by Abby Green
As the silence settled around her she realised she’d made a huge mistake, but before she could turn and escape she heard a sound and Salim stepped out from behind a screen on the other side of the tent.
Charlotte couldn’t move.
He was naked.
Or almost naked. A tiny towel was hitched around his slim waist and his skin gleamed like burnished bronze. His hair was wet. He’d obviously just had a shower.
All Charlotte could see was the massive expanse of broad muscled chest and more ridges of muscle that led down to the towel, which did precious little to hide the very healthy bulge underneath, and then down lower to powerful thighs and strong legs.
If she’d thought he looked like a warrior before, now she realised he was a god. She was rooted to the spot, as if she’d never seen a naked man in the flesh before. Because she hadn’t.
That realisation made her whirl around to leave, but in her agitation she couldn’t find the opening of the tent. She was almost crying with frustration when she felt a solid presence behind her, and then a hand wrapped itself over her arm and turned her around.
She closed her eyes. Her heart was thumping so hard she felt light-headed.
‘Open your eyes, Charlotte.’
With the utmost reluctance she did, and then felt a mixture of relief and regret to see that he’d thrown on a tunic. She couldn’t lift her eyes higher, though, not wanting to see the expression on his face. But of course he tipped up her chin and she had no choice.
His face was harder than she’d ever seen it, those blue eyes burning. As if he was angry. When she was the angry one. She’d just forgotten for a moment.
She stepped back, dislodging his hold on her. She felt crowded and moved around him to gain some space.
He turned, watching her. ‘Was there something you wished to discuss, Charlotte?’
She folded her arms, lifted her chin and hoped her voice wouldn’t betray her. ‘There was, actually. For your information, I am most certainly not a romantic. Nothing could be further from the truth.’
Salim folded his arms too, mirroring her defensive stance. ‘So what was that back there? Some dust in your eye?’
He didn’t believe her. She had to make him understand. ‘I was six when my parents divorced. It was ugly and very public.’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean? How public?’
Charlotte gave a short harsh laugh. ‘As public as you can get. My father is Harry Lassiter and my mother is Louise Lassiter—she didn’t change her name after the divorce.’
Salim’s gaze sharpened. ‘The award-winning movie director and the actress?’
Charlotte nodded. They’d both won multiple awards for the film, which had brought them together in the first place.
Salim’s frown deepened. ‘But you’re Charlotte McQuillan.’
Her arms tightened around herself. Already she was regretting opening her mouth. What was it about this man that made him her confessor?
‘I changed my name legally as soon as I turned eighteen. I took my grandmother’s maiden name. I didn’t want to be associated with my parents, or the most infamous divorce in the last couple of decades.’
Salim said, ‘I was too young for it to be on my radar at the time, but I remember reading about it later.’
Charlotte grew hot, thinking of the lurid exposé programme that had been made about it, which was still on endless repeat on the entertainment channels. The memory of the pack of press waiting outside the courtroom was still vivid, and the awful knowledge that she’d wet herself because she’d been so upset after her father had said to her in the courtroom, ‘You’re no longer my daughter,’ because she’d chosen to stay with her mother.
Her tights had been stuck to her legs, damp and clammy, and she’d been sure that everyone would know her shame.
Diverting her mind from too-painful memories, she said, ‘I’m just telling you this so that you’ll understand why I have no illusions about romance or love.’
A sharp pain lanced her as she recalled the wedding ceremony she’d just witnessed and the well of secret emotion it had tapped into. She felt as if she’d just betrayed something precious.
Salim said, ‘I couldn’t agree more. My experiences might not have been the same as yours, but the end result is the same.’
Charlotte blinked at him. Bizarrely, his words didn’t make her feel comforted.
He said tautly, ‘My parents hated each other. You say you were a pawn—well, so were my brother and I. Born to lead two countries and keep the peace.’
Charlotte’s insides twisted as she imagined growing up in that environment. ‘People have been born for a lot less.’
He smiled, but it was hard. ‘Yes, but they have their freedom.’ And then his smile faded. ‘Maybe we’re not so different after all, hmm?’
Charlotte looked at Salim incredulously, thinking that they couldn’t be more different. He was vital and arrogant, a force to be reckoned with, and she... Who was she? Someone who’d spent her life running from feeling rejected and abandoned, building a persona to protect herself from all that.
It suddenly felt very fragile. She felt exposed and raw, from those memories and from saying too much. Again.
She backed away. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Wait. Stop.’
There was a note of command in his voice that stopped her in her tracks.
‘Why did you come here this evening, really?’
Charlotte swallowed. Her skin felt tight and hot and her mouth was dry. Her heart was beating like a trapped bird against her chest.
‘Just as I told you—I wanted to make sure you knew that I don’t...don’t have romantic notions.’
Salim moved towards her and she was rooted to the ground. ‘Why is that so important?’
She swallowed again. ‘I didn’t want you to think that I refused you last night because I wanted something more. I don’t want more...’ She stopped, her heart beating too hard and her brain fusing and stopping her words.
Because she was afraid she was lying to herself.
The wind screeched outside. Salim’s eyes were like two blue flames. ‘Believe me, the last thing you inspire is feelings of romance...’
Charlotte felt a pang of hurt. ‘I don’t?’
He shook his head. ‘No. You inspire much earthier things. Dark and decadent things.’
There was still a couple of feet between them, but Charlotte felt as if Salim was touching her. The push and pull inside her was torture.
For a second she almost took a step towards him, giving in to the inexorable pull. But sanity prevailed. She was a virgin. She was no match for this man’s presumably expert and voracious appetites. He would laugh at her, would ridicule her.
Before she could lose her mind completely, Charlotte blurted out, ‘I’m going back to my tent.’
She turned abruptly and blindly felt for the opening of the tent, but nothing happened when she tried to open it. Panic mounted, and then she heard Salim’s voice.
‘We’re in the middle of a sandstorm. The tent has been secured for our safety. If you were to step outside right now you’d be flayed in minutes.’
Charlotte noticed far too belatedly that the entire structure of the tent was swaying alarmingly. She dropped her hands and turned around.
Salim had a suspiciously innocent look on his face. ‘Don’t worry, we’re quite safe. These tents are built to withstand such events.’
Charlotte almost couldn’t articulate words, but she forced them out. ‘So, what does that mean.?’
An unmistakable glint of something wicked in Salim’s eyes replaced any hint of innocence on his handsome face. ‘It means, Charlotte, that you’ll have to spend the night here.’
CHAPTER SIX
CHARLOTTE TOOK A deep breath as she looked at herself in the small ornate mirror that hung—swinging precariously now—over the sink in the sectioned off bathing area of the tent. She looked wild. Her hair had been blown
everywhere by the wind.
She tried to drum up a sense of horror seeing herself come so undone, but in truth when Salim had told her she’d have to stay there a very illicit sense of liberation had flowed into her blood, making it race. As if nature itself had colluded to take the angst she was feeling out of her belly and replace it with a sense of fatalism.
She couldn’t keep fighting this. No matter how terrifying it was.
Salim hadn’t been crass enough actually to articulate what might happen, but it throbbed in the air even now.
Just then, as if to test her, something soft and light-coloured was flicked over the screen separating her from the rest of the tent and Salim’s voice floated in, far too close for comfort.
‘You can use this after you wash. It’ll be too big but it’s all I have.’
Charlotte was about to open to her mouth to declare she didn’t need to change, because she had no intention of taking off a stitch of her clothing, no matter what was going on in her head and body, but the words stuck in her throat when she found herself wondering if he had worn this tunic.
Weakly, she said nothing and pulled it over the screen into her hands. His scent drifted tantalisingly from the folds of material and something tugged deep in her belly—an ache that had become all too familiar since she’d met Salim.
She looked at herself in the mirror—her expression was one of someone who was hunted. Or haunted, to be more accurate. Haunted by her past.
It struck her then—as much as she’d done her best to move away from it—her past was still nipping at her heels, dictating everything she did. Stopping her from living fully for fear of annihilation. Rejection.
She thought she’d distanced herself from any possibility of pain, but she realised now with a sense of futility that you could never really escape pain. Unless you wanted to live half a life. And she knew now that she wanted more than that—even if it meant taking a risk.
The wind howled outside and the sense of being closed off from everything was very seductive. It whispered at her to let go of her inhibitions. It whispered at her to take a risk.
‘Charlotte? Is everything all right?’
She jumped at Salim’s voice and then answered quickly, ‘Everything is fine. I’ll be out in a minute.’
A reckless excitement filled her in that moment—a sense of seizing something vital and alive. Without really thinking about the invisible line she’d stepped over in her own mind, Charlotte stripped and stepped into the shower area, leaving her own clothes in a neat pile on a chair.
Hot water rained down over her head and body and she tipped her face up. She couldn’t help but be aware of the symbolism; she felt as if a layer of her carefully constructed persona was being washed away too.
She was in the middle of the desert in the middle of a sandstorm, sharing a tent with a man who had got under her skin and made her want more than she’d ever wanted in her life.
When she stepped out and dried herself perfunctorily with a towel cool air made her skin pop up into goosebumps. Her nipples were hard and tight. The ache deep in her core intensified.
The tunic Salim had given her fell heavily down her naked body, pooling on the ground at her feet. It had a vee neck that on him would look perfectly civilised, but on her cut right between her breasts, showing an indecent amount of flesh.
Suddenly Charlotte didn’t care. It was as if she could see her habitual self stalking out of this space, still dressed in her own clothes, determined to resist at all costs, but she didn’t want to be her any more. Or at least not for tonight.
The earth was being whipped into a frenzy outside, and they were separated from that awesome power by only a flimsy barrier. It intensified her growing urgency to seize the moment.
Charlotte took a breath and stepped out from behind the screen. For a second she couldn’t see anything in the dimly lit space, and her very recent and nebulous bravado faltered. But then her eyes fell on the bed, and she saw the unmistakably masculine shape of Salim, sprawled in careless abandon on top of the sumptuous fabrics.
The tent around them groaned ominously, but he didn’t move. Hardly breathing, Charlotte picked up the excess folds of the robe in one hand and moved forward, coming to a stop a few feet from the bed.
When her eyes had finally adjusted to the light she saw that he wasn’t moving because he was asleep, his dark lashes resting on those slashing high aristocratic cheekbones. Even though he wore clothes—he’d thrown trousers on under his robe—the latent power of that impressive body was impossible to conceal.
There was something incredibly voyeuristic about watching him in this moment of rare defencelessness, but that wasn’t strictly accurate because even now he exuded an air of force and control.
His leg moved slightly and Charlotte panicked, reality slamming into her like cold bucket of water. What was she doing? Had she really expected to walk out here and find him waiting for her just because he’d said, ‘You’ll have to spend the night here’ with that glint in his eye? Expected that he would still want her?
He was just toying with her because she was a woman unlike his other lovers—someone who intrigued him briefly. She was an idiot to think that anything fundamental had changed within her so that she was ready to throw caution to the winds, and she sent up silent thanks now that he’d never know how close she’d come to making a complete fool of herself.
She turned around to escape behind the screen, but got no further than a couple of feet when she heard Salim say, ‘Where are you going?’
Salim pushed himself up to sit on the bed. Charlotte had her back to him. He’d been listening to the sounds of the shower and imagining rivulets of water running down over her slender pale body. Then he’d heard her steal softly into the tent and he’d feigned sleep, curious to see what she’d do...
But nothing had happened and when he’d opened his eyes she’d been walking away.
She slowly turned around to face him.
Salim stood up from the bed. The robe he’d given her was comically large on her slender frame, but comical was the last thing he was feeling as he took her in.
She was bathed in the golden light of the candles around her and it made her pale skin even more lustrous. Her hair was damp and curling from the shower. And when his gaze dipped down desire engulfed him in a hot wave.
He’d seen women dressed in the most provocative lingerie the world had to offer. And yet right now the woman in front of him was the most erotic vision he’d ever seen.
The vee of the robe came to just below Charlotte’s breasts and did little to conceal the high, firm swells. He could see the outline of her body through the light material—where her waist dipped in and her hips flared out, her long legs and the slightly darker juncture between them.
His mouth watered at the prospect of tasting her there, feeling her come apart in his mouth...
She looked like the kind of woman he’d never slept with in his life. Like an innocent. And, as much as he knew he should turn away from her because he had no right corrupting anyone’s innocence, the dark part of him wanted her too much. The dark part of him he’d spent a lifetime indulging to carve out his independence, further his ambitions and seek revenge.
Charlotte couldn’t turn back now—not under Salim’s hungry gaze. It emboldened her again. She felt as if he’d just touched her all over but it wasn’t enough. She wanted him to touch her...properly.
She moved across the tent to stand in front of him, light-headed with what she was doing. She said, before she could stop herself, ‘What you said...that I make you want earthy things, dark things... I want that too.’
Salim’s gaze locked onto her mouth and she could see the colour slash across his cheeks. He lifted a hand and rubbed his thumb across her lower lip, his fingers touching her jaw. She held her breath, acutely aware of her innocence. Should she say something?
Her gut clenched.
Surely, she told herself, a man like him would hardly be sensitive enou
gh to perceive her innocence. And there was some bizarre comfort in the fact that her first lover would be a man who wouldn’t feel the need to give her platitudes or false promises.
She didn’t want someone tender and caring, as she’d always believed. She craved this inferno of need and she wanted it with this man who stood head and shoulders above every other man she’d ever met.
She was under no illusions. She knew that this was a moment out of time, that they were cocooned in this tent while a storm raged outside. In their usual world and in their usual circumstances he wouldn’t have looked at her twice, and she felt greedy now. Greedy to store up this moment for when they would be back in the real world.
He took his thumb off her mouth and put his hands on her arms. Blue eyes on green. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded. A faint alarm bell was ringing at his consideration, but it was too faint to be heard right now.
He brought his hands up her arms to her shoulders and slipped his fingers under the material of the robe. With gentle pressure he pushed at the robe until it slipped down her shoulders, baring them. It clung precariously to her upper arms and the slopes of her breasts for an infinitesimal moment, but when Salim exerted more pressure it fell all the way to the ground and pooled at her feet.
She was naked in front of him, more exposed than she’d ever been, but fire was burning inside her, and a hitherto unexplored sense of feminine power.
Salim’s gaze dropped down over her body, slowly and thoroughly. His eyes lingered on her breasts, which she’d always felt were too small. Now they felt positively voluptuous under his inspection. And then his gaze dropped further, and the ache between her legs turned sharp and insistent.
She didn’t realise she was trembling until he stepped back and started to take off his tunic, pulling it over his head and revealing that impressive chest again. With deft movements he shed his trousers and now he was naked too. Charlotte couldn’t help herself. Her eyes widened as she took in the majestic virility of the man in front of her.
She felt as if something was slotting into place—as if she’d had the desire to see this visual since the moment she’d laid eyes on him but hadn’t acknowledged it until now.
