‘Watch out for—’
Ruby lifted her hands in a sudden silencing motion, brown eyes lightening with temper. ‘Just let it go, Raja. I’ll take my chances against whatever it is! You’re just about perfect and you know everything and you could probably live out here all year but I’m afraid I’m not cut from the same cloth.’
‘The desert is home to my people and yours,’ the prince contradicted in a tone of reproof. ‘We design and maintain beautiful gardens and parks in Najar but when our people want to get back to basics they come out into the desert.’
Ruby snatched in a sustaining breath and she kicked a rock with a sneaker-clad foot to expel her extreme irritation.
‘Ruby!’
As the rock rolled over and something moved and darted from beneath it Raja almost leapt forward in his haste to haul her out of harm’s way. From several feet away, plastered back against the solid support of his hard muscular frame, Ruby stared in horror at the greenish yellow insects rushing out.
‘Scorpions. They shelter in dark places during the day. Their sting is very painful,’ Raja informed her as she went limp against him, sick with repulsion at how close she had come to injury. He removed her to a safe distance.
‘I don’t like insects either,’ Ruby confided in a shaken rush. ‘Especially ones that size and anything that stings—’
‘There are also poisonous snakes—’
‘Shut up…shut up!’ she launched at him fiercely. ‘I’m not on an educational trip. I don’t want to know!’
Raja turned her round and stared down at her, eyes shimmering with reluctant amusement.
‘I don’t care what you say either,’ Ruby added truculently. ‘Give it a rest—stop trying to train me into being a stuffy royal who never puts a foot wrong!’
This time Raja al-Somari laughed out loud, his ready sense of humour finally breaking free of his innate reserve, for Ruby was very much an original and not at all like the women he was accustomed to meeting. She didn’t flirt—at least if she did, she didn’t bother to do it with him. Indeed she used no feminine wiles that he could identify. She staged no enticing poses to draw attention to her body. She made no attempt to appeal to his ego with compliments or to pay him any especially gratifying attention and she had not told him a single story calculated to present her in a flattering light. He had never in his entire life met a woman as uncomplicated as she was and the more he was exposed to her frank, fearless style, the more he liked it.
‘So, you do have a sense of humour after all. My goodness, is that a relief!’ Ruby exclaimed, shaking her head in emphasis, a wealth of damp strands escaping her loose knot and spilling across her shoulders.
Raja stared down at her stunning face and the teasing smile on her ripe rosy lips. He lowered his handsome, dark head almost jerkily as if he were being yanked down to her level by some mysterious but very powerful outside force. He found her soft, sultry mouth with his and although that kiss started out gentle and searching it heated up at supersonic speed. Desire rose to gush through Ruby in a floodtide. Nothing had ever felt so necessary as the hard pressure of that sensual mouth on hers and the taste of him drowned her senses like a shot of alcohol on a weak head.
Without a word, Raja released her with startling abruptness and pressed a hand to her spine to urge her back down the slope towards the tent.
Ruby had never experienced such a charge of hunger before and, suddenly deprived of that connection with him, she was in a daze. The tip of her tongue snaked out to explore the reddened and swollen contours of her lips and all she could think about was how much she wanted his hot, hungry mouth back on hers again. The strength of that craving shook her. Her nipples were tight and tingling and her legs felt shaky. Putting one foot in front of another was a challenge. And at the same time, gallingly she was desperate to know what he was thinking.
Outside the tent Ruby shot Raja a sidewise glance brimming with curiosity. His hard profile was taut and he skimmed a look back at her, eyes brilliant with a wealth of stormy emotion. That shook her and in response her heart started beating very, very fast. ‘Don’t play games with me, Ruby,’ he spelled out in a roughened undertone.
Games? Ruby was offended by the suggestion and she lifted her chin in denial. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—you kissed me—’
‘But you made no objection. When you have said that you don’t want me to touch you what else is that but a game?’
‘I don’t calculate things to that extent. You are so suspicious,’ Ruby condemned, flushed and flustered by the reminder and by the embarrassment of her own un-characteristic behaviour. ‘It’s being in this situation…I simply forgot and got carried away for a moment.’
‘Every action has consequences,’ Raja pronounced, rigid with the pent-up force of arousal he was restraining, his lean hands clenching into fists, for his body was not one half as disciplined as his quick and clever brain.
Ruby sank down on a mat inside the tent. It was hot but nothing was as hot and disturbing as the hum of unnatural warmth at the centre of her body, which was shockingly new and demanding. She could not relax. She lifted a hand, watched it tremble and tried and failed to laugh at the state she was in. One kiss and it had been earth-shattering, even more so than the last. Now she felt cheated. She wanted more, she wanted to know what it felt like to make love with a man who attracted her to that extent. The hurricane-force potency of that attraction was certainly a first. She had not experienced anything comparable with other men when intimacy had often felt like more of a threat and a nuisance than a potential source of pleasure. More than once her un-enthusiastic response had led to her being asked if she was frigid or gay. She had often had to fight her way out of over-keen encounters. She had had to shout, she had had to defend and justify her boundaries because the easy availability of sex was often taken for granted in relationships. But not once, not once in the five years since she began dating had she actually wanted to make love.
And now what was she doing about it? Here she was taking refuge in the tent and avoiding Raja as if she were ashamed of herself or afraid when she was neither, she conceded uncertainly. It was not as though she could fall pregnant either, she reminded herself squarely. Some months earlier her doctor had advised her to agree to a course of contraceptive pills in the hope of correcting an irregular menstrual cycle. Although she had no supply with her in the desert she assumed she would still be protected for some time against conception. She lifted her head high. She had not been playing some sexual game with Raja, she was not a tease and didn’t want him thinking that she was. In an impatient movement she scrambled upright again.
Raja was staring into the dying embers of the fire, black lashes lowered and as spectacular even in profile as glossy black fringes, his high cheekbones prominent, sculptured mouth clenched.
‘I wasn’t playing games,’ Ruby declared defiantly.
He flung his proud dark head back and looked straight at her. ‘I want you so much I ache…’
And his admission sizzled through Ruby like a hot knife gliding through butter. His confidence shocked her, for she had believed that she was being bold but his words made hers meaningless and little more than a sulky expression of innocence. Indeed almost a lie, she adjusted uncomfortably, jolted by her sudden unexpected collision with the scorching challenge of his gaze. Just at that moment she knew that she had sought him out again quite deliberately and that he was experienced enough to know it.
‘A woman hasn’t made me ache since I was younger than you are now,’ Raja told her huskily, vaulting upright with an easy grace of movement that tensed every muscle in her slim body. ‘You’re very beautiful…’
So was he, but she was too wary and proud to tell him that that lean dark-angel beauty of his had taken up residence in her brain and dug talon claws of need and desire into her very soul. When he kissed her she felt as dizzy and uncoordinated as though she had drunk too much alcohol. He made her feel out of control and she didn’t like that but, regardless of that fact, every time she looked at him it was a tougher challenge to look away again. She moved closer and somehow he met her in the middle, a possessive hand closing on her slight shoulder to hold her in place, his mouth or was it her mouth eagerly melding with the temptation of his again. And that crushing kiss was good, so good, her bare toes curled and her nerve endings sang. Her arms went round him, her fingers spearing into his hair, and with her eager encouragement his mouth got rougher and harder, his lean, powerful length sealing more forcefully to her softer curves.
It was too much: she couldn’t breathe, broke her mouth free to pant for breath and yet immediately sought him out again with renewed hunger and blindly impatient hands. In the midst of it he eased back from her to haul off his robe but just as quickly he pulled her back into his arms. The sarong fell at her feet but she didn’t notice because Raja was already lowering her down on the quilts while pressing taut open-mouthed kisses along the slender expanse of her neck. She squirmed helplessly as the tip of his tongue scored the pulse there and then he nipped at her responsive flesh with his strong white teeth. Need was driving her now, all the while the heat in her pelvis was building and building into a furnace.