one matters, and a hundred and one people at court, in government and from abroad, demanded his attention every day—and he never, ever took a day off. But this particular day was different: he was with Tilda. Obviously he had not been firm enough in his command. He stepped over the phone.
‘Is there a problem?’ Tilda enquired, peering back at the hapless older man literally wringing his hands and muttering laments. ‘He seems a bit upset.’
‘Drama is the spice of life to my people.’
Angling her bright gaze back to Rashad, Tilda lifted her chin and finally said what had been simmering at the back of her mind for hours. ‘I didn’t tip off the press and I can’t imagine why you think I would’ve done.’
‘Many women revel in that sort of public attention.
There are also those who choose to make money by selling personal information to the paparazzi.’
That inflammatory comeback tensed her narrow spine into rigidity and she decided to give him the response he deserved. She spun round, platinum-fair curls falling in silvery streamers round her exquisite face, her jewelled eyes hurling a challenge. ‘Actually I don’t plan to sell my story of what it’s like to be a prince’s concubine until I go home again.’
The atmosphere sizzled like oil heated to boiling point.
Dense black lashes sweeping low on his scorching golden gaze, Rashad strolled silently back to her, intrigued by her continuing defiance. ‘Perhaps,’ he murmured very softly, ‘you won’t want to go home again. I can be very persuasive.’
Tilda had wanted to annoy him and the tenor of his reply took her by surprise. ‘Of course I’ll want to go home again … I’ll be counting the days!’
‘Or you’ll be doing whatever it takes to hold my interest so that you can stay. Today you stop running away and start learning.’ A lean brown hand lifted to brush a straying strand of pale hair back from her cheekbone in a confident gesture of intimacy. She backed up against the cold solid wall, her breath catching in her throat. He traced the pouting cupid’s bow of her upper lip with his thumb and gently opened her mouth to graze the soft moist underside. Her legs went limp and stinging awareness made her nipples pinch into painfully tight buds. It was a fight to contain the wanton shock of fascination travelling through her.
‘I don’t run away,’ she told him frantically. ‘Ever!’
‘Once, you ran faster than a gazelle every time I got too close. I’m a hunter. I enjoyed the chase.’ Rashad let his forefinger dip sexily between her peach-soft lips and retreat again. He watched her pupils dilate and the slender white expanse of her throat extend as she tipped her head back in instinctive female invitation. ‘But you always wanted me. You may fight with me, but you are begging for my mouth right now.’
Her long brown lashes fluttered. It took enormous effort to concentrate again. Angry pain slashed through that mental fog because for a long, timeless moment she had craved the heat of his mouth on hers as badly as a life-giving drug. ‘I’m not begging,’ she muttered, forcing a laugh that sounded horribly strangled.
Rashad gazed down at her with a languorous heat that made her tremble. ‘Don’t worry—you will.’
Tilda braced a hand on the wall and pushed herself away from him with a lack of coordination that infuriated her. She was trembling, maddeningly aware of every fluid shift of his lithe, powerful body so close to hers. Her mind threw up a dangerous image of Rashad pushing her back against the wall with the passion that was so much a part of him, the passion he so rarely freed from restraint. The knot of tension in her pelvis tightened and she recognised it for the hunger it was. The fact that her hostility didn’t stop her responding to him shook her up badly.
Rashad shot her pale, taut profile a glittering appraisal and closed a shapely brown hand over hers. ‘Let me show you the harem.’
‘I can hardly wait.’ Although colour now mantled her cheeks, Tilda lifted her head high. She remembered his dark sense of humour so well. She remembered how he had once teased the life out of her. A sharp pang of regret gripped her for that lost time and had the effect of simply hardening her resolve.
‘I didn’t tip off the press,’ she told him afresh.
‘So you say.’ His audible indifference to such a plea incensed her.
‘And five years ago, I didn’t sleep with anyone else.’
Rashad expelled his breath in a long-suffering hiss. Why did she keep on reminding him of her infidelity? He did not want to be reminded. Why did she not appreciate that every denial merely acted as a prompt to unsavoury memories?
Mounting a vast stone staircase by his side and determined to ignore the discouraging silence that had met her valiant claim, Tilda swallowed hard. ‘I’d like to see the proof you said you had of my so-called misdemeanours.’
‘Some day I will let you see it.’ Rashad flashed her an impatient look. As she could have no idea how conclusive his proof was she was probably hoping to argue her way out of the evidence of her deceit. Unhappily for her, he had complete faith in the source of the information he had received.
‘Why not now?’
‘I have heard enough of your lies. Silence is preferable.’ His lean, darkly handsome face was resolute. ‘In time, I expect you to accept the futility of lying to me.’
Tilda yanked her hand forcibly free of his. ‘So you intend to make it impossible for me to defend myself. I’m damned if I do speak up and damned if I don’t. But why would any man want a lying, cheating gold-digger?’
Rashad made no answer. He refused to rise to the bait. He was beginning to appreciate that whenever she was most desperate to keep him at a distance she started fighting with him.
Aggrieved by his lack of response, Tilda murmured dulcetly, ‘Maybe you only like bad girls.’
At that crack, Rashad surveyed her with pure predatory appreciation. Where she was concerned that was true. When he looked at her, when he thought about her, her sins were never at the forefront of his mind. His desire ran too hot and strong to be denied. With her turquoise eyes as vivid as polar stars, she glowed with beauty and quicksilver energy. The ache at his groin came close to pain. Never had he felt such powerful need to possess a woman. Suddenly all his patience just vanished. He strode forward and swept her up off her feet and headed for his bedroom.
‘What the heck are you doing?’ Tilda launched at him in astonishment.
‘We’ve waited long enough to be together.’ Rashad thrust at a door with a broad shoulder to force it wider and kicked it shut in his wake.
Tilda spread a decidedly panicky glance round the echoing bedroom, which seemed to her to have very little else in it beyond the highly ornate four-poster bed that sat on a dais. ‘I thought I was going to get a tour of the harem!’
‘Some other day, when I have the strength to resist you.’ Rashad lowered her to the floor and stripped off her coat, an imprisoning hand splaying across the soft swell of her hips in case she dared to stray anywhere out of his reach. He bent his arrogant dark head, golden eyes smouldering over her like tiny flames, and tasted her soft full mouth.
It was as though every time he touched her he sent another brick flying out of her wall of defence,
