most beautiful face could hide a lying, treacherous heart. It was the only safe, the only sensible thing to do. But he didn’t feel at all safe and he didn’t feel in the least bit sensible as he moved her slightly backwards, away from him, and, with the knife still held in one hand, carefully began to move the other hand across the glorious curves she offered him.
How the hell did security officers, his bodyguards, ever manage this? he asked himself as his fingertips patted over the silken robe, keeping to the safety of her neck and shoulders first, but then moving down, lower, over the slopes of her breasts, and underneath where the soft weight seemed to fall into his palms with wicked enticement.
He would have been all right then, too, if only he hadn’t glanced up. Hadn’t looked into her face and seen the way her eyes had darkened, their lids becoming heavy, hooded, as her breathing became deeper, slower too. He could feel her pulse, thick and heavy, and saw her head fall back, eyes closing slowly, her soft mouth opening slightly.
He was on very thin ice indeed. If he gave in too quickly to the hungry demands of his aroused body, he of all people knew how foolish that was. Hadn’t Sharmila taught him anything? In the back of his mind he could hear her words—the words he had believed to be motivated by love and caring.
Come to bed, my lord, and make me your wife.
‘Nabil...’
Aziza’s whole body was burning up in response to his touch, her breasts tightening, heated moisture gathering between her legs. The feel of those hot, hard palms against her body, even with the fine silk of her wedding dress between them, was like being branded for life. Branded as his. Wherever he touched she thought that a trail of marked skin would follow the path of those tormenting fingers and she could barely stop herself from pressing into that scorching connection. When his searching hands swept down from below her tingling breasts to smooth over the curves of her hips, the intimate response that shuddered through her had her doing a small, uncontrolled little shimmy against his touch.
‘As you see, I’m not hiding anything,’ she managed, her throat raw and dry.
‘No...’ He sounded worse than she did.
‘So take me to bed, my lord, make me your wife.’
Nabil’s shocking response was a violently muttered curse. Unbelievably, he suddenly stopped his search, his hands frighteningly still for a moment.
‘Enough,’ he declared harshly, cold and withdrawn.
Enough? Aziza blinked hard, tried to stare at him through unfocused eyes. How could that be enough? He must be as aroused as her. How could he switch it off, forget it in the space of a heartbeat?
But when she looked into his face it was as if it was dead, totally closed off and opaque. He had withdrawn into some secret space where she couldn’t reach him and he snatched his hands away sharply, letting the heat evaporate and leaving her cold, jolting her out of the sensual dream she’d foolishly let herself drift into.
‘I said enough!’
His hands came up between them, like a knife cutting off all connection; his face was so set and hard, each muscle taut.
‘We are done.’
She was back to being Zia, the unwanted maid.
You stupid little fool—you wouldn’t even know who you were kissing. What kind of man you wanted...
The words rang inside her head, harder now, more brutal than before and hitting home with cruel precision. Because this time she knew just who she had been kissing; and she very definitely knew what kind of man she wanted. She wanted Nabil and only him, her childhood crush flowering into a fully formed adult hunger. The trouble was that he couldn’t have made it any plainer that she was not the kind of woman he wanted.
At least not in any way that he would admit to. But he had wanted her before—hadn’t he? She had so little experience in these things so had she read it all wrong? Was it true that, as her father had always said, she was not the marriageable prospect that her sister was? Or had she shocked Nabil by appearing so forward, by displaying her need so openly?
‘But now that you know I’m not concealing any weapon? That I’m no danger to you...?’
‘Not unless that was your secret weapon,’ Nabil flashed back, stunning her.
His searing look that slid over her bewildered face, lingering at her breasts and hips, confused her even further until she realised just what he was saying and her blood ran cold.
‘You think that I was trying to seduce you into...’
‘You were not trying—you were succeeding,’ Nabil retorted but he managed to make it sound as if that was the greatest crime on earth.
She was forgetting that the man who had grabbed her hand and all but dragged her here from the banqueting hall had had his mind filled with thoughts of conspiracy and treachery. Did he really believe that she had set out to seduce him, to distract his thoughts from the realisation he had been deceived...betrayed? The memory of the moment he had pulled out the knife made it feel as if the weapon had twisted in her own heart.
She had tried so hard to make him believe that she was someone he could trust, even submitting to that brutally intimate search, letting his hard fingers go wherever they wanted on her body. She could still feel the scorch they had left behind.
‘As I said, we are done.’ The ultimate dismissal.
Just for a moment Aziza almost returned to the mood of the night when they’d met on the balcony. When she had been pretending to be Zia the maid. He had spoken in the same dismissive way then, wanting rid of her as quickly as possible. Once again she’d been ordered to leave the presence of the Sheikh, dismissed by him, and this time her response was very nearly the same. She even let her hands drop to gather the golden folds of her skirt, ready to dip into the respectful curtsey protocol demanded. But then she met Nabil’s cold-eyed stare once more and knew a welcome rush of rebellion.
No. The word reverberated inside her head so strongly that she felt sure Nabil must hear it too. But the brutal glare showed no response, no alteration in his expression. She felt the change in herself, though, and was determined to act on it. He had chosen her once even if the dark suspicions built by something in his past had caused him to go back on that decision. She would show him that, even if he didn’t believe it as yet, she had his best interests and that of the kingdom at heart.
‘So you want me to go out there...’
With a wave of her hand she gestured towards the closed door through which he had bundled her such a short time before.
‘And let everyone see that this marriage has failed already? To tell my father that the treaty is null and void—dead in the water?’
And that her father was correct when he’d said that his ‘other daughter’ was not a suitable wife for the Sheikh.
‘As you wish.’ She made her voice as cold as his had been.
Then she drew herself up, lifted her chin and turned on her heel. Not even glancing back over her shoulder to see his response, refusing to let it look as if she cared, she took one step away from him, then another.
‘One
