Craving Beauty
"With this bond, I take my life and put it in the keeping of Marc Pierre Bordeaux. Forever and eternity." Hira's heart shattered into a thousand pieces as she repeated the ritual words.
Smiling, the elder lifted the trailing edge of the silken red ribbon tied around Hira's wrist and fed it through the lacy aperture atop the wall dividing the men from the women. The marriage ceremony was almost complete — soon she'd be wife to a man with ghost-gray eyes.
What should've been the most wonderful day of her life was instead marking the destruction of her dreams. Dreams of love, dreams of family, dreams of tenderness. Because instead of being wooed and won, Hira Dazirah had been part and parcel of a business agreement.
Her wrist jerked as the ribbon went taut. At the same time, the elder said, "He is bound."
On the other side of the wall, a single voice rose in the haunting cadences of the blessing chant.
Per the customs of her homeland, Zulheil, in a few more seconds Marc would be her husband. Marc with his slow smile and eyes full of temptation. Marc with his warrior's face and hunter's walk. Marc, who'd demanded her fath ... read full excerpt from: Craving Beauty ebook
