Читать книгу Sheikh's Woman - ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Страница 12

“Let me out,” Anna said, her hands snapping to the seat belt.

Ishaq Ahmadi fastened his own seat belt and moved one casual hand to still hers as she struggled with the mechanism. “We have been cleared for immediate takeoff,” he said.

“Stop the plane and let me off. Tell them to turn back,” she cried, pushing at his hand, which was no longer casual. “Where are you taking us? I want my baby!”

“The woman you saw is a children’s nurse. She is taking care of the baby, and no harm will come to her. Try and relax. You are ill, you have been in an accident.”

Her stomach churned sickly, her head pounded with pain, but she had to ignore that. She stared at him and showed her teeth. “Why are you doing this?” A sudden wrench released her seat belt, and Anna thrust herself to her feet.

Ishaq Ahmadi’s eyes flashed with irritation. “You know very well you have no right to such a display. You know you are in the wrong, deeply in the wrong.” He stabbed a forefinger at the chair she had just vacated. “Sit down before you fall down!”

With a little jerk, the plane started taxiing. “No!” Anna cried. She staggered and clutched the chair back, and with an oath Ishaq Ahmadi snapped a hand up and clasped her wrist in an unbreakable hold.

“Help me!” she screamed. “Help, help!”

A babble of concerned female voices arose from behind a bulkhead, and in another moment the hostess appeared in the doorway behind the bar.

“Sit down, Anna!”

The hostess cried a question in Arabic, and Ishaq Ahmadi answered in the same language. “Laa, laa, madame,” the woman said, gently urgent, and approached Anna with a soothing smile, then tried what her little English would do.

“Seat, madame, very dingerous. Pliz, seat.”

“I want to get off!” Anna shouted at the uncomprehending woman. “Stop the plane! Tell the captain it’s a mistake!”

The woman turned to Ishaq Ahmadi with a question, and he shook his head on a calm reply. Of course he had the upper hand if the cabin crew spoke only Arabic. Anna had a dim idea that all pilots had to speak English, but what were her chances of making it to the cockpit?

And if it was a private jet, the captain would be on Ishaq Ahmadi’s payroll. No doubt they all knew he was kidnapping his own wife.

Ahmadi got to his feet, holding Anna’s wrist in a grip that felt like steel cables, and forced her to move towards him.

The plane slowed, and they all stiffened as the captain’s voice came over the intercom—but it was only with the obvious Arabic equivalent of “Cabin staff, prepare for takeoff.” Ishaq Ahmadi barked something at the hostess and, with a consoling smile at Anna, she returned to her seat behind the bulkhead.

Ishaq Ahmadi sank into his seat again, dragging Anna inexorably down onto his lap. “You are being a fool,” he said. “No one is going to hurt you if you do not hurt yourself.”

She was sitting on him now as if he were the chair, and his arms were firmly locked around her waist, a human seat belt. The heat of his body seeped into hers, all down her spine and the backs of her thighs, his arms resting across her upper thighs, hands clasped against her abdomen.

Wherever her body met his, there was nothing but muscle. There was no give, no ounce of fat. It was like sitting on hot poured metal fresh from the forge, hardened, but the surface still slightly malleable. The stage when a sculptor removes the last, tiny blemishes, puts on the finishing touches. She had taken a course in metal sculpture at art college, and she had always loved the metal at this stage, Anna remembered dreamily. The heat, the slight surface give in something so innately strong, had a powerful sensual pull.

She realized she was half tranced. She felt very slow and stupid, and as the adrenaline in her body ebbed, her headache caught up with her again. She twisted to try to look over her shoulder into his face.

“Why are you doing this?” she pleaded.

His voice, close to her ear, said, “So that you and the baby will be safe.”

She was deeply, desperately tired, she was sick and hurt, and she wanted to believe she was safe with him. The alternative was too confusing and too terrible.

The engines roared up and the jet leapt forward down the runway. In a very short time, compared to the lumbering commercial aircraft she was used to, they had left the ground.

As his hold slackened but still kept her on his lap, she turned to Ishaq Ahmadi. Her face was only inches from his, her mouth just above his own wide, well-shaped lips. She swallowed, feeling the pull.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Home.” His gaze was steady. “You are tired. You will want to lie down,” he murmured, and when the jet levelled out, he helped her to her feet and stood up. He took her arm and led her through a doorway.

They entered a large, beautifully appointed stateroom, with a king-size bed luxuriously made with snowy-white and deep blue linens that were turned down invitingly. There were huge, fluffy white pillows.

It was like a fantasy. Except for the little windows and the ever-present hum you would never know you were on a plane. A top hotel, maybe. Beautiful natural woods, luscious fabrics, mirrors, soft lighting, and, through an open door, a marble bathroom.

“I guess I married a millionaire,” Anna murmured. “Or is this just some bauble a friend has loaned you?”

“Here are night things for you,” he said, indicating pyjamas and a bathrobe, white with blue trim, that were lying across the foot of the sapphire-blue coverlet. “Do you need help to undress?”

Anna looked at the bed longingly and realized she was dead on her feet. And that was no surprise, after what she had apparently been through in the past few hours.

“No,” she said.

She began fumbling with a button, but her fingers didn’t seem to work. Even the effort of holding her elbow bent seemed too much, so she dropped her arm and stood there a moment, gazing at nothing.

“I will call the hostess,” Ishaq Ahmadi said. And that, perversely, made her frown.

“Why?” she demanded. “You’re my husband, aren’t you?”

His eyes probed her, and she shrugged uncomfortably. “Why are you looking at me like that? Why don’t you want to touch me?”

She wanted him to touch her. Wanted his heat on her body again, because when he touched her, even in anger, she felt safe.

He made no reply, merely lifted his hands, brushed aside her own feeble fingers which were again fumbling with the top button, and began to undo her shirt.

“Have you stopped wanting me?” she wondered aloud.

His head bent over his task, only his eyes shifted to connect with hers. “You are overplaying your hand,” he advised softly, and she felt another little thrill of danger whisper down her spine. Her brain evaded the discomfort.

“Did you commission work from me or something? Is that how we met?” she asked. She specialized in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern designs, painting entire rooms to give the impression that you were standing on a balcony overlooking the Gulf of Corinth, or in the Alhambra palace. But what were the chances that a wealthy Arab would want a Western woman to paint trompe l’oeil fifteenth-century mosaic arches on his palace walls when he probably had the real thing?

“We met by accident.”

“Oh.” She wanted him to clarify, but couldn’t concentrate. Not when his hands were grazing the skin of her breasts, revealed as he unbuttoned her shirt. She looked into his face, bent close over hers, but his eyes remained on his task. His aftershave was spicy and exotic.

“It seems strange that you have the right to do this when you feel like a total stranger,” she observed.

“You insisted on it,” he reminded her dryly. He seemed cynically amused by her. He still didn’t believe that she had forgotten, and she had no idea why. What reason could she have for pretending amnesia? It seemed very crazy, unless…unless she had been running away from him.

Perhaps it was fear that had caused her to lose her memory. Psychologists did say you sometimes forgot when remembering was too painful.

“Was I running away from you, Ishaq?”

“You tell me the answer.”

She shook her head. “They say the unconscious remembers everything, but…”

“I am very sure that yours does,” Ishaq Ahmadi replied, pulling the front of her shirt open to reveal her small breasts in a lacy black bra.

She knew by the involuntary intake of his breath that he was not unaffected. His jaw clenched and he stripped the shirt from her, his breathing irregular.

She wasn’t one for casual sex, and she had never been undressed by a stranger, which was what this felt like. The sudden blush of desire that suffused her was disconcerting. So her body remembered, even if her conscious mind did not. Anna bit her lip. What would it be like, love with a man who seemed like a total stranger? Would her body instinctively recognize his touch?

She realized that she wanted him to make the demand on her. The thought was sending spirals of heat all through her. But instead of drawing her into his arms, he turned his back to toss her shirt onto a chair.

“What will I remember about loving you, Ishaq?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, and she turned away, dejected, overcome with fatigue and reluctant to think, and lifted her arms behind her to the clasp of her bra. She winced as a bruised elbow prevented her.

Her breath hissed with the pain. “You’ll have to undo this.”

She felt his hands at work on the hook of her bra, that strange, half electrifying, half comforting heat that made her yearn for something she could not remember. She wondered if they had been sexually estranged. She said, “Is there a problem between us, Ishaq?”

“You well know what the problem between us is. But it is not worth discussing now,” he said, his voice tight.

She thought, It’s serious. Her heart pinched painfully with regret. To think that she had had the luck to marry a man like this and then had not been able to make it work made her desperately sad. He was like a dream come to life, but…she had obviously got her dream and then not been able to live in it.

If they made up now, when she could not remember any of the grievances she might have, would that make it easier when she regained her full memory?

As the bra slipped away from her breasts, Anna let it fall onto the bed, then turned to face him, lifting her arms to his shoulders.

“Do you still love me?” she whispered.

His arms closed around her, his hands warm on her bare skin. Her breasts pressed against his silk shirt as her arms cupped his head. He looked down into her upturned face with a completely unreadable expression in his eyes.

“Do you want me, Ishaq?” she begged, wishing he would kiss her. Why was he so remote? She felt the warmth of his body curl into hers and it was so right.

A corner of that hard, full mouth went up and his eyes became sardonic. “Believe me, I want you, or you would not be here.”

“What have I done?” she begged. “I don’t remember anything. Tell me what I’ve done to make you so angry with me.”

His mouth turned up with angry contempt. “What do you hope to gain with this?” he demanded with subdued ferocity, and then, as if it were completely against his will, his grip tightened painfully on her, and with a stifled curse he crushed his mouth against her own.

He was neither gentle nor tender. His kiss and his hands were punishing, and a part of her revelled in the knowing that, whatever his intentions, he could not resist her. She opened her mouth under his, accepting the violent thrust of his hungry, angry tongue, and felt the rasp of its stroking run through her with unutterable thrill, as if it were elsewhere on her body that he kissed her.

Just for a moment she was frightened, for if one kiss could do this to her, how would she sustain his full, passionate lovemaking? She would explode off the face of the earth. His hand dropped to force her against him, while his hardened body leapt against her. She tore her mouth away from his, gasping for the oxygen to feed the fire that wrapped her in its hot, licking fingers.

“Ishaq!” she cried, wild with a passion that seemed to her totally new, as the heat of his hands burned her back, her hips, clenched against the back of her neck with a firm possessiveness that thrilled her. “Oh, my love!”

Then suddenly he was standing away from her, his hands on her wrists pulling her arms down, his eyes burning into hers with a cold, hard, suspicious fury that froze the hot rivers of need coursing through her.

“What is it?” she pleaded. “Ishaq, what have I done?”

He smiled and shook his head, a curl of admiring contempt lifting his lip. “You are unbelievable,” he said. “Where have you learned such arts, I wonder?”

Anna gasped. He suspected her of having a lover? Could it be true? She shook her head. It wasn’t possible. Whatever he might suspect, whatever he might have done, whatever disagreement was between them, she knew that she was simply not capable of taking a lover while pregnant with her husband’s child.

“From you, I suppose,” she tried, but he brushed that aside with a snort of such contemptuous disbelief she could go no further.

“Tell me why you won’t love me,” she challenged softly, but nothing was going to crack his angry scorn now.

“But you have just given birth, Anna. We must resign ourselves to no lovemaking for several weeks, isn’t it so?”

She drew back with a little shock. “Oh! Yes, I—” She shook her head. He could still kiss her, she thought. He could hold her. Maybe that was the problem, she thought. A man who would only touch his wife if he wanted sex. She would certainly hate that.

“I wish I could remember!”

He reached down and lifted up the silky white pyjama top, holding it while she obediently slipped her arms inside. He had himself well under control now, he was as impersonal as a nurse, and she tasted tears in her throat for the waste of such wild passion.

Funny how small her breasts were. Last time, they had been so swollen with the pregnancy…hadn’t they? She remembered the ache of heavy breasts with a pang of misery, and then reminded herself, But that’s all in the past. I have a baby now.

“Do you think I’ll remember?” she whispered, gazing into his face as he buttoned the large pyjama shirt. It seemed almost unbearable that she should feel such pain for a baby who had died two years ago and not remember the birth of the beautiful creature who was so alive, and whose cry she could suddenly hear over the subdued roar of the engines.

“I am convinced of it.”

“She has inherited your birthmark,” she murmured with a smile, touching his eye with a feather caress and feeling her heart contract with tenderness. “Is that usual?”

He finished the last button and lifted his eyes to hers. “What is it you hope to discover?” he asked, his hands pulling at her belt with cool impersonality. “The… Ahmadi mark,” he said. “It proves beyond a doubt that Safiyah and I come of the same blood. Does that make you wary?”

“Did you think I had a lover?” she asked. “Did you think it was someone else’s child?”

His eyes darkened with the deepest suspicion she had yet seen in them, and she knew she had struck a deep chord. “You know that much, do you?”

Somewhere inside her an answering anger was born. “You’re making it pretty obvious! Does the fact that you’ve now been proven wrong make you think twice about things, Ishaq?”

“Wrong?” he began, then broke off, stripped the suede pants down her legs and off, and knelt to hold the pyjama bottoms for her. His hair was cut over the top in a thick cluster of black curls whose vibrant health reflected the lampglow. Anna steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder and stifled the whispering desire that melted through her thighs at the nearness of him.

They were too big. In fact, they were men’s pyjamas.

“Why don’t I have a pair of pyjamas on the plane?” she asked.

“Perhaps you never wear them.”

He spoke softly, but the words zinged to her heart. She shivered at the thought that she slept naked next to Ishaq Ahmadi. She wondered what past delights were lurking, waiting to be remembered.

“And you do?”

“I often fly alone,” he said.

It suddenly occurred to her that he had told her absolutely nothing all night. Every single question had somehow been parried. But when she tried to formulate words to point this out, her brain refused.

Even at its tightest the drawstring was too big for her slim waist, and the bunched fabric rested precariously on the slight swell of her hips. Ishaq turned away and lifted the feathery covers of the bed to invite her to slip into the white, fluffy nest.

She moved obediently, groaning as her muscles protested at even this minimal effort. Once flat on her back, however, she sighed with relief. “Oh, that feels good!”

Ishaq bent to flick out the bedside lamp, but her hand stopped him. “Bring me the baby,” she said.

“You are tired and the baby is asleep.”

“But she was crying. She may be hungry.”

“I am sure the nurse has seen to that.”

“But I want to breast-feed her!” Anna said in alarm.

He blinked as if she had surprised him, but before she could be sure of what she saw in his face his eyelids hooded his expression.

“Tomorrow will not be too late for that, Anna. Sleep now. You need sleep more than anything.”

On the last word he put out the light, and it was impossible to resist the drag of her eyelids in the semi-darkness. “Kiss her for me,” she murmured, as Lethe beckoned.

“Yes,” he said, straightening.

She frowned. “Don’t we kiss good-night?”

A heartbeat, two, and then she felt the touch of his lips against her own. Her arms reached to embrace him, but he avoided them and was standing upright again. She felt deprived, her heart yearning towards him. She tried once more.

“I wish you’d stay with me.”

“Good night, Anna.” Then the last light went out, a door opened and closed, and she was alone with the dark and the deep drone of the engines.