him look only at her, unlocked for her the door to an agonising new world of pain!
Thoughts, longings, needs hitherto denied and forbidden broke loose from the control she had imposed on them, one after the other, until she was exposed to an entire avalanche of them. They buried for ever any possibility of her denying what her feelings for Blaize really were!
Frantically she struggled to make sense of what was happening. In the eerie pristine silence that followed the inner explosion, her thought processes were frozen.
How was it possible for her to love Blaize? Petra felt as though she had suddenly become one of those small figures in a child’s snowstorm ball, who had just had her whole world and all her perceptions of what was in it turned vigorously upside down. But say she had got it wrong. Say she did not really love Blaize. Mentally she tried to imagine how she would feel if she were never to see him again.
The intensity of her pain made her catch her breath. Was this how her mother had felt about her father? It must have been. But things had been different for her mother, Petra had to remind herself. Her mother had known that her love was returned… shared… That she was loved as much as she herself loved.
The music was reaching a crescendo, and Petra shivered as she felt and saw the raw sensuality of the dancer’s movements, her passionate determination to make Blaize notice her, choose her. Blaize himself had turned round and was watching her. The girl danced faster and faster, and then as the music exploded in climactic triumph she flung herself bodily as Blaize’s feet.
Petra could tell from the reaction of the guides and the robed men watching that this was not the normal finale to the dance. Instinctively she knew that the girl did not normally offer herself with such sexual blatancy to one of the male onlookers the way she just had done to Blaize, and immediately her own jealousy burned to a white heat.
She wanted to run to the girl and push her away—to tell her that Blaize belonged to her. But of course he did not!
The audience were good-humouredly throwing money onto the floor for the dancer, as they had been encouraged to do, but the dancer remained prostrate in front of Blaize, not acknowledging their generosity. It was left to one of the male fire-eaters who had been entertaining them earlier to pick it up.
As Petra watched Blaize watching the girl she wondered what he was thinking. He said something to one of the men he had been speaking with, who inclined his head as though in deference to Blaize before going over to the girl and bending towards her.
What was the man saying to her? Petra wondered jealously. What message had Blaize given the man to give her? Had he told her that he would see her later? The girl was getting up. She looked at Blaize, a proud, challenging flash of dark eyes, before walking slowly away, her hips swaying provocatively as she did so, her spine straight.
How could any man resist such an invitation? Petra wondered bleakly. Why would a man like Blaize even try to do so? And why, oh, why did a woman like her have to fall in love with him?
The evening was drawing to a close. People were finishing off their drinks and retiring to their pavilions.
Petra looked towards Blaize, who was still talking to the falconer and some other men. The dancer had disappeared, and Blaize was showing no signs of coming over to her or even looking at her.
Tiredly Petra got up and made her own way to their pavilion, collecting her things and then heading for the shower block. Too much was happening to her too quickly. Since arriving in this country she had been forced to confront aspects of herself and her feelings that it was very hard for her to accept.
Suddenly, standing beneath the warm spray of the shower, she longed achingly to be able to turn back the clock and return to a time when she had known nothing of the complexities that meeting her grandfather would bring. A time when she would have laughed out loud in disbelief if anyone had suggested that she would fall in love with a man like Blaize.
The camp was settling down to sleep when she made her way back to her pavilion. The soft glow of the lamps added to the air of mystery and enticement of its interior.
Someone had placed a dish of dates on one of the low carved tables in the sitting area, and silk cushions were placed invitingly on the floor in front of it, but Petra had no stomach for the sweetness of the dates—no stomach for anything, really, she admitted, now that her heart was soured by the anguish of her unreturnable love for Blaize. After all, even if he were by some impossible means to return her feelings, how could there be any future for them?
It wasn’t a matter of money. That didn’t come into it. Blaize could have had nothing and she would have loved him proudly and joyously. But how could she feel anything other than disquiet and distress at loving a man who used himself in the way that Blaize did? It was that which hurt her more than anything else! Even more than thinking about him with another woman? The belly dancer for instance?
Petra curled her hands into small fists. Where was he now? He was not in his room. The fabric covering the entrance to it was tied back so that she could see that the space beyond was empty.
Unlike hers, the ‘walls’ of his room were hung with darker, heavier fabric, which if anything was even more richly embroidered in gold than her own. Opulent fur-mimicking throws were heaped on the bed. There was a beautiful rug on the floor and a dish of sweet almond cakes on the table in front of the divan, along with a pot of richly fragrant coffee.
It was a setting fit for an Arabian prince, Petra reflected admiringly. And a retreat to which that same prince could bring the dancing girl of his choice, a dangerous inner voice taunted her.
Quickly Petra suppressed it. Blaize was no prince, Arabian or otherwise, and as for the dancing girl…
But where was he? Virtually the whole camp seemed to have settled down to sleep, and yet there was no sign of him.
Restlessly Petra paced the small pavillioned sitting area, tensing as the opening flap was abruptly pushed back and Blaize came in. He was stripped to the waist, a towel round his shoulders, his hair damp, and as he came in he brought with him the scent of the night and the desert—and of himself.
Petra felt her insides turn softly, compliantly liquid, longing pulsing through her as she gazed helplessly at his body.
She hadn’t truly appreciated its magnificence the first time she had seen it, hadn’t been able to sense its male capacity for sensuality and female pleasure, but now she could.
Abruptly her eyes narrowed, her gaze focusing on the angry claw-marks on his arm, which were still oozing blood slightly. Immediately the earth rocked beneath her feet and she was savaged by her own jealousy.
He had been with the dancer, and she had clawed her mark of possession on him!
Her mark of passion!
Before she could even recognise what she was doing, never mind stop herself, Petra had clenched her hands into small fists and advanced on him, demanding furiously, ‘Where have you been? As if I didn’t know! Was she good? Better than the rich tourists who pay you for your favours?’
‘What…?’
Like lightning the changing expressions chased one another across his face, frowning disbelief followed by a warning, taut concentration. In its place followed an even more dangerous flash of sheeting anger and his mouth compressed and a tiny nerve pulsed in his jaw.
But Petra was in no mood to heed
