The Sultan's Heir Read online

  Well, they would walk under the stars and the staff could imagine what they liked about what was passing. He dropped his arm as soon as darkness enveloped them. Here there were other eyes, but there was nothing to prove to them.

  A cloud of intoxicating perfume rushed against her when they stepped into the garden. Rosalind caught her breath on surprised pleasure. “Roses!” she exclaimed. “How on earth can you have so many plants?”

  “There is a spring here. It is the reason the house was built on this spot,” he answered mechanically. He did not smell the roses, but her hair. It had released its own scent to his nostrils as she swung her head. A clean smell, lemon rather than musk, but no less disturbingly sensual.

  The darkness was lightening imperceptibly as they threaded their way along the paths, the silence between them alive with the unspoken. The glow behind the domed roof meant the moon was moving into view.

  He thought of the morning when he had gone to her apartment. He had been swept by the desire to lift her in his arms without a word and carry her to her bed…he wished he had done it. He wished he had become her lover before he had been forced to suspect her of so much treachery.

  He said, with a harshness that startled her, “Does a woman feel guilty, taking a lover when her husband is at war?” He said it to stop the trend of his own thoughts, but she heard it as an attack.

  Her eyes glistened with indignation as they focussed on him, reflecting moonlight. “You’re very sure I know the answer to that.”

  “I am not sure!” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “I am sure of nothing with you, nothing! Only one thing I know—” he lifted a hand to punctuate every word with a stroke of his forefinger “—that you have not told me all the truth. No!” He cut her off when she would have interrupted him. “Do not deny it! You cannot deny it!”

  She was silent, the angry denial caught in her throat.

  “Tell me,” he commanded softly, as temptation crept towards him again, like an animal scenting the fatally wounded in the desert. “Tell me the truth and I will love you, Rosalind. I will make such love to you—”

  Her hand flew to her throat. “What?” she whispered.

  He stroked light fingers down her bare arm. He was wounded, she had pierced his heart in the first moment she looked at him, suspicious and mistrustful though her eyes had been.

  “You are a woman who enjoys sex, Rosalind. Do you think a man does not know such a thing?”

  She closed her eyes and breathed to silence her noisy heart.

  “I, too, Rosalind. And I look at you and know that I can give you lovemaking to remember. Days and nights, we would be drunk on our own pleasure. You will not regret it. Your body will sing for me….”

  Sensation rippled through her like a shock wave. She swayed where she stood. “What are you saying?” she murmured, hardly hearing more than the word lovemaking in that deep, intimate, caressing voice.

  “How my mouth craves to kiss you, Rosalind, my hands burn with wanting to touch you. Do not you feel it? I know you do. I see it in your eyes. You want my touch. Tell me that it is so. Say it!”

  “Najib,” she whispered. Winds seemed to buffet her from every direction. Her body was streaming with feeling, with yearning, with deep need of his touch.

  He had met the woman he had dreamed of, and she was a cheat. How could it be so? Why did she not give him an explanation that would release his desire from the restraint he had to place on it? How could such passionate need as he felt for her co-exist with the deep suspicion that she was a danger—to him, to the family, to the thing that ruled all their lives?

  His hands gripped her shoulders, and with the sudden convulsion of a starving man, he bent to kiss her throat. Her head fell back on a moan.

  He could make her confess. Lovemaking would be the undoing of a woman like her, he knew it. She moaned with the merest touch of his mouth. He could melt her utterly, she would be all his, and then she would tell him whatever he asked…so his demon whispered….

  “Rosalind,” he murmured. His strong hand tipped her head and his lips moved up under her ear, to a spot that suddenly proved to be connected to every nerve in her body. His hand ran down her side to her hip, to her thigh, with a ruthless pressure that spoke deep, passionate hunger.

  She melted and gasped for air, and his mouth was suddenly clamped to hers, devouring her. She moaned and swayed against him.

  Dimly, as his arms wrapped around her and dragged her ruthlessly against him, he realized that sex was a two-edged sword. He should not have tried to use against her a weapon that could so easily be turned against himself.

  What if it is not her, but you yourself who confess all? the voice of reason cried urgently in him. When she has defeated you with the pleasures of the body…can you be certain it is not you who will tell her whatever she asks?

  But the thought was drowned under the tidal wave of need.

  Twelve

  Moonlight streamed into the bedroom through the lattice, imprinting moving arabesques of light and shadow on the coverlet, the walls, the floor.

  She moved ahead of him slowly, towards the bed, into the pale beams. Her hair swung, making its own moonshadow on the wall, and he felt even the movement of shadow to be a touch that was painful.

  She was ghostly in the darkness, in the slender, pale dress, the darker skin, and he wanted her to be real. He lifted his arms and stripped off his shirt, tossing it into the shadows.

  There was a sudden odour of his male sweat, and she gasped in erotic surprise and turned to take him in as he came nearer. His chest curved with muscle, and his dark skin was darker with the black hair that curled over chest and arms.

  He had stepped out of his thonged sandals and approached her now in silence, his foot like a lion’s paw, folding softly down onto the marble floor.

  Her arms went around his waist and she pressed her face against his naked shoulder and smelled him again, skin, sweat, sun and soap all contributing to the heady aroma that was him.

  He was everything she needed. So strong, so male, so real. Everything that had been missing from her life for too long.

  His hands slid the zipper down her back and moved inside to caress her bare skin with a touch that electrified her. He buried his face in her hair, kissed her ear and, when her head fell helplessly to one side and then back, her neck and throat. One hand moved up to push the neckline of her dress out of the path of his seeking lips.

  She felt his touch like a tracery of fire sending out rivers of flame over all her skin, through every muscle and cell. She kissed his chest, felt the curling hair brush her lips, too, with fire. She ran her hands over his back, feeling the firm musculature, the strongly knit spine.

  He drew a little away, and his hand came up to tilt her chin back, raise her mouth for his kiss. For a moment they stopped, staring into the blackness of each other’s eyes, and then his lips came down on hers. Electric heat spiralled out from the contact, and her body trembled in his hold.

  His hold was firm and determined on her head, holding her just where he wanted her while his mouth took hungry possession of hers, so hungry she melted against his chest with a cry. Then, his lips firmly locking hers, his hands slipped down to encircle her, and his arms wrapped her tight against him, secure, enclosed, held.

  He was in no hurry. Hungry he might be, but that only made him the more determined to enjoy every sweet, delicious morsel to the full. Inside the opening of her dress again, his hands caressed her back, her sides, the sensitive space under her arms, the swelling of her breasts at the sides, his fingers stroking her nerve endings into wilder and wilder disarray.

  They stroked all down the length of her spine, and then up again, and the touch seemed to release a fire inside her that licked all up her spine with the most delicious heat she had ever experienced.

  His mouth nibbled and chewed and pressed and toyed with hers, and his hands stroked her, till her skin twitched convulsively all over and her body ached with hunger. Then he a
bandoned her swollen lips and trailed his mouth down the line of her neck again, to the neckline of her dress, and now his hands pulled the fabric away and down her arm, leaving her shoulder vulnerable to the trailing fire of kisses.

  His tight hold on her relaxed, and his naked chest moved away as he drew her dress down both arms. For a moment she was imprisoned by the fabric of her dress, her arms caught at her sides, and he held her there and gazed at her with a look in his eyes that melted her again and again in waves of electric heat.

  His eyelids drooped as her naked breasts were kissed with moonlight, and then he held her back over his arm and bent to press his own kiss against that moon-whitened skin.

  Her dress tumbled down over her hips and to the floor, and his other arm slipped under her knees, and he picked her up out of the circle of white cloth and carried her to the bed.

  She awoke to birdsong, her body lazy and luxurious, as if she had honey instead of blood in her veins. A thin sheet was all that covered her, and its touch on her supersensitive skin as she turned was erotic, as his hands had been, in the night.

  She smiled, languidly stretching, and opened her eyes. Sunshine was playing through the lattice across the bed, the pattern moving as a little wind played with the branches outside. The scent of the desert came to her, bringing all its harsh beauty to her mind.

  She was alone. She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow where he had slept, breathing in the smell of him as remembered pleasure shot through her body, melting her womb with yearning.

  She showered and pulled on briefs and a cotton dress and sandals. In heat like this shorts were constricting. A long, loose dress allowed the air to circulate, and the dryness of the air meant sweat evaporated almost before it had a chance to form.

  Out in the shadowed courtyard the morning was still relatively cool, and the air had a freshness and a purity that was delightful.

  Najib and Samir were sitting at a table on the western side of the courtyard, where the sun’s rays reached in under the cloister. Sam was babbling away and Najib was listening and nodding. Both were wearing the white Arab garment called djellaba, a simple full-length robe with long loose sleeves. Rosalind paused to watch them for a moment, her body rushing with the memory of the night.

  They didn’t notice her until she was gripped by a sudden paroxysm of coughing, and then both turned her way. Sam laughed and called out to her, but although Najib smiled, his eyes were grave.

  Rosalind bent to give Sam a hug and kiss. She wanted to do the same with Najib, but his look made her a little nervous of him, and she only smiled her good-morning. One of the staff pulled out her chair and poured her a cup of coffee, then rolled up a trolley for her choice of breakfast.

  “I am wearing a dress, Mommy,” Sam informed her gravely. “Daddy is wearing one, too. Men wear dresses in the desert.”

  “It looks very handsome,” she said. There was something majestic about a man wearing such a robe, and Najib was certainly no exception. “But where did you get it?”

  “Tahira put it on me.”

  She glanced a question at Najib. “It is the most comfortable wear for this heat,” he said, and she assumed that meant that he had ordered it done.

  They ate their breakfast, with Sam doing most of the talking. He clearly liked the whole situation, from the heat to the clear skies to the fact of sitting down to meals with two parents. Rosalind watched with a little pang how intimately he smiled into Najib’s eyes, and prayed that Najib would prove to be right—that it would be better for them to bond, even if Najib were later to disappear from Sam’s life.

  But the truth was she was hoping that he would not disappear….

  She mentioned the beach, and Najib said that it was best to swim in the morning, because the sun would be too intense later. So they spent a lazy time over the breakfast table and then Rosalind slipped on a swimsuit under her dress and they strolled down to the little cove.

  It was very, very different from any beach Sam had ever been at before. She stripped off his djellaba and let him run into the water naked, and he cried, “Mommy, it’s warm! The water is warm!” and flung himself into it with total abandon.

  “I always thought he was a little nervous of the water,” Rosalind told Najib. “I never realized before that it was a question of temperature!”

  The little cove was mostly sheltered from ocean currents by the fingers of rock which were progressively longer on neighbouring coves. There were a couple of yards of shallows before the beach sloped steeply into deeper water. The surface was calm, the water lapping gently at the shore. For swimming it was almost ideal.

  About twenty yards away from where they were, on one side of the cove, was a little stony outcrop, and after a while Najib took Sam on his back and set off to swim to it, with Rosalind beside them. Sam was laughing with delight, his little hands wrapped around Najib’s neck, his head trustingly pressed against Najib’s, gasping and blinking when water splashed him, but completely fearless.

  Rosalind, doing a lazy crawl beside them, wondered what she would do with her inheritance. It was clear that Sam loved the climate, but how would he feel, how would they both feel, about coming here when Najib was not with them? There was no doubt that for Sam a big part of the perfection of the moment was Najib’s presence.

  For her, too.

  “If I don’t want to keep this place, what will happen?” she asked Najib later, when he was showing her over the house and grounds. They were in a small study off the other courtyard, where she had been surprised to discover a computer with an Internet linkup, and several phones. It meant she could work here and send in her translations by e-mail. If she wanted to.

  He had just explained the presence of all this equipment by saying that the house had been a family holiday place for years. Sophisticated communications were necessary for many members of the family.

  “You do not want the house?” he murmured, looking at her from under lowered brows.

  His voice was expressionless. She couldn’t tell what his attitude was. “Well, something in France would probably be more practical as a holiday home,” she said. “It’s so expensive to fly out here, and—”

  “You and Sam of course travel free on Royal Barakat Air,” he interrupted impatiently.

  Rosalind blinked. “We do? Free? Why?”

  “We are about to be married, Rosalind. As far as the world is concerned, we are married already. The families of the Cup Companions travel free on Royal Barakat Air.”

  “Oh,” she said. And then, “But it’s not even a real marriage.”

  She wasn’t sure why she said it. Maybe to get a reaction from him. She certainly got one. Naj said, with obvious irritation, “How much more real does it have to get, Rosalind? We were husband and wife last night, were we not?”

  The embers of awareness that were always there between them exploded into flame with a heat that seemed to suck all the air out of her lungs. He grasped her arm. “Do you—” he began, but whatever he had been going to say was lost as Rosalind, responding to that touch with a hunger that melted him, slipped into his embrace and tilted her face up for his kiss.

  He had meant to resist. He had meant to explain how foolish it would be for them to continue what he had been helpless to prevent beginning. But her lips, already swollen with his last night’s kisses, now parted in willing expectation, and it was too much for him. His mouth closed the gap of its own accord, and roughly drew the sweetness from hers.

  He gave himself up to the madness that consumed him. He had awakened this morning with her warm, naked body stretched out beside him in the deep abandon of a woman who has been thoroughly pleasured in the night, and an almost overwhelming hunger to awaken her with more lovemaking had swept over him.

  He had forced himself up and away. What good could come of this? One way or another, she was a betrayer. She had probably already betrayed him, the whole family, and she might prove their downfall in the end. But the physical need for her was affecti
ng his judgement.

  Kingdoms had been lost before this for the sake of a woman’s love. And if the women had been like Rosalind, Najib reflected, with an appreciation he had never before felt for the dilemma of such fools, he could understand it.

  Down on the beach they had both dressed and then slipped off their wet suits. He was naked under the djellaba, and he knew she was naked under the dress. It was too easy, it was impossible not to give in to what was offered. His hands caressed her with rough hunger, but she was already moaning with need. Her hands pulled at him, her body strained against his.

  With a muttered oath, he turned her away, dragging up her loose dress, and she understood his design and bent over the back of the chair. The sight of her naked back was more potent than he could have dreamed in a thousand weeks of bliss, and he dragged his own robe out of his way and thrust into the waiting heat.

  She cried out with wild excitement, a sound that tortured him almost into instant loss of control, and he clenched his jaw, his hands tight on her hips, for a motionless moment while he struggled against it.

  One hand moved under her body, to find the cluster of nerves that had already proved so responsive to his touch, with one unerring finger.

  Rosalind exploded into release, her throat opening to cry out her surprise, as the delicious heat spiralled out from under his hand and his driving body and then instantly began to build again.

  It was a heat as searing as the desert sun, a blasting, merciless power. The world went black, and she floated there, battered by high, drowning waves of pleasure measured by each stroke of his body in her. She gasped for air after each one, and the thirst for release was cruel, she was lost at sea under hot sun, crying, hungry, battered, desperate—until he broke through with a high cry, and then it flowed through her like sweet water, a cooling bliss like nothing she had experienced before.