Possessed by the Sheikh. PENNY JORDAN

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      They were led by El Khalid, but it was one of his young lieutenants who saw her first. He swerved the battered Land Rover he was driving round so hard that he almost overturned it.

      Behind Katrina, at the pass between the rocks, Richard fell back in terror, and then turned and ran towards his own vehicle, ignoring Katrina’s plight. He leapt into it and started the engine, driving back in the direction he had come as fast as he could.

      Katrina, though, was oblivious to his desertion of her.

      The air around her was thick with choking dust, the last dying rays of the sun striking blindingly against the metal of the vehicle racing alongside her. The driver was leaning out of the window, one hand on the steering wheel, the other reaching for her, a lascivious grin slicing his face.

      Immediately she turned to run back the way she had come. Unwanted though Richard’s attentions were, she could deal far more easily with him than she could with what she was now facing, but to her horror she recognised that her escape route was already being blocked off by the horse and rider bearing down on her even as she still tried to run from him.

      The sound of his horse’s hooves mingled with the fierce cries of the men surrounding her. He was so close to her that she could feel the heat of the horse’s breath on her skin. Her heart felt as though it were about to burst. She saw him draw level with her and bend low in his saddle, his hand coming out, and then unbelievably she was being lifted off the ground and swept up onto the horse’s back in front of him, as his prisoner.

      Sobbing for breath, her heart pounding sickly, her face pressed against the coarsely woven cloth of the tunic he was wearing, she could do nothing other than lie there, forced to breathe in the smell of the fabric, with its faint lemony scent. Katrina stiffened. She now realised the lemony cologne, like the scent of the man himself, were both immediately familiar to her. The drumming of horse’s hooves became the drumming of her own heart as she struggled to twist her body so that she could look up into his face.

      As she had expected all she could see of it were his eyes—gold-flecked, reminding her of a tiger’s eye. Her heart leapt and banged against her chest wall as she looked into them and saw them flash gold sparks of molten anger back at her.

      Quickly she turned her head, too shocked to withstand the contempt in his eyes. In the distance she could see the four-wheel drive disappearing as Richard drove himself to safety, having left her to her fate. Tears welled in her eyes and one rolled down her face to land on the golden warmth of the male hand holding the horse’s reins.

      His mouth hardening, he shook it away. He murmured to the horse as he wheeled round and started to head back to the group of men watching them.

      As he did so out of nowhere, or so it seemed to Katrina, a vehicle appeared, driven at frightening speed right at them. In the driver’s seat was the man who had first pursued her, his face contorted with savagery as he shook his fist at her captor and mouthed some words in a dialect she could not understand before driving off again, reaching the waiting onlookers ahead of them.

      There were a hundred, no, a thousand questions she wanted to ask, Katrina acknowledged, but before she could do so he was reining in his mount in front of a powerfully built man of medium height, who was gesturing to him to dismount.

      Katrina shivered to see the powerful-looking rifle he was wearing slung over one shoulder, an ammunition belt around his waist, into which was thrust a wicked-looking traditionally curved dagger.

      At his side was the man who had pursued her, gesticulating angrily as he pointed towards her and burst into a rapid speech, of which she could only catch the odd word.

      A brief inclination of his head from the man at her side told Katrina that the man with the gun must be the leader of the men. But whilst he obviously commanded the obedience of everyone else, she was aware that her captor’s body language was subtly emphasising his own independence.

      ‘Why did you let the man get away?’ Katrina heard the leader demand angrily in Zuranese.

      There was a brief pause before her captor answered him coolly, ‘El Khalid, you’re asking me a question you should surely be asking another! A man on horseback, even when that animal is as fast as any mount in the Ruler’s fabled stable, cannot hope to outrun a four-wheel drive. Sulimen could have caught up with him had he not decided to pursue an easier prey.’

      ‘He has taken my prize and now he seeks to discredit me. The girl is mine, El Khalid,’ the driver of the Land Rover protested hotly.

      ‘You hear what Sulimen says, Tuareg! What do you answer him?’

      Katrina had to bite down hard on her lip to stop herself from turning to her captor and begging him not to let Sulimen take her. The leader had called him ‘Tuareg’, using only his tribal name, whereas he had used the more intimate Sulimen for the other man. Did that mean he would favour the other’s claim? Katrina felt sick at the thought.

      Why didn’t her captor say something…? She could feel him looking at her, but she could not bring herself to lift her head and look back at him. She was too afraid of what she might see in his eyes.

      ‘I answer him that I have the girl and he does not. She will earn me a fat purse when I take her back to Zuran City and ransom her back to her people.’

      ‘No one is to leave this camp until I say so,’ came the harsh response. ‘I have gathered you all here in this place for a special mission. Our success in it will make us all very rich men.

      ‘Since both of you lay claim to the girl, then you might fight one another for her.’ He gave a small jerk of his head, and before Katrina could protest she was being led forcibly away by two fierce-looking armed men.

      Anxiously she turned round just in time to see El Khalid removing the glitteringly sharp-edged hooked dagger from his belt and throwing it towards her captor.

      The breath left her lungs in a rush as he caught it and he and Sulimen began to circle one another. Sulimen already had a similar dagger in his hand and almost immediately he jabbed savagely at his opponent with it. The other men had begun to form a circle around them.

      Standing behind them between her jailers, Katrina could only catch maddeningly brief glimpses of the two men as they fought.

      Not that she liked watching men fight—far from it—but on this occasion she had a very strong reason for wanting to know which one was going to be the victor. Whilst the men had dragged her away, the two opponents, whilst СКАЧАТЬ