Read Horns for the Harem Girl for Free Online

close to hers that she could smell his wine-sweet breath. With a tug of his hand, Arad pulled Helena close to his body, clasping her tightly against himself. For a moment, she buried her nose in his hair. He smelled of leather, of man, of the hard smells of the desert... and there was something else, too, something in the background that she couldn’t quite pick out.
    “Why me?” she asked. “Of all the women in the kingdom, why—”
    “Because love is impossible to understand,” Arad said, sweeping his hand down one of Helena’s veiled cheeks. “Because I can’t explain my heart, and have long since stopped trying. But I tell you this – I may be known for my appetites and my tastes, but I have never lied to get my way, you’ve heard this?”
    “You lied to get me here,” she observed. “The map?”
    A twinkle of insight came over Arad’s eye, like he’d found a worthy adversary and was about to do battle. “That doesn’t count,” he said.
    “Why not? It was a lie, wasn’t it?”
    “No, it was a map.”
    “But an untrue one.”
    “A lie would be if I told you that my mother was dying, and I needed your touch to stave off the sadness.”
    “You drew a map purposefully to lead me astray,” Helena stuck to her guns. “That’s a lie if anything is.”
    Arad cocked his head to the side. “Well, if I allow that one – then I’ve told one lie to get what I want. Can I erase it with a good deed?”
    Helena swallowed so hard she heard the clicking in her bone-dry throat. “What... what would that be?”
    When he pressed his lips to hers – silk between their skin – his heat burned into her. She immediately forgot whatever it was they’d been going back and forth about, and found that he’d released her hands.
    She slid them along his muscled arms and let her palms flatten on his back, pulling the prince against her hungrily. The thickness underneath his belt buckle flared, and Helena was aware of her nipples going erect, brushing against Prince Arad’s chest through his open shirt, but neither of them seemed to mind.
    He kissed her cheek when their lips parted ways, and then her eyelid and then her neck. He found, somehow, the one place on her face not covered with veil, and touched his lips there, teasing, tantalizing her. A swirl of desire, and then a clench of panic took her.
    “What if the king finds out?” she asked, suddenly very aware of the danger they were playing with. “He’ll kill us both.”
    Arad’s eyes burned into Helena’s soul. “He will do no such thing. We’ve talked.”
    Helena opened her mouth to call him on another lie, but the prince continued: “In a manner of speaking,” and then kissed her again, this time pushing her veil away with his face before exploring her lips desperately with the tip of his tongue.
    She let a gasp escape between their tongues. Then, a moan slipped from her lips. Seconds later, Helena – only two days before completely unaware of any feelings she had for this man – felt him stir against her belly. “We can’t,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t be proper, wouldn’t be right.”
    A tight, slightly irritated sound rumbled in Arad’s chest. He kept on kissing her though, forcing her head back with the passion and desperation of his lips. It was only when they parted again, a soft sucking sound filling the air between them, that he bothered to catch his breath. She tried to pull away but his grip was iron.
    “You’re right,” he said. “It wouldn’t be proper. Then again, is it proper for a king to make his subjects sell their children to feed the others?”
    That stopped Helena dead in her tracks.
    “Is it not wrong to starve your people while you live in such absurd luxury?”
    He kissed her again, but this time it was harder, deeper, more desperate than before, as though he needed to drink her in to live. “Is it not wrong to keep destined lovers apart because of some... silly traditions?”
    “Yes,” she whispered,