Kitabı oku: «The Sheikh Who Desired Her», sayfa 3

CHAPTER THREE

THE inarticulate rage that had risen up within Salman seconds ago was already diminishing, and he knew it had had more to do with this woman’s effect on him than her belligerence and anger. And now he couldn’t see anything but Jamilah, her clothes already soaked through and sticking to that glorious body.

Jamilah was gasping in shock, her back against the wall of the shower. Water was streaming over her head, face, into her eyes, and Salman’s hand was splayed across her abdomen, holding her in place. Through the steam she could see his glittering obsidian gaze, his hair plastered to his skull, and water sluicing down that powerful chest, through the dark smattering of hair, over his blunt nipples.

She tried to smack his hand away, but he merely put it back and said grimly, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

Humiliation scorched up through Jamilah as she became very aware of how drenched she was, and how her clothes were plastered to her body. As if reading her thoughts, Salman dropped his eyes, and she could feel her breasts respond, growing heavy, her nipples peaking almost painfully against her wet bra and shirt. She could only imagine how see-through the flimsy material must be under the powerful spray. A flash of fire lit his eyes, and they went darker in an instant—and, awfully, she felt an answering rush of heat.

Once again she tried to get free, but Salman merely moved closer and took her hands, raising them above her head. She struggled in earnest now, feeling intensely vulnerable, but it was a struggle against the fire that was gathering pace inside her body, in her blood. She had to stop abruptly when her hips came into explosive contact with his.

‘Let me go.’

She longed to go for his vulnerable area with a knee, but he quickly manoeuvred them so that he could thrust a thigh between her legs and shook his head, saying, ‘Ah-ah …’

The shock of feeling that powerful thigh between hers rendered her mute. All too easily he held her two hands in one of his, like an iron manacle. His other hand drifted down to cup her jaw and turn her face up to his. The spray bounced off him, cocooning them in steam. She gritted her jaw and tried to turn away, but he ruthlessly turned her head back.

He smiled down at her, and it was the smile of a dangerous predator. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit glad to see me?’

A treacherous kick of her heart made Jamilah all but spit at him. ‘You’re the last person I’d be happy to see, Salman al Saqr.’

He shook his head mock-mournfully and tutted. ‘All those strong feelings still under the surface, Jamilah?’

Cold horror snaked through her, despite the heat around them. She had to protect herself. She forced her body to relax and mirrored his own easy demeanour. She even smiled sweetly. ‘On the contrary. I don’t have feelings for you, Salman. I never did. Whatever you saw in Paris was a very transitory and misplaced affection for a first lover. That’s all. You mean nothing to me. I am merely angry because you disrespect your brother and sister-in-law, who I care about greatly, and your home. You’ve caused chaos in the castle, and I refuse to stand by and watch it for a moment longer.’

Salman’s gaze glittered down. His jaw clenched. It was getting harder to keep her body relaxed as he came even closer and she felt his hips grind into hers. And then it was all but impossible when she felt the thrillingly hard evidence of his arousal. Heat climbed upwards and she lashed out. ‘You’re an animal.’

Salman growled, ‘I agree. I feel very animalistic at the moment.’ His eyes had grown heavy and dangerously slumberous, but still with that provocative fire igniting in their depths.

He tightened his hold on her jaw and swooped down, his mouth a searing brand over hers before she could take another breath. Their bodies touched, chest to chest, hip to hip, and Jamilah felt an immediate wild excitement coursing through her blood.

She wanted to rip the wet clothes from her body and arch closer to Salman, to feel wet skin on wet skin. A vivid memory of another shower, another time, flared up. He had lifted her naked body against the wall and urged her to wrap her legs around his waist. He’d found the hot wet core of her and had surged up and into her, making everything blur into a heat haze of passion.

Anger at her reaction and at the vividness of the memory made her kiss him back, defiantly at first, and then she realised the folly of that when Salman pulled her in even closer. She had to battle harder than she’d ever done in her life not to respond, not to let him suck her under to a dark vortex where past and present might merge and make her forget where she was and what he had done to her.

She seized her opportunity when he lifted his head momentarily. With an abrupt move she snaked out from under him and out of the shower, dripping water everywhere and only then realising how much the wall had been supporting her when her legs felt like jelly.

Salman turned slowly under the spray of water and looked at her. She fought the wild clamour of her pulse. As she watched his hand snaked down to his jeans. He flipped open the top button and drawled, ‘I’m going to make myself more comfortable, if you’d care to do the same and join me?’

Jamilah dragged her gaze back up and shook her head, feeling as if she were on fire inside. ‘I wouldn’t join you if we were the two last humans on earth and the future of civilisation depended on us procreating.’

Salman smiled and lazily pulled down his zip. Jamilah could see the whorls of dark hair which led to his sex in her peripheral vision. Heat threatened to engulf her completely. She wondered why she couldn’t move.

And then Salman said, ‘But wouldn’t we make beautiful babies?’

Jamilah made a garbled sound. She was so mad she wanted to cry, or slap Salman’s mocking face. And through that emotion, completely unbidden, came the sudden awful yearning to be heavy with this man’s child. That brought with it the return of bitter reality and the sharpest pain of all—because she knew what it had felt like to carry this man’s child for the briefest time, before nature had taken its tragic course. She could still feel that dragging pain, the wrenching sense of loss, and he would never know.

Even now he was still mocking, taunting, pulling his wet jeans down over lean hips and off, blissfully unaware of the nuclear implosion happening within Jamilah. Before he could see any of it she tore her gaze away and grabbed a towel hanging on a nearby rail. While she still could, she walked on wobbly legs out of the bathroom to the sound of a dark, mocking chuckle and a softly intoned, ‘Coward.’

Salman stood in the shower after Jamilah had walked out, his hands against the wall and his head downbent between them. Only minutes before he’d held her captive. Dripping wet and the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. He finally turned the water to cold as he faced the prospect that for the first time since his teens he might be forced to pleasure himself just to reclaim some sanity. But he had to acknowledge now that his sanity had fled along with Jamilah.

Her white shirt had turned see-through the minute the water had hit, clearly showing her white lace bra and the puckered tips of her berry-brown nipples. Her breasts were still beautifully round, firm and high. And he knew that they would fill his palms like succulent fruits.

He groaned softly when his wayward body persisted in responding, despite the stinging cold spray, and he valiantly resisted the urge to wrap his hand around himself and seek all too transitory relief. There was only one way to relief now. Past or no past, history be damned, one thing was clear: he would have Jamilah back in his bed until he’d sated himself—until he’d sated them both. Because their desire was mutual, explosive and unfinished. And there was no way he could survive a month here without taking her. He’d go crazy.

All concerns for Jamilah’s emotional welfare and the state of his soul were dissolving in a wave of heat. He took some reassurance from the way she’d stood up to him. He could be in no doubt that she was no longer some shy, timid and idealistic virgin. And you did that to her. He blocked out the voice.

His mind stalled for a moment. Dammit, she had been a virgin. He’d assumed that she’d been at least a little bit experienced. He could still remember his shock when he’d thrust into that slick tightness and felt her momentary hesitation, seen the fleeting pain on her face. And then heard her husky moans and pleas for him to keep going. She’d just been too seductive. He was only human, and he hadn’t been able to stop.

His mouth tightened. But hadn’t she all but told him that she’d had plenty of other lovers, and that the turmoil he’d witnessed that day in Paris had merely been a passing crush on her first lover. He should feel comforted by that thought … yet he didn’t.

With an abrupt move he switched off the shower and stepped out. Towelling himself dry roughly, he made a mental vow that if he was consigning himself to hell for ever by resolving to have Jamilah in his bed, then she was coming with him—all the way.

As he found and dragged on clean clothes he thrust thoughts of Jamilah aside with effort. He had some things to attend to—and one of them was making sure that his ill-advised party guests had indeed been shown the door. For the first time in years living vicariously through those around him, watching them lose all sense of self and envying them their opiate nirvana, hadn’t worked to block out his own reality.

‘I apologised to Hana, and to Hisham.’

Jamilah steeled herself before she turned from where she’d been unpacking her suitcase in one of the guest suites. She hadn’t wanted Salman to know so soon that she’d given in to both Hana’s, and Nadim’s chief aide’s pleas for her to move up to the castle. Taking a deep breath, she finally did turn round—to see Salman in dark trousers and a white shirt, leaning insouciantly against the open door.

‘I know,’ she said stiffly, trying to ignore the response in her body and treacherously wishing she wasn’t wearing her habitual uniform of jeans and a shirt—albeit fresh ones. It had been a long day since that eventful morning, and she was exhausted.

She didn’t need to be reminded of how he’d wound the intractable Hana around his little finger. She’d been all but blushing when she’d told Jamilah of his apparent heartfelt apology.

‘So …’ Salman quirked a brow. ‘You’ve been sent to babysit me? Are you going to ground me for bad behaviour?’

Jamilah heard the edge to his voice and guessed that he didn’t often find himself in the position of having to apologise for his actions. She didn’t feel that he was in any way repentant, despite his apology.

She focused on his eyes, and then wished she could look anywhere else when she was sucked into the dark depths and butterflies erupted in her stomach. Salman had a unique ability to plug into her deepest emotions and stir them around. He’d always had that ability.

That realisation made her voice frigid. ‘They asked me to come and stay here. That’s all. With Nadim and Iseult away there’s a lot to take care of, and clearly you’re not interested in taking responsibility.’

She saw his eyes flash at that, but it was gone in an instant and Jamilah wondered why she should be feeling bad.

Salman’s mouth twisted into a mocking smile. ‘What? And not live up to my reputation as the prodigal bad-boy brother?’

Jamilah’s own lush mouth firmed. ‘Something like that.’ And then, before she could stop herself, she asked curiously, ‘Why did you come home?’

A dangerous glint came into Salman’s eye. ‘I’ll tell you if you have dinner with me tonight.’

He was flirting with her.

Jamilah’s belly tightened in rejection of that even as a rush of heat washed through her body. She firmed her jaw. ‘Just because your odious friends have gone, I am not available to entertain you in their absence.’

She stalked over to the door and started to close it purposefully, uncaring of the fact that Salman was in the way. To her abject relief he stepped back. But just before she could close it he stopped it with a hand and said, ‘I’m going to be here for a few weeks, Jamilah … you won’t be able to avoid me for ever. Especially not now that we’re going to be under the same roof.’

Jamilah snorted indelicately. ‘This castle is big enough for an army. We won’t have to make much of an effort to stay out of each other’s way, Salman. And, believe me, I have no intention of seeking you out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had a long day, I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.’

Much to her chagrin, she still couldn’t close the door. She glared up at Salman and tried not to notice that he’d shaved. His jaw was dark and smooth. His clean and intensely masculine scent teased her nostrils. He was one of the few men she knew who hadn’t ever worn overpowering cologne.

‘This isn’t it, Jamilah, not by a long shot. We have unfinished business.’

Fear caught Jamilah’s insides into a knot. She knew she simply would not be able to survive if Salman decided he wanted to seduce her again just because he was bored, or curious. ‘We finished any business we had a long time ago, Salman, and the sooner you realise that the better. And, quite frankly, I don’t care if this is your home and you’re the acting ruler—just stay out of my way.’

When Salman stood on the balcony of his suite a short while later, he felt a hardness enter his belly. The view of Merkazad at night was spread below him. It was a small city but beautiful, full of soaring floodlit minarets and ancient buildings nestling alongside more modern architecture. When he’d been much younger, before the rebel invasion, he’d loved to watch it at night and dream of all sorts of fantastical tales, and the great wide world beyond … but then, during and after the incarceration, it had become a prison to be escaped at all costs …

He was waiting for the inevitable rise of emotion, for nausea to cripple him as it had done whenever he’d looked at this view before. But emotion wasn’t rising in its usual unassailable wave. Instead he felt suspiciously calm. As if something had shifted and this view was no longer as malevolently threatening as it had been for years.

All he could think about was Jamilah and how beautiful she’d looked just now, with that fall of silky midnight-black hair in a curtain around her shoulders and down her back. His gut clenched. She had looked tired. Faint purple shadows under her huge blue eyes. And that vulnerability had made him want to gather her up into his arms and carry her somewhere far away, into the dark starlit night, and lay her down underneath him. He amended his impulse. He just wanted her. He didn’t want to protect her.

But he had once … He’d been twelve and she’d been just six when she’d broken through the numbness encasing him to provoke a protective instinct. He could remember the moment by their parents’ graves as clearly as if it were yesterday. She’d been so still, so stoic. He’d felt an affinity with her that he hadn’t felt with anyone else.

The earth shifted ominously beneath his feet as he had to acknowledge that perhaps Jamilah could be the key to his unfamiliar feeling of equanimity. That thought disturbed him far more than any view could.

Two nights later, as Jamilah lay in bed unable to sleep, she had to admit to herself that she probably would be better off if she was seeing Salman every day. Perhaps it would inure her to his presence? A voice laughed mockingly in her head at that. But anything had to be better than this awful restless hot feeling. She was useless at work, jumping at the slightest sound. She was turning into a nervous wreck.

She’d heard people talking and speculating about him—especially the younger girls at the stables. ‘Is it true he’s more wealthy than even Sheikh Nadim?’ ‘He’s the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, but why doesn’t he come to the stables?’

This last comment had been made dreamily by one of the girls who’d run an errand to the castle. Before Jamilah could say anything, her chief aide, a man called Abdul, had said curtly, ‘He is the Sheikh. And he can do as he wishes. Now get back to work.’

Jamilah had looked at him aghast. Abdul was the most mild-mannered man she’d ever known, and had worked at the stables for longer than anyone could remember. He rarely opened his mouth to anyone. The girls had scuttled off, and he’d immediately apologised to Jamilah red-faced, clearly mortified. She’d waved off his apology, not knowing where the sudden passion had blazed from, and with the curious feeling that he’d been defending Salman. But from what?

With a groan of frustration, mixed with anger at her obsessive thoughts about Salman, Jamilah threw back the covers and got out of bed. She stripped off and went straight to her shower, where she endured the icy spray until her teeth were chattering—as if she could numb all feeling.

‘You will have dinner with me tonight.’

Salman’s voice was an autocratic decree from the ruler of Merkazad. If it had been Nadim, Jamilah would have said yes immediately. But it was Salman, and as her suddenly sweaty hand gripped the handset of the phone in her office she said waspishly, ‘Why should I?’

Salman sighed, and her skin prickled.

‘Because we need to discuss some things …’

Her heart thumped. ‘I have nothing to discuss with you.’

Salman said, with an edge to his voice, ‘What you said to me the other day appears to be true. As much as I might be acting ruler, I’m being constantly diverted to you.’

Jamilah couldn’t even feel a bit smug for a second. She just said faintly, ‘I told you you’d need to earn their respect.’

‘And until that day dawns I’m afraid that I need you—’

Jamilah’s mind blanked when he said those words, and she had to concentrate just to keep up.

‘To have dinner with me and discuss official business. Or do you want me to bother Nadim and his pregnant wife while they are spending time with her family?’

Immediately Jamilah answered, because she knew Salman would have no compunction about disturbing them, ‘No. Of course not.’ She continued in a rush, before she could lose her nerve, ‘I’m finished at work by seven. I’ll see you at eight.’

Salman’s voice was husky. ‘Good. I’ll be looking forward to it, Jamilah.’

Jamilah let the phone drop with a clatter and put hands to hot cheeks. Suddenly breathless, she had to consciously block out evocative images and memories of those weeks in Paris and tell herself that never again would she be so foolish as to let Salman anywhere near the vulnerable heart of her.

A few hours later, though, seated in Nadim’s private formal suite, which Salman had moved into, at an intimate dining table, Jamilah was struggling hard to cling on to her sense of equilibrium. Salman sat opposite her in a black shirt. It made him look even darker, more dangerous. She took another sip of delicious red wine and cursed the impulse which had made her change into a black dress and high-heeled shoes. And leave her hair down. And put on the slightest touch of mascara. She told herself it was just armour. And she needed all the armour she could get.

Salman put down his knife and fork and sat back, wiping his mouth with a napkin. She’d once teased him about the single-minded way he ate. To block the insidious memory, she commented, ‘You’re not drinking …’ And then she smiled sweetly. ‘Still recovering from last week? They say it gets harder with age to cope with the after-effects.’

Almost curtly Salman said, ‘I don’t drink.’

Jamilah frowned, and Salman’s whole body tightened. If she had any idea how aroused and hot he was for her right now she’d run a mile. Since Hisham had shown her in earlier he’d been in a state of heat and lust. He’d expected her to be in jeans and a shirt, and wouldn’t have been surprised to see mucky riding boots.

But she was dressed in something floaty and black. And, while it revealed nothing overt, it clung to her soft bountiful curves with a loving touch. All he wanted to do was smash aside the table between them and rip it off her.

He forced an urbane smile and tried to clamp down on his recently dormant but now raging libido. ‘And I don’t do drugs, either.’

Jamilah was reminded of how he’d certainly appeared sober enough the morning she’d found him passed out. His admission made her feel funny … curious. She shook her head, not understanding. ‘How could you bear to be around those people, then? How could you invite them here and let them run amok like that?’

Salman smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘What can I say? I’m drawn to their instinctive hedonism. I find their lack of engagement with reality fascinating.’

Jamilah had the sudden inexplicable sense that he envied those people, and battled her growing curiosity. Her voice was scathing. ‘I find that hard to believe. It would be impossible to stay in any kind of proximity to that kind of world without being out of your head.’

His eyes darkened to unreadable black. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve been drunk once, and only once.’

At that admission, which Jamilah could see he didn’t welcome, his face shut down, became impassive. Jamilah remembered then that Salman had never drunk to excess during the time she’d been with him.

And then he said, ‘What about you, Jamilah? Are you such a paragon of virtue that you’ve never overindulged?’

Jamilah’s insides contracted. She could remember heady nights of wine and food when she’d been with Salman, the delicious tipsiness that had imbued her and Paris with a magical hue of romance. It certainly hadn’t done the same for Salman. Almost unconsciously she pushed away her half-full glass and answered, ‘I’m no paragon of virtue, Salman, but, no, I don’t feel that I need to see life through a veil of inebriation and crippling hangovers.’

He smiled mockingly, and she couldn’t fail to notice something unbearably bleak this time. ‘Because you wake up each morning with a sense of optimism about your life and the future?’

Jamilah went still inside. Once she’d been like that. So long ago that she almost couldn’t remember it. But she couldn’t deny that now every day when she woke up there was a dull sense of loss … of emptiness. He didn’t know that losing the baby had made her fearful that she might never get pregnant again. No one knew what she’d been through. And she wasn’t about to bare her soul to Salman now.

Much as she hated to admit it, her sense of isolation had been heightened recently by Nadim and Iseult’s unabashed joy in finding each other.

She wiped at her mouth perfunctorily with a napkin and sat up straight, looking pointedly at her watch even if she didn’t register the time. ‘What did you want to discuss, Salman? I’ve got an early start in the morning. We’ve got three new colts that need to be broken in.’

She looked at him then, and was taken aback at the sudden ashen tinge to his skin. Instinctively she leant forward and said, ‘Salman?’

But, as if she’d imagined it, he recovered. He stood up abruptly and walked over to a cabinet, where he took out some papers. Jamilah felt decidedly shaky, and tried not to let her eyes dwell on his tight buttocks encased in superbly cut black trousers. He turned and came back and her face flamed guiltily. She willed down the heat, hating feeling so out of control.

He put down the sheaf of documents and she picked up the top one, feeling at a serious disadvantage as he stood looming over her with hands in his pockets. She could see that it was a press communiqué about an important series of meetings of Middle Eastern heads of state to be held in Paris later that week, regarding the global financial crisis.

She looked up at him blankly. ‘So? What am I supposed to be seeing here?’

‘I have to go to Paris in Nadim’s place.’

Feeling threatened, and not sure why, and also more than a little disturbed by the fact that she wasn’t feeling relief at being informed of Salman’s incipient departure, she stood up and said, ‘Well, have a good trip. I’ll try not to miss you too much.’

She realised then that Salman hadn’t moved back, and now they were almost touching. With a spurt of panic Jamilah moved, but her heel caught in the luxurious carpet and she felt herself pitching backwards. At her helpless cry, two big hands came around her waist and hauled her up again. Breathing heavily, from fright and unwanted sensation, Jamilah could only look up into the black pools of Salman’s eyes.

His fingers tightened on her waist and he said ominously, ‘You’re coming to Paris with me.’