‘Wrong? Wrong?’ Rarely had Malik remembered feeling such a raw and blinding rage. He wanted to lash out. He wanted…
His long olive fingers briefly flexed, made an even briefer claw-like shape, before clenching into tight and angry fists on the starched white linen tablecloth. Could it really be Sorrel who was saying this? Sorrel—his ward—the young ward he had watched over like a hawk. Sweet, flaxen-haired Sorrel, who’d used to run around the palace gardens—indulged by all who came across her sunny smile. Sorrel the innocent…the…
Or was that an assumption too far? Like the ones he had stupidly made about her unquestioning obedience and her loyalty to him as her Sheikh? Did her desire for a man to know her in such a way mean that she had already tasted the fruits of intimacy? Enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh in a way which had made her hungry for more? A shaft of something which felt like pain but which he put down to outrage caught him by the throat. She had denied it once, but that did not mean she had spoken the truth!
‘You are no longer a virgin?’ he demanded hoarsely.
Sorrel felt the stain of a blush flare up from the base of her throat to burn in tell-tale spots upon her cheeks. How bizarre that he felt he had the right to ask her something as intimately personal as this in a restaurant!
But didn’t you ask for it? mocked a small voice in her head. By stating your crass desire to find yourself a lover?
Reminding herself that she did want to live like any other young woman, she stared at him.
‘You’ve already asked me that, Malik.’
‘And I am giving you the opportunity to retract your statement.’
‘We are not in a court of law!’ she stormed.
He ignored that, leaning across the table towards her. ‘Do you speak the truth, Sorrel?’ His black eyes bored into her. ‘Are you still a virgin?’
Their eyes did furious battle—until Sorrel realised that it was a pointless one. What was the point of pretending an experience that was sadly lacking if it would damn her even further in his opinion?
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I am. And the one thing I am not is a liar, Malik!’
He was unprepared for the flame of triumph which blazed through him, surging in a heated stream through his veins, but he did not show it, merely sucked a still angry breath in through his nostrils—like his most temperamental stallion when he was thwarted. He must, he realised, play this very carefully—for Sorrel was not being obedient. Far from it. But she would be made to bend to his will, without even comprehending that she was doing so! He uttered a silent prayer of thanks, without understanding why it should be so important to him. Because it meant he would have failed in his role as her guardian?
‘So why the urge to change that state?’ he questioned, in a cool voice which was a million miles away from the inner turmoil of his feelings. But he was good at disguising his feelings—as a child it had been a necessity, and as aide to the Sheikh he had quickly learned that it was inappropriate to have feelings. And hadn’t that been the most invaluable training for his new position? ‘It sounds rather an impetuous decision,’ he drawled.
How cold his eyes. And how disapproving his demeanour, which had the power to make her feel like a gauche young girl—or maybe that was his intention? Suddenly Sorrel wanted him to hear the truth, not a sanitised version of it told to protect the precious royal ears.
‘Because…. because I’m twenty-five years old and I feel like I’ve spent the whole of my live in a convent!’
‘You mean you have been protected from the carnal desires of men?’ he elaborated savagely.
Sorrel licked her lips nervously. Had she been expecting such an angry response? The answer was that she hadn’t really thought it through properly.
‘I mean that I want to live like other women of my age!’ she declared. ‘Or rather I want to live! I’m fed-up with conforming to other people’s standards. I want to be able to show my legs without feeling that I’m breaking some kind of moral code, to dance late at night and drink alcohol, and…and…’
‘And have sex?’
Why the hell was he making something which was perfectly healthy and normal sound so fundamentally wrong?
‘What’s wrong with that?’ She sighed. ‘Other women my age do.’
‘Other women your age are not you.’
Sorrel shook her head in frustration. ‘And just what is that, Malik—huh? Who am I? Someone who is like a stranger in her own country and yet can never fit into her adopted country.’
‘Why not?’ he questioned coolly.
‘Because…because….’ Because I adore you and there can never be any future with you—and that’s even if you had ever bothered to look at me as a woman rather than as someone who just fits in with your unrealistic wishes. ‘Because I can never have true independence in Kharastan.’
‘And that is what you want? That is what matters to you? To wear the revealing clothes and have the sex?’
She had never heard him sound so…foreign…But then she had never seen him so het up before. And the truth was that these things were not really what she wanted—but what they represented. If she had carried on living in Kharastan then she would have spent all her youth and her life living in the shadow of a man who would one day marry another. And Sorrel knew that she couldn’t have stood there and watched it happen.
Malik was so egotistical that it wouldn’t even occur to him that it might hurt. Why, she could even imagine him thoughtlessly requesting that she help his new wife settle in—maybe even help with any progeny they might produce. And she couldn’t do that—she really couldn’t. It would rip her heart in two if she ever had to deal with Malik’s beautiful black-eyed children by another woman.
‘Maybe these things do matter,’ Sorrel said, expecting another furious tirade—but to her surprise there was none. Just that narrow-eyed and considering look from those glitteringly intelligent eyes which those who knew Malik had learned to be wary of.
‘And you think that if you accompanied me on my tour I would prevent you from doing these things?’ he questioned.
Was he kidding? Or was it just one of Malik’s devilishly clever plans which had made him one of his region’s most feared and respected rulers in just two short years? Sorrel decided to call his bluff. ‘Are you really implying that you’d give me your blessing to start living a liberal life if I decided to join you?’
For the first time he partook of a little food—crumbling a bread roll between his fingers and eating a piece of it thoughtfully rather than eagerly. He ate little, Sorrel realised—he always had—and she guessed that explained why his body was harder and leaner than those of other men. It was like the difference between a pampered domestic cat and a predator that existed on its wits in the forest. He picked up his water glass and drank from it, so that when he put the glass down and lifted his gaze to hers his lips gleamed, as did his black eyes.
‘That depends.’
Sorrel blinked, putting down her fork, which still speared a half-gnawed piece of fish—because this whole situation was so bizarre that she had completely lost what little appetite she’d had.
‘Depends?’ Her voice trembled as she looked at him, and so did her body. ‘Depends on what?’
‘On just who you elect to be the lucky recipient of your sexual favours.’
‘Malik, you make it sound so…’
‘Vulgar?’
‘Well, yes.’
He shrugged. ‘I agree entirely. But surely you have only yourself to blame? You did not express a wish for the hearts and the flowers that I assumed all young women yearned for when they lost their maidenhood—you simply made it sound like a mechanical act.’
Now he was humiliating her. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more!’ she vowed fiercely. ‘Let’s just forget it.’
Malik shook his dark head in a resolute and decisive movement that Sorrel had seen many times before.
‘I cannot forget it,’ he said simply. No indeed—for now he was haun
ted by vivid and graphic and infinitely disturbing images of her pale, bare body tangled with that of a man. Being penetrated by another…her beautiful, sunny and innocent face crying out first her pain and then her pleasure. Her long, shapely legs—which he had only seen for the first time himself tonight—wrapped around the back of an interloper. Someone else who would fill her with his seed…He winced, halfway himself between pain and pleasure, and having to suppress a small sound of protest. ‘But I have a solution which I think might suit us both.’
Sorrel’s senses prickled with alarm, and with something else, too—something she wasn’t really sure she recognised. ‘I’m not with you.’
He smiled, but it was a calculating, almost cruel smile. ‘You want a lover?’ he said softly. ‘Well, so do I. You want to learn the delights of lovemaking? Then let me be your tutor—for you will find none better.’
Her heart was pounding fit to deafen her—but a thousand nebulous dreams exploded into a shivering feeling of fear as they became a possible reality. ‘You mean…you…you…would…?’
With a grim kind of satisfaction he noted the rosy colour which had bloomed in her cheeks as he listened to her stumbled words. How naïve she was! How the hell was she expecting to cope in a world of sexual predators? he thought soberly. With her flaxen hair and her delicate blush she looked heart-stoppingly innocent. Why, he should throw her to the lions and let her discover for herself just how foolhardy she was being. But then he felt the hard weight of his erection pressing against his leg and knew that he could not bear for another man to touch her. Not before he did…
‘Yes, I would be your tutor,’ he agreed softly, drinking in the blue confusion of her widened eyes. ‘Would that be so reprehensible a gesture?’
She was about to say yes, when he spoke about it like that—with all the lack of emotion he might employ if he were reading out a shopping list. Except that Malik would never have to even look at a shopping list, she reminded herself. ‘I just hadn’t…’ But her words tailed off. She knew that he might detect the lie in them if she said she hadn’t ever thought of him in terms of lover when she’d spent years fantasising about just that.
‘Hadn’t what, Sorrel?’ he prompted throatily. ‘Hadn’t got around to picking a candidate? Well, then, you have the very best available.’ His black eyes glittered with anticipation of pleasures to come. ‘For every woman I have bedded has told me that I am the greatest lover of all,’ he murmured, totally without shame.
It was stupid and illogical, but this hurt. Really hurt. Of course somewhere in the back of her mind Sorrel knew that he’d had lovers—and that there had probably been lots of them. Malik was certainly no innocent—he exuded an air of sexuality which was as natural to him as breathing. He was bred to be sensual in the same way that the falcon was bred to move in for the kill—but she had never heard it voiced before, and his boast made her picture him with other women. How many? she wondered jealously. How many?
He noted her hesitation and, oddly enough, it pleased him—for a man would take little joy in a prize easily won. ‘What I am offering you is a scenario that most women would yearn for,’ he mused, and traced the tip of his finger along the lush pad of his bottom lip, knowing that her eyes followed the movement and knowing perfectly well what effect it would have on her. ‘You will be taken to the most glamorous places in the world and you will stay in the lap of luxury—and there you will be given the most comprehensive education possible in the art of seduction.’
It was a cold-blooded itinerary for something so significant, and Sorrel knew that she ought to say that it was a preposterous idea—but she was distracted by the erotic gesture of Malik stroking his mouth like that. Was he doing it deliberately? she wondered. Aware that her eyes would be mesmerised by the slow and tantalising gesture—that she would be imagining him stroking her lips like that…
But could she bear to have him as her lover? To give him her body when he had already captured her heart? Wouldn’t that be a risk too far? Say no, urged the calm, inner voice of reason—but reason was vanquished by a sudden and unexpected source.
A svelte redhead was sitting on the other side of the restaurant, at a table which afforded a perfect view of Malik’s hard and autocratic face.
Sorrel had noticed the woman staring over—but that was nothing new and she had paid her little attention. With his dark, slightly dangerous good-looks people were always staring at Malik.
But some transformation had occurred at his suggestion that he could fulfil the role of Sorrel’s sensual tutor—and it felt awfully like possession. That he was hers—or rather he could be hers—and wasn’t that almost as dangerous as the unrequited love she had felt for him for years? Because Malik could never be hers—not in any real sense. He was too proud and too cold to give himself to her emotionally, even if strict Kharastani custom meant that he could never marry a woman not of his own blood.
Marry him! Now, where the hell had that come from? Age seemed to have taught her nothing if she was having the kind of bizarre fantasy that she wouldn’t even have been foolish enough to entertain at the age of sixteen!
Malik had been studying her with the kind of detached interest with which a scientist might peer into a test tube as he waited for her answer—but the new focus of her gaze in the direction of the redhead made him frown, and his eyes narrowed as he glanced over at the Titian-haired beauty.
The woman had clearly been to a colour expert who must have advised her that green was the way to go—her very womanly curves were squeezed into a luscious mint-green cocktail dress which provided a wonderful backdrop for the rich lustre of her hair. Her scarlet lips were pouting, and she didn’t seem to be listening to a word that her dining partner was saying to her.
For one second—like an invisible observer—Sorrel watched the interplay between the stranger and the Sheikh. I want you, the woman’s eyes said—as clearly as if she had shouted the words out at the top of her voice.
Sorrel sneaked a glance at Malik, who had allowed a small and rueful smile to play around the curved perfection of his mouth. Was she imagining it, or was his glittered look a silent acknowledgement, I want you, too, or was she just going crazy? Crazy or not, Sorrel felt a tug of an emotion so primitive and powerful that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She looked at the naked hunger on the beauty’s face, and knew with certainty that she would have taken up Malik’s offer without a moment’s thought.
Malik had no need to pick up strange women in restaurants—no matter how stunning they were—but he had already said that he wanted a lover.
Sorrel bit her lip perplexedly. So, did she turn down his offer—make the wise decision and just walk away?
Or did she give in to her heart and body’s desire and take what was so beautifully on offer—even if it risked the complete wreckage of all her dreams?
But maybe dreams had to be smashed to allow you to carry on living with some degree of contentment in the real world?
‘Okay,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders like an awkward schoolgirl and wishing that they were alone somewhere, so that the arrangement could have been sealed in the traditional way.
‘Okay?’ Malik frowned. It was not the jubilant acceptance which was his due, and clearly she had no idea of the great honour he was affording her. But she would soon learn, he thought grimly.
Sorrel shifted in her chair as practical considerations began to rear their heads. ‘What will…? Well, what on earth is Fariq going to think about the arrangement?’
Malik gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not exactly planning to go on national television to announce it.’
His sarcasm should maybe have warned her that she was playing with fire—and everyone knew what happened to people who did that—but it was too late to back out now, even if she’d wanted to. But if their sexual arrangement was to resemble some sort of business arrangement, then they really ought to establish ground-rules right at the beginning.
‘You mean it’s going to have to be a s
ecret? Fariq won’t know?’
‘Of course he will know,’ he said softly. ‘But, as usual, he will turn a blind eye, and we will be discreet.’
His words made it perfectly clear that this was how these things worked. Smoke and mirrors and discretion. ‘Of course.’
Her lips were trembling, and he found himself swamped with an overpowering desire to kiss them. He turned towards the aide seated unobtrusively at another table and glimmered him a look—and the whole machinery for the Sheikh leaving a restaurant was set into motion.
He signalled for her to follow him out, but her hands were clammy with nerves as the small cluster of hotel management who were mingling with his staff moved forward to accompany them to the executive lift.
‘Leave us now,’ Malik ordered his bodyguards, once the door of the penthouse apartment had been opened, and Faliq, who had silently appeared from within, gave a short bow and followed them—though Sorrel knew she hadn’t mistaken the faint look of shock and disapproval on his face.
Malik closed the door behind them, and put his hands on her shoulders.
‘So, we are alone at last,’ he murmured, and his voice was thick with desire. ‘Your lesson must begin.’
She could feel his hands burning into her flesh through the T-shirt she wore, and suddenly Sorrel felt unprepared—unworthy of her sheikh lover.
‘You mean…now?’
Her face was a mere hand’s width away, and never before had he been so aware of the sapphire blueness of her eyes—as gleaming and as bright as the colour of his beloved Balsora sea on a hot summer day.
‘Now?’ he echoed huskily, not quite understanding.
‘You want us to go to bed now?’
Malik’s mouth hardened, first with anger and then with a grim determination. She was wise to have adopted him as her tutor—but would he soon be regretting his swift folly in having offered himself?
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