them.
‘I did not set out to hurt you,’ Alim told her.
He could feel her anger and the frantic beating of her heart and then she spoke. ‘But you did.’
So badly.
‘That morning I went for breakfast with my father and he told me the diktat had been invoked.’
Gabi frowned as she recalled a conversation that had taken place so many months ago. ‘The same ruling that happened to your father and Fleur?’
‘The same one.’
‘Why couldn’t you have told me this that morning, and saved all this hurt and pain?’
‘Where?’ Alim asked. ‘In the hotel foyer?’
‘No, you have an entire floor of the Grande Lucia at your disposal.’
‘But the laws state that I cannot be alone with a woman I desire unless it is my future bride.’
Desire.
The word made her burn, it made her face feel hot and she wanted to press her cheek into the cool of his robe, so she did.
Yet she could feel the heat from his skin and the thud of his heart as he spoke.
‘Even to work alongside you and want you would be forbidden. When I was showing Raul through the hotel and I came into the ballroom and you were there, I knew it was imperative that I leave or I would have broken the rules by which I have been raised. I can only take a lover here in the desert.’
‘Are you camped out here, then?’ she asked, and looked up. He smiled and for a moment so did Gabi. When she met his eyes, the problems of the world faded; when he smiled like that she forgot the hurt and how cross she was.
‘I have been to the desert,’ Alim said, ‘alone.’
‘Oh.’
He looked at her and her cheeks went a bit pink because she wanted to know about his alone time in the desert.
‘And when I am here I think of you.’
‘And the night we shared?’ she asked, because when exhausted, when wretched, when aching for the memory to fade, the image of them taunted and sleep was no relief for he was there in her dreams.
‘I think of that night,’ Alim said, ‘and I think of this.’
‘This?’
‘Us here together.’
He had been fighting not to bring her here for many months.
He pulled her in tighter so she could feel his arousal. His hand slipped to her back and his fingers explored the top of her spine while still his eyes held hers.
Gabi knew she should resist and not be drawn further under his spell, yet at the same time she told herself it would be the last time.
This was the only time she would be in the desert with him for she would never be tricked into being here again.
His mouth brushed hers and she tried to keep her lips pressed together but as their mouths met again she realised that the feel of him had never left her mind.
Alim’s hand came to the back of her head and as he pressed her in he gave her his tongue.
She accepted. Deeply.
And she offered hers.
They tasted and claimed each other again, while his other hand slid to her breast and took its aching weight.
‘Just once,’ she told him.
And Gabi meant it.
This wasn’t like a break in her diet, this was her absolute rule.
‘Once?’ Alim checked, and his fingers slid between her thighs, sliding along the velvet of her robe and then probing her softly.
He made her feel weak with the promise of more.
‘I mean one night,’ Gabi said as his tongue made indecent work of her ear as she amended her rules. ‘One night and that’s it. I shan’t be your on-call desert lover, Alim.’
Gabi would be more than his desert lover, Alim thought, though he chose not to enlighten her.
With a child between them, once he married she would be his mistress.
Alim just had to tell her, though he felt no guilt withholding that information.
After all, Gabi held the biggest secret of all.
‘Come to bed,’ Alim said.
There, he had decided she would tell him.
Whatever it took.
THIS TIME THEY made it to the sleeping area, because Alim had decided it would be a more measured seduction.
He was not used to being lied to, or having vital information withheld from him. Not for long anyway.
Alim took her by the hand and led her there.
The wind played a seductive tune as she stepped into his chamber and they faced each other.
‘Here,’ Alim said, ‘we are not forbidden.’
But it was a forbidden love.
His fingers traced her clavicle and moved the robe down so that her shoulder was bare, and then he did the same on the other side. Alim’s hands roamed over her breasts and to the sides of her ribcage as her mouth ached for his kiss and the weight of him on her.
‘I have missed you,’ Alim told her.
And she could not confess to just how much she had missed him too, for that would leave her exposed and weak to his demands.
‘I have thought about you,’ Alim said, and he pointed to the bed. ‘There, on that bed, I have thought about you a lot.’
She swallowed at the image he conjured and watched as he freed himself from his robe.
Gabi caught her breath for, to be kind, her mind had dimmed his beauty a touch, but now it was hers to witness again.
She put a hand up and touched his chest—solid and warm. She pressed her fingers to his skin and then shared a deep kiss as her fingers pressed into the flesh of his torso.
‘Have you thought of me?’ he asked.
‘At first,’ Gabi said. ‘But I’m over you now.’
‘Not quite,’ he said, pulling the robe down over her breasts
