Desert Princes Bundle

by Sharon Kendrick

  There weren’t many men who looked like him strutting around the small town of Dolchester. If there had been then she might have gained a little practice in dealing with them and been better equipped at coping with Xavier de Maistre.

  No, a man of this calibre was outside her experience—and just because she had been employed to accompany him back to Kharastan that did not mean that she had to put up with his blatantly sexual scrutiny or provocative remarks. Hadn’t she decided after the Josh debacle that never again would she let a man take advantage of her?

  The pilot’s voice informed them that they were cruising at a steady altitude and would shortly be beginning their descent. Soon she would step out onto the tarmac at Kumush Ay—the capital city of Kharastan—and her job would be completed. It was no longer essential for her to maintain the effort of trying to placate him—she could stop walking on eggshells.

  That did not mean that she was about to start being rude to him, of course—simply that she might open his eyes to the way that most women liked to be treated. It might do him good.

  ‘Monsieur de Maistre,’ she sighed.

  ‘I keep telling you to call me Xavier,’ he interjected silkily, aware that her reluctance to do so had intrigued him.

  ‘Xavier,’ Laura agreed, and then hesitated. How could his name be so…so…enticing? Because it was so foreign to her lips—lingering there like the juice of a fruit she had never tasted before? Or because it was impossible to say it without first softening your voice? She swallowed. ‘I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to make comments about my figure, or my choice of apparel.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Apparel?’ he echoed. Was this the stiff, starchy attitude so beloved of generations of Englishmen—because they wanted their women to sound like their nannies? ‘But you are a woman—do you not care to be admired?’

  Laura sat up straight and looked at him reprovingly. ‘Obviously, if I find myself in a situation where such a reaction might be more relevant.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, at a party. Or a social function.’ Laura shrugged. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You think that men and women only play with one another when they meet socially?’ he demanded incredulously.

  Play with one another. Unwanted images swam into Laura’s mind as she recalled the way her blood had pounded when he had gripped her arms, the melting way he had made her feel inside. Now he was threatening to do the same again if she let him—just by the outrageous taunts he was making and the way he was looking at her.

  ‘Why do you twist my words round?’ she demanded. ‘Can’t you get it into your head that not every woman with a pulse wants to leap into bed with you?’

  There was a pause, and when he spoke his eyes were glittering.

  ‘Whoever said anything about leaping into bed, Laura?’ he questioned softly, enjoying her answering rise of colour.

  ‘Oh!’ Laura glared at him. This was madness. She had to get a grip of herself before they landed. Malik had hinted that other work might be available to her once this job was over, but he was hardly going to be impressed if she was in emotional tatters by the time she arrived. ‘I think I would like that drink, if it’s all the same to you,’ she said.

  ‘Me, too,’ he said, pressing a button by his seat to summon the stewardess. He spoke rapidly in his native tongue and the girl disappeared into the galley.

  Laura met his eyes. He was staring at her as if he would like to jump on her and eat her up, and she wished he would do up the top button of his shirt. That crisp, dark hair peeping out was very distracting. ‘This may be the last proper drink you get for a while,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re aware that alcohol is frowned on in Kharastan?’

  ‘How kind of you to alert me to local custom,’ he observed sarcastically. ‘And there I was thinking that it would be one long booze-fest from dawn to dusk!’

  Laura bit back a smile, because surely to admit that she found him amusing would be another admission of weakness—and hadn’t she demonstrated enough of that already?

  ‘Your English is pretty amazing,’ she observed instead. ‘Did you learn it as a little boy?’

  The shutters came down. ‘But surely you know everything there is to know about my early life?’ he questioned softly. ‘Hasn’t your Sheikh had a report made on me?’

  Stupidly, Laura felt herself blushing. ‘Well, yes—he did, actually,’ she said awkwardly.

  ‘Let me see it.’

  For a second Laura hesitated—but only for a second. What was the point in trying to refuse him when his look of unyielding determination told her it would be pointless? Pulling out the report from her briefcase, she handed it to him, meeting the question in his eyes with a shrug.

  ‘I was only doing my job,’ she said.

  He noted her defensive tone with a grim kind of pleasure. How it would have pleased him to have taken the moral high-ground with her—to scorn her for invading his personal space—and yet hadn’t he done similar, or worse? In the past, hadn’t he been called unscrupulous in his business dealings—been both lauded and feared for his cold-hearted determination to succeed?

  Yet you don’t like it when it is done to you, do you?

  His eyes scanned the notes, which were gratifyingly brief—simply stating that his home had been in the Marais. There was his school record, naturally, and a list of his mother’s patchy employment history—it had suited her and her employers for her to be paid cash-in-hand, so that her name appeared as infrequently as possible on national records.

  He saw now why the newspapers had always come up with a blank whenever they had tried to investigate his past. Apart from a few non-starter articles by a couple of ex-schoolfriends—who had provided the unsurprising facts that as a youth he had been a bit of a loner and popular with the girls—there had been nothing. ‘Not very much,’ he observed.

  ‘Surprisingly little,’ agreed Laura.

  So his mother’s wish had been granted, he thought, in a rare moment of reflection. She had strived for and achieved a private life which had bordered on the secretive. Had that contributed to his cool detachment—his almost icy indifference to relationships which women had always complained about?

  He stared at Laura. ‘Does he have sons of his own?’ he questioned suddenly. ‘I mean legitimate sons?’

  ‘No,’ she answered slowly. ‘He has no legitimate sons.’

  ‘So maybe he’s clutching at straws—desperate to find someone he can call his own. What exactly is the purpose of this trip?’ Xavier questioned.

  Laura saw the way his mouth hardened. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Is it? A reunion inspired by sentiment or practicality, I wonder?’ he queried, his voice brittle with sarcasm. ‘Does a powerful man ache to see his seed made flesh before he passes from this world into the next? Or is he planning to allocate his riches to a man who grew up in relative poverty?’ His black eyes glittered. ‘Do you think I am about to inherit a vast fortune, cherie?’

  ‘That’s a very mercenary attitude,’ she said.

  ‘You think so?’ He shook his dark head. ‘Non. I am merely being practical. Or would you think it more appropriate if I affected wide-eyed surprise if such an offer was made to me?’

  ‘That’s what most people would do,’ she said, thinking about the readings of wills she’d had to deal with during the course of her career, and the baser instincts it brought out in people.

  ‘Well, I don’t need or want his damned money!’ continued Xavier, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Even sheikhs must learn that loyalty and affection cannot just be bought at the end of a lifetime.’

  It seemed a curiously moral attitude for a notorious playboy to have, and was an insight into a character Laura suspected was far more complex than it first seemed.

  The stewardess chose that moment to arrive with the wine, and Laura was glad to have the distraction of dark burgundy being poured into crystal glasses. She took a large mouthful.

  ‘
Is that better?’ he questioned softly.

  ‘Much better. It’s delicious.’

  Xavier sipped his own wine as he watched her, aware that the balance of information was tipped heavily in her favour. What did he know of her, after all? Wasn’t it perhaps time he started to even things up? ‘So, tell me about your connection with the royal family of Kharastan.’

  It was more a command than a question. ‘I have been in the employ of the Ak Atyn family for a month.’

  ‘Only a month?’ Xavier’s eyes narrowed. ‘So short a time to be entrusted with such a personal matter.’

  ‘I was employed by Sheikh Zahir specifically for this purpose,’ she said softly.

  ‘To bring me to him?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m an expert on family law—and all Kharastani legal documents are drawn up in English, too.’

  ‘So how come a nice girl like you ends up running errands for a sheikh?’

  ‘Thank you for your supposition that I’m nice.’

  ‘Don’t you have a boyfriend who minds you going on missions to ensnare strange Frenchmen?’

  Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘Why would he mind? Are you one of those men who thinks a woman needs permission to breathe?’

  ‘So you do have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Actually, I don’t.’ Now, why had she told him that? ‘And is my personal life really relevant?’

  Xavier made a small sound of exasperation. ‘Alors! Why do lawyers never answer questions directly?’

  ‘Perhaps because we are paid to ask them, not to answer them. I’m the Sheikh’s international legal advisor. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, cherie,’ he contradicted softly.

  Laura met the formidable glint in his black eyes and suddenly some of her composure left her. ‘We’ll…we’ll be landing soon.’ And she couldn’t wait. Being cooped up in here with him, with the tension growing by the second, was her idea of a nightmare.

  Laura unsnapped her seat-belt and stood up, wanting to get away from the mesmerising spotlight of his stare and his increasingly probing questions.

  Acutely aware of his eyes following her every move, she went over to one of the round porthole windows and stared down at where mountaintops were capped with snow which looked like thick white daubs of paint. Oh, please let’s just get there, she thought.

  ‘So what was the particular talent which made you the successful candidate for this job?’ he murmured. ‘Or can I guess?’

  ‘I told you. I’m a lawyer—there are papers I need to witness.’ She turned round to see that Xavier had also risen to his feet, and that his eyes were gleaming with something which was fast approaching menace.

  ‘Don’t play disingenuous,’ he drawled. ‘It doesn’t suit you. There are a million lawyers out there who could have done the job, but none that look as good as you. Were you chosen for your beauty and your sex-appeal, do you think?’

  Sex-appeal? Laura knew that the stylist had worked an almost complete transformation on her physical appearance—but it was hard to change your own view of yourself. Because the mirror could lie—every woman knew that. How you looked had little to do with how you felt on the inside—particularly for someone who had fought insecurity all her life.

  She had been the hand-to-mouth daughter of a hard up mother and then the diligent law student. And latterly—with Josh—she had been frigid and uptight Laura, the cash-cow who had been laughably easy to milk and then send on her way. Yes, she was wearing a fortune in clothes—but sexy? Her? Never in a million years. Not according to Josh, anyway.

  ‘Of course I wasn’t!’ she defended. ‘I may have been chosen because women have different qualities to men, but my sex-appeal is not only irrelevant but inappropriate to a country like Kharastan.’

  Was she really naïve enough to believe that? he wondered. He walked over to the window to stand beside her and looked down into her face, his eyes narrowing in perplexity as he saw that her green eyes were huge and dark in her white face.

  Women did not usually shrink from him like this, and it was turning him on—deep down he wanted something or someone to lash out at for the unusual situation he unwillingly found himself in. And why should it not be her? Don’t shoot the messenger, urged a voice inside his head, and Xavier’s mouth tightened. Ah, non—he wasn’t intending to shoot the messenger.

  ‘So you reckon it’s just some kind of coincidence that they should have appointed a nubile young woman to do the job?’ he questioned, his voice edgy with desire.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, as if she had suddenly come to realise the trap she found herself in. Backed up against the wall, ostensibily alone on a powerful jet with a powerful man whose whole large and muscular frame emanated a raw kind of sexuality. It shimmered from his skin in a hot, almost tangible radiance—so that despite knowing she should be distancing herself, or calling for the stewardess, Laura found herself curiously debilitated, unable to move, or to think, or to…

  ‘Don’t you?’ he whispered back, and touched the tip of his finger to her chin, tilting it upwards and forcing her to meet the piercing black gaze. ‘I think you do. Just as I think that someone told the Sheikh’s entourage about those rosebud lips and knew that I would want to do this…’

  He was lowering his face towards hers, and Laura felt like one of those women in a sci-fi film—zapped into compete immobility by some alien’s ray-gun. Except it was nothing remotely alien which was freezing her to the spot—it was a feeling as old and human as creation itself, even though it had never hit her quite like this before. Xavier lowered his mouth down onto her trembling lips.

  Perhaps if it had been a hard and blatant kiss—a demonstration of his superior power and experience—then Laura might have had the strength or the desire to push him away. But it wasn’t. It was the cleverest kiss in the world, for it coaxed and hinted and tantalised and made her yearn for more. So that it was her mouth which parted slightly, and her tongue which gave a little flick towards his.

  And his low laugh of triumph and anticipation as he placed his hands on her waist and then slid them down to cup her buttocks and draw her towards him, as he deepened the kiss with an instinctive display of sensuality and mastery.

  ‘Mmm,’ he murmured against her lips.

  ‘Xavier!’ she gasped.

  ‘You like that?’

  ‘Y…yes! Oh, yes!’

  Xavier laughed again, tempted to cup her breasts, or to slide the long filmy dress up her long legs and explore her most secret treasures. But a hasty mental calculation told him that there was no time to enjoy any kind of sexual game. Starting something might mean that they were both left high and dry—or, worse, that they might be interrupted by the stewardess telling them that they were coming in to land.

  No, there was no time for sex—but plenty of time for sexual promise. And it sure beat worrying about what lay ahead in Kharastan. Xavier knew how much value women placed on a kiss—how they played it over again and again in their minds, like a much-loved piece of music. Well, then, let her have the long, sweet kiss of all her romantic fantasies.

  Using his mouth like an instrument, he continued to explore her lips in soft and provocative caresses until, with a little cry, Laura reached up to cling onto his broad shoulders and began to sway slightly as the kiss became harder now, and deeper.

  His lips tasted sweet, the sweetest thing she had ever tasted. Laura had been kissed before—of course she had—but never like this. Oh, never like this. She could feel the sticky rush of desire, the debilitating sense of wonder which made her want him to…to…

  With a soft smile Xavier drew back from her, hearing her tiny moan of protest. He stared down into eyes which looked almost black, so dilated were her pupils, and her mouth was darkened too by his kiss. There was a faint flush accentuating her cheekbones—and he knew with arrogant certainty that if the flight had been just a little longer he would be having sex with her, right now.

  ‘Alas, non
,’ he murmured regretfully, for he was so hard that he felt he might burst. ‘There is no time for love, cherie.’

  Was it his totally inappropriate use of the word ‘love’ which brought Laura crashing back to reality? Like someone who had been thrown from the confusing blackness of a cave into blinking light?

  She took a tottering step back in complete and utter horror, her hand flying to her throat. ‘Wh…what are you doing?’ she breathed unsteadily, and then shook her head in disbelief. ‘Or rather, what am I doing?’

  He laughed. ‘You want a biology lesson?’

  ‘I want…. I want…. Oh! How could I have been so…stupid?’ To let him kiss her like that—to open her body and her mouth up to him, telling him in no uncertain terms that for that brief moment she had wanted him in the most complete sense. How could she possibly play the cool lawyer now?

  Xavier gave a lazy smile. ‘Do not beat yourself up, cherie—it is no crime to want me. Most women do.’ He shrugged. ‘And what better way to pass the time during the long nights ahead in the desert?’ To use sex as an escape from thought—ah, yes, it had many uses other than pleasure and procreation. ‘We will make love just as soon as we get an opportunity to do so.’

  Common sense splashed over Laura’s senses like a cold shower at his arrogant sexual boast. Her hands flew up to her hair and she knew she must straighten it before they came into land—and, more importantly, that she must make it clear that there would be no repeat of what had just happened. None. No matter how provocatively he kissed her. And you aren’t going to let him do it again!

  ‘I don’t think so. That was a very serious error of judgement on my part,’ she said, her voice steadier now. ‘One which will not be repeated—for once I have effected an introduction between you and the Sheikh then my dealings with you will be over, and I will bid you farewell.’