“When you have finished your coffee, perhaps you would like to dance?” Blaize suggested. “After all, we are supposed to be lovers, despite that virginal look of yours….”

Petra’s mouth compressed and she put down her coffee cup with a small clatter. “That’s it!” she told him forcefully. “From now on, every time you so much as mention my…my…the word virgin, I shall deduct five dollars from your fee! I am paying you to help me escape a marriage I don’t want, not to keep on bringing up something that has nothing whatsoever to do with our business arrangement!”

“No? I beg to differ,” Blaize informed her softly. “I am supposed to create the impression that I am seducing you,” he reminded her. “Who is going to believe that if you insist on looking like a…”

“Five dollars!” Petra warned him.

“Like a woman who does not know what it is to experience a man’s passion,” Blaize finished silkily.

MILLS & BOON

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From the internationally bestselling author

Penny Jordan

Spent at the sheikh’s pleasure…

An enthralling new duet set in the desert kingdom of Zuran.

The Sheikh’s Virgin Bride

Petra is in Zuran to meet her grandfather—only to discover he’s arranged for her to marry the rich, eligible Sheikh Rashid! Petra plans to ruin her own reputation so that he won’t marry her—and asks Blaize, a gorgeous man at her hotel, to pose as her lover.Then she makes a heart-stopping discovery: Blaize is none other than Sheikh Rashid himself!

On sale June, #2325

One Night with the Sheikh

The attraction between Sheikh Xavier Al Agir and Mariella Sutton is instant and all-consuming. But as far as Mariella is concerned, this man is off-limits.Then a storm leaves her stranded at the sheikh’s desert home and passion takes over. It’s a night she will never forget….

On sale July, #2332

Penny Jordan
THE SHEIKH’S VIRGIN BRIDE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘DID you check out the sexy windsurfer attendant like I told you?’

‘Yeah! He was everything you said and more—much, much more. He’s coming up to my room later. Mind you, he did say that he’d have to be careful. Apparently he’s already on a warning from this Sheikh Rashid—the guy who co-owns the hotel—for fraternising with guests.’

‘And you did more than just “fraternise”, right?’

‘Yeah, much, much more.’

From her seat under the protective sun umbrella of the rooftop bar of the Marina Restaurant where she had just finished lunch, the conversation of the two women standing next to her chair was plainly audible to Petra. Still discussing the sexual attributes of the Zuran resort complex’s windsurfing instructor, they started to move away. Realising that one of them had dropped her wrap, Petra picked it up, interrupting their discussion to return it and earning herself a brief thank you from its owner.

As they walked away, still engrossed in their conversation, Petra grinned appreciatively to herself, murmuring wholeheartedly beneath her breath, ‘Thank you!’

Although they didn’t realise it, thanks to them she had just been given access to the very thing she had been looking for for the last two days!

As soon as they were out of sight she got up, collecting her own wrap, although unlike them she had chosen to eat her lunch wearing a silky pair of wide-legged casual trousers over her tankini top, instead of merely her swimwear.

Shading her eyes from the glare of the sun, she summoned the waiter who had served her her meal.

‘Excuse me,’ she asked him, ‘can you tell me where the windsurfers are?’

Half an hour later Petra was lying on a sun lounger, carefully positioned by the attentive beach attendant who had asked her where she wanted to sit so that she had a direct and uninterrupted view of the stunning man-made bay which was home to the resort’s pleasure craft, and an equally direct and uninterrupted view of the windsurfing instructor she had overheard discussed so enthusiastically over lunch!

She could certainly appreciate just why her fellow guests had waxed so lyrical about him!

Petra was used to seeing good-looking muscular men; she had attended an American university and, since the death of her parents in an accident when she was seventeen, she had travelled extensively both in Europe and Australia with her godfather, the senior British diplomat who had been her parents’ closest friend. She’d become, therefore, quite familiar with the sexy beach bum super-stud macho type of man who thought he was heaven’s gift to the female sex.

And this man certainly filled all the physical specifications for the type! And then some!

He could easily earn a living modelling designer underwear, Petra acknowledged as her own rush of sensual heat caught her discomfortingly off guard.

But as she watched him Petra was unwillingly forced to admit he had something else; something extra.

He was gathering up some discarded boards, and even the regulation smart hotel shorts had the effect of heightening his sexuality rather than discreetly concealing it. Across the distance that separated them Petra could somehow sense his maleness, and almost feel the testosterone-laden aura that surrounded him. The movement of his body as he worked reminded Petra of the coiled suppleness of a hunting panther—every movement, every breath a perfect harmony of honed strength and focus, not one single jot of energy wasted or superfluous.

She could see the way the sunlight highlighted the muscle structure of his arm as he held the windsurfer, the breeze tousling the thick darkness of his hair. From beneath their designer sunglasses she suspected that every woman on the beach must be watching him, and perhaps holding their breath as they did so, as she herself was doing. He had a mesmerising presence about him that was wholly and shockingly sexual, a rawness that Petra acknowledged was compelling, challenging, and very, very dangerously exciting! Oh, yes! He was exactly what she needed! The more she watched him, the more she was sure of it!

Compulsively she watched him from the safety of the distance that separated them.

Over an hour later, on her way back to her luxurious hotel suite, Petra was busily making plans. As she crossed the busy souq area of the complex, Petra paused to watch in admiration as a craftsman skilfully hammered a piece of metal into shape.

It was no wonder that this particular complex had received such worldwide acclaim. From the seductive appeal of its Moorish design, with its fragrant enclosed gardens, to its palatial extravaganza of expensive boutiques and the traditional flavour of its recreated souq, the complex breathed magic and romance and most of all wealth.

Petra still could not get her head round the fact that in all there were over twenty different restaurants situated around the complex, serving food from virtually every part of the world, but right now food was the last thing on her mind.

From her hotel bedroom Petra could just about see the beach. The sexy macho windsurfer had disappeared midway through the afternoon, climbing aboard one of the gleaming and very obviously fast boats moored at the adjoining marina, and Petra’s last sight of him had been of the sunshine gleaming on the thick darkness of his hair and the golden bronze of his tanned skin.

He was back now, though, even though the beach itself was deserted as the sun started to dip towards the horizon. Methodically he was collecting the abandoned windsurfers, and the other small pleasure craft the complex made available to its guests.

This was the perfect opportunity for her to do what she had been wanting to do ever since she had overheard the two women discussing him!

Before her courage could desert her she picked up her jacket and headed for her suite door.

Down on the beach it was almost dusk, the cool chill in the air reminding Petra that, despite the fact that the daytime temperature was in the high twenties, in this part of the world it was still winter.

For a second she thought she was too late, that the beach bum had gone, and her heart plummeted sharply with disappointment—her gaze searching the darkening beach.

As she stood looking out across the pretty marina Petra was so lost in her own thoughts that the sudden darkness of a shadow thrown across the fading light shocked her.

Spinning round, she sucked in her stomach on a shocked breath as she realised that the object of her thoughts was standing in front of her, and so close to her that a single step forward would bring them body to body.

Instinctively Petra wanted to step back, but the stubborn pride that her father had once insisted she had inherited directly from her grandfather refused to let her move.

Lifting her head, she took a deep breath, then exhaled it unsteadily as she realised that she had not lifted her head enough, and that right now instead of making contact with his eyes her gaze was resting helplessly on the curve of his mouth.

What was it they said about men with a full bottom lip? That they were very sensual, very tactile…men who knew all the secret nuances of pleasures the touch of those male lips could have on a woman?

Petra felt faintly dizzy. She hadn’t realised he was so tall. What nationality was he? Italian? Greek? His hair was very dark and very thick, and his skin—as she had had every opportunity to observe earlier in the day—was a deep, warm golden brown. He was fully dressed now, in a white tee shirt, jeans and trainers, and somehow—despite his casual clothes—he was disconcertingly much more formidable and authoritative-looking than she had expected.

It was almost fully dark; tiny decorative lights were springing up all around them, illuminating the marina and its environs. Petra could see the searing flash of his eyes as his glance encompassed her. First almost dismissively, and then appraisingly, his body stiffening as though suddenly alerted to something about her that had caught his interest, awakened his hunting instinct, changing the uninterest she could have sworn she had initially seen in his eyes to a narrowed intense concentration that pinned her into wary immobility.

If she turned and ran now he would enjoy it—enjoy pursuing her, tormenting her, she decided nervily. He was that kind of man!

Despite the fact that she was wearing a perfectly respectable pair of jeans and a shirt, she suddenly felt as though he could see right through them to the flesh beneath her clothes, that already he knew every curve of her, every hidden secret and vulnerability. She was not used to experiencing such feelings and they threw her a little off guard.

‘If you’ve come looking for one-to-one lessons, I’m afraid you’ve left it too late.’

The open cynicism in his voice was something she had not been prepared for, and both it and the look he was giving her burned her skin. Petra suspected she could hear a hundred generations of male contempt for a certain type of female wantonness.

‘Actually, I don’t need lessons,’ she told him, immediately rallying her pride. She had learned to windsurf as a young teenager, and although he wasn’t to know it she’d reached competition standard.

‘No? Then what do you need?’ his soft insultingly knowing response shocked through her.

Petra could understand how those women had been so excited by him! He possessed a sexual aura, a sexual magnetism that dizzied her senses. His air of control and self-assurance hinted tauntingly at the fact that he considered he had the power to overwhelm and dominate her if he chose to do so, that he knew precisely the effect he had on her sex! This was a man whose very existence spelled a very distinct kind of predatory male dangerousness in any language. Which was exactly why he was so perfect for what she wanted, she reminded herself as she tussled with an unfamiliar and ignominious urge to turn and run whilst she still had the option to do so.

Irritated by her own weakness, she refused to give in to it. In her time she had faced down a wide array of men for a wide variety of reasons, and there was no way she was going to be out-faced by this one! Even if it was the first time she had ever been made so overwhelmingly aware of a man’s sexuality that she could barely breathe the air that surrounded them because it was so charged with raw rogue testosterone.

Ignoring what she was feeling, Petra took a deep breath and told him firmly, ‘I have a proposition to put to you.’

In the silence that followed her statement he must have moved slightly, she recognised, because suddenly she could see his full face—and what she could see made the breath seize in her lungs. She had known this afternoon that he had the kind of powerful male allure that could neither be imitated nor acquired, but now she realised that he also had the kind of facial features that would have made a Greek god weep with envy.

The only thing she couldn’t see was the colour of his eyes. But surely with such colouring they had to be brown. Brown! Inwardly Petra allowed herself to relax a little. Brown-eyed men had never appealed to her. Secretly she had always hankered for a man with the cool magnetism of pure silver-grey-coloured eyes, having fallen in love with the hero of a book she had read as a young teenager whose eyes had been that colour.

‘A proposition?’ The cynical uninterest in his voice made her face burn a little. ‘I’m a man,’ he told her bluntly. ‘And I don’t go to bed with women who proposition me. I like to hunt my own prey, not be hunted by it. Of course if you’re really desperate I could give you directions to a place where you might have more luck.’

As she felt her fingers curling into small, angry fists, Petra had to resist the instinctive temptation to react to his insult in the most basic female way possible. Satisfactory though it might initially be, slapping his face was hardly going to be conducive to concluding her plan successfully, she reminded herself wryly. At least his attitude confirmed her assumption that he was a sexual predator—not the kind of man a potential husband would want consorting with the woman he wanted to make his wife. In short this man was ideal for her purpose.

‘It isn’t that kind of proposition,’ she denied firmly.

‘No…? So what kind is it, then?’ he challenged her.

‘The kind that pays well and isn’t illegal,’ Petra replied promptly, crossing her fingers and hoping inwardly that her comment would have piqued his interest.

He had moved again, and now Petra realised that it was her turn to have her features revealed to him in the increasing illumination of the decorative lights.

She wasn’t a vain person, but she knew that she was generally considered to be attractive. But if this man found her so, he certainly wasn’t showing it, she acknowledged as she was subjected to a cool visual inspection that made her itch to step back into the protective shadows, her arms wrapped protectively around her body.

‘Sounds fascinating,’ he mocked her laconically. ‘What do I have to do?’

Petra allowed herself to begin to relax. ‘Pursue me and seduce me—very publicly,’ she told him.

Just for a second she had the satisfaction of seeing that she had surprised him. His eyes widened fractionally before he controlled the movement.

‘Seduce you?’ he repeated. And now it was Petra’s turn to be surprised, and unpleasantly so, as she marked the sharp curtness in a male voice that had abruptly become disconcertingly chilly.

‘Not for real,’ she told him quickly, before he could say anything more. ‘What I want is for you to pretend to seduce me.’

‘Pretend? Why?’ he demanded baldly. ‘Do you already have a lover you wish to make jealous? Is that it?’ he guessed insultingly.

Petra glared at him.

‘No, I do not. I want to pay you to ensure that I lose my…my reputation.’

For one unguarded moment Petra saw his face and wondered exactly what the sudden frown creasing his forehead and the complete stillness of his body meant.

‘Am I allowed to ask why you want to lose it?’ he asked her.

‘You can ask,’ Petra told him. ‘But I don’t intend to tell you.’

‘No? Well, in that case, I don’t intend to help you.’

He was already turning away from her and Petra started to panic.

‘I’m prepared to pay you five thousand pounds,’ she called out to him.

‘Ten thousand and then we might…just might have a deal,’ he told her softly as he stopped and turned to look at her.

Ten thousand pounds. Petra felt sick. Her parents had left her a very generous trust fund, but until she turned twenty-five, there was no way she could raise such a large sum without the approval of her trustees—one of whom was her godfather, who was after all part of the reason why she needed to do this in the first place.

Her body slumped in defeat.

He was still walking away from her, and had almost reached the end of the beach. In another few seconds he would be gone.

Swallowing against the bitter taste of her own failure, she turned away herself.

CHAPTER TWO

REFUSING to give in to the temptation of watching him disappear, Petra fixed her gaze on the sea.

Most people, on first seeing her, assumed that Petra carried either Spanish or Italian blood in her veins. Her skin had a soft creamy warmth and her dark brown hair was thick and lustrous, her bone structure elegant and delicately patrician. Only her brilliant green eyes and the narrow straightness of her small nose, combined with her passionate nature, gave away the fact that she possessed Celtic genes, inherited through her American father’s Irish ancestry. Very few people guessed that her colouring came from an exotic blending of those genes with her mother’s Bedouin blood.

She could feel the evening breeze lifting her hair, its coolness raising tiny goosebumps on her skin, but they were nothing to the rash of sensation that flooded atavistically through her body as she suddenly felt the pressure of a male hand on the nape of her neck.

‘Five thousand, then—and the reason,’ a now familiar silken voice whispered in her ear.

He had come back! Petra didn’t know whether to be elated or horrified!

‘No haggling!’ the silken voice warned her. ‘Five thousand and the reason, or no deal.’

Petra’s throat had gone dry. She didn’t want to tell him, but what option did she have? And besides, what harm could it really do?

‘Very well.’

What was it that was making her voice sound so tremulous? Surely not the fact that his hand was still on her nape?

‘You’re trembling,’ he told her, so accurately tracking and trapping her own thoughts that his intuitiveness shocked her. ‘Why? Are you afraid? Excited?’

As he drawled the soft words with deliberate slowness, almost whispering into her ear, his thumb stroked against the side of her throat, trapping the pulse fluttering there.

Stalwartly Petra wrenched herself free and told him resolutely. ‘Neither! I’m just cold.’

She could see the taunting cruelty in the mocking curve of his smile.

‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘So, you want me to publicly pursue and seduce you?’

He questioned her as though he had suddenly grown bored with tormenting her, like a domestic cat suddenly tiring of the prey it had caught as a plaything rather than for food. But this man was no domesticated fireside pet! No, everything he did had a raw, untamed danger about it, a warning of power mockingly leashed.

‘Why? Tell me!’

Petra took a deep breath.

‘It’s a long and complicated story,’ she warned him.

‘Tell me!’ he repeated.

Briefly Petra closed her eyes, trying to marshal her thoughts into logical order, and then opened them again, beginning quietly, ‘My father was an American diplomat. He met my mother here in Zuran when he was posted here. They fell in love but her father did not approve. He had other plans for her. He believes that it is a daughter’s duty to allow herself to be used as a pawn in her family’s empirebuilding.’ As she spoke Petra could hear the anger and the bitterness in her own voice, just as she could feel it surging inside her—a mixture of a long-standing old pain on behalf of her mother and a much newer, bitter anger for herself.

‘My grandfather refused to have anything to do with my mother after she ran away with my father. And he forbade his family—my mother’s brothers and their wives—from having anything to do with her either. But she told me all about him. How cruel he had been!’ Petra’s eyes flashed.

‘My parents were wonderfully, blissfully happy, but they were killed in an accident when I was seventeen. I went to live in England with my godfather who, like my father, is a diplomat. That’s how they met—when my godfather was with the British Embassy in Zuran. Everything was fine. I finished university and then I travelled with my godfather, I worked for an aid agency in the field, and I was…am planning to take my Master’s. But then…

‘A short time ago, my uncle came to London and made contact with my godfather. He told him that my grandfather wanted to see me. That he wanted me to come to Zuran. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I knew how much he had hurt my mother. She never stopped hoping that he would forgive her, that he would answer her letters, accept an olive branch, but he never did. Not even when she and my father were killed. He never even acknowledged her death. No one from my family here came to the funeral. He would not allow them to do so!’

Tears of rage and pain momentarily filled Petra’s eyes, but determinedly she blinked them away.

‘My godfather begged me to reconsider. He said it was what my parents would have wanted—for the family to be reconciled. He told me that my grandfather was one of the major shareholders in this holiday complex and he had suggested that both I and my godfather come and stay here, get to know one another. I wanted to refuse, but…’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I felt for my mother’s sake that I had to come. But if I’d known then the real reason why I was being brought out here—!’

‘The real reason?’ There was a brusqueness in the male voice that rasped roughly against her sensitive emotions.

‘Yes, the real reason,’ she reiterated bitterly.

‘The day we arrived my uncle came here to the hotel with his wife, and his son—my cousin Saud. He’s only fifteen, and…They said that my grandfather wasn’t well enough to come, that he had a serious heart condition, and that his doctor had said that he needed bed rest and no excitement. I believed them. But then, when we were on our own together, Saud accidentally let the cat out of the bag. He had no idea, you see, that I didn’t know what was really going on!’

Petra shook her head as she heard her voice starting to tremble. ‘Far from merely wanting to meet me, to put right the wrong he had done to my parents, what my grandfather actually wants is to marry me off to one of his business partners! And, unbelievably, my godfather actually thinks it’s a good idea.

‘Although at first he tried to pretend that I had got it wrong and misunderstood Saud, in fact my godfather thinks it’s so much of a good idea that right now he’s incommunicado in the far east—on official diplomatic business, of course—and he’s taken my passport with him! “Just meet the chap, Petra, old thing.”’ She mimicked her godfather’s cut-glass upper class British voice savagely. ‘“No harm in doing that, eh? Who knows? You might find you actually rather like him. Look at British nobility. All from arranged marriages, and with pretty good results generally speaking. All that love tosh. Doesn’t always work y’know. Like to like, that’s what I always say—and from what your uncle has to say—it seems like this Sheikh Rashid and you have lots in common. Similar cultural heritage. Bound to go down well with the Foreign Office. And the Prime Minister…awfully keen on that sort of thing, y’know. I’ve heard it on the grapevine that the White House is one hundred per cent behind the idea.”’

‘Your grandfather wants you to marry a man who is a fellow countryman of his, and a business colleague, as a PR exercise for diplomatic purposes? Is that what you’re telling me?’ He cut across Petra’s angry outburst incisively.

Petra could hear the cynical disbelief in his voice and didn’t really blame him for his reaction.

‘Well, my godfather would like me to think that’s the only motivation for my grandfather’s behaviour, but of course he isn’t anything like so high-minded or altruistic,’ she told him scathingly.

‘From what I’ve managed to find out from Saud, my grandfather wants me to marry this man because as well as being a fellow shareholder in this complex he is also very well connected—is in fact related to the Zuran Royal Family, no less! My mother was originally supposed to marry a second cousin of the Family before she met and fell in love with my father. Her father—my grandfather—considered it to be a very prestigious match, and one that would bring him a lot of benefits. I suppose in his eyes it is only fitting that since he couldn’t marry my mother off to suit his own ends I should now take her place as a…a victim to his greed and ambition!’

‘Does your mixed heritage disturb you?’ His unexpected question threw Petra a little.

‘Disturb me?’ She tensed, anger and pride ignited inside her. ‘No! Why should it?’ she challenged him. ‘I am proud to be the product of my parents’ love for one another, and proud to be myself as well.’

‘You misunderstand me. The disturbance I refer to is that caused by the volatile mixing of the coldness of the north with the heat of the desert; Anglo Saxon blood mixed with Bedouin, the hunger for roots and the compulsion that drives the nomad and everything that those two polar opposites encompass. Do you never feel torn, pulled in two different ways by two different cultures? A part of both of them and at the same time alien to them?’

His words so accurately summed up the feelings that had bedevilled Petra for as long as she had been able to recognise them that they stunned her into silence. How could he possibly know that she felt like that? The tiny hairs on her skin lifted as though she were in the presence of a force she could not fully understand—a strength and insight so much more developed than her own that she felt in awe of it.

‘I am what I am,’ she told him firmly as she fought to ignore the way he was making her feel.

‘And what is that?’

Anger darkened her eyes.

‘I am a modern, independent woman who will not be manipulated or used to serve the ends of a machiavellian old man.’

She could see the shrug he gave.

‘If you do not want to marry the husband your grandfather has chosen for you then why do you simply not tell him so?’

‘It isn’t that easy,’ Petra was forced to admit. ‘Of course I told my godfather that there was totally and absolutely no way I was going to agree to even meet this man. Never mind marry him. That was when he announced that he had to leave for the far east and that he was taking my passport with him. To give me time to get to know my grandfather and to rediscover my cultural heritage, was how he put it, but of course I know what he’s really hoping for. He’s hoping that by leaving me here, at my grandfather’s mercy, he will be able to pressure me into doing what he wants. My godfather retires next year, and no doubt he’s hoping that the government will reward him for his work—including arranging a high-profile marriage to Sheikh Rashid—with a Peerage in the New Year’s honours list. And what makes it even worse is that, from what my cousin Saud has told me, it seems the whole family believe I should be thrilled to think that this…this…man is prepared to consider marrying me,’ Petra concluded bitterly.

‘Like normally marries like in such circumstances,’ the cool, almost bored voice pointed out. ‘I understand what you are saying about your grandfather’s motivations, but what about those of your proposed husband? Why should this…?’

‘Sheikh Rashid,’ Petra supplied for him grimly. ‘The same Sheikh Rashid who, from what I hear, does not approve of your…behaviour with his female guests!’

The quick, hard look he gave her caused Petra to say immediately, ‘I heard two women discussing you earlier on—’ She stopped. ‘As to why the Sheikh should want to marry me…’ Petra took a deep breath. ‘You might well ask. But apparently he and I have something in common—we are both of mixed parentage, only in his case I believe that it was his father who provided his Zuran heritage and not his mother. More importantly, The Zuran Royal Family consider the marriage to be a good idea. My godfather says that it will cause great offence if he refuses a marriage they have given their seal of approval, and great offence to mine if he refuses me. However, whilst I know enough about Zuran culture to know that for either of us to refuse the other once negotiations have commenced is considered to be an unforgivable insult, I know too that if he were to have reason to believe that morally I am not fit to be his wife he could honourably refuse to accept me.’

‘There’s an awful lot of supposition going on here,’ came the wry comment.

But when Petra shot him a fulminatingly angry look, and demanded, ‘Are you trying to say that it’s all in my imagination? Then there’s no point in us wasting any more of one another’s time!’

He gave her a small semi-placatory look and offered con-ciliatingly, ‘So! I understand the motivation, but why choose me?’

Petra gave a small cynical shrug.

‘Like I said, I heard a couple of female guests discussing you earlier, and from what they were saying it was obvious that…’

When she stopped speaking, he prompted her softly, ‘That what?’

‘That you have a reputation for enjoying the favours of the women who stay here. So much so, in fact,’ she added, tilting her chin defiantly, ‘that you have already been reprimanded for your behaviour by…by Sheikh Rashid, and are in danger of losing your job!’ Petra gave a small shudder. ‘I don’t know how those women can cheapen themselves! I might not want an arranged marriage, but there is no way I would ever prejudice my own personal moral beliefs by indulging in a meaningless sexual fling a…a cheap sexual thrill!’ Through the darkness Petra was suddenly acutely conscious of his gaze fixing intently on her.

‘I see…So you don’t want an arranged marriage and you don’t want cheap sexual thrills. So what do you want?’

‘Nothing!’ As he turned his head Petra saw the mocking way he raised his eyebrows and defended herself immediately. ‘What I mean is I don’t want anything until I meet a man who…’

‘Who matches up to your very high standards?’ he suggested tauntingly.

Crossly Petra shook her head.

‘Please don’t put words into my mouth. What I was going to say was until I meet a man I can love and respect and…and want to…to commit myself to emotionally, mentally, cerebrally, sexually—every which way there is. That is the kind of relationship my parents shared,’ she told him passionately. ‘And that is the kind of relationship I want for myself and one day want to encourage my own children to aspire to.’

‘A tall order, especially in this day and age,’ came the blunt response.

‘Perhaps, but one I think it worth waiting to fulfil,’ Petra told him firmly.

‘Aren’t you afraid that if you finally meet this paragon he might be deterred by the fact that your reputation—?’

‘No.’ Petra interrupted him swiftly. ‘Because if he loves me he will accept me and know and understand my values. And besides…’ She stopped, her face burning as she realised just how close she had come to telling him that the fact that she had so far not met such a man and was still a virgin would tell its own story to the man who eventually claimed her love. ‘Why are you asking me all these questions?’ she demanded sharply instead.

‘No reason,’ he replied laconically.

Through the darkness Petra could sense him evaluating her.

‘So,’ he announced at last. ‘You are offering to pay me five thousand pounds to pursue and seduce you and publicly ruin your reputation.’

‘To pretend to,’ Petra corrected him immediately.

‘What’s wrong?’ he taunted her. ‘Having second thoughts?’

‘Certainly not!’ Petra denied indignantly, and then gasped in shock as he closed the distance between them and took her in his arms, demanding shakily, ‘What are you doing?’

He smelled of clean night air and warm male skin, of the dangerous heat of the desert and the cool mystery of the night, and her whole body quivered in helpless reaction to his maleness. The slow descent of his head blocked out the light and the glitter of his eyes mesmerised her into unmoving stillness.

‘We have made a pact! A bargain!’ she felt him murmuring against her lips.

‘And now we must seal it. In the desert in times gone by such things were sealed in blood. Shall I prick your skin and release the life blood from your veins, to mingle it with my own, or will this suffice?’

Before Petra could protest his mouth was on her own, crushing the breath from her lungs. Oh yes, she had been right, she recognised weakly. He was as swift and as deadly as the panther she had mentally likened him to earlier…

A tiny frantic moan bubbled in her throat as she felt her body’s helpless response to the mastery of his kiss. She had been right to fear the passionate expertise indicated by that full bottom lip. There was a slight roughness about his face that chafed slightly against her own soft skin, and she had to fight to control the instinctive movement of her hand towards his face to touch that distinctive maleness. As he released her lips it seemed for some inexplicable shaming reason that they were determined to cling to his. Panic flooded over her, and before she could stop herself she bit fiercely into his lip in defiant pride.

The shock of the taste of his blood on her tongue held her immobile.

As she tensed herself for his retaliation she felt his hand wrapping round the slenderness of her throat.

‘So…you prefer to seal our bargain in blood after all? There is more of the desert in you than I had realised.’

And then before she could move his mouth was on hers again, crushing it with the pressure of a kind of kiss that was totally outside anything she had ever experienced. She could taste his blood, feel the rough velvet of his tongue, hear the frenzy of a desert storm in her own heartbeat and the relentless, unforgiving burn of its sun in the touch of his hand against her throat.

And then abruptly he had released her, and as he raised his head for a brief moment Petra saw his face fully illuminated for the first time.

His eyes were open and shock reeled through her as she discovered that they were not, after all, as she had imagined dark brown, but a pure, clear, cool, steely silver-grey.

‘We have the whole morning at our disposal, Petra. I thought you might like to go shopping. There is an exclusive shopping centre nearby, which has some wonderful designer shops, and…’

With a tremendous effort Petra tried to concentrate on what her aunt was saying to her.

She had telephoned Petra the previous evening to suggest that she show her something of the city and its shops. Whatever she thought about her grandfather’s behaviour, Petra could not help but like her aunt by marriage—even if she had been the one to speak to Petra self-consciously the very day her godfather had left.

‘Your grandfather knows how disappointed you must be that his doctor’s orders mean that he is unable to see you just yet, Petra, and so he has arranged for a…a family friend who…who has a major financial interest in it, to give you a guided tour of the hotel complex and to show something of our country. You will like Rashid. He is a very charming and very well-educated man.’

Petra had had to bite on her tongue to prevent herself from bursting out angrily that she knew exactly who and what Rashid was—thanks to Saud’s innocent revelations!

She had been awake for what felt like virtually the whole of the night, reliving over and over again those moments on the beach and wondering how she could ever have been stupid enough to allow them to happen, and had then fallen into a deep sleep which had left her feeling heavy-eyed.

The combination of that and the nervous edginess that was making her start at every tiny sound had exhausted her, and shopping was the last thing she felt like doing. Besides, what if he should try to get in touch with her? Would he do that, or would he expect her to seek him out on the beach and perhaps throw herself at him in the same shameless way she had heard that the other women had done? The thought made her stomach tense nauseously. No, their arrangement was that he was the one who had to pursue her, she reminded herself. Pursue and seduce her, a tiny inner voice whispered dangerously to her…

Seduce her. A fierce shudder ran through her, causing her aunt to ask in concern if she was cold.

‘Cold? In nearly thirty degrees of heat?’ Petra laughed. Her aunt might protest that in Zuran it was winter, but to Petra it felt blissfully warm.

‘Your grandfather hopes to be well enough to see you very soon,’ her aunt continued. ‘He is very much looking forward to that, Petra. He keeps asking if you look anything like your mother…’

Petra tried not to be affected by her aunt’s gentle words.

‘If he really wanted to know he could have found out a long time ago—when my mother was still alive,’ she pointed out, remaining unforgiving.

It was so tempting to tell her aunt that she knew the real reason she was here in Zuran, but she had no wish to get her young cousin into trouble.

‘What do you think of the hotel complex?’ her aunt was asking her, tactfully changing the subject.

Petra toyed with the idea of fibbing but her conscience refused to allow her to do so.

‘It’s…it’s breathtaking,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t explored all of it yet, of course. After all it’s almost like a small town. But what I have seen…’

She particularly liked the traditional design of the interconnecting hotel and villa complexes, with their private courtyards filled with sweetly scented plants and fruit trees, and the musical sound of fountains which had reminded Petra immediately of both the Moorish style of Southern Spain’s architecture and images her mother had shown her as a child of Arabian palaces.

‘When Rashid shows you round you must tell him that. Although unfortunately it may be several days before he is able to do so. He sent word to your grandfather this morning that he has been called away on business on behalf of The Royal Family…Another project he is working on in the desert.’

‘He works?’ Petra made no attempt to conceal her disbelief. From what Saud had told her, her prospective suitor sounded far too wealthy and well-connected to do something so mundane.

‘Oh, yes,’ her aunt assured her. ‘As well as having a large financial interest in this complex he also designed it. He is a very highly qualified architect and greatly in demand. He trained in England. It was his mother’s wish that he should go to school there, and after her death his father honoured that wish.’

An architect! Petra frowned, but she had no intention of showing any interest in a man she had already decided to despise.

‘It sounds as though he is a very busy man,’ she told her aunt. ‘There really is no need for him to give up his time to show me round the complex. I am perfectly capable of exploring it on my own.’

‘No. You must not do that,’ her aunt protested once they were on their own again.

‘No? Then perhaps Saud could accompany me?’ Petra could not resist teasing her.

‘No…no! It is best that Rashid should show you. After all, he is the one who designed the complex and he will be able to answer any questions you might have.’

‘And his wife?’ Petra questioned innocently. ‘Will she not mind him spending his precious free time with me?’

‘Oh, he is not married,’ her aunt assured her immediately. ‘You will like him, Petra,’ she assured her enthusiastically. ‘You have much in common with one another, and—’ She broke off as her mobile phone started to ring.

Her aunt reached beneath her robes to retrieve her phone. But as Petra listened to her speaking quickly in Arabic, she saw her aunt’s face crease in anxiety. ‘What is it?’ she demanded as soon as the call was over. ‘Is it my grandfather? Is he—’

Furious with herself for her unguarded reaction, and for her concern, Petra stopped speaking and bit her lip.

‘That was your uncle,’ her aunt told her. ‘Your grandfather has suffered a relapse. He knows that he has been ordered to rest but he will not do so! I must go home, Petra. I am sorry.’

Just for a moment Petra was tempted to plead to be allowed to go with her—to be allowed to see her grandfather, the closest person to her in blood she had—but quickly she stifled her weakening and unwanted emotions. Her grandfather meant nothing to her. How could he when she so obviously meant nothing to him? She must not forget the past and his plans for her. No, she was certainly not going to be the one to beg to see him. Her mother had begged and pleaded and had suffered the pain of being ignored and rejected. There was no way that she, Petra, was going to allow her grandfather to do the same to her!

After a taxi had dropped her off outside the hotel, Petra made her way into the lobby. With the rest of the day to herself there were any number of things Petra knew she could do.

The complex had its own souq, filled with craftspeople making and selling all manner of deliciously irresistible and traditional things, or she could leave the hotel and enjoy a gondola ride through the man-made canals that bisected the complex, or walk in the tranquillity of its gardens. And of course she could simply chill out if she so wished, either by one of the several stunningly designed pools, including a state-of-the-art ‘horizon pool’, or even on one of the private beaches that belonged to the complex.

The pools and beaches were reached via a man-made ‘cave’ below the lobby floor of the hotel, where it was possible to either walk or be taken in one of the resort’s beach buggies.

Once there, as Petra had already discovered, a helpful employee would carry her towel to the lounger of her choice, and position both it and her beach umbrella for her before summoning a waiter in case she wanted to order a drink.

Nothing that a guest might need, no matter how small—or how large—had been left to chance in the planning of the complex or the training of its staff. Petra had travelled all over the world, both with her parents, her godfather, and on her own, and she had already decided that she had never visited anywhere where a holidaymaker’s needs were catered for so comprehensively and enthusiastically as they were here.

But of course she was not here on holiday—even if her closest girlfriends at home had insisted on dragging her round some of London’s top stores before she had left, to equip her with a suitably elegant wardrobe for her trip.

Baring in mind her own innate modesty, and the country she was travelling to, Petra had eschewed the more outré samples of resort wear her enthusiastic friends had pointed out to her—although from what she had seen of her fellow holidaymakers’ choice she could have chosen the briefest and most minimal bikini and still have felt comparatively over-dressed compared with some of them.

Instead she had opted for cool, elegant linens and discreet tankini beach sets, plus several evening outfits including an impossible to resist designer trouser suit in a wonderfully heavy cream matt silk satin fabric, which the salesgirl and her friends had tried in vain to convince her she should wear with simply the one-button jacket fastened over her otherwise naked top half.

‘You’ve got the figure for it,’ the salesgirl had urged her, and her friends had wickedly agreed. But Petra had refused to give in, and so a simple cream silk vest with just a hint of a pretty gold thread running through it had been added to her purchases.

A rueful smile quirked her mouth as she remembered the more outrageous of her two friends attempts to persuade her to buy a trendy outfit they had seen in a London department store: a fringed and tasselled torso-baring top, with a pair of matching lower than hip level silky pants which had revealed her belly button, claiming mock innocently that it would be perfect for her to wear in a country that celebrated the art of belly dancing.

Petra had known when she was being wound up. Her smile deepened as she instinctively touched her smooth flat stomach with her fingertips. Hidden beneath her clothes was the discreet little diamond navel stud she had bought herself just before she’d left home to replace the one she had been wearing whilst her recently pierced flesh had healed up.

No one, not even her friends, knew of the uncharacteristic flash of reckless defiance which had led to her having her navel pierced the very day after her godfather had finally ground down her opposition and persuaded her to come to Zuran.

Secretly Petra had to acknowledge that there was something dangerously decadent and wanton about the way the tiny diamond she had bought for herself flashed whenever it caught the light, but of course no one was ever likely to see it, or to know of her rebellious emotional reaction at having to give in to her grandfather’s desire for her to visit his country.

Thinking of her grandfather made Petra frown. Just how serious was his heart condition? She had assumed from her uncle’s original calm, almost casual reference to it that it was not a particular cause for concern.

Was he as ill as her aunt seemed to believe? Or was it simply a ploy, a means of manipulating her and putting pressure on her? Petra was fiercely determined that she would not give one inch to the despot who had caused her mother so much pain, and she was convinced that he was playing the kind of cat and mouse game that her mother had often told her he was an expert at, using his supposed poor health as a means of keeping her in dark about his real plans for her. Naturally such behaviour on his part had put her on her mettle and alerted her most defensive and hostile reactions. But what if she had been wrong? What if her grandfather was genuinely very ill?

Although it would have been impossible for her not to be emotionally touched by the warmth of her aunt and uncle’s reception of her, and their concern that she might be disappointed at being deprived of what they seemed to assume was a much longed for meeting with her grandfather, Petra’s antipathy towards her grandfather had been intensified by his emotional manipulation and had caused her to harden her heart even more against him.

She had every right to both mistrust and dislike him, she reassured herself. So why was she feeling somehow abandoned and rejected—excluded from the anxious family circle which had gathered protectively around him? Why did she feel this sense of anxiety and urgency to know what was going on? Why did she feel this sense of pain and loss?

Her uncle or her aunt would ring her at the hotel if they thought it was necessary; she knew that. But that wasn’t like being there, being part of what was happening, being totally accepted.

A family walked past her in the foyer, on their way to the piano lounge, its three generations talking happily together. A deep sense of anguish welled up dangerously inside Petra. Grimly she tried to suppress what she was feeling. She had always been too vulnerable to her emotions. Her Celtic inheritance was responsible for that! Against her will she discovered that she was remembering how she had felt as a child, knowing that she was different, sensing her mother’s pain and helpless to do anything to alleviate it, envious of other children she knew who talked easily and confidently about their adoring grandparents.

She was letting her feelings undermine her common sense, she warned herself. Her grandfather had only brought her here for one reason and it had nothing to do with adoring her! To him she was merely a suddenly valuable pawn in the intricate game he so enjoyed playing with other people’s lives, using them to advance his own lust for power.

But if he was ill…seriously ill…if…something should happen before she had the chance to meet him….

Swallowing against the sharp lump in her throat, Petra headed for the lift. She would go upstairs to her room and decide how she was going to spend the rest of the day.

The suite her family had booked her in to was elegantly luxurious and large enough to house a whole family. Not only did it have a huge bathroom, complete with the largest shower Petra had even seen, as well as a sunken whirlpool bath, it also had a separate wardrobe-filled dressing room, and a bedroom with the most enormous bed she had even slept in, as well as a private terrace overlooking one of the complex’s enclosed gardens.

Letting herself into the suite, Petra walked over to the dressing table and put down her bag. As she did so she glanced into the mirror and then froze as in it she saw the reflection of the bed—and more importantly the man lounging on it: her would-be seducer and partner in crime! His hands were clasped behind his head as he watched her, his body covered in nothing more than the towel he had wrapped around his hips. Tiny drops of moisture still glinting on his skin testified to the fact that he must have only recently stepped out of the shower—her shower, Petra reminded herself, unable to stop her eyes widening in betraying shock as she turned round and stared at him in disbelief.

Her suite, like the others on the same floor, and like the palatial owners suite above them, could only be reached by a private lift for which one needed a separate security card!

But for a man like this one anything and everything was possible, Petra suspected.

Like someone in a trance, she watched as he swung his feet to the floor and stood up.

If that towel he had wrapped so precariously around his body should slip…

Nervously she wetted her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue. His own mouth, she suddenly realised on a flush of dangerous raw heat, bore a small fresh scar. Mesmerised, she tried to drag her gaze away from it…from him…

Had someone turned off the air-conditioning? she wondered dizzily. The room suddenly seemed far too warm…

He was walking towards her now, and in another few seconds…Automatically she backed away.

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