by Annie West
He’d grown tired of people clamouring for attention because of his royal ties and wealth. Merging into the holiday throng in Greece as Shakil had been a delicious freedom. And it had been a heady delight knowing that when pretty little Arden had smiled at him in that bar on Santorini there’d been stars, not dollar signs in her eyes. She saw simply the man, not the shadow of his family connections and how she might benefit from them.
Was it any wonder he remembered their affair as special?
Still she didn’t look convinced.
‘As for not turning up at the rendezvous that last afternoon—you can hardly hold me to account. You didn’t show.’
A phone call had hauled him out of Arden’s bed and back to the upmarket hotel room where he hadn’t spent a single night for the week since he’d met her. All he’d known at first was something important had happened and he needed privacy to talk with his uncle’s closest advisers. It was only when he was alone in his hotel that he’d learned about his uncle’s heart attack, the fact his life hung by a thread, and that he’d named Idris his heir.
There’d been no question of returning to the rendezvous with Arden—three o’clock by the church—even if she had decided to accept his invitation to an extended vacation in Paris. There’d been no question of Paris or a lover, not when he was urgently needed at home.
And if he’d been fleetingly disappointed that she’d thought better of accepting his offer, he’d known it made things easier given the enormity of what he faced. He had enough experience of clinging women to know severing ties could be tiresome.
‘You went to the church to meet me?’ Her words held a breathless quality and there was something in her eyes he couldn’t read.
‘I had to fly home urgently. I sent someone instead.’
There was a tiny thud as her head rocked back against the door. Her eyes closed and her mouth twisted. Idris frowned at what looked like pain on her features.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Fine.’ Finally she opened her eyes. ‘Absolutely fine.’
She didn’t look it. She looked... He couldn’t put a name to that expression, yet he felt an echo of it slap him hard in the chest.
‘He didn’t wait long.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your friend. He didn’t stay long.’
‘You’re saying you did go to the rendezvous?’ To say goodbye or accept his offer of a longer affair? For a moment Idris wondered, until he reminded himself it was history, done and dusted.
‘I was late.’
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask why. Second thoughts? A last-minute dash? He pictured her running through the narrow streets of Thera, between the whitewashed buildings she’d so enjoyed exploring. Her hair would be down like now, and her summer skirt floating around those lissom legs.
He chose to say nothing. What was there to say now, after four years? What was done was done.
Except, remarkably, it seemed that what they’d shared in that sultry week in Santorini hadn’t quite ended.
Arden Wills wasn’t dressed to seduce. Her dark green pullover swam on her, just hinting at the curves beneath. Her old jeans were frayed and there was a patch on one knee. Her face was free of make-up. Yet her hair rippled around her like a halo on a Pre-Raphaelite model, beguiling and exotic. She made him want to forget duty, forget necessity, and tug her to him so she fitted between his thighs, cradling him with her hips.
‘So, what is it you want?’
‘Pardon?’ Idris shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets as he realised the direction his thoughts wandered. To whether she wore a bra beneath that bulky pullover and whether her pale skin was as petal-soft as he recalled.
‘Why did you come here, if not to see your cousin?’ She paused, her lips tightening. ‘Surely not to catch up on old times.’ Her breathing altered, drew short and jerky, as if she, too, remembered how it had been between them all those years ago.
‘Why not?’ Idris lifted his shoulders in a show of insouciance he was far from feeling. ‘I was...curious about you. It’s been, what? Four years?’ As if he didn’t know precisely how long it had been. His reign as Sheikh of Zahrat dated from that week. ‘There have been changes in both our lives.’
Her face stilled, her eyes darting to the side almost furtively, as if tempted to look behind her but thinking better of it.
Instantly Idris was on alert.
He couldn’t read that look but instinct warned him something was afoot. Something she hid from him. His gaze lifted to the gleaming paint of the door behind her. What could she possibly feel the need to hide? She wasn’t living in squalor, not here. Something sordid? A lover?
Adrenalin surged, coiling his tension tighter. He took another half step forward, only stopping when a small palm flattened against his chest. He felt the imprint of it through the fine wool of his suit. His skin tingled where she touched as if abraded. As if she’d scraped sharp nails over his bare flesh.
Idris sucked in oxygen and forced himself not to react.
‘I don’t want you here.’ Those eyes were so huge in her face he felt he could dive into them.
His hand covered hers and fire danced across his skin before burrowing deep inside. A judder of potent sexual hunger tightened his groin.
‘You need to say that as if you mean it.’
The scent of her was so vivid he could almost taste her on his tongue. Sweet with a telltale hint of warm musk. No woman before or since had smelled like Arden Wills. How had he forgotten that?
‘I do mean it.’ Yet her voice had a soft, wondering quality that reminded him of the night they’d shared their bodies that first time. Her eyes had shone with something like awe. She’d looked at him as if he were a glorious deity opening the secrets of the heavens, until her eyes clouded in ecstasy and she’d shattered in a climax so powerful it had hauled him over the edge.
His thumb stroked the back of her hand and she quivered. Her hand was small but strong. He recalled how, as her confidence grew, she’d been as demanding as he, exploring, stroking, driving him to the brink with her generous passion.
She’d driven him to flout his self-imposed rules and invite her to France on holiday with him, because a week together hadn’t been enough.
Idris hauled himself back to the present. To the slant of sunlight burnishing her hair and the distant sound of a car. London. His betrothal. The peace treaty between his nation and Ghizlan’s.
He shouldn’t be here. His life was about duty, control and careful, deliberate decision-making. There was no room for spur-of-the-moment distractions.
In another second he’d step away.
But first he needed her to acknowledge what was between them. Even after all this time. Idris couldn’t countenance the idea that he alone burned. Pride demanded proof that she felt this undercurrent of hunger. This electricity simmering and snapping in the air. The charge of heat where they touched.
‘You need to leave. Don’t make me scream for help.’ Her head tipped back against the door, as if to increase the distance between them, yet her touch betrayed her. Her hand had slipped under his jacket lapel, fingers clutching his shirt. Heat poured into him from her touch, spreading to fill his chest.
He forced his hand to his side, conquering the impulse to haul her close.
‘I said, leave me alone.’ Her breath was warm on his chin and his thoughts whirled as he imagined her sweet breath on other parts of his body. He needed a moment to curb his arousal.
Here, on a London street!
Anger flared. At this woman. At his unruly body that for the first time in memory didn’t obey.
* * *
‘It’s obviously escaped your notice, but I’m not touching you. You’re the one touching me.’
His voice, crisp with challenge, nevertheless held
that once heard and never forgotten deep note that resonated right to her core.
Arden blinked, dragging her gaze from his mouth and solid, scrupulously shaved jaw to his chest.
Heat scorched her cheeks at the sight of her hand clutching him, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go. As if, even now, his desertion couldn’t kill the slavish passion she’d felt for him.
Though, if he told the truth, he hadn’t deserted her.
It was too much to take in.
Too terrible to think that perhaps he hadn’t betrayed her as she’d believed.
Words trembled on her tongue, the truth she hadn’t been able to share with this man for four years. But caution held her back.
She needed time alone to sort out what it meant if he hadn’t deserted her. Time away from his piercing dark gaze and hot body that reduced her hard won defences to ash.
Arden dragged her hand away, pressing it against the solid door behind her. That was what she needed. To remember where they were and how much was at stake. She couldn’t risk revealing too much.
‘You need to go. This isn’t right.’ A weight lodged on her chest, making her breathless so she could only manage short sentences.
Something that might have been anger flickered across his face. Yet still he didn’t shift.
Desperation coiled tight in her belly. A desperation fuelled by the urge to spill everything to him, here and now, as if by doing so all her burdens would be lifted.
But Arden had spent a lifetime learning self-reliance. The last years had reinforced that. She carried her burdens alone.
‘We’ve both moved on, Shakil.’ It was as if she evoked the past with that one single word. ‘Idris,’ she amended quickly.
‘Moved on where? To Hamid?’ His voice was a low growl that sent fear feathering her skin. His head lowered and she felt tension come off his big frame in waves. ‘You’re afraid your lover will see us together?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ It came out as a hiss of distress. It had been bad enough realising last night that Hamid now saw himself as far more than a friend.
‘Ridiculous?’ Idris’s eyes narrowed to ebony slits. Those carved cheekbones loomed threateningly high as his face drew taut. ‘You call me ridiculous?’
Fire branded her neck as hard fingers closed around her nape, moulding to skin turned feverish at his touch.
Arden swiped her suddenly arid mouth with her tongue, searching for words to stop the fury in that glittering gaze.
But his touch didn’t feel like anger. That was the problem. She could have withstood it if it did.
Arden trembled as the hand at her neck shifted and long fingers speared her hair, spreading over her scalp, massaging. Shivers of delight rippled through her and her eyelids hovered, weighted, at half mast. Tendrils of fire cascaded from her scalp down her spine and around to her breasts where her nipples peaked.
She swallowed convulsively and forced herself to straighten away from the door, even though it meant brushing against him.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Of course you did.’ His mouth twisted. ‘You’re right. It is ridiculous. Impossible and inconvenient...and inevitable.’
Then, while Arden was still absorbing his words, his head lowered.
His mouth on hers was just as she remembered. A huge, tearing fullness welled in her chest as his lips shaped hers, not hard and punishing as she’d expected from the glint in his eyes, but gentle, questing. As if seeking an answer to a question she hadn’t heard.
Shakil. The taste of him burst on her, rich and delicious. It was the one sense memory she hadn’t been able to recall in the years since he’d left her. Now it filled her, evocative, masculine and, she feared, potently addictive. For her head was lolling back, lips open to allow him access.
Somehow her hands had crept up to brace on his chest. The steady thrum of his heart was a reassuring counterpoint to her sense of disorientation.
His other hand slipped around her waist, pulling her against a body that was all hard power, making her feel soft and feminine in ways she’d almost forgotten.
And still that kiss. No longer quite as gentle. Arden heard a guttural sound of approval as her tongue met his in a foray into pure pleasure.
He shifted and delight filled her as her nipples grazed his torso. She moved closer, absorbed in heady, oh-so-familiar delight, till a long hard ridge pressed against her belly.
Arden’s eyes snapped open and she saw his eyes had narrowed to slits of dark fire. Then, over his shoulder, high up at street level, came a burst of light, a glint of sunlight off something. It was enough, just, to bring her back to reality.
‘No.’ No one heard her protest since their lips were locked.
She had to shove with all her might for him to lift his head, blinking as if unable to focus. That might have made her feel better but for the realisation that just five minutes in this man’s company had obliterated every defence she’d spent years constructing.
‘No,’ she gasped. That full feeling behind her breastbone turned to pain. ‘This is wrong. We can’t...’
She didn’t need to go on. Sheikh Idris of Zahrat agreed completely. It was there in the dawning horror sharpening his features and the unsteady hand that swiped his face. He shook his head as if wondering what he was doing.
Nor did Arden need to shove him again. One swift pace backwards on those long legs took him almost to the base of the area steps and left her feeling appallingly alone.
Chest pumping, Arden stared at the dark-gold face of the man she’d once adored. The man who now looked at her as if she were his personal nightmare.
Desperate, she put her palms to the door behind her, needing its support.
Despite it all, the anger, hurt and betrayal that had shaped her life for four years, she’d harboured a hope that if they met again he’d admit he’d made a terrible mistake in leaving. That he’d missed her, wanted her, as she’d missed and wanted him.
In her dreams he’d never looked at her with horror.
Pain lanced her chest and kept going right down through her womb.
With a choking gasp of distress she whirled around, hauled the door open and slipped into her sanctuary. Her hands shook so much it took for ever to bolt and latch the door. When it was done Arden put her back to it and slid down to sit on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees as silent sobs filled her.
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOUR HIGHNESS, IF I may?’
Idris looked up from the papers on the ambassador’s desk. His aide, Ashar, stood in the doorway, expression wooden. That, Idris had learned in the turbulent first few years of his rule, was a sure sign of trouble.
Please, not another delay with the combined peace and trade treaty. Ghizlan’s father might be eager to cement a dynastic bond with Idris but he wasn’t past trying to wheedle more concessions before the betrothal was announced.
Idris turned to the ambassador, who, ever the diplomat, was already standing. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Highness, I’ll leave you to check for news on that US investment project.’
Idris nodded. ‘That would be useful, thank you.’
When the ambassador had left, Ashar entered the room, closing the door behind him. Silently he passed a computer tablet across the desk. Bold black lettering filled the screen.
Off the Leash in London, Sheikh Tastes Local Delicacies.
Beneath the headline was a photo. A close-up of Idris locked in an embrace with Arden Wills, her hair a riot of curls against the black of her front door.
The air rushed from his lungs as an unseen punch slammed a sickening blow into his midsection.
Damn it. Hadn’t he known it was a mistake, going to her house? Hadn’t it defied logic? Yet when she’d told him to leave, what had he done? Had he behaved like
the sane, prudent man he was and returned to his embassy? No, he’d reacted like...like...
Words failed.
Worse was the fact that, facing a nightmare public debacle, he had total recall of her sweet mouth and her soft body moulding to his.
‘There’s more.’
Of course there was. It was the way of the world that you slaved twenty hours a day for your country and the first time in four years you did something utterly selfish, utterly incomprehensible, the press was there to turn a molehill into a mountain.
He sighed and forked his hand through his hair. ‘Let me guess. Princess Ghizlan.’
He scrolled to the next page and the next headline.
Two-Timing Sheikh Keeps Fiancée and Lover in Same City.
Idris swore long and low. There was a photo of him and Ghizlan at the embassy reception. Beside it was one of him with Arden. His hand wrapped around her neck, pulling her to him, and her eyes were closed, those plump lips open, as if eager for his kiss. As if she hadn’t just told him to take a hike.
Fire shot from his belly to his groin. Even now, with all hell about to break loose, his body was in thrall to the Englishwoman he should have forgotten four years ago. Instead he remembered it all. She’d been ardent, so deliciously honest and real. Her desire had been for him, not his wealth or connections. Together they’d created a magic he’d craved more of, though brutal logic said it must eventually burn out. Passion always did. That was how it always was for the men in his family, how it was for him—lust and desire, never anything more permanent.
He shoved the tablet across the table and shot to his feet, stalking away from the desk.
Of all the impossible timing. This was the worst. For his country, and for Ghizlan’s.
Ghizlan! He’d put her in an appalling situation.
