The air between them began to pulse, Raschid’s eyes darkening with a very possessive sense of pleasure as he stood taking in the shattering impact of Evie’s beauty, framed as it was by the darkness outside his apartment window.
So tall, those glittering eyes measured. So incredibly slender yet so beautifully rounded in all the right places. The whole person so inherently sensual to this man who knew every inch of her as intimately as he knew himself.
Skin he knew was as smooth as satin seemed to shine like a pearl against the draping of wine-red silk. Her wonderful hair shone like a coronet of pure gold that had been sleekly contained to frame the most delicately perfect face he had ever seen in his life. Perfect bone structure, perfect nose, perfectly seductive heart-shaped mouth—and those wonderful cold-cut lavender-blue eyes that, even in anger, could not quite disguise what was happening to her as she stood there gazing back at her opposite in every way.
For where her skin was pale his was dark, as dark as lovingly cared for wood that had been honed and planed and carefully polished to create the most exotically beautiful male structure Evie had ever set eyes upon. And if she was tall then he was taller, wider, stronger—tougher. His hair was a smooth, slick, uncompromising black, cut to perfection to make the best of his lethally attractive face—a face with a superbly sculpted long thin nose, acutely defined sensual mouth—and eyes like liquid gold that easily countered cold-cut lavender-blue by seeming to induce her to dive right in.
Opposites—complete and utter opposites. One as English as afternoon tea, the other as Arabian as a Bedouin warrior.
Two years they had been together—two years—and the very air between them could still crackle with that hot, tight sizzle of a fierce sexual awakening that was as strong now as it had been when it began.
But then, it had had to be, or the relationship would not have survived the disapproving rumblings across two very proud cultures.
‘My apologies.’ Raschid spoke at last and, like the eyes, his voice was so golden it slid over the senses like warm dark honey. ‘I have just this moment returned from my embassy.’
Which accounted for his eastern attire, Evie assumed as she ran her cool eyes over the long straight white tunic he was wearing beneath a dark blue, loosely flowing top robe. Though he had delayed long enough to remove his headgear, she noted as she watched a small grimace touch the moulded shape of his mouth at her continuing silence.
‘You’re angry with me.’ Dryly he stated the obvious.
‘No,’ Evie countered. ‘Bored.’
‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘In one of those moods, are we?’ Stepping further into the room, he closed the door. ‘What would you like me to do?’ he enquired, ever so politely. ‘Grovel at your beautiful feet?’
Which was his own unique brand of sarcasm, Evie made rueful note. Quite deliberately she took the words at their face value.
‘Right now, I would much rather you feed me,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast this morning, and it is now…’ she paused to glance at her watch ‘… almost nine o’clock.’
‘So, you do want me to grovel,’ he assumed from all of that, not in the least bit fooled by her cold manner.
What he wasn’t seeing was the anxiety lurking behind the coldness—thank goodness—because now that she actually had him here in the flesh Evie had cravenly decided she needed time before she said what she had to say to him.
So her barely perceptible shrug sent one of his sleekly defined black silk brows arching, and in two very economical and outwardly innocent gestures war between them was declared. It was not a new aspect of their relationship. In fact the whole foundation of it had been built on a refusal on both parts to pander to the arrogance of the other. Evie refused to pander to his god-like ego and Raschid refused to pander to her ice-princess image.
‘I have responsibilities,’ he clipped out.
‘Really?’ Evie drawled.
His eyes began to spark. ‘My time is not always my own to do with as I please.’
‘So it didn’t please you to keep me waiting for almost an hour?’ Her turn to use sarcasm, his to respond—or not—depending on his mood.
What he chose to do was to begin walking towards her with the sleek soft tread of a predator ruthlessly stalking its prey. Her nerve-ends began to tighten, sending out electric signals to all parts of her body as she watched him grow in height, in power, in skin-flaying mastery the closer he came to her.
The man was sheer poetry in motion. So lean and lithe and dark and deliciously dangerous that, by the time he came to a stop mere inches away from her, the breath had completely seized in her chest, and tiny tight tingles of a very familiar excitement were beginning to shimmer through her blood.