His raspy voice galvanized her into action. Her breath sawing out of her lungs, she almost managed to nudge her foot out of his slack grasp when his fingers tightened. Sarani could hardly take in any air, and her survival instinct kicked into action. Flee. Flee. Flee. She had to get out of there before he woke.

Too late! A pair of devastatingly familiar gray-blue eyes, the color of salt and storm, opened and fastened on her. They were very awake and very lucid.

His fingers convulsed on her ankle. “Sarani?”

The low rasp of his voice murmuring her name was too much to bear. Shock and stunned recognition flared in his gaze, emotions swiftly followed by such a fulminating hatred that she recoiled from the blast of it. He had every reason to loathe her, after all.

Breaking from her own horrified trance, Sarani wrenched her leg from his gasp and scrambled over him. She dove for the door handle, yanking it open. But he was faster, moving like the wind for such a large man. The door slammed shut, and he caged her between his arms, all burning rage and brimstone.

Trembling, Sarani turned to face him, her throat working. “Hullo, Rhystan.”

Three

The first time he saw her, Rhystan couldn’t breathe.

Rising like a water sprite from a wide bend in the river, she was the most gorgeous girl he’d ever beheld in his life. And he’d seen a few. With his lineage and his looks, he’d never lacked for female company, not at Eton, at Cambridge, or as a naval officer. But no girl had ever made him feel like he’d run face-first into a wall.

“Who is that?” he asked, almost toppling from his horse in an effort to keep her in view.

The former commodore of his ship, Sir Edward Blankley, peered at him. “No one for the likes of you, Huntley,” Edward said. “That girl’s father, if I’m right, is the Maharaja of Joor.”

Rhystan blinked, the knowledge that she was royalty and clearly out of his reach doing little to deter his interest or the sudden heated rise of his body. Though that could be because he hadn’t been with a woman in months. He and Edward were on leave from the Royal Navy, having spent the last eleven months in the Baltic and Black Seas detaining smugglers, then ferrying them back to port in St. Helena for criminal sentencing. He should have gone back to England, but he wasn’t finished seeing the world.

Or avoiding his tyrant of a father.