Читать книгу The Scandalous Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 37

FOR a moment Hassan was frozen into shocked immobility, scarcely able to believe what had just happened. The impudent minx of a Jackson girl had thrown champagne over him!

Angrily, he wiped both cheeks, aware that people were staring at him, their voices beginning to rise in excited chatter above the brief, stunned silence which had followed their very public row. But he barely paid them any attention. He was too busy watching the tottering sway of ‘Cinderella’ Jackson’s silver-clad bottom as she moved through the ballroom, as swiftly as her ridiculously high heels would allow.

He could see his bodyguard fixing him with a questioning look, as if seeking permission to go after her and give her a crash course in royal protocol. But Hassan gave a decisive shake of his head as a cold realisation crept over him.

How dare she humiliate him in such a way? And in public! Why, if a man in his own country had done such a thing, he would have been thrown immediately into the city jail!

His mouth hardening into a grim line, he began to follow her, his long stride quickly covering the distance between them. Now he was close enough to hear the clatter of her high heels on the marble floor and see the gleam of light as it highlighted the curve of her silver-beaded bottom. He saw her glance over her shoulder, her blue eyes widening when she saw him behind her, and a brief sensation of anticipation rippled over his skin as she increased her speed.

Silently, he pursued her, pleased when she briefly hesitated between two corridors—one wide and one narrow. She wouldn’t have a clue where she was going, he thought with satisfaction, whereas he knew well the labyrinth network of passageways which comprised the Santina palace. Hadn’t he and Alex played hide-and-seek in them often enough when they were children?

She chose the narrower passage and he continued to shadow her, knowing that he could easily have caught up with her there and then but he was enjoying the thrill of the chase too much to want to end it. It was like being back in battle, his senses honed and heightened as he pursued his quarry….

Only when the main body of the palace had retreated and the corridors were bare of servants did he surge forward. She whirled round as he backed her into a corner, her breath coming in short little pants. Her abundant curls were spilling down over the silver dress, one thigh was pushed forward as if to showcase its honed perfection, and he thought that he had never seen a woman look so wild and so wanton.

‘Got you,’ he said, his voice a triumphant murmur, but he didn’t touch her.

Ella stared at him, her heart pounding so hard that it felt as if it was about to leap out of her chest. She was hot and out of breath. Running in these heels had been a stupid thing to try to do because her feet now felt as if they were on fire. What had possessed her to react like that? To dare to chuck a drink over a man who was now towering above her looking like the devil incarnate, a patch of his pristine white shirt clinging wetly to his chest. A man who was different from every other man she’d ever met. Well, she had done it, and now she just had to keep her nerve.

‘You don’t scare me!’ she blurted out, but she wondered how convincing her words were as she met emptiness of his eyes.

‘Don’t I?’ Hassan leaned in a little. ‘Then maybe I need to try a little harder. Most people would be pretty scared of my reaction if they’d done what you’ve just done.’ He observed her rapid breathing which was causing the silver beads over her breasts to shimmer in a provocative sway. And suddenly it was difficult to remember just why he was so angry. He swallowed, so unbearably turned on that for a moment he could not speak. ‘That was some scene you created back there.’

Ella told herself that she ought to tread carefully. That she was dealing with someone who had danger written all over him. Someone who she, with her laughable lack of experience, didn’t have a clue how to deal with. The voice of reason was telling her to try to make it right between them, yet the apology she knew she really ought to make stayed stubbornly unspoken. For how could she forget those harsh things he’d said?

‘Who cares about a scene?’ she questioned stubbornly.

He met the defiance in her ice-blue eyes. ‘Clearly you don’t, but then you don’t have any reputation to wreck, do you?’

Actually, she did. She’d worked hard to build her own business and she survived on the income it provided. But the irony was that causing a scene with the sheikh was likely to bring new customers flocking to her, instead of taking their custom elsewhere. The fact that she was even mixing with royals would be great publicity. A bit of scandal never seemed to affect her client base. Hadn’t she noticed a definite growth in business whenever her father’s face was splashed all over the papers, no matter how dodgy the story? ‘And you do, I suppose?’

‘Of course I do!’ he snapped. ‘I am the ruler of a desert kingdom and my word is law. In fact, I make the laws.’

‘Wow! Mr. Powerful,’ she mocked.

Her insolence was turning him on almost as much as it was infuriating him. He felt a muscle working in his cheek and an even more insistent throbbing at his groin. ‘And I have people who look up to me who will not enjoy reading that their king had champagne flung at him by a brazen English nobody.’

‘I should have thought that people would have been used to your flings by now!’ she returned, and for one brief moment she thought she saw the edges of his lips tilt in the beginning of a smile. But it quickly disappeared and so did her small moment of triumph as she reminded herself that this man was the enemy. ‘Anyway, you should have thought about that before you started laying into my family.’

‘By telling the truth, you mean?’

‘It’s not—’

‘Oh, please, spare me the empty defence!’ His eyes took on a look of challenge. ‘You’re denying that your father is no stranger to the bankruptcy court? Or that your sister’s awful singing brought the house down, but not in a good way? Or that the Crown Prince has dumped his long-term girlfriend and fiancée in order to marry your other sister?’

Ella gritted her teeth. ‘If only there was another waitress nearby, I’d happily upend another drink all over you!’

‘Would you now?’ He tilted his head to one side and studied her. ‘And do you make a habit of resorting to playground tactics?’

‘Only if I’m forced to deal with the class bully!’ Ella stared at him with growing bewilderment. Why did she feel this overpowering sense of frustration which was making her want to pummel her fists against the solid wall of his chest? ‘Actually, I’ve never done anything like that before.’

‘No? You just thought you’d make an exception for me, did you?’ He stared at her, wanting to crush her rosy lips beneath his. Wanting more than that. Wanting to feel the soft surrender of her body as it gave itself up to the hard dominance of his own. ‘I wonder why?’

The arrogant flick of his gaze made her skin grow heated. ‘Because you’re overbearing, overopinionated and ridiculously traditional? Could that give you some sort of clue? You spout such outdated and macho comments that it’s obviously made me react to you in an uncharacteristically primitive way!’ Raking her fingers back through the wayward spill of her curls, she glared at him. ‘And you obviously haven’t got a clue what the modern world is like.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You think that I am a stranger to the modern world?’

Suddenly, Ella wasn’t sure what she thought. Not any more. Not when he was staring at her so intently and every cell in her body was responding to that black-eyed scrutiny. Her senses seemed to be short-circuiting her brain, but there was one thing she was certain of. He’d just lumped her in with the rest of her family and he seemed stubbornly unrepentant about doing it. Maybe it was time he discovered how it felt to be treated as if you were simply a stereotype, instead of an individual.

She met the challenge in his eyes with one of her own. ‘Yes, I think you’re a stranger to the modern world! How can you not be? How can you know how most people live if you’re stuck in some remote desert country where you probably travel round by camel and sleep in a tent?’

For a moment Hassan could scarcely believe his ears. Camel? It was true that his most recent months had been spent on horseback as he had battled to settle the long-running dispute on the borders of his country. But although much in his life involved the ancient and the traditional, he had also insisted on embracing every new technology, for he recognised that there could be no real progress without it. He thought about his fleet of cars, the state-of-the-art aircraft and the engineers he employed to search for ever more eco-friendly alternative travel.

‘Now you insult my land,’ he observed furiously. ‘And thus my honour.’

‘As you did mine!’

He met the rebellious gleam in her blue eyes. ‘I said nothing which isn’t true. Whereas you have just passed judgement on my homeland without knowing a single thing about it.’

‘Well, that’s tough. Deal with it. And now, if you wouldn’t mind stepping out of the way, I’d like to leave.’

Hassan tensed. Was it her continuing defiance which made something inside him tighten? Something which had been tightening ever since he’d first started dancing with her and felt her soft and fragrant body in his arms.

Women never answered him back like this. They usually went out of their way to accommodate him. They didn’t hurl champagne at him and then storm away, wiggling their silver bottom in a provocative movement which was designed to ensnare his fast-hardening body. For all her professed disdain of him and all he stood for, there was an undeniable sexual charge sparking through the air between them. It had been there from the outset and nothing they’d said or done had diminished it. He could read her hunger in the darkening of her eyes and in the flagrant thrust of her nipples as they pushed against the tiny silver beads of her dress.

He felt urgent sexual desire fire him up, heating his blood with its insistent throb. He’d barely been a week back from battle when he had flown here to Alex’s party and the contrast between this glittering event and the months of arid hardship could not have been greater.

Warfare put many pressures on a man and perhaps the greatest of those was the absence of sex. For so long now he had sublimated his fierce sexual appetite in battle that it had become almost habitual. In some ways he welcomed it, for not only did it channel his energy into fighting, it also made him feel powerful. It gave him strength to know that he could subdue the weaknesses of the flesh. Yet how could he have forgotten what it felt like to be in thrall to his senses? And how could he not but thank a fate which had conspired to put him alone with a beautiful and eager young woman?

He looked around. The corridor was empty and bare of staff. Should he take her here and risk discovery? Or simply give her a taste of what would inevitably follow—the teasing brush of his lips over hers, the butterfly caress of his fingers over her jewel-covered breasts?

Yet he recognised that this tumble-haired brunette was a challenge, and that only fuelled his hunger, for he loved to conquer and to tame. That was his default mechanism. A way of inflicting control onto a life which had been filled with chaos.

Now that his anger had dissipated, there remained only desire. He remembered her defiance and the way she had struck him and his heart began to thunder. How it would please him to see her subdued. To hear her begging him to enter her, her fiery spirit temporarily silenced by her hunger for him!

His eyes were drawn downwards to see the way she had wriggled a restless-looking foot and he gave a slow smile, for he could read women as well as he could read his beloved falcons when he raced them over the desert skies.

‘Your feet are aching,’ he observed softly.

Ella’s eyes widened, momentarily disarmed by the lazy question in his. Had he read her mind? And what was it about this quiet corner of the palace which made her feel as if they had been suddenly cloaked in a quiet intimacy, so that she responded to him frankly? ‘My shoes are killing me,’ she admitted.

‘Then take them off. Isn’t that what Cinderella is supposed to do?’

The words were faintly erotic and Ella opened her mouth to protest, but when she thought about it, why not? Loads of women shed their shoes at parties. Some even secreted a pair of pumps in their bag. She made as if to bend but before she could move Hassan was there before her, crouching down to slide off both her high heels with a dexterity which made her think he might have done that kind of thing before. Briefly, he ran a thumb across her cramped toes and they gave an appreciative little wriggle before he put them down to meet the delicious coolness of the marble floor.

He straightened up, his black eyes mocking as they looked at her. ‘Better?’

Ella nodded. Sure, her feet now felt comfortable and free, but stupidly she was missing his touch. Because hadn’t it felt like some kind of delicious intimacy to have the sheikh’s fingers on her toes? She forced a smile.

‘Much better,’ she said.

He handed her the shoes. ‘Are you heading back to the party?’

Hooking her fingers through the glittery slingbacks, she shook her head. She couldn’t possibly go back now, and not just because she had left the ballroom in such dramatic circumstances. She just couldn’t face any more of this wretched partying, supposedly celebrating an engagement which nobody seemed happy about. Except for the happy couple, presumably.

‘No. I think I’ll call it a night. I need to organise a car to get back to my hotel.’

‘I’ll walk you back to the main entrance.’

Ella’s heart raced as fear and desire fused into a molten ache at the base of her belly. It was something to do with the way he was looking at her, her sudden awareness of how close he was. Close enough for her to be able to inhale his distinctly masculine scent, just as he’d done on the dance floor. And to remember him sliding the shoes from her feet like some old-fashioned fairy tale, in reverse. Because wasn’t the prince supposed to put the shoe on? She felt the rapid thunder of her heart. ‘No, honestly. I’ll be fine.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You know where you’re going, do you?’

For the first time she became aware of her surroundings, of the dim silence of the cool corridor, in a network of passageways which all seemed to look exactly the same. She suddenly realised that there were no sounds of revelry drifting towards them and that they must be miles away from the other guests. But then she’d run like the wind, hadn’t she? Running to escape him wearing too-high heels which explained her aching feet and why she now found herself in some unknown corner of a strange palace.

Should she brazen it out? Tell him that she’d find her own way back and she didn’t need his help, thank you very much? That would be the most sensible thing. To walk away with her pride intact, and with some sort of uneasy truce having been reached between them. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Are you sure? It’s a bit of a maze. And I’d hate to think of you wandering around in circles for hours.’

‘But a maze which you can negotiate with the ease of a born navigator, I suppose?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘As it happens, I do have a superb sense of direction, but I also happen to know the palace well. I used to spend a lot of time here with Alex when we were children.’

Ella’s fingers tightened around the straps of her shoes. It was strange to imagine this towering man with the cruel face ever having been a child. Had he told her that to emphasise his own royal credentials, reinforcing the fact that her family were simply arriviste social climbers?

Yet as she met the mockery in his black eyes, she realised that maybe she should do the grown-up thing and accept his offer. The last thing she wanted was to spend hours walking around this cavernous place and wandering into some part of the palace which was out of bounds.

She need never see him again—except, presumably, at the wedding, when her sister would marry his friend. And surely it would be better to part on cordial terms, particularly after she’d thrown champagne all over him. In fact, it was surprising and rather reassuring that he seemed to have forgotten all about that.

This time her smile was wider, even if it didn’t feel exactly joyful. But then joy wasn’t a word you really associated with a man whose eyes were so hard and so black they looked as if they’d been made from some rare, cold stone. ‘In that case, yes, please. I wouldn’t mind being pointed in the right direction.’

Hassan allowed a brief smile to curve the edges of his lips. ‘Let’s go,’ he said softly, knowing instantly the route he was about to take.

They made no sound as they moved through the high-ceilinged passage, but Ella was so aware of him that she didn’t take in any of the spectacular surroundings. For once, the ornate decor was completely overshadowed by Hassan himself. Without the added inches of her heels, his height and his breadth were almost intimidating. Did he always dominate his surroundings and the people in them? she wondered.

His question broke into her muddled thoughts. ‘How long are you staying on the island?’

‘I’m flying back to London tomorrow.’

‘After lunch?’

Ella shrugged, dreading the thought of yet another formal meal while people looked down their noses at her and her family. She’d been hoping to escape and slip back to England straight after breakfast but from what she understood attendance at the lunch seemed to be mandatory. She was quickly learning that you weren’t allowed to say no to royals. ‘Yes.’

Hearing the note of heavy resignation in her voice, Hassan glanced down at her. She wasn’t doing anything he had expected her to do. He’d expected a little more gratitude that he’d forgiven her for her shocking display of temper, and the seductive removal of her shoes would usually have guaranteed that by now she’d be glancing up at him from beneath her lashes and flirting like crazy. But she was doing no such thing. Instead her gaze seemed fixed firmly ahead of her, like a runner who had their eyes on the finish line. Like someone longing to reach their destination.

Was she?

Or was she just trying to dampen down the desire which had been so apparent since they’d first set eyes on each other? He let his eyes linger on her body as she moved. The shimmer of her silver dress was enhancing her willowy frame and the thick gleam of her dark hair made him want to run his fingers through it. And somehow her bare toes, with their gleam of silver polish, were much sexier without the stilt-like shoes he’d just removed. He felt a renewed stab of lust.

‘So would you like a glass of champagne before you leave?’ he questioned. ‘Or is that just asking for trouble?’

‘Champagne?’ It was the hint of unexpected humour in his voice which made her waver, until she reminded herself of her dramatic exit from the ballroom. She stared up at him, her hair shimmying around her face. ‘But I don’t want to go back to the party.’

‘I know. But since we’re right by my own suite, I thought you might like to see it.’ His lips curved into a smile. ‘Especially as it happens to contain some fabulous paintings.’

It was ironic that he seemed unwittingly to have hit on the one thing designed to make her heart beat faster and yet Ella’s one feeling was one of disappointment. It seemed that all men were predictably similar, whether they were desert princes or hedge fund managers. ‘As in, “Come up and see my etchings,” I suppose?’ she questioned sarcastically. ‘Gosh, you really do need to take a refresher course when you’re trying to chat up a woman!’

‘I had no idea that I was dealing with such an expert in chat-up lines,’ he murmured. ‘Or perhaps you just don’t like beautiful paintings?’

She heard the subtle put-down. There was that judgement of his all over again. Did he think she was too common to appreciate anything of beauty, that a Jackson would only ever enjoy some mindless pap on TV, or flicking through an undemanding glossy magazine? The anger which she’d thought had been extinguished now began to simmer once more. But infuriatingly, it was manifesting itself in the prickle of her breasts and a soft, melting feeling at the fork of her thighs. It was making her throat dry just to look at him, and her heart fluttered madly. ‘Or perhaps I just don’t like strange men coming on to me with sexual innuendo?’

‘Ah, Cinders, Cinders,’ he mocked as he watched the battle between her provocative words and her blossoming body. And wasn’t it echoing the same battle which was taking place in his own? ‘I was simply talking about art, yet all you seem to want to talk about is sex. And just what is your real name, by the way?’

‘It’s Ella,’ she said, her head spinning. ‘And will you please stop twisting everything I say? I don’t want to talk about sex!’

‘Neither do I,’ he agreed unexpectedly. ‘Since talking about it is a complete waste of time.’

Before she properly realised what he was going to do, he had pulled her into his arms. Pulled her right up close to his aroused body and, with a thrill of shocked recognition, she was letting him. An urgent kind of hunger overwhelmed her as she felt the weight of his hands at her back. The touch of his fingers on her bare skin was as electric as it had been on the dance floor and it had precisely the same sizzling effect on her. Only this time they weren’t in a crowd with the curious eyes of the other dancers on them. This time they were dangerously alone.

She opened her mouth to say something but by then his curiously empty eyes had begun to blaze into life as he lowered his head towards her. And then it was too late.

His lips came down to meet hers and Ella’s mouth opened of its own volition, and she found herself unwillingly lost in the most sensational kiss of her life.