by Abby Green
Dark storm clouds were gathering on the horizon and she heard a distant crack of thunder. She was aware of someone hovering nearby—a bodyguard. And now she felt foolish for stalking off.
She wished in that moment that Zafir had never reappeared in her life. And then the thought of that made her suck in a pained breath and put a hand to her belly as if someone had just punched her.
Taking another deep breath, and assuring herself that she still had everything under control, Kat turned around and walked back into the room—only to see Zafir smiling indulgently down into the upturned face of a famous French actress, a renowned beauty, who had her scarlet-tipped nails firmly on Zafir’s arm as she told him something undoubtedly scintillating and hilarious.
As if feeling the weight of her gaze, Zafir turned his head for a second and looked straight at her, with no expression on his face, and then he deliberately turned his back on her and his attention to the other woman.
The speed with which Kat became engulfed in a red mist of jealousy shocked her. As did the speed with which she could already imagine that Zafir had decided she was too much trouble to pursue, and was now turning to an easier and far more accommodating prospect.
Kat had made Zafir wait before finally agreeing to date him that first time. He’d been too overwhelming...intimidating. But a woman like that wouldn’t make him wait. He’d give and she’d take and then move on...not like Kat, who’d never really moved on.
She turned away from the sight just as Rahul passed close by. Kat caught his arm impulsively. ‘I’ve got a headache—do you think it’d be okay if I left now?’ She crossed her fingers at the white lie.
Rahul immediately looked concerned and anxious. ‘Let me just check...’
He was gone before she could stop him, and suddenly Kat couldn’t bear to watch Zafir’s face change expression as he was told that she wanted to leave early. She threaded her way through the crowd to where another of Noor’s men was waiting and told him she was ready to give the necklace back. He looked unsure, but took her aside to a secure area and waited as she removed it and handed it over.
He and his colleague had it boxed up and whisked away within seconds. Discreet and efficient.
When Kat stepped back into the room she let out a sigh of relief that she couldn’t see Zafir or Rahul. She pressed the button for the elevator, wanting to get out of Zafir’s orbit before she made a complete fool of herself.
It finally arrived with a soft ping and the doors opened. She’d stepped in, and had just pressed the button to go down when a hand inserted itself into the closing doors, forcing them open again.
Zafir.
CHAPTER SIX
ZAFIR WAS ANGRY. ‘Leaving so soon?’
Kat forced herself to sound cool. ‘I have a headache.’ She wasn’t even lying now. She could feel a throbbing at her temples.
He frowned and stepped into the elevator with her as the doors closed. Instantly the space was dwarfed by his tall and broad masculine form. ‘I’ll see you down to your room.’
Panic surged. ‘You don’t have to—you shouldn’t leave the function.’
Zafir shrugged even as his eyes stayed on her, alert. ‘They’ll hardly notice now, the champagne and cocktails have been flowing for a couple of hours. The object of the evening has been achieved. Jandor will be indelibly imprinted on their minds, thanks to you and the diamond.’
Zafir pressed the button and the elevator started moving with a little jolt. It was enough to make Kat sway and go off balance, falling backwards. As quick as lightning Zafir reached for her, taking her arms and hauling her against him.
They both sucked in a breath at the contact, and with a muttered curse Zafir reached out and slammed a hand on the stop button. Kat’s hands were pressed against his chest as the elevator came to a juddering halt.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Do you really have a headache, Kat?’
She looked up at him helplessly. She knew if she tried to move he’d only pull her even closer, and as it was she could feel every hard plane of his chest, and down lower the unmistakable thrust of something much more potent. His arousal. For her? Or for that woman?
Heat and self-disgust flooded her body. She pushed herself away, stepping back until she hit the wall and could go no further.
Zafir took a step closer. ‘You don’t have a headache, do you?’
Kat bit her lip, but the sharp pain made no difference. Images of him laughing down at that woman, made her say rashly, ‘What do you even care, Zafir? I’m just a living, breathing mannequin. Your guests will be missing your presence.’
Zafir’s eyes flashed and then narrowed on her, and he came even closer. So close that she could see the beginnings of stubble along his hard jaw. The darker flecks of grey in those mesmerising eyes.
Softly he asked, ‘You wouldn’t be jealous, would you, Kat? Jealous that I was giving attention to a woman who made it obvious that she’d welcome me to her bed if I just said the word?’
Aghast that she’d exposed herself so easily and quickly, Kat blurted out, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t care who you sleep with.’
Zafir stepped even closer. Close enough to touch. ‘Liar,’ he breathed. ‘I think you do care.’
The expression on his face was fierce now. He put his hands on the wall, either side of her head, enclosing her with his whole body.
Kat was barely breathing. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides in an effort to stop herself from grabbing him—or smacking him.
‘The truth is that you’ve reduced me to crude methods not even used by hapless teenage boys.’
Kat shook her head, finding it hard to focus. ‘What are you talking about?’
Zafir’s jaw clenched. ‘I’m talking about making you jealous, Kat. I wanted to make you jealous. I wanted to provoke you into showing me something...anything...so that I don’t feel as if I’m the only one going crazy here.’
Kat swallowed, all her turmoil dissolving and being replaced by a dangerous tenderness. She whispered unevenly, ‘You’re not going crazy...’
‘The problem is,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken, his voice rough, ‘that I do care who I sleep with, and unfortunately there’s only one woman I want to sleep with. She’s haunted me for months and I can’t get her out of my head...not till I’ve tasted every inch of her again.’
Kat felt a dangerous languor steal over her. She was oblivious to the fact that they were in a stalled elevator. ‘Who...?’ she managed to croak out. ‘Who is this woman?’
Zafir lowered his hands from beside her head and expertly wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her into him. His other hand found and started plucking the pins from her hair as he said throatily, ‘You know it’s you, Kat...it’s always been you.’
It’s always been you...
Kat could feel tendrils of her hair falling down around her shoulders. She didn’t have the strength to resist Zafir any more. She wanted him with an ache that was painful. And when his mouth touched hers she couldn’t stop a helpless whimper of need escaping. Her hands were already unfurling and climbing up to wrap around his neck.
The kiss quickly became carnal and explicit. This was no gentle exploration. This was months of hunger and frustration. Months of X-rated dreams. Zafir demanded Kat’s response and she gave it, arching her whole body into his as if they could just fuse there and then.
She was dizzy, ravenous for the taste of Zafir’s mouth, sucking his tongue deep, nipping with her teeth. He was hot and hard against her belly, and she longed to wrap her hand around him and squeeze his flesh, remembering the way his breath would hiss between his teeth.
His hands roved over her back, slipping over her dress, feeling her curves. She felt constricted, her breasts pushing against the heavy fabric, nipples tingling with need.
Zafir’s hands went lower, covering her buttocks, squeezing with his big hands, pulling her dress up. It was the sensati
on of air on her bare leg that finally managed to cut through the heated haze in Kat’s brain, and with a stark feeling of sheer panic and dread she realised that Zafir was about to expose her in more ways than one.
She broke away from his kiss and opened her eyes. It took a second for her to focus, and her breathing was as jagged as her heart rate. The fact that Zafir looked similarly dishevelled was no consolation.
She’d almost forgotten...
She stepped to the side, her dress falling down around her legs. Covering her again. Her mouth felt swollen. Other parts of her felt sensitive. Slick. God. He’d been moments away from lifting her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist.
‘What is it, Kat?’
She couldn’t look at him. Her hair was half up, half down, and she raised trembling hands, trying to repair the damage. ‘Please...just take me back to my room.’
For a long moment there was only the sound of harsh breathing in the small space, and then Zafir turned away and pressed a button. The elevator started moving again, and this time Kat put a hand on the wall to steady herself. She saw her clutch bag on the floor, where she must have dropped it, and bent down to pick it up with nerveless fingers.
Zafir’s back was impossibly broad and remote in front of her. She longed to say something. Anything. But her tongue was frozen.
When the elevator doors opened Zafir stepped out. Kat followed him down the corridor to her room. She opened her clutch to get her key, but her hand was shaking too much to put it in the door. Any hope of disguising his effect on her was well and truly gone.
Her key was plucked out of her hand by a much bigger one and Zafir opened the door efficiently, waiting for her to go in. Kat wanted to sag down into a chair and take the weight off her quivering legs, but Zafir followed her in, closing the door behind him.
She faced him, heart thumping. ‘Zafir, I didn’t mean for you to—’
‘Continue what we just started?’ he inserted harshly.
He folded his arms. He’d never looked more formidable or gorgeous.
‘Well, tough,’ he said. ‘Because I have every intention of finishing what we started.’
Kat shook her head and forced herself to speak as calmly as possible. ‘I’m sorry, Zafir, if I gave you the impression...’
But the words dried up in her throat under his quelling look. She knew Zafir was more sophisticated than that. Just because they’d kissed, he wouldn’t expect more now. But it wasn’t about that. She’d felt the conflagration between them. It was unique. Unprecedented. Undeniable.
He unlocked his arms and shed his jacket, tossing it on a nearby chair. Then he reached for his bow tie and undid it with jerky moves, yanking open his top button.
He looked around. ‘Do you have anything to drink in here?’
Kat lifted her hand and pointed to the drinks tray on a table near the window. Zafir strode over, more animal than man. He poured himself a shot of something and drank it back in one.
Then he looked at her. ‘Do you want anything?’
Kat was shocked. It was as if a layer of civility had been stripped away. She’d never seen him like this. Not even that night when her world had crumbled to pieces around her.
She shook her head, even though her mouth was dry. ‘No, I’m fine.’
Zafir slugged back another shot and turned around to face her. ‘You’re not, though, are you?’
Kat could feel herself pale.
How did he know?
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean is that for some reason you’re determined to deny us this closure.’
Relief warred with anger.
He didn’t know.
‘You’re so certain that resuming our physical relationship will end with everything neatly tied up in a bow?’
Hurt lanced her that Zafir could believe it would be so simple. But it would be...for him. Because he had no feelings involved. Only lust. She wished it could be so easy for her.
His mouth was a tight line. ‘It’s inevitable, Kat. We can’t be within two feet of each other without going up in flames. Can you handle another week of this? Because I know I can’t.’
One week. Surely she could survive one more week and then walk away, heart and soul still intact?
She lifted her chin. ‘I can, Zafir. I’m sorry for what just happened...’ A sudden flash of their two bodies welded together and how good it had felt to have him kiss her made her falter, but then she regained her composure and said, ‘But it was a mistake.’
‘A word I’ve heard more times than I care for lately,’ Zafir said.
He started to pace then, and that only drew Kat’s hungry eyes to his lean form.
He stopped suddenly to look at her. ‘What is it, Kat? Is this punishment for what happened before? This is your retribution? Because I didn’t give you a chance to explain your past? Because I judged you too harshly?’
Kat’s eyes widened. It was so much more than that. That had been just the tip of the iceberg.
He hadn’t loved her.
She backed away. ‘No, Zafir. I’m not that petty.’
She whirled away from him, afraid he’d see something of the emotion she was feeling on her face.
A bleak, futile anger rose up and she turned around again. ‘It’s not all about you, you know. There are things...things you don’t understand.’
He frowned, and then his gaze moved over Kat’s shoulder to something behind her and he frowned even harder.
She only had the barest moment of premonition before he said, ‘Why are there crutches in your room?’
* * *
Kat wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to be on her own so she could curl up in a ball and pretend she’d never seen Zafir again. Pretend that her body wasn’t pulsating with awareness just to be near him.
This was the moment of truth. It had been spectacularly naive or stupid of her to believe that she could keep her secret from Zafir. It was amazing that he hadn’t found out already. And she’d never been less ready to tell him. Especially not after that moment in the elevator, reminding her of just how explosive it had always been between them. And how it could never be again. Not after this.
‘Kat?’ There was something stark in his voice. ‘Who do the crutches belong to?’
She looked at him and swallowed painfully. ‘Me. Because I need them.’
Zafir shook his head. Not understanding. And why would he?
‘Tell me why you need them when you’re standing in front of me right now.’ He sounded harsh now.
It was time to stop hiding. Kat reached down and caught her dress in one hand. She pulled it up, revealing her prosthetic limb and the joint where it met her leg.
Even so, it took a few seconds for Zafir to understand what he was looking at—and when it finally registered he went pale. Eventually his gaze lifted back to her face. The room was so silent it felt like time had stopped.
‘What are you showing me?’ Zafir’s voice was hoarse.
The dress fell from nerveless fingers to cover her leg again. She started to tremble and felt cold. She was going into shock. ‘The accident...the one I mentioned. It was worse than I let you believe. They had to amputate... My foot...was crushed.’
She must have swayed or something, because suddenly Zafir was there, hands on her shoulders, pushing her down into a chair. He disappeared for a moment and then reappeared with a glass in his hand.
He held it up to her mouth. ‘Drink some of this.’
Kat’s eyes were on his as she lifted shaking hands to the glass and tipped back her head. The liquid burned down her throat and she coughed. Zafir took the glass away as fire bloomed in her chest, having an almost immediate effect on the numb coldness that had gripped her.
He put down the glass. His hands were on the chair’s armrests either side of her. He looked as if he’d just been punched in the gut.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Because I was using it as a crude defence to resis
t you.
Kat opened her mouth and shut it again uselessly, before saying finally, ‘At first I didn’t see that it was any of your business. And then...when you offered all that money to do the job...I couldn’t afford to say no and I was afraid if you knew you’d think I couldn’t do it.’
Zafir’s grey gaze bored all the way through her. ‘I don’t think that’s it at all—or not all of it.’
Feeling threatened, and horribly exposed, Kat pushed herself up out of the chair, forcing Zafir to stand. She stalked away from him, acutely aware of her limp now.
She whirled back, the truth spilling out. ‘I’m different now, Zafir. You want the Kat I was before, and she doesn’t exist any more. I didn’t want to see you look at me the way others do—with horror and pity.’
She’d dreaded this moment ever materialising, and she feared that she’d avoided it for so long for the most basic reasons of vanity more than anything more noble. And that killed her when she knew she was so much stronger than that. But standing here now, in front of the only man who’d ever made her feel truly alive, she couldn’t bear it. Tears weren’t far away, and that would be the worst humiliation.
‘You know where the door is, Zafir. Please, just go.’
But he didn’t go. He came closer, and Kat held herself rigid for fear she’d shatter into a million pieces before she was alone again, when she could lick her wounds without that devastating gaze on her.
When Zafir spoke, he sounded harsh. ‘You really think I hadn’t realised that you’d changed in some very fundamental way? Have you not noticed that if anything it’s only made me want you more?’
Kat blinked. She’d expected to be looking at a retreating back and a closing door. Not listening to Zafir sounding almost...hurt.
‘You really think I’m that shallow?’ he asked.
She might have before, when he’d more or less admitted he’d only proposed because she embodied some physical ideal, but now everything she’d thought she’d known about this man was jumbled up and contradictory.
She couldn’t speak. The fact that he was still here was too much. The tears she was desperately holding back filled her eyes. She heard a curse, and then Zafir’s white shirt became a blur in her vision as she was enveloped in strong arms and held tight against his body.