It did.
For Georgie something else mattered.
She closed her eyes to his kiss and tried not to think about it, tried to forget and just be warmed by his tongue, which was hot now.
Hot and probing and done with her spent mouth. Now that he had kissed her onto the bed, he pulled the straps on her dress and licked down her chest, his hand pushing up the hem of that hateful dress, but not all the way, because her hips rose so high into him he was blocked. It was urgent, urgent and desperate and completely delicious, her body responding as if it had been waiting for ever to join him. She tore at his jacket, his shirt, her mouth in his hair, on his ear, her hands on his back, her stilettos tearing the silk of his trousers as their legs entwined, wishing the heat from their bodies would melt their clothes so they could connect with skin.
It mattered.
She could not ignore it—could not forgo her strange principle. As she knelt on the bed and lifted her hem as Ibrahim lowered his head, not knowing whether or not it would matter to him, Georgie said, ‘We can’t …’
He liked her game.
‘We can.’
He liked her feigned reluctance.
Liked the sudden shyness as his mouth met her stomach.
‘I can’t.’
‘You can,’ he breathed as his hands pulled at her panties and brushed off the hands that sought to keep them on.
‘Ibrahim, please …’ And he realised then that it wasn’t a game. Or rather that she’d been playing a very dangerous one, because he could not have been closer, could not have been closer. He was still hard and he was back to angry and for a moment there he did not like his own thoughts, but he hauled himself from her, looked down at his torn clothing, could feel the scratches from her nails in his back and shot daggers at her with his eyes.
‘I’m sorry …’ Georgie gulped, and wondered how could she explain it suddenly mattered.
‘I’m not like that.’
‘You pretending to be demure was lost in the hallway.’
‘I haven’t—’
‘Don’t try to tell me you’re a virgin.’ He gave a nasty smirk. ‘A condom-carrying virgin.’
‘I’m not.’ She wasn’t and she certainly wasn’t about to explain to him in this mood about the Heathrow gods. ‘I didn’t mean to lead you on.’
‘You meant it,’ he said. ‘You meant every second of it.’ He wasn’t hard any more, he was just pure angry. He’d been told she was trouble and he should have listened. ‘What are you holding out for, Georgie?’ It dawned on him then. ‘Jealous of your big sister, are you? Want a rich husband of your own?’ He mocked her with a black smile. ‘Here’s a tip for the future—men like a little or the lot.’
She was angry too. Angry at herself and now at him for not letting her explain. And she was embarrassed, which wasn’t a great combination because she bit back with harsh words of her own.
‘Oh, so you’d have loved me in the morning?’ She answered her own question. ‘As if.’ He was a bastard, a playboy and she’d been playing with fire from the beginning, she just hadn’t known it at the time.
But there was a beat, a tiny beat where their eyes met.
A glimpse of a tomorrow that might have been, which they’d lost now.
That made him even angrier, ‘I wouldn’t touch you again if you were on your knees, begging. I’ll tell you what you are …’ Ibrahim said, and he added an insult that needed no translation and it hurtled from his mouth as he walked from her room.
She pulled up her knees as he slammed closed her door and then pulled a shaking hand across her mouth because how could she tell him what had suddenly mattered?
Georgie wasn’t looking for a husband.
She already had one.
CHAPTER THREE
IT DID not abate.
Ibrahim Zaraq rode his horse at breakneck speed along the paths, across the fields and back along the paths, his breath white in the crisp morning air, and, despite the space, despite the miles available to him to exercise his passion, today, this morning, and not for the first time lately, Ibrahim felt confined.
London had been the place that had freed him, the place of escape, and yet as he pulled up his beast, as he patted the lathered neck, Ibrahim, though breathless, wanted to kick him on, wanted to gallop again, to go further, faster, not follow a track and turn around.
There, in the still, crisp morning, in the green belt of a city, the desert called him—just as his father had told him it would.
And though Ibrahim resisted, again he felt it.
This pull, this need for a land that supposedly owned him, and for just a moment he indulged himself.
‘You would love it.’ He climbed down and spoke in Arabic to his stallion, a beast who kicked and butted the walls of his luxurious stable, who paced the confines of his enclosure and bit any stranger who ignored his stable-door warning and was ignorant enough to approach. ‘For there,’ he said to the beast, stroking the rippling muscles, hearing the stamp and kick of his hooves, ‘you would finally know and relish exhaustion.’ Only the desert could sate. Again Ibrahim glimpsed it—the endless dunes, the fresh canvas the shifting desert provided each morning. He did not just glimpse it, he felt the sting of sand on his cheeks, the scarf around his mouth, the power of a horse unleashed between his thighs.
Yet his life was in London.
A life he had created, business and riches that came with no rules attached, because he had built them and they were his. His mother was here—forbidden to return to Zaraq because decades ago she had broken the rules.
‘I’ll take him, Ibrahim.’ A young stablegirl he sometimes bedded made her way over and he handed her the reins. Ibrahim saw the invitation in her eyes, and perhaps that would help, he thought, as she unstrapped the saddle. Ibrahim took the weight of it from her, saw her hands soothe the angry beast, saw the stretch of her thighs as she put on the horse blanket. He waited and wanted to feel something, for it would have been easier, so much easier to soothe the burn of his body and the turmoil in his mind with his favourite solution. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ Hopeful, beautiful, available, she turned to him—and the answer on any other morning would have been yes.
It wasn’t today.
Neither had it been the other night.
After seeing Georgie, he had directed his driver to his date’s home instead of his and had declined her invitation to come in.
‘Come to bed, Ibrahim.’ Her mouth and her hands had moved to persuade but Ibrahim had brushed her off and when tears hadn’t worked, she’d got angry. ‘It’s that tart from the nightclub that’s changed things, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ Ibrahim had said coolly. ‘It’s entirely you.’
‘Ibrahim?’ The stablegirl smiled and he looked down at her breasts, which were pert and pretty. He gauged the length of her hair and then walked away because, though her hair was dark, it was long and thick and her frame too was slender. Ibrahim knew he’d have only been thinking of her.
Of Georgie.
He did not want to think of her and his mind turned to the desert instead.
He picked up pace, his boots ringing across the yard. He would go to his property in the country this weekend, for he knew if he was in London he would end up calling Georgie. He did not like unfinished business, did not like to be told no, and seeing her again had inflamed things, but more trouble with his family was the last thing he needed now. The country was a good option—there he would find space, there he could ride for ever, except as he climbed into his sports car he glanced at the sat-nav and felt as if he were staring at an aerial map. He could see the fields, the houses, the hedges, the trees, the borders …
And his father had been right, and so too his brothers, who had told him that one day the desert would call him.
The king had let his son go with surprising ease when he had left to study engineering, confident that when the time was right he would return.
‘Of course I will be back.’ Su
rly, arrogant, back from his compulsory stint in the military, a young Ibrahim had been ready for London. ‘I will visit.’
‘You will be back as a royal prince to share your new knowledge, and your country will be waiting.’
‘No.’ Ibrahim had shaken his head. ‘For formal functions occasionally I will return and, of course, to see my family …’ His father did not seem to understand, so he had spelt it out. ‘My life will be in London.’
But the king had just smiled. ‘Ibrahim, you are going to study engineering. Remember as a child all the plans you had for this country of ours, all you could do for the people.’
‘I was a child.’
‘And now you are a man—you get to make real your dreams. When it is time, you will come back to where you belong.’ Ibrahim had rolled his eyes but the king had just smiled. ‘It is in your blood, in your DNA. You may not want to listen to your father, but the desert has its own call—one you cannot ignore.’
He wanted to ignore it.
For years now he had, but everything had changed when he’d returned for the wedding.
Ibrahim sped the car through the grey Sunday morning, out of the city and into the country. He hugged tight bends and accelerated out of them. His father’s patience was running out, his future awaited him and he raced from it till his tank was almost empty and again rules rushed in.
‘Breathe till I tell you to stop,’ the policeman ordered, and Ibrahim did. He even emptied out his pockets and let the man inspect his boot. He saw the suspicion in the officer’s eyes when everything turned up clean.
‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’ the officer asked again. He had seen Ibrahim’s driver’s licence and was sick of the rich and the young royals who thought the laws did not apply to them. This man was both.
‘I don’t know,’ Ibrahim answered again. Normally it would have incensed the policeman, normally he would have headed back to the car to perform another slow check just to make the prince wait because a fine would not trouble him, but there was something in Ibrahim’s voice that made the policeman hesitate. There was a hint of confusion in this arrogant, aloof man’s tone that halted him. ‘I’m sorry.’ The officer frowned at Ibrahim’s apology. ‘I apologise for not following your laws.’
‘They’re there for your own protection.’ And Ibrahim closed his eyes because, albeit in English now, those were the words that had swaddled him through childhood, through teenage years and into adulthood.
‘I appreciate that,’ Ibrahim said, then opened his eyes to the concerned face of the policeman. ‘Again I apologise.’
‘Is everything okay, sir?’
‘Everything is fine.’
‘I’ll let you go with a warning this time.’
He would rather have the ticket.
As he climbed back into the car, Ibrahim would far rather have paid his dues, accepted the punishment, and it had nothing at all to do with the fact he could afford to—he did not want favours.
Ibrahim drove sensibly, even when the police car left him as he turned into the petrol station. Ibrahim stayed within the speed limit all the way back to London, and as he turned into the smart West London street he did not look at the stylish three-storey house but at the railings in front of it, and the neatly trimmed hedge, to the houses either side and the next house and the next, and he couldn’t bring himself to go in.
Had the policeman been behind him he would have pulled him over again, for Ibrahim executed a highly illegal U-turn and then reprogrammed his sat-nav. His decision was made.
He would get it out of his system once and for all.
The future king was due to be born in a few weeks’ time and he certainly didn’t want to get caught up in all that. He would ride his horses in the ocean and desert for a few days, hear what his father had to say and then he would return to London.
To home, Ibrahim corrected himself.
Despite what his father said, London was his home.
He just had to be sure of it.
His mind flicked to Georgie, to unfinished business, to a woman who did not want the desert, who had been on his mind for far too long now, and another decision was made … he would visit the desert and return, and then he might call her.
CHAPTER FOUR
THERE was a new lightness to Georgie as she took out her blonde hair from its ponytail and combed it, and there was a smile on her lips as she applied lip balm. Not even the prospect of the long flight ahead could dim a world that suddenly felt just a little more right.
That her divorce had come through that morning might not seem to many something to be pleased about, and a marriage that had been a mistake might seem nothing to be grateful for, but it had taught her a lot.
Even though she had left him years ago—left a marriage of just a few weeks—the fact it was officially over brought her relief.
Now she was free.
Her only regret was that it hadn’t come through sooner. That the morals that kept her from sleeping with anyone, even with her divorce pending, had kept her from Ibrahim that night.
Georgie closed her eyes for a moment, told herself not to go there—it was a path she had chosen. Her illness, her father’s abuse, a marriage that had seemed an escape—it would be so easy to look back with regret, yet she had learnt so much from it all. She had grown into a strong woman, a confident woman who knew herself, because she had chosen to learn from, rather than rue, her mistakes. It was a hard path to follow but, for Georgie, the right one. Guilt and regret had led her to troubled places, but no more. She wanted to talk with Felicity, wanted to thank her for all her support through the difficult years. Georgie swallowed, because she was still undecided, but she wanted to tell Felicity about Mike, to clear the past and make way for a glorious future.
Ibrahim’s apology had helped too.
It had been unsettling seeing him, of course, but she took his apology as a sign that the chapter was closed and that it was time to move on.
To have no regrets.
The air ticket her sister Felicity had sent meant she bypassed the nightmare queues at Heathrow. She sat, awkward at first, in a first-class departure lounge, but as she sipped champagne and checked her emails, it was soon easy to relax. She accepted the delicacies on offer without thought. A new smile spread across her face as she realised just how far she had come. The endless abacus was finally silent—no more calories versus treadmill, no penance for pleasure, just the sweet taste of a pistachio macaroon dissolving on her tongue. She didn’t need a plane to fly to Zaraq. Her mood was so buoyant as she boarded, her high so palpable, Georgie could have flown there on happiness alone. Finally, the dark days were over—the soul-searching, the introspection, the agony of healing was behind her. She was ready to move on, even if the plane wasn’t.
Just a little nervous of flying, Georgie took a vial of melissa oil from her bag and massaged a drop into her temples. The attendant offered her another drink, but Georgie didn’t want one. ‘When are we taking off?’ Used to economy class, Georgie half expected to be speaking to thin air by the time the words were out, or at best to receive a brusque answer, but she was reminded she was travelling first class when the attendant smiled and lingered. ‘We’re sorry for the delay but we have an unexpected passenger. He shouldn’t be too much longer …’ But even in first class there was a pecking order, because the attendant’s voice trailed off and Georgie was no longer the focus of her attention. She watched as the woman’s cheeks darkened. Curious, Georgie followed the woman’s gaze and her heart seemed to stop as all efforts to move on were halted, any chance of forgetting lost.
‘Your Highness.’ The attendant curtsied as he strode past but even she couldn’t halt the flicker of confusion on her smooth brow at their passenger’s attire. He was dressed in mud-splattered white jodhpurs and black jumper, and there was a restlessness to him, a wild energy that seemed to have boarded the plane along with him. He didn’t respond to the attendant, neither did he glance in Georgie’s direction. There w
as such purpose to his stride it looked as if he was heading for the cockpit, prepared to fly the plane himself, but at the last minute he turned and, yes, there were levels of first class because it would appear Ibrahim had his own suite. The attendants fluttered away from their charges and gathered together to discuss the latest arrival, and just a moment or so later a steward slipped into the suite with a bottle of brandy as the others watched.
She wanted to stand, to stop the plane that was now taxiing along the runway, to get off, for she could not face being there with him.
She didn’t even notice the plane rise off the ground, or dinner being served, her mind consumed by her fellow passenger. ‘Is everything okay, Miss Anderson?’ The flight attendant removed her plates untouched and Georgie just nodded, too stunned to answer, let alone eat. The thought of being back in the palace with him, of being in such close proximity to him, had her reeling.
She had done everything possible to ensure that he wouldn’t be there—oh, so casually asking her sister about his movements—and even in the nightclub he had given no clue.
But, then, neither had she.
Maybe there had been an emergency. His father had recently been sick after all. Why else would he be boarding a plane dressed like that? Or maybe this was how the rich lived, Georgie pondered. Who flew long haul in riding boots? Maybe he was so laid-back about travelling that he didn’t even give it a thought. He could step off a horse and onto a plane … But later, when she got up to go to the toilet, a steward was coming out of his suite carrying a laden tray and shaking her head. Georgie got a glimpse of Ibrahim before the doors to his suite were closed—he lay sprawled out on the bed. He hadn’t bothered with the gold pyjamas Georgie had on. He was unshaven, boots off, sprawled out on a bed and fast asleep.
She got only the briefest look as the door was quickly closed, but it was an image that stayed with her through the flight.
Anguished.
Even in sleep his face wasn’t relaxed. His full mouth was tense. Even at rest he somehow looked troubled—but more worrying than that was just how much Georgie wanted to know what was on his mind
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