by Lynne Graham
Molly sucked in a steadying breath, dismayed by the realisation that the more he prohibited her natural behaviour, the more he simply made her want to shout. There was something very basic in her, she sensed, that literally had to fight Azrael’s dominance and, inexplicably, when she spoke her mind to him in anger, she felt as if she was finally being herself and was unashamed of the fact. ‘And I cannot tolerate being told that I can’t shout,’ she confided guiltily. ‘Yet I very rarely do it. Obviously you make me angry and aggressive—’
And without the smallest warning, Azrael smiled and it illuminated his serious features like a sudden flash of sunlight, firing up the gold in his eyes enhanced by his ridiculously thick black lashes, accentuating his exotic cheekbones, revealing even white teeth and a wonderfully shapely mouth. That charismatic smile made him so handsome that her heart jumped inside her and her tummy dropped as though she had gone down in a lift too fast. She was startled; her mouth ran dry and her breath caught in her throat.
‘So, it’s my fault that you shout,’ Azrael derided silkily in a tone she had never heard from him before.
‘Yes,’ Molly replied squarely. ‘I find you extremely annoying. You try to tell me what to do. You patronise me. Then you freeze if I get annoyed...but you’re the one making me annoyed!’
Azrael paced closer as silent as a stalking cat on the trail of prey. ‘I don’t annoy other people—’
‘And I don’t shout at anyone else,’ Molly interposed.
‘Perhaps you are focusing your anger with Tahir on me,’ Azrael suggested.
‘No!’ Molly disagreed, reluctant to acknowledge that she could possibly be that unaware of her own responses. ‘But why did nobody tell me that I was teaching a teenager? Looking at him, I’d never have guessed that he was still only a boy. Someone should have told me what age he was.’
Azrael lifted a fine ebony brow. ‘Or you should have asked one of the embassy staff.’
‘I had no reason to suspect he was that young and I’m not sure it changes anything.’ Molly looped a long coppery rope of curls back from her hot face and glowered at Azrael accusingly. ‘Why should it change anything? It was a grown-up crime,’ she blustered, not knowing what she planned to do or how she felt about the unexpected fact she had just learned.
But the fact of the matter was that occasionally teenagers did do crazy things and, ironically, nobody knew that better than Molly. At the age of fourteen, Molly had packed her bag and run away from her family home. She had planned to go to London to become a musician in a band, for goodness’ sake. Sadly, the cost of the train fare had thwarted that fanciful ambition and in a rage of tempestuous teenage fury she had landed on Maurice’s doorstep, where he had talked some sense back into her.
Maurice had returned her to her father’s home and when she had seen her, her stepmother had said angrily, ‘I knew it was too good to be true. I knew you’d come back again!’
And then her father and Maurice had had an argument, for which she had also received the blame. Her slight shoulders drooped at her distressing recollection of that day. That was the moment that she knew that she would not approach the police in London about what Tahir had done. He was sixteen and, while she couldn’t forgive him for the fright he had given her and the risk he had taken with her health, she knew that teenagers could make stupid decisions and fatal mistakes and she realised that she no longer wanted him to pay the full adult price for his wrongdoing.
In addition, if she went to the police about what Tahir had done, it would inevitably attract the interest of the press and she didn’t want her name and her face splashed across the newspapers or people speculating about whether or not she might have encouraged Tahir in his delusions. Nor would the subsequent scandal improve her employment prospects. No, there would be no benefit to her in making an official complaint.
Abstractedly, she studied Azrael, guessing that he had probably been a very sensible teenager with an outlook older than his years. ‘You never did tell me how far we are out here from the airport.’
‘Several hundred miles,’ Azrael murmured, his attention welded to the tender fullness of her naturally pink lips while he inevitably wondered if they would taste as soft and lush as they looked.
Her green eyes flew wide. ‘Several hundred?’ she repeated in disbelief, clashing with shimmering dark golden eyes that made her feel oddly light-headed and even more oddly detached from her brain. ‘But how did you get me to the fortress yesterday?’
‘By helicopter, of course,’ Azrael explained. ‘We fly in and out. The cars pick us up at the landing site and drive us the rest of the way—’
‘But there must be a road somewhere nearby—’
‘No. Beyond the oil fields we do not yet have a country-wide network of roads, nor will we have until our construction engineers embark on that project,’ Azrael admitted, faint colour lining his sculpted cheekbones. ‘This part of the desert has always been fairly inaccessible.’
Molly experienced a sudden startling desire to smooth her fingers gently across one of those exotic cheekbones and so foreign was that forbidden prompting that her face began to flush as she questioned it. She had never before wanted to touch a man of her own volition. Her fingers fluttered and her nails bit into her palms, her breathing struggling in the new tightness of her chest. A kind of craving was snaking through her like a wildfire that burned everything that stood before it, and it shook her because that craving was so powerful it swallowed all common sense.
A drumming boom sounded outside the cave and she flinched.
‘It is only the storm,’ Azrael breathed tautly when a crashing roar seemed to shake the very rock walls of the cavern protecting them.
‘I would have hated being caught outside in that,’ Molly admitted shakily, ultra-conscious of the smouldering silence enclosing them and speaking in a deliberate attempt to shatter an atmosphere that was becoming suffocating. ‘I didn’t realise it would be so violent.’
‘The elements in our climate are often violent and perverse,’ Azrael declared huskily, reaching for her hand and tugging her closer, knowing that what he was doing was wrong but utterly unable to continue battling the urge to touch her. ‘Just as you make me feel things I don’t want to feel...’
Her hand engulfed in his, Molly looked up at him, knowing she should back away, knowing that she should be listening to the voice of reason inside her head. But that close to Azrael she couldn’t think, she could only feel. And what she felt just then was the incredibly seductive sensation of being thrillingly alive, her heart thumping fast while adrenalin raced in her veins.
‘Tell me not to touch you,’ Azrael urged thickly, brilliant dark deep-set eyes shimmering like gold ingots across her hectically flushed face.
CHAPTER FOUR
AND MOLLY COULDN’T tell Azrael that because she didn’t want to. Even the innocent word, touch, awakened a storm of seething curiosity and volatile awareness inside her. Her body felt as primed as though a detonator were ready to set it off. She was on the very edge of that fierce craving and, without the smallest hesitation, her hands came up to reach into the front of his robe to bring him closer.
That fast Azrael’s mouth came down hard on hers, driving her lips apart for the savage plunge of his tongue. Molly shuddered, excitement leaping high as flames flared inside her, the hot liquidity at the heart of her swiftly becoming a burning, unbearable ache. Within seconds she wanted more than she had ever wanted before in a man’s arms and she was locked to every long, virile line of him on tiptoe, her hands lacing into the silky depths of his luxuriant black hair. More, more, more, her body seemed to scream with single-minded purpose as the raw hunger threatened to consume her. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think of anything but her instinctive fear that he would let her go.
Azrael tried to let her go but because he had supressed the attraction so hard one tiny taste of Molly’s yielding mouth unleashed a ferocious surge of lust. He was utterly aroused, throbbing close to
the edge of pain. She was plastered to him so that he could feel every soft feminine curve but it was nowhere near enough to satisfy his hunger. Her lips were open but he wanted all of her open. He wanted her spread under him naked and eager. He wanted to surge into the warm, wet welcome of her body and sate the need riding him as hard as the storm outside rode the land.
He lifted her high against him, her hands dropping to clutch at his shoulders for support. ‘I want you, aziz,’ he growled, settling her down on the worn Persian rug that she had slept on earlier.
And Molly wanted him as she had never wanted a man before. She was already wondering if such strong feelings were what she had always subconsciously waited and hoped to find. Outside the storm rumbled while, inside her, her heart thudded and raced and she angled up ecstatically to the sudden welcome weight of Azrael’s body as he ground down on her. The piercingly sweet, sharp arousal thrumming through her pelvis was unbearable.
He was crushing her mouth and she revelled in his urgency, tiny little flickers of excitement dancing through her wherever his body melded to hers. The plunge of his tongue into the warm, wet interior of her mouth sent a pulse of ferocious heat right down to the very heart of her. He was yanking up her dress and she made no protest because for the first time she too hungered for touch. In any case, she felt safe with Azrael, knew he would stop if she asked, somehow knew he would do nothing that she didn’t want.
Baring the soft ripe swell of her creamy breasts, Azrael was enraptured by her. There were so many possibilities that he hardly knew where to begin until the jutting prominence of a rosy nipple took precedence. He stroked that straining nub with a reverent fingertip.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he told her in Arabic. ‘So...perfect.’
And for once there was no thought of tomorrow or even what he was doing in Azrael’s usually very organised brain. He could do nothing but claim her luscious mouth again while his eager hands explored the warm, heavy weight of her silken breasts, skimming the pouting peaks with teasing fingers while she twisted and moaned under him, as impatient as he was for something to satisfy the craving that controlled them both.
An agonised gasp escaped Molly as Azrael eased between her thighs and moved against the most achingly sensitive part of her entire body. She arched up to him, wanting, needing. Was this it? Was this finally the moment when she would take the plunge? she was wondering helplessly. In the back of her mind, she was surprisingly calm, reminding herself that she was on the pill, not only to regulate her menstrual cycle, but also to ensure that she never ran the risk of an unplanned pregnancy.
Azrael’s lips engulfed a velvety pink nipple and suckled. Her spine arched, a startled moan wrenched from her parted lips. Every tiny sound of pleasure that escaped her ramped his desire higher still. Her lips tasted as ripe as fresh strawberries, Azrael decided, gazing down at her through the thick veil of his lashes in awe, revelling in her responsiveness. Long brown fingers skimmed down to skate over the stretched taut triangle of fabric between her legs, recognising the heat and moisture there, moving to uncover it and then freezing as a dilemma he had never thought to face gripped him. Birth control...and he had nothing. Teeth gritting, Azrael yanked his burning body back from her and rolled off her, a curse of frustration forming on his tongue and swallowed back with the steely control that was so much a part of him.
‘Azrael...?’ Molly framed uncertainly, lifting her tousled head.
‘We cannot continue. I have no contraception,’ he breathed in a raw undertone.
Dazed, Molly sat up, her entire body leaping and throbbing with a pulsing excitement that had yet to drain away. In some ways she was in shock because she knew she had been on the brink of giving up her virginity in the equivalent of a one-night stand. Logic and practicality warned her that she could never have anything more with a reigning king. She also recognised that for the first time ever she had met with pure sexual temptation and she had succumbed so fast to its allure that she was shattered. Even at that instant, acknowledging that she had not known what she was doing even while she thought that she did, she was tempted to part her lips and assure him that there was no risk of pregnancy because she was taking contraception.
But before she could speak she asked herself when she had last taken a pill and dismay swept her because she kept her pills in her handbag and she had not seen her bag since before she was kidnapped. Her bag had probably been left behind in the Djalian Embassy in London and she had missed a couple of pills and was no longer protected. Why hadn’t she thought of that reality sooner? Because it hadn’t occurred to her that a kiss could lead to so much more...
‘It is not a risk I can take,’ Azrael breathed tautly.
‘Of course not,’ Molly agreed circumspectly, her face burning like mad as she wondered what the source of Azrael’s fatal attraction was. He was gorgeous, yes, she accepted that...and when he touched her it was as if the whole world erupted in flames and suddenly she hadn’t cared about anything or anybody. For the space of a few crazy minutes, her body had controlled her, he had controlled her. Shock slivered through her because all her common sense had gone straight out of the window. She wasn’t a prude, she told herself, but she had always assumed that she would be in a relationship when she finally had sex with someone. That would have been a measured, sensible decision.
Yanking her dress down, Molly scrambled upright, refusing to look at Azrael. Her legs felt like cotton wool and outside the storm was still ominously rumbling. Another pressing need took charge of her enervated body and she said stiltedly, ‘I’m going to have to go outside...’
Azrael strode over to the edge of the pool to lift the rusty lantern and returned to her. ‘There is no need,’ he told her, planting a guiding hand to her spine to lead her to the very back of the cave where a large rock concealed a narrow fissure in the craggy wall. ‘The facilities are primitive but adequate,’ he informed her.
And even by the dull light of the lantern she could see that the facilities were rudimentary but she was so grateful to see them, she smiled in relief, realising that the amenity of crude indoor plumbing had to date back to Azrael’s stay with his mother in the cave. Necessity taken care of and her hands tingling with the chill of a wash in cold water, she returned to the main cave and wandered back to the fire, striving not to be self-conscious. After all, they had got a little carried away but really nothing very much had happened. Ultimately good sense had stopped them in their tracks.
Azrael was staring steadily into the fire, striving for calm and cool while his essentially volatile nature warred with conflicting urges below the surface. He had never wanted anything as much as he had wanted to sate himself on her fiery passion. Denied that outlet and, indeed, any prospect of relief, he seethed inside himself like a cauldron bubbling on a fire. He ached with arousal and frustration and regret.
Molly dropped down opposite and ruefully studied his brooding dark features. ‘You’re like a wet weekend, Azrael. Lighten up. We got a little silly but nothing happened.’
His beautifully moulded mouth compressed. ‘We will not discuss it.’
Molly collided with brilliant dark golden eyes and a flock of butterflies took off in her stomach again and she almost groaned. That wretched attraction wouldn’t go away, wouldn’t quit making itself heard and felt, but just then she didn’t want that awareness of him. Yet she could remember times when she had actually longed to feel the powerful pull of sex that she had heard other women describe. So, now she knew that, after all, she was normal and in possession of all the usual hormones and drives, she told herself impatiently. Just her luck that only a desert king had the power to affect her that way and that it had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
‘I could talk out loud and you could choose not to listen,’ she suggested facetiously.
Black lashes lifted to reveal impatient, dark-as-night eyes shorn of shimmering gold. ‘We will behave like adults.’
‘Unfortunately I only want to push you fully dresse
d into the pool when you talk like that,’ Molly admitted truthfully, scrambling upright again to go and investigate the storm. Push him in the pool and slap him, her brain added in exasperation. Did Azrael monitor and squash every human response? Did he always have to be in control? Was that why he was angry? Had he come too close to losing control with her?
The drumming, hissing roar of the continuing storm took Molly aback. There was no sign that the storm was abating while the force of the wind almost sent her off her feet as well as coating her with fresh dust. Shaking herself irritably, she returned to the fire.
‘Will it make you feel better if I tell you that I will not go to the police when I get back to London?’ Molly asked drily.
Azrael slung her a narrowed questioning glance. ‘What changed your mind? I thought you wanted justice.’
‘I do but sometimes you have to take a rain check on what you want and opt for a proportionate response instead. Tahir did something crazy but I did something crazy too when I was a teenager. I didn’t break the law but it did make me aware that I was not as mature as I thought I was at the time,’ Molly told him flatly.
Curiosity infiltrated Azrael. ‘What did you do?’
‘I was only fourteen but I was convinced that I could become a professional musician and I ran away from home. I planned to go to London and lose myself before embracing fame,’ she confided with a rueful grimace at the naivety of that dream, built entirely on the back of the small fact that she was a good pianist.
‘Why?’ he asked simply.
Molly swallowed hard, reluctant to share more. ‘My stepmother was hurting me and it was getting worse.’
Azrael was frowning. ‘How was she hurting you?’ he demanded.
‘She’d pinch me and pull my hair and slap my face and although I told my father, he wouldn’t do anything about it. She said that I was cheeky but I wasn’t. I had long since learned to keep quiet around her and try not to annoy her but it didn’t change anything,’ she confided ruefully. ‘In the end, I went to live with my grandfather and I never saw my dad again. He didn’t stay in touch.’
