love? Could he live with himself if his secret fears proved to be correct and his love for her overwhelmed his sense of duty?
Switching off the laptop, he reached for his Jeep keys.
She couldn’t ever remember a time when she had felt more nervous, Mariella acknowledged as she urged the four-wheel drive along the familiar boulder-strewn track. Up ahead of her she could see the pavilion and her heart lurched, slamming into her ribs. What if Xavier simply refused to be seduced and rejected her? What if…?
For a moment she was tempted to turn the four-wheel drive round and scuttle back to the city. Quickly she reminded herself of sexual tension stretching between them in the garden of the villa. He had wanted her then, and had admitted as much to her!
She had half expected to see him emerging from the pavilion as he heard her drive up, but there was no sign of him.
Well, at least he wouldn’t be able to demand that she turn round and drive straight back, she comforted herself as she parked her vehicle and climbed out, going to the back to remove her things, and then standing nervously staring at the pavilion.
Perhaps if she had timed things so that she had arrived in the dark… Some seductress she was turning out to be, she derided herself as she took a deep breath and walked determinedly towards the chosen fate.
Five minutes later she was standing facing the oasis, unwilling to accept what was patently obvious. Xavier was not here! No Xavier, no four-wheel drive, no seduction, no baby!
A crushing sense of disappointment engulfed her. Where was he? Could he have changed his mind and returned to the city despite informing his great-aunt that he intended to stay on at the oasis? How ironic it would be if by rushing out here so impulsively she had actually denied herself the opportunity of achieving what she wanted!
But then she remembered that his laptop was still inside the pavilion, and surely he would not have left that behind if he had been returning home? So where was he?
The sun was already a dying red ball lying on the horizon. Soon it would be dark. There was no way she was going to risk driving all the way back without the benefit of daylight!
So what exactly was she going to do? Spend yet another evening enduring her rebellious body’s clamouring urgency for the fulfilment of its driving need? It had simply never occurred to her that he wouldn’t be here!
The pavilion was so intimately a part of him. Dreamily, she trailed her fingertips along the chair he used when working at the laptop. The air actually seemed to hold an echo of his scent, a haunting resonance of his voice, and she felt that, if she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, she could almost imagine that he was there… She could certainly picture him behind her tightly closed eyelids. But it wasn’t his mental image she wanted so desperately, was it?
She knew she ought to eat, but she simply wasn’t hungry. She was thirsty, though.
She went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of water. Fine grains of sand clung to her skin, making it feel gritty. Hardly appropriate for a would-be siren! The long drive in the brilliant glare of the desert sun had left her eyes feeling tired and heavy. Like her body, which felt tired and heavy and empty. A sense of dejection and failure percolated through her.
Slowly, she walked out of the kitchen intending to return to the living area, but instead found herself being drawn to the ‘bedroom.’ Standing in the entrance, she looked achingly around it.
A fierce shudder that became an even fiercer primal ache gripped her as she looked at the bed and remembered what had happened there. It was just her biology that was making her feel like this, her fiercely strong maternal desire. That was all, and of course it was only natural that that urge should manifest itself in this hungry desire for the man whose genes it had decided it wanted, she reassured herself as she was confronted with the intensity of her longing for Xavier.
Just thinking about him made her go weak, made her want him there so that she could bury her lips in the warm male flesh of his throat and slide her hands over the hard, strong muscles of his arms and his back, and then down through the soft dark hair that covered his chest and arrowed over his belly to where…
She needed a shower, Mariella decided shakily. A very cool shower!
‘Safe travelling, Ashar.’ Xavier smiled ruefully as he embraced the senior tribesman whilst the others went about the business of breaking camp ready to begin the long slow journey across the desert.
‘You could always come with us,’ Ashar responded.
‘Not this time.’ Xavier shook his head.
All around him he could hear the familiar sounds of the camp, the faint music of the camel bells, the orderly preparations for departure. The tribe would travel through the night hours whilst it was cool, resting the herd during the heat of the day.
Ashar’s shrewd brown eyes surveyed him.
Ashar remembered Xavier’s grandfather as well as his father. Alongside his respect for Xavier as his leader ran a very deep vein of paternal affection for him.
‘Something troubles you—a woman, perhaps? The tribe would rejoice to see you take a wife to give you sons to follow in your footsteps as you have followed in those of your grandfather and your father.’
‘If only matters were that simple, Ashar.’ Xavier grimaced.
‘Why should they not be? This woman, you are afraid perhaps that she will not respect our traditions, that she will seek to divide your loyalties? If that is so then she is not the one for you. But knowing you as I do, Xavier, I cannot believe that there could be a place in your heart for a woman such as that. You must learn to trust what is in here,’ he told him, touching his own heart with his hand. ‘Instead of believing only what is in here.’ As he touched his hand to his head Xavier hid a wry smile. Ashar had no idea just how dangerously out of control his emotions were becoming!
He waited to see the tribe safely on their way before climbing in his vehicle to drive back to the oasis.
A sharply crescented sickle moon shared the night sky with the brilliance of the stars. Diamonds studded onto indigo velvet. For Xavier it was during the night hours that the desert was at its most awesome, and mystical, a time when he always felt most in touch with his heritage. His ancestors had travelled these sands for many, many generations before him, and it was his duty, his responsibility to ensure that they did so for many, many generations to come. And that was not something he could achieve from behind the walls of a high-rise air-conditioned office, and certainly not from the fleshpots of the world as Khalid would no doubt choose to do. No, he could only maintain and honour the tribe’s traditional way of life by being a part of it, by sharing in it, and that was something he was totally committed to doing. He must not deviate from that purpose. But his feelings, his love for Mariella could not be denied, or ignored. The strength of them had initially shocked him, but he had now gone from shock to the grim recognition that it was beyond his power to change or control the way he felt.
He saw Mariella’s vehicle as he drove up to the oasis. Parking next to it, he got out and studied it warily. He did not encourage anyone to visit him when he was at the oasis and he was certainly not in the mood for uninvited guests, right now! Where and who was its driver?
Frowning, he headed for the pavilion, not needing to waste any time lighting the lamps to illuminate the darkness, his familiarity with it enough to take him from the entrance to the opening to the bedroom without breaking
