by Penny Jordan
She rolled on to her side, punching her pillow and trying to blot out the image of Raschid. Half an hour later she crawled wearily out of her sleeping bag. Her body was tired, but her mind refused to let her sleep. A short walk might help ease her tension, might help her to prepare some sort of defence against the accusations the morning was bound to bring.
Outside it was bitterly cold and she was glad of the thick sweater she had put on top of her blouse. Disregarding the boots Nadia had loaned her, she padded across the sand, breathing in the pure crystal air, and filling her lungs with its sharp freshness.
‘Miss Gordon!’
She spun round. Raschid was standing by one of the Land Rovers watching her. Her heart sank. If only she had stayed in the tent! What better time than now, when they were alone, for him to confront her with her duplicity? What possible excuses could she offer for abusing their hospitality by remaining with them when she knew that Faisal no longer wanted her? Could she plead Zahra’s birthday, or would he see through the protective sham and pluck the truth from her heart?
‘What are you looking for, Miss Gordon? Money? Romance? Does even your mercenary little heart yearn for a man’s hard arms to possess your slenderness and bind it to him, on a night like this? His lips against yours as the coldness of the desert gives way to the heat of mutual passion?’
Felicia gasped in pain, wondering if he knew how he was tormenting her. She sensed that here in the desert he was a different man from the cool, sardonic entrepreneur who ran their vast empire.
‘I merely wanted to walk,’ she stammered. ‘I couldn’t sleep….’
‘Because you longed so much for my nephew?’ he mocked savagely. ‘Well, I have longings too, and am as able to assuage your needs as Faisal—also I have the advantage of being here, while he is many miles away.’ He crossed the small space dividing them and took her in his arms.
If he had wanted to punish her he must have succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings, Felicia thought despairingly, looking pleadingly up into his face for some trace of pity. In the moonlight her skin was the colour of a waxen waterlily, only her eyes glowing darkly as they searched in vain for some sign of remorse. There was none—only the hardening demand of his arms, and the cold implacable purpose in his eyes, as he bent his head, obliterating the moonlight and filling her world with darkness, his face reflecting all the cruelty of the falcon’s descent to its prey.
It was impossible to resist. Impossible and unthinkable. This was her one moment stolen from time, and she admitted that in the hidden recesses of her heart she had dreamed of something like this. She longed for his touch even when it was fuelled by rage, and out here in the darkness she could pretend for a while that the arms that held her were those of a lover, that Raschid strained her body against his in desire and not anger, that the hands possessing her body trembled against her skin in passion and not fury.
She closed her eyes so that she would not see the contempt in his eyes, and gave herself up to his kiss, letting his mouth mould and teach hers. She had been kissed before—but she had never known this complete subjugation of self—this complete need to be one with another person to the extent that she was pressing herself against Raschid as though she wanted to imprint the feel of his body against her very bones.
Somehow her sweater had been removed and the buttons of her blouse unfastened, leaving her pearly skin exposed to Raschid’s impatient mouth. Her own hands mutely implored closer contact with his body, her murmured protest silenced under the pressure of his mouth as it taught her the meaning of desire.
His lips trailed lazily across her cheek, nibbling the lobe of her ear, descending to caress her neck and the fragile hollows of her shoulder blade, and then lower still to the shadowy cleft between her breasts.
Her heart was beating like a trapped bird. Stupid to feel so shy and so aroused. A lassitude enveloped her; she longed for his complete possession, and arched instinctively against him. He growled deep in his throat, his hands inside the waistband of her jeans, holding her so close to him that she could feel his impatient desire, her breasts swelling tautly in answering need. Through the thin barrier of their clothes she could feel the hard maleness of him, and fire licked along her veins as she sought to convey her growing desire. A small creature moved in the undergrowth, disturbing the heavy silence of the night. Realisation shuddered through her, breaking the spell that had enchanted her. Her flesh shrank under Raschid’s touch, and she felt him probing the darkness, listening…waiting….
The moment was gone. They were no star-crossed lovers, impatient for the culmination of their urgent lovemaking, but two enemies using their bodies to wage a war of attrition—or at least that was what Raschid thought. What had he intended to do? Make love to her and then throw Faisal’s desertion in her face? Perhaps he didn’t realise that she already knew, and was deliberately leading her on, waiting until she was at her most vulnerable, to throw the truth at her.
He was not like the falcon after all, she thought; they at least killed quickly and cleanly.
‘Obviously I was not a totally acceptable substitute after all,’ he drawled at her side. ‘A pity. You should have used your imagination a little more, or have you forgotten that I am far richer than Faisal, and far better equipped to pay for my pleasure?’
And then he was gone, melting into the darkness, leaving her to stumble back to her tent alone.
‘SO, DID you enjoy your journey into the desert?’ Umm Faisal asked Felicia.
They had arrived back just after lunch and Nadia and Achmed had gone to their own quarters with Zayad. Zahra was with the dressmaker being measured for her wedding clothes and Felicia was alone with Umm Faisal.
‘Very much,’ she replied listlessly. Since their return from the desert, a curious inertia seemed to have enveloped her, coupled with a nervous dread that kept her continually on edge.
‘Raschid has received a letter from Faisal,’ she continued. ‘Soon he will be returning home, I am sure.’
Felicia shuddered. So Raschid had read the letter. Dear God, how was she going to face him? She could not! Excusing herself to Umm Faisal, she went to her room. If only they were still in Kuwait and escape were just a relatively simple matter of presenting herself at the British Embassy. But they were not in Kuwait. They were in the desert. The desert…. She looked out across its golden emptiness; perhaps a breath of fresh air might help clear her thoughts.
She went downstairs. Outside Umm Faisal’s sitting room she paused, hearing voices. Raschid’s voice.
‘Rest assured, she will not marry Faisal,’ she heard him saying, and her face whitened with pain and despair.
Without knowing how she got there she found herself in the courtyard. The huge wooden gates stood open; the desert beckoned, offering solitude and escape from her agony. Like a sleepwalker Felicia walked through the gates to where the waters of the oasis glittered.
So many small wounds, so carelessly inflicted, all combined to make her heart and body one dreary mass of pain from which there was only one cure—Raschid’s love.
CHAPTER TEN
ONE tear followed another down her pale cheeks. She walked on, head down, not comprehending where her unwary feet were taking her, wrapped in her thoughts.
The sun was hot on the back of her neck. Her legs ached and she seemed to have been walking for a long time, but strangely she had no desire to stop. Some instinct beyond her control urged her on. Her blouse was soaked with perspiration and her hair clung damply to her skin. She raised a listless hand to ward off a persistent fly droning angrily next to her ear. Her head felt muzzy, and she was very, very thirsty. She thought longingly of a glass of fresh lime-juice—then she halted suddenly in her tracks and stared back in the direction in which she had come.
She was lost! Completely and absolutely lost. She had broken the first law of the desert. She had wandered away from the sheltering protection of the oasis and no one knew where she had gone.
What was worse, Zahra an
d Umm Faisal were to visit Saud’s mother during the afternoon, and probably no one would realise that she was missing until she didn’t appear for dinner! The harsh reality of her plight dispersed the woolly misery clouding her brain. No matter how hard she searched the horizon there was no sign of the oasis—no sign of anything apart from the vast solitude of the desert itself.
She had to sit down because her legs suddenly refused to support her any more, and anyway, wasn’t there something about staying put in one place because when you were lost you just wandered round and round in circles, exhausting the body’s pitifully frail defences and making rescue harder? Felicia licked her lips and tasted the salt rimming her top lip. Closing her eyes in despair, she remembered the salt tablets she should have been taking. Sickness and giddiness swept her in alternate waves; her eyes ached from the fierce glare of the sun, everywhere she looked an unending vista of sand upon sand.
At length when it finally sank in that she was well and truly lost, she crept into the lee of one of the sandhills hoping the meagre shade it afforded would provide some protection from the sun’s dehydrating heat.
Nothing moved. The only creature foolish enough to brave the elements was herself—a pale, singularly ill-equipped female.
Time passed. She slept and awoke, stiff and more thirsty than ever. The world was a molten brass bowl with nowhere for her to escape the burning rays of the sun.
She closed her eyes again and tried not to think of the tinkling fountains in the courtyards. Her tongue snaked over cracked lips. Her throat felt as though she had swallowed the entire Sahara. Had her absence been noticed yet? Without her watch she had no means of gauging time.
Slowly at first, and then with growing fear, she acknowledged that by the time anyone did realise she was missing it could be too late.
She would have cried, but she had no tears left. Sick and exhausted, she tried to crawl a little farther across the sand, but fresh waves of nausea racked her, the landscape swayed unsteadily beneath her feet as her eyes stubbornly refused to focus properly.
She gave a dry sob. She was going to die, alone in this harsh environment, her bones picked clean by scavengers and vultures.
Hysteria bubbled up inside her. Stop it! she commanded herself. Nothing would be achieved by giving way to her emotions. She had no one but herself to blame, and anyway, what pleasure did life hold for her now?
The lengthening afternoon sun threw long shadows across the desert. High above the inert figure on the sand, a bird wheeled and hung motionless, a tiny speck in the distance. Its acute hearing, more finely tuned than any human ear, picked up a sound carrying on the clear air and it circled the girl once or twice before winging westward.
Voices impinged upon her consciousness with the imperfect clarity of waves heard from a sea-shell.
Felicia struggled to make sense of what she could hear, but it was too much effort and she succumbed to the desire to close her eyes and keep them closed.
Someone was rolling her over on to her back, touching her skin with hard, sure fingers, and she pushed ineffectively at them, wanting to be left alone in her comfortable, pain-free cocoon of nothingness.
She wasn’t allowed to, though. Those merciless fingers touched and prodded until she was forced to acknowledge their presence.
‘She’s suffering from salt deficiency,’ she heard someone say, ‘and over-exposure. Fortunately she had the sense to keep her face covered. We’d better get her in the Land Rover….’
The Land Rover! She stiffened. The Land Rover was associated with pain, and she had had enough of that, but it was useless, she was being lifted and carried by someone—the same someone who had discussed her so dispassionately—a someone whose identity hovered lazily on the periphery of her awareness. She could feel the rise and fall of the chest against which she was held. It was very comforting to be held thus, and she had a childish desire to remain there, surrendering to the cotton-woolly sensation that made nonsense of her efforts to comprehend what was happening.
‘I’ll drive, Raschid.’
Raschid! Her contentment splintered into a thousand tiny fragments, and her eyelids flickered open as a small moaned protest escaped her cracked lips.
‘It’s all right, Felicia, you are quite safe now,’ Achmed comforted her.
Safe! Weak relief spread through her. Gone was the intense heat, punishing her sensitive skin, but still her body trembled with convulsions of reaction she was powerless to control. Of all her senses only those of touch and smell remained unaffected, and through her trembling palms she felt muscles contracting in what she guessed to be tightly reined anger, the scent of male sweat pungently close to her nostrils as the arms holding her tightened fractionally.
Raschid offered her security and she took it gratefully like a tired child too exhausted to reason, her head dropping like a dust-streaked flower too heavy for the slender stem supporting it.
She remembered now! She had wandered out of the oasis because Raschid had hurt her, but her muddled thoughts could not tell her why. She only knew in his arms were peace and safety, a haven for which she had longed all those weary hours in the blistering sun. She closed her eyes and let her senses dictate her actions. Her fingers curled instinctively into the soft cloth of the dishdasha beneath her cheek, her breath expelled on a soft sigh as she sought and found the opening which gave her access to the sun-warmed male chest. Unaffectedly she turned her face into it, breathing in the scent of male skin, unaware that above her Raschid’s face tightened, a small muscle beating suddenly in his jaw, as he looked down at her passive body.
‘Little fool! She could have died out there….’
‘She gives you her trust, Raschid,’ Achmed murmured, looking from his wife’s uncle to the girl lying against him. ‘It is a precious gift.’
‘She is still unconscious. I doubt if she is aware of anything at all,’ was the uncompromising response. His fingers clenched and emotion broke through the barrier of his reserve. ‘What possessed her to wander out into the desert? If Nadia had not alerted us….’
‘She will tell us when she recovers,’ Achmed told him gently. ‘Now is not the time for recriminations and lectures. Let us praise Allah that she is safe. Thank God Zahra and Umm Faisal are still at Saud’s. They at least have been spared the anxiety. Look,’ he added, his eyes on Felicia’s face, ‘she stirs. She is recovering consciousness.’
Awareness came and went in encroaching and receding waves. Water splashed down on to her face and she drank greedily from the flask that was proffered, but she had barely done more than wet her lips with the life-giving nectar when it was withdrawn.
‘Gently!’ a stern voice warned. ‘Too much will make you sick.’
The effort drained her. She closed her eyes and the world swung away. When she opened them again they were approaching the oasis. She heard Achmed say something to Raschid, and then the Land Rover stopped.
Achmed opened the door. They were in the courtyard of the villa. Nadia came hurrying towards them, her face breaking into a relieved smile when she saw all three of them in the Land Rover.
‘She is safe?’
‘Quite safe,’ Achmed reassured her. ‘I’ll take her up to her room, Raschid.’
‘I’ll do it,’ was his terse reply.
Felicia felt the bed give under their combined weight.
‘Shall I send for Doctor Hamid?’ Nadia asked worriedly.
Raschid was bending over her, and something of her panic must have shown in her eyes, because he said over his shoulder, ‘No need. It’s merely salt deficiency, as I told Achmed, that and too much sun. I’ll deal with it. You get back to Zayad—I heard him crying as we came in.’
‘He caught our anxiety,’ Nadia admitted, glancing at her husband. ‘You must go for Mother and Zahra. They will wonder what has happened. Thank goodness we don’t have to greet them with the news that Felicia is missing. It was a wonder that you found her, Raschid.’
‘Without the falcons I doubt that I
would. She had wandered miles from the oasis.’
There was silence, and then cool, detached hands were easing her aching body out of the sand-stained garments on to deliciously cool fresh sheets. From the bathroom she heard the sound of running water—a sound she had longed for during her ordeal. She opened her eyes and discovered that Raschid was standing by her bed. Awareness came back on a floodtide. She had gone out into the desert because she had overheard Raschid discussing her with his sister. Raschid had read Faisal’s letter! She struggled to sit up and was pushed back against the pillows, Raschid’s hands cool against her heated skin.
‘You are badly burned,’ he told her unemotionally. ‘Your skin must be attended to. I would call Nadia to you, but she is too upset.’
‘I can manage,’ Felicia assured him, knowing that she could not.
For a moment his eyes seemed to darken and then he was walking to the door. Long minutes dragged by while she tried to summon the energy to walk to her suitcase. Surely she had brought with her some anti-sunburn cream! She had small hope of it completely easing the heated burning of her skin, but it might ease the pain a little.
She was halfway across the room when an incredulous oath stopped her in her tracks, as Raschid plucked her up and returned her unceremoniously to her bed.
‘What the hell were you doing?’
Tears stung her eyes. She dashed them away, suddenly noticing the tube of cream he held in his hand.
‘I was going to the bathroom,’ she told him. ‘I wanted to have a shower, to comb my hair….’
‘You nearly perish in the desert and all you can think of is brushing your hair?’ He strode to the dressing table and returned with her brush. ‘If I wasn’t sure it’s too late by a considerable number of years to have any effect, I would be tempted to wield this implement on a part of your anatomy where it might produce better results!’
Her face burned.
‘You wouldn’t dare!’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ Raschid advised her. ‘You’ve pushed me to my very most limits, Miss Gordon. Believe me, it wouldn’t take very much at all to push me over them! Now sit up.’