by Penny Jordan
‘You,’ she breathed, helpless with longing.
CHAPTER THREE
WHAT a strange thing the senses were in the way they could instantly recognise a person and then immediately cause one’s body to react to that recognition, Sam thought giddily, as she stared across the space that divided them at the man who was looking back at her.
She had known he was tall, but she had not realised quite how tall. She had known how virile and broad-shouldered and how muscular his body was, but not how strong and corded those muscles would be with the morning sun delineating the power beneath the flesh.
She hesitated, engulfed by the intensity of her own emotional and sexual arousal, and torn between flight from it and submission to it. Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to her before—which, of course, was why she had tried to initially evade and then deny it. Now, though, she was face-to-face—quite literally—with a truth she could not escape, with a knowledge about herself and her emotions, and she had no idea how to cope with it.
How was it possible for her to feel the way she did? How was it possible for her to want him so completely and unreservedly that all she wanted to do was go to him and give herself into his keeping for ever?
It was crazy, reckless... .dangerous. And if she had any sense she wouldn’t be thinking such things. She looked at his mouth. Sense. What was that? Nothing that mattered. Not like the aching sweetness pouring through her.
‘How did you find me?’ She was filled with awe and delight, humbled and elated. Reality belonged to another universe, not this magical place she had suddenly stepped into, where a person’s most secret dreams could come true.
Perhaps she was dreaming? Only in daylight now, instead of during the protective darkness of the night hours. If so, Sam knew that she did not want to wake up again—ever. Why had she wasted all those hours trying uselessly to convince herself that nothing life-transforming had really happened between them? Why had she not had more faith in what she felt? He obviously had, because here he was. He had found her. He had come for her. Joy flooded through her.
Vere felt as though he had been turned to stone. No, not stone—because stone could not have felt what he was feeling right now. Stone could not have been pierced by the sharp, immediate and intense male surge of overpowering need to take her, to let his body satisfy the elemental force that was filling his head with images of their bodies together: naked flesh to naked flesh, her head thrown back in ecstasy whilst he moulded her to him, shaping her with his hands, spreading open the softness of her eager thighs, possessing her as she was begging him to do, endlessly and erotically, as she cried out to him over and over again in her pleasure until it became his, until he knew even as fulfilment rushed through him that its satisfaction would never be enough, that like a drug once tasted he would need more, and then still more.
The young boy’s fear translated into a grown man’s savage anger against what gripped him. He had to get away from her.
Sam could hardly contain her emotions. They made her tremble like a gazelle scenting the hunter and knowing its fate. In another minute he would reach her and take her in his arms, and then... She started to walk towards him, her pace quickening with the intensity of her need to touch him and be touched by him. A wild thrill of excitement shot through her—only to turn to a sharp stab of shocked disbelief when, just as she had almost reached him, he abruptly turned his back on her and started to walk away.
Pain and confusion swirled through her, leaving her feeling unsteady and insecure, desperate to stop him from leaving her.
‘No!’
The denial felt as though it had been torn from her heart, it hurt so much.
Another man had appeared from a side path and was coming between them, bowing low in front of him, to murmur respectfully, ‘Highness.’
Highness?
Had she actually whispered her appalled dismay? Was that why he had turned to look at her, that brilliant emerald-green gaze homing in on her, transfixing her to the spot, unable to move, unable to do anything, until it had been removed from her and the two men were walking away from her back down the path.
Sam searched her too pale expression in the mirror. If she didn’t go and join the others soon, not only would she miss breakfast, she’d almost certainly have someone coming to ask why she wasn’t there and if she was all right.
All right? She gave a small shiver. She wasn’t sure she would ever be that again.
Had she actually seen him by the oasis, or had she only thought she had? Had he been merely a mirage, conjured up by her own imagination? And if he had, what did that tell her about the state she was in?
‘Sam—at last. I was just about to come and look for you in case you’d overslept.’
The anxiety combined with just a hint of reproach in the voice of Anne Smith, the female half of a pair of married statisticians who were part of the team, caused Sam to give her an apologetic look.
‘Sorry—’ she began, but to her relief, before she was obliged to come up with an explanation as to why she was so late, Anne continued.
‘You’ve never missed breakfast before, and with Sheikh Sadir telling us that the Ruler of Dhurahn has arrived, and that we are all to be formally presented to him, I was getting really worried that you wouldn’t make it.’
At least now Sam knew the likely cause of his sudden reappearance here at the oasis—as well as the reason he had been in Zuran in the first place. He must be part of the Ruler of Dhurahn’s entourage.
She had been in a total state of shock after seeing him so unexpectedly and then having him refuse to acknowledge her and walk away from her. It seemed ridiculous now that she had actually thought that somehow or other he had known she was there and come in search of her. Patently it was quite impossible—as she had since told herself. But at the time her sense of despairing anguish, coming so quickly on the heels of her earlier euphoria, had meant that it had been several minutes after he’d disappeared before she’d felt able to move. Even when she had, her heart had been thudding so heavily and uncomfortably that she had felt both sick and light-headed by the time she had reached the privacy of her tent.
Now she wasn’t even sure she could trust herself to have actually seen him—not simply created the whole incident in the way that people lost in the desert and thirsting desperately for water saw mirages of what they so longed for.
The fact that she might be late for breakfast had been the last thing on her mind as she had semi-collapsed into a chair, her body going frantic with its wild message of longing, whilst her head and her heart burned with the pain of despair and humiliation.
Initially she had been glad that the shock of seeing him had left her so weak and shaky. If not for that, she suspected that her body, in its feverish heat of desire that seemed to have turned into a life force outside her own control, would have had her making a complete fool of herself and running after him—or, just as bad, running after a mirage. It was hard to say which would have offered her more humiliation.
Sam had stayed there in the chair for a long time, trying to understand what was happening to her—and, just as importantly, why. She wasn’t the sort of person who became taken over either by an emotional or a sexual need so strong that it possessed her and threatened her self-control. How could one kiss be responsible for such a dramatic change in her personality? How could it have her indulging in ridiculous fantasies of love at first sight and soul mates?
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sp; Now she felt drained and on edge, exhausted physically and emotionally by what had happened, as weak as though she had been struck down by a powerful virus. Perhaps she had, she thought wildly. Perhaps someone somewhere had found the chemical formula that was responsible for sexual attraction and was trying it out on unsuspecting victims, causing them to suffer hallucinations.
Now she was being ridiculous, she warned herself as she followed Anne to the large tent that was used for meetings and general information announcements.
Anne, quite naturally, went to join her husband, who was seated with their colleagues, leaving Sam to find her own seat. Her heart sank when she saw that the only available space was next to James.
He gave her a superior look as she sat down next to him, and Sam realised too late that virtually everyone else in the tent was dressed formally—or at least as formally as the their desert situation would allow. The men were in long chinos and shirts, the women in sleeved tee shirts—some of them had even covered their heads.
They had been told at their original orientation meeting that although the Sheikh of Zuran did not expect them to abide by the Arab rules of dress whilst working in the desert, the other leaders might.
Had something been said to indicate that the Ruler of Dhurahn did expect them to dress more formally? Sam wondered in dismay, now acutely conscious of her own sleeveless tee shirt, and her very practical below the knee loose-fit multi-pocketed cargo pants. She had a fold-up wide brimmed canvas hat in one of the pockets, but no headscarf. It was too late now, though, to worry about her appearance. Two men were being ushered onto the slightly raised platform with its traditional Arab divans.
One of them was Sheikh Sadir, and the other...
Sam’s heart literally missed a full beat, staggered through a half-beat and then missed another—rather as though she were a boxer who had been knocked off his feet.
It couldn’t be, surely? But it was; the man accompanying Sheikh Sadir, and who he was treating with such obvious reverence, was none other than the man she had seen earlier—the man with whom she had exchanged that shockingly intimate kiss in the hotel corridor in Zuran. So he wasn’t a mirage, then. She didn’t know now whether to be glad or sorry about that.
Now, of course, she truly understood the importance of that reverent ‘Highness’ that had so shocked her earlier.
She felt James nudge her hard in her ribs, and realised that everyone was standing and lowering their heads. Somehow she managed to get to her own feet in time to hear Sheikh Sadir introducing the man as Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar, the Ruler of Dhurahn.
The Ruler of Dhurahn—Prince Vereham al a’ Karim bin Hakar.
Not a mirage. Not a mere man at all, but a prince.
Sam recoiled in shock. This couldn’t be happening. But of course it was.
Now she knew exactly why he had turned his back on her on the path this morning. Of course he didn’t want to acknowledge her. He was the Ruler of an Arab state and she was a nobody—less than a nobody in his estimation, no doubt. What he had taken from her he had taken as carelessly as he might have plucked a fig from a tree, biting into it in his desire to enjoy its sweetness and then discarding it, his enjoyment of it over and forgotten.
The robed serving staff provided by the Ruler of Zuran were coming round in pairs, one carrying a tray of coffee cups, the other a tray of coffee and small sweet pastries.
Up above them on the dais, the Ruler of Dhurahn was also being served with coffee. Sam watched as the sleeve of the gold-embroidered black robe he was wearing over an immaculate crisp white full-length Arab shirt was swept back, to reveal a lean brown hand and a muscular forearm. Beads of sweat pierced her forehead and her upper lip. She felt sick and shaky. It was because she hadn’t eaten any breakfast, she tried to reassure herself. But she knew deep down that wasn’t the reason at all.
‘We’ll see a bit more action now that he’s here,’ James told her, helping himself to several of the small pastries with relish. ‘Word has it that he’s got his own reasons for being here, and that he’s the kind to make sure he gets what he wants.’
Yes, he was very definitely that kind, Sam agreed mentally. And if he had wanted her... Stop that, she warned herself. Whatever foolish fantasies she might have entertained before—and they had been foolish—there could be no question of her continuing to entertain them now that she knew who he was.
He was standing up to speak, addressing them in unaccented crisply clear English as he reaffirmed what the cartographers amongst the team had already been told: namely, that the purpose of the exercise in which they were involved was not either to reassess or challenge the validity of already existing borders but to study the effect of the desert itself on those borders.
‘Curious that he seems so keen to warn us that we aren’t to question the existing borders, don’t you think?’ James asked Sam sotto voce, under cover of eating yet another pastry.
‘Not really,’ Sam denied. ‘After all, we were told right from the start why we are here and all he’s doing is reaffirming that.’
She didn’t want to have to listen to James, and she certainly didn’t want him obstructing her view of the Prince. And yet what was the point in her pathetic and painful desire to watch and listen to him, like an obsessed teenager fantasising about some out-of-reach pop idol?
Sheikh Sadir was now announcing that they were all to be presented to the Ruler of Dhurahn. Obediently everyone was shuffling out of their chairs to form a long line, going up to the dais, being introduced.
‘Here—hold this for me a minute, will you?’
Before she could stop him James had thrust the sticky crumb-filled plate from which he had been eating his pastries towards her, before standing up and leaving her holding it.
Sam looked yearningly towards the rear exit to the tent. She was closer to it than she was to the dais. It would be easy enough for her to slip away and avoid the formal introduction. But of course it was impossible for her to do that. Apart from anything else it would be a grave breach of protocol, and indeed almost an insult to the Ruler.
She looked with distaste at the plate she was still clutching and then, feeling a bit guilty, bent down to slip it beneath the nearest chair before filing into the queue behind James.
It would be her turn next. So far Sam had managed successfully to avoid looking directly at the new Ruler, but that hadn’t stopped her heart thumping as heavily as though someone were wielding it like a sledgehammer, and now her palms were clammy with nervous perspiration. She was uncomfortably conscious of her bare shoulders and her casual attire. Would he think she had chosen to dress like this deliberately, as some kind of statement, or even worse in an attempt to lay claim to some kind of privileged status?
James was bowing his head. Sam heard him laugh, and then to her horror he turned to her and announced cheerfully, ‘If you’ll take my advice, Prince, you’ll keep an eye on my fellow cartographer here. She’s already been checking up on the source of your river. The next thing you know she’ll probably be challenging your borders as well. Trust a woman to want to meddle, eh?’
Sam could feel herself shaking with a mixture of disbelief and furious outrage at James’s wholly unprofessional and untruthful allegations. With a few supposedly casual words he had painted a picture of her for the man who was now in charge of their venture that could only mark her out as a troublemaker, determined to ignore the guidelines they had been given from the start—guidelines which the man n
ow staring very hard and very coldly at her had only just repeated.
The words That’s not true hovered on her tongue, only to be choked back. Any kind of protest or argument from her now would only make her position worse.
Ignoring James, she made a determinedly low obeisance to the Prince and said quietly, ‘Highness, I am aware, of course, of the purpose of our being here, and I thank you and the other Rulers for granting us the opportunity to work here. It is a unique opportunity and a privilege to be permitted to learn something of the mystery of the desert.’
Without waiting to see what kind of reaction her words were receiving Sam backed away, waiting until her place in front of the Ruler of Dhurahn had been taken by someone else before straightening up ready to turn round. But before she did so she couldn’t prevent her gaze from seeking his. She wanted to look at him as the woman she had been in the hotel corridor, and him to be the man who had looked back at her with such fierce, sensual hunger.
He was not that man now, though. Now he was an Arab prince. The Ruler of an Arab State—a man, his dismissive gaze was telling her, as far removed from her as it was possible for him to be. His cold refusal to engage visually with her, never mind acknowledge or recognise her, confirmed everything that Sam had already guessed. He didn’t want to know. The look he had given her earlier on the path confirmed that he had recognised her as immediately as she had done him, but now he was letting her know that he was the Ruler of Dhurahn and she was a European woman he wanted to pretend he had never met.
It was an indication of just how foolish she was that she actually felt achingly saddened to discover he was the kind of prince who was ready to enjoy the sexual advantages of his power and position in private, but at the same time determined to deny that he had availed himself of them in public.