The Pirate Prince Read Free Page A

dark brows rose when he saw a burly sailor standing guard. “You keep Ibrahim’s treasure here, under guard?”
    “Aye. You will see why in a moment.”
    Juad dismissed the guard and opened the door. “Behold the sultan’s treasure, Prince Dariq. Make of it what you will for it now belongs to you. Truthfully, I am glad to be done with it. It has caused me a great deal of trouble.”
    Somewhat wary, Dariq stepped inside. He ducked just in time to avoid a missile that sailed past his head and crashed to the deck.
    Then, with shock and a great deal of dismay, he saw her.
    Ibrahim’s treasure.
    A woman.
    Willow Foxburn glared at the fierce pirate who had barged into the cabin, ready to defend herself should the need arise. He appeared startled to see her, his ferocious glower causing her to gulp back a cry. He had dangerous eyes, she thought. Mesmerizing gray eyes. They locked with hers and held, but she didn’t look away.
    Did he speak English? she wondered.
    He said nothing, merely fixed her with that intense silver gaze. She held her breath, suddenly aware that this man presented a new king of danger. Though the man was dressed as a Turk, there was something about him that set him apart from Captain Juad’s sailors.
    He was handsome. Impossibly so. Terrifyingly so. Clearly, he was Turkish, but his silver-gray eyes softened his features and suggested he was not all Turk. She had never seen a man quite like him before.
    “Who are you?” she asked, refusing to back away from his intimidating presence. “I heard the sound of cannon. Is the
Ottoman
under attack? Are you a pirate?”
    She gave a little start as his glittering gaze swept over her, his curiosity as obvious as hers.
    “Do you speak English?” Willow asked.
    The responsive flicker in his silver eyes might have been surprise, but his expression remained unreadable.
    Dariq was too shocked to speak. It had never crossed his mind that Ibrahim’s treasure could be a woman. Not just any woman, but a woman with hair of pure gold, eyes as green as emeralds, skin like silk and cheeks tinted with roses. His mind failed to accept what his eyes beheld. Dariq had always known that Ibrahim preferred golden-haired women but had yet to find such a woman… until now. The woman standing before him now was likely to satisfy all his brother’s desires.
    And with good reason. She would satisfy a stone if it had a cock. Thinking back, Dariq couldn’t recall one golden-haired concubine in the harem. Even his mother had dark hair, and she was English. It was from Saliha Sultana that he had inherited his silver-gray eyes.
    Dariq’s gaze slid over the young woman, assessing her worth as only a connoisseur of beautiful females could. She wore a short vest and sheer skirts that concealed little of her charms. An aba, the robe meant to hide her curvaceous body from the eyes of the world, lay across the bed.
    Dariq looked his fill, memorizing every lush line of her lithe form, from the short veil that fell over her head and shoulders to the soft slippers on her dainty feet.
    “Who is she?” Dariq asked Captain Juad, who hovered behind him. He could tell from the woman’s puzzled expression that she could not speak his language.
    “She is Lady Willow Foxburn, an Englishwoman. Quite a beauty, is she not?”
    “How did she get here?”
    “Mehmed the slave master had the good fortune to buy her from Barbary pirates who had attacked her ship. The ship was sailing from Marseilles to England when it was stopped and boarded. The woman was taken to Algiers and sold to Mehmed. Apparently, the slave master realized she matched the description of a woman Ibrahim had been searching for, and offered her to him at a hefty price.
    “Though her price was exorbitant, Ibrahim paid it gladly and sent me to fetch her,” Juad continued. He shot Willow a stern look. “She has been a problem from the moment she came aboard. Ibrahim won’t make a pet of this one. She has a fiery temper.”
    “I