The Sheikh′s Last Gamble
The Sheikh's Last Gamble
Trish Morey
The winner takes all! When infamous billionaire gambler Bahir Al-Qadir is forced to protect his ex-lover, Marina Peshwah, it seems Lady Luck has finally deserted him… He’s tried to forget the spoilt princess, but even the relentless heat of the desert has failed to burn the intoxicating image of her from his mind.Now he’s about to discover that their passion left them with more than memories… Marina is once again at the mercy of the man she loves to hate. She may hold the winning card, but with such high stakes this proud sheikh will go all in to claim his heir!
The wind tore at her gown, peeling the fabric high around her legs, and Bahir wondered if she still never wore anything under her nightgown.
He growled. Why would she wear a white nightgown? So very virginal and innocent.
Who was she trying to kid?
Marina was nowhere near a virgin. She was a sorceress. He should leave now, while he had the chance, before he was tempted to do something he might regret.
But he could not force his feet to move. He could not turn away. Instead he stayed and watched while she was hit by the spray of a wave crashing below, watched while she flung her arms out wide and laughed as brazenly as the weather, watched while her damp white gown turned transparent—and knew that he had no choice.
Knew he had to go to her.
DESERT BROTHERS
Bound by duty, undone by passion!
These sheikhs may not be brothers by blood,
but they are united by the code of the desert.
Their power and determination is legendary and
unchallenged—until two beautiful Jemeyan princesses
threaten their self-control …
In Trish Morey’s exciting duet searing passion and
sizzling drama are about to be unleashed!
In May you met:
Zoltan and Aisha
Will this barbarian sheikh tame
his defiant virgin princess and claim his crown?
This month meet:
Bahir and Marina
Infamous billionaire Bahir Al-Qadir risks it all in a
high-stakes game of love!
About the Author
TRISH MOREY is an Australian who’s also spent time living and working in New Zealand and England. Now she’s settled with her husband and four young daughters in a special part of South Australia, surrounded by orchards and bushland and visited by the occasional koala and kangaroo. With a lifelong love of reading, she penned her first book at the age of eleven, after which life, career and a growing family kept her busy until once again she could indulge her desire to create characters and stories—this time in romance. Having her work published is a dream come true.
Visit Trish at her website, www.trishmorey.com
Recent titles by the same author:
DUTY AND THE BEAST (Desert Brothers) SECRETS OF CASTILLO DEL ARCO FIANCÉE FOR ONE NIGHT THE HEIR FROM NOWHERE
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Sheikh’s
Last Gamble
Trish Morey
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
BAHIR Al-Qadir hated losing. For a man barred entry to more than half the world’s casinos for routinely and systematically breaking the bank, losing did not come often or easily. Now, as he watched yet another pile of his chips being swept from the roulette table, the bitter taste of loss soured his mouth and a black cloud of despair hung low over his head.
For three nights now he had endured this run of black fortune and still there seemed no end to it. And not even the knowledge that roulette was a game designed to give the house the edge was any compensation. Not when he was used to winning. How ironic that Lady Luck had deserted him now, just when he had been counting on a stint at a casino to improve his mood. He might have laughed at the irony, except right now he was in no mood for laughing.
Still, he managed to dredge up a smile as placed his last pile of chips on a black square, and glanced the way of the croupier to let him know he was ready. So what that he had already dropped the equivalent of a small nation’s gross national product? He was nothing if not a consummate professional. The back of his neck might be damp with perspiration and his stomach roiling, but he’d be damned if any of the vultures around the table watching him come undone would read how bleak he felt right now on his face or in his body language.
The croupier called for any more bets even when he would have known there would be none. One by one the other players had dropped out, content to watch the unthinkable, to watch Bahir—the famed ‘Sheikh of Spin’—lose, until there remained only him and the numbered wheel.
With a well-rehearsed flick of one wrist, the croupier sent the wheel spinning; a flick of the other sending the ball hurtling in the opposite direction.
A feeble and battered thread of hope surged anew. Surely this time? Surely?
Bahir’s gut clenched as the ball spun. The damp at his collar formed a bead that ran down his back under his shirt. And, despite it all, he forced his smile to grow more nonchalant, his stance more relaxed.
‘Rien ne va plus!’ the croupier announced unnecessarily, for nobody looked like making another bet. Everybody was watching the ball bounce and skip over the numbered pockets as the wheel slowed beneath it.
Finally the ball lost momentum and caught in one of the pockets, fighting momentum and bouncing once, twice, before settling into another and being whisked suddenly in the other direction. He knew exactly how it felt. He’d felt hope being ripped right out of him in much the same way for three nights running now. Surely this time, on his last bet of the night, his luck would change? Surely this time he might regain some tiny shred of success to take with him, to show him his gift hadn’t abandoned him completely?
Then the wheel slowed to a crawl and with sickening realisation he saw: red, the colour rendering the number irrelevant.
It was done. He had lost.
Again.
He thanked the croupier, as if he had dropped no more than the price of a cup of coffee, ignoring the shocked murmurings of the onlookers, intending to walk out of here with his head held high, even if he felt like dropping it into his hands. What the hell was wrong with him?
Bahir didn’t lose.
Not like this. The last time he had suffered a run like this …
He pulled his thoughts to an abrupt halt. He wasn’t going down that path. The last thing he needed to think about on a night such as this was her.
She was the damned reason he was here, after all.
‘Monsieur, s’il vous plait,’ came a smooth-as-silk voice alongside him, and he turned to see the shark-faced Marcel, the host the casino had assigned to him tonight. The perfect host up until now, keeping both his distance and his expression free of the smugness he was no doubt feeling, Marcel had meantime ensured that he had wanted for nothing during his stint at the table. ‘Sheikh Al-Qadir, the evening does not have to end here. If you wish, the casino would be only too happy to extend you credit to prolong your entertainment.’
Bahir read his face. The man’s bland expression might tell him nothing, but there was an eagerness in his grey eyes that made his skin crawl. So they did not think he was done with his losing streak yet? A momentary challenge flared in his blood, only to be quashed by the knowledge that all he’d done here since he’d entered this establishment three days ago was lose. So maybe they were right. Which gave him all the more reason to leave now.
Besides, he didn’t need their money. He had won plenty of that over the years not to be worried about dropping the odd million, or even ten for that matter. It wasn’t the money he cared about. It was losing that did his head in. It pounded now, the drums in his head beating out the letters of the word: loser. He smiled in spite of it. ‘Thank you, but no.’
He was halfway across the room before Marcel caught up with him. ‘Surely the night is still young?’
Bahir looked around. A person could certainly think that here. Locked away under the crystal chandeliers, surrounded by luxurious furnishings and even more luxurious-looking women, and without a hint of a window to indicate the time of day, it was possible to lose all concept of time. He glanced at the watch on his wrist, realising that, even leaving now, daylight would beat him to bed. ‘For some, perhaps.’
Still his host persisted. No doubt he would be amply rewarded if he hung onto his prize catch a while longer. ‘We will see you this evening, then, Sheikh Al-Qadir?’
‘Maybe.’ Maybe not.
‘I will arrange a limousine to collect you from your hotel. Perhaps you will have time for dinner and a show beforehand? On the house, of course. Shall we say, eight o’clock?’
Bahir stopped then, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to produce enough pain to drown out the thunder in his head. Not for the first time was he grateful he hadn’t accepted the casino’s oh-so-generous offer of accommodation in-house. There were advantages in turning down some of the casino’s high-roller benefits. The ability to come and go as he pleased, for one.
He was just about to tell Marcel where he could shove his limousine and his show when he saw it—a flash of colour across the room draped over honey-coloured flesh, and a coil of ebony hair held by a diamond clip—and for a moment he was reminded of another time, another casino.
And, damn it all, of another woman; one he had come here expressly to forget. He shook his head, wanting to rid himself of the memories, feeling the blackness inside of him swell to bursting point, feeling the rush of heat from a suddenly pounding heart.
‘Shiekh Al-Qadir?’
‘Go away, Marcel,’ he snarled, and this time the pinstriped shark took the hint and with a hasty goodnight withdrew into the sea of gowns and dinner suits.
It wasn’t her, he realised on a second glance, it was nothing like her. This woman’s face was all square jaw and heavy brow, her lips like two red slugs framing her mouth, that honey skin more like leather. And, of course, how could it have been her? He’d left her with her sister in Al-Jirad and surely not even someone as irresponsible as she was would abandon her family so soon after the trouble they had all gone to to rescue her from Mustafa?
Then again, knowing Marina …
He cursed under his breath as he headed for the exit. What the hell was wrong with him tonight? The last thing he needed to think about was her.
No, that was wrong. The last thing he needed to think about was her honey skin, and how she’d still drawn him like a magnet, in spite of the passage of time and despite the hate-filled chasm that lay between them. Yet she’d stepped out of that desert tent and he’d still felt the tug in every cell of his body. What was it now—three years? More? Yet still she’d managed to make him hard with just one glance from those siren’s eyes, a glance that had turned frosty and cold the instant she’d realized just who one of her rescuers was.
Still she’d moved like liquid silk, mounting the horse like a natural, her limbs as slender as he recalled, her body still willowy slim despite time and the two children he knew she’d borne.
He might be on the losing streak from hell, but he would bet everything he had that her satin skin was just as smooth as he remembered it to be, whether it be under his hands or in the long slide of her legs wrapped around him.
Curse the woman!
He would not think of her or her long limbs and satin skin! There was no point to it. She was trouble, past or present. She was the worst kind of gamble, the wager lost before the wheel was even spun.
A doorman nodded and bade him a good evening as he passed, even though the night sky outside was already softening to grey. He looked to the cool morning air for the balm it should have been to his overheated skin and fractured nerves, searching for the promise of a new day.
Instead he felt only frustration. He rolled his shoulders on an exhale, protesting the unfamiliar stiffness in his back and neck. When before had his muscles ever been bound so tightly? When before had his spirits ever felt so bleak?
But he already knew the answer to that question. He didn’t want to go there either.
He curled into a waiting limousine and tugged his bow tie loose as he sagged against the upholstery, suddenly weary of the world, suddenly restless with his life. He’d thought the casino would liven his spirits. Instead, his luck had let him down and ground him further into the mire.
He looked vacantly out of the window, past the palm-lined esplanade, over the white-fringed sea. Monaco was beautiful, there was no doubt, and justifiably a magnet for the rich and famous and those who craved to be. But right now Monaco and the entire south of France seemed stale, empty and utterly pointless.
No, there was nothing for him here.
He needed to get away, but to where? Las Vegas? No, that would be pointless. Casinos in the States offered even better odds for the house. And he was still unwelcome in Macau after his last winning streak.
An image formed unbidden in his mind, a recent memory of desert dunes and a golden sun, heavy, hot and framed between palm trees as it dipped inexorably lower towards the shimmering horizon.
The desert?
He sat up straighter in his seat, his interest piqued, though wondering if he was mad in the next moment. His recent visit to Al-Jirad had reunited him with his three old friends, Zoltan, Kadar and Rashid. It had also brought two brief forays into the desert. But neither of them had afforded more than a taste of the desert as they had raced to retrieve first the Princess Aisha and then her sister, Marina, from the clutches of the snivelling Mustafa.
The first excursion he had found exhilarating, speeding with his three friends in a race against time across the dunes. The second he’d found less so, although the horses had been just as willing, the company just as entertaining and the sunsets and dawns just as magnificent. It was seeing Marina again after all these years that had spoilt that trip for him.
Of all the women in the world, how unfortunate that Zoltan had to marry her sister, the one woman he had sworn never to see again in his life. Even more unfortunate that she could still make him hard with just one look.
Maybe a return visit to the desert would cure him. Maybe the desert sun would sear her from his brain, and the crisp desert night air clear all thoughts of her once and for all.
And maybe not just any desert. Maybe it was just time to go home.
Home.
How long since he had thought of the desert as his home?
How long since he’d called any place home?
But why shouldn’t he go now? There was nowhere he needed to be. He had no one to please but himself. And this time he could take the time to drink in the colour and the texture of the desert, take the time to linger and to observe and absorb its sheer power, and breathe in air turned pristine under the heat of the desert sun.
But, more than that, out in the desert there would be no flashes of colour across a crowded room; no glimpses of flesh to remind him of another time and another woman he wanted to forget.
He breathed deeply, content for the first time in days, making a mental note to check flights and make enquiries after he had slept. He was glad this run of nights was behind him. Surely now this run of bad luck must be over too? For right now it could not get much worse.
The mobile phone vibrated in his pocket. He hauled it out, curious who would be calling him at this early hour, less surprised when he checked the caller ID. He pressed the phone to his ear. ‘Zoltan, what can I do for you?’
He listened while the grey of the dawn sky peeled away to pink and his run of bad luck took a turn for the worse.
CHAPTER TWO
‘NO.’
‘Bahir,’ his friend insisted, ‘just listen.’
‘Whatever it is, I don’t need to hear it. The answer is still no.’
‘But she can’t travel home by herself. I won’t allow it.’
‘I thought Mustafa was cooling his heels in prison.’
‘He is, but I made the mistake of underestimating him once before. I won’t do the same again. So long as there’s a possibility someone out there is still loyal to him, I’m not taking any chances with Aisha’s sister’s safety.’
Bahir raked one hand through his hair. ‘So get Kadar to do it.’
‘Kadar has urgent business in Istanbul.’
He grunted. ‘How convenient. Rashid, then.’
‘You know Rashid. He’s disappeared. Nobody knows where or when he’ll show up again.’
He had to be dreaming. Bahir pinched his nose until sparks shot behind his eyelids but there was no waking up. This nightmare was real. ‘Look, Zoltan, it doesn’t have to be one of us! What’s wrong with getting one of the palace guards to babysit her?’
‘They’re busy.’ A pause. ‘Besides, Aisha specifically asked that you do it.’
He hesitated. He’d liked what he saw of Zoltan’s new bride. Although he’d had his doubts at first, now he could not imagine a better woman as a match for his friend. In any other circumstances, he would not hesitate to do whatever she asked of him. But Aisha had no idea what she was asking of him. ‘Aisha was wrong.’
‘But you know Marina.’
‘Which is exactly the reason I’m saying no.’
‘Bahir—’
‘No. Isn’t it enough that I agreed to come with you to rescue her? Don’t push me, Zoltan. Why don’t you do it yourself, if you’re so God damned keen on her having an escort home?’
‘Bahir,’ came the hesitant voice of his friend at the end of the line. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing is wrong!’ Everything is wrong. ‘Listen, Zoltan, we broke up for a reason. Marina hates me and, when it all comes down to it, I’m not that overly fond of her. She might now be your sister-in-law, but you don’t know her like I do. She’s as irresponsible as they come, the original party girl who’s never done a thing for anyone else. She’s spoilt and headstrong, and if she isn’t given exactly what she wants she goes out and takes it anyway, regardless of the consequences. And, if that’s not enough, she’s got the morals of an alley cat and the litter to prove it. I tell you now, Zoltan, I am not going back there.’
‘God, Bahir, I’m not asking you to marry her! All you have to do is make sure she gets home safely.’
‘And I’m telling you to find someone else.’
There was silence at the end of the line. A brooding silence that did nothing to encourage Bahir to think he was swaying his friend’s opinion. ‘You know, Bahir,’ his friend said at last. ‘If I didn’t know better …’
Bahir felt like growling. ‘What?’
‘Well, anyone who didn’t know you better might actually think you were actually—worried—about spending time with Marina.’
‘Are you suggesting I’m afraid?’
‘Are you?’
‘You just don’t get it, Zoltan. Even if I agreed to take her, there is no way this side of hell freezing over that she’d agree to come with me. Didn’t you hear me say that she hates me? If you’d bothered to ask her you’d already know that.’
There was a telling pause at the end of the line and Bahir felt a glimmer of hope as he saw a way out of this madness.
‘In that case, you might try asking her. She’ll give you the same answer I have. No. If you’re so convinced she needs someone to make sure she’s safe, then you find someone else to do your babysitting.’
‘And what if she agrees?’
He laughed out loud. ‘No way. She’ll never agree. Not in a million years.’
‘And if she does, will you do it?’
‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘Okay—so, if she says no, I’ll find someone else and if she says yes, then you’ll do it?’
‘Zoltan … There’s no way …’
‘Is that a bet?’
‘She won’t say yes.’ She wouldn’t. If there was one thing in this world he could be certain of, it was that she would want to be with him even less than he wanted to be with her. Especially after the way they’d parted. ‘I know she won’t.’
‘In which case,’ Zoltan said, ‘you’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘No way!’
‘Marina!’ Aisha called as her sister jumped up from the garden seat where they’d been sitting together. ‘Just listen.’
‘There’s no point,’ she said, striding swiftly away. ‘Not if you’re not going to make sense.’
Aisha chased after her. ‘Zoltan and I don’t want you going home alone, surely you can understand that? You should have an escort. It’s the least we can do.’
‘I’ll be fine. It’s not that far.’
‘Like you thought you’d be fine on the way here too, remember?’
Marina shook her head. ‘Mustafa’s been put away. And this time I won’t go overland, okay? Put me on a private jet. Nothing can possibly go wrong.’
‘You’re going on a private jet, no question, but you’re not going alone. Not this time.’
‘Fine! So assign me a bodyguard if you must. But I will not go with that man! It was bad enough to find him waiting for me outside Mustafa’s tent. If I hadn’t known everyone was afraid for me, I would have gone right back inside again.’ And it had had nothing to do with the shivers that had skittered across her skin at finding him amongst the party of her rescuers; nothing to do with that flare of heat she had witnessed in his eyes, before they had turned hard, and as cold and unflinching as ice.
Aisha studied her sister. ‘You didn’t seem that upset when you arrived back at the palace. “A blast from the past”, you called him. I got the impression that whatever had happened in the past, it wasn’t that serious.’
Not serious. Marina flung her arms out wide, her fingers flicking the flowers of a nearby jasmine creeper in the process and sending its heady scent swirling into the air. She shook her head, reining her arms in and weaving them tightly around her midriff. ‘You were all so worried about me, and happy I was safe, how could I make a fuss? Besides, I thought it was over, that I’d never see him again. And clearly he was just as relieved himself that it was over.’
And when she saw the question in her sister’s eyes, she added, ‘Didn’t he take off for Monte Carlo that very same day? No doubt so that there was no chance he could run into me again while I was at the palace.’
‘Oh, Marina, I had no idea.’ Aisha slid a hand beneath one of her sister’s tightly bound arms and coaxed her into a walk through the fragrant garden. ‘What happened between you two?’
What hadn’t happened? Marina dropped her head, the weight of painful memories dragging her spirits with it. ‘Everything and nothing. It all came to nothing.’ She frowned. No, not nothing. She still had Chakir. ‘I was stupid. Naive. I flew too close to the sun and it’s no wonder I came crashing down.’
‘Okay. So you had an affair that ended badly, right?’
And this time it was Marina’s turn to squeeze her sister’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Aisha. I’m not making sense, I know. But you’re right. I met Bahir one night at a party—eyes across a crowded casino, the whole boring cliché, I guess.’
She looked intently at her sister, trying to make her understand. ‘But the attraction was so intense, so immediate, and I knew in that instant that we were going to spend the night together. And one night turned into a week and then a month and more, and it was reckless and passionate and didn’t look like ending. And I really thought I loved him, you know. I actually thought for one mad moment—maybe more than just one—that he was the one.’ She sighed, staring blankly into the distance. ‘But I couldn’t have been more wrong.’
‘Oh, Marina, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘How could you? It wasn’t as if I was ever home to share my news. And we seemed to have so little in common back then. You seemed content to stay in the family fold while I was continually rebelling against it. Our brothers provided the necessary heir and spare and our father made no bones about it. I figured I was surplus to requirements and so I might as well enjoy myself.’
‘A redundant princess,’ Aisha said softly to herself, remembering another time, another conversation.
‘What did you say?’
She smiled and shook her head as they resumed walking. ‘Nothing. It’s funny how different we are. But there were times I envied you your freedom and the fact you got to choose your lovers. There were days I wished I could be more like you, headstrong and rebellious, instead of bound by duty. But I guess they both have their down sides.’
‘Amen.’ Marina sighed and turned her face to the heavens. ‘And now you’re married to one of his best friends. Small world, isn’t it, when someone who has told you to get out of their life for ever suddenly turns up on your doorstep? Oh, Aisha, I can’t go with him. Don’t make me go with him!’ Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes with the pain of the past. Tears rolled down her cheeks with the complexities of the present and her fears for the future. ‘What a mess!’
‘He must have hurt you so very much.’
‘He hates me.’
‘Are you sure? He was there when they rescued you.’
‘I doubt that he wanted to be. The others would have expected it, that’s all.’
Aisha nodded. ‘It’s true they are close. Zoltan told me they were the brothers he never had. But hate you? People say things in the heat of the moment—stupid things—but they don’t mean them, not really.’
Marina shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together until she could find the words, the burden of her secret suddenly too heavy to bear. ‘Oh, he hates me. Even if he had forgotten how much, he will surely hate me when he discovers the truth.’
Aisha stopped walking and turned to her, fear in her eyes. ‘Discovers what truth?’
Marina looked at her through eyes scratchy and raw, and her soul bleaker than at any other time in her life. ‘The truth about his son.’
Her sister’s mouth opened wide. ‘Oh no, Marina, surely not? Is Chakir Bahir’s child?’
She nodded.
‘But you told everyone you didn’t know who the father was.’
Marina put a hand to her mouth. ‘I know. It was easier that way. And nobody had any trouble believing it.’
‘I’m so sorry!’
‘Don’t be. I had a reputation as a party girl and it came in handy. It made it easier to hide the truth. It was easier to pretend it didn’t matter.’
‘Even from Bahir.’
‘He has no idea.’
Aisha’s feet stilled on the path, her gaze fixed on nothing, and when she looked up at her sister Marina was afraid of what she saw in her eyes. ‘I think you need to get on that plane. With Bahir.’
Marina pulled back. ‘I won’t go with him. I can’t face him.’
‘But you have to tell him.’
‘Do I?’
‘Of course you do! You have let him know that he is a father; that he has a child.’
She shook her head. ‘He doesn’t want to know.’
‘He has a right to know. It is right that you tell him. And you must tell him. You have no choice.’
‘He won’t want to hear. He never wanted a child.’
‘Then maybe he should have thought about that.’ Aisha gave her sister’s shoulders a squeeze. ‘I’ll tell Zoltan it’s all set.’
‘No! I only told you so you would understand why I can’t see him again. I would never have told you otherwise.’
Her sister smiled, a soft and sad smile. ‘I think you told me because you already know what you have to do. You just needed to hear it from someone else.’
Knowing Aisha was right didn’t make boarding the Al-Jiradi private jet any easier. No easier at all when she’d seen the plane land and knew he was already waiting inside. How Zoltan had managed to talk Bahir into this was anybody’s guess. He would not be happy about it; of that much she was certain.
‘You can do this,’ Aisha said as she gave her older sister a final squeeze. ‘I know you can.’
Marina smiled weakly in return, wishing she believed her, and waved one last time before disappearing into the covered stairs leading to the plane. Right now her legs were so weak and her stomach so tightly wound, it felt like if it snapped she would spin right off the stairs. A fate infinitely preferable, nonetheless, to being enclosed in the cabin of an aircraft with Bahir.
But it had to be done. For more than three years she had wrestled with the question of whether to tell Bahir of Chakir’s existence. At first it had been easy to say nothing, the pain of their break-up still raw, the savagery of his declaration never to have children still uppermost in her mind. Why should Bahir be informed of his child’s existence, she’d reasoned, when he’d told her he never wanted to see her again? He would not thank her for discovering that, no matter what either of them wanted, they were bound together via the life of a child they had jointly created.
Then, when Hana had come into the world, there had been plenty to think about, and the question of Bahir’s rights to know had been easy to ignore. Suddenly mother to two fatherless children, why complicate matters with the father of only one? And Bahir had made it clear he was not a family man; he didn’t want her or a child and they certainly didn’t need him.
But she’d had reason to wonder lately as she’d watched her young son grow and turn from baby to toddler to young boy, and she’d found herself wondering what Chakir himself would want.
She swallowed back on a lump of apprehension that had lodged in the dry sandy desert that was now her throat. So despite Bahir telling her that he never wanted a child, and even though she was more than happy to accept that as his final word on the topic, maybe for the sake of their son’s wishes this would be worth it. For Chakir’s sake.
Please God, let it be worth it.
She managed a tremulous smile for the cabin attendant who welcomed her to the plane. Then she was inside the cool interior and he was there, standing with his back to her at a rack filled with magazines, seemingly oblivious to her presence. She wished she could be so oblivious to his, but she could not.
Just the sight of him was enough to make her heartbeat skip and her skin tingle while she sensed a pooling heat building between her thighs. She cursed her body’s wayward reaction and wished she could look away. Damn the man! When would she ever be able to look at him and not think of sex? After all the things he had said to her, after the way they had parted, after all the years that separated them, still he conjured pictures of tangled sheets, tangled limbs and long, hot nights filled with sin.
Then again, how was it possible not to think of sex when it was some kind of god that filled your vision? Was there some kind of formula for masculine perfection; some ratio of leg-length to height or shoulder-width to hip? Some magic number that nature had allocated at conception that marked a man for physical supremacy?
If so, this man was it, and that was just the view of his back.
He turned then, as the attendant ushered her to the seat across the aisle, and the blast of resentment in his eyes made her catch her breath and forget all about magic numbers.
‘Bahir,’ she uttered in acknowledgement.
‘Princess,’ he said sharply on a nod before he returned his attention to sorting through the rack. She was amazed he’d managed to pry his jaw apart enough to form the word, it had been so firmly set.
The cabin attendant chatted cheerily while she settled Marina into her wide leather seat, but Marina caught not a word of it, too consumed by Bahir’s reaction, too stunned to think about anything else.
So that was what she would get—the silent treatment.
Clearly Bahir was as resentful of being in her company as she was being in his. Equally clearly, he was in no mood for small talk.
Which suited her just fine.
So long as she could eventually find the words to tell him he was a father.
He tried to focus on the business magazine he’d selected from the rack but the words were meaningless scrawl, the article indecipherable, and he tossed it aside. Hopeless. It was no different from the online journal he’d been reading since he’d boarded the jet in Nice, his attention riveted not by the words he was attempting to read but by a simmering resentment that bubbled faster and more furious the closer the plane got to Al-Jirad. Why the hell had he agreed to this again? He still wasn’t sure he had agreed. But Zoltan had called and said she’d agreed to go with him and he knew he would have looked weak if he’d refused again.
Much better to look like it didn’t matter a bit.
Except that it did.
Because right now, as the attendant stowed Marina’s hand luggage and made her comfortable, and as he tried to pretend she wasn’t there, his focus was still held captive by the images captured on his retinas—those damned eyes, her pupils large, catlike and seductive. The jut of her collarbones in the vee of the open neck of the fitted ruffled shirt that flirted over her curves, and the jewel-studded belt hugging her swaying hips.
He growled, his nostrils flaring. He picked up his laptop again, determined not to give in, trying to find focus instead of distraction. Because, if it wasn’t enough that his mind was filled with images of her, now he could smell her. He remembered that scent, a blend of jasmine, frangipani and warm, wanton woman. He remembered the taste of it on her glistening, sweat-slickened skin. He remembered pressing his face to the curve of her throat and drinking it in as he plunged into her sweet depths.
He shifted in his seat and slammed the computer shut as the plane started to taxi to the runway. How long was the flight to Pisa—three hours? Four? He growled again.
Too long, however long it took.
How did you find the words to tell someone he was a father? Not easily, especially when that man sat across the aisle from you, rumbling and growling like a dark thundercloud. Any moment she expected to see lightning bolts issuing from his head.
And that was before she had managed to find the words.
What was she supposed to say? Excuse me, Bahir, but did I ever tell you about our son? Or, Congratulations, Bahir. You’re a father, to a three-year-old boy. It must have somehow slipped my mind …
The plane came to a halt at the start of the runway and she glanced across the aisle to where he sat, his posture closed off, his expression grim. Even though she let her gaze linger, even though she was sure he would be aware, still he refused to look her way.
And she wondered how, even if she could find the words, was she supposed to tell him about his child when he wouldn’t even look at her?
Did he hate her that much?
How much more would he hate her when he learned the truth?
The engines whined, preparing for take-off, echoing her own nerves, spun tight by his presence, and spun even tighter by the search for the words to tell him.
She closed her eyes and let the jet’s acceleration push her deeper into her seat, forcing herself to relax as the whine became a scream and then a roar as the plane launched itself and speared into the sky.
It wasn’t as though there was a rush. They had four hours of flight time and then a two-hour drive to her home in the most northern reaches of Tuscany. Why tell him now and spoil the fragile if tense cease-fire that seemed to exist between them? For he would not remain silent once he knew. He would be intolerable. Perhaps with a measure of justification. Still, why make their hours together more difficult than they already were?
No, there was plenty of time to tell him.
Later.
They were an hour into their flight when they were given the news. One hour of interminable and excruciating silence, filled with the static of all the things that were left unsaid, until the air in the cabin fairly crackled with the tension, a silence punctuated only when the smiling flight attendant came to top up their drinks or offer refreshments.
But this time she had the co-pilot with her and neither of them was smiling.
‘So fly around it,’ Bahir said after they’d delivered their grim message, too impatient for this trip to be over to tolerate delays, whatever the reason.
‘That’s not possible,’ the co-pilot explained. ‘The storm cell is tracking right into our path. And the danger is we could ice up if we try to go over. The aviation authorities are ordering everyone out of the area.’
‘So what does that mean?’ Marina asked. ‘We can’t get to Pisa at all?’
‘Not just yet. We’re putting down at the nearest airport that can take us. We’ll be beginning our descent soon. Just be prepared as we skirt the edges of this thing that it could get a bit rough. You might want to keep your seatbelts fastened.’
Bahir usually had no trouble sitting. He could sit for hours at a stretch when his luck was with him and the spinning ball might have been his to command. But right now he couldn’t sit still a moment longer.
He was up and out of his seat the moment they’d gone. God, if it wasn’t enough that he had to spend six hours in her company, now he would be forced to spend even more time. He raked clawed fingers through his hair. And with her sitting there, her legs tucked up beneath her and those eyes—those damned eyes—looking like an invitation to sin.
‘The co-pilot suggested keeping your seatbelt fastened.’
He ignored her as much as it was possible to do. That was the problem with planes, he realised. There was not enough room to pace and to distance yourself from the thing that was bugging you, and right now he sorely needed to pace and find distance from the woman who was bugging him.
Besides, any possible turbulence outside the plane was no match for what was going on inside him. He turned and strode back the other way, covering the length of the cabin in a dozen purposeful but ultimately futile strides, for there was no easing of the tightness in his gut, no respite.
Suddenly he understood how a captive lion felt, boxed and caged and unable to find a way out no matter how many times it turned to retrace its steps, no matter how hard it searched.
‘The co-pilot said—’
‘I know what he said!’ he spat, not needing input from the likes of her.
‘Oh, good. Because I thought maybe you’d developed a hearing problem. I should have realised it was a problem with your powers of comprehension.’
‘Oh, I’ve got a problem all right, and it begins and ends with you.’
She blinked up at him, feigning innocence. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
Suddenly the turbulence inside him exploded. He wheeled around and clamped his hands on the arms of the chair either side of her, his face occupying the space hers had been just moments before. He almost grunted his satisfaction, because he liked the way she’d jumped and pressed herself as far back as she could in the chair. He liked knowing he’d taken her by surprise. And, strangely, he liked knowing she wasn’t as unaffected by his presence as she made out. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’
Inches from his own, those rich caramel eyes opened wide enough until they were big enough to lose yourself in. He watched them, knowing the dangers, watching their swirling depths as she tried to come up with an answer. He’d lost himself in those eyes once before, lost himself in their promises and their persuasion. But that was before, and for all their seductive power he sure as hell wouldn’t let that happen again, no matter what pleasures they promised.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He shook his head, not believing. ‘Then maybe I should spell it out for you. I’m talking about being stuck here—you and me. I expressly told Zoltan I wouldn’t do this. I told him there was no way you would agree. And yet here we find ourselves, together. How did that happen, do you suppose? Unless you agreed to it. And I have to ask myself, what possible reason could you have for doing that? What were you thinking?’
She tried to hide her nervous swallow, but he missed nothing of the tiny tilt of her chin and the movement in her throat. He had trained himself to spot the tiniest shift in facial expression or body language of his opponents, a skill that had stood him in good stead through many a poker game. He knew she was hiding something. Did she imagine that there was a chance for them again? Did she think that, because he’d accompanied Zoltan and the others to Mustafa’s camp, it meant something? That he was ready to take her back?
She looked up at him, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘You think I really want to be here, imprisoned thousands of feet above the earth with you and your black mood?’
Her words were no kind of answer, and he would have told her, only he was suddenly distracted by a stray strand of hair that looped close to the corner of one of those eyes. ‘Somebody must have agreed,’ he rumbled as he raised one hand. ‘And it sure as hell wasn’t me.’ She flinched as his fingers neared, holding her breath as he gently swept the hair back, surprised when he felt a familiar tremor under her skin, disturbed even more when he felt a corresponding sizzle under his own.
Abruptly he pushed himself away and stood with his back to her, rubbing his hands together to rid himself of the unwelcome sensation. ‘Don’t you think I’ve got better things to do than waste my time babysitting a spoilt princess?’
‘I absolutely agree,’ she said behind him. ‘I’m quite sure there’s a casino just waiting to be fleeced by the famous Sheikh of Spin. I can’t imagine how you managed to drag yourself away.’
His hands stilled. He didn’t need any reminders of why he wasn’t still at the roulette table. He turned slowly. ‘Be careful, princess.’
She jerked up her chin. ‘That’s the second time you’ve addressed me by my title. Is it so long that you’ve forgotten my name? Or can you just not bring yourself to utter it?’
‘Is it so long that you’ve forgotten that I said I never wanted to see you again?’
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you turned up outside my tent that night.’
‘Is that what this is about? Why should that change anything? Or were you merely hoping to thank me?’
‘Thank you? For what?’
‘For rescuing you from Mustafa.’
‘Oh, you kid yourself, Bahir. You weren’t there for me. You were along for the ride, only there to have fun with your band of merry men. A little boys’ own adventure to whet your taste for excitement. So don’t expect me to get down on bended knees to thank you.’
A sudden memory of her on bended knee assailed him, temporarily shorting his brain, just as her mouth and wicked tongue had done back then. Not that she’d been thanking him exactly that time. More like tasting him. Laving him with her tongue. Devouring him. In fact, if he remembered correctly, he’d been the one to thank her …
He shook his head, wondering if he would ever be rid of those images, knowing he would miss them in the dead of sleepless nights if they were gone. But that minor concession didn’t mean he welcomed their presence now while he was trying to make a point. ‘I wouldn’t want your thanks anyway. If I did anything that night, it was out of loyalty to Zoltan and my brothers. It was duty, nothing more.’
‘How very noble of you.’
‘I don’t care what you call it. Just don’t go thinking that I’ve changed my mind about what I said back then. You’d be kidding yourself if you did. What we had is over.’
‘You really think you have to tell me that? I have no trouble remembering what you said. Likewise, I have no trouble believing you mean it now, just as you meant it then. And, for the record, it is you who are kidding yourself if you think I am insane enough to want you to change your mind. After what you said to me, after the way you treated me, I wouldn’t take you back if you were the last man left on earth!’
He sat back down in his seat. ‘So we understand each other, this is merely duty. Of the most unpleasant kind.’
Her eyes glared across at him as he buckled up. ‘Finally you say something I can agree with.’
Her agreement offered no satisfaction. His mood only mirrored the darkening sky as the plane descended judderingly through the clouds, icy rain clawing at the windows, the tempestuous winds tearing at the wings—and a sick feeling in his gut that, whatever the weather, things were not about to improve.
CHAPTER THREE
THE plane touched down somewhere on the coast of western Turkey at a small airport not far from where the rocky shoreline met the sea. It was almost dark now, although still only mid-afternoon, and they emerged from the plane into a howling wind that tore at their clothes and sucked the words from their mouths. A waiting car whisked Marina and Bahir through the immigration formalities before surprising Marina by heading away from the airport.
She flicked her windswept hair back from her face and looked longingly back at the airport. ‘Shouldn’t we stay with the plane?’ she asked, concerned. ‘So we’re ready to take off when the weather clears?’
Was it the lashing from the rain that had eroded her harsh demeanour and left her softer, almost vulnerable? Whatever. With her long black hair in wild disarray around her face, and with her eyelashes still spiked with the air’s muggy atmosphere, she looked younger. Softer. Almost like she had when she’d woken sleepily from a night of love-making. All that was missing was the smile and the hungry glint in her eyes as she’d eagerly climbed astride him for more.
‘Didn’t you hear the pilot’s last announcement, princess?’ Bahir asked, dragging his thoughts away from misspent days and nights long gone. This was the reason he’d never wanted to see her again. Because he knew she’d make him remember all the things he would never again enjoy. ‘Airports all over Europe are closed. We are not going anywhere tonight.’
‘But my children … I promised them I would be home tonight.’
Bahir looked away. He wasn’t taken in by her sudden maternal concern for her children. It was the first time she had even mentioned them and, if they meant so much to her, why had she left them at home in the first place? Maybe in hindsight it might have been the right thing to do this time, given how she had lumbered into the path of Mustafa, but she could not have known that would happen. And surely they had deserved to be at their own aunt’s wedding if not the coronation of Zoltan himself?
‘We leave at first light,’ he said, already looking forward to it. ‘You will be home soon enough.’ Though never soon enough for him.
She was silent as they passed through a small town that was seemingly abandoned as everyone had taken cover from the storm, the shutters of windows all closed, awnings flapping and snapping in the wind.
‘So where are we going now? Why couldn’t we stay with the plane?’
‘The crew are staying with the plane. It is, after all, Al-Jiradi property. They will not leave it.’
‘So we must?’
‘There is a small hotel on the coast. Very exclusive. You will be more comfortable there.’
‘And you?’
‘This is not about my comfort.’
If there was comfort in this hotel, it was proving elusive to find. There was luxury, it was true: the plushest silk carpets, the finest examples of the weaver’s art. The most lavish of fixtures and fittings, from the colourful Byzantine tiles to the gold taps set with emeralds the size of quails’ eggs.
But comfort was nowhere to be found. Just as it was impossible to sleep. Even now, when it seemed the worst of the storm had passed, lightning still flashed intermittently through the richly embroidered drapes, filling the room with an electric white light and bleaching the room of colour. But the atmosphere in the room remained heavy with the storm’s passing, and the soft bed and starched bed-linen felt stifling. She looked longingly at the doors that led onto the terrace overlooking the sea.
Ever since they’d arrived she’d locked herself away in her suite, wanting desperately to find distance from that man. He’d been impossible on the plane, sullen and resentful at first, openly explosive when the news had come of their flight’s delay, as if it had been all her fault.
Maybe it was. She had been the one to agree to him seeing her safely home, but it wasn’t for the reason he was thinking—that she somehow imagined that he might change his mind, that he might take her back.
What kind of arrogance led a man to believe a woman would want him back after the things he’d said to her?
Did he think she had no pride?
No, the man was unbearable.
So she’d taken refuge in her room, savouring her privacy and her time alone to call Catriona and explain about the delay. She took her time to talk to each of her children and tell them she would soon be home to hug and kiss them and tickle their tummies until they collapsed with laughter again.
It had seemed such a good idea to lock herself away like this while the storm had raged all around. But like the worst of the storm, hours had passed, and still she could not sleep. Still, she could not make sense of the war going on inside herself.
For she hated him, didn’t she? Hated him for the way he had amputated her from his life as quickly and decisively as if he’d been slicing a piece of fruit—as if she had never meant more than that to him. Yet still one sight of him and some primal, some base, bodily response kicked in and she had been wet with wanting him. Even now her body ached with need, as if he had flicked some kind of switch and turned her heartbeat into some kind of pulsing drumbeat of desire.
What kind of woman did that make her?
Was she mad? Or simply wanton? The party princess out for nothing but a good time and not caring who it was who gave it to her.
God, it was hot! The mattress seemed to cocoon her, trapping the heat of her thoughts and slowly roasting her in them. She pushed herself up and a bead of sweat trickled from her hair down her neck.
So much for a refuge. All she’d succeeded in doing was exchanging one kind of prison for another. And, in a few short hours from now, she’d be back on the plane—with him—and the torture would continue.
Another flash of lightning lit up the room, and her gaze went to the doors again. There was a chance they could be opened now, without being blown off their hinges or she being blown away herself. And maybe it would be cooler outside on her terrace. Maybe the wind would tear away some of the heat from her overheated skin, and maybe the air might have a chance to cool her sheets while she was gone.
She slid from the bed and reached for her gown, only remembering then that it was still tucked somewhere deep in her luggage because she had thought the weather too warm to need it. She thought for a moment of the hotel robe waiting neatly on a hanger in the closet, but the thought of towelling against her skin when she was already so hot …
She hesitated only a fraction of a moment. She didn’t really need it. It was three in the morning, and she was only stepping onto the darkened terrace. She wouldn’t be outside for long, and she so craved the feel of cool air and rain on her skin.
The wind had dropped but still she had to hang onto the door lest it slam open. She snicked it firmly closed behind her, knowing the sound would not carry over the waves crashing on the nearby shore, the wind already whipping her hair around her face and sending swirls of air up the slit in her long nightie, brushing against her legs and fanning against her heated core.
She shivered, not with cold from a sprinkling of rain, but with the wind’s delicious caress against her skin, and she turned into the onshore wind, pushing against it until she reached the balustrade overlooking the sea.
This was more like it. The shoreline was thick with dancing foam, bright white against the inky black of sea, the tang of salt heavy in the moisture-laden air. In the distance the storm rumbled and lit up the world for an instant at a time.
Then a wild wave crashed on the rocks below and she was hit with the spray, the wind turning the droplets icy on her skin.
She gasped as it hit, her body electric and alive from her head to her toes, and she flung her arms out wide and laughed into the wind with the sheer thrill of it. It was wild. It was exhilarating. And she felt free, just like she’d always yearned to be.
Like she had been once, before Bahir had stolen her heart.
He watched her from his doorway, where he had been standing for more than an hour watching the storm boil and simmer away. At first he had not heard her, whatever sound she made whipped away by the wind or lost under the crash of the sea, but then he had caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, a vision of a woman in a long white nightgown. But not just any woman. Marina. A ghost from his past, moving across the terrace with bare arms and bare feet while her black hair followed, untamed, blowing riotous and free.
He watched and grew hard as the nightdress was plastered against her body by the wild wind and the rain, against her lush breasts and the slight swell of her belly, against the sweet curve of her mound. Plastered hard against all the places he remembered, and plastered so close that she might not have been wearing anything at all.
The wind tore at her gown, peeling the fabric high around her legs, and he grew still harder wondering if she still never wore anything under her nightgown.
He growled. Why would she wear a white nightgown? So very virginal and innocent.
Who was she trying to kid?
She was nowhere near a virgin. She was a sorceress. She was wanton in bed, hungry and insatiable. She was sinuous and lithe, moved and twisted with a dancer’s grace, and he knew he should go. He should leave now, while he had the chance, before he was tempted to do something he might regret.
But he could not force his feet to move. He could not turn away. Instead he stayed and watched while she was hit by the spray of a wave crashing below; watched while she flung her arms out wide and laughed as brazenly as the weather, watched while her damp white gown turned transparent—and he knew that he had no choice.
Knew he had to go to her.
Her gown was soaked with spray and clinging to her, her hair blowing wild where it wasn’t stuck to her scalp and skin, and she knew that soon she would feel sticky with salt and think herself insane for doing something so utterly reckless when she should have been trying to sleep.
But for now she felt more alive than she had in months. More awake. More liberated.
She spun around, lifting her sodden hair high to cool the back of her neck as another wave sent spray flying, when lightning illuminated the terrace and told her in a chill bolt of realisation that she was not alone.
‘Bahir,’ she said, dropping her arms and backing away into the spray, the sound wrenched from her mouth before even she could hear it. But her body needed to hear no alarm. Her body was already on high alert, her breasts straining and peaked against the fine wet fabric of her gown, her thighs tingling with urgency and her feet primed to flee.
She might have tried to run, but his expression stilled her feet, his face a tortured mask, as if he’d battled his inner demons and lost. His eyes held her spellbound, dark and fathomless in a shadowed face, while his white shirt clung to him in patches, turning it the colour of the golden skin that lay beneath.
She swallowed, tasting the salt of the sea, or was it of his flesh? For even here she could feel the heat rolling off him as his body called to hers, in all the ways it had done in the past, promising all the pleasures of the past and more.
‘Why?’ she asked softly in a lull in the wind, wanting to be sure, wary of trusting the chemistry between them.
‘You can’t sleep either.’ He answered with a statement, without really answering at all.
‘I was hot.’
His eyes raked over her, slowly, languidly, and the heat she saw there stoked a fire under her skin that even the effect of the night air on her wet gown could not whip away. As she looked at how his white shirt clung to his skin, moulding to one dark nipple, she realised how she must look to him—exposed. As good as naked. She wrapped her arms around her torso in a futile attempt to cover herself.
She had never had reason for modesty with Bahir. There was perhaps no reason for modesty now. He had seen it all before and more. But she was different now. She was a mother, and pregnancy had left its inevitable marks on her body. Would he notice? Would he care? He had no right to care and she had no need to wonder—yet still …
Then his eyes found hers again and he simply said, ‘I feel it too. Hot.’ And she knew he wasn’t talking about the weather.
He took a step closer, and then another, so she had to raise her face to look up at him.
‘You should go,’ he said.
‘I should,’ she agreed, because it was right, and because to stay would be reckless. The last thing she needed was to be trapped outside on a storm-tossed terrace with a man she had never stopped lusting after, even when she had tried to hate him so very much. Even when she knew she should.
But her feet didn’t move, even when the wind pushed at her back, slapping the wet gown against her legs, urging her to get out while she still had time.
‘You should go,’ he repeated, his voice gravel-rough against her skin. ‘Except …’
She tilted her head up at him, her senses buzzing, every nerve in her body buzzing. ‘Except what?’
‘Except, I don’t want you to.’
She swallowed and closed her eyes, one part of her wishing she’d already left so she’d never have heard him utter those words. The other part of her, that wanton part of her that belonged to him for ever, rejoicing that he had.
‘I want you,’ he said, and she started and opened her eyes as she felt his hands lift her jaw and cradle her face.
Suddenly it was much too late to run, even if she could have recalled a fraction of all the good reasons why she should.
When she looked up at him it was to see him gazing down at her with such a look of longing that it charged her soul, for it had been so long since someone had looked at her that way, and that person had been Bahir. Nobody had ever looked at her the way Bahir had.
But that was before …
‘This is a mistake,’ she said, some remaining shred of logic warning her as his hand drifted towards her face.
‘Does this,’ he said as his fingers traced across her skin and she forgot how to breathe, ‘feel like a mistake?’ And she sighed into his touch, for electricity accompanied his fingers, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake, just like his touch had that moment on the plane when he had reached out to her brow and left her sizzling with the contact.
Maybe not right now, she thought, in answer to his question. But tomorrow or next week or even next month she would realise this was all kinds of mistake.
And then his hand curved around her neck, gentling her closer to his waiting mouth. Some mistakes, she rationalised, were meant to be made.
The wind pounded at her back, and she let it push her closer to him, meeting his lips with her own and sighing into his mouth with that first, precious touch.
It was like coming home, only better, because it was to a home she’d never expected to find again. A home she’d thought lost for ever.
‘Bahir,’ she whispered on his lips, recognising the taste and scent and texture of him, welcoming him.
For one hitched, exquisite moment the tenuous meeting of their mouths was enough, but only for a moment. Until he groaned and pulled her against him, his mouth opening to hers, sucking her into his kiss.
She went willingly, just as her hands went to the hard wall of his chest, drinking in his hard-packed body with her fingers, pressing her nails into his flesh as if proving he was real, as if proving this was really happening.
He was real, her fingers told her, joyously, deliciously, delectably real.
And so very hot.
His breath, his mouth, his lips on her throat, the flesh under her hands—all of him so hot. Yet when his hand cupped her breast it was she who felt like she would combust with his fingers kneading her flesh, his thumb stroking her hard, straining nipple.
Then his mouth replaced his hand, drawing her breast into his mouth, laving her nipple through the thin gown, and silk had never felt so good against her skin.
A burst of sea spray shattered over them. The clouds parted to a watery moon and she clung to his head in order to stay upright and not collapse under the impact of his sensual onslaught.
But when his hands slid down her back and cupped her behind, his fingers perilously close to the apex of her thighs and the heated, pulsing core of her existence, she knew her knees would not last much longer. ‘Bahir!’ she cried, but he had already anticipated her need, knowing what she asked and what she needed instinctively, as he always had.
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her long and hard, until she was dizzy and his own breathing ragged when he pulled himself away enough to speak.
‘One night,’ he said, his voice thick with want. ‘Just this night. That’s all I ask.’
She knew what he was telling her—that he hadn’t changed his mind, that he didn’t want her as a permanent fixture in his life and that he would never want her love—but he was offering her this night. Or, at least, what was left of it.
Would she take it?
If she were stronger—if she was more like her younger sister, Aisha, who had tamed her own potent sheikh—she’d tell him what he could do with his one night. But she wasn’t that strong. And the choice was so unfair.
She could have this one night with him, and sacrifice her principles and her pride, or she could have none. But her pride and her principles would never make her heartbeat trip with just one glance or one gentle touch. They could not take her to paradise and back and all the wondrous places in between. And what were pride and principles when compared to paradise?
One excruciatingly short night of paradise. A few short hours before they had to rise and return to the airport and continue their flight.
Was it worth it?
Oh yes.
And tomorrow she would tell him about their son—and it wouldn’t matter if he never wanted to see her again, because she would have this one stolen night to remember.
She looked up into his eyes and could see the impatience there, the urgency and the crippling, demanding need that so echoed her own.
‘Just one night,’ she agreed, and felt herself swept up into his arms as if she were weightless.
He carried her to his suite at the opposite end of the terrace from hers, and laid her reverentially on a bed that looked just as storm-tossed as the one she had left. The covers were piled in disarray on the floor, the pillows thumped to within an inch of their existence. It thrilled her that she might be responsible for at least some of the heat that had kept him from sleep.
He stood at the side of the bed, his eyes never leaving her as he purposefully unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it to the floor, his damp, golden skin glowing in the thin moonlight. She held her breath as his trousers soon joined it, then even the scrap of silk he called underwear was gone, and he was gloriously naked before her, his erection swaying proud and free.
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Trish Morey
The winner takes all! When infamous billionaire gambler Bahir Al-Qadir is forced to protect his ex-lover, Marina Peshwah, it seems Lady Luck has finally deserted him… He’s tried to forget the spoilt princess, but even the relentless heat of the desert has failed to burn the intoxicating image of her from his mind.Now he’s about to discover that their passion left them with more than memories… Marina is once again at the mercy of the man she loves to hate. She may hold the winning card, but with such high stakes this proud sheikh will go all in to claim his heir!
The wind tore at her gown, peeling the fabric high around her legs, and Bahir wondered if she still never wore anything under her nightgown.
He growled. Why would she wear a white nightgown? So very virginal and innocent.
Who was she trying to kid?
Marina was nowhere near a virgin. She was a sorceress. He should leave now, while he had the chance, before he was tempted to do something he might regret.
But he could not force his feet to move. He could not turn away. Instead he stayed and watched while she was hit by the spray of a wave crashing below, watched while she flung her arms out wide and laughed as brazenly as the weather, watched while her damp white gown turned transparent—and knew that he had no choice.
Knew he had to go to her.
DESERT BROTHERS
Bound by duty, undone by passion!
These sheikhs may not be brothers by blood,
but they are united by the code of the desert.
Their power and determination is legendary and
unchallenged—until two beautiful Jemeyan princesses
threaten their self-control …
In Trish Morey’s exciting duet searing passion and
sizzling drama are about to be unleashed!
In May you met:
Zoltan and Aisha
Will this barbarian sheikh tame
his defiant virgin princess and claim his crown?
This month meet:
Bahir and Marina
Infamous billionaire Bahir Al-Qadir risks it all in a
high-stakes game of love!
About the Author
TRISH MOREY is an Australian who’s also spent time living and working in New Zealand and England. Now she’s settled with her husband and four young daughters in a special part of South Australia, surrounded by orchards and bushland and visited by the occasional koala and kangaroo. With a lifelong love of reading, she penned her first book at the age of eleven, after which life, career and a growing family kept her busy until once again she could indulge her desire to create characters and stories—this time in romance. Having her work published is a dream come true.
Visit Trish at her website, www.trishmorey.com
Recent titles by the same author:
DUTY AND THE BEAST (Desert Brothers) SECRETS OF CASTILLO DEL ARCO FIANCÉE FOR ONE NIGHT THE HEIR FROM NOWHERE
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Sheikh’s
Last Gamble
Trish Morey
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
BAHIR Al-Qadir hated losing. For a man barred entry to more than half the world’s casinos for routinely and systematically breaking the bank, losing did not come often or easily. Now, as he watched yet another pile of his chips being swept from the roulette table, the bitter taste of loss soured his mouth and a black cloud of despair hung low over his head.
For three nights now he had endured this run of black fortune and still there seemed no end to it. And not even the knowledge that roulette was a game designed to give the house the edge was any compensation. Not when he was used to winning. How ironic that Lady Luck had deserted him now, just when he had been counting on a stint at a casino to improve his mood. He might have laughed at the irony, except right now he was in no mood for laughing.
Still, he managed to dredge up a smile as placed his last pile of chips on a black square, and glanced the way of the croupier to let him know he was ready. So what that he had already dropped the equivalent of a small nation’s gross national product? He was nothing if not a consummate professional. The back of his neck might be damp with perspiration and his stomach roiling, but he’d be damned if any of the vultures around the table watching him come undone would read how bleak he felt right now on his face or in his body language.
The croupier called for any more bets even when he would have known there would be none. One by one the other players had dropped out, content to watch the unthinkable, to watch Bahir—the famed ‘Sheikh of Spin’—lose, until there remained only him and the numbered wheel.
With a well-rehearsed flick of one wrist, the croupier sent the wheel spinning; a flick of the other sending the ball hurtling in the opposite direction.
A feeble and battered thread of hope surged anew. Surely this time? Surely?
Bahir’s gut clenched as the ball spun. The damp at his collar formed a bead that ran down his back under his shirt. And, despite it all, he forced his smile to grow more nonchalant, his stance more relaxed.
‘Rien ne va plus!’ the croupier announced unnecessarily, for nobody looked like making another bet. Everybody was watching the ball bounce and skip over the numbered pockets as the wheel slowed beneath it.
Finally the ball lost momentum and caught in one of the pockets, fighting momentum and bouncing once, twice, before settling into another and being whisked suddenly in the other direction. He knew exactly how it felt. He’d felt hope being ripped right out of him in much the same way for three nights running now. Surely this time, on his last bet of the night, his luck would change? Surely this time he might regain some tiny shred of success to take with him, to show him his gift hadn’t abandoned him completely?
Then the wheel slowed to a crawl and with sickening realisation he saw: red, the colour rendering the number irrelevant.
It was done. He had lost.
Again.
He thanked the croupier, as if he had dropped no more than the price of a cup of coffee, ignoring the shocked murmurings of the onlookers, intending to walk out of here with his head held high, even if he felt like dropping it into his hands. What the hell was wrong with him?
Bahir didn’t lose.
Not like this. The last time he had suffered a run like this …
He pulled his thoughts to an abrupt halt. He wasn’t going down that path. The last thing he needed to think about on a night such as this was her.
She was the damned reason he was here, after all.
‘Monsieur, s’il vous plait,’ came a smooth-as-silk voice alongside him, and he turned to see the shark-faced Marcel, the host the casino had assigned to him tonight. The perfect host up until now, keeping both his distance and his expression free of the smugness he was no doubt feeling, Marcel had meantime ensured that he had wanted for nothing during his stint at the table. ‘Sheikh Al-Qadir, the evening does not have to end here. If you wish, the casino would be only too happy to extend you credit to prolong your entertainment.’
Bahir read his face. The man’s bland expression might tell him nothing, but there was an eagerness in his grey eyes that made his skin crawl. So they did not think he was done with his losing streak yet? A momentary challenge flared in his blood, only to be quashed by the knowledge that all he’d done here since he’d entered this establishment three days ago was lose. So maybe they were right. Which gave him all the more reason to leave now.
Besides, he didn’t need their money. He had won plenty of that over the years not to be worried about dropping the odd million, or even ten for that matter. It wasn’t the money he cared about. It was losing that did his head in. It pounded now, the drums in his head beating out the letters of the word: loser. He smiled in spite of it. ‘Thank you, but no.’
He was halfway across the room before Marcel caught up with him. ‘Surely the night is still young?’
Bahir looked around. A person could certainly think that here. Locked away under the crystal chandeliers, surrounded by luxurious furnishings and even more luxurious-looking women, and without a hint of a window to indicate the time of day, it was possible to lose all concept of time. He glanced at the watch on his wrist, realising that, even leaving now, daylight would beat him to bed. ‘For some, perhaps.’
Still his host persisted. No doubt he would be amply rewarded if he hung onto his prize catch a while longer. ‘We will see you this evening, then, Sheikh Al-Qadir?’
‘Maybe.’ Maybe not.
‘I will arrange a limousine to collect you from your hotel. Perhaps you will have time for dinner and a show beforehand? On the house, of course. Shall we say, eight o’clock?’
Bahir stopped then, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to produce enough pain to drown out the thunder in his head. Not for the first time was he grateful he hadn’t accepted the casino’s oh-so-generous offer of accommodation in-house. There were advantages in turning down some of the casino’s high-roller benefits. The ability to come and go as he pleased, for one.
He was just about to tell Marcel where he could shove his limousine and his show when he saw it—a flash of colour across the room draped over honey-coloured flesh, and a coil of ebony hair held by a diamond clip—and for a moment he was reminded of another time, another casino.
And, damn it all, of another woman; one he had come here expressly to forget. He shook his head, wanting to rid himself of the memories, feeling the blackness inside of him swell to bursting point, feeling the rush of heat from a suddenly pounding heart.
‘Shiekh Al-Qadir?’
‘Go away, Marcel,’ he snarled, and this time the pinstriped shark took the hint and with a hasty goodnight withdrew into the sea of gowns and dinner suits.
It wasn’t her, he realised on a second glance, it was nothing like her. This woman’s face was all square jaw and heavy brow, her lips like two red slugs framing her mouth, that honey skin more like leather. And, of course, how could it have been her? He’d left her with her sister in Al-Jirad and surely not even someone as irresponsible as she was would abandon her family so soon after the trouble they had all gone to to rescue her from Mustafa?
Then again, knowing Marina …
He cursed under his breath as he headed for the exit. What the hell was wrong with him tonight? The last thing he needed to think about was her.
No, that was wrong. The last thing he needed to think about was her honey skin, and how she’d still drawn him like a magnet, in spite of the passage of time and despite the hate-filled chasm that lay between them. Yet she’d stepped out of that desert tent and he’d still felt the tug in every cell of his body. What was it now—three years? More? Yet still she’d managed to make him hard with just one glance from those siren’s eyes, a glance that had turned frosty and cold the instant she’d realized just who one of her rescuers was.
Still she’d moved like liquid silk, mounting the horse like a natural, her limbs as slender as he recalled, her body still willowy slim despite time and the two children he knew she’d borne.
He might be on the losing streak from hell, but he would bet everything he had that her satin skin was just as smooth as he remembered it to be, whether it be under his hands or in the long slide of her legs wrapped around him.
Curse the woman!
He would not think of her or her long limbs and satin skin! There was no point to it. She was trouble, past or present. She was the worst kind of gamble, the wager lost before the wheel was even spun.
A doorman nodded and bade him a good evening as he passed, even though the night sky outside was already softening to grey. He looked to the cool morning air for the balm it should have been to his overheated skin and fractured nerves, searching for the promise of a new day.
Instead he felt only frustration. He rolled his shoulders on an exhale, protesting the unfamiliar stiffness in his back and neck. When before had his muscles ever been bound so tightly? When before had his spirits ever felt so bleak?
But he already knew the answer to that question. He didn’t want to go there either.
He curled into a waiting limousine and tugged his bow tie loose as he sagged against the upholstery, suddenly weary of the world, suddenly restless with his life. He’d thought the casino would liven his spirits. Instead, his luck had let him down and ground him further into the mire.
He looked vacantly out of the window, past the palm-lined esplanade, over the white-fringed sea. Monaco was beautiful, there was no doubt, and justifiably a magnet for the rich and famous and those who craved to be. But right now Monaco and the entire south of France seemed stale, empty and utterly pointless.
No, there was nothing for him here.
He needed to get away, but to where? Las Vegas? No, that would be pointless. Casinos in the States offered even better odds for the house. And he was still unwelcome in Macau after his last winning streak.
An image formed unbidden in his mind, a recent memory of desert dunes and a golden sun, heavy, hot and framed between palm trees as it dipped inexorably lower towards the shimmering horizon.
The desert?
He sat up straighter in his seat, his interest piqued, though wondering if he was mad in the next moment. His recent visit to Al-Jirad had reunited him with his three old friends, Zoltan, Kadar and Rashid. It had also brought two brief forays into the desert. But neither of them had afforded more than a taste of the desert as they had raced to retrieve first the Princess Aisha and then her sister, Marina, from the clutches of the snivelling Mustafa.
The first excursion he had found exhilarating, speeding with his three friends in a race against time across the dunes. The second he’d found less so, although the horses had been just as willing, the company just as entertaining and the sunsets and dawns just as magnificent. It was seeing Marina again after all these years that had spoilt that trip for him.
Of all the women in the world, how unfortunate that Zoltan had to marry her sister, the one woman he had sworn never to see again in his life. Even more unfortunate that she could still make him hard with just one look.
Maybe a return visit to the desert would cure him. Maybe the desert sun would sear her from his brain, and the crisp desert night air clear all thoughts of her once and for all.
And maybe not just any desert. Maybe it was just time to go home.
Home.
How long since he had thought of the desert as his home?
How long since he’d called any place home?
But why shouldn’t he go now? There was nowhere he needed to be. He had no one to please but himself. And this time he could take the time to drink in the colour and the texture of the desert, take the time to linger and to observe and absorb its sheer power, and breathe in air turned pristine under the heat of the desert sun.
But, more than that, out in the desert there would be no flashes of colour across a crowded room; no glimpses of flesh to remind him of another time and another woman he wanted to forget.
He breathed deeply, content for the first time in days, making a mental note to check flights and make enquiries after he had slept. He was glad this run of nights was behind him. Surely now this run of bad luck must be over too? For right now it could not get much worse.
The mobile phone vibrated in his pocket. He hauled it out, curious who would be calling him at this early hour, less surprised when he checked the caller ID. He pressed the phone to his ear. ‘Zoltan, what can I do for you?’
He listened while the grey of the dawn sky peeled away to pink and his run of bad luck took a turn for the worse.
CHAPTER TWO
‘NO.’
‘Bahir,’ his friend insisted, ‘just listen.’
‘Whatever it is, I don’t need to hear it. The answer is still no.’
‘But she can’t travel home by herself. I won’t allow it.’
‘I thought Mustafa was cooling his heels in prison.’
‘He is, but I made the mistake of underestimating him once before. I won’t do the same again. So long as there’s a possibility someone out there is still loyal to him, I’m not taking any chances with Aisha’s sister’s safety.’
Bahir raked one hand through his hair. ‘So get Kadar to do it.’
‘Kadar has urgent business in Istanbul.’
He grunted. ‘How convenient. Rashid, then.’
‘You know Rashid. He’s disappeared. Nobody knows where or when he’ll show up again.’
He had to be dreaming. Bahir pinched his nose until sparks shot behind his eyelids but there was no waking up. This nightmare was real. ‘Look, Zoltan, it doesn’t have to be one of us! What’s wrong with getting one of the palace guards to babysit her?’
‘They’re busy.’ A pause. ‘Besides, Aisha specifically asked that you do it.’
He hesitated. He’d liked what he saw of Zoltan’s new bride. Although he’d had his doubts at first, now he could not imagine a better woman as a match for his friend. In any other circumstances, he would not hesitate to do whatever she asked of him. But Aisha had no idea what she was asking of him. ‘Aisha was wrong.’
‘But you know Marina.’
‘Which is exactly the reason I’m saying no.’
‘Bahir—’
‘No. Isn’t it enough that I agreed to come with you to rescue her? Don’t push me, Zoltan. Why don’t you do it yourself, if you’re so God damned keen on her having an escort home?’
‘Bahir,’ came the hesitant voice of his friend at the end of the line. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing is wrong!’ Everything is wrong. ‘Listen, Zoltan, we broke up for a reason. Marina hates me and, when it all comes down to it, I’m not that overly fond of her. She might now be your sister-in-law, but you don’t know her like I do. She’s as irresponsible as they come, the original party girl who’s never done a thing for anyone else. She’s spoilt and headstrong, and if she isn’t given exactly what she wants she goes out and takes it anyway, regardless of the consequences. And, if that’s not enough, she’s got the morals of an alley cat and the litter to prove it. I tell you now, Zoltan, I am not going back there.’
‘God, Bahir, I’m not asking you to marry her! All you have to do is make sure she gets home safely.’
‘And I’m telling you to find someone else.’
There was silence at the end of the line. A brooding silence that did nothing to encourage Bahir to think he was swaying his friend’s opinion. ‘You know, Bahir,’ his friend said at last. ‘If I didn’t know better …’
Bahir felt like growling. ‘What?’
‘Well, anyone who didn’t know you better might actually think you were actually—worried—about spending time with Marina.’
‘Are you suggesting I’m afraid?’
‘Are you?’
‘You just don’t get it, Zoltan. Even if I agreed to take her, there is no way this side of hell freezing over that she’d agree to come with me. Didn’t you hear me say that she hates me? If you’d bothered to ask her you’d already know that.’
There was a telling pause at the end of the line and Bahir felt a glimmer of hope as he saw a way out of this madness.
‘In that case, you might try asking her. She’ll give you the same answer I have. No. If you’re so convinced she needs someone to make sure she’s safe, then you find someone else to do your babysitting.’
‘And what if she agrees?’
He laughed out loud. ‘No way. She’ll never agree. Not in a million years.’
‘And if she does, will you do it?’
‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘Okay—so, if she says no, I’ll find someone else and if she says yes, then you’ll do it?’
‘Zoltan … There’s no way …’
‘Is that a bet?’
‘She won’t say yes.’ She wouldn’t. If there was one thing in this world he could be certain of, it was that she would want to be with him even less than he wanted to be with her. Especially after the way they’d parted. ‘I know she won’t.’
‘In which case,’ Zoltan said, ‘you’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘No way!’
‘Marina!’ Aisha called as her sister jumped up from the garden seat where they’d been sitting together. ‘Just listen.’
‘There’s no point,’ she said, striding swiftly away. ‘Not if you’re not going to make sense.’
Aisha chased after her. ‘Zoltan and I don’t want you going home alone, surely you can understand that? You should have an escort. It’s the least we can do.’
‘I’ll be fine. It’s not that far.’
‘Like you thought you’d be fine on the way here too, remember?’
Marina shook her head. ‘Mustafa’s been put away. And this time I won’t go overland, okay? Put me on a private jet. Nothing can possibly go wrong.’
‘You’re going on a private jet, no question, but you’re not going alone. Not this time.’
‘Fine! So assign me a bodyguard if you must. But I will not go with that man! It was bad enough to find him waiting for me outside Mustafa’s tent. If I hadn’t known everyone was afraid for me, I would have gone right back inside again.’ And it had had nothing to do with the shivers that had skittered across her skin at finding him amongst the party of her rescuers; nothing to do with that flare of heat she had witnessed in his eyes, before they had turned hard, and as cold and unflinching as ice.
Aisha studied her sister. ‘You didn’t seem that upset when you arrived back at the palace. “A blast from the past”, you called him. I got the impression that whatever had happened in the past, it wasn’t that serious.’
Not serious. Marina flung her arms out wide, her fingers flicking the flowers of a nearby jasmine creeper in the process and sending its heady scent swirling into the air. She shook her head, reining her arms in and weaving them tightly around her midriff. ‘You were all so worried about me, and happy I was safe, how could I make a fuss? Besides, I thought it was over, that I’d never see him again. And clearly he was just as relieved himself that it was over.’
And when she saw the question in her sister’s eyes, she added, ‘Didn’t he take off for Monte Carlo that very same day? No doubt so that there was no chance he could run into me again while I was at the palace.’
‘Oh, Marina, I had no idea.’ Aisha slid a hand beneath one of her sister’s tightly bound arms and coaxed her into a walk through the fragrant garden. ‘What happened between you two?’
What hadn’t happened? Marina dropped her head, the weight of painful memories dragging her spirits with it. ‘Everything and nothing. It all came to nothing.’ She frowned. No, not nothing. She still had Chakir. ‘I was stupid. Naive. I flew too close to the sun and it’s no wonder I came crashing down.’
‘Okay. So you had an affair that ended badly, right?’
And this time it was Marina’s turn to squeeze her sister’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Aisha. I’m not making sense, I know. But you’re right. I met Bahir one night at a party—eyes across a crowded casino, the whole boring cliché, I guess.’
She looked intently at her sister, trying to make her understand. ‘But the attraction was so intense, so immediate, and I knew in that instant that we were going to spend the night together. And one night turned into a week and then a month and more, and it was reckless and passionate and didn’t look like ending. And I really thought I loved him, you know. I actually thought for one mad moment—maybe more than just one—that he was the one.’ She sighed, staring blankly into the distance. ‘But I couldn’t have been more wrong.’
‘Oh, Marina, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘How could you? It wasn’t as if I was ever home to share my news. And we seemed to have so little in common back then. You seemed content to stay in the family fold while I was continually rebelling against it. Our brothers provided the necessary heir and spare and our father made no bones about it. I figured I was surplus to requirements and so I might as well enjoy myself.’
‘A redundant princess,’ Aisha said softly to herself, remembering another time, another conversation.
‘What did you say?’
She smiled and shook her head as they resumed walking. ‘Nothing. It’s funny how different we are. But there were times I envied you your freedom and the fact you got to choose your lovers. There were days I wished I could be more like you, headstrong and rebellious, instead of bound by duty. But I guess they both have their down sides.’
‘Amen.’ Marina sighed and turned her face to the heavens. ‘And now you’re married to one of his best friends. Small world, isn’t it, when someone who has told you to get out of their life for ever suddenly turns up on your doorstep? Oh, Aisha, I can’t go with him. Don’t make me go with him!’ Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes with the pain of the past. Tears rolled down her cheeks with the complexities of the present and her fears for the future. ‘What a mess!’
‘He must have hurt you so very much.’
‘He hates me.’
‘Are you sure? He was there when they rescued you.’
‘I doubt that he wanted to be. The others would have expected it, that’s all.’
Aisha nodded. ‘It’s true they are close. Zoltan told me they were the brothers he never had. But hate you? People say things in the heat of the moment—stupid things—but they don’t mean them, not really.’
Marina shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together until she could find the words, the burden of her secret suddenly too heavy to bear. ‘Oh, he hates me. Even if he had forgotten how much, he will surely hate me when he discovers the truth.’
Aisha stopped walking and turned to her, fear in her eyes. ‘Discovers what truth?’
Marina looked at her through eyes scratchy and raw, and her soul bleaker than at any other time in her life. ‘The truth about his son.’
Her sister’s mouth opened wide. ‘Oh no, Marina, surely not? Is Chakir Bahir’s child?’
She nodded.
‘But you told everyone you didn’t know who the father was.’
Marina put a hand to her mouth. ‘I know. It was easier that way. And nobody had any trouble believing it.’
‘I’m so sorry!’
‘Don’t be. I had a reputation as a party girl and it came in handy. It made it easier to hide the truth. It was easier to pretend it didn’t matter.’
‘Even from Bahir.’
‘He has no idea.’
Aisha’s feet stilled on the path, her gaze fixed on nothing, and when she looked up at her sister Marina was afraid of what she saw in her eyes. ‘I think you need to get on that plane. With Bahir.’
Marina pulled back. ‘I won’t go with him. I can’t face him.’
‘But you have to tell him.’
‘Do I?’
‘Of course you do! You have let him know that he is a father; that he has a child.’
She shook her head. ‘He doesn’t want to know.’
‘He has a right to know. It is right that you tell him. And you must tell him. You have no choice.’
‘He won’t want to hear. He never wanted a child.’
‘Then maybe he should have thought about that.’ Aisha gave her sister’s shoulders a squeeze. ‘I’ll tell Zoltan it’s all set.’
‘No! I only told you so you would understand why I can’t see him again. I would never have told you otherwise.’
Her sister smiled, a soft and sad smile. ‘I think you told me because you already know what you have to do. You just needed to hear it from someone else.’
Knowing Aisha was right didn’t make boarding the Al-Jiradi private jet any easier. No easier at all when she’d seen the plane land and knew he was already waiting inside. How Zoltan had managed to talk Bahir into this was anybody’s guess. He would not be happy about it; of that much she was certain.
‘You can do this,’ Aisha said as she gave her older sister a final squeeze. ‘I know you can.’
Marina smiled weakly in return, wishing she believed her, and waved one last time before disappearing into the covered stairs leading to the plane. Right now her legs were so weak and her stomach so tightly wound, it felt like if it snapped she would spin right off the stairs. A fate infinitely preferable, nonetheless, to being enclosed in the cabin of an aircraft with Bahir.
But it had to be done. For more than three years she had wrestled with the question of whether to tell Bahir of Chakir’s existence. At first it had been easy to say nothing, the pain of their break-up still raw, the savagery of his declaration never to have children still uppermost in her mind. Why should Bahir be informed of his child’s existence, she’d reasoned, when he’d told her he never wanted to see her again? He would not thank her for discovering that, no matter what either of them wanted, they were bound together via the life of a child they had jointly created.
Then, when Hana had come into the world, there had been plenty to think about, and the question of Bahir’s rights to know had been easy to ignore. Suddenly mother to two fatherless children, why complicate matters with the father of only one? And Bahir had made it clear he was not a family man; he didn’t want her or a child and they certainly didn’t need him.
But she’d had reason to wonder lately as she’d watched her young son grow and turn from baby to toddler to young boy, and she’d found herself wondering what Chakir himself would want.
She swallowed back on a lump of apprehension that had lodged in the dry sandy desert that was now her throat. So despite Bahir telling her that he never wanted a child, and even though she was more than happy to accept that as his final word on the topic, maybe for the sake of their son’s wishes this would be worth it. For Chakir’s sake.
Please God, let it be worth it.
She managed a tremulous smile for the cabin attendant who welcomed her to the plane. Then she was inside the cool interior and he was there, standing with his back to her at a rack filled with magazines, seemingly oblivious to her presence. She wished she could be so oblivious to his, but she could not.
Just the sight of him was enough to make her heartbeat skip and her skin tingle while she sensed a pooling heat building between her thighs. She cursed her body’s wayward reaction and wished she could look away. Damn the man! When would she ever be able to look at him and not think of sex? After all the things he had said to her, after the way they had parted, after all the years that separated them, still he conjured pictures of tangled sheets, tangled limbs and long, hot nights filled with sin.
Then again, how was it possible not to think of sex when it was some kind of god that filled your vision? Was there some kind of formula for masculine perfection; some ratio of leg-length to height or shoulder-width to hip? Some magic number that nature had allocated at conception that marked a man for physical supremacy?
If so, this man was it, and that was just the view of his back.
He turned then, as the attendant ushered her to the seat across the aisle, and the blast of resentment in his eyes made her catch her breath and forget all about magic numbers.
‘Bahir,’ she uttered in acknowledgement.
‘Princess,’ he said sharply on a nod before he returned his attention to sorting through the rack. She was amazed he’d managed to pry his jaw apart enough to form the word, it had been so firmly set.
The cabin attendant chatted cheerily while she settled Marina into her wide leather seat, but Marina caught not a word of it, too consumed by Bahir’s reaction, too stunned to think about anything else.
So that was what she would get—the silent treatment.
Clearly Bahir was as resentful of being in her company as she was being in his. Equally clearly, he was in no mood for small talk.
Which suited her just fine.
So long as she could eventually find the words to tell him he was a father.
He tried to focus on the business magazine he’d selected from the rack but the words were meaningless scrawl, the article indecipherable, and he tossed it aside. Hopeless. It was no different from the online journal he’d been reading since he’d boarded the jet in Nice, his attention riveted not by the words he was attempting to read but by a simmering resentment that bubbled faster and more furious the closer the plane got to Al-Jirad. Why the hell had he agreed to this again? He still wasn’t sure he had agreed. But Zoltan had called and said she’d agreed to go with him and he knew he would have looked weak if he’d refused again.
Much better to look like it didn’t matter a bit.
Except that it did.
Because right now, as the attendant stowed Marina’s hand luggage and made her comfortable, and as he tried to pretend she wasn’t there, his focus was still held captive by the images captured on his retinas—those damned eyes, her pupils large, catlike and seductive. The jut of her collarbones in the vee of the open neck of the fitted ruffled shirt that flirted over her curves, and the jewel-studded belt hugging her swaying hips.
He growled, his nostrils flaring. He picked up his laptop again, determined not to give in, trying to find focus instead of distraction. Because, if it wasn’t enough that his mind was filled with images of her, now he could smell her. He remembered that scent, a blend of jasmine, frangipani and warm, wanton woman. He remembered the taste of it on her glistening, sweat-slickened skin. He remembered pressing his face to the curve of her throat and drinking it in as he plunged into her sweet depths.
He shifted in his seat and slammed the computer shut as the plane started to taxi to the runway. How long was the flight to Pisa—three hours? Four? He growled again.
Too long, however long it took.
How did you find the words to tell someone he was a father? Not easily, especially when that man sat across the aisle from you, rumbling and growling like a dark thundercloud. Any moment she expected to see lightning bolts issuing from his head.
And that was before she had managed to find the words.
What was she supposed to say? Excuse me, Bahir, but did I ever tell you about our son? Or, Congratulations, Bahir. You’re a father, to a three-year-old boy. It must have somehow slipped my mind …
The plane came to a halt at the start of the runway and she glanced across the aisle to where he sat, his posture closed off, his expression grim. Even though she let her gaze linger, even though she was sure he would be aware, still he refused to look her way.
And she wondered how, even if she could find the words, was she supposed to tell him about his child when he wouldn’t even look at her?
Did he hate her that much?
How much more would he hate her when he learned the truth?
The engines whined, preparing for take-off, echoing her own nerves, spun tight by his presence, and spun even tighter by the search for the words to tell him.
She closed her eyes and let the jet’s acceleration push her deeper into her seat, forcing herself to relax as the whine became a scream and then a roar as the plane launched itself and speared into the sky.
It wasn’t as though there was a rush. They had four hours of flight time and then a two-hour drive to her home in the most northern reaches of Tuscany. Why tell him now and spoil the fragile if tense cease-fire that seemed to exist between them? For he would not remain silent once he knew. He would be intolerable. Perhaps with a measure of justification. Still, why make their hours together more difficult than they already were?
No, there was plenty of time to tell him.
Later.
They were an hour into their flight when they were given the news. One hour of interminable and excruciating silence, filled with the static of all the things that were left unsaid, until the air in the cabin fairly crackled with the tension, a silence punctuated only when the smiling flight attendant came to top up their drinks or offer refreshments.
But this time she had the co-pilot with her and neither of them was smiling.
‘So fly around it,’ Bahir said after they’d delivered their grim message, too impatient for this trip to be over to tolerate delays, whatever the reason.
‘That’s not possible,’ the co-pilot explained. ‘The storm cell is tracking right into our path. And the danger is we could ice up if we try to go over. The aviation authorities are ordering everyone out of the area.’
‘So what does that mean?’ Marina asked. ‘We can’t get to Pisa at all?’
‘Not just yet. We’re putting down at the nearest airport that can take us. We’ll be beginning our descent soon. Just be prepared as we skirt the edges of this thing that it could get a bit rough. You might want to keep your seatbelts fastened.’
Bahir usually had no trouble sitting. He could sit for hours at a stretch when his luck was with him and the spinning ball might have been his to command. But right now he couldn’t sit still a moment longer.
He was up and out of his seat the moment they’d gone. God, if it wasn’t enough that he had to spend six hours in her company, now he would be forced to spend even more time. He raked clawed fingers through his hair. And with her sitting there, her legs tucked up beneath her and those eyes—those damned eyes—looking like an invitation to sin.
‘The co-pilot suggested keeping your seatbelt fastened.’
He ignored her as much as it was possible to do. That was the problem with planes, he realised. There was not enough room to pace and to distance yourself from the thing that was bugging you, and right now he sorely needed to pace and find distance from the woman who was bugging him.
Besides, any possible turbulence outside the plane was no match for what was going on inside him. He turned and strode back the other way, covering the length of the cabin in a dozen purposeful but ultimately futile strides, for there was no easing of the tightness in his gut, no respite.
Suddenly he understood how a captive lion felt, boxed and caged and unable to find a way out no matter how many times it turned to retrace its steps, no matter how hard it searched.
‘The co-pilot said—’
‘I know what he said!’ he spat, not needing input from the likes of her.
‘Oh, good. Because I thought maybe you’d developed a hearing problem. I should have realised it was a problem with your powers of comprehension.’
‘Oh, I’ve got a problem all right, and it begins and ends with you.’
She blinked up at him, feigning innocence. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
Suddenly the turbulence inside him exploded. He wheeled around and clamped his hands on the arms of the chair either side of her, his face occupying the space hers had been just moments before. He almost grunted his satisfaction, because he liked the way she’d jumped and pressed herself as far back as she could in the chair. He liked knowing he’d taken her by surprise. And, strangely, he liked knowing she wasn’t as unaffected by his presence as she made out. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’
Inches from his own, those rich caramel eyes opened wide enough until they were big enough to lose yourself in. He watched them, knowing the dangers, watching their swirling depths as she tried to come up with an answer. He’d lost himself in those eyes once before, lost himself in their promises and their persuasion. But that was before, and for all their seductive power he sure as hell wouldn’t let that happen again, no matter what pleasures they promised.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He shook his head, not believing. ‘Then maybe I should spell it out for you. I’m talking about being stuck here—you and me. I expressly told Zoltan I wouldn’t do this. I told him there was no way you would agree. And yet here we find ourselves, together. How did that happen, do you suppose? Unless you agreed to it. And I have to ask myself, what possible reason could you have for doing that? What were you thinking?’
She tried to hide her nervous swallow, but he missed nothing of the tiny tilt of her chin and the movement in her throat. He had trained himself to spot the tiniest shift in facial expression or body language of his opponents, a skill that had stood him in good stead through many a poker game. He knew she was hiding something. Did she imagine that there was a chance for them again? Did she think that, because he’d accompanied Zoltan and the others to Mustafa’s camp, it meant something? That he was ready to take her back?
She looked up at him, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘You think I really want to be here, imprisoned thousands of feet above the earth with you and your black mood?’
Her words were no kind of answer, and he would have told her, only he was suddenly distracted by a stray strand of hair that looped close to the corner of one of those eyes. ‘Somebody must have agreed,’ he rumbled as he raised one hand. ‘And it sure as hell wasn’t me.’ She flinched as his fingers neared, holding her breath as he gently swept the hair back, surprised when he felt a familiar tremor under her skin, disturbed even more when he felt a corresponding sizzle under his own.
Abruptly he pushed himself away and stood with his back to her, rubbing his hands together to rid himself of the unwelcome sensation. ‘Don’t you think I’ve got better things to do than waste my time babysitting a spoilt princess?’
‘I absolutely agree,’ she said behind him. ‘I’m quite sure there’s a casino just waiting to be fleeced by the famous Sheikh of Spin. I can’t imagine how you managed to drag yourself away.’
His hands stilled. He didn’t need any reminders of why he wasn’t still at the roulette table. He turned slowly. ‘Be careful, princess.’
She jerked up her chin. ‘That’s the second time you’ve addressed me by my title. Is it so long that you’ve forgotten my name? Or can you just not bring yourself to utter it?’
‘Is it so long that you’ve forgotten that I said I never wanted to see you again?’
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you turned up outside my tent that night.’
‘Is that what this is about? Why should that change anything? Or were you merely hoping to thank me?’
‘Thank you? For what?’
‘For rescuing you from Mustafa.’
‘Oh, you kid yourself, Bahir. You weren’t there for me. You were along for the ride, only there to have fun with your band of merry men. A little boys’ own adventure to whet your taste for excitement. So don’t expect me to get down on bended knees to thank you.’
A sudden memory of her on bended knee assailed him, temporarily shorting his brain, just as her mouth and wicked tongue had done back then. Not that she’d been thanking him exactly that time. More like tasting him. Laving him with her tongue. Devouring him. In fact, if he remembered correctly, he’d been the one to thank her …
He shook his head, wondering if he would ever be rid of those images, knowing he would miss them in the dead of sleepless nights if they were gone. But that minor concession didn’t mean he welcomed their presence now while he was trying to make a point. ‘I wouldn’t want your thanks anyway. If I did anything that night, it was out of loyalty to Zoltan and my brothers. It was duty, nothing more.’
‘How very noble of you.’
‘I don’t care what you call it. Just don’t go thinking that I’ve changed my mind about what I said back then. You’d be kidding yourself if you did. What we had is over.’
‘You really think you have to tell me that? I have no trouble remembering what you said. Likewise, I have no trouble believing you mean it now, just as you meant it then. And, for the record, it is you who are kidding yourself if you think I am insane enough to want you to change your mind. After what you said to me, after the way you treated me, I wouldn’t take you back if you were the last man left on earth!’
He sat back down in his seat. ‘So we understand each other, this is merely duty. Of the most unpleasant kind.’
Her eyes glared across at him as he buckled up. ‘Finally you say something I can agree with.’
Her agreement offered no satisfaction. His mood only mirrored the darkening sky as the plane descended judderingly through the clouds, icy rain clawing at the windows, the tempestuous winds tearing at the wings—and a sick feeling in his gut that, whatever the weather, things were not about to improve.
CHAPTER THREE
THE plane touched down somewhere on the coast of western Turkey at a small airport not far from where the rocky shoreline met the sea. It was almost dark now, although still only mid-afternoon, and they emerged from the plane into a howling wind that tore at their clothes and sucked the words from their mouths. A waiting car whisked Marina and Bahir through the immigration formalities before surprising Marina by heading away from the airport.
She flicked her windswept hair back from her face and looked longingly back at the airport. ‘Shouldn’t we stay with the plane?’ she asked, concerned. ‘So we’re ready to take off when the weather clears?’
Was it the lashing from the rain that had eroded her harsh demeanour and left her softer, almost vulnerable? Whatever. With her long black hair in wild disarray around her face, and with her eyelashes still spiked with the air’s muggy atmosphere, she looked younger. Softer. Almost like she had when she’d woken sleepily from a night of love-making. All that was missing was the smile and the hungry glint in her eyes as she’d eagerly climbed astride him for more.
‘Didn’t you hear the pilot’s last announcement, princess?’ Bahir asked, dragging his thoughts away from misspent days and nights long gone. This was the reason he’d never wanted to see her again. Because he knew she’d make him remember all the things he would never again enjoy. ‘Airports all over Europe are closed. We are not going anywhere tonight.’
‘But my children … I promised them I would be home tonight.’
Bahir looked away. He wasn’t taken in by her sudden maternal concern for her children. It was the first time she had even mentioned them and, if they meant so much to her, why had she left them at home in the first place? Maybe in hindsight it might have been the right thing to do this time, given how she had lumbered into the path of Mustafa, but she could not have known that would happen. And surely they had deserved to be at their own aunt’s wedding if not the coronation of Zoltan himself?
‘We leave at first light,’ he said, already looking forward to it. ‘You will be home soon enough.’ Though never soon enough for him.
She was silent as they passed through a small town that was seemingly abandoned as everyone had taken cover from the storm, the shutters of windows all closed, awnings flapping and snapping in the wind.
‘So where are we going now? Why couldn’t we stay with the plane?’
‘The crew are staying with the plane. It is, after all, Al-Jiradi property. They will not leave it.’
‘So we must?’
‘There is a small hotel on the coast. Very exclusive. You will be more comfortable there.’
‘And you?’
‘This is not about my comfort.’
If there was comfort in this hotel, it was proving elusive to find. There was luxury, it was true: the plushest silk carpets, the finest examples of the weaver’s art. The most lavish of fixtures and fittings, from the colourful Byzantine tiles to the gold taps set with emeralds the size of quails’ eggs.
But comfort was nowhere to be found. Just as it was impossible to sleep. Even now, when it seemed the worst of the storm had passed, lightning still flashed intermittently through the richly embroidered drapes, filling the room with an electric white light and bleaching the room of colour. But the atmosphere in the room remained heavy with the storm’s passing, and the soft bed and starched bed-linen felt stifling. She looked longingly at the doors that led onto the terrace overlooking the sea.
Ever since they’d arrived she’d locked herself away in her suite, wanting desperately to find distance from that man. He’d been impossible on the plane, sullen and resentful at first, openly explosive when the news had come of their flight’s delay, as if it had been all her fault.
Maybe it was. She had been the one to agree to him seeing her safely home, but it wasn’t for the reason he was thinking—that she somehow imagined that he might change his mind, that he might take her back.
What kind of arrogance led a man to believe a woman would want him back after the things he’d said to her?
Did he think she had no pride?
No, the man was unbearable.
So she’d taken refuge in her room, savouring her privacy and her time alone to call Catriona and explain about the delay. She took her time to talk to each of her children and tell them she would soon be home to hug and kiss them and tickle their tummies until they collapsed with laughter again.
It had seemed such a good idea to lock herself away like this while the storm had raged all around. But like the worst of the storm, hours had passed, and still she could not sleep. Still, she could not make sense of the war going on inside herself.
For she hated him, didn’t she? Hated him for the way he had amputated her from his life as quickly and decisively as if he’d been slicing a piece of fruit—as if she had never meant more than that to him. Yet still one sight of him and some primal, some base, bodily response kicked in and she had been wet with wanting him. Even now her body ached with need, as if he had flicked some kind of switch and turned her heartbeat into some kind of pulsing drumbeat of desire.
What kind of woman did that make her?
Was she mad? Or simply wanton? The party princess out for nothing but a good time and not caring who it was who gave it to her.
God, it was hot! The mattress seemed to cocoon her, trapping the heat of her thoughts and slowly roasting her in them. She pushed herself up and a bead of sweat trickled from her hair down her neck.
So much for a refuge. All she’d succeeded in doing was exchanging one kind of prison for another. And, in a few short hours from now, she’d be back on the plane—with him—and the torture would continue.
Another flash of lightning lit up the room, and her gaze went to the doors again. There was a chance they could be opened now, without being blown off their hinges or she being blown away herself. And maybe it would be cooler outside on her terrace. Maybe the wind would tear away some of the heat from her overheated skin, and maybe the air might have a chance to cool her sheets while she was gone.
She slid from the bed and reached for her gown, only remembering then that it was still tucked somewhere deep in her luggage because she had thought the weather too warm to need it. She thought for a moment of the hotel robe waiting neatly on a hanger in the closet, but the thought of towelling against her skin when she was already so hot …
She hesitated only a fraction of a moment. She didn’t really need it. It was three in the morning, and she was only stepping onto the darkened terrace. She wouldn’t be outside for long, and she so craved the feel of cool air and rain on her skin.
The wind had dropped but still she had to hang onto the door lest it slam open. She snicked it firmly closed behind her, knowing the sound would not carry over the waves crashing on the nearby shore, the wind already whipping her hair around her face and sending swirls of air up the slit in her long nightie, brushing against her legs and fanning against her heated core.
She shivered, not with cold from a sprinkling of rain, but with the wind’s delicious caress against her skin, and she turned into the onshore wind, pushing against it until she reached the balustrade overlooking the sea.
This was more like it. The shoreline was thick with dancing foam, bright white against the inky black of sea, the tang of salt heavy in the moisture-laden air. In the distance the storm rumbled and lit up the world for an instant at a time.
Then a wild wave crashed on the rocks below and she was hit with the spray, the wind turning the droplets icy on her skin.
She gasped as it hit, her body electric and alive from her head to her toes, and she flung her arms out wide and laughed into the wind with the sheer thrill of it. It was wild. It was exhilarating. And she felt free, just like she’d always yearned to be.
Like she had been once, before Bahir had stolen her heart.
He watched her from his doorway, where he had been standing for more than an hour watching the storm boil and simmer away. At first he had not heard her, whatever sound she made whipped away by the wind or lost under the crash of the sea, but then he had caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, a vision of a woman in a long white nightgown. But not just any woman. Marina. A ghost from his past, moving across the terrace with bare arms and bare feet while her black hair followed, untamed, blowing riotous and free.
He watched and grew hard as the nightdress was plastered against her body by the wild wind and the rain, against her lush breasts and the slight swell of her belly, against the sweet curve of her mound. Plastered hard against all the places he remembered, and plastered so close that she might not have been wearing anything at all.
The wind tore at her gown, peeling the fabric high around her legs, and he grew still harder wondering if she still never wore anything under her nightgown.
He growled. Why would she wear a white nightgown? So very virginal and innocent.
Who was she trying to kid?
She was nowhere near a virgin. She was a sorceress. She was wanton in bed, hungry and insatiable. She was sinuous and lithe, moved and twisted with a dancer’s grace, and he knew he should go. He should leave now, while he had the chance, before he was tempted to do something he might regret.
But he could not force his feet to move. He could not turn away. Instead he stayed and watched while she was hit by the spray of a wave crashing below; watched while she flung her arms out wide and laughed as brazenly as the weather, watched while her damp white gown turned transparent—and he knew that he had no choice.
Knew he had to go to her.
Her gown was soaked with spray and clinging to her, her hair blowing wild where it wasn’t stuck to her scalp and skin, and she knew that soon she would feel sticky with salt and think herself insane for doing something so utterly reckless when she should have been trying to sleep.
But for now she felt more alive than she had in months. More awake. More liberated.
She spun around, lifting her sodden hair high to cool the back of her neck as another wave sent spray flying, when lightning illuminated the terrace and told her in a chill bolt of realisation that she was not alone.
‘Bahir,’ she said, dropping her arms and backing away into the spray, the sound wrenched from her mouth before even she could hear it. But her body needed to hear no alarm. Her body was already on high alert, her breasts straining and peaked against the fine wet fabric of her gown, her thighs tingling with urgency and her feet primed to flee.
She might have tried to run, but his expression stilled her feet, his face a tortured mask, as if he’d battled his inner demons and lost. His eyes held her spellbound, dark and fathomless in a shadowed face, while his white shirt clung to him in patches, turning it the colour of the golden skin that lay beneath.
She swallowed, tasting the salt of the sea, or was it of his flesh? For even here she could feel the heat rolling off him as his body called to hers, in all the ways it had done in the past, promising all the pleasures of the past and more.
‘Why?’ she asked softly in a lull in the wind, wanting to be sure, wary of trusting the chemistry between them.
‘You can’t sleep either.’ He answered with a statement, without really answering at all.
‘I was hot.’
His eyes raked over her, slowly, languidly, and the heat she saw there stoked a fire under her skin that even the effect of the night air on her wet gown could not whip away. As she looked at how his white shirt clung to his skin, moulding to one dark nipple, she realised how she must look to him—exposed. As good as naked. She wrapped her arms around her torso in a futile attempt to cover herself.
She had never had reason for modesty with Bahir. There was perhaps no reason for modesty now. He had seen it all before and more. But she was different now. She was a mother, and pregnancy had left its inevitable marks on her body. Would he notice? Would he care? He had no right to care and she had no need to wonder—yet still …
Then his eyes found hers again and he simply said, ‘I feel it too. Hot.’ And she knew he wasn’t talking about the weather.
He took a step closer, and then another, so she had to raise her face to look up at him.
‘You should go,’ he said.
‘I should,’ she agreed, because it was right, and because to stay would be reckless. The last thing she needed was to be trapped outside on a storm-tossed terrace with a man she had never stopped lusting after, even when she had tried to hate him so very much. Even when she knew she should.
But her feet didn’t move, even when the wind pushed at her back, slapping the wet gown against her legs, urging her to get out while she still had time.
‘You should go,’ he repeated, his voice gravel-rough against her skin. ‘Except …’
She tilted her head up at him, her senses buzzing, every nerve in her body buzzing. ‘Except what?’
‘Except, I don’t want you to.’
She swallowed and closed her eyes, one part of her wishing she’d already left so she’d never have heard him utter those words. The other part of her, that wanton part of her that belonged to him for ever, rejoicing that he had.
‘I want you,’ he said, and she started and opened her eyes as she felt his hands lift her jaw and cradle her face.
Suddenly it was much too late to run, even if she could have recalled a fraction of all the good reasons why she should.
When she looked up at him it was to see him gazing down at her with such a look of longing that it charged her soul, for it had been so long since someone had looked at her that way, and that person had been Bahir. Nobody had ever looked at her the way Bahir had.
But that was before …
‘This is a mistake,’ she said, some remaining shred of logic warning her as his hand drifted towards her face.
‘Does this,’ he said as his fingers traced across her skin and she forgot how to breathe, ‘feel like a mistake?’ And she sighed into his touch, for electricity accompanied his fingers, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake, just like his touch had that moment on the plane when he had reached out to her brow and left her sizzling with the contact.
Maybe not right now, she thought, in answer to his question. But tomorrow or next week or even next month she would realise this was all kinds of mistake.
And then his hand curved around her neck, gentling her closer to his waiting mouth. Some mistakes, she rationalised, were meant to be made.
The wind pounded at her back, and she let it push her closer to him, meeting his lips with her own and sighing into his mouth with that first, precious touch.
It was like coming home, only better, because it was to a home she’d never expected to find again. A home she’d thought lost for ever.
‘Bahir,’ she whispered on his lips, recognising the taste and scent and texture of him, welcoming him.
For one hitched, exquisite moment the tenuous meeting of their mouths was enough, but only for a moment. Until he groaned and pulled her against him, his mouth opening to hers, sucking her into his kiss.
She went willingly, just as her hands went to the hard wall of his chest, drinking in his hard-packed body with her fingers, pressing her nails into his flesh as if proving he was real, as if proving this was really happening.
He was real, her fingers told her, joyously, deliciously, delectably real.
And so very hot.
His breath, his mouth, his lips on her throat, the flesh under her hands—all of him so hot. Yet when his hand cupped her breast it was she who felt like she would combust with his fingers kneading her flesh, his thumb stroking her hard, straining nipple.
Then his mouth replaced his hand, drawing her breast into his mouth, laving her nipple through the thin gown, and silk had never felt so good against her skin.
A burst of sea spray shattered over them. The clouds parted to a watery moon and she clung to his head in order to stay upright and not collapse under the impact of his sensual onslaught.
But when his hands slid down her back and cupped her behind, his fingers perilously close to the apex of her thighs and the heated, pulsing core of her existence, she knew her knees would not last much longer. ‘Bahir!’ she cried, but he had already anticipated her need, knowing what she asked and what she needed instinctively, as he always had.
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her long and hard, until she was dizzy and his own breathing ragged when he pulled himself away enough to speak.
‘One night,’ he said, his voice thick with want. ‘Just this night. That’s all I ask.’
She knew what he was telling her—that he hadn’t changed his mind, that he didn’t want her as a permanent fixture in his life and that he would never want her love—but he was offering her this night. Or, at least, what was left of it.
Would she take it?
If she were stronger—if she was more like her younger sister, Aisha, who had tamed her own potent sheikh—she’d tell him what he could do with his one night. But she wasn’t that strong. And the choice was so unfair.
She could have this one night with him, and sacrifice her principles and her pride, or she could have none. But her pride and her principles would never make her heartbeat trip with just one glance or one gentle touch. They could not take her to paradise and back and all the wondrous places in between. And what were pride and principles when compared to paradise?
One excruciatingly short night of paradise. A few short hours before they had to rise and return to the airport and continue their flight.
Was it worth it?
Oh yes.
And tomorrow she would tell him about their son—and it wouldn’t matter if he never wanted to see her again, because she would have this one stolen night to remember.
She looked up into his eyes and could see the impatience there, the urgency and the crippling, demanding need that so echoed her own.
‘Just one night,’ she agreed, and felt herself swept up into his arms as if she were weightless.
He carried her to his suite at the opposite end of the terrace from hers, and laid her reverentially on a bed that looked just as storm-tossed as the one she had left. The covers were piled in disarray on the floor, the pillows thumped to within an inch of their existence. It thrilled her that she might be responsible for at least some of the heat that had kept him from sleep.
He stood at the side of the bed, his eyes never leaving her as he purposefully unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it to the floor, his damp, golden skin glowing in the thin moonlight. She held her breath as his trousers soon joined it, then even the scrap of silk he called underwear was gone, and he was gloriously naked before her, his erection swaying proud and free.
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Trish Morey
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The winner takes all! When infamous billionaire gambler Bahir Al-Qadir is forced to protect his ex-lover, Marina Peshwah, it seems Lady Luck has finally deserted him… He’s tried to forget the spoilt princess, but even the relentless heat of the desert has failed to burn the intoxicating image of her from his mind.Now he’s about to discover that their passion left them with more than memories… Marina is once again at the mercy of the man she loves to hate. She may hold the winning card, but with such high stakes this proud sheikh will go all in to claim his heir!