like a car crash victim. Albeit the most beautiful car crash victim he’d ever seen.
Grimly he recognised that he obviously hadn’t misread her look earlier. Her mouth … He had to grit his jaw just thinking of how it had trembled. How she’d pressed those lips together to try and contain her emotion. And how it had made him want to reach up and pull her head down to his so that he could press his mouth against hers and see if she tasted as sweet as she looked.
He’d just finished his first punishing set of lengths when she’d burst onto the terrace and for a second he’d believed he might be hallucinating. Or going mad. He’d spoken out loud as much to dispel the image before him, but then she’d screamed and turned around, clearly stunned to find anyone there. And as soon as he’d realised that she was very real, his brain had gone into meltdown.
Chagrined to be brought to this level of lack of control, Sebastian took a deep breath and went back out to the living room.
Aneesa heard the stranger returning and stood, but almost immediately she swayed. In a second he was by her side again—and dressed, she noted with relief. He pushed her back down onto the couch gently.
His voice was grim. ‘You’re not in any state to go anywhere.’
Before Aneesa could protest he was handing her a glass which held about an inch of dark golden liquid. She looked up and said huskily, ‘I don’t drink.’
He held it out. ‘Consider it medicinal. You need something, you’re clearly in shock.’
Belatedly she noted the English intonation of his accent. With a slight tremor in her hands she took the glass, relieved that their fingers didn’t touch, and wrinkling her nose, she took a sip, wincing as the fiery liquid burnt its way down her throat. Almost immediately she could feel it settle into her stomach and a resulting warm numbing glow spread outwards.
She sensed rather than saw him move away and when she could muster the courage she looked up to see him standing a few feet away with arms crossed, leaning insouciantly against the glass doors. The white of his shirt couldn’t disguise the powerful chest underneath, or the way the muscles in his arms bunched. He watched her intently and she flushed.
She bit her lip and then said, ‘I’m very sorry for disturbing you like this. I had no right to barge in.’
He frowned then, black brows drawing together over those mesmerising eyes. ‘How did you get in?’
Aneesa faltered for a moment, much of her journey here was hazy. ‘I think through a service lift, into a utility room …’
His mouth tightened with displeasure and Aneesa read it to mean that he was angry with her. She started to apologise again. ‘I’m so sorry—really, I had no idea where I was going—’
He cut her off. ‘It’s not your fault.’
Just then a phone rang, making Aneesa flinch. Her heart started to hammer again and she looked from the phone on a nearby table to the man in horror. ‘They must be looking for me … ‘
As he pushed himself away from the glass doors he said, ‘I’ll have to answer it or they’ll send someone up.’
Aneesa stood in agitation, still gripping the glass. ‘Please, don’t tell them I’m here. Please. I’m not ready to deal with … it.’
She watched as the man picked up the phone, answering with a curt, ‘Yes,’ his eyes never leaving hers.
Aneesa could just hear an indistinctly panicked voice. They must be phoning every room in the hotel. Her heart sank. This man was a complete stranger; he had no obligation to protect her. But even as she was thinking this and fearing the worst he cut off the babble on the phone and said, ‘I’ve seen no one. Please don’t disturb me again tonight unless it’s urgent. I’m sure the manager can deal with the situation.’
And he put down the phone. His eyes hadn’t left hers for a second.
Relief washed through Aneesa, dizzying in its intensity, even as her skin tingled, as if something unspoken had just passed between them. ‘Thank … thank you so much, I know you have no obligation to help me …’
The man prowled close to her and took the glass from her white-knuckled grip, placing it down on a table. Curiously, she recognised that even though she didn’t know him, she felt safe with him. As if she could trust him. And that was a revelation when for days she’d looked at everyone around her with suddenly jaundiced eyes.
He straightened up again to his full intimidating height. ‘Perhaps we should introduce ourselves, because it looks like you won’t be going anywhere for a while. They have every guard combing the hotel for you right now. I think you must be aware that I know who you are.’
Up until recently she would have automatically expected that response, but while this man knew who she was, clearly he wasn’t in thrall and that gave Aneesa a heady feeling. New humility and untold gratitude for this sanctuary made her voice soft. ‘Yes, I’m Aneesa.’
After a long moment she put out her hand, only becoming belatedly aware of what a caricature she must look like with the henna tattoo and all the elaborate jewels, and the wedding outfit. Her hand was enveloped in his much larger one, his grip warm and strong and sending a disturbing electric tingle right to her groin. He smiled and it was lopsided, making Aneesa feel dizzy again. She feared after tonight that she’d never get her equilibrium back.
‘Sebastian … at your service it would seem.’ Sebastian had made a split-second decision not to mention his family name, feeling it hanging like a yoke around his neck, and was aware for the first time that he was in the presence of someone who didn’t appear to know who he was. The thought was curiously heady.
A thread of illicit tension snaked through Aneesa at his words. As if he might be at her service in a much more carnal way. Shocked by that thought, and suddenly overwhelmed by everything and feeling more and more ridiculous, she said shakily, ‘Would you mind if I used your bathroom?’
He stood back after a long moment, releasing her hand with deliberate slowness, and shook his head, gazing so intently at her that she felt flutters run all the way up and down her spine. No man had ever looked at her so explicitly. He gestured to the back of the penthouse. ‘By all means, it’s just through there.’
Aneesa walked away on still-wobbly legs and found the bathroom, slipping inside and closing the door. It was a relief to be away from that courtyard and the intense pressure, and a relief to be away from Sebastian’s disturbing presence. Just then she remembered how it had been the memory of his eyes that had acted as a catalyst to make her run from the ceremony.
And now she was here, in his suite. And he was protecting her from the hordes.
She shivered slightly. She was a pragmatic person, not given to flights of fancy, but it suddenly felt very serendipitous to have arrived here. Immediately that visceral physical response flooded her body in a way that had never happened before.
Even on the fateful evening she’d gone to Jamal’s room to seduce him in her impossibly naïve way, she’d felt no physical anticipation, and yet in the space of the past few minutes she’d become more aware of herself and another man than she ever had been in her whole life. It was fast eclipsing the recent disastrous events.
She pushed away from the door and went to stand in front of the mirror; a soft
