Read Online SEDUCING HIS PRINCESS by Olivia Gates - Free Book Online Page A

info—his mother. After making him swear he’d never confront his father, Queen Safaa admitted that King Hassan believed Najeeb would end up marrying me, a daughter of the hated Aal Masoods, and it would cost him his position as his heir, as Saraya’s tribes wouldn’t abide the introduction of Aal Masood blood into the royal family. He even feared the Aal Ghaanems might lose the throne altogether to an uprising.”
    Mohab still had no reaction. But then again, why should he react? He already knew all this.
    She exhaled. “To stop this calamity, King Hassan had one hope of breaking up our relationship. You. The kingdom’s most lethal secret weapon. I was a homeland security threat of the highest order after all. As someone who was raised to despise the Aal Masoods, the idea that your crown prince might sully your line with the blood of your hated enemies was probably as unthinkable to you.
    “Najeeb’s mother related how you shared your king’s opinion of me—the then-minor princess who flaunted her region’s values and disgraced her brothers by living a degenerate life in the West. You agreed that I was manipulating the honorable Najeeb, using our shared ordeal to ride him to the status of a future queen. When the king authorized you to get rid of me, he knew how you’d do it. The same way you rid the kingdom of every black widow who tried to compromise the royal family or the integrity of the kingdom.”
    His gaze remained unchanged, betraying nothing.
    Figured. He’d betrayed nothing through their five-month relationship. Not one action or glance or word had given her a clue that it had all been an act. The reverse had been true. Everything from him had been fierce, consistent, unequivocal, had felt more real than anything she’d ever experienced. Discovering the truth had hit so out of the blue, it had crushed her.
    Her world had warped, every emotion and passion she’d felt for him becoming shame, humiliation.
    She went on, emptying her voice of any remembered anguish. “You seduced me only to make me ineligible for Najeeb, then asked me to marry you to perfect your act, no doubt to drop me like a used napkin the moment you were sure your crown prince was safe.”
    Najeeb had been livid at his father, but more at Mohab, if only for the interference, the duplicity. His outrage had been mitigated by his belief that he’d saved her in time. She had never exposed the depths of her fall and folly to her friend. Only wanting the mess over with, she’d made Najeeb promise he’d never confront Mohab. She’d just wanted to walk away.
    Numb and feeling used, she’d stumbled home, had stood in that shower for what might have been hours. Then Mohab had come. His urgency and passion, which her senses still hadn’t been able to recognize as fake, had had her body detonating with a fireball of lust and her mind spiraling in blankness.
    Afterward everything had spilled over, razing her with the devastation of fury and mortification.
    After Mohab had finally gone, she’d collapsed. Not in any dramatic way, just a gradual descent into depression, her misery deepening with time and repercussions. It had taken her years to climb out.
    Now, just as she was finally over her ordeal and firmly on stable footing, the man responsible for it all had come back to destroy the peace she’d struggled so long and hard for.
    “So that’s why you decided you didn’t want to marry me after all, and so abruptly.”
    His deep statement roused her from her musings.
    She gave him the only answer he’d get from her. “It just gave me the reason to bail, as I’d been wanting to, without caring how I did it.”
    “That’s why you didn’t confront me, no matter how much I pushed? You weren’t interested in hearing my defense, since you’d already decided to walk out on me?”
    At her nod, he shook his head, as if deprecating himself for wanting to hear her discoveries had been the only reason behind her rejection. No doubt out of