by Penny Jordan
Although Dhurahn, like Zuran, was a modern city, there was still that awareness of the proximity of the desert and its mystery, and she had learned while she was in Zuran that there was something about it that enthralled her. She had taken a couple of organised trips out to the wadis, and had marvelled at everything she had seen, gaining respect for the strength and pride of those who had lived for so many centuries in this hostile but strangely beautiful environment. If she were allowed to stay on she would try to explore the desert a little more, get to know more about it, she told herself, letting her thoughts drift as she waited patiently for Drax.
When she at last heard the hum of the descending lift she waited expectantly for the doors to open—only to stiffen with shock when it wasn’t Drax who got out, but Jack Logan. He was grinning wolfishly at her in the almost obscenely vain way he had that she had always found so threatening.
‘I saw you get in the lift, so I thought I’d come down and keep you company,’ he said mockingly. ‘How did you manage to get involved with the top man, by the way? Not via his bed, I’ll bet…You wouldn’t have lasted two seconds there once he’d sussed out how sexless you are…’
Sadie swung round, turning her back on him, praying that Drax would appear and unwittingly rescue her from her tormentor.
‘Sadie, Sadie…’ Jack Logan was singing softly. ‘Who won’t open her legs for anyone. What’s it like being so uptight? Tell you what I’ll do, seeing as I’m feeling generous, I’ll show you what it’s like to have a man…’
If she just ignored him he’d get tired of harassing her and leave her alone, Sadie reasoned. If she just stood here and avoided eye contact—She gave a shocked protest when Jack suddenly grabbed hold of her and swung her round. He was considered good-looking, she knew, but he had mean eyes, and the cruel look in them made her shudder.
‘You thought you were so clever, making a fool of me in London—didn’t you? Well, now it’s your turn. Now it’s payback time, Sadie.’
This couldn’t be happening to her. Not in broad daylight, here in this beautiful building. But it was. Jack Logan was laughing at her as he held on to her, and then he reached out and squeezed her breast. When she shuddered with loathing and closed her eyes he laughed even more.
Sadie didn’t hear the lift door opening. Nor did she see the look on Drax’s face when he saw her standing with her back to him in another man’s embrace, another man touching her. But Jack saw Drax, and he saw the look in his eyes, so he bent his head and kissed Sadie fiercely and unkindly on her tightly closed lips, before releasing her and saying softly, ‘Like I said, it’s payback time,’ then sauntering off, leaving her to take a deep breath and wipe her hand across her mouth in an attempt to wipe the taste and the feel of him from her memory.
‘If you’re ready?’
The icy coldness in Drax’s voice made her turn towards him, her eyes still dark with shocked distress.
She felt too numb to say anything, much less attempt to explain what had happened as she fell into step beside him, struggling to match his long, impatient stride as he hurried her back to his car.
It wasn’t on his own account that he was filled with such ferocious and all-consuming anger, Drax assured himself. No, it was because her behaviour, as he had just witnessed it, had proved her to be a liar and a sexual adventuress—and thus totally unfit to become Vere’s wife. That meant bringing her here to Dhurahn had been a complete waste of his time, and time wasn’t something Drax liked to waste.
He strode ahead of Sadie without bothering to turn and check that she was able to negotiate the rubble safely. Not because his anger had wiped out his good manners, but because he simply did not trust himself to speak to her, never mind touch her right now. How could she have allowed that oaf to maul her like that? And in public. Where he could see them. In his country, where such displays of sexual intimacy were an offence in the eyes of some of his more devout people. She had behaved with a complete lack of respect—for his country, for him, and for herself. Normally that would have been enough to thoroughly disgust him. Normally?
He was disgusted, Drax assured himself as he yanked open the driver’s door to his car. Disgusted and bitterly, dangerously angry. So angry, in fact, that…That what? he challenged himself as Sadie slid into the passenger seat of the car. He could smell the scent of her skin, and with it her fear. Her fear? Surely she should have smelled of her boyfriend and the intimacy they had been sharing?
Drax didn’t trust himself to look at her. Because he was jealous of the fact that she had given herself to another man?
No!
Sadie sat rigidly in her seat, trying to focus on the view ahead and stop herself from giving in to her emotions. Inwardly she felt nauseous and shivery, shaking with loathing and horror from Jack’s touch. And sickeningly aware of just how much he had enjoyed humiliating her in the way that he had.
Thank goodness Drax had come along when he did—because if he hadn’t…She tried to tell herself that she was over-dramatising what had happened, and that Jack had simply been tormenting her. He surely wouldn’t have gone as far as actually…raping her? She shuddered violently, gritting her teeth against the whimper of horror bubbling inside her.
Drax saw her small shiver and automatically turned down the air-conditioning. He could see the goose-bumps on her arms. She was staring into the distance, no doubt wishing she was still with her lover, imagining what they could be doing. He cursed savagely under his breath. He couldn’t believe the extent of his own misjudgement. He, who had always prided himself on his swift and accurate assessment of a person’s true character. She hadn’t even had the grace to attempt to make an excuse for herself, never mind apologise for the lies she had told him.
They had reached the palace, and the guards salaamed them in through the heavy gates. What was she thinking now? Did she imagine he was simply going to ignore her conduct—and her lies? If so, she was speedily going to discover her error.
He brought the car to a halt and switched off the engine, saying curtly, ‘Come with me. There is something I wish to discuss with you.’
Numbly, Sadie nodded her head. She had no idea what Drax wanted to say to her, but she hoped that whatever it was it would be compelling enough to help her stop reliving what had happened with Jack Logan. Her breast actually felt slightly sore where he had squeezed it. Sore and dirty…Everything felt dirty…Every bit of her, inside and out, and not just her body, but her thoughts as well—as though somehow he had contaminated all of her with his disgusting behaviour.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT FELT as though days rather than hours had passed since she had last stood in this room, Sadie reflected as she stood in the middle of Drax’s private sitting room, looking out towards the swimming pool.
Drax had brought her here and then told her to wait, disappearing in the direction of what she assumed must be his bedroom.
This time he hadn’t asked her if she wanted anything to eat or drink, and the truth was that she felt desperately in need of a reviving caffeine boost. Instead she had to make do with what water was left in the bottle she had taken out with her earlier. Now lukewarm, it tasted slightly brackish.
Drax would have to tell Sadie that she was dismissed. He had no other option now, knowing that she had made contact with what was obviously a past lover here in Dhurahn. There was no way that Vere could be allowed to marry her. It was unthinkable. His only option was to pay her off and put her on the first flight back to London, her lover with her.
The supposedly calming, cool shower he’d just had had done nothing to lessen the boiling heat of his emotions. He reached for a towel to dry himself and then changed his mind, instead pulling on the fresh towelling robe that his manservant had left ready for him. He headed barefoot into the room where he had left Sadie.
Sadie was standing facing the window, her now empty water bottle clasped tightly in her hands. Drax didn’t want his body to react the way it did when he looked at her, but he seemed power
less to stop it. He made a small harsh sound of self-disgust beneath his breath that caused Sadie to turn and look at him, her eyes darkening and her face heating with colour for all the world as though she were remembering seeing him naked and was embarrassed that he might know. Drax could taste the bitterness of his own raw emotions.
‘You really had me fooled, you know,’ he told her with forced calm as he walked towards her. ‘When you put on that act for me, pretending to be shocked by Monika’s suggestion that you seduce her clients, I fell for it completely. When you told me that the grinning ape you were encouraging was merely a business acquaintance, I believed you.’
‘I told you the truth,’ Sadie said. This was not what she had expected to hear him say, and she couldn’t conceal her shock.
‘Liar! I saw the way you were letting him touch you.’
Her emotional radar registered his banked-down fury, but she couldn’t understand what had caused it.
‘I saw the intimacy between you,’ he continued harshly, adding savagely as he caught hold of her, ‘This kind of intimacy.’
He was holding her as he had done earlier, his hands sliding beneath the capped sleeves of her top to grip the rounded curve of her shoulders. But this time he wasn’t just holding her, he was kissing her as well—possessing her mouth, forcing her lips to part for the demanding thrust of his tongue. She knew she ought to stop him, to push him away and insist that he listen to her, to demand an apology and a retraction of his accusation, but the need inside her was powering through her, obliterating reason and conscience, ruthlessly silencing every warning voice that would have spoken against it, filling her until there was nothing else—nothing else but his kiss and no one else but him.
What was happening to him? Somehow Sadie had taken the kiss he had begun as a savage indictment of her duplicity, allowing a safe escape for his own anger, and turned it into something different—something so sensually sweet and magical that his desire for her was drawing him under like a swimmer caught in a powerful undertow. He could neither resist it nor escape it. It called out to him with a siren song that lured him into waters so treacherous that he was already lost.
When he let go of her she reached for him and drew him closer, encircling him with her arms around his neck, tangling her tongue with his in a slow dance of rebirth from which they would emerge not as two separate people but as one. He slid his hand beneath her shirt, spanning her back and then letting his fingertips trace the narrow sharpness of her collarbone. She felt so fragile, as though he could crush her in his hands, and yet she was so strong—strong enough to overpower him with her sensuality. Her tongue-tip touched his mouth quickly and delicately, retreating as though shocked by its own boldness, and then returned to taste him again, almost compulsively. His hands slid to her breasts. Inside his head he could see himself touching them whilst she arched back in his hold, her throat tightly corded with desire, the heels of her palms pushing on his shoulders. Another minute and he would be pushing her top out of the way to taste her willing flesh…
Sadie quivered with emotion as Drax’s hands tightened on her breasts. It felt so good to have him holding her like this, to feel his touch burning away the loathsome memory of Jack Logan. She wanted to beg him to take away all the barriers between them, to hold her so that from now on when she closed her eyes and thought of today all she would be able to remember was him. She didn’t know how they had got to this level of intimacy so swiftly, and she didn’t want to know. All she wanted was to be burned clean and purified by the fierce heat of their mutual passion. Her ability to think logically was wholly suspended, overridden by the demands of a new command centre. All she wanted was for Drax to take her to bed…No, all she wanted was for Drax to simply take her, she amended dizzily. To take her completely and totally—here, now, at once. Eagerly she pressed herself into his hands and his body, lifting her own hands to hold his head while she kissed him over and over again, whispering to him how much she wanted him.
This was madness, Drax knew. But why should he not have her? She was offering herself to him, he wanted her, and with what he knew about her now she could never marry Vere. Why shouldn’t he have her? Why shouldn’t he take her as she was begging him to do?
There were a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t—but they weren’t enough to outweigh the one compelling, compulsive reason why he must. So he lifted his hands from her breasts, swung her up into his arms and carried her into his bedroom. Sadie wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his jawline and his throat, then pushed aside the neck of his robe to kiss his collarbone, so that by the time he had reached the bed she was so high on his scent and taste that no power on earth could have matched the intensity of her desire for him.
Drax lowered her onto the bed, pausing only to shrug off his robe, and Sadie gazed up at him, marvelling at his male beauty as he arched over her. With her fingertip she traced the corded sinews of his arms, wondering at their male strength beneath the satin heat of his skin. His chest was dark with fine hair which arrowed downwards, causing her heart to leap high inside her chest and then beat unsteadily and too fast as she remembered the way she had felt that morning when she had watched him emerging from the pool. The water had run from his chest straight down that dark line, and she had followed its journey and seen, as she could see now, the base of the stiffening evidence of his desire for her. Sadie trembled as she leaned forward and kissed the base of his throat.
Drax arched against the caress of her mouth, not knowing why that kiss and this woman should affect him so immediately and so fiercely that he could feel his reaction right down to his toes.
As she kissed him he undressed her, feeling her slip eagerly and easily from her clothes and into his hands. Even now her mouth was still pressed against his skin. She had fantasised about this, Sadie acknowledged dizzily, and now somehow Drax was lying on his back and she was above him, instinctively straddling him. The reality was a hundred—no, a thousand times more erotic than her imaginings, and if she closed her eyes how much more intense would the sensation of Drax’s hands on her body be? But she couldn’t bear not to see him, not to watch him as he touched her and she touched him. And she wanted so much to touch him…so desperately had to touch him.
She leaned forward until her hair swung down to shield her face and stroke Drax’s body. But he could still see her expression. She touched him in a way that no woman had ever touched him before, eagerly and yet unknowingly, as though everything about what she was doing was new to her, as though she was following her instincts rather than her experience. When her fingers touched him and then curled around him he felt her hesitate. She looked at him as though seeking reassurance, and then, when he gave it, he could see her confidence grow—and with it her need. It was as though she hungered desperately for him—as though the touching filled her with intense delight and yet fed her need for more of him.
In her eyes was a look of wondering and amazed delight. It curved her mouth and somehow filled the air between them, so that he could almost taste it himself. Nothing he had done before had been like this. Or like her…Whatever magic spell she had cast it had pulled him under its influence, he admitted, as he caught hold of her free hand and lifted it to his mouth, kissing each finger in turn and then licking her soft palm. He watched as her nipples tightened and her belly quivered, and beneath her closed eyelids welled tears of intense arousal.
He reached for her, his hands on her waist, lifting her and steadying her, his fingers digging into her flesh when he felt her hesitation.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, her voice husky and uncertain as she said, ‘I’m not…I don’t…Oughtn’t we to…?’
He was tight and hot and hard with a surging need that didn’t want to wait.
‘Oughtn’t we to what?’ he demanded.
‘You know…use something. For…for safe sex and…’ She was blushing now. She could feel the heat burning her skin. ‘And to make sure that I don’t…I mean…I’m sorr
y,’ she told him simply, ‘but I haven’t done this before.’
How could he feel such anger and yet still want her? He pushed her away and sat up in the large bed,
‘What on earth are you saying? We both know that is a lie,’ he said savagely. ‘No woman your age hasn’t “done this before”,’ he told her scornfully, mimicking the soft uncertainty of her voice. ‘I wouldn’t believe it even if I hadn’t seen you letting your lover maul you with my own eyes.’
‘Letting him…I wasn’t letting him do anything!’ Sadie said, filled with shocked disbelief that he should speak to her that way after the intimacy they had been sharing. ‘For your information—not that you’re going to believe me, and it’s obvious that you don’t want to believe me—’
Her voice had started to tremble poignantly, and she had to fight to control it. ‘He grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let me go. And he isn’t my lover. He never has been. That’s why he did it. For revenge. He told me that.’
Even now, having heard the antagonism and rejection in Drax’s voice, seen it in his eyes, she still couldn’t fully take on board what was happening. She had heard the emotion and felt the tears threatening to break through into her voice as she’d tried to deal with Drax’s verbal attack. How could things have changed so quickly? Was this what men did when they took you to bed and then changed their minds about wanting you? Did they seize on some imagined shortcoming instead of being honest? He had left behind their shared intimacy, abandoning it as speedily as he had abandoned her; she was still struggling to release herself from it. Her mind and her emotions might be trying to deal with the hurt Drax had caused her, but her body was still aching for satisfaction. Her pain was still mercifully at the brutally numbing stage, when she knew that it was going to hurt but the shock of it was still too great for her to feel it.
Sadie couldn’t be what she was claiming to be. It just wasn’t possible. But there was something about the look in her eyes that shamed him. And his body was reminding him of how innocent and untutored her touch had been.
