Desert Prince, Defiant Virgin. Kim Lawrence

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      The air was dense with a sexual tension you could have reached out and grabbed with both hands. It hung in the hot, humid air like a crackling field of electricity.

      Tair viewed this unexpected development with as much objectivity as he was able—which wasn’t very much when he was seeing life through a hot hormonal haze.

      It hadn’t been slow burn, it had just exploded out of nowhere and it still held him in its grip.

      Tair’s jaw clenched as he struggled to reassert control; he was not a man who let his appetites rule him. Of course he had experienced his share of lustful moments but he’d never been drawn to anyone in such an elemental way before.

      This personal insight into what this woman could do to a man ought to have made him feel sympathy for his cousin, but it was not empathy he felt when he thought of Tariq following up on the sort of impulse he had just resisted.

      Resisted, even though he was free to follow his urges, unlike his cousin.

      His hooded gaze slid to her mouth.

      ‘It’s just for my own amusement,’ she repeated hoarsely.

      His own amusement was very much in Tair’s thoughts as his eyes stayed on the soft full outline of her lips. If he followed up on his impulses it would be because he chose to and not because he couldn’t help himself.

      He had control.

      So why had he been staring at her mouth for the last two minutes as if it were an oasis and he were a man who needed water?

      Hands clenched at his sides, he removed his eyes from her lips. If he did kiss her it would be at a time and place of his choosing.

      Pushing back strands of loose hair from her brow, Molly extended her hand towards him. ‘Thank you…’

      As he looked at her fingertips Tair thought about them trailing over his damp bare skin. A spasm of irritation drew his lean features into a frown. His problem was that there had been too much work in his life recently and not enough sex.

      His problem, he acknowledged, was her mouth.

      To Molly’s utter dismay, instead of handing her the spectacles Tair held them up to his own eyes.

      She watched his dark brows lift towards his hairline and thought how it was typical that the only person who had ever seen past her harmless charade had to be him.

      ‘Clear glass…?’

      He struggled to hide his extreme distaste at his discovery. Presumably the clothes and unmade face were all part of the same illusion. The one that made other women dismiss her as no threat, but every man she came into contact with knew different.

      He knew different.

      Molly, feeling an irrational level of guilt as though she had been caught out in some shameful crime, shook her head mutely.

      She was not about to explain that when arriving at university via an educational hothouse scheme for gifted children, aged sixteen and looking fourteen, she had come up with the inspired idea of looking older by adopting a pair of heavy spectacles. She realised now that they hadn’t made her look older but over the years they had become a safety blanket.

      ‘A fashion accessory.’

      ‘I think you should change your fashion guru.’

      The suggestion drew a forced laugh from Molly. ‘Fashion isn’t really my thing.’

      ‘But wearing clothes two sizes too big is?’

      He didn’t come right out and say that she looked like a dowdy bag lady, but that was clearly the message in his comment. The voltage of Molly’s smile went up and her muscles ached from the fixed and slightly inane grin her facial muscles had frozen into.

      She was comfortable in her own skin, and if this man with his perfect face and better than perfect body couldn’t see past superficial things like make-up and clothes that was his problem. She only had a problem if she started caring what men she met casually thought about her.

      It could be she had a problem.

      She looked at his fingers holding her glasses. They were rather incredible; long, tapering and the lightest contact with them had sent her nervous system into meltdown. She was sure there was a perfectly logical explanation for what happened—a build-up of static electricity and a freakish set of circumstances that couldn’t be repeated if she tried.

      But Molly wasn’t about to put her theory to the test. As far as Prince Tair was concerned she had a strict no-touch policy—her body was still shaken by intermittent aftershocks from his light touch. Anything more intimate and she might well end up hospitalised.

      Just as well him getting more intimate with her was about as likely as snow in the desert.

      With the fixed smile still painted in place, she reached out to carefully take her glasses from his fingers.

      He gave a sardonic smile that Molly didn’t choose to respond to, her cheeks pink as she slid the spectacles onto her nose while expelling a shaky sigh of relief. Of course he knew he was gorgeous. Of course he knew women fainted away when he deigned to throw them a smile, but, God, she didn’t want to be one of them.

      It was all so shallow and silly. It seemed a good moment to remind herself that she was neither.

      ‘I’m meeting Tariq,’ she explained, hoping he would take the hint and go away. There were only so many times a girl could make a fool of herself. ‘He should be here any minute now.’

      ‘I know.’

      ‘You do?’ Then why hadn’t he just said so straight off instead of giving her the opportunity to act like a total imbecile?

      ‘He asked me to deliver a message.’

      She gave an encouraging nod. Dragging a sentence out of this man was like dragging blood from the proverbial stone.

      ‘He is not coming.’

      Molly’s face fell. ‘Right, well…thank you.’ She urged him to go—her system couldn’t take all this undiluted testosterone.

      ‘Beatrice is not well.’

      Molly’s mask fell away. ‘Beatrice…’ She pressed one hand to her mouth and, all hint of self-preservation gone, she caught his arm with the other. ‘What happened?’ she asked, her mind turning over the events of two days earlier when she had come across Beatrice sitting with her head between her knees recovering from a slight dizzy spell.

      Molly’s first inclination had been to get help, but Bea had begged her not to, saying that Tariq was already wildly overprotective and he would worry himself silly over a moment of light-headedness.

      She shouldn’t have let Bea dissuade her, she thought. She should have told Tariq.

      Tair felt the fingers curled over his forearm tighten.

      ‘Apparently she had a…troubled night.’

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