by Penny Jordan
‘This is Bisma, who will be Kazim’s nanny,’ Zahir said tightly. His face was a taut mask of fury, and Erin’s spurt of angry defiance wavered when he gripped her arm and dragged her over to the door. ‘I will escort Kazim’s stepmother to her room.’ He addressed Bisma in English, and the young woman nodded and smiled faintly, clearly still shocked that Erin had shown such disrespect to a member of the royal family. ‘We will leave you so that you and Kazim can become acquainted.’
To Erin’s relief Bisma replied in perfect English. ‘Of course, sire. I will let Prince Kazim explore the nursery, and then give him his lunch—if you wish me to,’ she added hesitantly, when Erin opened her mouth to argue that Kazim was her responsibility.
Before she could comment, Zahir tightened his hold on her arm and tugged her forcefully out of the room.
Omran was hovering in the corridor and hurried forwards. ‘Your Highness, permit me to show…’ He hesitated, as if he was unsure of how to refer to Erin, and she detected a barely disguised insolence behind his unctuous smile. ‘Erin to her quarters.’
This time Zahir replied in Arabic, but it was clear from his tone that he was dismissing his personal assistant, and judging from the shadow of resentment that crossed Omran’s features he did not like it—or her—Erin was sure.
Zahir’s staff were the least of her problems, she acknowledged, as he frogmarched her a short way along the corridor and into another room. At a quick glance she saw it was as sumptuously furnished as the rest of the palace. It was dominated by a large bed draped with a satin bedspread and scattered with silk cushions in rich shades of gold and peacock-blue.
Zahir gave her no time to admire the bedroom before he spun her round to face him and finally released her wrist. One look at his hard face told Erin he was still seething, and common sense dictated that she should try and defuse the situation, but her own temper was at boiling point and the contemptuous curl of his lip was the final straw.
‘Brute,’ she snapped, rubbing the red marks around her wrist. ‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?’
‘One day that disrespectful tongue of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble,’ he said silkily, advancing menacingly towards her so that she backed away—until her legs met the end of the bed and she had nowhere else to go. ‘Do you know what the punishment is for insulting a member of the Royal House of Qubbah?’
He towered over her, dark and dangerous, watching her intently with no hint of warmth in his black eyes. Erin could feel her heart jerk erratically in her chest, and suddenly she was fourteen again, her back pressed against the wall in an alley next to the care home, while a group of older girls edged closer…
‘I told you to bring me the new Wild Boys CD,’ Terri, the ringleader said nastily. ‘Why haven’t you, Erin?’
‘I don’t have any money to buy a CD.’
A laugh went around the group and Terri smiled unpleasantly. ‘Who said anything about buying it?’ she taunted. ‘You should have nicked it, you silly little cow. You need to learn what happens to people who don’t do as they’re told.’
The teenager struck without warning, hitting Erin in the stomach with her clenched fist. Erin buckled with the intensity of the pain and fell to her knees as the crowd of girls moved in. She curled up in a ball and covered her face with her arms, just as she had learned to do when her mother had taken her drug-fuelled frustrations out on her.
Keep your head down and it will be over more quickly—that had been one of the golden rules of her childhood. But now she blinked and glanced around the room—at Zahir—and the memory faded. She wasn’t a scared adolescent any more; she was a mother, fighting for her child, and she threw her head back and glared at Zahir.
‘So what are you going to do—hit me?’ she demanded scornfully.
‘I have never struck a woman in my life,’ he snapped, sounding so genuinely shocked at the suggestion that Erin’s eyes flew to his face.
She stared helplessly at his beautiful, sensual mouth and the razor-sharp lines of his cheekbones, and heat seeped through her veins. An unbidden memory of how he had kissed her in the library at Ingledean filled her mind. She groaned silently, hating herself for her weakness where he was concerned. Even the realisation that he believed her to be a gold-digger who had married his brother for money did not prevent her longing for him to kiss her again. The atmosphere between them had changed imperceptibly from anger to something far more dangerous. The air crackled with static electricity, and she saw Zahir’s jaw clench as if he too was waging a violent internal battle.
‘I did not lie to you,’ he growled.
‘No, you just conveniently forgot to mention that you are a royal prince, or that under Qubbah’s laws Kazim is next in line to rule the kingdom. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ Erin said sweetly, ‘but once Kazim has met your father I’m taking him home. When he’s eighteen he can decide whether or not he wants to take up his position as the next King. Until then he’s going to enjoy a normal upbringing…’
‘With a woman who tricked his father into marrying her so that she could inherit a house and a huge fortune,’ Zahir finished grimly.
‘I did not trick Faisal. He asked me to marry him and, as I’ve already told you, he begged me to adopt Kazim. I have had more than enough of your outrageous insults,’ she muttered, trying to edge past him and failing when his big, muscle-packed body barred her way. ‘I want to leave as soon as it can be arranged.’
‘Suits me!’ Zahir reached into his jacket and withdrew her passport. ‘I’ll be more than happy to arrange your immediate departure.’ He met Erin’s gaze, his eyes hard and cold as he watched her nervously finger the passport.
‘I need Kazim’s passport too,’ she said shakily, sick fear swilling in her stomach.
‘No.’
‘What do you mean—no? Legally he’s my son.’
‘In England maybe. But we’re not in England,’ Zahir said, with a grim finality that set Erin’s temper alight.
‘You can’t kidnap him. I’ll go to the British Embassy,’ she cried wildly. ‘I agreed to bring him to Qubbah to visit your father, and I trusted that you would not stop me taking him back to Ingledean. You can’t go back on your word.’
‘I did not say anything about you taking Kazim away from Qubbah,’ Zahir shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if bored with the argument. ‘You are free to leave whenever you like. But he is staying here at the palace—for good.’
‘No! You can’t do that.’
Erin’s face drained of colour, and Zahir felt the faintest tug on his conscience. Her eyes were huge in her pale face, and her vibrant hair seemed to have a life of its own, fighting free of the pins that secured it to tumble around her shoulders.
She was so beautiful, he thought angrily, infuriated by his body’s unbidden response to her. He had never met a woman so exquisitely lovely, or wanted one with such shaming hunger. But the level of his desire for her surprised him. He had spent his adult life enjoying the company of beautiful women—women who were sophisticated and worldly and who played the game by his rules, and who did not have a criminal record for theft. So why did his libido go into overdrive whenever he looked at Erin?
She had been Faisal’s wife—his sister-in-law, for pity’s sake! He gave a bitter laugh and swung away from her as an unwelcome thought seeped into his mind. Did he want her because she had been married to Faisal? Was his feeling of satisfaction that she shared this wildfire sexual awareness more acute because he still had a score to settle with his dead brother? Faisal had stolen the woman he loved, and now he wanted to turn the tables? Or was he simply a man who had taken one look at a woman and been consumed by a desperate, overwhelming hunger to possess her, and nothing—not even the knowledge that she was an immoral gold-digger—could detract him from that need?
He glanced at her again, his eyes narrowing on the frantic rise and fall of her small breasts. She looked hot, and her thin skirt was clinging to her thighs. No doubt
she wanted a shower after the long journey from England. To his self-disgust he pictured her stripping off her clothes and standing beneath the spray, smoothing soap over her flat stomach and then lower…
Heat surged through him and his nostrils flared. She was glaring up at him, clearly incandescent with rage that he had outwitted her, but the chemistry between them was so intense it was almost tangible, and the message in her stormy grey eyes was one he could not ignore.
‘Of course you don’t have to leave,’ he murmured. ‘I appreciate that Kazim is emotionally attached to you, and for his sake it might be better if you remained here—at least until he is settled.’
Erin shook her head so that her curls flew about her face. ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from him,’ she vowed fiercely. ‘I will never, ever leave him.’
‘In that case it looks as though we’re stuck with each other—but there could be compensations for our enforced union,’ he drawled, his voice suddenly soft and sensuous, sliding over her and sending a shiver of awareness the length of her spine.
Suddenly he was too close, although Erin hadn’t been aware that he had moved. She could feel the heat of his body, and her senses quivered as she inhaled the exotic musk of his cologne. He was watching her with eyes that were suddenly hooded and slumberous, focusing intently on her mouth. She knew what he was thinking, but reacted seconds too late when he suddenly lowered his head towards her.
‘Don’t you dare touch me.’ The words that had started out as an angry cry left her lips as a desperate plea that he ignored with supreme arrogance, claiming her mouth in a hard, possessive kiss that drove every logical thought from her mind and left nothing but her overwhelming awareness of him in its place.
His arms closed around her, caging her against his hard body, and she gave a shocked gasp, muffled beneath his mouth when she felt the rigid proof of his arousal nudge insistently between her thighs. She hated him, she reminded herself desperately. He was a cheat and a liar, and his threat to keep Kazim permanently at the palace was nothing short of diabolical. But the determined thrust of his tongue between her lips was a temptation she was pathetically powerless to resist, and she opened her mouth, allowing him access to her moist inner warmth. He slid his hand to her head and released the few remaining pins, and as her hair uncoiled in a sheet of rippling red silk down her back he made a low feral noise deep in his throat that sent an answering quiver of desire through her.
Every lesson she had learned about self-protection seemed to have deserted her. Nothing mattered except that she should assuage the clamouring need that started low in her pelvis and radiated out until every nerve ending was acutely sensitive to the feel of Zahir’s hands and mouth on her skin. He released her lips, leaving them stinging and swollen, and trailed his mouth down her throat and along her collarbone, then lower still, his fingers deftly freeing the buttons of her blouse to reveal her small round breasts cupped by her lacy bra.
‘Zahir!’ She gave a startled cry when he suddenly lifted her, and the room whirled in a kaleidoscope of rich colours before he laid her on the bed and came down beside her, one heavy thigh anchoring her to the satin bedspread. This was dangerous, and she should stop him now, a voice in her head warned. But it was also new and exciting, and when he trailed his lips over the swell of her breast she shivered and held her breath—wanting more, wanting him to…
He eased her bra cup aside with long, tanned fingers that contrasted starkly with her pale flesh. She heard him mutter something in Arabic when he exposed her dusky pink nipple, and for a few seconds he stared down at her, his eyes glittering with a fierce hunger, before he lowered his head and stroked his tongue delicately over the rosy crest.
Sensation speared her and she whimpered with pleasure, sliding her hands to his shoulders and digging her nails into him in her desperation for him to continue. She felt weak and boneless, and when he drew her nipple fully into his mouth she arched her back, giving herself up to the new and exquisite delight of sexual desire flooding through her veins.
‘Undress me.’
The command was a low growl that resonated through her, and when she lifted her heavy lids she saw that Zahir’s sharp cheekbones were stained with dull colour, his face a taut mask of undisguised hunger. Once again the voice in her head advised caution, but her body had a will of its own. Her fingers fumbled with his shirt buttons until eventually the last one was freed, and she pushed the material aside and ran her hands over olive-gold skin that felt like satin beneath her fingertips, while the mass of black hairs that covered his chest tickled her palms.
She traced the ridges of his powerful abdominal muscles and felt his stomach contract, heard him growl something against her skin as he dragged her bra strap down her arm to expose her other breast. She gasped when he caught her swollen nipple between his lips and sucked—hard—causing a peculiar sensation to spiral down through her body from her breasts to her pelvis.
She could feel the flood of sticky wetness between her legs and twisted her hips restlessly. She was burning up, and when he grabbed the hem of her skirt, thrust it roughly up to her waist and slid his hand between her thighs, she quivered with anticipation, knowing that he was going to touch her where no man had ever touched her before, and ease the throbbing ache that consumed her whole body.
His mouth claimed hers once more in a deep, drugging kiss while his fingers brushed lightly over her knickers, stroking up and down but in no hurry to ease the strip of lace aside. It was torture at its most refined, Erin thought as she lifted her hips and rubbed against his hand in an agony of need that made her want to scream with frustration.
‘Please…’ Her voice sounded shockingly desperate, but she didn’t care. She was drowning in the wondrous sensations he was arousing in her, and more than anything she had ever wanted in her life she longed for him to remove the rest of her clothes and possess her completely.
The sudden buzzing noise in her ear sounded like an angry wasp, but it was loud enough to impinge on her dream-like state. She opened her eyes at the same time as Zahir cursed savagely and rummaged in his jacket for his mobile phone.
He spoke in Arabic, his voice no longer like molten honey but clipped and harsh, and when he ended the call he stared down at her, the flame of desire that had made his eyes gleam now extinguished, leaving them cold and contemptuous as he trailed a path over her naked breasts.
Ice replaced the heat in Erin’s veins, and with a low cry she sat up and dragged her bra into place with trembling fingers. A few moments ago she had writhed beneath him, her body driven by an intense sexual desire she had never experienced before. But now her passion had drained away, and she felt sick with humiliation and self-disgust as she recalled her wanton response to him.
How could she have allowed him to make love to her without offering the slightest resistance? She hated him for the way he had cynically manipulated her into bringing Kazim to Qubbah—how he had played on her sympathy for his sick father. Yet Zahir had only had to touch her, kiss her, and she had obediently rolled over and begged him to take her like a common slut.
Her behaviour proved that she was her mother’s daughter, she acknowledged on a wave of shame. It had been no secret on the rough housing estate where she had spent the first years of her childhood that her mother worked the streets to pay for her drug habit, and it had frequently been whispered that Jeannie Maguire enjoyed her chosen career, and invited numerous lovers as well as clients back to the rundown flat that had been Erin’s home. She had hated the men who’d knocked on the door at all hours of the day and night, and she remembered how she used to climb into the big old wardrobe in her bedroom to block out the strange noises coming from her mother’s room.
Perhaps it was those early experiences that had left her feeling that sex was dirty and shameful? Certainly she had never felt the curiosity about sex that had consumed the other girls at school, and as an adult she had been relieved to realise that she had scant interest in men. But all that had changed
when she had walked into the library at Ingledean and come face to face with the most stunningly gorgeous male she had ever laid eyes on. Zahir had blown her away, she thought dismally. He had triggered feelings she had hoped never to have and awakened her to a sexual desire that was now desperate to be appeased. But not with him, she told herself fiercely. Not with a man who clearly did not respect her.
‘My father wishes to see me,’ Zahir announced, his harsh voice shattering the silence and dispelling the lingering sensual haze that still hovered between them. He rolled off the bed, refastened his shirt and snatched up his jacket, frowning when he noted Erin’s ashen face and the haunting vulnerability in her grey eyes.
There was nothing vulnerable about his brother’s widow, he reminded himself cynically as he strode over to the door. Erin was no different from the countless other women he had met throughout his life—money-hungry, highly sexually experienced and calculating. His hunger for her—this primitive urge to throw her down on the bed, push up her skirt and sink himself into her—was an irritating inconvenience he could do without.
He knew he must fight his desire for her. Erin had been his brother’s wife and was legally his nephew’s stepmother. In his father’s eyes that made her a member of the family, and the King would be deeply perturbed if he heard that he had visited Erin’s bedroom when she had been unchaperoned. His behaviour constituted a serious breach of palace protocol and it could not happen again, he acknowledged as he stepped into the corridor and closed her door firmly behind him. Erin was out of bounds. And as it was now obvious that he was unable to keep his hands off her, he would have to avoid her until such time that he could dismiss her back to England.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE refused to stay here for another day, Erin vowed the following morning as she stood at the nursery window, blinking back angry tears. She would not allow Zahir to manipulate her and treat her as if she was worthless—particularly where Kazim was concerned.
