Читать книгу Modern Romance May 2017 Books 5 – 8 - Bella Frances, Louise Fuller - Страница 20
ОглавлениеGABI WAS RELUCTANT to enter.
But for reasons of her own: she was scared she might like it.
Alim stood aside and Gabi stepped into relative silence.
She put down the shoes she carried in her hand, along with the small overnight bag, and felt him walk up behind her.
Her bare feet were caressed by soft rugs; oil lamps gave off a gentle glow that danced along the walls, though bore testimony to the fierce winds outside.
It was a haven indeed.
And she fought to keep her guard raised.
The peregrine note she had first breathed in when they’d danced was more prominent for Gabi now; it hung in the air and enveloped her from all around. It was hard to be scared with Alim so close by her side.
Gabi was angry, though.
‘There is no one else here,’ Alim informed her as he watched her walk through to the main living area.
She looked up at the high ceiling and felt terribly small. ‘So there’s no point screaming.’
Alim merely sighed. ‘Gabi, you really are far too dramatic. What I meant when I said that we are alone is that there is no one here to disturb us and no one to overhear us when we are talking.’
He wanted to make it very clear to Gabi that whatever was said was just between them.
For now.
A baby certainly would change things—Violetta would have even more work cut out for her but at the very least he hoped by the end of this trip Gabi would leave knowing that both she and the baby would be taken care of.
Since he had found out that Gabi had been on maternity leave, Alim had been trying to find out what he could and using his best contacts to garner information.
It had proven surprisingly difficult.
Gabi did not work for the Grande Lucia; however, he had found out that indeed she had been on maternity leave. There was some recent CCTV footage of Gabi in the foyer of the Grande Lucia, speaking with a woman who handed Gabi a baby.
Alim had watched the grainy footage and had found himself holding his breath and zooming in on the image, desperate for a better glimpse of his child.
His child!
A fierce surge of protectiveness had hit him and his plans to bring Gabi to the desert had increased in their urgency.
He still did not know whether it was a boy or a girl.
And, from her silence, Alim was starting to realise that Gabi was in no rush to enlighten him with the news.
‘I think,’ Alim said, ‘there is rather a lot to discuss, don’t you?’ But Gabi shook her head when he offered an opening for her to tell him.
‘I have nothing to say to you.’
He was about to state that that was certainly not the case, but for now Alim chose to bide his time.
She was shocked, he accepted that, and angry too, so he offered her the chance to regroup.
‘Why don’t you go and get changed?’ Alim suggested, and gestured to a curtained area.
‘Changed?’
‘Have a bath and get changed and then we can speak.’
‘Alim, I’m stranded in the desert against my will and you expect me to go and slip into something more comfortable.’
‘I don’t like that suit.’ Alim shrugged. ‘And from memory neither do you.’
She just stood there.
The truth was, Gabi didn’t really have anything more comfortable to put on.
Well, some pyjamas and another awful black suit and a small tube skirt and top.
Her packing really had been done in haste.
‘My suits are all I’ve really got with me,’ she admitted.
‘I’m sure there will be alternatives in there.’
Again he gestured to the curtained area but still she did not move.
‘Gabi, you are not stranded. If you want me to arrange the helicopter I shall do so, you just have to say the word.’
Gabi didn’t, though.
She turned and walked to the area that Alim had gestured to and pulled aside heavy drapes.
It was like stepping inside a giant jewellery box.
The walls were lined with thick red velvet, which she ran her hand over, and jewelled lights dotted the ceiling.
It was a trove of exotic treasures with a huge, beautifully dressed bed in the centre.
She walked over and upon it lay a dark robe. It was too dark to make out the colour but the fabric when she held it was as soft as the velvet walls.
There was more—a dressing table adorned with stoppered bottles. Gabi picked up one and inhaled the musky fragrance then caught sight of herself in a large gilded mirror.
She looked terrible. Her hair was wild and filled with sand and the mascara she had put on in the bathroom of the plane was halfway down her cheeks.
Gabi looked over to a screened area and curiosity beckoned her to investigate.
The lighting was subtle and it was even darker behind the screen, but she could see a deep bath and it had been filled most of the way. Gabi put in her hand, assuming that the water would be cold.
Yet it was not.
Her fingers lingered, feeling the oily warmth for a moment, and she simply didn’t understand so she walked back out to Alim.
He was lying on some cushions, propped up on one elbow and completely unfazed by her rather angry approach.
‘You said that there was no one else here.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘So who filled my bath?’
He looked over to where she stood and smiled at the suspicion in her eyes and then the slight startle in them when he gave his response.
‘Me.’
‘You?’
‘The water comes directly from hot desert springs and I added some oils that are supposed to aid in relaxation.’
A slight shiver went through her, albeit a pleasurable one, as she thought of Alim here alone and readying the place for her arrival. But Gabi was in no mood to relax.
She wanted her wits about her, and knew that she needed to keep every one of them firing in his presence.
‘Did you select the robe?’ Gabi asked with a slight edge to her voice.
‘No,’ Alim responded. ‘That would be Violetta.’
‘So she lays out the clothes for your tarts?’
‘Violetta has worked hard to ensure we are both comfortable and alone. We shall dine when you are ready to.’
‘I ate on the plane.’
‘Then there’s no rush. Take your time.’
Gabi hadn’t heard those words in a very long time; there simply weren’t enough minutes in any day to get all she wanted to done.
Taking her time to get changed for dinner sounded like a reward on its own.
She wanted, for argument’s sake, to say something scathing, but there was nothing that came to mind. Gabi wanted to point out that she was here against her wishes.
Yet her wishes said otherwise, for the truth was that she wanted to be there.
‘Gabi.’ He tried to capture her gaze but she would not let him. ‘There is unfinished business between us.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Are you saying that you haven’t thought of me?’ Alim asked.
‘I’ve tried everything I can not to.’
‘Did it work?’
No.
Her silence said it for her, but then came the surprise when Alim spoke.
‘It didn’t work for me either.’
Her eyes flicked to his and she saw the burn of desire there, and while she was angry it was tempered with relief. Absolute relief, not just at seeing him but that clearly Alim had wanted to see her again too.
Gabi had ached not only because of the sudden end to their affair but its lack of closure.
There was so much unanswered.
She’d felt as if she had been slowly going out of her mind these past months.
Not just about the pregnancy but over and over she had relived their night together, and the morning after, like a perpetual film that restarted the moment it was over, pausing, analysing and trying to work out where it had all gone wrong.
And she wanted to know.
‘Go,’ Alim said.
He watched her turn and disappear and he was glad of it, for there was such dark temptation between them and that did not make for sensible conversation.
In their months apart he had told himself that possibly he looked back at their time through rose-coloured glasses and that abstinence had made his memory of her grow fonder.
Not so.
And consequently he dismissed her.
* * *
She turned, and as the drape swished closed behind her it became a boudoir indeed, Gabi thought as she returned to the dimly lit cavern.
She took off her suit and top and then her underwear and there was no feeling of being rushed or concern that she might be disturbed.
Oh, there were no locks or doors but this space was so deeply feminine she just knew it had been assigned to her.
Assigned.
Gabi stepped into the bath. She did not like that word, though she knew that it was the correct one.
This mini desert kingdom was a lover’s hideaway.
But she would not be his lover tonight.
Her anger at being brought here against her will served only to inflame her temper, and her blood was surely a full degree warmer as she could feel its warm passage through her veins and the weight and heat in her breasts and groin.
She wrenched herself from the bath but there were no towels or sheets to drape herself in and Gabi was certainly not going to ask him for one. And she did not put on the oils left out for her, or the rouge for her lips or kohl.
Instead, she ran a silver comb through her hair and still dripping wet she pulled on the robe over her naked body. It was a deep purple and the scooped neckline showed too much cleavage while the velvet clung to her skin. She could deny to herself her desire for Alim, but the reflection in the mirror stated otherwise.
Her eyes were glittering, her cheeks were flushed and it looked as if she had just come.
Or was about to.
Alim was sitting at a low table and watched as Gabi walked out.
The gown clung becomingly to her skin, her hair fell in one long damp coil and was twisted so that it fell over her right shoulder and dripped onto her breast.
‘Oh, you didn’t have to go to all this effort,’ she teased as she took a seat opposite, assuming Violetta had prepared the treats and she simply hadn’t noticed until now.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘I meant,’ Gabi said, her voice a touch shrill, ‘that clearly Violetta has been busy.’
‘I selected the banquet,’ Alim said. He picked up a jewelled flask and poured a clear-looking fluid into her glass. As he did so, a citrus scent coiled up in the air. ‘And Violetta ensured it was all prepared, as best as it could be. However, while you were bathing I took care of the last-minute details.’
Her eye roll told her she did not believe him for a moment.
‘You don’t seem to understand the privacy afforded us here,’ Alim said as he offered her delicacies. ‘A woman is not brought here to work.’
Gabi peeled open the pastry she had selected; it was plump with succulent meat and ripe, pink pomegranate seeds. Gabi understood his words but she would not succumb to seduction. ‘Why? Because you don’t want her to be too tired for sex?’
He smiled that slow smile and she forgot his might, for he was Alim and they could just as easily be in the Grande Lucia, smiling across the foyer.
‘Or too tired for conversation,’ Alim said. ‘Or too tired to lie on a clear night and look at the stars. There are many reasons other than sex to come deep into the desert. Let’s explore them, shall we?’
And Gabi breathed out for he had done it again—just as she’d thought she had scored a point he trumped her.
Sex was the uncomplicated part.
‘It has been a long time since we have spoken,’ Alim said, inviting conversation.
‘I don’t think there’s anything to discuss.’ She gave him a smile then, but it was far from sweet. ‘Apart from the reason I’m here—your wedding!’ And then the bitter smile faded and for a moment she came close to crumbling and she revealed a little of her pain. ‘How cruel you are!’
‘Gabi, you are not here to plan my wedding. I invented that, just so that we could be alone.’
‘Oh, so you ruin my career because you want a conversation...’ She hesitated because the air between them was potent and she knew it was more than conversation they both craved. It was one of the reasons for her defensiveness because even after everything there remained desire. ‘What is Bernadetta going to say when I return home without the contract?’
‘You will think of something.’
She stared at him in anger and her lips twisted. ‘You know how important work is to me.’
‘As I said, I am sure you will think of something. So, how has it been?’ he pushed for her to open up. ‘Work?’
‘Much the same.’ Gabi selected a plump fig but as the questions began her appetite faded and she found that she was playing with her food.
‘Is it still busy?’ he asked, knowing she had just come back from leave.
‘Extremely.’
She wasn’t going to tell him about the baby, Alim realised. He was almost certain the baby must be his but he had to make sure.
‘So what else have you been doing with your time?’
Gabi gave a small mirthless laugh before answering him. ‘You’ve lost any right to ask about my personal life.’
‘Have you met someone?’ he asked. ‘Is that why you are so uncomfortable to be here?’
A piece of fruit had just found its way to her mouth and he watched as she furiously swallowed, such was her haste to respond.
‘I’m uncomfortable to be here because of what you did to me,’ Gabi said, and she knew that tears flashed in her eyes. She wished she had found a more sophisticated answer but the fact was he had landed her in hell that morning. ‘We don’t all leap out of one bed and dive into the next. You hurt me, Alim, badly. I get that you might have been bored that night and just filling in time...’
‘Never.’
‘Don’t!’ Gabi said, and she stood from the table, tired of any attempt at being polite. She was glad, so glad that there were no staff and they were in the middle of the desert because she could say exactly what was on her mind and as loudly as she chose to! ‘You’d had me already, Alim,’ she shouted. ‘I was fully prepared to leave it at that, to walk out the door and go back to being colleagues, yet you offered me a year. And a job. You made it more! And then you took it away. Did it give you a kick?’
‘Gabi...’ He tried to take her arms, to contain her, but she shook him off.
‘And now you decide that you want to see me again. Well, tough, Alim, I don’t want to see you.’ Great thick tears were streaming down her cheeks, and they both knew that she lied.
It was torture not to see him and agony to be here. He did not move to hold her; instead, he drew her into his arms and it truly was the lesser of two evils because even resisting she sank into them.
‘I did not set out to hurt you,’ Alim told her.
He could feel her anger and the frantic beating of her heart and then she spoke. ‘But you did.’
So badly.
‘That morning I went for breakfast with my father and he told me the diktat had been invoked.’
Gabi frowned as she recalled a conversation that had taken place so many months ago. ‘The same ruling that happened to your father and Fleur?’
‘The same one.’
‘Why couldn’t you have told me this that morning, and saved all this hurt and pain?’
‘Where?’ Alim asked. ‘In the hotel foyer?’
‘No, you have an entire floor of the Grande Lucia at your disposal.’
‘But the laws state that I cannot be alone with a woman I desire unless it is my future bride.’
Desire.
The word made her burn, it made her face feel hot and she wanted to press her cheek into the cool of his robe, so she did.
Yet she could feel the heat from his skin and the thud of his heart as he spoke.
‘Even to work alongside you and want you would be forbidden. When I was showing Raul through the hotel and I came into the ballroom and you were there, I knew it was imperative that I leave or I would have broken the rules by which I have been raised. I can only take a lover here in the desert.’
‘Are you camped out here, then?’ she asked, and looked up. He smiled and for a moment so did Gabi. When she met his eyes, the problems of the world faded; when he smiled like that she forgot the hurt and how cross she was.
‘I have been to the desert,’ Alim said, ‘alone.’
‘Oh.’
He looked at her and her cheeks went a bit pink because she wanted to know about his alone time in the desert.
‘And when I am here I think of you.’
‘And the night we shared?’ she asked, because when exhausted, when wretched, when aching for the memory to fade, the image of them taunted and sleep was no relief for he was there in her dreams.
‘I think of that night,’ Alim said, ‘and I think of this.’
‘This?’
‘Us here together.’
He had been fighting not to bring her here for many months.
He pulled her in tighter so she could feel his arousal. His hand slipped to her back and his fingers explored the top of her spine while still his eyes held hers.
Gabi knew she should resist and not be drawn further under his spell, yet at the same time she told herself it would be the last time.
This was the only time she would be in the desert with him for she would never be tricked into being here again.
His mouth brushed hers and she tried to keep her lips pressed together but as their mouths met again she realised that the feel of him had never left her mind.
Alim’s hand came to the back of her head and as he pressed her in he gave her his tongue.
She accepted. Deeply.
And she offered hers.
They tasted and claimed each other again, while his other hand slid to her breast and took its aching weight.
‘Just once,’ she told him.
And Gabi meant it.
This wasn’t like a break in her diet, this was her absolute rule.
‘Once?’ Alim checked, and his fingers slid between her thighs, sliding along the velvet of her robe and then probing her softly.
He made her feel weak with the promise of more.
‘I mean one night,’ Gabi said as his tongue made indecent work of her ear as she amended her rules. ‘One night and that’s it. I shan’t be your on-call desert lover, Alim.’
Gabi would be more than his desert lover, Alim thought, though he chose not to enlighten her.
With a child between them, once he married she would be his mistress.
Alim just had to tell her, though he felt no guilt withholding that information.
After all, Gabi held the biggest secret of all.
‘Come to bed,’ Alim said.
There, he had decided she would tell him.
Whatever it took.
