Desert Fantasies. Barbara McMahon

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СКАЧАТЬ long after the ceremony, wonder where she was and come looking for her. She should have known that he wouldn’t wait for her to open the door to barge in, all aggrieved and affronted masculine pride.

      She rose to face him, willing away the heat in her cheeks. Against Rani’s shocked protests, she’d unwound herself from the metres and metres of golden fabric, pulled down her hair and scrubbed her face clean, dressing instead in a simple white nightdress, with a white robe lashed at her waist. Now only the henna tattoos adorning the backs of her hands and feet remained, but even they would fade in time and at least she no longer felt like some kind of prize to be fought and waged war over and dressed up like some kind of triumph. She felt like herself. Not even a princess any more, but a woman.

      A woman with a mind of her own. A woman who knew about duty, but who also had her own hopes and dreams for the future.

      That woman faced up to him now.

      ‘Why wouldn’t I be here?’ She swallowed and tugged on the ends of her robe’s ties, taking both mental and physical reinforcement from the action. ‘After all, this is my suite, Sheikh Zoltan.’ She put the emphasis squarely on the ‘my’.

      ‘And this is our wedding night!’

      Packed with memories she would cherish for ever. What a laugh. She shrugged, realising she hadn’t been the only one to divest of her wedding garb. He’d changed too out of that crisp, white wedding robe and into a pair of perfectly tailored trousers and a smooth fine-knit shirt that clung to his chest like a lover’s caress. But no, she would rather not think of his lovers right now, or how many he must have had, or what their hands might do with a chest like that to explore. Not that she was jealous, exactly. It was just that she did not care to know the details.

      She lifted her gaze to his face, plastering a disingenuous expression on her own. ‘Your point being?’

      ‘You are supposed to be in my chamber. Didn’t they tell you I was expecting to find you in my suite?’

      She sniffed, looking down at the desk and fingering the hand-written pages, thinking about all the things she’d talked about, all her hopes and her disappointments, exposing herself and her pointless dreams. No, she probably wouldn’t end up sending it, come to think of it. Her seize-the-moment sister would probably only laugh and say that no man was worth waiting for, especially the one you didn’t even know existed. She looked back up at Zoltan, waiting like a mountain before her. ‘I do believe someone mentioned something like that, yes.’

      ‘Then why did I have to come looking for you here?’

      ‘Because there seemed no point in going to your room.’

      He raked one hand through his hair. ‘What the hell are you talking about? Why not, when you knew I had been expecting to find you there?’

      ‘Simply because I thought it might give you the wrong idea,’ she said, pausing to enjoy the mess of confusion on his features and the questions flashing across his eyes before deciding to put him out of his misery. ‘Given the fact I have no intention of sleeping with you.’

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      THE mountain before her turned volcanic, the face glowing hot with the magma so close below the surface, eyes wild. She braced herself for the eruption, knowing she was courting disaster and yet feeling a strange sense of elation that she’d succeeded in throwing him so completely off-balance. But the expected eruption did not eventuate. Zoltan somehow managed to hold himself together, his rage rolling off him in searing waves of heat. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

      ‘Rest assured, Sheikh Zoltan,’ she said, aiming for meekness. ‘I would never joke about such a thing. I am deadly serious.’

      ‘But you are my wife!’ he roared, rigid with fury. ‘Let me remind you of that fact, in case today’s ceremony had somehow slipped your mind.’

      This time she could not help but laugh. ‘Do you seriously think for a moment I could forget, when I was handed over to you like little more than a stick of furniture?’

      ‘Oh,’ he said, pacing out the width of the Persian rug that took up one half of the room before turning to devour the distance back in long, purposeful strides, his thumb stroking his chin as if he were deep in contemplation of some highly complex problem. ‘I see your problem. You think it should have been all about you, the poor little princess forced to do her duty for once in her life? Do you think we should have got down on hands and bended knees and thanked you for so generously sacrificing yourself on the altar of martyrdom? For so generously agreeing to do what was your duty?’

      She closed her eyes as she took a despairing breath, ignoring his barbs and insults except to use them to fuel her resolve. If she had a problem, it was standing not ten feet from her. ‘No, I don’t think that at all. For, while I’m not overly fond of finding myself a pawn in someone else’s game—a game, it seems, where I find myself a loser from the very beginning—I actually don’t think I’m the one with the problem here.

      ‘You needed a wife—a princess, no less—in order to be king and today you got one. So now you can be crowned King of Al-Jirad. You have my heartiest congratulations.’ She looked towards the door. ‘And now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving, Sheikh Zoltan, I will finish my correspondence.’

      He stood, slowly shaking his head. ‘You are kidding yourself if you think that, Princess. You think this ends here? You know Al-Jirad needs an heir. Two at least before your work is anywhere near done.’

      She angled her chin higher. ‘I acknowledge that my services are also required as some kind of brood mare. I do not particularly like it, but I accept that it is so.’

      His eyes gleamed in the light. ‘Then what are you doing here and not already in my suite?’

      ‘Simple,’ she said, crossing her arms over her chest, refusing to be cowed. ‘I don’t know you. I won’t sleep with a man I don’t know, whoever he is, whether or not he believes he has some kind of legal entitlement to my breeding services.’

      He came closer then, so close she could feel the air shift and curl between them, carrying his scent to her on a heated wave. It was all she could do to stand her ground and not turn and run, and only half from fear of his anger. The other half was from fear that, in spite of her anger and her hatred for him, she might yet be drawn towards an evocative scent that brought back memories of lying wrapped in his arms, close to his heated body.

      She swallowed as he came close. But surely he would not try anything here, in her suite? Surely he was not that ruthless that he could come here to take what she had denied him elsewhere?

      ‘You don’t know me, Princess?’ He scooped the back of one finger down her cheek, an electric, evocative gesture that sent ripples of sensation radiating out under her skin. ‘Not at all?’

      ‘No,’ she said, hating it when he slid his hand around the curve of her throat. ‘I know practically nothing about you.’ She willed herself to be strong, to remember his cruelty and the fact he was using her, even as her skin tingled, her traitorous body yearning to sway into his touch. ‘And to tell you the truth, I’m not particularly fond of the bits I have seen.’

      ‘Strange,’ he mused. ‘When I had been sure there was a definite connection between us.’ He angled his head. ‘Did you not feel it then, when we kissed?’

      ‘I СКАЧАТЬ