by Penny Jordan
With a sharp cry of self-disgust she pulled herself away from him and, picking up her towel, fled back to the privacy of the inner chamber.
Would he come after her, and if he did would she be able to be strong enough to deny her body what it was craving? She took a deep breath and held it, nervously fixing her gaze on the curtained doorway, and waited…
But Xander did not appear.
When the breath started to leak painfully from her lungs she told herself that she was glad that he had not come after her.
On the other side of the curtain Xander told himself that Katrina had only pre-empted his own rejection of her by a mere heartbeat. But for the second time in less than twelve hours he had to wait longer than he wanted to admit for the desire for her to slowly and painfully subside to a bearable level.
CHAPTER FOUR
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Katrina frowned in concentration as she sketched the plant she was studying.
She had decided that since she was stuck here at the oasis with no means of escape she might as well put the time to good use, and although he had frowned initially over her request for paper and drawing and writing implements, Xander had produced what she had asked for plus a small stool for her to sit on whilst she worked.
It was three days since she had been kidnapped and nearly three nights since… Quickly she tried to re-focus on the plant, but, fascinating though it was, it simply did not have the power to compel her thoughts in the same way that Xander did.
A movement caught her eye and she looked up to see Sulimen standing watching her. A small quiver of apprehension raced down her spine, but determinedly she refused either to acknowledge his presence or to let him see how nervous he was making her feel.
This wasn't the first time she had noticed him watching her, and his presence made her feel on edge and vulnerable.
She tried to continue sketching as though she were completely unfazed by his presence directly in her line of vision, but it was impossible. And impossible too for her not to be aware of the brooding concentration of his gaze as he stared openly and boldly at her.
The way he was looking at her made her wish that she had the protection of the traditional black garments and veils, like those worn by the women she had seen within the camp, to take refuge behind, instead of just her tee shirt and jeans.
But with every second that passed she became more and more on edge and in the end she was forced to concede that her attempts to ignore him were not working, and that the fact that he was continuing to stand boldly staring at her made her feel too uncomfortable to remain.
Turning her back on him, she started to gather up her things, as quickly as she could, telling herself that she would have had to stop working anyway, as the sun was dropping quickly towards the horizon and it would soon be dark.
Seconds later, though, when she headed back towards Xander's tent, Sulimen slipped away into the shadows. Walking through the pitched tents, she was sharply aware of the growing tension that was gripping the whole camp—a combination of a sense of expectancy mingled with something darker and far more dangerous. She gave a small shiver. These were criminals she was living amongst, she reminded herself; men who were outcasts from society because of what they had done. And Xander was one of them, and she had better remember that.
She gave a frightened gasp as she felt a hand on her shoulder, and realised too late that whilst she had been engrossed in her own thoughts Sulimen had emerged from the shadows to catch up with her, and was now subjecting her to a hot-eyed look of sexual greed.
Immediately she pulled away from him, and started to walk as fast as she could towards Xander's tent, and then broke into a run as her fear overwhelmed her.
'Katrina!'
She came to an abrupt halt as she saw Xander standing in front of her, frowning darkly at her. He wasn't on his own; El Khalid and several other men were with him.
'Tuareg. The woman. How much do you want for her?' she heard Sulimen demanding.
Shock and fear poured through her veins in an icy surge. Sulimen was offering to buy her from Xander? This couldn't be happening. Please, please let it not be happening, she began to panic. But it was.
Wildly she looked into Xander's closed dark face, her mute gaze fixed on him as she prayed that he would not sell her to the other man.
Xander didn't seem disposed to be in any hurry to respond. Was he weighing up how much he could get for her? Or perhaps whether it would be more profitable for him to sell her now to Sulimen rather than to keep her and ransom her once they could return to Zuran City?
She could feel him looking at her. Her pleading, anxious gaze met his; the knowledge that she had to beg him to keep her rubbed her pride raw.
'She is not for sale.'
The terse words made her eyes burn with relieved tears. Without waiting for him to say anything else she almost ran to his side in relief.
But as she quickly discovered, her relief had been premature.
'I will have her,' Sulimen declared angrily. 'I will give you twice what you can ransom her for, Tuareg. Is that not a fair offer, El Khalid?'
Katrina could see the way El Khalid was looking from Sulimen to Xander.
'The offer is indeed a fair one, Tuareg. I do not wish to have dissent amongst my brothers. It is my wish that you let Sulimen have her.'
Katrina thought she was going to be physically sick, she felt so distraught and afraid.
Sulimen was walking towards them, and she shrank back against Xander's side, making a small sound of acute distress as she did so.
Her vulnerability combined with her fear and his own very real awareness of exactly what kind of man Sulimen was had Xander acknowledging inwardly that he could not in all conscience allow Katrina to be handed over to Sulimen and that he had to do something to protect her. Even without that tell-tale little movement she had made towards him, his own sense of honour and decency would have made it imperative that he did everything he could to prevent such a fate befalling her. But he could think of only one course of action that would save her.
'A thousand apologies, El Khalid, but I cannot do as you ask,' he protested quickly.
'What?'
Katrina could see how infuriated El Khalid looked. His two henchmen were already reaching for the daggers that were stuck into their belts, which, ornate as they were, and as Katrina already had good cause to know, were not in any way merely pretty ornaments.
She couldn't bring herself to look at Xander. She knew that he would have to give her up.
'What is this?' El Khalid was challenging Xander, whilst Sulimen moved closer.
'I have decided to take the woman as my wife,' Xander announced calmly.
There was a small silence during which Katrina discovered that she was trembling violently. She knew that Xander didn't mean it, of course. He was just claiming that he wanted her as his wife in order to protect her. As she knew from her study of the area's history and customs, as a man's intended wife she immediately became totally off limits to any other man. Even so…
'He is lying,' Sulimen shouted angrily. 'Do not listen to him!'
Katrina saw El Khalid look from Sulimen's angry, contorted face to Xander's coolly implacable one.
'I want an end to this matter. We shall soon have important business to do, and I will not have dissent amongst my followers. Tuareg, you have said you want to take the woman as your wife, and so you shall. You and the woman will both present yourselves to me before my divan tonight. And you, Sulimen, I do not need to tell you of the penalty for approaching the wife of another man.'
As he turned to leave El Khalid looked at Xander and told him, 'You have two hours to prepare yourselves for your wedding.'
They were on their own in the shadows of the tents. Dusk had fallen but Katrina could see Xander's face quite plainly in the light of the stars. 'What… what…did El Khalid mean…about…about our wedding?' she began and then had to stop, as her emotions prevented her from continuing.
&n
bsp; 'He meant exactly what he said, 'Xander informed her coldly. 'We have two hours to prepare ourselves for our marriage.'
'No!' Her denial was instant. Shock and sick disbelief filled her. This couldn't be happening.
'I thought it took weeks to prepare for a wedding in Zuran,' she heard herself protesting shakily. 'And the marriage itself…I thought it went on for several days and…'
'Normally it does, but there is a shorter version, created for circumstances such as these. It isn't so very long ago that different tribes warred with one another and sometimes to marry one's enemy's daughter or sister was a good way of resolving the issue. It has only two requirements, the first being that we present ourselves before El Khalid and declare that we wish to be married. The—'
'But how can we be married?' Katrina demanded numbly.
'Quite easily. By tradition, as the leader of his men El Khalid has the authority to perform such a ceremony. Of course if you would prefer me to hand you over to Sulimen—'
'No,' Katrina stopped him frantically. 'You can't want to marry me.'
'I don't,' he agreed grimly. 'But there is some honour even here amongst thieves and I have heard things of Sulimen that would not allow me to sleep easily with my own conscience were I to let him buy you from me.'
'Buy me! I am a human being and not a…a possession!' she protested wildly.
Immediately Xander took hold of her arm, giving her a small warning shake as he did so. 'Fine words, but they mean nothing out here.'
'That is barbaric. You are barbaric,' she told him, hurling the words at him as her shocked emotions burst through the frail barriers of her self-control.
'This isn't Europe…and it isn't Zuran either,' he answered her. 'The desert is a harsh master and those who inhabit it live by its harsh law—or die.'
There was something about the words he had chosen, the way he was looking at her that sent a curl of icy fear chasing over her nerve endings. Suddenly all the fears and the suspicions she had tried to ignore overwhelmed her.
'What are you all doing out here? What is going on?' she demanded, beginning to panic. 'You are planning something, I know, and I know too that it must be something truly dreadful.' The words were pouring from her in a feverish stream as she finally succumbed to the trauma of everything she had undergone.
'Silence!'
The savage command, accompanied by an even more savage shake, made her tremble from head to foot—with anger and not fear, Katrina decided as she glared furiously at him.
'If you value your life you will not repeat those words!' Xander warned her grimly.
Katrina caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she fought to stop her mouth from trembling. 'If I agree to go through with this…this marriage, I shall want your assurance that it will not be a real marriage!'
'What do you mean by a "real" marriage? In the eyes of El Khalid and his followers it will most certainly be real. Or are you asking me if I intend to take you to my bed as tradition says every bridegroom has a right to do with his bride? Even if I did, I wouldn't be able to provide evidence that you came to me with your virtue intact by producing a bloodstained sheet for the tribe's inspection, would I?'
'That was not what I meant!' Katrina could feel her face burning and she was glad of the darkness to conceal her reaction from him.
'I…what I meant… What I wanted was to be assured that the marriage will not be truly legal.'
There was the briefest of pauses before he answered her, but in her anxiety Katrina was unaware of it. 'It will certainly not be legal under European law, or international law,' he told her.
It was the answer she had been hoping for, and she exhaled shakily. She might not want to be forced into this marriage; her pride might rebel in outrage and disgust at Xander's cynical observations and references to her as a possession to be bought and sold, but logically she knew being with him was infinitely preferable to being handed over to Sulimen. But how did she feel emotionally about the situation she was in? That was a question she just did not want to answer. From the first moment she had seen him, her reaction to Xander had been illogical and far too immediate and intense for her to be comfortable with. The harsh flames of reality and everything she had learned about him and his way of life since then should have burnt those foolish tendrils of female longing and desire to ash—she knew that. So why hadn't they? Why couldn't she look at him and see, not a dangerously sensual man whose powerful physical presence affected her like no other man ever had, but a liar and a thief, a man totally devoid of anything in his make-up that could command her respect? Or her love!
A fierce thrill of pain shocked through her. She did not love him! But you want him, an inner voice insisted sharply. You desire him…you ache for him, and if he…
No! No, she was not going to think about this. She was not going to acknowledge it, nor admit to it, and she certainly wasn't going to think about it. She certainly wasn't going to think about the intimacies of marriage to Xander, of being his wife. Of the dark, velvet silence of the desert night and the feel of his hands on her eager body as he reached for her. She wasn't going to think either about the satin heat of his naked body, or the pleasure it would give her to touch his skin, to breathe in its scent, to place her lips against the solid strength of his chest and to… She gave a small violent shudder of rejection and self-disgust. She wasn't going to think about those things because none of them were going to happen!
She could not… would not allow herself to feel this way about a man like Xander. How could she respect herself if she did? How could there be true love without respect? There couldn't!
Grimly Xander stood in the open entrance to his tent and stared unseeingly into the darkness that lay beyond it. He was waiting for Katrina to join him so that they could present themselves before El Khalid and declare their desire to be married to one another. He might have allowed Katrina to believe that their marriage would not be legally binding, but he was well aware that within Zuran such a traditional form of marriage was normally perfectly acceptable and irrevocable. In their case, though, the marriage would have to be formally and legally set aside once his business here was finished. As a member of the ruling family, he needed his half-brother's approval before marrying, and he was confident that his half-brother would be willing to expedite a swift ending of their union. His half-brother would understand that he'd had no option other than to give Katrina the protection of making her his wife. No matter what her lifestyle had been, he could not allow her to be subjected to the fate Sulimen had in store for her. It was no secret around the campfires that amongst his other crimes Sulimen had been accused of both raping and beating at least two women, and that he possessed a streak of sexual carnality and sadism.
None of this, though, was information he could give Katrina.
Earlier in the day he had managed to have a brief secret meeting with the three special agents appointed by the Zuranese Ruling Council who had also infiltrated El Khalid's forces. Like him, they had heard of the important personage with whom El Khalid was expecting to do business, but also like him they had not been able to discover when he would be arriving.
Xander suspected that they were not as fully convinced of the danger to Zuran's ruler as he was himself. He had also heard from his half-brother that Nazir had left Zuran supposedly to deal with his business affairs in Europe.
He heard a small sound behind him and turned round. Katrina was standing hesitantly in the shadows of the tent's living area, her eyes huge and dark with apprehension. His mouth hardened. She was a complication he just did not need!
'A word of warning,' he said grimly as he stepped back inside the tent. 'Once we are married, you cannot do anything that might attract the attentions of other men.'
Katrina glared angrily at him. She had spent the last half an hour wondering how on earth she was going to go through with what lay ahead of her, and trying to fight back her feelings of despair and loneliness. This was not the way she had envisaged hers
elf being married! She ached for the lost protection and love of her patents, for someone of her own she could turn to. But of course there was no one. She was completely alone. Alone and a prisoner, forced into a degrading sham of a marriage for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with love.
'How dare you say that to me?' she protested emotionally. 'It's not my fault that Sulimen—'
'No?' The slanting look he was giving her was not a kind one.
'If I had wanted him I would not be here, would I?' she challenged him fiercely.
'I did not say that you wanted him. But maybe you did encourage him? Maybe you were missing the attentions of your lover? Or maybe—'
Katrina curled her fingers into the palms of her hands, her nails digging into her own tender flesh as she seethed with fury. 'I did not encourage him, and Richard was not my lover!'
'That's an easy denial to make, and of course one that cannot be proved!' That was where he was wrong, but Katrina was not going to tell him as much. As yet no man had been her lover—but of course she was not going to do any such thing!
When she committed herself to a man, and to her love for him and his for her, that commitment would be for ever, and it would involve far more than mere physical intimacy. She had her dreams, even if by some other people's standards they were too idealistic.
'It's time for us to go.'
Xander was holding the curtain aside for her, the tawny gaze fixed on her like a falcon's on its prey.
He was wearing his Tuareg headdress, but instinctively she knew that his mouth would be curved into a hard scimitar-sharp line of disdain and irritation. For all that she had tried to deny it, she was sharply aware that he carried with him a very powerful aura of command and authority. And never more so than tonight.
She had no idea where the richly embroidered over-cloak he was wearing had come from—to judge from its richness it must have once been the property of some very wealthy man. A part of her tried to insist that he should look ridiculous dressed in such theatrical clothes, but another, stronger part of her couldn't help responding to what she could see.