The Sheikh’s Collection

Sheikh’s Captured Bride

Lynne Graham, Kristi Gold and Kate Hewitt

Sheikh’s Defiant Wife

Sharon Kendrick, Caitlin Crews and Maisey Yates

Sheikh’s Convenient Marriage

Sharon Kendrick, Kate Hewitt and Tara Pammi

Sheikh’s Dark Seduction

Sharon Kendrick, Caitlin Crews and Olivia Gates

Sheikh’s Forbidden Queen

Lynne Graham, Lynn Raye Harris and Carol Marinelli

Sheikh’s Desert Desire

Lynn Raye Harris, Maisey Yates, Tara Pammi

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Sheikh’s Captured Bride

The Sheikh’s Prize

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

The Sheikh’s Son

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Epilogue

Captured by the Sheikh

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sheikh’s Defiant Wife

Defiant in the Desert

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

In Defiance of Duty

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

To Defy a Sheikh

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Sheikh’s Convenient Marriage

Shamed in the Sands

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Commanded by the Sheikh

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

The Last Prince of Dahaar

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sheikh’s Dark Seduction

Seduced by the Sultan

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Undone by the Sultan’s Touch

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Seducing His Princess

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Sheikh’s Forbidden Queen

Zarif’s Convenient Queen

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Gambling with the Crown

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

More Precious than a Crown

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

Sheikh’s Desert Desire

Carrying the Sheikh’s Heir

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

Forged in the Desert Heat

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The True King of Dahaar

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

Copyright

Sheikh’s Captured Bride

The Sheikh’s Prize

Lynne Graham

The Sheikh’s Son

Kristi Gold

Captured by the Sheikh

Kate Hewitt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Sheikh’s Prize

Lynne Graham

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen romance reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

CHAPTER ONE

ZAHIR RA’IF QUARISHI, hereditary king of the gulf state of Maraban, leapt up from behind his desk when his younger brother, Akram, literally burst into his office.

‘What has happened?’ Zahir demanded urgently, straightening to his full six feet three inches of height, his lean powerful body tensing like the army officer he had been into immediate battle readiness.

His face unusually flushed, Akram came to an abrupt halt to execute a jerky bow as he belatedly recalled the niceties of court etiquette.’ My apologies for the interruption, Your Majesty—’

‘I assume there’s a good reason,’ Zahir conceded, his rigidity easing as he read Akram’s troubled expression and recognised that something of a more private and personal nature had precipitated his impulsive entry to one of the very few places in which Zahir could usually depend on receiving the peace he required to work.

Akram stiffened, embarrassment claiming his open good-natured face. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this—’

‘Sit down and take a deep breath,’ Zahir advised calmly, his innate natural assurance taking over as he settled his big frame down into an armchair in the corner of the room and rested his piercing dark-as-night eyes on the younger man while moving a graceful hand to urge him to sit down as well. ‘There’s nothing we can’t discuss. I will never be as intimidating as our late father.’

At that reminder, Akram turned deadly pale, for their late and unlamented parent had been as much of a tyrant and a bully in the royal palace with his family as he was in his role as a ruler over what had once been one of the most backward countries in the Middle East. While Fareed the Magnificent, as he had insisted on being called, had been in power, Maraban’s oil wealth had flowed only one way into the royal coffers while their people continued to live in the Dark Ages, denied education, modern technology and adequate medical support. It had been three years since Zahir took the throne and the changes he had immediately instigated still remained a massive undertaking. Angrily conscious that his brother worked just about every hour of the day in his determination to improve the lives of his subjects, Akram suddenly dreaded giving Zahir the news he had learned. Zahir never mentioned his first marriage. It was too controversial a topic, Akram acknowledged awkwardly. How could it not be? His brother had paid a high price for defying their late father and marrying a foreigner from a different culture. That he had done so for a woman clearly unworthy of his faith could only be an additional source of aggravation.

‘Akram…?’ Zahir prompted impatiently. ‘I have a meeting in thirty minutes.’

‘It’s…her! That woman you married!’ Akram recovered his tongue abruptly. ‘She’s out there in the streets of our capital city shaming you even as we speak!’

Zahir froze and frowned, his spectacular bone structure tightening beneath taut skin the colour of honey, his wide sensual mouth compressing hard. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Sapphire’s here filming some television commercial for cosmetics!’ Akram told him in fierce condemnation, resenting what he saw as an inexcusable insult to his elder brother.

Zahir’s lean strong hands clenched into fists. ‘Here?’ he repeated in thunderous disbelief. ‘Sapphire is filming here in Maraban?’

‘Wakil told me,’ his brother told him, referring to one of Zahir’s former bodyguards. ‘He couldn’t believe his eyes when he recognised her! It’s lucky that our father refused to announce your marriage to our people—I never thought we’d live to be grateful for that…’

Zahir was stunned at the idea that his ex-wife could have dared to set a single foot within the borders of his country. Rage and bitterness flamed through his taut powerful frame and he sprang restively upright again. He had tried not to be bitter, he had tried even harder to forget his failed marriage…only that was a little hard to do when your ex became an internationally famous supermodel, featuring in countless magazines and newspapers and even once in a giant advertising hoarding over Times Square. In truth a mere five years ago he had been a sitting duck of a target for a cunning schemer of Sapphire Marshall’s ilk and that lowering awareness had left an indelible stain on his masculine ego. At twenty-five years of age he had, thanks to his father’s oppression, still been a virgin, ignorant of the West and Western women, but although he hadn’t had a clue he had at least tried to make his marriage work. His bride, on the other hand, had refused to make the smallest effort to sort out their problems. He had fought hard to keep a wife who didn’t want to be his wife, indeed who couldn’t even bear for him to touch her.

More fool him, he reflected with hard cynicism, for he was no longer an innocent when it came to women. The explanation for Sapphire’s extraordinary behaviour had become clear as crystal to him once he shed his idealistic assumptions about his wife’s honour: his bride had only married him because he was wealthy beyond avarice and a prince, not because she cared about him. Unpardonably, her goal in marrying him had simply been the rich pay-off that would follow their divorce. He had married a woman with all the heart of a cash register and she had, not only, ripped him off but also got away scot free while he had paid in spades. At that reflection, his even white teeth ground together, tiny gold flames igniting in his fierce eyes. If only he had been dealing with her in the present as a male who now knew the score, he would have known exactly how to handle her.

‘I’m sorry, Zahir,’ Akram muttered in the seething silence, ill at ease with the rare dark fury that had flared in his brother’s face. ‘I thought you had a right to know that she’d had the cheek to come here.’

‘It’s five years since I divorced her,’ Zahir pointed out harshly, his lean strong face impassive. ‘Why should I care what she does?’

‘Because she’s an embarrassment!’ Akram rushed to declare. ‘Imagine how you would feel if the media found out that she was once your wife! She must be shameless and without conscience to come to Maraban to make her stupid commercial!’

‘This is all very emotive stuff, Akram,’ Zahir countered, reluctantly touched by his brother’s concern on his behalf. ‘I’m grateful you told me but what do you expect me to do?’

‘Throw her and her film crew out of Maraban!’ his brother told him instantly.

‘You are still young and impetuous, my brother,’ Zahir replied drily. ‘The paparazzi follow my ex-wife everywhere she goes. Try to picture the likely consequences of deporting a world-famous celebrity. Why would I want to create headlines to alert the world’s media to a past that is more wisely left buried?’

When Akram had finally departed, still incredulous that his brother had failed to express a desire for retribution, Zahir made several phone calls that would have astonished the younger man. It was a supreme irony but Zahir’s coolly astute brain was perpetually at all-out war with the volatile passion of his temperament. While it made no logical sense whatsoever he wanted the chance to see Sapphire in the flesh again. Did that desire imply that he still had some lingering need for closure where she was concerned? Or was it simple and natural curiosity because he was currently facing the prospect of having to take another wife? Once, in a desperate search for a solution to his seemingly incurable problems with Sapphire, Zahir had read books about all sorts of strange subjects before he finally accepted that the simplest explanation of the apparently inexplicable was usually the closest to the truth. Since then events in his ex-wife’s life had suggested that his sceptical convictions about her true character were spot-on. He had wed a gold-digging social climber with not an atom of true feeling for him. After all, he was well aware that Sapphire was now cosily ensconced in a live-in relationship with the award-winning Scottish wildlife photographer, Cameron McDonald. Presumably she wasn’t having any difficulty bedding him… Zahir’s dark eyes burned afresh like golden flames at that incendiary thought.

Saffy dutifully angled her hot face into the flow of air gushing from the wind machine so that her mane of blonde hair wafted back in a cloud over her shoulders. Not an atom of her growing irritation and discomfort showed on her flawless features. Saffy was never less than professional when she was working. But how many times had her make-up already needed retouched in the stifling heat? It was simply melting off her face. How many times had the set security had to interrupt filming to make the crowd of over-excited spectators back away to give her colleagues the space to work? Coming to Maraban to film the Desert Ice cosmetics commercial had been a foolish mistake. The support systems the film crew took for granted were non-existent.

‘Give me that sexy look, Saffy…’ Dylan, the photographer, urged pleadingly. ‘What is wrong with you this week? You’re not on form—’

And as if someone had zapped her with an electrified cattle prod, Saffy struggled to switch on the expression he wanted because she hated the fact that anyone should have noticed that anything was amiss with her mood. Inside her head, she fought to focus on the fantasy that never failed to ignite that much vaunted look of desire on her face. So ironic, she reflected momentarily, so very cruelly ironic that she should have to focus on what she had often dreamt of and never yet managed to experience in reality. But when she was working a shoot costing her clients thousands of pounds was not the time to allow all that old bad stuff to resurface. With the strong determination that was the backbone of her temperament, Saffy forced the distressing memories back down into her subconscious again and then mentally searched to extract the required familiar image: a man with jet-black hair down to his broad brown shoulders, a man who positively oozed raw animal magnetism from every pore with a lean powerfully naked body encased in warm gilded skin. In every image he would slowly turn his head to look at her, revealing fiercely stunning eyes of gold surrounded by black lashes so lush they acted like eye liner on a guy already so savagely masculine and passionate that at one glance he took her breath away. And all those wretched frustrating responses swam back through her taut body in a wave, her nipples beading below the scrap of silk she wore, her entire body dampening with shocking awareness.

‘That’s it…that’s exactly it!’ Dylan crooned in enthusiasm, leaping around her posed figure to take photos from different angles as she shifted position with languorous ease, that image inside her head like an indelible tattoo below her skin. ‘Lower your lids a little more—we want to see that eye shadow…brilliant, sweetheart, now pout that gorgeous mouth…’

A couple of minutes passed before with a tiny jerk of displacement, Saffy returned to the present and was suddenly plunged back into the heat, the noise and the curious crowds, her huge bluer-than-blue eyes reflecting her discomfiture at the massive attention they were attracting. But Dylan had got the shots he wanted and he leapt around like a maniac punching the air with satisfaction. Her single-minded concentration on her role gone now, she looked out above the crowds and saw a vehicle parked at the height of a giant rolling ochre-coloured sand dune with a robed figure standing nearby holding something in his hand that glinted in the sun.

Zahir had his high-definition binoculars trained on his stunningly beautiful ex-wife. With her glorious mane of golden hair blowing back from her face like a sheet of gleaming silk and seated atop a pile of giant fake ice cubes, she would have looked spectacularly eye-catching by any standards. But in the beauty stakes, Sapphire occupied a category all of her own and the sight of her took Zahir’s hot-blooded temper to new and dangerous heights. He was outraged that she was appearing in public in Maraban clad in only a couple of scraps of azure silk that displayed the surprisingly bountiful mounds of her breasts, the smooth skin of her now bejewelled midriff and the incredible svelte stretch of her very long and perfect legs.

He watched the men involved in the shoot dart slavishly around Sapphire, offering her drinks and food and fussing with her hair and her face, and he wondered with vicious coarseness which of them had had the pleasure of her beautiful body. After all, she might live with Cameron McDonald, but the UK tabloids had, nonetheless, exposed the fact that she had had several affairs with other men. Clearly she was anything but a faithful lover. Of course, it was possible that Cameron and Sapphire enjoyed a civilly negotiated ‘open’ relationship, but Zahir was not impressed by that possibility or even by the concept of open relationships. He didn’t sleep around, he had never slept around even when he finally had the freedom to make such choices. His ex-wife had to be a bit of a slut, he decided with dark brooding bitterness, his lean strong face set granite hard at the acknowledgement. He had married an embryo slut and, worst of all, she was a slut he still lusted after. At that final disturbing admission, Zahir ground his even white teeth while perspiration beaded his upper lip, his tall, powerful body furiously tense and aggressively aroused by his perusal of that perfect body and even more perfect face.

Sapphire, the one mistake he had ever made and the payback had been unforgettably brutal. He had endured indescribable punishment to keep her as his wife for even a year. She owed him, she definitely owed him for twelve months of unadulterated hell. Add in the millions she had received from him since the charade of their marriage finally ran aground in a divorce and he had every right to feel ill-done by, every right to still be aggrieved and hostile. She had used and abused him before walking away unharmed and considerably richer. Maybe it was finally payback time, Zahir reflected grimly, his adrenalin spiking at the idea. And bearing in mind that she and her film crew had chosen to come to Maraban and film without the permission of the relevant authority, she had put herself and her precious high-flying career in his power. And the very thought of Sapphire being in his power was the most seductive image that Zahir had indulged in for years. He lowered the binoculars, thinking fast, squashing the disconcerting logical objections already trying to assail him to persuade him to restrain his primal responses. It wouldn’t be the same between them now, he reasoned angrily; he was not the same man. This time around he had the weapons to make her want him back.

That process of self-persuasion was incredibly seductive. Throughout his life Zahir had very rarely done what he wanted to do, for the necessity of always considering the needs of others had taken precedence. But why shouldn’t he put his own desires first for once? He had already checked Sapphire’s schedule and she was due to leave Maraban within hours, an awareness that merely made him all the more single-minded. Zahir made his plans there and then with ruthless cool and the same kind of fierce, almost suicidal resolution that had once persuaded him to take a foreign wife without first asking his despotic father’s permission. As that reality and comparison briefly occurred to him he stubbornly suppressed the piercing shard of unease it awakened.

With a sense of merciful release from the strain of being on show, Saffy stepped into the site trailer to change. She shed the skimpy silk bandeau and slashed skirt and peeled off the fake navel jewel before donning white linen trousers and an aqua tee. In a couple of hours she would be on her way home and saying goodbye to the joys of Maraban couldn’t come quickly enough as far as she was concerned. After all, it was the last place in the world she would have chosen to visit, but civil unrest in a neighbouring country had led to a last-minute change of location and nobody had been willing to listen to her necessarily vague objections. But then the fact that nobody had a clue about her past connection to Maraban or Zahir was a relief. Thankfully that period of her life before fame had claimed her remained a deep dark secret.

So, in spite of all he had once had to say on the score of corrupt hereditary rulerships, Zahir had still ended up taking the throne to become a king. But then, according to what she had read in the newspapers, the citizens of Maraban had not had a clue what to do with the offer of democracy and had instead rallied round their popular hero prince, who had rebelled with the army against his old horror of a father to protect the people. There were pictures of Zahir everywhere: she had noticed one in the hotel foyer with a vase of flowers set beneath it rather like a little sacred shrine. Her lush mouth twisted as she questioned the thread of bitterness powering her thoughts. He was honourable, a big fan of justice and was very probably an excellent king, she conceded grudgingly. It really wasn’t fair to resent him for what he couldn’t have helped. Their marriage had been a disaster and even now her thoughts slid away from the memories with alacrity. He had broken her heart and dumped her when she failed to deliver and she wasn’t really sure that it was fair to hate him for that when by that stage she had been urging him to divorce her for months. Everyone made choices, everyone had to live with those choices and a happy ending wasn’t always included.

But she had a good life, she reminded herself doggedly as the security team cleared a path for her through the crush of spectators to the waiting limo that would whisk her back to the airport. She now had three glorious days of freedom to look forward to, and a tired sigh escaped her as she touched an admiring fingertip to the silky petal of an impossibly perfect blossom in the beautiful bouquet displayed in a vase inside the limo, while only vaguely wondering where the flowers had come from. When she got back to London, she would first catch up with her sisters, one who was pregnant, one who was desperate to conceive and one who was still at school. Her eldest sister, Kat, was thirty-six and considering fertility treatment while still being full of the newly married joys of her life with her Russian billionaire. After a sticky interview with her tough brother-in-law, Mikhail Saffy was a little less enamoured of her sibling’s blunt-spoken husband. Mikhail had demanded to know why Saffy hadn’t offered to help Kat when her sister had run into serious debt. Well, hello, Saffy thought back angrily—Kat had never told Saffy that she was in trouble and, even if she had, Saffy knew she would have found it a challenge to come up with that kind of cash at short notice. Having made a major commitment early in her career to help support an African school for AIDS orphans, Saffy lived comfortably but not in luxury.

Saffy’s twin, Emmie, was pregnant and Saffy had not been surprised to learn that Emmie didn’t have a supportive man by her side. Saffy was painfully aware that her twin did not forgive those who hurt or offended her and in all probability the father of Emmie’s child had made that mistake. Saffy knew better than anyone how inflexible her sibling could be because the relationship between the twins had long been tense and troubled. Indeed Saffy could never suppress the surge of the guilt that attacked her whenever she saw her sister. As young children she and Emmie had been very close but events during their troubled teen years had ripped them apart and the two young women had never managed to repair that breach. Saffy would never forget the injuries that her reckless behaviour had inflicted on her twin sister or the many years of suffering that Emmie had endured as a result. Some things were just too bad to be forgiven, Saffy acknowledged sadly.

In any case, Mikhail and Kat would undoubtedly assist Emmie in her struggles as a single mum—certainly, Saffy knew better than to offer assistance that would be richly resented. But she could not understand why Emmie had chosen to make a big secret of her baby’s paternity. Saffy winced at that thought. While it was true that Saffy had never told her sisters the humiliating truth about her own failed marriage, she felt that she had had good reasons for her silence, not the least of which was the embarrassing fact that she had totally ignored Kat’s plea that Saffy get to know Zahir better and for longer before she married him. Just common sense really, Saffy conceded wryly. Getting married at eighteen to a guy you had only known a couple of months and had never lived with had been an act of insanity. As immature and idealistic as most teenagers with little experience of independent life, Saffy had struggled from the outset with the role of being a wife in a different culture. And while she had struggled, Zahir had steadily grown more and more distant, not to mention his penchant for disappearing for weeks at a time on army manoeuvres just when she needed him most. Yes, she had made mistakes…but then so had he.

Satisfied with that appraisal, which approportioned equal blame for what had gone wrong in the past, Saffy emerged from her reverie and noticed in surprise that the limo was travelling down a wide empty road that strongly reminded her of an airport runway. As the route back to the airport entailed travelling through Maraban city, she frowned, gazing out in confusion at the emptiness of the desert surrounding her on all sides. Strewn with stones and occasional large volcanic rock formations, the bleak desert terrain was interrupted by little vegetation. And so pervasive was the march of the sand that it was steadily encroaching on the road, blurring its outlines.

Saffy had never warmed to Zahir’s natural preference for a lot of sand in his vicinity, had never learned to adjust to the extremes of heat or to admire the austerity of such a landscape. Where on earth were they going? Could the driver be taking another route to avoid the city traffic, such as it was? Her smooth brow creasing, she leant forward to rap the glass partition to attract the driver’s attention, but although she saw his eyes flicker in the rear-view mirror to glance in her direction he made no attempt to respond to her. While Saffy was annoyed at being ignored, his behaviour also awakened the first stirrings of genuine apprehension and Saffy rapped the glass harder and shouted for him to stop. What on earth was the stupid man playing at? She didn’t want to miss her flight home and she didn’t have time to waste.

As she withdrew her fingers from the glass her knuckle brushed against the flowers in the vase and for the first time she noticed the envelope attached to them. She snatched it up and ripped it open to extract a typed card.

It is with great pleasure that I invite you to enjoy my hospitality for the weekend.

What on earth? Saffy stared down at the unsigned card. Who was inviting her where and why? Was this why her uncommunicative driver was travelling in the wrong direction? Her even white teeth gritted in angry frustration. Had her lightly clad appearance at the shoot caught the eye of some local randy sheikh? Possibly even the guy in the sand dunes with the binoculars? What did he think she was? Dial-a-tart? No, no, no! Her blue eyes flashed like twin blue fires. No way was she sacrificing her one free weekend to pandering to the ego of yet another rich man, keen to assume that the very fact she made her living by her face and body meant that she was an easy lay available to the highest bidder! Desert Ice cosmetics was always willing to serve her up to VIPs as the face of its product and the somewhat racy reputation bestowed on her by the tabloids encouraged the wrong expectations and made rejecting amorous men even more of a challenge.

No way on earth was she spending her weekend with some man she hadn’t even met! She dug through her bag in search of her cell phone, intending to ring one of her colleagues for assistance, but she couldn’t find her phone and only finally accepted that it wasn’t there after she had tipped out the contents of her bag on the seat beside her. She had had her phone in her hand before she got changed, she recalled with a frown. She had set it down…and clearly she hadn’t picked it up again! She ground her teeth together and just for the sake of it attempted to open the door beside her. She wasn’t surprised to find it locked and it really didn’t matter, she conceded ruefully, for she had no intention of risking serious injury by throwing herself out of a moving car.

Conscious of the anxious glances the driver was now giving her in the mirror, she lifted her head high, her brain working double time. She might feel as if she were being kidnapped, but that was a most unlikely interpretation of her situation in a country as old-fashioned and law-abiding as Maraban. In addition, no Arab host would want an unwilling guest in his home. Indeed making a guest uncomfortable was a big no-no in Marabani culture, so once she politely explained that she had a prior engagement and apologised for being unavailable, she would be free to leave again…only by that time she might well have missed her flight home. Her lush mouth took on a downward curve.

Only minutes later, the limo came to a halt by the side of the road and with a click the door beside her opened. Saffy’s brow pleated as she climbed out and she thought about making a run for it. But a run for it to where? It was the hottest part of the day and she would burn to a crisp. In addition the road was still empty and they had travelled miles through unbroken desert. As she pondered the unavoidable fact that there was nowhere safe to run to, a large four-wheel-drive vehicle drew up at the other side of the road. The driver jumped out and opened the passenger door wide while regarding her expectantly. Clearly it was an arranged meeting for her to be transferred to another vehicle. Did she accept that? Or fight it…but fight it with what? She glanced back into the limo and studied the glass vase that held the flowers. It was the work of a moment to smash the vase against the built-in bar and retrieve a jagged piece of glass, which she cupped awkwardly in her hand because she didn’t want to tighten her fingers and cut herself on it. Straightening her slim shoulders, she crossed the road and climbed into the four-wheel-drive. The door slammed instantly behind her.

Was she in any true danger, she asked herself irritably, or was she at even greater risk of being swept along by an over-confident belief that somehow she was still in control of events? As soon as they arrived at their destination she would make it very clear that she wished to return to the airport immediately and if anyone dared to lay a single finger on her she would slash that person with the glass. Now was not the time to wish she had taken self-defence classes.

The vehicle moved off and performed a U-turn to pass directly in front of the limo and drive down a stony track that ran straight out into the desert. That change in direction took Saffy very much by surprise and she looked out of the windows in dismay at the giant looming sand dunes coming closer to tower all around them as the rough track streaked doggedly ahead. It was very bumpy and very hot because there seemed to be no air-conditioning in the car. Perspiration beading her brow, Saffy gripped the safety rail above her head and gritted her teeth, thinking that possibly she should have made a run for it while they were still on the highway. As the track inevitably vanished beneath the sand the powerful vehicle roared endlessly over the shallow mounds that had taken its place, forging a zigzagging path between the dunes. Finally, when every bone in her body felt as if it were rattling inside her skin, the vehicle began to climb up the steep side of a dune, the engine whining at the strain. At the top she peered out of the window and focused on the sole sign of civilisation within view: a stone fortress with tall walls and turrets that looked remarkably like an ancient crusader castle.

Oh, dear, she thought with a sinking heart, for it didn’t look as though it would offer the comforts of a five-star hotel and where else could they possibly be heading? And who in their right mind would invite her to such a remote place? Aside of a herd of goats there was nothing moving in the castle’s vicinity.

The car thundered down the slope towards the building and big black gates spread slowly open as they approached. Through the gates she glimpsed surprisingly lush greenery, a welcome sight to eyes strained by sand overload. The vehicle lurched to a halt and she breathed in slow and deep when she saw staff clustered round an arched entrance. Maybe it was a hotel; certainly it looked at least the equal of the one she had stayed at in the city. As Saffy stepped out heads bowed low and nobody looked directly at her and nobody spoke. Saffy was in no mood to speak anyway and she followed in the steps of the older man who shifted his hand to gain her attention. Her shoes clicked on a polished marble floor and the blessed coolness of air-conditioning chilled her hot damp skin but nothing could have prepared her for the awe-inspiring sight that met her eyes. The amazingly spectacular hall stretched into seeming infinity in front of her. Fashioned of gleaming white marble and studded with gilded pillars and ornate mirrors, it was as unexpected in its sheer opulence inside those ancient walls as snow in the desert. She blinked in bewilderment, gazing up to scan the heavily decorated ceiling far above, which rejoiced in a gloriously well executed mural of a sunny blue sky dotted with exotic flying birds. A few feet ahead her guide hovered to wait for her to move on again.

Her mouth tightening, Saffy walked on to descend a shallow flight of stone stairs and walk through tall gilded doors into a vast sunlit room, which, although draped in luxury fabrics, was traditionally furnished in Eastern style with low divans and beautiful rugs carefully arranged around a central fire pit where coffee could be made and served in the same way as it might have been in a tent. It was a statement that her prospective host respected the old ways from the far-off years when the Marabani had been nomadic tribesmen. She pushed the piece of glass into her bag.

‘Qu’est-ce que vous desirez, madame?’

Startled, Saffy turned her head to see a youthful maid eager to do her bidding, and well did she recall that sinking sensation at the familiar sound of the French language, which was more commonly spoken in Maraban than English. For a girl who had dismally failed her GCSE French exam, communicating in French had been a major challenge five years earlier.

‘Apportez des refraîchissements…bring refreshments,’ another voice interposed in fluent accented French as smooth as honey warmed by the sun. ‘And in future use English to speak to Miss Marshall,’ he advised.

Tiny hairs prickling eerily at the base of her skull, her eyes huge and her slim body trembling, Saffy stared in disbelief at the man in the doorway. In the corner of her eye the maid bent her head, muttered something that sounded terribly servile and backed swiftly out of the room through another exit.

‘Zahir…?’ Saffy framed in shaken disbelief.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHO ELSE?’ ZAHIR enquired silkily as she backed away small step by small step.

Saffy’s heart was in her mouth and she was desperately short of breath because her every instinct for self-preservation was pumping full-blown panic through her tall, slender length. Zahir? Zahir, the King of Maraban. He was responsible for bringing her to the castle/fortress/palace, whatever it was? He was the host who wanted her to enjoy his hospitality for the weekend? What kind of sense did that make for a male who had divorced her five years ago and never once since alluded to their former relationship in public?

Yet he stood there, effortlessly self-assured in a black cotton shirt and jeans, a casual outfit that however emanated designer chic, for both garments fitted his very tall, well-built frame to perfection. He was one of the very few men Saffy had to look up to even in heels because he was several inches over six feet. Unhappily the sheer impact of his unexpected appearance shattered her renowned composure. For so long she had told herself that memory must have lied, that if she were to meet him again she would not be so impressed as she had been at the tender age of eighteen. And yet there he stood, defying her every ego-boosting excuse. Luxuriant hair with the blue-black shine of polished jet accentuated his absolutely gorgeous face, drawing her attention to the slash of his high exotic cheekbones, the proud arch of his nose, the stubborn jut of his strong jawline and the beautifully defined, wide, sensual fullness of his mouth. He had the lean powerfully athletic physique of a Greek god. And the fiercely stunning dark eyes of a jungle predator. He wasn’t safe; she saw that now. Zahir was not a man who played safe or who gave his woman the freedom to do her own thing, not when he had come to earth convinced of the fact that he always knew best. She had been way too innocent at eighteen and yet already damaged, she conceded painfully, much more damaged than either of them could ever have guessed. In spite of the surge of disturbing memories, butterflies still leapt and fluttered in her tummy at the stirring sight of him: dear heaven, she acknowledged in even greater shock, he could still rock her world.

In defiance of that disturbing conviction, Saffy flung her head high, shining layers of wheaten blonde hair sliding like heavy silk back from her face and tumbling off her shoulders. ‘You’re responsible for bringing me here?’ she demanded shakily, her voice embarrassingly breathy and insubstantial from the level of incredulity still gripping her. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’

Eyes of heavenly blue clung to Zahir’s lean dark face. His astute dark eyes narrowed, hardened, kindled to burning gold as he allowed himself a slow steady appraisal of her lithe figure. Tall and slim she might be, but unlike many models Sapphire had womanly curves and the fine cotton T-shirt she wore could not hide the high pouting curve of her breasts or their beaded tips, any more than her white linen trousers concealed the long supple line of her thighs, the delicious peachy swell of highly feminine hips below her tiny waist or the dainty elegance of her narrow ankles. The pulse at his groin kicked up hell in response and he clenched his teeth together, willing down that threat to his self-possession. If he was honest he had expected to be a little disappointed with her when he saw her again face to face, but if he was equally honest she was even more staggeringly lovely now than she had been as a teenager. Shorn of a slight hint of adolescent chubbiness, her flawless bone structure had fined down.

Zahir surveyed her with smoulderingly bright eyes, instantly resenting her effect on him. ‘Since we parted, you’ve cost me over five million pounds. Maybe I was curious to see what I was paying for. Maybe I even thought I might be due something in return…’

Angry resentment surged from the base of Saffy’s insecurity and discomfiture. How dared he talk back to her as if he had done nothing wrong?

‘Just you stop right there… Are you out of your mind?’ she blazed back at him full tilt. ‘What the heck gives you the right to bring me here when I don’t want to be here?’

‘I wanted to speak to you.’

‘But we’ve got nothing to talk about!’ Saffy scissored back without pausing to draw breathe. ‘I never expected to see you again in this lifetime and I don’t want to speak to you, not even to find out why you’re talking about five million pounds that I certainly didn’t receive!’

‘You’re a liar,’ he retorted quietly, using that deadly quietness he had always had the power to deploy once he had got her to screaming point. It was impossible to deflect Zahir from his target.

‘I have to ask—on the score of the five million pounds you mentioned—what planet are you living on? I haven’t had a penny from you since I started working!’ Saffy snapped out of all patience while desperately trying to recapture her cool and with it her wits.

‘Denial won’t cut it,’ Zahir scissored back with cool contempt. ‘I have paid you substantial alimony since the day you left Maraban—’

‘No way!’ Saffy sizzled back at him, enraged by his condemnation. After all, she was very proud of her independence and of the fact that she had never taken advantage of his great wealth, believing as she had that their short-lived and unsuccessful marriage gave her no right to expect his continuing support. ‘That is a complete lie, Zahir. You gave me money when I first left and I needed to use that until I started earning. But I never wanted alimony from you…I told my solicitor that and he must have informed you.’

‘No, since your departure the money has been paid every month into a trust fund and none of it has ever been returned,’ Zahir informed her with infuriating certainty. ‘But at this moment I should warn you that that may not be your most pressing problem.’

Saffy gritted her teeth. She was shaking with rage and shocked by the speed with which her usually easy temper had gone skyward. She had forgotten, oh, dear heaven, she had actually forgotten how easily Zahir could push her buttons. ‘Why? What may be my most pressing problem?’ she slung back scornfully, hot pink adorning both her cheeks.

‘You and your colleagues shot your commercial without first lodging a request for permission to do so from the Ministry of the Interior.’

‘I know nothing about that!’ Saffy proclaimed in instant dismissal of the charge. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with the legal requirements or arrangements for filming abroad—I’m just the model. I go where I’m told and you had better believe that Maraban was the last place on earth I wanted to come!’

Zahir tensed, an even brighter sliver of gold lightening his dark eyes. ‘Why so? Maraban is a beautiful country.’

‘Surely that view depends on your standards of beauty?’ Saffy snapped back with lashings of scorn. ‘Maraban is eighty per cent desert!’

The gold effect in his eyes heightened to flame level. ‘Had you still been my wife I would have been ashamed of your narrow outlook!’

Saffy loosed a cutting laugh. ‘Mercifully for me I’m no longer your wife!’

The insult made him tense even more, his big shoulders squaring, the wall of his strong abdominal muscles tightening visibly below his shirt. His eyes held her fast, held her as completely as if he had her pinioned to a wall, those extraordinarily beautiful eyes of his set below well-defined ebony brows, eyes rimmed with thick curling black lashes and stormily bright with aggression. ‘Mercifully for us both,’ he murmured levelly.

Inexplicably his agreement wounded her and she sucked in a sudden surge of air to fill her deflated lungs in the seething silence and decided to concentrate on basics. ‘So the shoot took place without permission from some authority—what does that mean?’

‘That the film was confiscated at the hotel where you and the crew were staying,’ Zahir advanced grimly.

Saffy took a hasty step forward. ‘Confiscated?’ she repeated in horror. ‘You can’t do that!’

‘I can do anything I like when people break the law in Maraban,’ Zahir responded levelly. ‘Filming was not authorised.’

‘But you have the power to overlook it. I’m sure the company just made a mistake if they didn’t seek permission. The location was changed at the very last minute—there probably wasn’t time!’ she protested. ‘Is that why you’ve brought me here? To tell me this?’

‘No…I wanted to see you again,’ Zahir confided with shocking cool.

And she remembered the shock of that honest streak of his, his ability to cut through all the rubbish people could spout and hit the bottom line without hesitation or embarrassment. ‘Why would you want to see me again?’ she prompted stiltedly.

‘You only have to look in the mirror to know why,’ he fielded without skipping a beat. ‘I want you. Just once I want what should have been mine when I married you and what you have since given to other men…’

Shock engulfed Saffy in a tidal wave. She moved back from him again in dismay, disbelief and bewilderment. Her ex wanted her to have sex with him?

‘Unless, of course,’ Zahir murmured silkily, ‘you truly do find me physically repulsive…’

Saffy backed away another step, thinking that there was surely not a woman alive who could find Zahir repulsive. She certainly didn’t; never had, in fact. Was that the impression she had left him with? Guilt rippled through her, for she was agonisingly aware that he could not possibly have overcome her problems for her five years earlier. It had taken years of therapy for Saffy to find the solution and to come to terms with what she had learned about herself during the process.

‘If you can convince me that you do, I will let you go,’ Zahir purred, literally stalking her across the room with fluid steps.

Zahir wanted to sleep with her. So, tell me something new, a wry little voice said inside her head. It was like being plunged back into her marriage without warning, unable to give him what he wanted and needed. The most appalling sense of inadequacy gripped her afresh. She had failed him and not surprisingly he was bitter. But that was no excuse whatsoever for his current behaviour. ‘You virtually kidnapped me!’ she accused rawly.

‘I sent you flowers and an air-conditioned limo. How many kidnappers do that?’

‘You’ve got to be crazy… I mean, are you even thinking about what you’re doing?’ Saffy gasped, stepping back against a piece of furniture and sidling sideways to avoid it and to keep moving further out of his reach.

‘I don’t think around you,’ Zahir muttered flatly. ‘I never did.’

Saffy was more than willing to kick his brain back into gear. ‘Zahir, you’re a king…royalty doesn’t do stuff like this!’

Zahir flung back his darkly handsome head and laughed with rich appreciation, even white teeth flashing against his bronzed skin. ‘Sapphire…my father kept a harem of a hundred concubines in this palace. Until very recently indeed, royalty did indeed do things that were neither socially nor morally acceptable.’

‘Your father? Had a harem here?’ Saffy parroted in consternation, her heart beating so fast as he stalked closer that she was convinced it might burst right out of her chest. She refused even to think of that nasty old man, Fareed, having had a hundred unfortunate women locked up to fulfil his gruesome requirements. It wasn’t a surprise though: her father-in-law had been an out-and-out lech.

‘I have no harem…no wife,’ Zahir pointed out.

‘Those are the only positives you have to offer in your own favour?’ Her voice was careening up and down as if she were on a vocal seesaw. She was locked into his eyes, those amazingly beautiful amber eyes, which had struck her like a thunderbolt at eighteen across a crowded department store. ‘Stay back…’

‘No, been there, done that, paid the price,’ Zahir countered, running a forefinger slowly down over her cheekbone so that in some strange way it seemed perfectly normal to turn her cheek into his hand.

Saffy looked up, clashed with his eyes, experienced a light-headed sensation that did nothing to collect her wits, and swallowed painfully. How could he be so gorgeous that she couldn’t breathe? Why was it as if the world had stopped turning and had flung her off into space? She was completely disorientated by his proximity, the very heat she could feel filtering from his lean powerful body towards hers even though their only connection was the hand resting against her face. ‘Zahir?’

He lowered his proud dark head. He’s going to kiss me, he’s going to kiss me, a crazily excited voice chanted inside her head and both anticipation and denial warred inside her. And then he did, firm, sensual lips circling hers, the pressure steadily deepening even as a shriek alarm of shock shrilled through her trembling body. He parted her lips, let his tongue dart between and it felt like the most erotic caress she had ever experienced because the taste and the flicker of movement inside her mouth were indescribably sexy. Heat burned in her pelvis, her nipples swelling taut, abrading the cotton covering them. That intoxicating intense physical reaction was exactly what she had wanted to feel for a long time but he was the very last man on earth she wanted to feel it with.

And yet she couldn’t will herself to break free while his tongue tangled with hers, touching, tasting, savouring, a low growl breaking from his throat while his fingertips stroked her neck where it met her shoulder. Unholy pleasure was ricocheting through her treacherous body as it awakened to sudden life, hot, damp sensation tingling at her feminine core while her breasts swelled and ached. Gathering every atom of her strength, she pushed her hand forcefully against a wide muscular shoulder and broke free. ‘No…no, I don’t want this!’

His gaze filled with sardonic amusement, Zahir studied her hectically flushed face with satisfaction. ‘Liar,’ he said thickly. ‘You always liked my mouth on you.’

Saffy felt the rush of heat below her skin and momentarily closed her eyes while she blocked him out and fought for recovery. He was a demon kisser. That far, they had worked and the chemistry had misleadingly suggested a match made in heaven. In that instant, she loathed him for bringing the past alive again and reminding her of exactly what she yearned to find in another man’s arms. Frustration filled her. Been there, done that, as he had said, although they hadn’t actually done it. Did he feel cheated? Was that why he had brought her here? Why did he think that anything would have changed between them? It was not as if he knew what she had gone through in search of a cure. Crushing out that torrent of curious questions and musings, Saffy concentrated on the here and now.

‘I want transport to the airport and the film that was confiscated,’ she told him drily, straightening her slender shoulders to stand up to him.

Zahir viewed her from beneath the cloak of his lush black lashes, dark eyes bright as stars. ‘It’s not happening.’

‘Then what would it take to make it happen?’ Saffy prompted, determined to sort the situation out by taking the practical approach that generally served her well in difficult situations. ‘That missing money you mentioned? I promise I’ll look into that mystery and sort it out as soon as I get back to London.’

‘Don’t try to avoid the real issue here—I want you…’

Her mouth ran dry and her skin ran hotter than hot as he lounged back against the wall beside him and she noticed, really couldn’t help noticing by the close fit of his jeans that he was aroused. She turned her head away, her tummy flipping even as she recognised the healthy discovery that the awareness of his arousal no longer made her feel threatened. ‘But we can’t always have what we want,’ she pointed out tautly, hanging onto her cool with difficulty. ‘And you know that bringing me here is crazy. Your people would be scandalised by this set-up.’

‘I’m a single man and not a eunuch.’

‘You’re also intelligent and fair—at least you used to be,’ Saffy countered with determination.

‘Then you will understand that I seek justice.’

‘Because you didn’t get either the wedding night or the bride of your dreams you think you can magically turn the clock back?’ Saffy lifted a fair brow. ‘Good luck with that without a time machine.’

‘You’re staying,’ Zahir declared with razor-sharp emphasis. ‘And I don’t want the girl you were five years ago. I want the woman you are now.’

‘But the woman I am now is living with another man,’ Saffy slotted in curtly, shooting the last bolt in her rejection routine, which she usually regarded as worth using only at the last ditch but his sheer persistence was ruffling more than her feathers

‘And he shares you with whomever you choose to stray with,’ Zahir retorted, unimpressed, his wide sensual mouth compressing with speaking derision.

Saffy stiffened as though he had slapped her in the face. Evidently he had come across the silly stories about her that the tabloids printed and believed them, actually believed that she slept around whenever she felt like it. But then she had only to be pictured emerging from a man’s apartment for the press to assume she was engaged in an affair, but the truth was that she had some very good male friends, whom she visited, and had learned to treat the reports with amusement, for there was really nothing she could do to stop lies about her appearing in print. That, she had learnt, was the price of a life lived in the public eye.

‘That is not true. Cameron and I are very close. He’s my best friend,’ Saffy admitted, throwing her head high, reluctant to lie to him about that relationship but happy to take advantage of his ignorance if it acted as another barrier between them.

‘I don’t want to be your best friend. I want to be your lover.’

Saffy’s lovely face snapped tight and turned pale. ‘And we both know how that panned out five years ago,’ she reminded him flatly. ‘Let me go, Zahir. Bringing me here is reckless and illogical.’

Zahir studied her with veiled eyes, a grimly amused smile tugging at the corners of his handsome male mouth. ‘Perhaps that’s why it feels so good.’

Saffy had shot her last reasonable bolt and she was stunned by his indifference. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘I have never been so sure of anything,’ he shot back in rebuttal.

The last string of restraint broke free inside Saffy. She had had a very long, hot and tiring day and now Zahir was plunging her into the nightmare of her better forgotten past. ‘But you can’t be serious…you can’t really intend to keep me here against my will!’

‘I will do nothing that causes you harm,’ Zahir replied stubbornly.

‘But keeping me here against my will is causing me harm! What gives you the idea that you can do this to me?’ Saffy lashed back at him, her temper finally slipping its leash and her voice rising on a shrill note.

‘The knowledge that I have achieved it. Your colleagues have been informed that you have accepted a private invitation to spend another few days in Maraban. Nobody will be looking for you or concerned that anything is amiss,’ Zahir asserted with satisfaction.

‘You can’t do this to me!’ Saffy erupted, infuriated by his self-assurance, his evident belief that he had covered all bases. ‘And why? Nothing’s going to happen between us. You’re wasting your time!’

‘No man looking at you could possibly believe that I was wasting my time in at least trying,’ Zahir drawled with husky appreciation, his golden eyes resting on her delicate profile with possessive heat. ‘It is a risk I take with pleasure.’

‘But I don’t!’ Saffy slammed back at him in furious rebuttal. ‘I didn’t agree to this. Nobody tells me what to do or makes me stay somewhere I don’t want to be and nothing on this earth is capable of persuading me to get into bed with you again, so you can forget that idea right now!’

‘I will call Fadith to take you to your room…’ Zahir pressed a button on the wall with a graceful brown hand, his bold profile set in uncompromising lines.

In outrage that he wasn’t even taking heed of her objections, Saffy swept up a china vase on a stand and pitched it at him. It fell short and smashed against the edge of the fire pit to break into a hundred pieces.

Zahir enraged her by turning his handsome dark head and treating her to a slashing smile of very masculine amusement. ‘Ah, that takes me back years. I had forgotten how you liked to throw things at me when you lost control of your temper. I will see you later when it is time to dine.’

And with that very cool and unruffled assurance, Zahir strolled out of the room and left her standing there in a tempestuous rage that she could do nothing more to vent with her target gone. Trembling from the force of her pent-up feelings, Saffy breathed in deep to find inner calm. He would pay; she would make him pay for this in spades!

CHAPTER THREE

FADITH REAPPEARED AND led the way down a corridor and up a flight of pale marble stairs. Shown into a room as traditionally furnished and comfortable as the room she had seen downstairs, Saffy breathed in deep. The furniture was ebony inlaid with gleaming mother-of-pearl and the bed was a fantasy four-poster hung in swirling silk that piled opulently on the floor at each corner. Saffy wandered into a bathroom with a sunken marble tub and every possible extra and suppressed a groan. As she returned to the bedroom Fadith was removing a tray from another maid’s grasp to set it on a table.

‘Thanks,’ Saffy murmured, reluctantly lifting the mint drink she recalled from the year she had spent in Maraban. Maraban, the land that time forgot, she reflected grimly. She asked if there was any water and was shown a concealed refrigerator in a cupboard. She pulled out a chilled bottle and unscrewed the cap.

‘Would you like a bath?’ Fadith asked her then, clearly eager to be of service.

Saffy screened her mouth and faked a yawn before telling an outright lie to get rid of the younger woman. ‘Perhaps later. I think I’ll lie down and sleep for a while. It’s very warm.’

Fadith pulled the blinds and scurried over to the bed to turn it down in readiness before departing. Playing safe, Saffy waited for a couple of minutes before heading off to explore. She had no intention of staying with Zahir and since there was no prospect of her being rescued she had to rescue herself. She walked across the vast landing on quiet feet, passing innumerable closed doors and peering out of windows into inner courtyards before finally heading downstairs. Ignoring the ground floor, she went down another flight into the basement, which she could see by the trolleys of cleaning equipment was clearly the servants’ area. It was easy to identify the kitchens from the clatter of dishes and the buzz of voices and she gave it a wide berth. She stared out through a temptingly open rear door at the line of dusty vehicles parked outside while wondering what the chances were of any of them having keys left inside them. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that she could walk out of the desert: she needed wheels to get back to the city. Without further hesitation she sped out into the heat and the first thing she saw was a four-wheel-drive full of soldiers at the far side of the courtyard. In dismay she dropped down into a crouch to hide behind a car. Of course there would be soldiers around to guard Zahir while he was in residence, she conceded ruefully. She inched up her head to peer into the car and then twisted to study its neighbour: there was no sign of keys left carelessly in the ignition. Meanwhile the soldiers trooped indoors. Saffy continued her seemingly fruitless search for a car to steal and dived behind a vehicle to avoid being seen when a couple of kitchen staff strolled out of the palace talking loudly.

One of them wished the other a good journey home in Arabic and she recognised the phrase as the young man threw his bag into the pickup and jumped into the driver’s seat. He was going home? There was a good chance that he would be driving into the city. For a split second Saffy hesitated while she considered her options. The gates were guarded. It would be impossible for her to drive through them without being detected. Possibly stowing away in a vehicle being driven by a member of staff would be a cleverer move. Before she could lose her nerve, she scrambled over the tailgate and dived below the tarpaulin cover.

But the pickup didn’t immediately move off as she had expected. In fact someone shouted to the driver and he got back out of the vehicle. She lay still, stiff with tension, listening to voices talking too fast for her to follow before the steps moved slowly away and she heard the driver moving back. Finally the door slammed again, the engine ignited and she expelled her breath in relief. Her original drive from the road down the track to the palace had been long and rough and lying on the rusty bed of the pickup, Saffy rolled about and wondered if the constant pitching gait of the vehicle would leave her covered with bruises. But she was willing to endure discomfort as the price of having escaped Zahir.

What on earth had come over her ex-husband? Their marriage had been a train wreck and who in their right mind would want to revisit that?

And the answer came to her straight away. Failure of any kind was anathema to Zahir, whose callous old father had expected his son to excel in every field and who had punished him when he botched anything. Zahir was trying to rewrite the past. Why didn’t he appreciate that that was impossible? People changed, people moved on…

Although she had not moved on very far, a tart little voice reminded Saffy, who was bitterly conscious that she was still a virgin. And time rolled back for her as she lay there and the pickup rattled and roared across the sands, threatening to shake her very teeth loose from her gums. Saffy had been eighteen and working at a department-store beauty counter when she first met Zahir. She hadn’t wanted to go to university like her twin, had preferred to jump straight into work and start earning. Zahir had travelled to London with his sister, Hayat, who had been shopping for her wedding trousseau. Saffy still remembered seeing Zahir that very first time, her heart jumping inside her, her breath shortening as she collided with the most mesmerising dark golden eyes she had ever seen. Hayat had bought cosmetics while Saffy stared fixedly at Zahir and Zahir stared back equally transfixed at Saffy. She had never felt anything that powerful, either before then or since: an exhilarating and intrinsically terrifying instant attraction that swamped her like a fog, closing out the rest of the world and common sense.

‘I will meet you after you finish work,’ Zahir had told her in careful English.

He had told her that he was an army officer in Maraban. He hadn’t told her that he was a prince or the son of the ruler of Maraban. She had had to look up Maraban online to find out where it was and her mother, Odette, with whom she had briefly lived at the time, had laughed at her and said, ‘Why worry? He’ll be gone in a few days and you’ll never see him again.’

Initially Saffy had been desperately afraid of that forecast. After only a handful of dates, she had fallen for Zahir like a ton of bricks and she had been ecstatic when he told her he would be back the following month to attend a course at Sandhurst. She remembered little romantic snapshot moments from that period: sitting in a park below a cloud of cherry blossom with Zahir brushing a petal out of her hair with gentle fingers; lingering over coffee holding hands; laughing together at mime artists in the street. From the outset, Zahir had had the magic key to winning her trust, for, unlike previous boyfriends he didn’t grab and grope and didn’t expect her to leap straight into bed with him. At the same time, though, he was chary of the part-time modelling she was already doing, even when assured that she didn’t do nude or underwear shots. She had recognised that he was old-fashioned in a way that had gone out of fashion in her country, but she had very much admired the seriousness of his quick clever mind and his unvarnished love for Maraban. Long before his course was over he asked her to marry him and he told her who he really was. And the news that he was a royal prince had merely added another intoxicating layer of sparkle to the fairy-tale fantasy she was already nourishing about their future together, Saffy conceded sadly.

Zahir had married her in a brief ceremony at the Marabani embassy without any of his family present and without his father’s permission. With hindsight she knew how courageous he had been to wed her without his father’s consent and she knew he had done it because he had known that his parent would never agree to him taking a foreign bride. Reality, unfortunately, hadn’t entered their relationship until she landed in Maraban. Starting with the wedding night during which she panicked and threw up and ending with a daily life more like imprisonment than marriage, their relationship had hit the rocks fast. She hadn’t been able to give him sex and neither of them had been able to handle the fallout from that giant elephant in the room. Any sense of intimacy had died fast, leading to backbiting conversations and even more of Zahir’s constant absences.

The pickup came to a sudden jolting halt. A door slammed and a burst of voices met her straining ears. As the voices receded she began to snake out from below the tarpaulin, only then appreciating that it was almost dark. That was not a possibility she had factored into her plans and, climbing out of the truck, she soon recognised the second big drawback. It had not occurred to her that the driver might be rendezvousing with his family at a huge multi-roofed tent right out in the desert. Consternation swallowed Saffy whole as she stared round her at what she could see in the fast-fading light. There was no sign of a village, a road or anything else for her to focus on as a means of working out where she was. Biting her lip with vexation, she was pushing her bottle of water into the front pocket of her jeans when a tall pale shape clad in beige desert robes moved out of the tent.

‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘Come inside.’

Disbelieving her ears, Saffy froze and gaped, her eyes straining to penetrate the growing darkness. ‘Zahir?’ she exclaimed incredulously. ‘What are you doing here?’

With one hand he tugged off the headdress bound with a gold and black circlet of cord and straightened, black hair ruffling back against his lean strong face in the slight breeze, his dark eyes bright as stars in the low light. ‘I drove you here.’

‘You…what?’ Saffy gasped in disbelief.

‘The security surveillance at the palace is the best money can buy,’ Zahir drawled. ‘I saw you climbing into the pickup on CCTV and I decided that if anyone was going to take you anywhere it should be me.’

‘I’ve been under that tarpaulin for more than an hour!’ Saffy launched at him in a rage of disbelief. ‘I was so thrown about under it I’m not convinced my bones are still connected!’

Zahir shrugged without even a hint of sympathy. ‘Well, it was your chosen mode of travel.’

‘Don’t you give me that!’ Saffy flung at him through teeth that were starting to chatter because it was extraordinarily cold, but mercifully her temper was still rising like rocket fuel to power her. ‘You knew I was in there!’

‘Perhaps I thought a little shaking was a just reward for a woman stupid enough to climb into a car driven by a stranger when she didn’t even know where the car was heading.’

Such a jolt of rage roared through Saffy that she was vaguely surprised that she didn’t levitate into the air like a sorcerer. Her great blue eyes flashed. ‘Don’t you dare call me stupid!’ she warned him in a hiss.

Zahir had never been the type to withdraw from a fight. He stood his ground, wide shoulders thrown back, stubborn jaw line set like granite. ‘But it was very stupid to take such a risk with your personal safety.’

Saffy knotted her hands into fists and clenched her teeth together. ‘My safety wouldn’t be an issue if you hadn’t kidnapped me!’ she bit back.

‘I kept you safe and I will continue to keep you safe and unharmed until you return to London because while you are here you are my responsibility,’ Zahir countered in a tone of crushing finality. ‘Now I suggest that you come inside so that you can wash and eat. I don’t know about you…but I’m hungry.’

‘Mr Practical…Mr Reasonable all of a sudden!’ Saffy raged back at him, aggrieved by his unshakeable self-assurance in the face of her violent and perfectly reasonable resentment. ‘How could you do this to me? I hate you! Get stuffed!’

Zahir expelled his breath in a slow sibilant hiss. ‘When you are ready to be civil again, you may come inside and join me.’

And with that ultimate putdown, he was gone, striding soundlessly into the dimly lit tent and simply leaving her standing there. Saffy stamped her feet in the sand to express her fury and only just resisted an urge to slam her fists up against the metal side of the pickup. What a prune she felt—what a complete and utter idiot! Her bid for freedom had been seen and Zahir had stepped into the driver’s seat to ruin her escape attempt. He had made a fool of her and not for the first time. It was many years since Saffy had been so angry, for in general she was the mildest personality around and quite laid back in temperament, but Zahir’s dominant gene got to her every time. She gritted her teeth, stretched her aching back and legs and leant back against the pickup. Contrary to her every expectation of the desert, it was absolutely freezing and her tee was so thin she might as well have been naked. She couldn’t stop shivering and she rubbed her chilled goose-fleshed arms in an effort to get her circulation going again. Seeing Zahir again seemed to have fried her brain cells.

When she couldn’t stand the cold any longer she stalked into the tent, which was even larger than she had appreciated and even offered communicating doorways to other sections. Festooned in traditional kelims, it nonetheless offered sofas in place of the usual rugs round the fire pit. Zahir was being served coffee by a kneeling older man.

‘What is this place?’ Saffy asked abruptly. ‘Where are we?’

‘It’s a semi-permanent camp where I meet with the tribal sheikhs on a regular basis. Although I know you would sooner be dead than sleep under canvas, it offers every comfort,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘The bathroom is through the second door.’

A wash of heated embarrassment engulfed Saffy’s pale taut face. He was throwing her own words of five years ago back in her teeth, her less than tactful rejection of anything to do with tents and the nomadic lifestyle that had once been customary for his people.

‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that there’s a shower in there?’ Saffy breathed tautly.

‘No, it is not. Go ahead and freshen up. A change of clothing has been laid out for you.’

Her gaze flickered uneasily off his darkly handsome features, her heart beating too fast for comfort or calm. Straight out of the frying pan right into the fire, she acknowledged uncomfortably as she brushed back the hanging that concealed a normal wooden door and stepped through it into a bathroom that contained every luxurious necessity. She stripped off in haste because even cold as she was she still felt sweaty and grubby, and her white linen trousers had not withstood the journey well. The powerful shower washed the grit from her skin and an impressive array of surprisingly familiar products greeted her on a shelf. Wrapped in a towel, she combed out her wet hair and made use of the hairdryer. Hot running water and electric in a tent? Had he told her that that was a possibility she would have agreed to the desert trip he had tried to take her on soon after they were married. Or would she have? If she was honest, her fear of the intimacies of sharing a tent with him had lain behind her dogged refusal to consider such an excursion.

A silk kaftan lay over a chair with a pair of simple mules beside it. Leaving her underwear with her clothes, she slid into it, wondering what she would wear the following day and where he was planning for her to sleep. There were at least two more doorways leading out of the main tent for her to investigate.

‘Are you ready to eat?’ Zahir asked.

Eyes widening, she nodded affirmation and spun to look at him. He had shed the robes and got back into jeans. Damp black hair feathered round his lean bronzed features, accentuating those smouldering amber gold eyes surrounded by dense black lashes. Her pulses gave a jump. Butterflies flocked loose in her tummy and she swallowed hard, frantic to shed her desperate physical awareness of him. It seemed so schoolgirlish and immature to react that way after all the years they had been apart and the life she had since led. She was supposed to be calm, sophisticated…in control.

‘No table and chairs, I’m afraid,’ he warned her, settling down by the flickering fire with animal grace.

‘That’s OK,’ she muttered as a servant emerged from one of the doorways bearing a tray, closely followed by another. ‘So, you have a kitchen here.’

‘A necessity when I’m entertaining.’

He had mentioned the tribal sheikhs he met up with but Saffy was already wondering how many other women he had brought out into the desert. She knew there had been other women. For a couple of years after the divorce and before the overthrow of his father, Zahir had made occasional appearances in glossy magazines with several different beautiful women on his arm. And those glimpses of the new and much more visible life he was leading abroad without her had cut deep like a knife and made her bleed internally. She had known that those women were sharing his bed, entangling his beautiful bronzed body with lissom limbs and giving him everything she had failed to give him. Divorce, she had learned the hard way, wasn’t an immediate cut-off point for emotions, even emotions that she had no right to feel.

Zahir watched Sapphire curl up on the sofa opposite, looking all fresh faced and scrubbed clean just the way he remembered her, the way he liked her best, for with her stunning looks she required few enhancements. Her restive fingers toyed with a strand of golden blonde hair and instantly he recalled the silken feel of it sliding against his skin and got a hard-on. He crushed the recollection before it could stray into even more erotic areas and reminded himself that she was a beautiful shell with a cash-register heart. He was not at all surprised that she had dropped the subject of the five million pounds without any acknowledgement or adequate explanation. It might be pocket change to a member of his family, but it still mattered that she had taken so much and given nothing in return.

Perched with a plate on her lap, Saffy helped herself to portions of different dishes and dug in because she was starving. While she ate she studied Zahir from below her lashes, marvelling at the superb bone structure that gave his features such strength and masculinity. From every angle he was glorious. Sitting there, his attention on his plate and quite unaware of her scrutiny, he mesmerised her. Her breasts stirred beneath the silk, the tips growing tender and swollen. She dredged her eyes back to her food, her mouth dry, her heart hammering, images from the past bombarding her. Although consummating their marriage had proved impossible, she had learned how to give him pleasure in other ways. At that thought she shifted uneasily on her seat, moist heat pooling at the heart of her. He had never understood what was wrong with her. How could he have? But he had at least tried, assuring her of his patience while he did everything possible to set her fears to rest. Unfortunately her fears had been in her subconscious and not something she could control, fears from a hidden source that she had repressed many years before while she was still a child. All of a sudden she simply could not comprehend why he would bring her back into his life after a marriage that had turned into a hell on earth for both of them.

‘Why on earth did you want to see me again?’ Saffy demanded abruptly.

He lifted his dark head, stunning golden eyes locking to her. ‘Few men forget their first love and you’re the one who got away…’

Regret stabbed through her and she flinched, for they had begun with love in spite of the fact that during the year of marital strife that followed they had lost it again. The plates were cleared away and coffee and cakes served. She ate to fill the emptiness inside her, the hollow that never seemed to fill. She couldn’t look at him, didn’t dare look at him again, knew the temptation was a weakness to be suppressed at every opportunity.

‘I wanted to see you again before I remarried,’ Zahir heard himself admit in brusque addition, knowing that he would never have trusted himself to see her after that event had taken place.

Her golden head flew up, heavenly blue eyes wide with shock. ‘You’re getting married again?’ she gasped, shattered at the idea although she couldn’t have explained why.

Zahir raised a winged ebony brow. ‘As yet there is no particular bride in view but there is considerable pressure on me to take a wife. Inevitably I will have to satisfy my people’s expectations.’

Some of the tension eased from her taut shoulders and she lowered her head. Of course he would be expected to marry: it went with the territory of kingship. What did it matter to her? Why should the concept bother her? It was not as though she still thought of him as her husband. In fact she was being ridiculously oversensitive and it was time to grow up and don her big-girl pants. Exhaustion engulfed her in a debilitating wave then, reminding her that she had been up since five that morning. A yawn crept up on her and she stood up smothering a yawn. ‘I’m incredibly tired…’

Zahir sprang upright and rested his hands on her shoulders to prevent her from moving away. Her mouth ran dry, her heart skipping a beat as she looked up at him, up over that full sensual mouth to the black-lashed golden eyes that wreaked havoc with her insides.

‘Tonight you’re tired.’ His deep dark voice reverberated through her very bones, the husky nuances toying with her nerves like a secret caress. ‘I won’t touch you…’

Saffy shivered at just the thought of being in bed with him again. The image caught at her and not with the sense of threat that she believed she should have felt. A lazy brown forefinger grazed the length of her delicate collarbone, smoothed a passage up her slender throat while she struggled not to fall in a limp heap at his feet because her knees were threatening to buckle. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think while he touched her, and then he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a hungry passion that should have frightened her out of her wits, but which instead stormed through her and set her on fire. There was a primitive sense of tightening and dampness between her legs, a sudden painful pulse throbbing through the peaks of her breasts. With every plunge of his tongue she trembled, lost in the hot, electrifying darkness of overwhelming physical sensation.

‘Bed,’ Zahir muttered raggedly, stooping to haul her up bodily in his strong arms, thrusting back a door with an impatient shoulder. ‘I want you wide awake tomorrow.’

He laid her down on a big modern divan dressed in pristine white linen. When he had said, ‘bed’ in that deep thrilling tone her imagination had exploded into the stratosphere and when he released her again and moved back to the door, she frowned at him poised there in the dim light, black hair tousled by her fingers, the taste of him still on her lips, the sheer call of him to her senses overpowering. She rolled over and buried her hot face in a pillow. No, she didn’t have a stupid bone in her body. She was looking for a man—had been for years—but he was not the one, although inconveniently he still seemed to be the only one she actually wanted, the only one she could even imagine becoming intimate with.

Angry tears of frustration stung her eyes. After the divorce had destroyed her faith in true love and happy endings, she had licked her wounds for years, terrified of getting into another serious relationship and meeting up with the same problems. But after therapy, she had longed to lose her virginity and have sex with a lover to prove that she was fully cured and had come to terms with her past. She had simply wanted to be normal as other women took for granted…how could that be wrong? Or selfish? Or immoral? And she did not need to compound her mistakes by being attracted to a man who had not only hurt her very badly once but who also had plans to marry another woman.

Zahir went for a shower—a very cold one. A great well of burning hunger was consuming him but it was cooled by disturbing memories of Sapphire shaking with unmistakeable fear when he had tried to make love to her during their marriage. Even with all the sexual experience he had painstakingly acquired since then, he was wary and seriously distrustful of the physically encouraging vibes she was putting out. He had been wrong before; why shouldn’t he be wrong again? And while a faint sense of wonderment was stirring that he should actually have her in a bed again within reach, no sense of regret yet assailed him. In fact a merciless sense of all-male satisfaction was still driving him hard.

Saffy froze when she heard the door open again and rolled over, ridiculously conscious that her eyelids and her nose were probably pink from the overload of emotion and events that had brought overwrought tears to her eyes. She sat up in honest surprise to stare at Zahir, poised one step inside the door clad in only a pair of black silk boxers. Her throat closed over and she stopped breathing.

‘There is only one bed…’

‘It’s not a problem,’ Saffy responded as carelessly as she could contrive, rolling off the bed and yanking the bedspread off the mattress in almost the same movement. ‘I’ll sleep on the floor, although you could have taken one of the sofas.’

‘I refuse to do so and you can’t sleep on the floor.’

‘I can do whatever I want to do,’ Saffy told him, rolling herself into the spread and lying down beside the bed as well wrapped up as an Arctic explorer.

‘Except when I’m around,’ Zahir pronounced in direct challenge, snatching her up from the floor and planting her back on the divan with the strength that came so naturally to him.

‘I’m not sharing that bed with you!’ Saffy spat at him.

Zahir dealt her a derisive appraisal. ‘Even when you already know that you can certainly trust me to hear the word no?’ he queried in a very dry reminder.

Hot pink colour washed her lovely face and then receded to leave her pale and stricken. She was crushed by all that went unsaid within that aide-memoire, but equally suddenly she felt foolish making such a fuss about sharing a bed, and she squirmed out of the cloaking folds of the spread to slide below the sheet. ‘This is all your fault—you should never have brought me here!’

Zahir almost laughed. She was shouting at him again, fighting with him, and he should have been furious at her lack of respect but he wasn’t; he was too busy enjoying the novelty of being treated like an equal by a woman. Sapphire wouldn’t bat her eyelashes at him, look down in submission and offer honeyed words of feminine flattery as the other women he met did. He climbed into the bed and lay back against the pillows. With Sapphire’s mane of hair tossed all over the pillow beside his, the smell of the shampoo she used wafted into his nostrils, a familiar floral scent she had worn ever since he had known her, and that evocative aroma awakened too much that he would have preferred to forget. Slowly his lean brown hands clenched into fists, the tension in his lean powerful body extreme.

‘Well, isn’t this cosy?’ Saffy mocked, determined not to show weakness again.

‘Don’t rock the boat…’ Zahir purred softly in warning.

‘Your English has improved so much,’ Saffy remarked acidly, staring up at the boarded ceiling. ‘Was that a by-product of your promiscuity with various Western women or did you actually have to study the language?’

His even white teeth gritted. The novelty of her backchat was fast dimming in appeal and he sat up to stare down at her. ‘I was not promiscuous…’

Saffy stared stonily back at the lean bronzed beauty of his arresting face. ‘None of my business.’

Eyes as dark a black and cold as she had ever seen them, he swivelled away from her and turned on his side and she caught a glimpse of his back, and anything else provocative that she might have said was forgotten instantly. Without thought she thrust down the sheet to get a better look. The once-brown silken sweep of his smooth, muscular back was marred with slashed and intersecting lines of scars. Before she could think better of it, she exclaimed, ‘What on earth happened to your back?’

In an abrupt movement, Zahir flipped round to lie flat on his back again while colour crawled across his slashing cheekbones because he had forgotten to keep his shirt on. ‘Not something I want to talk about.’

‘But it looks like you were beaten…whipped!’ Saffy burst out, unable to stifle her horror at the thought of anyone deliberately inflicting that amount of pain on him. His back must have been shredded to leave scars that deep and extensive.

In the nerve-racking silence, which only Zahir was capable of using like a weapon he switched out the light. She could recall so many times when he had shut her out like that five years earlier, keeping his own counsel, refusing to share his thoughts or even the details of what he did or where he went when he was away from her. He wasn’t the confiding type, never had been, was very much made in the iron image of an army officer with the proverbial stiff upper lip. She compressed her lips on the questions tumbling on her tongue. Had he been caught, imprisoned and mistreated during the rebellion that had brought his father down? But surely his status as his father’s heir should have protected him on either side of the fence?

Bewildered, even wondering why she should be so curious, Saffy closed her eyes and instead pictured him lounging in his boxers by the door and finally she smiled faintly in the darkness, the more disturbing images banished. He might have acquired a few scars but he was still a vision of bronzed masculine perfection, still her fantasy male from his perfect pecs to his six-pack abdomen and powerful hair-roughened thighs. He would either be highly amused or highly offended to learn that she pictured him when she tried to look sexy in a pose.

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