‘Nothing that I know of,’ she answered as her boss gave a brief nod of his head and walked across the art gallery to talk to a woman on the other side of the room.
‘Shall we go home?’ questioned Suleiman.
‘I think we’d better,’ said Sara quietly. ‘Before I smash one of those very expensive “regurgitated cat supper” canvasses over your arrogant head.’
‘Are you saying you’d like one of those hanging in your living room?’
‘I do happen to like some of them, yes, but I’m not going to have a conversation about the artwork.’
Suleiman kept his hand firmly on her waist as he steered her towards the cloakroom, so that she could collect her wrap.
She didn’t speak until they were outside and neither did he, but just before he opened the door of the waiting cab he leaned into her, breathing in her scent of jasmine and patchouli oil. ‘Just what is your relationship with Steel?’
‘Don’t,’ she snapped back. ‘Don’t you dare say another word, until we’re back at my apartment.’ She began speaking to him in Qurhahian then, her heated words coming out in a furious tirade. ‘I don’t want the cab driver thinking I’m out with some kind of Neanderthal!’
She made no attempt to hide her anger all the way through the constant stop-starting of traffic lights but Suleiman felt nothing but the slow build of sexual hunger in response. The stubborn profile she presented made him want her. Her defiantly tilted chin made him want her even more. He felt the hardening at his groin. He would subdue her fire in the most satisfying way. Subdue her so completely and utterly that she wouldn’t ever defy him again. She wouldn’t want to...
Feeling more frustrated than he could ever remember, he watched as the orange, green and red of the traffic lights flickered over her face. The flickering kaleidoscope of colour and the sparkle of her golden dress only added to her beauty.
If it had been any other woman, he would have just pulled her in his arms and kissed her. Maybe even brought her to gasping orgasm on the back seat of the cab. But this was not any other woman. It was Sara. Fiery and beautiful Princess Sara. Stubborn and sensual Sara.
The elevator ride up to her apartment was torture. The heat at his groin almost too painful to endure. All he could see was the glimmer of gold as her dress highlighted every curve of her magnificent body, but her shoulders were stiff with tension and her face was still furious.
It seemed to take for ever before the lift pinged to a halt and they were back in her apartment again. The front door had barely closed behind them before she turned on him. ‘How dare you behave like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Coming over all possessive and squaring up to my boss like that!’
‘So why the sudden defence of Steel, Sara? Was he your lover? The man to whom you lost your innocence?’
‘Oh!’ Frustratedly, she stared at him for a piercing moment before turning her back and marching into the sitting room, just the way she’d done on Christmas Eve at the cottage. And just like then, he followed her—mesmerised by the shimmering sway of her bottom, until she turned round to glare at him again.
The violet flash in her eyes warned him not to continue with his line of questioning, but Suleiman found he was in the grip of an emotion far bigger than reason. ‘Was he?’ he demanded hotly. ‘Is that why he lent you his cottage? Why you were so keen to get to the party tonight?’
She shook her head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You don’t seem to realise that I’ve been living in England for all these years and I’m just not used to men behaving like this. It’s primitive. And it’s inappropriate.’
‘I don’t think it’s inappropriate,’ he ground out. ‘You told me that night that you were waiting for your lover and that it was Steel’s cottage. Then I discovered that you were not a virgin and so I put two and two together—’
‘And came up with a number which seems to have reached triple figures!’ she flared, before taking a deep breath as if she was trying to get her own feelings under control. ‘Look, I shouldn’t have said that about Gabe that night. I was trying to make you angry—and it seems that I have far exceeded my own expectations. I was hurling out stuff and hoping to get a reaction. But I said all that before we became...involved. For the record, Gabe has never been my lover. But even if he had...even if he had...that does not give you the right to just march up to him like that in public and start playing the jealousy card. I just don’t get it.’
‘What don’t you get?’ he demanded. ‘That a man should feel possessive about the woman he loves? Isn’t that a mark of the way he feels about her?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the way he feels about her—it’s more a mark of wanting to own her! Before you became Mr Oil Baron, you travelled for years on Murat’s behalf. Are you trying to tell me that this is the way you behaved whenever you met with some diplomat or politician whose ideas you didn’t happen to agree with? Going in with all guns blazing?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘On the contrary. One of the reasons I excel at card games is because I have the ability to conceal what I’m thinking.’
Slowly, she nodded her head ‘So what happened tonight?’
‘You did,’ he said. ‘You happened.’
‘You mean it’s something I did?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m having trouble working it out for myself. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before, and sometimes it scares the hell out of me. I’ve never wanted a woman in the way I want you, Sara.’
‘But wanting me doesn’t give you permission to behave like that towards Gabe. It doesn’t give you the right to start treating me like a thing. Like a valuable painting or some vase that you own, which nobody else is allowed to look at, because it’s all yours. I don’t want that.’
For a moment there was silence as he looked at her.
‘Then just what do you want, Sara?’ he questioned. ‘Because you don’t seem to want a normal relationship. Not from where I’m standing.’
‘That’s funny. A normal relationship? I don’t think you’d recognise one if you tripped over it in the street!’ she said. ‘And how could you? You’re possessive and demanding and insanely jealous.’
‘And you don’t think that you might have fed my instinct to be jealous?’
‘I’ve already explained about Gabe.’
‘I’m not talking about Gabe! I’m talking about the fact that ever since I’ve moved in here, you seem to be pushing me away. It’s like you’ve surrounded yourself with a glass wall and I just can’t get through to you.’
She felt the fear licking at the edges of her skin. Was that true—or did Suleiman just want to make her completely his, and to stamp out all her natural fire and independence?
She couldn’t risk it.
‘Oh, what’s the point?’ she said tiredly. ‘There is no
