Surrender to the Sheikh Page 13

  ‘You bring out the wickedness in me,’ he murmured.

  ‘The feeling is mutual,’ she murmured back. ‘So, so mutual.’ Rose’s hands slid underneath the sapphire silk of his gown, fingertips feasting on the feel of the satin skin which lay over the muscular definition of his torso. She felt him shudder beneath her touch and knew another moment of triumph, suspecting that once again he was close to the edge. And that was a heady feeling. This man of control and power—hers!

  ‘I wanted to make this a long, slow undressing,’ he said, bending his head to whisper in her ear.

  ‘I sense a “but” coming.’

  ‘Mmm. I think it will take many days before I can bear to prolong the pleasure in that way. Shall we…?’ He paused, and trickled a finger down to rest possessively in the small dip of her navel. ‘Shall we quickly remove these constraining garments, so that we can come together without barrier?’

  But the word stirred an uncomfortable thought which had occurred to him over dinner that very night.

  ‘And I have brought with me—’ he scowled as he forced himself to say the abhorrent word, but only abhorrent when used in connection with Rose ‘—condoms! We were too reckless and too hungry for one another earlier.’ When, for the first time in his life, he had made love without protection. It had also occurred to him that she might have become pregnant, and an intense and primitive yearning had swept over him. Only to be replaced by a fervent prayer that it should not be so.

  For it would be impossible if Rose Thomas were carrying his child. Impossible!

  Rose shrugged the slippery silk impatiently over his shoulders and let it flutter to the ground.

  ‘You don’t need them,’ she told him.

  Black eyes iced instantly at the implication. ‘What don’t I need?’ he questioned softly.

  She met his gaze without flinching. ‘Condoms. We won’t need them.’ She hesitated. Surely she wouldn’t have to spell it out for a man of the world such as this?

  ‘Why not?’

  Apparently she did.

  ‘I’m on the pill,’ she said bluntly.

  ‘No!’ His mouth formed the denial as if he had been stung.

  ‘Yes,’ she insisted quietly.

  His heart pounding with an unendurable jealousy, he tightened his grip on her. ‘So this is the way of Western women, is it?’ he demanded. ‘Always prepared, is that so? Just in case?’

  ‘Don’t be so hypocritical, Khalim,’ she answered with dignity. ‘I happen to be on the pill because my periods were heavy and irregular—’

  ‘Your periods?’ he demanded incredulously.

  She guessed correctly that women did not speak of such matters with Khalim. So they were allowed certain intimacies with him such as sex, were they? But nothing in the way of real intimacy. Of women as they really were. Well, she had taken him on his terms; now let him take her on hers. She tried to make allowances for his upbringing and his culture. ‘It’s a very effective remedy,’ she explained patiently.

  ‘And also very convenient if you happen to just want to fall into bed with someone?’ he scorned.

  She wrenched herself away from him and fixed him with a withering stare. ‘If you believe that, then you can get out of here right now, and don’t bother coming back!’

  He could see from the fire in her blue eyes that she meant it, and he forced himself to draw a steadying breath. ‘I shouldn’t have said that—’

  ‘No, you’re right—you shouldn’t!’ Her breathing came fast and rapid and indignant. ‘How many lovers have you slept with in your life, Khalim?’

  ‘You dare to ask me that?’ he questioned dangerously.

  ‘I’ll bet it’s a whole lot more than I have—which is precisely two!’

  He flinched again and his mouth hardened. How dared there have been another before him? How dared there! ‘Two!’

  ‘Yes, two. Actually not terribly shocking considering that I’m twenty-seven years old and have grown up in the kind of culture I have! I have never gone to bed with anyone indiscriminately! Can you look me in the eye and honestly say that you haven’t, either?’

  He stared at her, torn between fury and admiration. His beautiful, logical Rose! Applying the same rules of life for her as well as him! He bit down the pain of jealousy and a slow light began to glimmer at the back of the black eyes.

  ‘You have never actually been to bed with me either, have you, sweet Rose?’ he murmured, taking her unresisting hand and raising it to his lips to kiss it. ‘And I think that is a situation which we should remedy now, with all seemly haste.’

  How powerful he looked. How masterfully dark and virile and proud. Rose wondered half wildly whether she should have prevented him from scooping her up into his arms and carrying her over to the low mattress. A victor with his spoils, she thought weakly.

  But then she was the victor, too. Because to have provoked that look of sensual promise coupled with a barely restrained impatience to make love to her was the most potent sensation she had ever encountered.

  She let the last of her misgivings go as he laid her down on the embroidered coverlet, tugging at the silk cord which bound his loose trousers so they fell to the floor.

  My heavens, but he was aroused! Darkly and magnificently aroused. Her mouth began to tremble as he slid her cotton trousers all the way down her legs and tossed them aside with an impatient disdain.

  ‘Khalim,’ she gasped as he came to lie beside her, his arms snaking possessively around her waist while his eyes burned down at her like smouldering coal.

  ‘What is it, sweetest Rose? You want me to kiss you now?’

  It was exactly what she wanted—the touch and the warmth and the security of his lips caressing hers. So that for one mad and crazy moment she could imagine that it was not lust which made this kiss such magic, but fool herself into thinking it was something as elusive and as precious as love.

  CHAPTER TEN

  KHALIM stayed with her for most of the night, but slipped out as dawn began to paint a pink and golden light on the horizon.

  He swiftly dressed, then bent his head to kiss her, his lips lingering regretfully on her pouting mouth. ‘The plane leaves at midday,’ he murmured. ‘Be ready to leave at ten.’

  ‘Mmm?’ she questioned groggily.

  It had been the night of her life. His love-making had known no boundaries—nor hers, either. She’d given herself to him without inhibition. But with love, she realised with a sinking heart as she acknowledged the emotion which had first crept and then exploded deep inside her.

  She loved him.

  The realisation gave her no real pleasure—for what pleasure could ever be gained from a love which was doomed right from the start? But she had taken him on her terms, and she did want him, and because of that she pinned a sleepy smile onto her face.

  ‘Mmm?’ she questioned again, stalling for time, time to be able to react in the way expected of her, and not with the gnawing feeling of insecurity which had started to overwhelm her every time she thought about losing him.

  ‘Be ready by ten,’ he instructed softly, wishing that he could lie with her here until the morning sun filtered its way in precious golden shafts through the shutters.

  She nodded and watched him go, all elegance and grace as he swished out of the room in the silken robes.

  She ate the fruit and bread which Fatima brought to her room for breakfast and was ready by nine when there was a knock on the door and she opened it to find Khalim standing there, changed from his robes into one of his impeccably cut suits, ready for the flight back to London, and with an unusual expression on his face.

  He looked perplexed.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked him quickly.

  He shrugged. ‘My father has requested that he meet you.’

  Rose opened the door a little wider. ‘You sound surprised.’

  He was. Exceedingly. It was inconceivable—to his mind, in any case—that his father should express a wish to meet his Western blonde. B
ut he would not tell Rose that.

  ‘He is so frail,’ he told her truthfully, ‘that he sees few visitors.’

  Except for prospective brides, thought Rose bitterly—bet he sees loads of those. ‘Then I must be honoured,’ she answered.

  He nodded absently, his mind far away. ‘I will arrange to have your bags taken out to the car,’ he said. ‘Now, come with me.’

  She thought how distracted he seemed as he led her through the maze of marble corridors into a much larger and grander part of the palace. Past silent figures who watched them with black eyes which were unreadable, until at last an elaborately ornate door was flung open and they were ushered into a bedchamber.

  At the far end of the room was a large and lavishly decorated bed, and, lying on it, a man whose unmoving rigidity proclaimed the severity of his illness.

  ‘Come,’ said Khalim softly.

  By his father’s bed sat his mother, her face troubled, and she nodded briefly at Khalim and then, not quite so briefly, at Rose.

  ‘Father,’ said Khalim. ‘This is Rose Thomas.’

  In a face worn thin by illness, only the eyes remained living and alert. Keen, black eyes, just like his son’s. He gave a small smile and Rose was overwhelmed by the graciousness of that smile.

  ‘So,’ he said slowly. ‘I believe that I must thank you for confirming Khalim’s chosen successor for the oil refinery.’ Another smile, this time rather more rueful. ‘An opinion which differed from my own. And therefore Khalim said that we must bring in an independent arbitrator to decide.’

  Rose looked up at Khalim in surprise, and met a mocking glance in return.

  ‘Thank you. It is a great honour to meet you, sir,’ she said quietly, and bowed her head.

  The old man nodded and said something very rapid to Khalim, in Marabanese, and then Khalim tapped her arm. ‘Come, Rose,’ he said. ‘Will you wait in the outer chamber while I bid my father farewell?’

  Rose slipped silently from the room, her heart clenching as she read the pain in Khalim’s face. Did every departure seem like the last time he would ever see his father? she wondered as she sat on a low couch outside the bedchamber.

  It seemed a long time before Khalim came out again, and when he did his face was grave and Rose sprang to her feet.

  ‘Is everything…okay?’ she asked. It seemed a stupid question under the circumstances, but Khalim did not seem to notice.

  ‘His physician is with him now,’ he said slowly. ‘Come, Rose—we must go to the airport, where the plane awaits us.’

  They walked back along the corridor and he glanced down at her. ‘The way you looked at me back there,’ he mused.

  Rose’s eyes opened very wide. Had he seen the tell-tale signs of love? she worried. And wouldn’t that be enough to send him fleeing in the opposite direction?

  ‘When?’

  ‘When my father told you that we had agreed to bring in an outsider to arbitrate, you looked surprised. What was the matter, Rose—did you imagine that I had invented the job as a ploy to get you out to Maraban?’

  ‘It would sound insufferably arrogant of me to say yes,’ she answered slowly. ‘But maybe just a little, then, yes—yes, perhaps I did.’

  He admired her honesty—it would have been easy for her to have been evasive, and to lie. And, in truth, had not such a vacancy existed—then might he not have manufactured an excuse to bring her on such a trip? He smiled. ‘You have fulfilled all my expectations, Rose. In every way and more.’

  The limousine whisked them to the airport at Dar-gar and they were immediately escorted onto the plane, where Philip Caprice and the two glamorous air stewardesses were waiting for them.

  And it wasn’t until the plane had taken off into a cloudless blue sky and Khalim found his eyes wandering irresistibly to her pure, beautiful profile that he began to experience some of the misgivings which his father had already expressed so eloquently.

  He had not wanted to leave her this morning, and now he felt like dismissing Philip and making love to her again. Rose Thomas was getting under his skin, he acknowledged—and he seemed to be hell-bent on breaking every single rule which mattered.

  His mouth hardening, he deliberately picked up his briefcase and pulled a sheaf of papers out.

  Rose interpreted the body language. The almost imperceptible way he turned away from her. Oh, yes! He’d been virtually silent in the car on the way to the airport, and now she was getting the cold freeze. Was he having second thoughts? Had he thought more about the heinous crime of her being on the pill and decided that she was the worst kind of woman?

  Was this the reality of being Khalim’s temporary woman?

  She got to her feet and met the hard, dark question in his eyes. ‘I’m going to freshen up,’ she said, and picked up the smaller of her two bags.

  When she emerged a whole half an hour later, Khalim froze.

  While in Maraban she had dressed most appropriately, in trousers or long skirts—clothes which modestly concealed her delectable shape. But now she had changed into a strappy little sundress in a golden colour which matched her hair, and which showed off far more brown and shapely leg than he was comfortable with.

  He shifted in his seat. Not at all comfortable with. He waited until she had decorously taken her place beside him before challenging her.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  She turned her head and raised her eyebrows. Now he was talking to her as though she were his concubine! ‘The meaning of what?’

  ‘This…this…vulgar display of your body,’ he grated, realising that he did not want her body on show for anyone. Anyone but him!

  ‘But this is exactly the kind of dress I was wearing when we first met,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘You liked it well enough then, as I remember.’

  ‘But now,’ he said coolly, ‘I do not.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He lowered his voice to a sultry whisper. ‘I do not want other men looking at you in that way!’

  ‘You mean the way you’re looking at me?’ she enquired innocently.

  ‘That is different!”

  ‘I fail to see how!’ she answered wilfully.

  He drummed his fingers impatiently against the arm rest. Well, short of marching her back into the bathroom and insisting that she put something decent on, there was little he could do.

  He made a terse and impatient sound beneath his breath, feeling the uncharacteristic tug of frustration—and not solely sexual frustration, either. No, this was a frustration born out of the knowledge that he had finally met a woman who would not bend to his will! His match!

  ‘Wear what you like!’ he gritted.

  ‘I intend to!’

  The rest of the journey was completed in a stony silence, while Rose fumed and wondered how she could ever have thought herself in love with such a tyrant of a man.

  Then she stole a glance at that beautiful, dark profile and thought of his tenderness and his passion during the night, and once again her heart pained her as though someone had driven a stiletto into it, then slowly twisted it round.

  By the time they had disembarked into the waiting limousine at Heathrow Airport, Khalim was in the rare quandary of not knowing what to do. Or, rather, of knowing exactly what he wanted to do—which was to rush Miss Rose Thomas straight back to his suite at the Granchester Hotel and ravish her to within an inch of her life. So that for ever after she would comply with every demand he ever made!

  He sighed. The trouble was—that he did not want that at all. Her fire and her independence inspired him almost as much as it frustrated him. What a hollow victory it would be to have Rose in the compliant position he usually expected of his women!

  The car slowed as it approached the busy thoroughfares of London and he forced himself to look at her.

  Forced, indeed! As if looking at her could give him nothing but untold pleasure!

  ‘Would you like to come home with me?’ he murmured.

  For Khalim, he sounded al
most biddable, Rose thought. But not quite.

  ‘You mean to the Granchester?’ she enquired coolly.

  ‘Of course!’

  She shook her head. She had had enough of his surroundings and their influence. ‘Why don’t you come back with me?’ she questioned innocently.

  To that flat she shared with the other girl? Unthinkable!

  And then he thought of the alternative, which was even more unthinkable—that he went home without her!

  ‘Very well,’ he answered.

  ‘There’s no need to make it sound as though I’m leading you into the lion’s cage!’ said Rose crossly.

  ‘Not a lion, no,’ he agreed, a hint of humour lightening the night-dark eyes. ‘More some beautiful and graceful cat!’

  She wasn’t sure whether it really was a compliment—but she found herself basking in it anyway.

  But as the car began to approach her road, Rose began to wonder whether it had been such a good idea to invite him. What if Lara had a load of her out-of-work actor friends around, lying all over the place and drinking wine and smoking cigarettes?

  Or what if Lara had had a heavy night, and had left the place in a state of disarray—a common enough occurrence when Rose wasn’t around to tidy up after her.

  They left the bodyguard sitting in the car outside and went upstairs to the flat.

  It was rather better than Rose had anticipated, but not much. There weren’t a crowd of Lara’s friends—just her on-off boyfriend, Giles, whom Rose always thought of as very off.

  Giles had been born into a wealthy family, imagining that the world owed him a living. He had fluked his way into drama school and then coasted through the course—only just managing not to be asked to leave by the skin of his teeth.

  Unfortunately he had the kind of blond-haired, blue-eyed looks and carved aristocratic cheekbones which meant that he could get any woman that he wanted—and Lara wanted him far more than he wanted her.

  Which meant, thought Rose grimly, that she waited on him as if he were an invalid. Cooking up various little treats for him and pouring him glasses of wine at all hours of the day.

  Like now.