Free The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl by Sharon Kendrick

he observed, his mouth drying at the thought of initiating her into the art of love-making. Of piercing through her tight maidenhood. Of having those soft breasts in his hands and those firm thighs wrapped tightly around his back. ‘I thought that you country girls sometimes took lovers out of wedlock.’
    ‘Perhaps some of them do, Highness, but not me,’ said Eleni disapprovingly.
    ‘Yet you might die and never know the pleasures of the body.’
    ‘Then I will gladly accept my fate,’ she answered fiercely.
    He laughed at her feistiness. ‘Ah, but you are missing out on a great deal, Eleni—one of the greatest wonders of life,’ he said softly. ‘More than you will ever know if you do not try it for yourself.’
    His eyes had softened, as well as his voice, so that they were more like molasses than jet and again Eleni was reminded with shocking clarity just how potent his kiss had been. And that strange and bewitching sensation of the sheikh’s tongue entering her mouth and…and…
    ‘Perhaps what you say is true, Highness—but I will not attempt to control my own destiny by lying with a man. To seek to shed my virginity simply for the sake of it is not how a well-brought-up girl should behave!’
    ‘And you are a well-brought-up girl, are you, Eleni?’
    She heard the mockery in his voice and she wanted to tell him not to confuse her with her father—that her mother had brought her up to behave as much like a lady as was possible when living in such basic conditions. But, of course, she could not boast about her own qualities at the expense of her father’s reputation.
    ‘Yes, Highness, I am. I know the difference between right and wrong and if it is not meant to be, then I accept that. After all, no-one can possibly have everything in life,’ she answered carefully. ‘And since I’ve answered your question—is it not fair to now answer mine, Highness? How did you come by these terrible scars?’
    How bold she was, he thought admiringly with a renewed kick of lust at his groin. And how outrageous of her to interrogate him in the light of her refusal to let him bed her. He could order her to go to hell…
    But how long since he had talked about that terrible day when his world had changed for ever? It was a subject off-limits, even with his twin who shared the awful guilt. A dark secret which had been hushed up by the palace apparatus like so much else. A stain on the family of Al’Farisi.
    Yet secrets became burdens which could grow in weight until they became intolerable—and suddenly the innocent and green-eyed young stable girl seemed as welcoming and as unthreatening as a newborn falcon chick.
    ‘You know about my brother?’ he demanded.
    The royal family of Calista was an endless source of fascination to its people. Even without mass communication, gossip about the ruling clan was always available—it was swopped in the market place or spoken of outside the school gates, just as it was the world over.
    Eleni knew that there had been five brothers—one of whom was his twin, Aarif. And she knew too that there was some terrible tragedy surrounding the youngest. Hadn’t he gone missing—when he was just a child?
    ‘You mean…Zafir?’ she ventured nervously.
    Kaliq flinched. She was one of his subjects, simply answering his question—yet it resonated painfully to hear Zafir’s name spoken aloud and a pang of remorse shot through him. How long since he had thought of his black-eyed little brother?
    Had he, and the palace, been guilty of airbrushing from their lives the tousle-haired young sheik who had disappeared at the age of six, lost without trace and never to be seen again? Was it because the painful reality had become too much for them all to bear—or were they emotional cowards who simply pushed away the darker sides of life?
    Yet Kaliq was not a man usually given to soul-searching and he stared at the young stable girl angrily, blaming her for the sharp stir of memory.
    ‘What do