The Sheikh's Prize(13)

Without hesitation, indeed reacting on pure gut instinct, Saffy pulled   free of Zahir and slid off the bed in one strong movement, a mane of   rumpled golden hair falling round her pale slender length like a veil.   'Do I qualify for a car to the airport now?' she asked thinly, blue eyes   cold as the polar wastes.

Raking long brown fingers through his black hair, Zahir sat up in the   tangled sheets, the white linen providing a striking foil for his golden   skin. He tensed and swore and, assuming his reaction was the result of   her sudden exit from the intimacy of the bed, she flicked him a bitter   glance. Yes, he was still unquestionably gorgeous, but she hated him,   totally hated him, wanted to be gone now as fast as possible, escaping   the scene of the crime. No doubt he thought he had used her but it was   the other way round and she would have liked the freedom to tell him   that, but was still not prepared to spill her deepest secrets to him.                       
       
           



       

'I want you to stay until tomorrow,' Zahir admitted in a low-pitched tone evocative of anticipation.

Her blue eyes flashed. 'No. I'm done here. I want to go home right now.'

Zahir, gloriously unaccustomed to being in receipt of a negative female   response since his divorce, stared back at her with faint but   perceptible hauteur while he wondered what had gone wrong. 'I don't do   one-nighters.'

Her lovely face without expression, Saffy dealt him an impatient glance,   eyes as unemotional as stones. 'I do and, as I said, I'm done.'

Determined not to meet his gaze, Saffy focused on the neat pile of   freshly laundered clothes sitting on a chair and wondered when they had   arrived, where they had contrived to get washed and ironed and when  they  had been returned, for all of those inconsequential thoughts were  safer  than thinking about the insane passion she had just shared with  Zahir.  She scooped her clothes up and headed at a brisk pace for the  bathroom.

Zahir leapt out of bed and reached the door a step ahead of her, one   brown hand bracing on the door to keep it shut. 'There's something I   should tell you first.'

Refusing to look directly at him, Saffy grimaced. 'What?' she asked impatiently.

'The condom I used broke...I suspect I was too passionate. I assume that   you're on the contraceptive pill and that there's no risk of   conception?' he pressed with the evident belief that that was the   natural order for a woman like her.

For a split second her eyes narrowed and she paled as she assimilated   that shocking information, suddenly grasping what had most probably   provoked his curse mere minutes earlier, and although a chill of dismay   gripped her she nodded immediate agreement. 'Of course,' she lied,   wanting him to believe that she was already taking that precaution   against pregnancy because she slept with other men, for that belief best   conserved her pride. And she also knew how much that belief would  annoy  him...for he was possessive to his backbone. At least, he had  been when  she knew him, she qualified grimly, but who could say what  drove him  now? Five years' separation, a lot of other women and  possession of a  throne had changed him: of course, they had. It would  be very naïve of  her to think otherwise.

'I'll organise transport,' Zahir breathed grittily. 'And see that the   film shot of the commercial is also delivered to you before you depart.'

'Is that my reward?' Saffy enquired drily, concealing her relief that he   was willing to hand over the film, well aware that the film crew and   her clients would be going mad over its confiscation.

His handsome features clenched. 'If you choose to see it that way-'

'Oh, I do,' Saffy asserted, watching gold glimmer like a flame in his   dark as midnight eyes and loving the burn of it, knowing she had annoyed   him as he threw open the door for her to leave the bedroom section of   the tent. 'And while I remember it, I would advise you to look more   closely into the disappearance of that five million pounds you   mentioned-because I'm telling you now, I didn't receive a penny of it!'

Zahir inclined his arrogant dark head in grudging acknowledgement. 'I   will have the matter investigated,' he conceded, coldly formal in tone.

Was he offended that she hadn't appeared to want a repeat of their   intimacy? Saffy stepped into the shower and washed her skin clean of the   scent of him. She felt sore, every movement of her lower limbs   reminding her of his passionate possession. It was done. She was no   longer a virgin. She had surmounted her fears. She was finally a normal   young woman and now in a condition to consider a relationship as a   potential part of her future. That was good, she told herself firmly.   She forced her stiff facial muscles into a determined smile and had just   wrapped a towel round her dripping body when a knock sounded on the   door and heralded Zahir's reappearance, his lean bronzed body still clad   only in boxer shorts.

'Yes?' Saffy prompted tightly, not having wanted to see him again   because seeing him hurt, made her think of the other women he had been   with and, even though it wasn't fair or even rational when she had been   unable to consummate their marriage while they were together and they   were now divorced, she hated him for having found pleasure and   satisfaction when she could not.

'I must have hurt you...there's spots of blood on the sheet,' Zahir informed her grimly. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

Hot colour flew into her cheeks like a banner of scarlet. It had not   occurred to her that there might be any detectable physical proof of her   innocence and she was mortified by his discovery. 'You didn't hurt   me...er, it's been a while for me, so perhaps that explains it,' she   muttered awkwardly through clenched teeth of discomfiture.                       
       
           



       

'Why has it been a while for you?' Zahir demanded bluntly. 'You live with a man.'

Somehow he contrived to voice that statement in a manner and tone that   implied she regularly sold her body on street corners. 'That's my   business,' Saffy responded flatly, her eyes veiled.

'You should see a doctor,' Zahir informed her curtly. 'I can contact someone-'

'No, thanks.' Her cup of humiliation now truly running over and   threatening to drown her, Saffy moved towards him and opened the door   for his exit. 'Excuse me, I'd like to get dressed.'

'Sapphire...' Frustration stamped on his lean dark features, Zahir   glowered down at her, smouldering golden eyes alight. 'Why are you   behaving like this? Is this a habit of yours? Do you often indulge in   casual sex?'

She refused to look at him and her lush mouth compressed so hard that   her lips turned bloodless. 'That would be kissing and telling, which I   definitely don't do.'





CHAPTER FIVE



SAFFY RESTED BACK in her cream leather reclining seat in Zahir's   incredibly opulent private jet, but beneath the skin her every muscle   was tense and she could not relax.

Even so, Zahir had certainly ensured that she was travelling back to   London in style. She frowned at the acknowledgement because she would   have preferred to consign every image and conversation of the past   twenty-four hours to a mental dustbin sealed with a good strong lid. She   had slept with her ex, no big deal, she told herself with rigorous   resolve. It was only a major event for her because having sex had been   something she had, until relatively recently, been afraid she couldn't   ever do. She had used him. That was how she had to look on what had   happened. If he knew that his temper would have gone nuclear because   Zahir expected everything on his own terms. In that spirit he had   married her and in the same spirit he had decided to divorce her again.   Nothing had ever been equitably discussed: he had been happy to make  his  mind up for both of them.

Five years ago, they had landed in Maraban as a newly married couple and   that too had been very much on his terms, with her not having the  first  clue about the dysfunctional royal family she had joined. His  father,  King Fareed, had been livid that his younger son had married a  foreigner  and had initially refused to even meet her. She had met  Zahir's older  brother, Omar, and his wife, Azel. Omar had died in a car  crash a few  months after Saffy arrived. As Omar and his wife had been  childless,  Zahir's importance to his father had mushroomed once he  became the  heir-in-waiting and Saffy had seen even less of her husband  as he was  forced to take on the ceremonial roles that had once been his  brother's.