Читать книгу Penny Jordan Tribute Collection - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 16

ONE tear followed another down her pale cheeks. She walked on, head down, not comprehending where her unwary feet were taking her, wrapped in her thoughts.

The sun was hot on the back of her neck. Her legs ached and she seemed to have been walking for a long time, but strangely she had no desire to stop. Some instinct beyond her control urged her on. Her blouse was soaked with perspiration and her hair clung damply to her skin. She raised a listless hand to ward off a persistent fly droning angrily next to her ear. Her head felt muzzy, and she was very, very thirsty. She thought longingly of a glass of fresh lime-juice—then she halted suddenly in her tracks and stared back in the direction in which she had come.

She was lost! Completely and absolutely lost. She had broken the first law of the desert. She had wandered away from the sheltering protection of the oasis and no one knew where she had gone.

What was worse, Zahra and Umm Faisal were to visit Saud’s mother during the afternoon, and probably no one would realise that she was missing until she didn’t appear for dinner! The harsh reality of her plight dispersed the woolly misery clouding her brain. No matter how hard she searched the horizon there was no sign of the oasis—no sign of anything apart from the vast solitude of the desert itself.

She had to sit down because her legs suddenly refused to support her any more, and anyway, wasn’t there something about staying put in one place because when you were lost you just wandered round and round in circles, exhausting the body’s pitifully frail defences and making rescue harder? Felicia licked her lips and tasted the salt rimming her top lip. Closing her eyes in despair, she remembered the salt tablets she should have been taking. Sickness and giddiness swept her in alternate waves; her eyes ached from the fierce glare of the sun, everywhere she looked an unending vista of sand upon sand.

At length when it finally sank in that she was well and truly lost, she crept into the lee of one of the sandhills hoping the meagre shade it afforded would provide some protection from the sun’s dehydrating heat.

Nothing moved. The only creature foolish enough to brave the elements was herself—a pale, singularly ill-equipped female.

Time passed. She slept and awoke, stiff and more thirsty than ever. The world was a molten brass bowl with nowhere for her to escape the burning rays of the sun.

She closed her eyes again and tried not to think of the tinkling fountains in the courtyards. Her tongue snaked over cracked lips. Her throat felt as though she had swallowed the entire Sahara. Had her absence been noticed yet? Without her watch she had no means of gauging time.

Slowly at first, and then with growing fear, she acknowledged that by the time anyone did realise she was missing it could be too late.

She would have cried, but she had no tears left. Sick and exhausted, she tried to crawl a little farther across the sand, but fresh waves of nausea racked her, the landscape swayed unsteadily beneath her feet as her eyes stubbornly refused to focus properly.

She gave a dry sob. She was going to die, alone in this harsh environment, her bones picked clean by scavengers and vultures.

Hysteria bubbled up inside her. Stop it! she commanded herself. Nothing would be achieved by giving way to her emotions. She had no one but herself to blame, and anyway, what pleasure did life hold for her now?

The lengthening afternoon sun threw long shadows across the desert. High above the inert figure on the sand, a bird wheeled and hung motionless, a tiny speck in the distance. Its acute hearing, more finely tuned than any human ear, picked up a sound carrying on the clear air and it circled the girl once or twice before winging westward.

Voices impinged upon her consciousness with the imperfect clarity of waves heard from a sea-shell.

Felicia struggled to make sense of what she could hear, but it was too much effort and she succumbed to the desire to close her eyes and keep them closed.

Someone was rolling her over on to her back, touching her skin with hard, sure fingers, and she pushed ineffectively at them, wanting to be left alone in her comfortable, pain-free cocoon of nothingness.

She wasn’t allowed to, though. Those merciless fingers touched and prodded until she was forced to acknowledge their presence.

‘She’s suffering from salt deficiency,’ she heard someone say, ‘and over-exposure. Fortunately she had the sense to keep her face covered. We’d better get her in the Land Rover….’

The Land Rover! She stiffened. The Land Rover was associated with pain, and she had had enough of that, but it was useless, she was being lifted and carried by someone—the same someone who had discussed her so dispassionately—a someone whose identity hovered lazily on the periphery of her awareness. She could feel the rise and fall of the chest against which she was held. It was very comforting to be held thus, and she had a childish desire to remain there, surrendering to the cotton-woolly sensation that made nonsense of her efforts to comprehend what was happening.

‘I’ll drive, Raschid.’

Raschid! Her contentment splintered into a thousand tiny fragments, and her eyelids flickered open as a small moaned protest escaped her cracked lips.

‘It’s all right, Felicia, you are quite safe now,’ Achmed comforted her.

Safe! Weak relief spread through her. Gone was the intense heat, punishing her sensitive skin, but still her body trembled with convulsions of reaction she was powerless to control. Of all her senses only those of touch and smell remained unaffected, and through her trembling palms she felt muscles contracting in what she guessed to be tightly reined anger, the scent of male sweat pungently close to her nostrils as the arms holding her tightened fractionally.

Raschid offered her security and she took it gratefully like a tired child too exhausted to reason, her head dropping like a dust-streaked flower too heavy for the slender stem supporting it.

She remembered now! She had wandered out of the oasis because Raschid had hurt her, but her muddled thoughts could not tell her why. She only knew in his arms were peace and safety, a haven for which she had longed all those weary hours in the blistering sun. She closed her eyes and let her senses dictate her actions. Her fingers curled instinctively into the soft cloth of the dishdasha beneath her cheek, her breath expelled on a soft sigh as she sought and found the opening which gave her access to the sun-warmed male chest. Unaffectedly she turned her face into it, breathing in the scent of male skin, unaware that above her Raschid’s face tightened, a small muscle beating suddenly in his jaw, as he looked down at her passive body.

‘Little fool! She could have died out there….’

‘She gives you her trust, Raschid,’ Achmed murmured, looking from his wife’s uncle to the girl lying against him. ‘It is a precious gift.’

‘She is still unconscious. I doubt if she is aware of anything at all,’ was the uncompromising response. His fingers clenched and emotion broke through the barrier of his reserve. ‘What possessed her to wander out into the desert? If Nadia had not alerted us….’

‘She will tell us when she recovers,’ Achmed told him gently. ‘Now is not the time for recriminations and lectures. Let us praise Allah that she is safe. Thank God Zahra and Umm Faisal are still at Saud’s. They at least have been spared the anxiety. Look,’ he added, his eyes on Felicia’s face, ‘she stirs. She is recovering consciousness.’

Awareness came and went in encroaching and receding waves. Water splashed down on to her face and she drank greedily from the flask that was proffered, but she had barely done more than wet her lips with the life-giving nectar when it was withdrawn.

‘Gently!’ a stern voice warned. ‘Too much will make you sick.’

The effort drained her. She closed her eyes and the world swung away. When she opened them again they were approaching the oasis. She heard Achmed say something to Raschid, and then the Land Rover stopped.

Achmed opened the door. They were in the courtyard of the villa. Nadia came hurrying towards them, her face breaking into a relieved smile when she saw all three of them in the Land Rover.

‘She is safe?’

‘Quite safe,’ Achmed reassured her. ‘I’ll take her up to her room, Raschid.’

‘I’ll do it,’ was his terse reply.

Felicia felt the bed give under their combined weight.

‘Shall I send for Doctor Hamid?’ Nadia asked worriedly.

Raschid was bending over her, and something of her panic must have shown in her eyes, because he said over his shoulder, ‘No need. It’s merely salt deficiency, as I told Achmed, that and too much sun. I’ll deal with it. You get back to Zayad—I heard him crying as we came in.’

‘He caught our anxiety,’ Nadia admitted, glancing at her husband. ‘You must go for Mother and Zahra. They will wonder what has happened. Thank goodness we don’t have to greet them with the news that Felicia is missing. It was a wonder that you found her, Raschid.’

‘Without the falcons I doubt that I would. She had wandered miles from the oasis.’

There was silence, and then cool, detached hands were easing her aching body out of the sand-stained garments on to deliciously cool fresh sheets. From the bathroom she heard the sound of running water—a sound she had longed for during her ordeal. She opened her eyes and discovered that Raschid was standing by her bed. Awareness came back on a floodtide. She had gone out into the desert because she had overheard Raschid discussing her with his sister. Raschid had read Faisal’s letter! She struggled to sit up and was pushed back against the pillows, Raschid’s hands cool against her heated skin.

‘You are badly burned,’ he told her unemotionally. ‘Your skin must be attended to. I would call Nadia to you, but she is too upset.’

‘I can manage,’ Felicia assured him, knowing that she could not.

For a moment his eyes seemed to darken and then he was walking to the door. Long minutes dragged by while she tried to summon the energy to walk to her suitcase. Surely she had brought with her some anti-sunburn cream! She had small hope of it completely easing the heated burning of her skin, but it might ease the pain a little.

She was halfway across the room when an incredulous oath stopped her in her tracks, as Raschid plucked her up and returned her unceremoniously to her bed.

‘What the hell were you doing?’

Tears stung her eyes. She dashed them away, suddenly noticing the tube of cream he held in his hand.

‘I was going to the bathroom,’ she told him. ‘I wanted to have a shower, to comb my hair….’

‘You nearly perish in the desert and all you can think of is brushing your hair?’ He strode to the dressing table and returned with her brush. ‘If I wasn’t sure it’s too late by a considerable number of years to have any effect, I would be tempted to wield this implement on a part of your anatomy where it might produce better results!’

Her face burned.

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ Raschid advised her. ‘You’ve pushed me to my very most limits, Miss Gordon. Believe me, it wouldn’t take very much at all to push me over them! Now sit up.’

She did as he told her, conscious of the scantiness of her brief bra and pants, as he methodically stroked the brush through her hair.

The effect was nerve-tinglingly sensual, but he seemed impervious to it, brushing her hair until it fell round her shoulders in a soft bell.

‘That is your hair disposed of,’ he said grimly, ‘but as far as your shower goes, I’m afraid you’ll have to forgo that in favour of something a little less exhausting. Stay there.’

He disappeared into her bathroom, and came back with a sponge and towel.

‘I want to put some of this cream on your burns, but I think we had better remove some of the dirt first,’ he told her.

‘I can do it myself.’ So this was what he had meant by ‘less exhausting.’ Felicia shuddered at the thought of having to endure the clinical touch of his hands on her body, when she longed for them to caress her in fierce possession.

He didn’t bother to reply, merely pushing her back on to the pillows and disposing of her protests by the simple expedient of ignoring them.

His touch was sure, and strangely relaxing, as he bathed the dust from her tired limbs. There must be something wrong with her, she thought achingly. She was actually enjoying this, even though she knew Raschid felt not a single jot of answering desire. Only when his fingers brushed the exposed curve of her breast did she move, trying to stop the colour rising betrayingly in her cheeks.

Raschid seemed unaware of her tension.

‘Soon be finished,’ he told her coolly—so coolly that she replied crossly, ‘Yes, doctor!’

His eyebrows rose, as he reached for the tube of cream he had placed on the floor.

‘I can manage the cream myself,’ she began hurriedly, but the glint in his eyes warned her that she was treading dangerous ground.

‘I think not,’ he murmured silkily. ‘Now turn over, please.’

She knew better than to defy him, so she presented him with a mutely protesting back, hunching her shoulders and burying her face in the softness of her pillow. Nothing happened and she relaxed her tensed muscles, raising her head to look at Raschid. He was regarding her with glinting anger, coupled with another emotion she could not name.

His fingers were cool against her overheated skin, massaging the cooling lotion into her shoulders with a circular movement at once intensely relaxing and yet somehow subtly seductive.

At first she told herself she was imagining the steely determination she had read in his eyes, but as the pressure of his fingers deepened, their subtle message increasing with each punishing stroke, her breathing became more and more erratic as she fought to control the desire pulsating through her. Her brain screamed at her to tell him to stop, but she lacked the willpower. His hands lifted the heavy weight of her hair off her shoulders, his fingers kneaded the bunched muscles at the base of her neck, until the tension eased.

‘Turn over, Felicia.’

Her heart seemed to be beating in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. She felt his hands slide down to unclip her bra, the weight of his body as he kneeled over her. She closed her eyes, trying to breathe evenly and slowly while she fought for self-control.

Hard fingers slid under her, turning her resisting body. She refused to look at him, glad of the protective darkness of her room. She would not let him see the desire she knew must be in her eyes.

His touch remote, he smoothed more lotion along her burning forearms and neck.

Perhaps she was going mad, she thought hazily. Perhaps she had only imagined the sensuality of those earlier caresses?

Tears welled in her eyes. She lifted her hand surreptitiously to brush them away, but it was pushed away, as Raschid’s hands cupped her face, forcing her to meet his eyes.

‘Tears?’ he whispered mockingly. ‘For whom do you shed them, Felicia Gordon?’

‘Myself.’ One sparkling tear accompanied her forlorn admission, trembling like a diamond against the darkness of Raschid’s skin, and then unbelievably she heard him curse, his arms tightened urgently around her, the warmth of his skin a welcome panacea for her bruises, his mouth brushed her face in light, butterfly kisses, teasing and tantalising, his hands returned to cup her face, so that her lips were forbidden the contact they craved.

‘Well, Felicia Gordon, am I a substitute for Faisal now?’

Faisal! The letter! But it was too late. Her tears flowed faster, her hands going up of their own accord to lock behind the dark head those tormenting few inches away, pulling him down towards her.

‘Please, Raschid!’

Where was her pride? Her determination to keep her love a closely guarded secret? They were gone, swept away in the wild tide of longing that surged through her, destroying the barriers of years. In the darkness her eyes begged silently. His hands moulded the fragile bones of her face, tracing the curve of her mouth which parted involuntarily to press a kiss against their hard warmth.

‘Please what?’ he mocked, his lips a mere breath away from hers.

All her need of him was in her eyes, giving her the message her lips could not frame.

Triumph edged the glittering look that swept her from head to foot, but Felicia closed her mind to it, tormented by a yearning desire to know his full possession just this once.

Moonlight silvered her body as she arched closer to him. Her body felt weak with longing, her hands trembling as she reached feverishly towards him.

‘Very well,’ he murmured at last. ‘But be sure you know who it is who possesses your body, Felicia Gordon,’ he told her as his mouth feathered across hers. ‘Do you know?’

Her mouth dry, Felicia answered his whispered demand with a small nod of her head.

All the promises she had made herself, all the warnings were forgotten. With an inarticulate murmur, she pressed herself against him, and was lost in the punishing ferocity of his kiss, as his lips ceased teasing, and instead swept her into a maelstrom of passion, that left her shaking and vulnerable to the fierce hawk eyes, as they surveyed her bruised mouth and pale face.

Every instinct for self-preservation was sublimated to the desire that swept through her, curling insidiously through her body until a strange lethargy possessed her, and her flesh and bones seemed to melt into the burning heat of Raschid’s skin, until there was no part of her he did not know.

His mouth traced paths of fire along her body, drawing from her a response that would once have shocked her to the core. His hands seemed to know instinctively how to teach her pleasure, and his lips followed their erotic journey, until she was pressing feverish kisses against his shoulders and throat, her hands trembling uncertainly against him as she tried to imitate his own skill.

The speed with which he had turned from cool mockery to heated desire reduced her to a mass of quivering nerve-ends, each one receptive to his every breath. Her need to know his complete possession was like nothing she had ever experienced before; wave after wave of a longing so strong that she could barely contain it, surging through her body.

At one point he paused, and she felt a cool shaft of air, followed by the realisation that now nothing separated them apart from her tiny lace briefs. She caught her breath as she acknowledged the full potency of his desire. His knee parted her thighs, his hands sliding over the softness of her stomach and upwards to cup her breasts, before sliding beneath her and lifting her against the hardness of his own body, crushing her against him, as his mouth possessed hers with heated urgency.

Her fingers touched the smooth muscled back. His mouth left hers, descending to the taut fullness of her breast. He muttered something in Arabic, and all at once the wave of sexual excitement she had been cresting crashed downwards, leaving her floundering in painful reality. What was she doing? She might love Raschid, but he did not love her. Why was he doing this? Not because he wanted her.

Her anguished protest was ignored, her thrashing attempts to evade his embrace stilled, as hard hands gripped her body.

‘Oh no, you don’t!’ he grated in her ear. ‘I don’t play games, Felicia Gordon. Did you really think you could lead me on and then not pay the price?’ He laughed deep in his throat, a feral sound that turned her blood to ice. ‘You may play those games with Faisal, but not with me. And don’t tell me you don’t want me,’ he said softly. ‘Your own body betrays you, and anyway it has gone too far now. Nadia is with Zayad; the others will not return for some time. We have all night to spend together, and whether you are willing or not I intend to stay here with you. When the sun rises tomorrow, Felicia, Faisal will never accept you as his wife.’

He turned her to him before she could speak, leaving her in no doubt as to his intentions. What sort of man was he, she wondered incredulously, that he could cold-bloodedly make love to her, just to prevent Faisal from marrying her, especially when all the time he must know that Faisal no longer wanted her?

Her mind might realise the cruelty of what he was intending, but her body still ached for him. Her skin stung in a thousand places from the sun and sand, and she cringed instinctively from the look she saw in his eyes, as he let her feel the full force of his impatient desire.

She could not plead for mercy. Nothing she could say would stop him from pursuing his reckless course. She turned her head, closing her eyes so that he would not see the betraying shimmer of tears filming their jade depths, tensing every muscle against what she knew now would be a bitter defilement of all her dreams. Raschid must know that Faisal did not want her, so why this?

He meant to humiliate her; she sensed it, and bit down hard on her trembling lip as she felt the determined pressure of his thighs, hurting, unyielding.

‘Don’t play the innocent with me!’ he gritted above her, his fingers grasping her hair and forcing her head round. ‘Or has my nephew got a fetish about virginity that you pander to?’

Her eyes gave her away, her face bone-white as she flinched back.

Tears streaming down her face, she screamed at him, ‘Stop it! Stop it! You know Faisal no longer wants me—I saw the letter. He told me he was writing to you.’

‘Faisal no longer wants you?’ He had gone very still.

‘You know he doesn’t,’ she accused bitterly. ‘I heard you telling your sister that he would never marry me. Because you’d written telling him about my “wanton” behaviour. Is that what this was all about? Another example of my unsuitability to be his wife? Why bother to put yourself out? You’ve already done enough. I would have been gone from here long ago if Faisal hadn’t urged me to spend all my savings.’ She faced him proudly with bitter eyes. ‘Have I suffered enough to pay for my ticket home, or must you humiliate me further?’

Raschid got off the bed, his back to her as he pulled on his clothes.

‘I don’t rape virgins,’ he told her harshly, turning round suddenly, his face suffused with angry colour. ‘What were you thinking of? Has no one ever warned you about pushing a man too far? Think yourself lucky I stopped when I did.’

He turned on his heel, leaving her alone with the shattered fragments of her dreams.

Not until she was quite sure that he would not return did she allow herself to break down, crying until she could cry no more. He had come to her room with one purpose and one only—to deliberately humiliate and denigrate her. Even knowing that Faisal did not want her he had still felt the need to torment and torture her. How he must hate her!

DAWN BROUGHT her no surcease from pain. Her heart felt like a lump of lead. How could she have thought—even for a moment—that Raschid actually wanted her? How could she have been so stupid? She had allowed her own love to blind her to the truth. Bitterly disillusioned, she contemplated the cynicism with which he had made use of her emotions, playing on them until she was too bemused to know what she was doing. That last painful scene her mind shied away from. Perhaps in time she might be able to relive it, but not now.

The bedroom door opened and Nadia walked in.

‘How are you feeling? I looked in earlier, but you were still sleeping, and Raschid said you were not to be disturbed.’

‘How thoughtful of him,’ Felicia said tightly. ‘But I’m fine. I think I’ll get up.’

‘Felicia….’ Nadia said gently, ‘what is wrong? You have been crying. Tell me what is the matter, or I shall go and bring Raschid. Are you not happy with us?’

She could not have hit upon a more effective threat. At the mention of Raschid’s name Felicia went white and then red.

‘Nadia, I must get away from here,’ she burst out desperately. ‘If you really do care anything for me, will you help me?’

‘To do what?’ Nadia asked shrewdly, coming to sit by the bed. ‘Return home, or escape from Raschid?’

‘Both,’ Felicia admitted bravely. ‘Raschid despises me, Nadia. Please help me,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t endure to stay here any longer….’

Weak tears flowed helplessly down her cheeks, as though from some bottomless well, and Nadia’s own eyes moistened in sympathy.

‘I will do everything I can. I shall go and find Achmed, and ask him to make the arrangements. I am sorry that my family has brought you so much pain, for I see from your eyes that it has.’

‘And you will say nothing to Raschid, promise me?’

What fresh, subtle forms of torture might he not dream up, if he knew how she longed to get away? His behaviour last night had not been that of a man with human failings and feelings, but a cold emotionless machine bent on exacting the last measure of payment for the crimes of which he had convicted her. The relentless manner in which he had destroyed Faisal’s love for her, the way he had tortured her—they both pointed to a man without pity or compassion, and she had to get away—now—before her pride deserted her completely and she begged him to allow her to stay.

She would have to find Umm Faisal and Zahra and bid them goodbye, Felicia thought wretchedly when Nadia had gone. And then there was small Zayad and helpful Selina, so many people who had touched her heart during her short stay in Kuwait, so much pain when she had to leave them.

She eyed her reflection with distaste. Her hair was all tumbled, her skin flushed from its exposure to the sun. Her body felt gritty with the small particles of sand which had clung to the lotion Raschid had applied. She needed a bath, she decided tiredly, collecting her towel and wrap. Perhaps when she felt clean and fresh she would feel more inclined to tackle her packing.

Although her bedroom possessed a shower, there was only one communal bathroom in the women’s quarters, and her footsteps echoed across the tiled floor as she opened the door. The room really was huge, she thought, and the bath positively enormous. She turned on the taps, pouring essence of roses into the water and watching the oil turn the clear water into milky foam.

It felt good to immerse herself in its warm silkiness, and she soaped herself vigorously, as though by doing so she could wash away the memory of Raschid’s hands on her body.

The warmth of the water induced her taut muscles to relax, tempting her to linger, soaking in its perfumed embrace.

She never heard the door open, only the decisive footsteps crossing the marble tiles. She glanced up curiously and froze.

Raschid! Wordlessly she clutched the sponge protectively against her breasts, trying to sink beneath the milky cover of the water.

‘Why do you want to leave us?’

So Nadia had betrayed her!

‘What possible reason is there for me to stay, in a house where I’ve been abused, reviled, made mock of, tormented….’

‘Tormented?’ His sharp eyes fastened on her trembling hands.

‘Please go, Raschid,’ Felicia begged. ‘If Zahra or your sister were to….’

‘Interrupt us? They won’t. They decided to spend the night with Saud’s family, and Nadia has been warned not to intrude upon us. To make sure that she does not, I have taken a small precaution.’ He reached in his pocket and produced an intricately carved key. ‘So you see, my dear Felicia, you are completely at my mercy. Divine justice, one might say. I want to talk to you,’ he said suddenly, ‘and I cannot do so while you wriggle about in there like a shy fish searching for a lily pad. Besides,’ he added sardonically, his eyes resting on the soft curve of her breasts, luminously pale against the water, ‘I am quite sure the water must be getting cold.’

It was, but her wrap was on a chair out of reach, and she had no intention of leaving the comparative protection of the bath while Raschid remained in the room.

‘If you’ll leave me to get dressed, I will come down to your study,’ she suggested, avoiding his amused, comprehensive glance.

‘Leave you?’ Was it her imagination or had his voice suddenly become slightly husky? His glance impaled her, a curious melting sensation running through her bones. In that moment he swooped, lifting her out of the bath and holding her against him, uncaring of the water soaking through his silk shirt, or the shivers that coursed through her as she tried to hold aloof.

‘Last night when you denied me I thought you either the shrewdest little bitch I had ever met, or appallingly innocent,’ he said suddenly, making her tremble with the swiftness of his attack. ‘Why do you want to leave us, Felicia?’

‘You know why,’ she answered tremulously. His touch was completely impersonal, but she was not going to let him trick her a second time, betrayed by her inexperience into mistaking retribution for desire.

‘Do I?’

She trembled convulsively, tears spilling down her cheeks to lie damply against his throat.

His muffled imprecation reached her as his arms imprisoned her. ‘By Allah, Felicia. I want you!’ he groaned against her lips, stifling her protests. ‘I have wanted you from the moment I saw you. Last night when I discovered that Faisal had not touched you I didn’t know who I hated the most, you or myself.’

He broke off, as his body shuddered uncontrollably against her, cradling her against him, while he murmured something under his breath. She couldn’t move. She was frozen with terror—What was he trying to do? Make her betray herself again? She looked at him, her eyes wild with pain, her expression that of a trapped, tormented animal.

‘What do you want?’ she whispered in anguish. ‘Haven’t I paid enough? Just let me go.’

His skin flushed darkly as he looked at her, and she tensed, waiting, dreading what he would say.

‘Very well, I will let you go,’ he said quietly, ‘but only if you listen to me first.’

When she nodded her head slightly he swung her up in his arms, carrying her over to one of the low divans and sitting down with her still in his arms.

‘You shame me, Felicia,’ he said at last. ‘You shame me as no other human being has ever done. When I left you last night I felt sick to my soul, not only for misjudging you, although that was bad enough, but for teaching you to think that I would actually go to such lengths to part you from Faisal.’

‘But you said….’

He placed his fingers to her lips. ‘No—no more misunderstandings. Let me tell you the truth. Initially it is true that I did want to destroy the love Faisal bore you, for Faisal’s own sake,’ he admitted wryly. ‘He is fickle and too young to settle down, especially with a girl not used to our ways, sophisticated, and perhaps more in love with his wealth than with him. This would not have been the first time I have had to extricate him from such a situation, and shall we say that his track record to date has made me somewhat cynical.

‘But it didn’t work out like that. For one thing you were so beautiful, so proud and spirited, and I found myself less and less concerned with Faisal and increasingly determined to make you turn from him to me, at the same time despising myself for being attracted to a woman of the type I thought you to be.

‘I told myself I was a fool, letting your beauty steal away my common sense. But it was my heart you took, driving me mad by coming to life in my arms like the desert after rain, and yet still insisting that you preferred Faisal.

‘I wanted to crush your resistance, to force you to admit that you loved me, but always you eluded me, until at last I thought that you had guessed my feelings for you and were playing on them to make me accede to your betrothal to Faisal. Then I knew bitterness indeed. I admit now that I let my prejudice blind me, seeing only what I wanted to see—what experience had taught me to see. When you walked openly in the street I admit you played straight into my hands, but I didn’t write to Faisal. I could not bring myself to denounce you to him, much as I longed to part you. When you accused me of knowing that your romance with him was at an end I had no idea what you meant. You see, I hadn’t read his letter. While we were in the desert I meant to read it, but there never seemed to be time.’ He shrugged. ‘To tell the truth, I did not want to read it. I thought he would be begging me to allow him to return to further your romance, and I planned to keep you apart, hoping that you would turn from him to me.

‘When I discovered that you were missing…. Never as long as I live do I want to go through that torment again. My relief at finding you, coupled with your own stubborn refusal to admit your response to me, drove me over the edge of sanity. This morning I telephoned Faisal and told him that I had received his letter—which I have now read. It seems that Yasmin wrote to him after seeing us together in Kuwait, and her letter provided him with the loophole he had wanted. Unlike me, he had the wit to see your essential innocence, and he had decided that you would never enter the kind of impermanent relationship he most enjoys. When Nadia came to me and told me that you were leaving I knew I had to stop you. My pride was as the sand beneath my feet…. Marry me, Felicia,’ he begged. ‘I want you now and tomorrow and for all our tomorrows. I want to be the man who will unfasten the one hundred and one buttons of your bridal gown; the one who penetrates the final veil, the one whose child you bear, the one whose grave you share. I want you for my wife, Felicia—my only wife,’ he promised. ‘Many, many times my sister has pleaded for me to marry, but I could not. Perhaps it is a weakness in me, but I knew always that the woman I married must be the only woman, and when I saw you I knew you were she. Only let me, and I shall wipe away the bitterness of last night and teach you the true meaning of love.’

‘But you told me that a marriage between East and West would never work,’ Felicia reminded him, not daring to believe her ears.

‘Between you and Faisal,’ Raschid corrected. ‘Because no sooner had I set eyes upon you than I knew that I could never allow you to waste yourself on Faisal, not when I could love you so much better. But you rejected me, and drove me insane with jealousy, tormented by images of you in Faisal’s arms, when I longed to have you in mine.’

The ice that had invaded her heart melted, and Felicia looked up at him, giving herself trustingly into his care.

‘Tell me you love me, Felicia,’ he pleaded hoarsely. ‘Tell me I am not deluding myself, misreading what I see in your eyes.’

She knew that this time she was not being deceived and her arms reached out to enclose him, her only protest a small murmur when his breath lost its cool, even tenor, and instead became the charged, uneven rasp of a lover.

Last night had all been a bad dream. Only this was real. There was reverence as well as desire in the sure touch of his hands and lips, as he whispered how desperate he had been when Achmed told him she was leaving.

A small smile touched Felicia’s face. Achmed had told him. So Nadia had not really broken her promise after all. Clever Nadia!

He would never let her go, Raschid whispered fiercely. She would be his prisoner throughout their lives and beyond. They were two halves of an indivisible whole, and Felicia, lost in the wonder of his love, could only agree, her hands running lovingly over the satin smoothness of his back beneath the thin shirt.

‘No, not now….’ he muttered thickly, trapping her importuning hands. ‘I cannot dishonour you.’

‘But I want you,’ Felicia pleaded.

Strong hands cupped her face, dark eyes understanding and stormy. ‘Do you not think I want you?’ Raschid whispered unevenly, groaning suddenly as he pulled her against him, letting her feel his need. Her fingers spread against his chest, as she pressed shy kisses against his skin. ‘If I take you now, I shall be like a man consumed by thirst, who is given but one sip of water.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I have denied myself this long, I can deny myself a little longer, but to taste water now and then have it withdrawn before I have quenched my thirst will drive me to madness. Do you understand?’

If she had doubted the depth of his love, she did so no longer. Shyly she nodded, overwhelmed by the recognition of a need she had never suspected existed; a need only she had the power to arouse—and to assuage.

‘It will not be long,’ Raschid promised as he removed his shirt and gently fastened it over her. His eyes burned dark with desire as the damp fabric clung seductively to her swelling curves. ‘Indeed it must not be long,’ he added with a touch of self-mockery. ‘My sister already knows of my hopes. Our betrothal shall be announced tonight. I will not give you an emerald,’ he told her, betraying his knowledge of the stone Faisal had bought her. ‘Do you remember the glass paperweight you gave me?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Well, I have it still, even though I knew you intended it for another. After you had gone I found it where you had thrown it. I keep it in my room so that I can always be reminded of you—little though I need to be. I have slept little since you invaded my life, Felicia Gordon, but soon I shall know the delights of your love.’

THREE WEEKS LATER, when the last of the wedding guests had drifted away, Felicia remembered his words, and trembled a little as wordlessly he lifted her into his arms and carried her through the now empty house.

She had begged to spend her honeymoon at the house by the oasis, and now they were alone, the faint light of the oil lamps throwing flickering shadows across the mosaic floor. Outside the Eastern night had veiled the skies in a shimmer of midnight gauze, studded with sparkling diamonds, like the tiny buttons fastening her robe.

Without a word Raschid knelt at her feet, and she held her breath as one by one he unfastened the tiny fastenings, pausing only when he reached the last one, to lift the heavy weight of her hair off her shoulders and remove the gold necklaces that had been placed there only hours earlier as a symbol of their eternal love. They had had a civil ceremony too, at the British Embassy, but these were their real marriage vows that they were to exchange now, Felicia thought dreamily.

At last she was free, stepping out of the rich fabric of her robe and walking into the hard warmth of the arms that opened to enclose her.

‘Love me….’ Raschid whispered passionately against her skin as he lifted her against him. ‘Love me as I intend to love you, little dove. Trust me to make the night one of pleasure as well as initiation. Where there is pain, there is also pleasure, and there will be pleasure, Felicia. I love you, my little dove. So very, very much….’

She was gathered up against him and kissed tenderly and then passionately until every inch of her vibrated with a desire she made no attempt to hide from him as he carried her towards the divan and its silk cushions.