Читать книгу The Sultan's Virgin Bride - Sarah Morgan - Страница 7

FARRAH stood in shocked silence.

I want you as my wife…I have decided to marry you.

His words spun round and round in her head and when she finally spoke her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Is this some sort of sick joke?’

Once, to marry him had been her dream. And he knew it. Was he taunting her with her naïvety?

‘As you well know, I have never found the prospect of marriage even remotely amusing.’ Ebony brows locked in a frown. ‘Why would you accuse me of joking?’

‘Because you can’t possibly be serious? We’ve had no contact for five years! And on the last occasion we were together—which, by the way, was when you told me that you could never marry a woman like me—’ she supplied helpfully, ‘you informed me that I was perfect mistress material but nothing else!’

Just saying the words aloud started her shivering again. You thought you’d recovered from something, she thought to herself as she tried to control her reaction, and then you realized that it had been there all along. Buried. Waiting to be uncovered.

People who said that time healed were lying. You made adjustments. You learned to live with things that you couldn’t change. But that didn’t mean that healing had taken place.

‘Actually, I was wrong. Five years ago you were too young and innocent to be perfect mistress material.’ Tariq studied her thoughtfully and he lifted a hand to touch her flushed cheek. ‘The perfect mistress should be sexually experienced and emotionally detached. You were neither.’

The colour in her cheeks deepened and she pulled away from him. ‘I’m not interested in your definition of the perfect mistress. It was a role I rejected, if you remember.’

He gave a slow smile. ‘Oh, I remember. You were holding out for a much larger prize.’

‘I made the mistake of thinking that our relationship meant something.’

‘It did. We were good together,’ he said smoothly. ‘And, had you come to my bed, you would have experienced the true meaning of the word “pleasure.”’

Her body heated with an explosive flash and she dragged her eyes away from the knowing gleam in his. ‘Had I come to your bed, I would have been a total idiot and would have discovered the true meaning of the word “regret.”’

He inhaled sharply. ‘I made you an extremely generous offer.’

‘Generous offer? Sorry, but I don’t see what’s generous about inviting someone to have sex with you.’ She’d loved him, for goodness’ sake. Passionately. Deeply. To the exclusion of all others. She’d believed he’d loved her. ‘You’re supposed to have a brilliant brain and a razor-sharp intellect but you know absolutely nothing about relationships or human emotions!’

‘Being my “mistress” as you so quaintly call it, would have come with significant perks.’

‘So basically you were offering me money in exchange for sex.’ Her voice was filled with derision. ‘There’s a word for that, Tariq, and it isn’t nice.’

His proud head lifted and the flash of his eyes was a reminder that he wasn’t accustomed to being challenged. ‘A marriage was not possible between us at that time.’

‘But now it is?’ She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice but he didn’t react.

‘Five years is a long time. You were very young. Much can be forgiven.’

‘Maybe. But I’m not the one that needs forgiving here.’ She was guilty of nothing more than being gullible and the injustice of the situation stung her deeply. She forgot he was the ruling Sultan of an oil rich state and one of the most eligible and influential men in the world. To Farrah, Tariq al-Sharma was just the man who had hurt her. She saw no further than that. Cared nothing for appearances or protocol. ‘You were utterly ruthless, Tariq. When I refused your “generous offer”, my father and I were forced to leave the country.’

His expression revealed nothing. ‘In the circumstances, it was not appropriate for you to stay.’

She thought of the desert and the beaches. She thought of the golden temples and the dusty streets. She thought of the mysteries of the souk and she thought of those precious early morning walks on the beach, warmed by the hot, hot sun. She thought of the Caves of Zatua and the legend of Nadia and her Sultan. ‘For a short time it was my home. I loved it. Leaving was hard.’

But not as hard as it had been to leave Tariq.

She’d felt as though a huge part of her had been left behind in the desert. The only part of her that mattered. She’d believed that he loved her and the discovery that his feelings had been no more than sexual had shattered her fragile self-confidence.

‘If you truly loved my country then you will be only too happy to return.’

‘I will never return.’ For her, Tazkash was a place that would always be linked with him. A place where there were too many painful memories. ‘You’re being ridiculous and I refuse even to have this conversation with you. I’m not one of your subjects or even one of your adoring women.’ And there were plenty of those, she thought grimly. Women prepared to do just about anything to gain his attention.

‘Once, Farrah Tyndall,’ he said softly, the pad of his thumb brushing over the fullness of her lower lip, ‘once, you begged me to marry you. You couldn’t wait to climb into my bed. It was I who slowed the pace because you were so young. Once, you adored me.’

Her heart was thumping with rhythmic force against her chest. She didn’t want to be reminded of just how open and honest she’d been with him about her feelings. Most women played it cool. At the age of eighteen, in love with a staggeringly sexy man, she hadn’t understood the meaning of the word. How he must have laughed at her. ‘That was before I discovered that princes work better in fairy tales. Before I discovered what a cold, unfeeling bastard you are.’

His head jerked back and his dark eyes narrowed in a warning. ‘Be careful. I have always allowed you more leeway than most but no one speaks to me in such a way—’

‘Which just goes to show what an unsuitable wife I would make. I thought you’d already made that discovery for yourself but it’s good to remind you of that fact.’ She shrugged her bare shoulders out of his jacket and handed it back to him. ‘Thanks, but I don’t need this. I prefer to go inside to warm up.’

He couldn’t be serious about marrying her. Why would he be? She didn’t understand what game he was playing, but she knew she didn’t want to be a part of it.

Something flickered in his eyes. Something dangerous. ‘You will come with me. Now.’ It was an unmistakable command and she gave a slight shiver of reaction.

No one argued with Tariq—she should have remembered that. His authority was absolute. Once, his status alone had been sufficient to render her tongue-tied, but not any more. She’d had plenty of time to reflect on what had happened between them. And she’d grown up.

‘Why would I want to go anywhere with you?’ She forced herself to speak lightly. Forced herself not to betray the effect he had on her. ‘So that you can show me the way to paradise? I’ve been there once before, Tariq, and I think I must have taken a wrong turning because, frankly, it wasn’t up to much. Excuse me, I’m going back inside.’

Long bronzed fingers caught her wrist in a steely grip. ‘I wish to talk to you properly. In private.’

‘But I don’t wish to talk to you in private, or in public, come to that. Five minutes in your company has been enough to convince me that you haven’t changed one bit so take my advice and quit while you’re only slightly behind.’

His glance reflected barely contained frustration. ‘You will come with me.’

‘Why? Because you order it? I don’t wish to go anywhere with you so what are you going to do? Kidnap me?’

His dark eyes were suddenly veiled. ‘I hardly think such extreme measures will be required.’

She risked a glance at him and realized with a jolt that he was deadly serious. He wanted her. Why? She wondered desperately. Because she’d finally managed to reinvent herself? Because, on the surface at least, she’d turned into the woman her mother had always wanted her to be? ‘Do you really think I’m going to walk back into your arms?’

‘If you’re honest about your feelings, then yes. It’s still there. Farrah—’ he used his superior strength to hold her fast when she would have run ‘—you can feel it and so can I. And I’m offering you what you’ve always wanted. Don’t let a childish tantrum deprive you of your dream.’

Her heart thundered against her chest. ‘Even for a sultan, you are insufferably arrogant,’ she gasped, trying to ignore the tiny shockwaves that gripped her body. ‘And any dreams I might have had about you ended five years ago. You had your chance with me, Tariq, and you blew it. End of story.’

Far from being disconcerted, his eyes gleamed and she remembered too late that Tariq thrived on challenge. He was a man who hunted for obstacles just so that he could smash them down and prove his superiority.

‘I am willing to play this your way for a while, Farrah, while you get used to the idea that we are going to be together again. But as my future wife you must abide by a certain code of behaviour. I understand you are to take part in the charity fashion show imminently.’

Farrah stared at him blankly. The fashion show? She’d forgotten all about the fashion show. The only thing on her mind since he’d walked on to the terrace had been escape. From him and from her jumbled feelings. His reminder of her commitment to the charity made her heart drop. She wasn’t at all sure she could make it through another couple of hours, especially not in such a public way. Everyone would be looking at her. Including Tariq.

She opened her mouth to tell him that she was going to make her excuses but his eyes flashed dark and menacing, his ebony brows drawn together in a disapproving frown.

‘I forbid you to take part.’

‘You forbid—?’ The word made her temper simmer and suddenly she struck on a foolproof way of removing him from her life again. After all, wasn’t her ‘inappropriate behaviour’ one of the main reasons he’d cited for being unable to marry her? ‘You don’t want me to be in the fashion show, Tariq?’ Suddenly she realized that appearing in the fashion show would be the perfect way of guaranteeing his rapid exit from her life.

‘As my future wife, it would not be appropriate.’

‘Good, that settles it, then,’ she said sweetly as she twisted her arm free of his grip, ‘because I intend to do the fashion show. So perhaps you’d better look elsewhere for the wife you so desperately need, Your Excellency.’

He inhaled sharply, disbelief flickering in his dark eyes. ‘You persist in this ridiculous pretence that you’re not interested. Do you understand what it is that I am proposing?’

‘Proposing?’ She tilted her head and her eyes sparkled with anger. ‘Sorry, I didn’t actually hear a proposal. I heard you ordering and forbidding and doing all the things that you’re really, really good at. You’re going to have to go and find someone else to command, Tariq, because I’m not interested.’

Without giving him a chance to respond, she walked past his bodyguards, back through the ballroom and into the room where they were frantically preparing for the fashion show. Her heart was thumping, her hands felt clammy and she felt physically sick as she joined the other girls who were modelling that evening.

His wife?

Why would he say such a thing?

Why on earth would he suddenly be talking about marrying her after five years of silence? What was going on? And why did her body still respond even though she knew what sort of man he was?

Like all addictive habits, she thought gloomily, you always wanted what was bad for you. And Tariq was extremely bad.

‘Farrah, thank goodness!’ Enzo Franconi, the famous Italian designer, embraced her with relief. ‘We thought you’d gone home and I have the most spectacular dress for you to wear tonight. I predict that you will shine, you will positively dazzle, you will—’

‘No dress.’ Farrah’s tone was grim as she slipped off her shoes and yanked the pins out of her hair. ‘Are you showing any swimwear, Enzo?’ Her hair fell smooth and sleek down her back while Enzo gaped in astonishment.

‘Of course. But you never model swimwear. Always you refuse to dress in anything so revealing.’

Farrah’s mind was on Tariq. On his proposal of marriage. He couldn’t have been serious. It didn’t make sense. ‘Well, tonight I’m not refusing. I’ll wear whatever you’ve got—but preferably the most shocking, daring thing in your collection.’

She didn’t understand what the Desert Prince was doing here tonight. But there was one thing that she did know for sure. If she wore something revealing on the catwalk he wouldn’t be bothering her again. A man as traditional and conservative as Tariq appreciated subtlety and dignity and she was determined to offer neither. She was going to drive him away by being as unsuitable as it was possible to be.

‘I do have something—’ Enzo waved a hand in a gesture as nervous as it was excited ‘—but you would never agree to wear it.’

‘I’m sure it will be absolutely perfect.’ Perfect to send Tariq as far away from her as possible. Once he had seen her making a display of herself in public he would march out of the room and she could get on with her life.

Enzo prowled around her, unable to believe his luck. ‘On you—’ he clapped his hands and an assistant came running to his side ‘—it will look sensational. I predict that men will faint.’

‘Well, let’s hope so,’ Farrah said flatly, allowing Enzo’s assistant to unzip her dress, ‘and let’s hope that one man in particular bangs his head hard when he hits the floor.’

‘Who?’ Enzo lifted a wisp of material in bright peacock blue from the rail next to him and then did a double take. ‘Is that mud on your leg?’

‘What?’ She glanced down and blushed. ‘Oh—sorry—’ she scrubbed it clean with her finger and Enzo gave a soft smile.

‘You have been helping those children in the riding school again—’

Farrah glanced around her nervously to see who might be listening. ‘We had a little girl with cerebral palsy today,’ she whispered. ‘You should have seen her face when we put her on the horse, Enzo.’ This man was her friend, she reminded herself, one of the few people who she could trust with the secret of her real life.

‘Marvellous, cara.’ Enzo sighed and shook his head as he watched her remove the final traces of mud. ‘But did you have to bring the stables into the ballroom?’

‘I was held up so I changed in the car.’ Farrah gave a dismissive shrug and Enzo looked at her through narrowed eyes.

‘So now tell me why you are suddenly wearing a swimming costume. It is about a man, obviously. You wish to make him jealous, no?’

‘Jealous?’ Staring at the costume on the hanger, she shook her head in disbelief, wondering how so little material actually attached itself to the body. ‘No, I don’t want to make him jealous. I want to make him run.’

She didn’t want him in her life a second time.

Enzo frowned. ‘Then take my advice and do not wear this costume. There is not a man alive who will run having seen you dressed in this. You will find yourself with the opposite problem.’

‘You don’t know this man. Give it to me.’ Farrah held out a hand. ‘I’ll get changed behind the curtain.’

‘Farrah, tesoro—’ Enzo’s tone was dry as he relinquished the garment ‘—if you need to get dressed behind a curtain, then that is not the costume for you.’

‘If it serves its purpose then it will be fine.’ Dressed only in her underwear, she walked in bare feet into the makeshift cubicle. ‘Oh, and Enzo, ask someone to find me spectacular shoes. High heels. Really high heels.’

Enzo’s eyes gleamed and he kissed the ends of his fingers in a gesture of approval. ‘Almost, I feel sorry for this man.’

‘I don’t need you to feel sorry for him. I just need you to make me look shocking. I need to be unsuitable wife material.’ She jerked the curtain across and her courage faltered. What the hell was she doing? Adrenaline surged through her body, fuelling her determination to go through with her plan. Before reason could take over and she could change her mind, she removed her underwear and wriggled into the costume. ‘Enzo? Are you out there? This thing doesn’t fit—’

The designer pulled back the curtain and sighed. ‘Not like that—’ He stepped forward and made several adjustments that had Farrah blushing. ‘Better. Much better. And now this—’He flung a transparent filmy wrap over her shoulders and she looked at it with a frown.

‘I don’t want to cover up.’

‘This covers nothing,’ Enzo said dryly, his hands tweaking and coaxing the fabric until he was satisfied. ‘It is designed to draw the eye. To tempt and tease.’ He narrowed his gaze, nodded with approval and then snapped his fingers towards his assistant who was hovering at a discreet distance. ‘Shoes?’

Farrah gave a wry smile as she slipped her feet into a pair of designer shoes with delicate straps and vertiginous heels. ‘This is all going to be wasted if I fall off the shoes, break my neck and give myself two black eyes in the process.’

‘Never.’ Enzo frowned and stood back as the hairdresser took over. ‘Leave it loose. Yes. Like that. She looks sensational. I predict that the costume will be this season’s big seller.’ He glanced at Farrah with a smile. ‘You wear heels that high all the time. You will not fall.’

Farrah thought of the muddy riding boots in the back of the family limousine. ‘Not all the time.’

Finally Enzo was satisfied and he stood back with a nod. ‘It is perfect. You are perfect, and totally wasted in this life of yours.’

They shared a secret smile and impulsively Farrah leaned forward to give her friend a hug. ‘You’ve helped me so much,’ she whispered. ‘You taught me how to dress, how to walk, how to—’

‘Enough—’ Enzo waved a hand to stop her but there was pleasure in his smile. ‘I had good material to work with. You could be a model, cara.’

‘No, thanks.’ Farrah walked towards the entrance where the other girls were lining up and Enzo caught her arm.

‘Not like that! You are walking as if you are angry and out for revenge and I taught you better than that! Your eyes spark and your mouth pouts. You look as though you’re going to kill someone, not seduce them.’

Farrah wondered what he’d say if he knew how close to the truth he was. She was angry. Angry and hurt.

‘This costume is about being a woman.’ Enzo gave her a slow smile. ‘Your eyes should say “look at me”, your mouth should say “kiss me” and your walk should say—’

‘Yes, all right,’ Farrah interrupted him quickly. ‘I think I get the message.’ She sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm herself.

After all, wasn’t that an even better way of displaying her anger to Tariq? For a man like him, displaying herself in such a public place would be enough to make him stalk towards the exit without a backward glance in her direction.

The music pulsed and she took her position near the entrance to the catwalk.

Tariq was in for a shock.

Still coming to terms with the fact that his first ever proposal of marriage had met with a decidedly unenthusiastic response, Tariq lounged in his seat in brooding silence, waiting for the fashion show to begin.

It was typical, he mused with growing tension, that she should refuse to turn down an opportunity to flaunt herself in public. It was one of the reasons that their relationship had floundered in the first place. He’d been able to see too much of the mother in the girl. The exact details of Sylvia Tyndall’s early death had been kept out of the press, but her incessant wild partying had supported the rumours that her death had been linked with drugs or alcohol or possibly a mixture of the two.

If anything, Farrah appeared to have grown even more like her mother over the years.

His long fingers drummed a slow, steady rhythm on the table as he pondered their encounter on the terrace.

All traces of the innocent girl he’d met on the beach had gone. But why should that surprise him? The young girl who’d captivated him so completely had been nothing more than an illusion. At that particular point in his life he’d been jaded and unsettled and he’d been ensnared by her fresh, unspoiled enthusiasm for life. He’d enjoyed her sense of humour and unguarded response to him. She’d appeared to be refreshingly unaware of her own breathtaking beauty. He’d found her to be modest and even a little shy. Uninterested in material things or in glamorous social gatherings.

But events had proved him wrong on so many counts.

Everything had changed from the moment they’d moved from the desert to his palace.

Gone had been the respectable mode of dress and the caring attitude. In its place a woman who’d appeared to care for nothing except her appearance. A woman who’d gone to enormous efforts to shock those around her. A woman who’d wanted to do nothing but party.

In a sense that had made her easier to deal with because he’d been dealing with women like her for almost all of his life. Women who played games. Women who traded beauty for other, more tangible, benefits, from extravagant gifts to an excellent marriage.

He skimmed a glance over the women who were now strutting down the catwalk, but only to ensure that none of them was Farrah.

He knew her well enough to realize that his request that she abandon the fashion show would be met by defiance but, even so, her entrance, made even more dramatic by the use of spotlights and pumping rock music, took him by surprise.

Her golden hair flowed long and loose over her shoulders and was the only thing that kept the dramatic swimming costume even vaguely decent.

There was a collective murmur of appreciation from the men in the room and by his side Hasim Akbar made a strangled sound. In contrast, Tariq sat still, the flicker of a muscle in his cheek the only indication of his soaring stress levels.

The music pounded in a hypnotic rhythm that was unashamedly sexual and she started to walk in time to the beat, her movements graceful and seductive. It shouldn’t have been possible to walk on the heels she was wearing but she made it look natural, as if she’d been born with high, slender spikes attached to her feet.

The swimsuit was cleverly cut to expose her long, long legs, her narrow waist and the tempting thrust of her breasts. A diaphanous wrap floated around her body, giving the illusion that she was walking through mist.

She was a vision of feminine perfection, every man’s fantasy, and Tariq felt sharp claws of lust drag through his loins.

A temporary marriage came with definite benefits, he conceded. Not only would he gain ownership of the shares that were crucial for the future of his country, but he would have Farrah Tyndall naked and at his disposal for forty days and forty nights. As newly-weds he could justifiably keep her trapped in his bed and then he would divorce her before she had the opportunity to embarrass him the way she was embarrassing him now.

On the opposite side of the catwalk a man half rose to his feet, a look of naked longing in his eyes.

Devoured by ever increasing tension, Tariq discovered a hitherto untapped possessive streak deep within himself.

She was inviting male attention, he thought grimly, and she was doing it to taunt him. It was clear to him that she was still sulking over his rejection five years previously.

He lounged in his chair, simmering with ever increasing anger as he watched what he perceived to be a deliberate attempt to provoke him.

But, instead of making him stride from the room, her intentionally provocative display merely served to reconcile him finally to the concept of marriage.

He was determined to make her his.

He should have done it five years ago, he mused in brooding silence, but instead he’d respected her innocence. He’d valued her purity. Had taken his time, the better to savour the moment when he would finally make her his.

Clearly his restraint had been wasted since she appeared to place no such value on herself.

She reached the end of the catwalk, dropped a hip in a pose deliberately designed to inflame and finally she directed her gaze in his direction. Green eyes locked on his in blatant challenge.

Try and stop me, her gaze said, and Tariq rose to his feet in a fluid movement, determined to do exactly that.

Anger roared inside him like a wild, untamed beast and he stepped onto the catwalk, ignoring the astonished scramble of his security team as they attempted to intercept him.

Without uttering a word, he swung her into his arms and strode out of the ballroom without glancing left or right. He was boiling and angry and he realized that he hadn’t known the true meaning of the word possessive until that moment.

‘Tariq—’ Her voice was a shocked breathless pant as she pushed at his shoulders. ‘What are you doing?’

Her words irritated him because they drew attention to the fact that for the first time in his life he’d acted without thought. He didn’t know what he was doing. His actions had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with some dark, primitive need to remove her from the line of sight of every man in the room. If it had been within his power, he would have removed her from their minds and fantasies too, but the man in him knew that it was already too late for that. She’d ensured herself a place in every erotic dream.

The thought made him tighten his grip in raw, naked jealousy and she wriggled.

‘Put me down!’

He was sorely tempted to do just that. Every part of him that mattered was in contact with smooth, warm female flesh—female flesh that squirmed in protest against certain vital parts of his body. Something dark and primitive broke loose and anger flared inside him.

Anger at her for deliberately provoking him.

Anger at himself for responding in such a predictable fashion.

Always, in her company, he found himself facing parts of himself that he didn’t want to acknowledge, Tariq thought with grim honesty.

‘You chose to invite attention, laeela—’ he tried to ignore the low, throbbing ache that threatened to test his legendary self-control ‘—and now you have it.’ He strode through the opulent foyer, through revolving doors and out to the street where his car awaited his return.

She weighed virtually nothing, he thought, as he all but thrust her into the car and delivered instructions to his driver in a clipped, angry tone.

‘Tariq, I’m not going with you—’

‘Be silent!’ Still seething, he shrugged out of his jacket for the second time that evening and dropped it into her lap. ‘Put this on.’

‘I don’t—’

‘Cover yourself!’ The ferocity of his tone shocked even him so he could hardly blame her for shrinking back in her seat. Her reaction shamed him because whatever his faults, he had never struck a woman and never would. He was a man who prided himself on his self-control and yet at that precise moment he wanted to kill someone. ‘You are barely dressed,’ he said flatly, turning his head so that he didn’t have to look at the confusion in her eyes. He didn’t want to feel sympathy. Didn’t want to feel anything. ‘When we reach my home, my staff will find you something more suitable to wear.’

Preferably something that covered every inch of her.

She glared at him. ‘You’re behaving like a caveman.’

‘If I were a caveman then I would have followed my baser instincts and stripped you naked in the ballroom when you all but begged me to do so,’ he said silkily, ‘and you would now be lying naked on one of those tables and your pleasure would be so great that you would be sobbing and begging for mercy.’

Her soft gasp of shock was at odds with her provocative appearance. ‘I would never beg you for anything,’ she said hoarsely, but her gaze held his for a fraction longer than necessary and his gaze hardened.

Experience told him that she was clearly not indifferent to him, no matter how much she would have liked that to be the case.

The attraction between them was as strong as ever and he was willing to overlook her less appealing traits in order to have her naked in his bed.

The marriage might be short lived, Tariq mused silently, but sexually it promised to be full-on and immensely satisfying.

‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you. Just drop me home, please.’ Her tone was flat but she slipped her arms into the jacket and closed it around her. She was so slender that it would have been possible to fit two of her inside but she was also tall and the jacket did nothing to conceal the tempting length of her legs. Clearly aware of that fact, she pressed her knees together and slid her legs closer to the seat.

Tariq gave a predatory smile. ‘It’s a little late for modesty, don’t you think?’ For some reason the sight of her bare, beautiful legs served to reignite the anger that he’d only just managed to subdue. ‘Charity balls have certainly taken an interesting turn since I was last in England. Is it suddenly a necessary requirement for the guests to reveal all?’

She didn’t glance in his direction. ‘It was all in a good cause.’

‘If you’re trying to persuade me that you really care about the charity then you’re wasting your time. We both know that you just seize on any excuse to dress up and flaunt yourself in public.’

Like mother like daughter.

‘That’s right.’ She turned her head towards him, her amazing green eyes glittering in the semi-darkness, her blond hair falling sleek and smooth over his jacket. ‘I spend all day lying in bed resting so that I have enough energy to get myself through another night of drink-fuelled partying. Isn’t that right, Tariq? Isn’t that the person I am?’

She looked so innocent, he mused as his eyes rested on the tempting curve of her soft mouth. Nothing like a woman who’d turned flirting into an art form or a woman who was only interested in expanding the contents of her already bulging wardrobe.

‘Don’t try and provoke me,’ he warned softly. ‘Next time you wish to support a cause then let me know and I will write them a large cheque. It will save you the bother of stripping off.’

‘I’ll do as I please.’ She lifted her chin and glared at him. ‘Life is all about money to you, isn’t it? All about power and influence. Well, I don’t need your money and your power doesn’t interest me. I don’t need anything at all from you. The way I act, the way I behave, is nothing to do with you. You don’t know me and you never did.’ The words were thrown at him with careless indifference but he sensed the growing tension in her, saw her amazing green eyes darken as something live and dangerous snapped taut between them.

The car sped through the night, smooth and silent, the darkness of the interior ensuring their privacy and increasing the intimacy.

Suddenly stifled by it, Tariq lifted a hand and tugged at his tie, opening the top two buttons of his shirt with a deft movement of his lean, strong fingers. She followed the movement with her gaze, caught his eye for a single tense moment and then looked away. The silken fall of her hair concealed her face but only after he’d seen the colour pour into her cheeks.

The atmosphere was pulled tight with a sexual tension so powerful that the air throbbed and hummed.

And he knew she felt it too because he saw the rapid movement of her slender throat as she swallowed, saw her fingers clutch his jacket around her like a shield. In a self-conscious gesture she tried to tuck her legs away but there was nowhere to put them. Nowhere to hide.

‘Stop looking at me, Tariq.’ Her hoarse plea brought a faint smile to his lips and dampened some of the anger inside him.

Her almost childish plea confirmed his belief that she was suffering as much as he was. Evidently she wasn’t as indifferent as she chose to appear.

‘That outfit is an invitation to a man to look. It was designed entirely for that purpose,’ he said smoothly, allowing his eyes to roam freely over her bare legs. ‘Presumably you knew that when you chose to wear it.’

Her knuckles whitened as she clenched her hands in her lap. ‘I wore it to annoy you!’

He gave a slow smile. ‘Then you don’t know much about men, laeela. In public, such an outfit would indeed annoy me but now we are in private my feelings are entirely different.’

‘I’m not interested in your feelings.’

‘No? We never found out, did we, laeela?’ He leaned towards her and gently brushed her hair away from her face, revealing her exquisite profile. ‘We never found out how we would be together. We dreamed and we danced around the edges of passion—those stolen meetings on the beach, kissing in the Caves of Zatua—all that foreplay—’ His gaze dropped to her lips and lingered there. ‘Five years. I have waited for five years to have that question answered.’

She turned her head then, her breathing rapid. ‘Then I hope you’re a patient man because you’re going to be waiting for the rest of your life and still you won’t find out. I’m not one of your toys, Tariq. I’m not yours to command. I’m not a fancy car you can buy or a jet you can fly. You can’t just decide to have me.’

‘Yes, I can. I have only to touch you and you will be mine.’ He wound a strand of hair around his finger. ‘And you want that every bit as much as I do.’

Her eyes stared into his, hypnotized. ‘Not true,’ she croaked. ‘I don’t want that. And your ego is sickening.’

‘A ruler with no confidence in himself does not inspire the loyalty and devotion of his people,’ he said huskily, moving his body closer to hers, ‘and we both know that my ego is not the problem here. Your feelings are the problem. Or rather, your insistence on denying them. Despite what you say to the contrary, you’re mentally undressing me and you’re wondering how our bodies will move together when we’re finally in bed. You’re wondering how it will feel when I’m inside you.’

He watched the movement of her slender throat as she swallowed, saw the flash of shock in her eyes, the hint of excitement in those green depths. ‘Stop it.’ Her voice was a tortured whisper. ‘I want you to stop it, now.’

His eyes gleamed dark with amusement. ‘Do you think I was unaware of your feelings? At eighteen your sexual curiosity was hard to conceal. You hadn’t learned to play games, laeela. Your eyes followed me everywhere and when I came near you, you felt an excitement so intense that you ceased to breathe.’

She blushed again. ‘You are so arrogant.’

‘I am honest.’ He sat back in his seat, more than satisfied with her response. ‘Which is more than you are. Five years ago I met the girl. Now I am eager to discover the woman. And this time we will not be flirting on the edge of passion, laeela, but plunging hard into its fiery depths.’

She really was astonishingly beautiful, he mused as he watched confusion flicker over her heart-shaped face as she registered his sexually explicit analogy. The prospect of marriage was growing more appealing by the minute. He was even starting to wonder whether forty days and forty nights would be long enough.

‘I won’t go with you, Tariq.’

‘I hate to point out the obvious,’ he said with gentle emphasis, ‘but you are with me.’

‘A mistake that I intend to rectify immediately.’ She glanced out of the window and her eyes widened. She turned her head for an explanation, panic in her eyes. ‘The airport? What are we doing at the airport?’

‘As I said, I am taking you home. My home. We are going to Tazkash.’ He leaned forward to speak to his driver and then turned back towards the woman who was trying to open the car door. ‘Enough of playing games. I’m going to make you my wife, Farrah. And then I’m going to take you to my bed and keep you there for as long as it suits me.’