“Can’t I just stay in my room, please?” Harper stopped pacing the length of her father’s room to throw another desperate look at Howard. “I’m not the hero, anyway, so I don’t understand why I need to be here.”

“Because your name was included in the invitation,” her father answered simply, “and so it is only polite for us to both heed the king’s request for our presence.”

“Well, he’s not my king,” she muttered.

Howard frowned.

Harper felt defensive. “But it’s true, isn’t it? I’m a citizen of the United States of America, not the kingdom of Ramil. So I am not lawfully bound---”

“And what about your honor?”

She knew it would come to that. “It’s just an invitation! How can turning down his invitation to dinner ‘besmirch’---” Harper couldn’t help sarcastically making quotation marks in the air. “---my honor?”

“Because I say so, and that is final.”

Howard’s grim tone put her in the same mood, and she growled, “I hate it when you’re stubborn like this.”

“Back at you, child,” he growled back.

Father and daughter scowled at each other, but their staring contest was interrupted when one of the palace maids knocked respectfully on their door, saying in hushed tones that dinner was about to start.

“You’re coming,” Howard said warningly, “and that’s final.”

And so she did, not because she was terrified of her father at this age (well, she was, just a little), but mostly because she loved him too much to disrespect him. Also, this was a dinner that the palace was hosting specifically for her father. It would look bad for Howard if she wasn’t by his side when receiving his accolades.

As the dinner was hosted in one of the palace’s smaller dining rooms – there were eight of them, last she knew – the table could only host a “modest” twenty. Howard was given a seat on the king’s left, but when she started to take the chair on Howard’s other side, the steward shook his head with a smile. “You are given the other seat of honor as Mr. Griffith’s daughter, anisdi.”

She mustered a smile purely for the sake of the proudly beaming steward. “Yay.” Not. Damn sheikh.

Five minutes to seven, the table’s guests were all seated, and at exactly seven in the evening the Emir Sheikh and his cabinet of vassals entered the room. Everyone was quick to rise to their feet in the sheikhs’ presence, Harper included. Whatever she felt about him, it wasn’t a valid excuse to disrespect the other sheikhs or Ramil’s culture in general.

“Thank you for joining us,” Khalil murmured, “in celebrating once again this kingdom’s living hero, Mr. Howard Griffiths.” His tone was soft and sibilant, without a single trace of the American accent he had used to speak with.

Per protocol, the customary exchange of greetings followed, and once this was done, Khalil turned to Harper.

Don’t react, she warned herself just as their eyes met---

His dark gaze glittered with fire and lust.

Shit.

And she found herself ignoring her own warning as her body melted under her abaya.

Khalil pulled out a chair for her, being a gentleman before a sheikh, and he waited until she was seated before he, too, claimed his position at the head of the table. The other sheikhs followed, then her father as the guest of honor, followed by the remaining individuals.

Women were glaring at her once again, Harper thought, sensing their jealousy and anger even though she kept her gaze trained on her plate. Oh, well. What was new?

Servants started to file in, laying down the first course for the night, and the conversation swirling around her grew in noise as the guests were continuously plied with delicious food and wine. Once in a while, she could feel the sheikh’s gaze drifting towards her, but she ignored it determinedly and spent the evening talking to Malik, whom she got along with fairly well.

If looks could kill, Harper thought, she would probably have died ten times by now. But whatever. She was an American citizen, not a subject of Ramil, and she was damned---

A hot touch claimed her knee, and Harper choked on the water she was sipping.

Oh my God!

The fingers on her knee squeezed, and her worst suspicions were confirmed just as her stomach turned over.

Beside her, Malik asked, “Are you alright?”

“Uh huh.” She nodded jerkily, and waited only for Malik to turn away to speak with his older brother before immediately looking the other side---

Oh!

Harper almost fell out of her chair at finding the king leaning so close towards her that she had almost bumped her face into his. He smirked at her obvious surprise, and she would’ve glared at him if not for Howard’s grim gaze narrowing on her from across the table.

Her teeth gnashed. Dad, seriously, you’re supposed to be on my side!

“You seem to be enjoying yourself with my cousin.”

Lifting her chin, she made herself smile sweetly, saying, “I’ve always enjoyed talking to Malik.” Unlike with you, were her silently implied words after.

His eyes glinted possessively, but the sheikh’s tone remained soft and silky as he said, “Just as long you remember you belong to me.”

The words had her heart skipping a beat even as Harper’s mind warned her that this was one rabbit hole she did not want to tumble into. If you let him think he has hold over you, it would be so forever, stupid!

And so Harper opened her mouth to tell him he had to have his head examined if he really believed she belonged to him---

But no words came out.

For his fingers on her knee had gone under the slit of her rather modern abaya, drifting past the short skirt of her dress, and going all the way up until they rested directly on top of her silk-covered pussy.

As dish after dish was served, Harper focused on methodically finishing her food and cleaning her plate. Not once did she look up, and on the few times either Malik or Howard tried to start a conversation, she mumbled incoherently, keeping her gaze on her plate. Better they thought her rude than let either of them see how hot her face was.

And it would probably stay hot all the way until dessert, with the way Khalil kept moving his fingers over her silk panties, now made moist by her need.

Damn sheikh.

Every tortuously slow stroke spoke of his expertise and experience, and his fingers would only lift and grant her a respite just when she was dangerously close to coming. It was as if he knew every pulse of her body like it was an instrument he had played for years – or maybe the sheikh simply understood a woman’s pleasure like he knew the back of his hand, because he had fucked that many of her sex.

Either way, it kept her in an agonizingly perpetual state of arousal, and by the time dinner came to a close, her body was painfully stiff, and her knuckles had turned white with the way she gripped her fork and knife so tightly. It was either that – or shove the damn sheikh under the table and yell at him to do something to make her cum.

As their dessert plates were taken away, Khalil leaned towards her, saying silkily, “Would you cum with me?”

The verbal play wasn’t lost on her, and Harper choked. A smirk touched the sheikh’s lips just before a smooth, polished mask fell over his handsome face. When he turned to her father, he was polite and business-like, asking his permission to have a private word with his daughter.

“Of course.” Howard was visibly puzzled, but manners prevented him from voicing the obvious, and that was why? What was there for the king to discuss privately with her?

Harper managed to swallow back her whimper as she felt the sheikh withdraw his fingers. A moment later, he had gracefully stood up, and the rest followed suit. He then turned towards her and offered his hand –

For one brief moment, she thought about slapping it away –

But then she caught sight of the amused gleam in his dark gaze, daring her to do it so he could reap the consequences –

And she managed to curtail her temper and take his hand with as much grace as she could muster.

As soon as he pulled her up she moved away, expecting him to release her, but instead Harper found herself firmly pulled back to his side, and she nearly tripped over her own feet in her shock.

What game was the damn sheikh playing now?

She was so tempted to step on his foot, or even just dig her nails into his hands – anything to cause him pain. But with everyone’s eyes on them, she could only work hard on keeping her own mask in place, chin up, and with a slight smile that could mean nothing and everything.

The guests took their leave with the sheikh one by one, and with her by his side, she was forced to meet their gazes and play dumb to the various emotions that flickered on their faces. Mostly, it was curiosity, but for the few female guests it was – to be specific – jealous contempt.

In their eyes, she was trash, and they could not see why their beloved Emir Sheikh was treating her so specially!

Which I can totally relate to, Harper thought without anger, since I don’t get it either.

The king’s cousins were the last to approach him, but unlike the others, the four sheikhs took their time, and all of them were openly smirking.

“Malik told us you were acting a little territorial,” Altair commented, “and we didn’t believe him.”

Harper’s eyebrows shot up. Territorial? Over what?

“And I was right, wasn’t I?” A grin underlined Malik’s tone.

“Go, all of you,” Khalil dismissed in disgust, but instead of the four men moving away, it was the woman by his side who tried to leave.

The other sheikhs sputtered in ill-suppressed laughter while Khalil pulled the woman back to his side. “Not you,” he growled.

“But I want to leave,” Harper growled back without hesitation. Just like with Khalil, she had never needed to pretend with the other sheikhs. They had known she was quite a cranky little B even when she was young.

When Harper tried to leave again, Khalil pulled her back once more, but this time punishing her with a short hard kiss on her lips. As her body stiffened, he lifted in his head, saying under his breath, “Try to leave me again, and I’ll be kissing another part of your body.”

And when his gaze slowly dropped to her heaving breasts –

Harper gasped in outrage. “You wouldn’t dare!”

The sheikh bared his teeth in a challenging smile. “Perhaps you’d care to find out now?” Their eyes collided, hers furious and his calm, but in the end she was the one to look away first – like they both knew she would.

Throughout this, the four other sheikhs were exchanging quiet looks, and all of them had the same thought in mind. Khalil had never gone after a woman, not even when a rockstar had taken away his then-fiancée Sapphire twice.

Harper Griffiths was definitely different, but the question was – did Khalil know this, too?

Turning back to his cousins, Khalil said softly, “I will see you in the morning, brothers.”

The four merely nodded, knowing that this time Khalil was no longer joking.

And then they were alone, and Harper didn’t like it one bit.

“Now, can you let me go?” she muttered shrewishly.

To which the sheikh responded by tightening his hold on her waist –

And then he was lifting her up in the air, making her gasp, and the next thing she knew he had her flat on the table, made sparkling clean by the staff as soon as the dessert dishes were cleared. “No!” She tried to shove him away and sit up, but he was already pushing her abaya up to her waist, exposing her short dress and bare legs.

“Noooooo!” But this time, the sound came out a restless moan.

The sheikh pushed her legs wide open, and she shook her head wildly against the table. “No!” She tried pushing his head away, but it still came down, closer and closer –

His mouth touched her pussy, and she gasped, eyes flying wide as her body arched.

He started to lick her silk-covered folds, his tongue running leisurely against the crevice, and she moaned again, her body shuddering as it fell back to the table.

Oh God. Oh shit. Oooooooh---

The fingers that once tried to pull his head away were now gripping his hair involuntarily, working to keep his head in place as his tongue stroked her pussy, again and again – and just when she thought it couldn’t get any better, it did, with the prince ripping her panties away.

“Oh!”

And then his mouth was on her pussy, his tongue lashing her sensitive, swollen skin.

“OH!”

His tongue thrust in, withdrew, and thrust back in.

Oh God, he was fucking her pussy with his tongue!

Her eyes squeezed shut as a strange kind of pleasure started coiling around her body, a mix of excruciating and exhilarating, making her want to scream ‘stop’ and ‘more’ at the same time. Her body began to buckle as the pleasure intensified, and her head began to turn. The words finally spilled past her lips, whimpers that were as incoherent as the thoughts that crowded her sex-drugged mind.

“Please. No. More. Please. Stop. God. Please. God.”

And throughout it, the sheikh paid her no heed, his entire attention focused on devouring her pussy.

The coils of pleasure tightened around her body, squeezing every cell with the most delicious pleasure---

And then her eyes rolled back, a thunderous orgasm claiming her body with jolting tremors, and she screamed.

His name.