Defiant in the Desert (10 page)

‘Then why are you crying like that?’

‘Because it can never work!’ she said fiercely. ‘How could it?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because our lives are totally incompatible, that’s why.’ She rubbed her hand over her wet cheek. ‘You live in Samahan and I live in London. You are an oil baron and I’m a flaky artist.’

‘You think those things are insurmountable?’ he demanded. ‘You don’t imagine these are the kind of logistical problems which other couples might have overcome?’

Sara shook her head as all her old fears came crowding back. She thought of her own mother. Love certainly hadn’t brought
her
happiness, had it? Because love was just a feeling. A feeling which had no guarantee of lasting. She and Suleiman had both experienced something when they were fixed at a time and in a place which was light years away from their normal lives. How could something like that possibly survive if it was transplanted into the separate worlds which they both inhabited?

‘Listen to me, Suleiman,’ she said. ‘We don’t really
know
one another.’

‘That’s completely untrue. I have known you since you were seven years old. I certainly know you better than I know any other woman.’

‘Not as adults. Not properly. We have no idea if we’re compatible.’

His hand tightened around her waist; his thumb traced a provocative little circle. ‘I think we’re
ve-ry
compatible.’

‘That’s not the kind of compatibility I was talking about.’

‘No?’

‘No. I’m not talking about snatched moments of forbidden passion beneath the shade of a rock in the desert. Or sex-filled weekends at one of the best hotels in the world. I’m talking about normal life, Suleiman. Everyday life. The kind of life we all have to lead—whether we’re a princess or an oil magnate, or the man who drives the grocery truck.’ She pulled away from him so she could look at him properly. ‘Tell me what your dream scenario would be. Where you’d like us to go from here—if you had the choice.’

‘Well, that bit’s easy.’ He tugged at the end of a long strand of hair which was tickling his chest. ‘You no longer have a job, do you?’

‘Not officially, no. I left Gabe a letter on Christmas Eve, saying I’d had to go away suddenly and I wasn’t sure when I was coming back. It’s not the kind of thing his employees usually do and I’m not sure if he’d ever employ me again. There’s a long list of people desperate to fill my shoes. He’s the best in the business who could get anyone to work for him. I doubt whether he’d give another chance to someone who could let him down without any warning.’

But if she was hoping to see some sort of remorse on Suleiman’s face, she was in for a disappointment. The slow smile which curved his lips made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up, because she suspected she wasn’t going to like what she heard next.

‘Perfect,’ he said.

‘I fail to see what’s perfect about leaving my boss in the lurch and not having any kind of secure future to go back to.’

‘But that’s the point, Sara. You do have a secure future—just a different kind of future from the one you envisaged.’ He smiled at her as if he had just discovered that all his shares had risen by ten per cent while they’d been in bed. ‘You don’t have to go back to working for a large organisation. All that—what do they say?—clocking in and clocking out. Buying your lunch in a paper bag and eating it at your desk.’

‘Gabe happens to run a very large staff canteen,’ she said coldly. ‘And insists on all his staff taking a proper lunch break. And I think it’s you who are missing the point. I
want
to go back to work. It’s what I do. What else do you suggest I do?’

He tugged on another strand of blonde hair and began to wind it around his finger. ‘Simple. You come back to Samahan, with me.’

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Samahan?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘The expression on your face looks as if I have suggested that you make your home in Hades. But I think you will find yourself greatly surprised. Samahan has improved greatly since the cross-border wars. The discovery of oil has brought with it much wealth and we are ploughing some of that wealth back into the land.’

He let go of the twisted strand of hair and it dangled in front of her bare breast, in a perfect blonde ringlet.

‘My home will not disappoint you, Sara—for it is as vast as any palace and just as beautiful. A world-class architect from Uruguay designed it for me, and I flew in a rose expert from the west coast of America to design my gardens. I stable my horses there—two of them won medals in the last Olympics. I have a great team around me.’

Sara recognised what he was doing. This was the modern equivalent of a male gorilla beating his chest. He was showing her how much he had achieved against the odds—he, the poor boy whose own mother had sold him. He was trying to reassure her that he would treat her like a princess, but that was just what she didn’t want. She had hated her life as a princess, which was why she had left it far behind.

‘And what would I do all day in this beautiful house of yours?’

‘You would make love to me.’

‘Obviously that’s extremely tempting.’ Her smile didn’t slip. ‘But how about when you’re not around? When you’re jetting off to the States or swanning off somewhere being an oil baron?’

‘You can amuse yourself, for there is much that you will enjoy. Swim in the pool. Explore my extensive library.’

‘Just like one long holiday, you mean?’ she questioned brightly.

‘Not necessarily. You will find a role for yourself there, Sara. I know you will. I think you will find that the desert lands are changing. How long is it since you visited the region?’

‘Years,’ she said distractedly. ‘And I think you’d better stop right there. It’s very sweet of you and I’m sure your home is perfectly lovely, but I don’t want to go to Samahan. I want to go back to London because there are still loose ends to tie up. I owe Gabe an explanation about what happened and I want to finish up the project I was working on.’ Her eyes met his. She realised that she wanted him and loved him enough to want to try to make it work. So why not reverse his question to her? ‘But you could come back with me, if you like.’

‘With you?’ His black eyes were hooded.

‘Why not? We can see if we can exist compatibly there—and if we can, then I’ll think about giving Samahan a try. Does that sound reasonable?’

She saw the sudden hardening of his lips and realised that ‘reasonable’ was not on the top of Suleiman’s agenda. He wasn’t used to having his wishes thwarted, particularly not by a woman. He had expected her to fall in with his plans—without stopping to think that she might have plans of her own.

But was he seriously suggesting she might be happy being ensconced in what sounded like the luxury prison of his desert home? Hadn’t that been what she’d spent her whole life rebelling against?

‘What do you think?’ she questioned tentatively.

He slipped his hand between her legs. ‘I think we have wasted enough time talking about geographical escape.’

‘Suleiman—’

He bent his head to her neck and kissed it.

‘You want me to stop?’

‘That’s the last thing I want.’

She thought she heard soft triumph in his laugh as he sheathed himself in a condom and then lay back against the mattress with a look of satisfaction on his face.
Like a conquering hero,
she thought as he lifted her up like a trophy, hating the part of her which enjoyed that.

His moan echoed hers as he slid her down slowly onto his erection. With each angled thrust of her hips she took him deeper and deeper and she wondered what he was thinking. She knew he was watching her as her blonde hair swung wild and free—and suddenly she found herself
performing
for him.

Was she trying to prove that she was a match for all those women who had preceded her—by playing with her breasts and biting her lips, her eyes closed as if she was indulging in some wild and secret fantasy?

Whatever it was, it seemed to work because he went crazy for her. Crazier than she’d ever known him. He splayed his dark hands possessively over her hips as he made the penetration deeper still. And each time she was close to orgasm, he stopped. Stopped so that once she actually screamed out loud with pent-up frustration, because he made her build it up all over again.

He did it to her over and over again. Until she begged him to release her and then at last he slid her onto the floor and drove into her, as if it were the very first time all over again. She felt her body shatter with the most powerful orgasm she’d ever known but once it began to recede, she felt a sudden sense of unease.

An unease which grew stronger with every second. Because that had been all about power, hadn’t it? Suleiman was a man who was used to getting his own way and by refusing to conform to his wishes she had taken control of the situation. She had taken control and he would use whatever it took to get it back.

Sex.

Power.

Palaces.

Even words of love which sounded wonderful, until you wondered if he actually knew what they meant. Were they just another lever to get her to see things his way? she wondered.

He’d never even seen her in her usual environment. He didn’t
know
that very important side of her personality.

‘I want to go back to London,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Do you want to come with me or not?’

CHAPTER NINE

‘S
AY
THAT
AGAIN
.’

Bathed in the light which flooded into Gabe Steel’s enormous penthouse office, Sara met her boss’s eyes as he drawled his question. He was leaning back in his chair with a look of curiosity in his grey eyes. And Gabe didn’t usually do curiosity. At least, not with his employees. She guessed that leaving him a rather dramatic letter saying she was going away and then asking to be reinstated just a few weeks later was enough to stir anyone’s interest. Even your incredibly high-powered and often cynical boss.

‘I know it sounds incredible,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘Incredible is something of an understatement, Sara. How come you kept it a secret for so long?’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know. I’d hate to make out that I’m some poor little rich girl—but everyone treats you differently once they know you’re a princess.’

‘I guess they do.’ His pewter eyes narrowed as he twirled a solid gold pen between his long fingers. ‘So what’s brought about the sudden change of heart?’

Change of heart.

She wondered if Gabe had any idea of how uncannily accurate that particular phrase was. Probably. You didn’t get to be head of one of the world’s biggest advertising agencies without having a finely tuned degree of insight.

‘I was...’ She wondered what he would say if she told him the truth.
I was due to get married to a Sultan, but I put a stop to that particular arrangement by having sex with his closest friend.
Probably not a good idea. Men could be notoriously tribal about that kind of thing and she didn’t want to portray Suleiman as some sort of bad guy. And anyway, that wasn’t the whole truth, was it? Suleiman wasn’t the
reason
behind the cancelled wedding. He was just a symptom.

She stared sightlessly out of the penthouse window. A symptom who was currently prowling around her London apartment and making her feel as if she had imprisoned a tiger there.

It was a big apartment—everyone said so. So how come the rooms seemed to have shrunk to the size of matchboxes since Suleiman had accompanied her back from Paris and moved in with her? It had been her mother’s apartment and Sara loved every inch of it, a feeling clearly not shared by her lover.

He had walked through the three huge—or so she’d thought—reception rooms, had barely deigned to look at the kitchen and had given the bedrooms only a cursory glance, before turning to demand where the garden was.

She had hated the way her voice had sounded all defensive. ‘There isn’t one.’

‘No garden?’ He had sounded incredulous, while all her explanations about the convenience of having a nearby park had fallen on deaf ears.

He had complained about the plumbing—which admittedly
was
fairly ancient—and insisted on having black-out blinds installed in her bedroom. He had commandeered the second bedroom as some kind of makeshift office. Suddenly emails began arriving at odd times of the day and night. Important documents from the US and the Middle East were delivered daily, while a series of efficient sounding staff would ring and she would hear him speaking in his native tongue. She told him it was like living at the United Nations.

He said he was trying to decide whether or not to set up a London headquarters. But that was a big decision which couldn’t be made in a hurry, while Sara seemed to get stuck with the smaller, niggling ones.

She’d been forced to find some kind of laundry service since it seemed that Suleiman liked to change his shirt at least twice a day. It helped explain why he always looked so immaculate, but the practicalities of such high sartorial standards were a pain.

But she tried to tell herself that these were just glitches which could easily be sorted out. That Suleiman had never lived with anyone before and neither had she. She convinced herself that all these problems were solvable, but quickly realised there was one which wasn’t—and that was the problem of time management. Or rather,
her
time management. Suleiman was obviously used to having women at his beck and call. He didn’t like it when she got up at seven each morning to get ready for work. Sometimes it seemed as if he was almost
jealous
of her job.

And that scared her.

It scared her even more than her growing feelings for him.

It was as if the love she felt for Suleiman had started out as a tiny seed, which was in danger of becoming a rampant plant and spreading its tentacles everywhere. His presence was so pervasive and his character so compelling that she felt as if she was being taken over by him. That if she allowed him to, he would take over her whole life and completely dominate her and she would become invisible. And she couldn’t allow him to do that.

She didn’t dare do that.

So even though she had to fight every loving and lustful instinct in her body, she didn’t give in to Suleiman’s repeated attempts to push her job into second place.

‘Come back to bed,’ he would purr, with that tiger-hasn’t-been-fed look on his face, as he patted the empty space on the bed beside him.

And Sara would pull on her silk wrap and move to a safe distance away from him. ‘I can’t do that or I’ll be late,’ she’d said primly, the third time it happened. ‘Haven’t you ever been out with a working woman before—and if so, how on earth did you cope?’

His answering smile had been infuriating. Almost, she thought—
smug
.

‘Most women can be persuaded to take a sabbatical, if you make it worth their while.’

Sara had felt sick at the lengths to which her sex would go to in order to hang onto a man. Which, of course, made her even more determined not to weaken. Her job meant independence and she’d fought long and hard for it.

She realised that Gabe was still looking at her from the other side of the desk. Still waiting for some kind of explanation. She flashed him a slightly self-conscious smile.

‘Actually, it’s a man.’

‘It usually is,’ he offered drily. ‘Would that be the reason why you had your skirt on inside out yesterday morning?’

‘Oh, Gabe!’ She clapped her palms to her flaming cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry. I only realised when I came out of the meeting and Alice pointed it out.’

‘Forget it. I only mention it because the client did—so perhaps best not to repeat it. Anyway.’ He smiled. ‘What’s his name? This man.’

She could hear her voice softening as she said it. ‘It’s Suleiman Abd al-Aziz—’

Gabe’s eyes narrowed ‘The oil baron?’

‘You’ve heard of him?’

He smiled. ‘Unlike princesses, global magnates tend not to stay anonymous for very long.’

‘No, I suppose not. The thing is, I was thinking...’ She twisted her fingers together in her lap and wondered what was making her feel so nervous. Actually, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly what was making her nervous. On some instinctive level, she was terrified of Suleiman meeting her powerful and very sexy boss. ‘I wanted Suleiman to get a bit of an idea about what my job’s about. I told him about the massive campaign we did for that new art gallery in Whitechapel—and I thought that I might bring him along to the opening tonight. If that’s all right.’

‘Excellent. You do that.’ Gabe looked at her expectantly. ‘And now, if we’re through with all the personal details—can you get me the drawings for the Hudson account?’

Noting the slight reprimand, Sara opened up the folder she’d carried in with her and worked hard on the account for the rest of the afternoon. She sent Alice out for coffee and tried ringing Suleiman to tell him about the gallery opening, but he wasn’t answering his phone.

It was gone six by the time she arrived back home to find the apartment filled with the smell of cinnamon and oranges. She wondered if Suleiman had ordered something in and whether he’d just forgotten that she had the opening tonight.

Because mealtimes had proved another stumbling block, mainly because Suleiman was used to having servants cater to his every whim. He liked food to arrive when he wanted it—usually after sex. He was not interested in the mechanics of getting it, not of shopping for it nor having Sara rustle him up a meal. So far they had compromised by eating out every night, but sometimes she just wanted to kick off her shoes and scoff toast on the sofa.

She followed the direction of the aroma out to the kitchen, and blinked in surprise to see Suleiman leaning over the hob, adding something to a pot. It was such an incongruous sight—and so rare to see him in jeans—that for a moment she just stood there, feasting her eyes on his powerful frame and thick dark hair. The denim clung to his narrow hips, it hugged the muscular shaft of his long legs and she had to swallow down her instant feeling of lust.

‘Wow. This is a sight for sore eyes,’ she said softly. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Wondering why it’s so difficult to buy fresh apricots in central London.’ He turned round, his black eyes glittering as he curved her a smile. ‘Actually, I’m trying to impress my liberated princess by producing a meal, after she’s spent a hard day at the office.’

Putting her handbag down on the counter, she walked over to him and looped her arms around his neck. ‘I didn’t know you cooked.’

‘That’s because I rarely do these days. But as you know, I once served in the Qurhahian army,’ he said, bending to brush his mouth over hers. ‘Where even men who had been spoilt by living in palaces were taught the basics of food prep.’

She laughed, lifting her lips for a proper kiss and within seconds she was lost in it. And so was he. Suddenly food was forgotten. Everything was forgotten, except the need to have him as close to her as possible. Her fingers tugged at his shirt, pulling it open to reveal his bare chest—not caring that several buttons went bouncing all over the stone tiles of the kitchen floor.

She tugged impatiently at his belt and he gave a low laugh as he pushed her up against the door. Rucking up her dress, he ripped her panties apart and her muffled protest was stifled with a hungry kiss. She could hear the rasp of his zip and the buoyant weight of his erection as it sprang free. She reached down to touch him, her fingertips skating over his silken hardness before he removed her hand. Cushioning the weight of her bottom with his hands, he positioned himself where she was hot and wet for him and thrust deep inside her.

Her legs wrapped tightly around his hips, Sara clung to him as they rocked in rhythm, but it was over very quickly. Her head wilted like a cut flower as she leaned it against his shoulder and her voice was sleepy in his ear.

‘Nice,’ she murmured.

‘Is that the best you can do? I was hoping for something a little more lyrical than “nice”.’

‘Would stupendous work better?’

‘Stupendous is a good word,’ he said.

‘Listen.’ She kissed his neck. ‘Do you want to go to the opening of that gallery in Whitechapel? The one I told you about? It’s tonight.’

He lifted up a handful of hair and brushed his lips against her neck. ‘No, I don’t—and neither do you. Let’s just stay home. I’m making dinner and afterwards I’m sure we can find ways to amuse ourselves.’

Sara could feel the warmth of her orgasm beginning to ebb away. ‘Suleiman, I have to go.’

‘No, you don’t. You don’t
have
to go anywhere. You’ve been working all day as it is.’

‘I know I have. But this is my job. Remember?’ She thought of her mother and the way she’d let all her options slide away from her. She thought of the way that men could manoeuvre women into a corner, if you let them.
And she wasn’t going to let Suleiman do that to her
. She bent down to pick up the tattered lace which had once been her panties. ‘I’ve been a major part of the whole campaign from the get-go and I want to see the launch. It’s expected of me and it would look very odd if I wasn’t there. But I asked Gabe whether I could bring you along—and he said yes.’

There was a pause. ‘How very generous of him,’ he said acidly. ‘And you didn’t think to give me any notice?’

‘Actually, I did.’ She tried to ignore the dangerous note in his voice, telling herself that she
had
sprung this on him at the last minute. And why had that been? Because she’d feared just this kind of reaction if she’d said anything about it sooner? ‘I tried ringing, but you weren’t picking up. Look, you really don’t have to go to this, Suleiman, but I do. So I’m going to take a shower and get ready.’

Without another word, she walked into the bedroom and stripped off her clothes before hitting the shower. She half expected Suleiman to follow her, but he didn’t.

She was
not
going to feel guilty. Furiously, she lathered shampoo into her hair. If he loved her—as he said he loved her—then shouldn’t he be making more of an effort to integrate into her world, and her life?

He could meet Gabe and he’d see Alice again—as well as some of the other graphic designers she’d spoken about. Wasn’t that what modern coupledom was all about?

But as she blow-dried her hair in front of the bedroom mirror her fears just wouldn’t seem to leave her. She found herself wondering if they were just
playing
at being modern. Pretending that everything was fine, when deep down nothing had really been addressed. At heart, wasn’t Suleiman just another old-fashioned desert warrior who was incapable of any real change?

Knowing that the press would be there, as well as the usual smattering of celebrity guests, she was extra generous with the mascara. She could hear the sound of water running in the bathroom next door and moments later Suleiman walked into the bedroom, a towel wrapped around his hips.

He rubbed at his damp hair with a second towel and she thought how powerful his body looked. The whiteness of the towel contrasted against the deep olive of his skin and droplets of water gleamed there, as if he’d been showered with tiny diamonds.

‘Oh, good,’ she said, and smiled. ‘You’ve decided to come.’

‘Reluctantly,’ he growled as he pulled a white shirt from the wardrobe.

She watched him from the mirror as she finished fiddling around with her make-up. He looked heartstoppingly gorgeous in that dark suit which emphasised the blackness of his hair and eyes. She wondered what Alice would say when she saw his name on the guest list. She wondered how he would fit in with all her work colleagues. But her heart was suddenly ridiculously light. He was coming, wasn’t he? How could they fail to love him, as she loved him?