Desert Nights: Falcon's Prey / The Sheikh's Virgin Bride / One Night With the Sheikh. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ his cruel words, but his hands reached out and stayed her, his expression cautionary.

      ‘Do not be foolish,’ he advised her. ‘Even nowadays the souks are not entirely free from danger for the unwary. Your careless footsteps might have led you down any one of a hundred alleys and before too long you would have been hopelessly lost—an experience I am sure neither of us wishes to endure.’

      She pictured herself, lost and frightened, dependent on this cold, autocratic man for succour, and her chin lifted proudly.

      ‘You need not worry, Sheikh Raschid,’ she told him. ‘If I were lost, you would be the last man I would want to rescue me.’

      She pulled away from him as she spoke and a piece of flint half buried in the sun-baked earth caught her unprotected ankle, lacerating the soft skin. She winced as pain shot through her and blood welled from the cut.

      Raschid tensed, frowning as he heard her involuntary protest, then dropped on to his haunches, a muttered curse falling softly into the golden silence of the afternoon when he saw what had happened.

      ‘It’s nothing,’ Felicia protested unsteadily as lean fingers probed the wound with surprising gentleness.

      ‘It’s bleeding. It must be washed and cleaned,’ Raschid replied curtly.

      There were some moistened tissues in her bag which she used to keep her hands and face fresh and she opened it, removing them.

      ‘I’ll do that.’

      The authoritative tone could not be ignored, and in silence she handed Raschid the moistened pad, flinching a little at its coolness against her throbbing flesh.

      ‘How one admires the British in adversity,’ Raschid mocked as he straightened up. ‘So cool, so controlled… so prepared for every contingency.’

      The light in his eyes reminded her that a few nights ago there had been a contingency for which she had not been prepared, but Felicia ignored it, murmuring lightly, ‘One tries….’

      ‘Indeed one does. But sometimes we must fail, for the good of our souls.’

      Was he warning her that she would fail to convince him to allow her marriage to Faisal? She moved away, wincing afresh as she put her full weight on her ankle. Raschid’s hand on her wrist steadied her; a momentary contact—no more—but in that moment the air between them seemed fraught with some intangible emotion and then she was free, the clean male scent of him fading from her nostrils as quickly as the imprint of his fingers was fading from her wrist.

      ‘What’s the matter?’

      Her eyelashes flicked down, but not in time to prevent him from reading the expression in her eyes. He laughed softly.

      ‘Ah yes, I see! You thought perhaps I might repeat our romantic scene of the other night. I’m afraid I must disappoint you, Miss Gordon.’

      ‘Romantic? Is that what you call it?’ Felicia retorted bitterly. ‘Then you have very strange ideas of romance, Sheikh.’ She turned away, anger and resentment flaring simultaneously to heated life, possessed by an urge to escape from this man and his tormenting mockery; a desire to put as much distance between them as possible, heedless of the dangers.

      In the empty souk her heartbeat thundered in her ears, steadily increasing as she hurried past shuttered shop fronts, like so many unseeing eyes, disdainful of the folly of the pale foreigner who ran unveiled along the shadowed alley. Pain throbbed through her ankle, but she disregarded it. The thudding of her heart drowned out every other sound bar one—the relentless footsteps behind her, firm and tireless, driving her like a terrified gazelle before the beaters.

      He caught her, as she had known he must, his fingers biting into her waist as he swung her back against him, shaking her until she thought her neck must break.

      ‘You little fool! Don’t you know any better than to run in this heat? Do you really want me to give you a reason to run from me?’

      Felicia looked up at the thin line of his mouth, harshly forbidding, and a tremor of something so alien and unwanted shot through her that at first she did not recognise it. When she did the shock was so great that she could barely comprehend that she, a girl who had never deliberately set out to arouse any man, and indeed shrank from physical contact, had felt a thrill of surging satisfaction at the blazing anger in Raschid’s eyes, and a desire to push him over the limits of his control, her own fury fuelled by his.

      Common sense warned her that the ensuing conflagration could destroy her totally, but she no longer cared. She wanted Raschid to experience anger as consuming as her own; to endure the lash of her contempt against his pride, as she had been forced to endure his.

      ‘Well, Miss Gordon?’

      ‘You have already given me sufficient reason, but in your arrogance you will not admit it.’

      His fingers curled round the soft flesh of her upper arms, frightening in their intensity. He smiled without pity when she winced at their crushing pressure.

      ‘This is the East,’ he reminded her. ‘I could punish you here and now for what you have just said and no man would raise his hand against me, not even if I beat you publicly in the streets. Beware! In every man there lurks the falcon; a streak of ruthlessness and thirst for power.’

      His fingers lifted to her throat, trapping the wildly beating pulse she could no longer control. All at once the fight had gone out of her, and where there had been momentary elation there now was dread. He laughed mirthlessly when she shivered under his touch, nervous as the silky-maned Arab mares of the Badu.

      ‘You see?’ he taunted. ‘At last you realise that a man is not an equal, but an alien force, bent on destruction when he is aroused to anger.’

      ‘Stop it! Stop it at once,’ Felicia begged him. ‘I won’t listen to you!’ Her voice trembled, caught somewhere between indignation and fear. ‘You don’t deceive me at all. You’re hoping to drive me away; to frighten me into giving up Faisal. You think I’ll be overpowered by that potent masculinity you’re so proud of, like a timid, shrinking Victorian heroine, caught in the trap of her own senses. Well, you’re going to be disappointed! I’m well aware of the difference between my senses and my heart.’

      ‘Are you indeed?’ he challenged softly, the sensuous movement of his thumb against the silkiness of her neck making her aware too late of her danger. She trembled under the deliberate provocation of the caress and he laughed, deep in his throat.

      ‘And what do your senses tell you now, Miss Gordon?’

      It was too late to pretend that his touch left her unaffected, too late by far to wish she had never allowed fury to betray her into this hopelessly untenable position. She closed her eyes and gritted bitterly:

      ‘They tell me that sex without love is like the desert without water—an arid wasteland where nothing can flourish.’

      ‘But that arid wasteland, as you call it, possesses a magic of its own.’

      His thumb was stroking along her jaw now, the steel fingers forcing her chin to tilt upwards no matter how much she fought against their pressure. She opened her eyes. His were barely inches away, darkly grey, the sensuously curving mouth smiling thinly.

      He СКАЧАТЬ