She walked noiselessly into the living area and found it empty. The tent flap had been tied back and through the opening she saw Kadir standing next to the oasis, staring up at the sky that was rapidly darkening as the sun completely disappeared. The heavens were filling with silver stars, like pins on a velvet pincushion. The wondrous beauty of the cosmos was displayed in breathtaking magnificence and, standing in the vast desert beneath the vast sky, Lexi thought how insignificant the human race was.
‘My father loved to watch the stars.’ Kadir turned as Lexi approached, sensing her presence although she made no sound. ‘Many nights when I was a boy we sat outside the tent and Baba taught me the constellations.’
‘You came to Jinan with him?’
‘Yes, it was a special place for both of us, away from the palace and the many duties of a Sultan. Here we were simply father and son, and we used to go fishing and cook what we caught. My father taught me to enjoy the simple things in life.’
‘Everyone I’ve spoken to says that Sultan Khalif was a great ruler of Zenhab,’ Lexi said softly.
‘He was the salvation of the kingdom.’ Kadir’s voice was fierce with pride. ‘Before my father became Sultan, Zenhab was riven by civil war. He worked hard to establish peace and he gave hope for the future, but only if the population were willing to embrace change and welcome ideologies from the outside world.’ His jaw clenched. ‘There are still some people in Zenhab who want to return to the old ways.’ Always he came back to the thorn in his side—Jamal—he brooded.
‘You loved your father.’ Lexi’s voice pulled Kadir from his dark thoughts about his uncle. ‘It’s sad that he died when you were a young man and you did not have more time with him.’ She felt a tug on her heart, remembering how Kadir’s old nanny, Mabel, had said his heart had been broken by Sultan Khalif’s death. ‘At least you had a loving father while you were growing up. Mabel said the Sultan adored you.’
Kadir heard the wistful note in her voice and pictured her as a little girl whose adoptive parents had sent her away to boarding school so that they could concentrate on their own daughter.
‘How old were you when you were adopted?’
‘Four.’
He frowned. ‘So, did you spend the first years of your life with your real parents?’
‘No, I was placed into social services’ care soon after I was born. Apparently I was fostered by a couple who planned to adopt me, but some time during the adoption process they changed their mind and I went back into care until the Howards adopted me two years later. I was too young to remember any of those experiences, of course.’
As an adult, Lexi had read various articles about attachment issues which could affect adopted children and the psychological problems resulting from negative early life experiences which could last into adulthood. The first failed adoption, followed by her failure to bond with the Howards was likely to be the reason why she was fiercely independent, yet deep down she wished she’d had a close, loving relationship like Kadir had enjoyed with his father. She’d been accused of pushing people away. It was true that she was wary of allowing anyone too close, she acknowledged. And when she had lowered her barriers with Steven, he had betrayed her trust.
Caught up in her thoughts, Lexi had only been partly aware that Kadir had led her back inside the tent. ‘I thought you must be hungry,’ he said, indicating the trays of food set out on the raised platform. He dropped down onto the piles of cushions and indicated that she should do the same. ‘It’s only crackers and dried fruits, I’m afraid.’
Lexi scanned the picnic and realised she was starving. ‘It looks wonderful,’ she assured him, biting into a plump dried fig. ‘It reminds me of the midnight feasts we used to have at boarding school, only we had to eat in the dark because if we were caught by the housemistress it meant a week of detentions.’
Kadir thought of his own generally happy years at Eton College. The only downside had been that he had hated being separated from his father. ‘What did you think of boarding school?’
‘It was hard at first, but I got used to sleeping in a dormitory and only going home for the school holidays. In many ways it toughened me up.’
‘Did you need to toughen up? You were eight years old,’ he said softly. With her pale blonde hair falling around her beautiful face she looked fragile and ethereal, but he knew she had a backbone of steel.
She shrugged. ‘It helped. After a while I stopped caring that my adoptive parents didn’t love me.’
‘What about your biological parents? Have you ever tried to trace them?’
‘No,’ she said abruptly. She did not want to tell him that her birth mother had been a prostitute when she had conceived Lexi.
She wondered how the Sultan of Zenhab would react if she told him he had spent the afternoon having sex with the daughter of a whore. Keen to turn the subject away from her private life, Lexi focused on the meal he had prepared.
‘This is baklava, isn’t it?’ she said, picking up a little pastry. ‘Layers of dough stuffed with pistachio nuts and honey. I tried them once before when I was serving in the Middle East and I remember they were delicious.’
‘They’re even better if you dip them in honey,’ Kadir told her, pushing a bowl of thick golden liquid towards her.
She dipped the pastry into the honey and popped it into her mouth. A rapturous expression crossed her face. ‘Mmm, I admit I have a weakness for sweet things.’
Kadir watched the tip of her pink tongue dart out to capture a crumb of pastry. She reminded him of a contented kitten, and her sensual enjoyment of the cake aroused a barbaric need in him to push her back against the cushions and thrust his throbbing erection deep inside her welcoming heat. He knew she would be ready for him. Her blue eyes—no longer chips of ice, but smoky-soft—had been issuing an invitation since she had stood beside him at the oasis.
‘You’ve got honey on your chin,’ he murmured as he lowered his head towards her. ‘And as there are no napkins I’ll have to lick it off you.’
Her impish smile tugged on something deep inside him. For a few seconds he glimpsed the child who had grown too serious too soon.
‘I would be grateful if you would,’ she murmured, as demure as a Victorian maiden. But Kadir had a vivid memory of earlier, when she had pushed him down on the bed and positioned herself above him, deliberately tormenting him as she had slowly, oh-so slowly, lowered herself onto his erect shaft before riding him hard and fast.
His breath hissed between his teeth as he struggled to control his hunger. His hand was already untying the belt of his silk robe, revealing his swollen manhood, and her little gasp when she saw how aroused he was drove him beyond rational thought.
It was impossible to rationalise anything that had happened since they had flown away from the palace that morning, Kadir brooded. Those moments on the helicopter when he had looked at death down the barrel of a gun had evoked a feeling of urgency to reaffirm life. He was aware that this was one stolen night. For a few hours, the past and the future did not exist and there was only now, with this woman. He could not fight his need for Lexi.
He brushed his lips over hers and his heart kicked when he felt her instant response. ‘You taste sweet,’ he growled, sliding his tongue into her mouth to explore her with mind-blowing eroticism that left them both shaking.
Lexi tasted salt on his skin when she kissed his throat. In the glow from the oil lamp his broad shoulders gleamed like polished gold, and his dark chest hairs felt abrasive against her palms as she ran her hands down his body, over his flat stomach and lower to clasp the rigid length of his erection.
His hands were no less busy opening the buttons down the front of her shirt and sliding the material from her shoulders so that she was naked beneath his glittering gaze. She made a startled protest when he dipped his fingers into the bowl of honey and trickled the sticky syrup over her breasts. He laughed at her surprise before closing his lips around one honey-coated nipple and suckling her until she
sobbed his name.
‘Sticky and sweet,’ he murmured, transferring his mouth to her other honey-anointed breast and curling his tongue around its taut peak. ‘From now on I will always be addicted to the taste of honey.’
It was sensuality taken to another level and before long Lexi was squirming and arching her hips in mute supplication for him to assuage the ache between her legs.
‘Patience, habibi,’ he teased. ‘Let me discover if you taste sweet here, too.’
She shivered with anticipation as he hooked her legs over his shoulders and slid his hands beneath her bottom, lifting her as he lowered his head and pressed his mouth against her to taste her molten heat with his tongue.
The intimate caress felt unbelievably good. Lexi was lost from the first lick of Kadir’s tongue up and down her moist opening, as he delicately but determinedly probed and delved and finally thrust into her feminine heat. Her body arched like a bow under intolerable tension, quivering as the pleasure inside her built. She curled her fingers into the satin cushions beneath her as he curled his tongue around her clitoris and created a storm of sensations that were too exquisite for her to withstand.
She exploded in a frantic orgasm, her hips jerking towards his wicked mouth, her breath forced from her lungs so that her gasps of pleasure filled the tent. It was impossible that anything could be better than what he had just done to her, but then he lifted his head and stood between her spread thighs to drive his powerful erection deep inside her, and Lexi began the delicious journey to nirvana all over again.
* * *
Lexi turned her head on the pillow and studied Kadir while he slept. The chiselled angles of his face looked softer, and his thick black lashes made crescents on his cheeks. Last night he had called her habibi, which she knew was an Arabic term of endearment, and when he had made love to her she had sensed tenderness as well as passion in his caresses. Had they simply had sex, she mused, or was it possible that he cared for her a little?
Dear heaven! What had they done?
She jolted fully awake, and the dreamy smile on her lips disappeared. Last night had been no dream. Of course he could not care for her. She and Kadir had had sex, but their passion was forbidden and they should not have become lovers. She glanced around the tent, filled with warm golden sunlight, and a chill spread through her body as cold reality hit her.
She had been flying Kadir to meet his fiancée when they had been kidnapped and stranded on the island. It was true that Kadir’s arranged marriage was no love match. He had never even met Haleema. But he was contracted to marry the Princess, and they should not have allowed themselves to be swept away by passion, Lexi thought bleakly.
Her heart was beating so hard that she was sure she could hear it. She frowned when she realised that the sound came from a long way off and she recognised the low throb of a motorboat’s engine. Perhaps the kidnapper had returned to the island. Their lives could once again be in danger.
‘Kadir.’
His lashes lifted, and his smooth chocolate eyes regarded her slumberously. ‘I thought I was dreaming.’ He cupped her breasts in his hands and gave her a sinful smile. ‘But these feel real.’
Fear made Lexi momentarily forget her feelings of guilt. ‘I can hear a boat engine,’ she said urgently.
He dropped his hands from her body and leapt out of bed, frowning as he heard a faint thrumming sound. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered, dragging on his shorts. ‘Find somewhere safe to hide while I go and see what’s happening.’
‘You must be joking!’ It took seconds to pull on her combats, but longer to wriggle her feet into her boots and tie the laces. ‘Wait for me!’ She cursed as he strode out of the tent, but common sense warned her not to run across the desert in bare feet and risk being bitten by a highly venomous death stalker scorpion.
* * *
Adrenalin pumped through Kadir as he hid behind a palm tree and watched a motorboat land on the beach. No doubt the kidnapper was still armed with a gun. He glanced around for something he could use to defend himself with. A tree branch would not be much use against a pistol, he thought ruefully, but he had the element of surprise combined with an implacable determination to protect Lexi from the gunman.
Shielding his eyes against the bright sun, Kadir frowned as he recognised the man. ‘Nasim!’
‘Sir!’ The bodyguard tore up the beach and dropped down onto one knee before his Sultan. ‘Your Highness, I feared Jamal might have had you killed.’
‘I guessed my uncle was behind this,’ Kadir said grimly. ‘Do you know what he is up to?’
‘He intends to depose you and make himself Sultan, and he has a few followers, including Fariq, working for him. I was held at gunpoint but I managed to escape. I overheard that Jamal planned for you and Miss Howard to be kidnapped and brought to the island. Your uncle has gone to the mountains to inform Sheikh Omar that, instead of attending the meeting to discuss your marriage to Princess Haleema, you chose to come to Jinan with your mistress.
‘Jamal has spies at the palace, and one of them reported that he had seen you kissing Lexi,’ Nasim explained when Kadir frowned. ‘Jamal hopes that Sheikh Omar will believe that you have snubbed his sister, and he will incite the mountain tribes to join forces with your uncle to overthrow you.’
Kadir’s jaw clenched. ‘I must act quickly. It is time I dealt with my uncle once and for all.’ He looked round to see Lexi running across the sand. After giving instructions to his bodyguard, he walked up the beach towards her.
‘What is Nasim doing here? He’s not working for the kidnapper, is he?’ she demanded.
‘He came to rescue us. As I suspected, my uncle is behind the kidnap plot.’ Kadir threw her the helicopter keys. ‘I need you to take me to the mountains to visit Haleema, and there is no time to lose. Wait here while I go and shut up the tent.’
Lexi stared after him as he strode up the beach and bit her lip. She did not know what she had expected from him, but his absolute indifference to the fact that they had spent the night together made her feel used and humiliated. His urgency to visit Haleema emphasised how unimportant she was to him, Lexi thought bitterly, just as she had been unimportant to her adoptive parents.
* * *
What the hell had he done?
As Kadir ploughed over the soft sand dunes, the sated ache in his groin was a mocking reminder of exactly what he had done to Lexi last night, and what she had done to him. She had made him forget everything except the thunder in his blood, his urgent, uncontrollable need to make love to her. But he could not blame Lexi for the fact that he had broken his promise to himself. And, despite the fact that he had just enjoyed the most amazing night of his life with her, he could not break the promise he had made to his father.
He heard Sultan Khalif’s voice inside his head.
‘The marriage arrangement that Jamal has brokered between you and the daughter of the leader of the northern tribes will ensure stability in the kingdom. The people of Zenhab deserve peace and prosperity after years of war and bloodshed. It is my dying wish, my only son, that when the time comes you will honour your promise to take Princess Haleema as your bride.’
Stumbling into the tent, Kadir sank to his knees and dropped his head into his hands as if he could somehow hold back the tidal wave of emotions rolling over him. Shame tasted as bitter as poison in his mouth. By making love to Lexi he had betrayed his personal code of honour and he had betrayed his father. It was no comfort that he had not technically had sex with Lexi in Zenhab and they had been on his private island, Jinan.
Even worse than letting himself down was the realisation that Lexi hoped, perhaps even expected, that having sex with her had meant something to him. Her soft smile when she had run towards him on the beach just now had made his gut twist, and the look of disappointment on her face when she’d realised that they could leave the island had been more revealing than perhaps she knew.
He cursed savagely, anger and guilt mingling with his shame. He did not w
ant to hurt Lexi. The discovery shocked him. His many previous affairs had been with sophisticated European socialites, women who had understood he wasn’t looking for a relationship that would continue outside the bedroom. Perhaps he could have been forgiven for believing that a tough-talking ex-RAF pilot knew the score. But he had glimpsed Lexi’s vulnerability and heard the hurt in her voice when she had explained how, as a child, she had overheard her adoptive parents say that they wished they had not adopted her.
He was jerked from his thoughts by the whump-whump of rotor blades. Dragging himself to his feet, he stepped outside the tent and stared up at the helicopter hovering in the blue sky. What was Lexi playing at? He watched her fly a circuit of the island before the chopper dipped below the tops of the palm trees.
The rotor blades had almost stopped spinning when Kadir reached the beach. Lexi jumped down from the chopper onto the sand and watched him walk towards her. He had changed back into his royal robes, and in the breeze his white keffiyeh fluttered around his tanned face. His dark eyes were no longer warm but hard and unreadable, and with every step he took closer to her she sensed a widening distance between them.
‘Why did you take off without me?’
She shrugged. ‘I wanted to make a test flight on my own. Although I’d checked underneath the chopper and didn’t find an explosive device, I couldn’t be certain that the kidnapper hadn’t tampered with the controls before he left us stranded here yesterday.’
Kadir was aware of a curious sensation in his chest, as if a fist was gripping his heart. ‘Are you saying you flew the helicopter to check it was safe? What if the kidnapper had done something to it that caused it to crash? It’s very likely you would have been killed.’ His jaw clenched. ‘You are the craziest woman I’ve ever met. You should have waited for me instead of risking your life.’
Sheikh's Forbidden Conquest Page 12