Читать книгу Penny Jordan Tribute Collection - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 40

‘IT IS almost a week since he left and still Xavier remains at the oasis.’

Mariella forced herself to concentrate on her work instead of reacting to Madame Flavel’s comments.

The prince had come to see how she was progressing earlier in the week and he had brought his wife and their young family with him. The sight of the four dark-haired and dark-eyed children clustering round their parents had filled her with such a physical ache of longing that she had felt as though her womb had actually physically contracted.

She was desperate to have her own child, Mariella recognised. And not just because she was missing Fleur. Fleur’s birth might have detonated her biological clock, setting it ticking away with such frantic urgency, but the longing she felt now was beginning to consume her, eating into her dreams and her emotions.

Now she felt she understood why she had wanted Xavier so much. Her body had recognised him as a perfect potential baby provider! Knowing that had in a way eased a lot of the anxiety she had been feeling; the fear she couldn’t bear to admit that she might actually have fallen in love with him. Now, though, she felt secure that her emotional defences had not been breached. Now it was easy for her to admit to herself just how much she had wanted him and how much she still wanted him. She wanted him because she wanted him to give her a child!

It made so much sense! Didn’t she remember reading somewhere that a woman naturally and instinctively responded to the ancient way in which nature had programmed her and that was to seek the best genes she could for her child? Quite obviously her body had recognised that Xavier’s genes were superlative and her brain fully endorsed her body’s recognition.

And this of course was why she was being bombarded by her body and her brain with messages, longings, desires, images that all pointed in the same direction. Xavier’s direction! Her maternal urges were quite definitely on red alert!

‘Xavier has telephoned to say that he will be remaining at the oasis for another week,’ Xavier’s great-aunt informed Mariella with a small sigh as they sat down for dinner. ‘It must be dull here for you, chérie with only your work to occupy you and me for company.’

‘Not at all,’ Mariella denied.

‘Non? But you do miss la petite bébé?’

Now it was Mariella’s turn to sigh.

‘Yes, I do,’ she admitted.

‘Then perhaps you should consider having enfants of your own,’ Madame Flavel told her. ‘I certainly regret the fact that I was not blessed with children. I envied my sister very much in that respect. I have to confess I cannot understand why two people like Xavier and yourself, who anyone can see are born to be parents, should decide so determinedly against marriage.

‘You are working very hard on your frieze. It would do you good to have a few days off.’

She had been working very hard—but if truth were told, the frieze was practically finished. But Mariella had been painstakingly refining it to make sure it was absolutely perfect. Could she take a few days off? To do what? Have even more time to miss Fleur and to ache for a child of her own? Even more time to wish passionately that Xavier had not brought an end to their intimacy before they had… If only she had pressed him a little harder, persuaded… seduced him to the point where he had not been able to stop, she considered daringly, then right now she could already be carrying within her the beginnings of her own child!

Restlessly her thoughts started to circle inside her head. Once they had finished eating Madame Flavel retired to her own room, leaving Mariella to walk through their private garden on her own. If only Xavier were here in the villa now, she could go to him. And what? Demand that he take her to bed and impregnate her?

Oh, yes, she could just see him agreeing to that!

Why would she have to demand? She was a woman, wasn’t she? And Xavier was a man… He had already shown her that he could be aroused to desire for her…

But he wasn’t here, was he? He was at the oasis.

The oasis… Closing her eyes, Mariella allowed herself to picture him there. That night when he had thought that she was Tanya, he had come so close to possessing her. Her whole body was aching for him now, aching with all the ferocity of a child-hungry woman whose womb was empty!

Irritably, Mariella threw down her sketch-pad, chewing on her bottom lip as she glowered at the images she had drawn: babies… all of them possessing Xavier’s unmistakable features. She had hardly slept all night, and when she had it had merely been to be tormented by such sensually erotic dreams of Xavier that they had made her cry out in longing for him. It was as though even her dreams, her own subconscious, were reinforcing her desire for Xavier’s child.

In fact the only thing about her that was still trying to fight against that wanting was… was what? Fear… Timidity… Did she really want to look back in years to come and face the fact that she had simply not had the courage to reach out for what she wanted?

After all, it wasn’t as though she would be doing anything illegal! She had no intention of ever making any kind of claim on Xavier—far from it! She actively wanted to be left to bring up her child completely on her own. All she wanted from him was a simple physical act. All she had to do…

All she had to do was to make it impossible for him to resist her! And whilst he was at the oasis he would be completely at her sensual mercy! It was even the right time of the month—she was fertile.

A wildly bold plan was beginning to take shape inside her head, and the first step towards it meant an immediate shopping trip, for certain… necessities! There was a specific shop she remembered from a previous trip to the busy souk in the centre of the city, which specialised in what she wanted!

Slightly pink-cheeked, Mariella studied the fine silk kaftan she was being shown by the salesgirl, so fine that it was completely sheer. Surely the only thing that stopped it from floating away was the weight of the intricate and delicate silver beading and embroidery around the neck and hem and decorating the edges of the long sleeves.

It was a soft shade of turquoise, and designed to be worn—the salesgirl had helpfully explained without so much as batting an elegantly kohled eyelid—over a matching pair of harem trousers. Their cuffs and waistband had been embroidered to match the kaftan itself. It was quite plainly an outfit designed only to be worn in private and for the delectation of one man. The sheerness of the fabric would leave one’s breasts totally revealed—and Mariella had not missed the strategically embroidered rosettes, which she doubted would do anything more than merely make a teasing pretence of covering the wearer’s nipples—and as for the fact that the harem pants incorporated an embroidered and beaded v-shaped section at the front, which she had an unnerving suspicion would draw attention to rather than protect, any wearer’s sex…

‘And then, of course, there is this,’ the salesgirl told her, showing Mariella a jewelled piece of fabric, which she helpfully explained was self-adhesive so that the wearer could easily fix it to her navel.

Mariella gulped. Her normal sleeping attire when she wore any tended to be sturdily sensible cotton pyjamas.

‘Er… No… I don’t think… it’s quite me,’ she heard herself croaking, her courage deserting her. Seducing Xavier was going to be hard enough without giving herself the kind of self-conscious hang-up wearing that kind of outfit would undoubtedly give her!

‘I…I was thinking of something more… more European,’ she explained ruefully to the salesgirl.

‘Ah, yes, of course. There is a shop in the shopping centre run by my cousin which specialises in French underwear. I shall tell you how to find it.’

Mariella sensed that the girl was amused by her self-consciousness, but there was no way she intended to pay a sheikh’s ransom for an outfit that would take more courage to wear than going completely naked!

The souk was busy, and she paused on her way back through it to admire the wares on some of the other stalls, especially the rugs.

There was far more to seduction than merely wearing a harem outfit, she tried to comfort herself as she headed for the modern shopping centre. Far, far more. Sight was just one of man’s senses, after all.

By the time she finally returned to the villa Mariella felt totally exhausted. She was now the proud owner of a perfume blended especially for her, and a body lotion guaranteed to turn her skin into the softest silk; she had also given in to the temptation to buy herself some new underwear, from the harem outfit seller’s cousin, in the shopping mall. French and delicately feminine without making her feel in any way uncomfortable. Low-cut French knickers might not be as openly provocative as beaded harem trousers but they did have the advantage of being perfect to wear underneath her jeans!

It didn’t take her very long to pack. All she said to Hera when she summoned her was that she wanted her to hand the note she was giving her to Madame Flavel when she woke up from her afternoon nap.

By that time she should have safely reached the oasis, and her note was simply to calm the older lady’s fears and told her only that Mariella had driven out to the oasis because there was something she wanted to discuss with Xavier.

She took a taxi to the four-wheel drive rental office, where the car she had organised earlier by telephone was waiting for her.

This time she made sure she had the radio tuned in to the local weather station, but thankfully no sandstorms were forecast.

Taking a deep breath, she started the car’s engine.

With a small oath, Xavier pushed the laptop away and stood up. He had come to the oasis to put a safe distance between himself and Mariella but all his absence from her was doing was making him think about her all the more.

Think about her! He wasn’t just thinking about her, was he?

The tribe were currently camped less than thirty miles away and on a sudden impulse he decided to drive over and see them. The solitude of his own company was not proving to be its usual solace. Everywhere he looked around the oasis he could see Mariella. There might be a cultural gap between them, but, like him, she had a very strong sense of responsibility, and like him she would not give either her heart or herself easily. Like him, too, once she was committed, that commitment would be for ever. And did she also ache for what they had so nearly had and lie away at night wanting… needing, afraid to admit that those feelings went way, way beyond the merely physical? And if she did, then… Could she love him enough to accept his duty to the tribe, and with it his commitment to his role in life… to accept it and to share it? Dared he lay before her the intensity of his feelings for her? His love? Could he live with himself if his secret fears proved to be correct and his love for her overwhelmed his sense of duty?

Switching off the laptop, he reached for his Jeep keys.

She couldn’t ever remember a time when she had felt more nervous, Mariella acknowledged as she urged the four-wheel drive along the familiar boulder-strewn track. Up ahead of her she could see the pavilion and her heart lurched, slamming into her ribs. What if Xavier simply refused to be seduced and rejected her? What if…?

For a moment she was tempted to turn the four-wheel drive round and scuttle back to the city. Quickly she reminded herself of sexual tension stretching between them in the garden of the villa. He had wanted her then, and had admitted as much to her!

She had half expected to see him emerging from the pavilion as he heard her drive up, but there was no sign of him.

Well, at least he wouldn’t be able to demand that she turn round and drive straight back, she comforted herself as she parked her vehicle and climbed out, going to the back to remove her things, and then standing nervously staring at the pavilion.

Perhaps if she had timed things so that she had arrived in the dark… Some seductress she was turning out to be, she derided herself as she took a deep breath and walked determinedly towards the chosen fate.

Five minutes later she was standing facing the oasis, unwilling to accept what was patently obvious. Xavier was not here! No Xavier, no four-wheel drive, no seduction, no baby!

A crushing sense of disappointment engulfed her. Where was he? Could he have changed his mind and returned to the city despite informing his great-aunt that he intended to stay on at the oasis? How ironic it would be if by rushing out here so impulsively she had actually denied herself the opportunity of achieving what she wanted!

But then she remembered that his laptop was still inside the pavilion, and surely he would not have left that behind if he had been returning home? So where was he?

The sun was already a dying red ball lying on the horizon. Soon it would be dark. There was no way she was going to risk driving all the way back without the benefit of daylight!

So what exactly was she going to do? Spend yet another evening enduring her rebellious body’s clamouring urgency for the fulfilment of its driving need? It had simply never occurred to her that he wouldn’t be here!

The pavilion was so intimately a part of him. Dreamily, she trailed her fingertips along the chair he used when working at the laptop. The air actually seemed to hold an echo of his scent, a haunting resonance of his voice, and she felt that, if she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, she could almost imagine that he was there… She could certainly picture him behind her tightly closed eyelids. But it wasn’t his mental image she wanted so desperately, was it?

She knew she ought to eat, but she simply wasn’t hungry. She was thirsty, though.

She went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of water. Fine grains of sand clung to her skin, making it feel gritty. Hardly appropriate for a would-be siren! The long drive in the brilliant glare of the desert sun had left her eyes feeling tired and heavy. Like her body, which felt tired and heavy and empty. A sense of dejection and failure percolated through her.

Slowly, she walked out of the kitchen intending to return to the living area, but instead found herself being drawn to the ‘bedroom.’ Standing in the entrance, she looked achingly around it.

A fierce shudder that became an even fiercer primal ache gripped her as she looked at the bed and remembered what had happened there. It was just her biology that was making her feel like this, her fiercely strong maternal desire. That was all, and of course it was only natural that that urge should manifest itself in this hungry desire for the man whose genes it had decided it wanted, she reassured herself as she was confronted with the intensity of her longing for Xavier.

Just thinking about him made her go weak, made her want him there so that she could bury her lips in the warm male flesh of his throat and slide her hands over the hard, strong muscles of his arms and his back, and then down through the soft dark hair that covered his chest and arrowed over his belly to where…

She needed a shower, Mariella decided shakily. A very cool shower!

‘Safe travelling, Ashar.’ Xavier smiled ruefully as he embraced the senior tribesman whilst the others went about the business of breaking camp ready to begin the long slow journey across the desert.

‘You could always come with us,’ Ashar responded.

‘Not this time.’ Xavier shook his head.

All around him he could hear the familiar sounds of the camp, the faint music of the camel bells, the orderly preparations for departure. The tribe would travel through the night hours whilst it was cool, resting the herd during the heat of the day.

Ashar’s shrewd brown eyes surveyed him.

Ashar remembered Xavier’s grandfather as well as his father. Alongside his respect for Xavier as his leader ran a very deep vein of paternal affection for him.

‘Something troubles you—a woman, perhaps? The tribe would rejoice to see you take a wife to give you sons to follow in your footsteps as you have followed in those of your grandfather and your father.’

‘If only matters were that simple, Ashar.’ Xavier grimaced.

‘Why should they not be? This woman, you are afraid perhaps that she will not respect our traditions, that she will seek to divide your loyalties? If that is so then she is not the one for you. But knowing you as I do, Xavier, I cannot believe that there could be a place in your heart for a woman such as that. You must learn to trust what is in here,’ he told him, touching his own heart with his hand. ‘Instead of believing only what is in here.’ As he touched his hand to his head Xavier hid a wry smile. Ashar had no idea just how dangerously out of control his emotions were becoming!

He waited to see the tribe safely on their way before climbing in his vehicle to drive back to the oasis.

A sharply crescented sickle moon shared the night sky with the brilliance of the stars. Diamonds studded onto indigo velvet. For Xavier it was during the night hours that the desert was at its most awesome, and mystical, a time when he always felt most in touch with his heritage. His ancestors had travelled these sands for many, many generations before him, and it was his duty, his responsibility to ensure that they did so for many, many generations to come. And that was not something he could achieve from behind the walls of a high-rise air-conditioned office, and certainly not from the fleshpots of the world as Khalid would no doubt choose to do. No, he could only maintain and honour the tribe’s traditional way of life by being a part of it, by sharing in it, and that was something he was totally committed to doing. He must not deviate from that purpose. But his feelings, his love for Mariella could not be denied, or ignored. The strength of them had initially shocked him, but he had now gone from shock to the grim recognition that it was beyond his power to change or control the way he felt.

He saw Mariella’s vehicle as he drove up to the oasis. Parking next to it, he got out and studied it warily. He did not encourage anyone to visit him when he was at the oasis and he was certainly not in the mood for uninvited guests, right now! Where and who was its driver?

Frowning, he headed for the pavilion, not needing to waste any time lighting the lamps to illuminate the darkness, his familiarity with it enough to take him from the entrance to the opening to the bedroom without breaking his stride.

Mariella was lying fast asleep in the middle of the bed, where she had curled up in exhaustion like a small child. The white robe she was wearing was Xavier’s and it drowned her slender body. She had lit one of the lamps, which illuminated her face, showing her bone structure and the thick darkness of her silky eyelashes. In the enclosed heat, Xavier could smell the scent of her, and of his own instant reciprocal desire for her.

Xavier’s hand tightened convulsively on the cord that fastened the curtain to the bedroom’s entrance, whilst his heart tolled in slow, heavy beats. If he had any sense he would pick her up and carry her straight out to the Jeep and then drive back to the city with her without stopping!

He let the heavy curtain drop behind him, enclosing them both in the sensual semi-darkness.

Standing next to the bed, he looked down at Mariella.

Something, some instinct and awareness, disturbed Mariella’s sleep, making her frown and stir, her eyes opening.

‘Xavier!’

Relief… and longing flooded through her. Automatically she struggled to sit up, her arms and legs becoming tangled in the thick folds of Xavier’s robe as she did so.

‘What are you doing here?’ Xavier demanded harshly.

‘Waiting for you,’ Mariella told him. ‘Waiting to tell you how much I want you, and how much I hope you want me.’

She watched as his eyes turned from steel to mercury and recognised that she had caught him off guard.

‘You drove all the way out here to tell me that!’

His voice might be curt and unresponsive, but Mariella could see the way his jaw tightened as he turned his head away from her, as well as feel his betraying tension. Tiny body-language signs, that was all she knew, but instinctively she knew she had an advantage to pursue!

‘Not to tell you, Xavier,’ she corrected him boldly. ‘To show you… like this…’

Standing up, she went to him, letting the robe slide from her body as she did so. She had never envisaged that she would ever feel such a pride in her nakedness, her femaleness, such a sense of power and certainty, an awareness of how much a man’s still silence could betray how very, very tightly leashed he was keeping his desire.

She was standing in front of him and he hadn’t moved. For a moment she almost lost her courage but then she saw it, the way he clenched his hand and tried to conceal his involuntary reaction.

Quickly she raised herself up on her tiptoes and cupped his face with her hands. Never in a thousand lifetimes could she have behaved like this simply for her own gratification, for the indulgence of her own sexual or emotional feelings, but she was not doing it for them, for herself, she was doing it for the child she so desperately wanted to give life! Silently she looked up into his eyes, her own openly reflecting her desire. Very deliberately she let her gaze drop to his mouth. There was no need for her to manufacture the sharp little quiver of physical reaction that pierced her, tightening her belly.

She brushed her lips against his—slowly, savouring the delicate sensual contact between them, refusing to be put off by his lack of response, drawing from her inner self to focus totally on the pleasure it was giving her to explore the shape and texture of his mouth. Very quickly her senses took over, so that it was desire that led her to stroking his bottom lip with her tongue tip rather than calculation, the same desire that drove her to trace tiny kisses along the shape of his mouth and then draw her tongue lightly along that shape.

Xavier couldn’t endure what she was doing to him! Mentally he willed her to stop, but instead she opened her mouth over his and started to kiss him properly! Lost in what she was doing, what she was enjoying, Mariella took her time, putting her whole self into showing him just how hungry for him she was.

And then sickeningly, she could feel the rejecting hostility of his body, and for a heart-rocking second when he raised his hands she thought he was going to push her away. She suspected that he had thought so too, because suddenly in his eyes she saw both his shock and his raw, burning hunger.

He could never be a man who would be a passive lover, Mariella recognised on a deep shudder of pleasure as his hands imprisoned her and his mouth fought hers for control.

How little he realised that her surrender was really her victory, she rejoiced as his tongue thrust urgently between the lips she had parted for him.

‘I can’t believe that you’ve done this,’ she heard him saying thickly.

‘I had to,’ Mariella whispered back. After all, it was the truth. ‘I had to be with you, Xavier… like this… as a woman.’

He had released her to look at her, and now he lifted his hand to her face. Instantly Mariella caught hold of his wrist and turned her head to run her tongue tip over his fingertips.

She saw the way his skin stretched over his cheekbones, running hot with colour, his chest lifting and falling as savagely as though he had been deprived of oxygen. His forefinger rubbed over her bottom lip, and when she sucked on it his whole body jerked fiercely.

‘I want to see you, Xavier,’ she told him softly. ‘I want to touch you… taste you… I want. I want you to take me to bed and pleasure me, fill me.’

Taking his hand, she placed it against her naked breast.

‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please now, Xavier. Please…’

‘This is crazy. You know that, don’t you?’ she heard him mutter. ‘You are not your sister, you do not… I have not… I am not prepared…’ His voice had become thick and raw as he bent his head to kiss the exposed curve of her shoulder, her throat, his hands sliding down her back to pull her urgently against him.

‘There is nothing for you to worry about,’ she told him.

She felt light-headed with the intensity of her own longing—but she only felt like that because she wanted his child, she was quick to reassure herself. That, after all, was what was driving her, motivating her, even if that motivation was manifesting itself in an increasingly urgent need to touch him and be touched by him, to allow herself to luxuriate in the slow and delicious exploration of every bit of his skin, absorbing its heat, its feel, the essence of him through the sensitivity of her own pores. So that her child, their child could be impregnated through her with those memories of his father he would never otherwise be able to have?

Ruthlessly she stifled that thought. Her child would not need a father to be there. He or she only needed a father to provide that life.

What he was doing was reckless to the point of insanity, Xavier knew that, but he also knew that he couldn’t resist her, that he had ached for her, yearned for her too long to deny himself the soft, sweet, wanton feel of her in his arms… his bed…

But once he had held her, loved her, he also knew that he would never be able to let her go. Could she accept his way of life… adapt to it? Would she?

She was kissing him with increasing passion, stringing tiny, delicately tormenting little kisses around his throat, her tongue tip carefully exploring the shape of his Adam’s apple, her fingers kneading the flesh of his upper arm with unconscious sensuality. Xavier recognised his senses on overload from her deliberately erotic seduction.

Mariella gave a small startled gasp as Xavier suddenly lifted her bodily in his arms, so that her mouth was on a level with his own as he took it in a hotly demanding and intimate kiss.

Helplessly she succumbed to it, feeling the desire he was arousing inside her run through her veins as sweetly as melting honey. He lifted her higher, kissing her throat, his lips moving lower to the valley between her breasts, before trailing with heart-hammering slowness and delicacy to first one eagerly waiting, quivering crest and then the other, and then back again, this time to lap tormentingly at her nipple with his damp tongue tip; the leisurely languorous journey repeated again and again until her whole body was crying out in agonised frustration.

Unable to stand the sensual torment any more, when his lips teased delicately at her nipple she buried her hands in the thick darkness of his hair and held his mouth against her body.

Surely he must feel the fierce rhythms pulsing through her flesh; surely he must know how much she wanted him?

Her hands tugged at his clothes, her voice whispering a soft torrent of aroused female longing that swamped Xavier’s defences.

His hands helped hers to quickly remove the layers of clothing that separated them.

When she finally saw the naked gleam of his flesh in the lamp-lit room, Mariella sucked in her breath on a small sob of shocked pleasure.

In wonder she studied him as tiny but openly visible quivers betrayed her body’s excited reaction to him. So compulsively absorbed in gazing at him, she was oblivious to the effect her sensual concentration was having on Xavier himself.

‘If you are deliberately trying to torment me and test my self-control by looking at me like that, then I warn you that both it and I have just about reached my limit,’ he told her thickly.

‘Now! Are you going to come to me and put into action all those dangerously seductive promises your eyes are giving me, or do I have to come to you and make you make good those promises, because, I warn you, if I do have to then I shall be demanding payment with full interest penalties,’ he added huskily.

For a moment Mariella couldn’t do anything. Xavier was watching her as she had been watching him. Excitement exploded inside her. She took a step towards him and then another, measuring his reaction as best she could, but it wasn’t easy given the extent of her own intense arousal.

She was only a breath away from him now, close enough to reach out her finger and draw the tip of it recklessly down his body, teasing the silky body hair.

‘You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to do this,’ she breathed truthfully.

‘No? Well, I certainly know how much I’ve wanted you to do it,’ Xavier responded throatily, ‘and how much I’ve wanted to…’

He gasped and shuddered as her fingertip stroked lower, and suddenly in the space of one single heartbeat she was lying on the bed, with Xavier arching over her.

‘Play with fire like that and you’ll make us both burn,’ he told her, his eyes darkening as he groaned. ‘Do you know what seeing that look in your eyes does to me? Do you know how much I’ve wanted to see just what colour they turn when I touch you like this?’

Mariella hadn’t realised just how ready she was for his intimate caress until she felt his hand stroke softly over her quivering belly, his fingers gently touching the swollen mound of her sex, his gaze pinioning hers as he parted the lips of her sex and began to caress her.

Mariella knew that she cried out, she knew too that her body arched to his touch actively seeking it, eagerly opening to it, but it was only a vague, distant knowledge, at the back of her awareness. Her self was concentrated on the mind-exploding battle to accept the intensity of her own feelings.

Frantically she reached for Xavier. Touching him, holding him, wrapping herself around him as she pressed passionate kisses against his skin, willing, aching for him to complete what he had begun.

And when he did enter her, moving into her, filling her moist sheathed muscles, filling her with such a soaring degree of pleasure that they and she clung to him, wanting to wring every infinitesimal sensation of pleasure from him, it was like nothing she had ever imagined feeling, a pleasure beyond any known pleasure, a sensation beyond any experienced sensation, a driven need that shocked her in its wanton compulsion as she urged him to drive deeper, harder, breaching every last barrier of her body until she knew instinctively that he could not and would not withdraw from her without giving her body the satisfaction it now craved.

They moved together, his thrusts carrying them both, delivering a pleasure so intense she could scarcely bear it, crying out against it at the same time as she abandoned herself to it.

She heard his guttural cry of warning and felt her body open up completely to him, the first tiny shudders of her orgasm sensitising her to the pulse of his, to the knowledge that she was receiving from him what she had so much wanted.

Was it that knowledge that made her orgasm so intense, so fierce that she felt almost as though she could not endure so much pleasure?

Long after it should have been over, the aftermath continued to send little shudders of sensation through her, shaking her whole body as she lay locked in Xavier’s arms.

She had done it, instinctively she knew it. Her child, of the desert and of a man who was equally compelling, equally dangerous, had been given life.

Reluctantly, Mariella opened her eyes. She could hear a shower running, and her whole body ached with an unfamiliar heaviness. ‘So you are awake!’

She stiffened as she saw Xavier coming towards her, his hair damp from his shower, a towel wrapped carelessly round his hips.

Leaning towards her, he bent his head to kiss her. He smelled of soap and clean, fresh skin and her body quivered helplessly in reaction to him.

‘Mmm…’

He kissed her again, more lingeringly, his hand stroking down over her bare arm.

The quivers became open shudders of erotic pleasure as he pulled the bedclothes back.

She had got what she wanted, and so surely she shouldn’t be feeling like this now that there wasn’t any need for her to want him!

The towel was sliding from his hips, quite plainly revealing the fact that he most definitely wanted her.

A sharp and unmistakable thrill of female excitement gripped her muscles.

It was just nature’s way of making doubly sure, Mariella told herself hazily as his hand cupped her breast, his thumb and forefinger teasing the already eagerly taut crest of her nipple. That was all, and, since nature wanted to be doubly sure, then obviously she must give in to her urgings. Urgings that were demanding that she experience the pleasure Xavier had given her the night before, and right now…

His hands were on her hips, holding her, lifting her. Already Mariella was anticipating the feel of him inside her, longing for it and for him. Needing him.

‘There will be things we shall need to discuss once we return to the city.’

‘Mmm…’ Mariella agreed, too satiated to lift her head off the pillow as Xavier turned to brush a kiss across her mouth.

She looked so tempting lying there in his bed, her face soft with satisfaction and her eyes heavy with their lovemaking, he acknowledged, ruefully aware of the way in which his senses were still reacting to her.

It would be all too easy to let the desire between them flare into life again, but there were practicalities that had to be considered.

‘Mariella.’ The abrupt note in his voice caught her attention. ‘Because of my position as leader of our tribe, I have always believed that I do not have the… freedoms of other men. I could never commit myself to a relationship with a woman who might not be able to understand or accept my duties and responsibilities to my people. Nor could I change my way of life, or…’

‘Xavier, there’s no need for you to say any more,’ Mariella checked him swiftly. Her heart was pounding heavily, a sharp, bitter little pain, piercing her even though she was fighting against admitting to it, stubbornly refusing to listen to the message it was trying to give her.

‘I would never ask you or any other man to do any such thing! And I can assure you that you need have no fear that I might misconstrue what’s happened. I shan’t. I am most definitely not looking for any kind of commitment from you.’

Only the commitment of conceiving his child, she admitted inwardly.

‘In fact, commitment is the last thing I want.’ Assuming a casualness that defied everything she had always inwardly believed in, she gave a small shrug and told him, ‘We are both adults. We wanted to have sex. To satisfy a… a physical need… And… now that we have done so, I don’t think there is any purpose in us holding a post-mortem, and even less in getting involved in needless discussions about the wherefores of why neither of us want a committed relationship. Truthfully, Xavier, I don’t want to marry you any more than you want to marry me! In fact, I shall never marry.’ Mariella delivered the words in a strong voice underpinned with determination.

‘What?’

Why was Xavier looking at her like that? Where was the relief she had expected—the cool acceptance of her claim that they had come together merely to slake their sexual appetite for one another? Xavier was looking at her with a mingling of barely controlled fury and bitterness.

‘What are you saying?’ she heard him demanding savagely. ‘You are not your sister, Mariella! You are not one of those shallow, surface-living women who think only of themselves; who give in to their need to experience what they want when they want, who go from man to man, bed to bed without… whose whole way of life—’ He paused and shook his head.

‘You are not like her! You don’t even know what you are talking about! Mere physical sex is not something…’

Mariella could see and feel the intensity of his growing anger, and she could also feel her own increasingly disturbing reaction of panic and pain to it, but she refused to allow herself to be intimidated by them.

‘I am not going to argue with you, Xavier. I know how I feel, and what I do and don’t want from life.’

Well, that was the truth, wasn’t it? She did know what she wanted, and she had every hope that last night had given her…

‘Do you really expect me to believe that you drove all the way out here just because you wanted sex?’

‘Why not?’ Mariella shrugged. ‘After all, I could hardly have come to your room at the villa, could I?’ she pointed out, trying to make herself react as though she were the woman she was trying to be—a woman who thought nothing of indulging her sexual appetite as and when she wanted to do so!

‘This was the perfect opportunity!’

Xavier was looking at her as though he would dearly love to make her take back her words, Mariella recognised uneasily. It had to be his male pride that was making him react in such an unexpected manner, she decided. Men were quite happy to use women for sexual pleasure without being emotionally committed to them, but apparently they didn’t like it very much when they thought that they were the ones being used.

Her legs began to tremble shakily as she mentally digested his reaction and tried to imagine what he might say—and do if he knew that she hadn’t even actually wanted him out of sexual lust, and that the desire that had really driven her had been her own female need to conceive his child!

Somehow instinctively she knew that the reaction she was seeing now would be nothing when compared with what he was likely to do were he ever to discover the truth!

The unexpected shrill sound of his mobile ringing broke into the thick silence stretching tensely between them.

Out of good manners Mariella turned away whilst he answered the call, but she could tell from the sound of his curt replies that it involved some kind of crisis.

Her instincts were confirmed when he ended the call and told her abruptly, ‘There is a problem with the tribe—a quarrel between two of the younger men, which needs to be dealt with. I shall have to drive out to do so immediately.’

‘That’s okay. I can find my own way back to the city,’ Mariella assured him.

‘This matter isn’t closed yet, Mariella,’ he told her grimly. ‘When I do return to the villa, we shall discuss it further!’

Mariella didn’t risk making any response. There wasn’t any need, not unless she wanted to provoke a further quarrel. The frieze was finished; there was nothing now to keep her in Zuran, no reason or need for her to stay, and she had already decided that she was going to make immediate plans to return home!