Sandstorm

by Anne Mather

  'What are you doing?' he protested, his voice returning to its previous tenor. 'Come and sit down again, and stop looking so anxious. You have nothing to fear from me.'

  Abby's eyes alighted on the bell, and trying not to make her actions too obvious, she backed away from the sofa.

  'You—you passed out,' she said, explaining her dilemma. 'I'M get Karim to come and put you to bed.'

  'I am not a child,' he muttered, getting unsteadily to his feet at her words. 'Have the decency not to treat me as one. I am quite capable of putting myself to bed, as and when it is necessary. And if my behaviour frightens you, then calm yourself. Have you never seen anyone with malaria before?'

  Abby's lips parted. 'Malaria?'

  'A similar disease,' he confirmed, taking a few uncertain steps across the room. 'It is an annoyance, nothing more. By tomorrow I shall be completely recovered.'

  Abby watched his uneven progress towards the bedroom door, and then, unable to resist the need to help him, she went and put an arm around his waist, encouraging him to support himself with an arm across her shoulders. For an instant he held back from her, but then, weakened by the effort, he allowed her to help him into the bedroom.

  He sat on the end of the bed while she folded back the covers, and then sprawled wearily between the sheets. With his head upon the pillows, he looked up at her with heavy eyes, and it was all she could do not to smooth the dark hair back from his forehead.

  'Do you want me to get Karim to undress you?' she asked, viewing his heavy robe with some misgivings, and he stretched out a hand to warm his palm against her cheek.

  She flinched away from him then, but his fingers curved around her nape, imprisoning her above him, and his eyes were perfectly lucid as they met her startled gaze.

  'Will you help me?' he asked, resisting her efforts to release herself, and her breathing quickened at his unconscious sensuality.

  'Rachid, I can't-...' she got out unsteadily, feeling the strength of his magnetic attraction. Relaxed upon the pillows, he had an overwhelming sexuality, and she would not have been human if she had not responded to it. 'Please, let me go, Rachid. You said I had nothing to fear from you.'

  'That is so.' His fingers relaxed their hold and his arm fell to the bed. 'I cannot force you to help me. I merely thought that our past relationship might mean something to you. So be it! Ring for Karim. He is not so churlish.'

  'Rachid ...'

  Abby stared down at him helplessly, and then, with definite reservations, she unfastened the cord of his robe. It fell apart revealing the plain tunic beneath, and with his assistance she removed both garments. It necessitated her kneeling on the bed, and she was sweating by the time he was naked. Ignoring the masculine scent of his body, she tucked the covers around him, and then stood hesitantly beside the bed, waiting for his dismissal.

  'Thank you,' he said, turning his face against the pillows. 'I am grateful.'

  'I'll wait until Karim brings my clothes and then I'll go,' she offered, as he closed his eyes, but Rachid did not answer her, and with a feeling of helplessness, Abby left him alone.

  In the living room, she examined her reflection with some dissatisfaction. Her exertions on Rachid's behalf had loosened her knot of hair, and it was presently hanging in tendrils about her neck. Tugging out the hairpins, she allowed it to tumble to her waist, then rummaged in her bag for a comb to restore it to order.

  It was while she was combing her hair that she heard Rachid's voice again. Thinking he was calling her, she opened the door to his bedroom, hesitating on the threshold, unwilling to intrude if she had been mistaken.

  He was talking, it was true, but not to her. In the light from the lamp she had left burning, she could see him tossing and turning on his pillows, muttering to himself, in the throes of delirium. He had pushed the enveloping covers down to his waist, and the moist expanse of his chest was exposed, brown and muscular, and finely covered with dark hair.

  Putting down her comb, Abby advanced into the room, drawing the covers up about him, and running an anxious hand over his forehead. Where before he had been chilled, now he was burning up, and she wondered if she ought to summon Karim after all.

  'Abby!'

  While she stood there pondering the best course of action, Rachid's eyes had opened, and now he was looking at her with only slightly opaque pupils.

  'Rachid?' she murmured, coming close to the bed and allowing a slight smile of encouragement to lift her lips. 'How are you feeling? You're very hot?'

  'Am I?' He moved restlessly. 'I feel cold. Did you open a window?'

  'You can't open windows here,' Abby explained gently. 'They're all double-glazed. And the air-conditioning's on seventy.'

  'It is?' His brows drew together, and he hunched his shoulders. 'I am so cold.' He withdrew a hand from the covers and held it out to her. 'Come and keep me warm, Abby. I need you.'

  Abby was staggered, but she tried not to show it. 'You know I can't do that,' she replied reasonably. 'I can get you an electric blanket‑'

  'I do .pot want an electric blanket,' he snapped, levering himself up on his elbows. 'Abby ...' The dark eyes glazed. 'Abby, do not leave me. Please! I beg of you!'

  'Rachid‑'

  Abby was caught in the trap of her own emotions. She couldn't stay with him, she couldn't, she thought wildly, but the trouble was, she couldn't leave him either.

  'Rachid, try to be sensible‑'

  'Come here!'

  She was afraid he might get out of bed and come after her if she did not obey him, and with a sense of helplessness she allowed her fingers to be enclosed by his.

  'Abby, Abby ...' He sank back against the pillows with her fingers to his lips, his tongue finding her palm with bone-melting intimacy. 'Get into bed,' he murmured huskily, finding the sensitive veins on the inner side of her wrist. 'I want to hold you in my arms.'

  'Rachid, I can't,' she protested, but inside, a small wicked voice was urging: Why not? Why not? What have you got to lose?

  'Why not?' Rachid demanded now, his eyes dark with emotion. 'You are my wife, are you not? My woman. Would you deny your husband that which is his by holy law?'

  This was rapidly getting out of hand. Abby silenced the voice inside her, and said sharply: 'I don't know what your game is, Rachid, but I have to go‑'

  'Go? Go? Where would you go?' His gaze was blank with incomprehension. 'Your place is here, with me. Would you desert me when I need you most?'

  'Rachid‑'

  Abby was attempting to free herself when a light tap sounded at the door. She guessed it was Karim, returning with her suit, and with a desperate glance over her shoulder she pulled her hand away.

  Trying to ignore Rachid's weak recriminations, she crossed the living room and hastened to open the door. The manservant stood waiting patiently, her suit folded over his arm, but his eyes moved past her to the open door of the bedroom beyond, and their instinctive anxiety encouraged Abby to confide in him.

  'The Prince is not well,' she explained, flushing as the man's enquiring gaze reminded her of her earlier scepticism. 'Has he seen a doctor recently? He seems very feverish. Is there no medication he could take?'

  Karim bowed. 'My master was visited by a doctor before you came, mistress.' His lips tightened. 'It is through his work with the children at the mission that he has contracted the fever, but I am assured that the drug the doctor gave him will cure him as before.'

  Abby blinked. 'His work—at the mission?' she was confused.

  'Yes, mistress.' Karim's expression was disapproving. 'My master insists on using his skill as a teacher to help those less fortunate than himself. Regrettably, he will not listen to reason.'

  Abby glanced behind her. It was obvious that Karim was not in favour of Rachid laying himself open to disease in the poorer sections of Xanthia, but it was untypical of her husband, she would have thought, not to care about his own welfare.

  With a shrug, she turned back to the manservant. 'He has been given quinin
e, I suppose,' she asked, and Karim nodded.

  'You will stay with him, mistress?' he suggested, his dark brows arched in silent admonition, and although Abby wanted to deny it, she found she couldn't.

  'For—for a while, perhaps,' she agreed unwillingly, taking the velvet pants and jacket from him. 'I'll call you when I need a cab. In an hour, perhaps?'

  Karim's face was expressionless now. 'If you say so, mistress,' he essayed politely, and with a faint bow of his head, he withdrew.

  Back in the bedroom, Abby found to her horror that Rachid was out of bed and fumbling impatiently for his clothes. Her pulses raced at the sight of his lean, brown body, but ignoring the intimacies of the situation, she went swiftly towards him, her voice firm and authoritative.

  'Come along,' she said, sustaining the impersonality, folding back the bedcovers with one hand and helping to support him with the other. 'You must rest. You'll feel better in the morning. I'll stay until you go to sleep, and then you can ring me when you've recovered.'

  Rachid resisted her efforts to subdue him, however. 'Hmm, Abby, your hair smells delicious,' he murmured, turning his mouth against her temple, and instead of pushing him back against the covers, she found herself in his arms.

  'Rachid, please ..

  She twisted recklessly, trying to avoid his searching lips. His arms seemed amazingly strong after his previous debility, and crushed against his warm body, she was overwhelmingly aware of her own weakness. Somehow she had to get away from him, but the longer he held her the more difficult it was going to be.

  'Abby, soul of my soul, stop fighting me,' he muttered roughly, holding her closer. 'You do not really want to leave me, do you? Not when I can make you feel like this‑'

  Her protests died beneath the hungry pressure of his mouth, and her resistance was a small thing against his superior strength. Besides, when his lips parted hers, she felt herself melting beneath their probing caress, and her overheated blood spilled like fire along her veins. His hands were at her waist, releasing the cord of his dressing gown, and she tore her mouth from his as he found the swelling warmth of her body.

  'Rachid, don't do this‑' she choked, as her skin tingled with the expectation of his touch, but his emotions had taken over, and she doubted that he heard her.

  He compelled her down on to the bed, covering her trembling limbs with his, stroking the tears from her cheek with a tender finger. He was infinitely gentle, infinitely loving, and gradually her opposition gave way to a tentative response. If the voice that had previously urged her to accept him now permitted itself a contemptuous sneer at her surrender, she refused to listen, and the exploring sensuality of his caress drove all coherent thought from her mind. She was sinking into a well of emotion, an abyss of feeling, where all that mattered was that Rachid should go on holding her, and kissing her, and arousing her to the explosive heights only he could achieve.

  His mouth moved knowingly against hers, demanding and taking with hungry abandon. As his kiss hardened, so too did his demands upon her, and she yielded completely to his passion, arching against him with involuntary eagerness. Her hands spread against the smooth skin of his shoulders, her nails curving into the flesh, and then softening again as his mouth lowered to the swollen fullness of her breasts. He teased their peaks with an enticing tongue, and then possessed their hardened upsurge with his lips.

  By the time he sought the ultimate invasion of her senses, Abby was desperate for his possession, uncaring of the consequences of her actions, inflamed by emotions too strong to deny. She wanted Rachid, she wanted to feel him a part of her, and most of all she wanted the satisfaction only he could give her ...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rachid was asleep when Abby left the suite. He had fallen into an exhausted slumber immediately after their lovemaking, and she guessed the exertion had achieved what drugs could not. He was resting, and at peace, and sleep would perform its miracle of recovery.

  For Abby, however, there was no such miracle, no such recovery. Dressing in the semi-darkness of the bedroom, fumbling over hooks and buttons, she felt only disgust at her behaviour, and contempt for the weakness Rachid had found so easy to exploit. She had known what he was like before she came here, she reviled herself bitterly, she had suspected the loathesome vulnerability of her body. Yet she had succumbed to his passion with only a token protest, and how could she blame him when her strength should have been greater than his?

  It was an irony she would have to live with, that no matter how much she despised her husband and his failings, where he was concerned she had her own Achilles heel. In truth, it might not have happened if he had not appealed to her sympathies, but nothing could alter the fact that physically he still had the power to arouse her.

  It deepened the sense of injustice she felt towards him to know that for the first time since she left Abarein she had been forced to an awareness of her own femininity. She didn't want to be reminded of that, and all the humiliation it involved, and she felt violently sick at the recollection of those months of uncertainty. She was free of that now, she told herself fiercely, free of marriage and all it entailed. This was the end, it was over, over. And if she saw Rachid again, she would make sure he understood she meant what she said.

  It was after two a.m. when she let herself into the house in Dacre Mews. She had not summoned Karim, but had asked the night porter to call her a cab, and she felt raw and weary as she climbed the stairs to her room. Where now the competent career woman? she chided herself contemptuously, as she took off her clothes. What had happened to the rampant feminist, with her high ideals and controlled emotions? As the lamplight picked out the rosy marks of Rachid's possession upon her, with her limbs aching from the hungry passion of his lovemaking, she acknowledged the inherent weakness of the female character, that she had to fight if she ever wanted to respect herself again.

  The opportunity to tell her father where she had been the previous evening came rather sooner than she would have liked. She was sitting hunched over her second cup of coffee the following morning when he came into the kitchen- cum-breakfast room, and helping himself to some toast, seated himself opposite her.

  'You were late last night,' he commented, spreading a thin layer of butter on his bread before reaching for the marmalade. 'You didn't tell me you were going out.'

  Abby hesitated, and then put down her cup. 'As a matter of fact, I had dinner with Rachid,' she admitted flatly. And at her father's raised brows: 'But don't get the wrong idea. It was only to discuss the divorce.'

  'I see.^ Professor Gillespie regarded his daughter's pale face with some misgivings. 'And did you? Talk about the divorce, I mean?'

  'Of course.' Abby's response was too quick, and she hastily qualified it. 'That is—we didn't exactly go into details.' She sighed, reluctant to go on, and yet feeling compelled to do so. 'Rachid was ill. He's contracted malaria, and two nights ago he had an attack.'

  'Two nights ago?' echoed her father. 'You mean, after he left here?'

  'Apparently.' Abby moved her shoulders offhandedly. 'It's not serious. Karim—that's Rachid's manservant—he said he'd had treatment.'

  'And was last night's meeting a spur-of-the-moment decision?' enquired Professor Gillespie quietly. 'Couldn't you have postponed it?'

  'If I'd known, I suppose so,' Abby shrugged.

  'I take it then it was arranged while Rachid was here?'

  'Yes. Oh, I know I should have told you, but‑' Abby got up from her stool, 'I didn't want you to think that— well, that we might get back together again.'

  'And you won't?'

  'No.' Abby reached for her coat which she had draped casually over the radiator on the corner. 'I've told you, Dad. We should never have got married. Our—our values are different.'

  'But you seemed so much in love ...' protested her father, urgently. 'Abby, Rachid's intentions are good‑'

  Abby's laugh was short and mirthless. 'What is it they say about good intentions—that the road to hell is paved
with them?'

  'You're very hard, Abby.'

  Hard? Abby's lips quivered for a moment. If he only knew! she thought bitterly. He wouldn't call her hard. He would realise how stupidly soft she was!

  Liz Forster rang during the course of the morning. She didn't usually ring Abby at work, but her first words indicated her reasons for doing so.

  'I expected you to ring me,' she said, half reproachfully, 'but I hear you've been too busy to bother about old friends.'

  Abby's nails curled into her palms. 'Where did you hear that?'

  'Oh—around, darling. Isn't it true?'

  Abby hesitated. 'It depends what you've heard.'

  Liz sounded impatient. 'Don't be obtuse, darling. I mean Rachid, and you know it. You were seen entering his hotel yesterday evening, and from what I hear, you didn't eat in the dining room.'

  Abby sighed. 'Honestly, Liz‑'

  'Now don't go getting all uptight about it. Your secret's safe with me. Unfortunately, there are others in the agency who are less scrupulous.'

  'You mean someone else saw me?'

  'Just Damon,' responded Liz half maliciously. 'I know it must be a source of annoyance to you, but he had had a meeting with your inestimable husband that had had to be cancelled because he was—how did they put it?—indisposed?'

  Abby felt exasperation gnawing at her nerves. 'Well, as it happens, it's true,' she conceded, realising she would get no peace unless Liz was satisfied. 'Rachid was—unwell.'

  'But not unwell enough not to see you.'

  Abby bit her lip. 'I suppose not.'

  'So what happened?' Liz was growing irritated. 'Do I have to drag every detail out of you? I thought we were friends. My goodness, the fuss you made about seeing him Tuesday night, I thought the last thing I would hear was that you were actually having dinner with him at his hotel!'

  Abby expelled her breath heavily. 'It wasn't like that.' She struggled for inspiration. 'We—it was a meeting arranged to discuss our divorce, that's all.'

  'But you did speak to him on Tuesday night?'

  'As he was waiting for me outside, which you must know very well, I could hardly avoid it,' retorted Abby heatedly and Liz made a sound of apology.