‘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.