, in his gaze that Zohra couldn’t draw breath for a second. It was a glimpse into the boy he must have been, the one his mother couldn’t stop talking about. “Why do you sound so surprised? You are all she talks about.”
    He gave a tight nod, and leaned against the closed door, the levity gone from his face.
    Hundreds of questions pummeled through her head. “Did she not know you were alive?”
    The look he shot her was scorching.
    She pushed off the bed.
    The quiet swirled and snarled around them. His jaw tightened; his hands turned into white-knuckled fists. The silence went on for so long that she wondered if he would answer. It felt as if she was standing on the shifting, sinking floor of a desert. The more she tried to hold herself at a distance, the more Prince Ayaan and Dahaar wove into the fabric of her very life.
    “Only my old bodyguard, who found me, and my father knew that I was alive. Khaleef roamed the desert for months without giving up. Even after the rescue efforts had been called off. I think he wanted to find our bodies for my parents.”
    The image those words conjured twisted her gut. “Did he?”
    “No, but he did find me.” He met her gaze then and Zohra heard the thread of anger in his. “Is this just puerile curiosity, Princess, or is there a point to this conversation?”
    Her breath hovered in her throat, an intense tightness in her chest. She could give the easy answer—lie and face his scorn at what he termed curiosity. But she couldn’t be a coward while facing the truth of her own feelings or fear.
    Maybe if she heard what had happened to him from his own mouth, if she knew what tormented him, she could stop speculating. Maybe she would fear him and this...rampant, unwise curiosity about him would die away. Still, it was the hardest truth she had ever given voice to. “I think, as your wife, irrespective of our...true relationship, I have a