your notice, but I’m not touching you. You’re the one touching me.’
His voice, crisp with challenge, nevertheless held that once heard and never forgotten deep note that resonated right to her core.
Arden blinked, dragging her gaze from his mouth and solid, scrupulously shaved jaw to his chest.
Heat scorched her cheeks at the sight of her hand clutching him, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. As if, even now, his desertion couldn’t kill the slavish passion she’d felt for him.
Though, if he told the truth, he hadn’t deserted her.
It was too much to take in.
Too terrible to think that perhaps he hadn’t betrayed her as she’d believed.
Words trembled on her tongue, the truth she hadn’t been able to share with this man for four years. But caution held her back.
She needed time alone to sort out what it meant if he hadn’t deserted her. Time away from his piercing dark gaze and hot body that reduced her hard won defences to ash.
Arden dragged her hand away, pressing it against the solid door behind her. That was what she needed. To remember where they were and how much was at stake. She couldn’t risk revealing too much.
‘You need to go. This isn’t right.’ A weight lodged on her chest, making her breathless so she could only manage short sentences.
Something that might have been anger flickered across his face. Yet still he didn’t shift.
Desperation coiled tight in her belly. A desperation fuelled by the urge to spill everything to him, here and now, as if by doing so all her burdens would be lifted.
But Arden had spent a lifetime learning self-reliance. The last years had reinforced that. She carried her burdens alone.
‘We’ve both moved on, Shakil.’ It was as if she evoked the past with that one single word. ‘Idris,’ she amended quickly.
‘Moved on where? To Hamid?’ His voice was a low growl that sent fear feathering her skin. His head lowered and she felt tension come off his big frame in waves. ‘You’re afraid your lover will see us together?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ It came out as a hiss of distress. It had been bad enough realising last night that Hamid now saw himself as far more than a friend.
‘Ridiculous?’ Idris’s eyes narrowed to ebony slits. Those carved cheekbones loomed threateningly high as his face drew taut. ‘You call me ridiculous?’
Fire branded her neck as hard fingers closed around her nape, moulding to skin turned feverish at his touch.
Arden swiped her suddenly arid mouth with her tongue, searching for words to stop the fury in that glittering gaze.
But his touch didn’t feel like anger. That was the problem. She could have withstood it if it did.
Arden trembled as the hand at her neck shifted and long fingers speared her hair, spreading over her scalp, massaging. Shivers of delight rippled through her and her eyelids hovered, weighted, at half mast. Tendrils of fire cascaded from her scalp down her spine and around to her breasts where her nipples peaked.
She swallowed convulsively and forced herself to straighten away from the door, even though it meant brushing against him.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Of course you did.’ His mouth twisted. ‘You’re right. It is ridiculous. Impossible and inconvenient...and inevitable.’
Then, while Arden was still absorbing his words, his head lowered.
His mouth on hers was just as she remembered. A huge, tearing fullness welled in her chest as his lips shaped hers, not hard and punishing as she’d expected from the glint in his eyes, but gentle, questing. As if seeking an answer to a question she hadn’t heard.
Shakil. The taste of him burst on her, rich and delicious. It was the one sense memory she hadn’t been able to recall in the years since he’d left her. Now it filled her, evocative, masculine and, she feared, potently addictive. For her head was lolling back, lips open to allow him access.
Somehow her hands had crept up to brace on his chest. The steady thrum of his heart was a reassuring counterpoint to her sense of disorientation.
His other hand slipped around her waist, pulling her against a body that was all hard power, making her feel soft and feminine in ways she’d almost forgotten.
And still that kiss. No longer quite as gentle. Arden heard a guttural sound of approval as her tongue met his in a foray into pure pleasure.
He shifted and delight filled her as her nipples grazed his torso. She moved closer, absorbed in heady, oh-so-familiar delight, till a long hard ridge pressed against her belly.
Arden’s eyes snapped open and she saw his eyes had narrowed to slits of dark fire. Then, over his shoulder, high up at street level, came a burst of light, a glint of sunlight off something. It was enough, just, to bring her back to reality.
‘No.’ No one heard her protest since their lips were locked.
She had to shove with all her might for him to lift his head, blinking as if unable to focus. That might have made her feel better but for the realisation that just five minutes in this man’s company had obliterated every defence she’d spent years constructing.
‘No,’ she gasped. That full feeling behind her breastbone turned to pain. ‘This is wrong. We can’t...’
She didn’t need to go on. Sheikh Idris of Zahrat agreed completely. It was there in the dawning horror sharpening his features and the unsteady hand that swiped his face. He shook his head as if wondering what he was doing.
Nor did Arden need to shove him again. One swift pace backwards on those long legs took him almost to the base of the area steps and left her feeling appallingly alone.
Chest pumping, Arden stared at the dark-gold face of the man she’d once adored. The man who now looked at her as if she were his personal nightmare.
Desperate, she put her palms to the door behind her, needing its support.
Despite it all, the anger, hurt and betrayal that had shaped her life for four years, she’d harboured a hope that if they met again he’d admit he’d made a terrible mistake in leaving. That he’d missed her, wanted her, as she’d missed and wanted him.
In her dreams he’d never looked at her with horror.
Pain lanced her chest and kept going right down through her womb.
With a choking gasp of distress she whirled around, hauled the door open and slipped into her sanctuary. Her hands shook so much it took for ever to bolt and latch the door. When it was done Arden put her back to it and slid down to sit on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees as silent sobs filled her.
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