Prologue
To say that my relationship with Sheikh Saif Al-Masri is a whirlwind romance woul be a huge understatement.
A few days ago, I was this ordinary hotel housekeeper whose only goal in life was to pay off my mother's debts. But then I got blackmailed by the sheikh, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but that's also how we ended up falling in love, and...um...have I mentioned how he's asked me to marry him, and that he now wants me to meet his brothers?
"Please tell me you're kidding."
I try pulling away in protest, but this only has the sheikh hauling me back, and I fall against his muscular chest as water splashes over the edge of his en-suite's whirlpool bath.
"There's nothing for you to worry about," Saif soothes. "They know I am crazy about you, and that you are even crazier about me—-"
"Ha!"
"That is all they need to know," the sheikh goes on to say like he hasn't heard anything, "for them to love you like a sister."
"Easy for you to say," I argue, "but what if they're just faking it? What if they're just too nice to let you know they don't approve of their eldest brother taking a commoner as his wife, much less their future queen?"
Saif looks at me in surprise. "My brothers are never nice."
"Riiiiight." Is that supposed to comfort me? "Can you tell me anything else about them? Or should I just assume they're all like you, but younger?"
"I suppose you can say that."
The way Saif's broad shoulders move in a shrug as he speaks is more than a little distracting. It reminds me of how it was only minutes ago when I was clutching those shoulders of his while he's driving his cock—-
Stop that, lustful self!
This is not the time to fantasize about sex. If I want Saif's younger brothers to like me, I need to seriously focus on winning them over, and if I'm to assume that they're all taken from the same cocky mold as the Crown Prince of the kingdom of Huzna's...
Oh!
Recalling a particular memory has me sitting up with a giggle, and I fail to notice how the movement immediately draws the sheikh's hungry gaze to the way my breasts jiggle and swell over the bubbles.
"Something on your mind?"
It's next to impossible not to smile as I remember how the sheikh and I first met. "This probably won't have anything to do with your brothers, but if you say they're like, um, you..."
Saif's gaze turns puzzled. "Go on."
My shoulders are shaking in mirth by the time I finish telling the sheikh about how I first mistook him as this hardcore fan of the Netflix show You and why I was originally worried I'd be his first real-life victim.
The sheikh looks stung, and understandably so. "I cannot see why you thought I had anything in common with that man."
"I know, right? But—-"
"If I were to murder someone, you can rest assured that I would not have made any mistake. I could be killing someone right next to you, and you would not have known it."
Um.
Okaaaay.
A part of me is tempted to laugh while another part of me wants to question myself for falling in love with such a man. While most guys would've objected to being compared to a murderer, my gorgeous sheikh here is apparently more offended by the fact that I dared think he could be so inept at killing.
Then again...
Saif does come from an exotic kingdom whose borders had been closed to the outside world for half a century, and one that had to go through a bloody civil war in order to overthrow its previous ruler.
Violence had been a way of life not just for Saif but for all of his brothers, and having grown up in a culture where only the strongest and most cunning survived, I suppose it's, um, understandable why the sheikh sees his ability to efficiently take lives as some sort of asset?
"What are you thinking now?" Saif questions.
"I'm just thinking about the kind of life you and your brothers were born to..."
"It was not an easy life," Saif acknowledges, "but..." His lips press together in a straight line. "Of the four of us, it is Khadem who likely had it the toughest."
Mm. I know this is going to make me sound like I'm obsessed, but there was a time that I had a very valid reason to dig up every article I could find on the Internet about Saif. Some of those articles also talked about his family, and if I remember correctly, Khadem is Saif's youngest brother at thirty-one, and the only one who hasn't inherited the Al-Masri's trademark gold eyes.
"Khadem is our half-brother," Saif says, and the words make me mentally go 'oh'. So that's why the articles described the youngest Al-Masri sheikh as having eyes that were as "blue as the tranquil waters of an oasis".