The Sheikh's Prize(2)

'Give me that sexy look, Saffy...' Dylan, the photographer, urged   pleadingly. 'What is wrong with you this week? You're not on form-'

And as if someone had zapped her with an electrified cattle prod, Saffy   struggled to switch on the expression he wanted because she hated the   fact that anyone should have noticed that anything was amiss with her   mood. Inside her head, she fought to focus on the fantasy that never   failed to ignite that much vaunted look of desire on her face. So   ironic, she reflected momentarily, so very cruelly ironic that she   should have to focus on what she had often dreamt of and never yet   managed to experience in reality. But when she was working a shoot   costing her clients thousands of pounds was not the time to allow all   that old bad stuff to resurface. With the strong determination that was   the backbone of her temperament, Saffy forced the distressing memories   back down into her subconscious again and then mentally searched to   extract the required familiar image: a man with jet-black hair down to   his broad brown shoulders, a man who positively oozed raw animal   magnetism from every pore with a lean powerfully naked body encased in   warm gilded skin. In every image he would slowly turn his head to look   at her, revealing fiercely stunning eyes of gold surrounded by black   lashes so lush they acted like eye liner on a guy already so savagely   masculine and passionate that at one glance he took her breath away. And   all those wretched frustrating responses swam back through her taut   body in a wave, her nipp**les beading below the scrap of silk she wore,   her entire body dampening with shocking awareness.                       
       
           



       

'That's it...that's exactly it!' Dylan crooned in enthusiasm, leaping   around her posed figure to take photos from different angles as she   shifted position with languorous ease, that image inside her head like   an indelible tattoo below her skin. 'Lower your lids a little more-we   want to see that eye shadow...brilliant, sweetheart, now pout that   gorgeous mouth...'

A couple of minutes passed before with a tiny jerk of displacement,   Saffy returned to the present and was suddenly plunged back into the   heat, the noise and the curious crowds, her huge bluer-than-blue eyes   reflecting her discomfiture at the massive attention they were   attracting. But Dylan had got the shots he wanted and he leapt around   like a maniac punching the air with satisfaction. Her single-minded   concentration on her role gone now, she looked out above the crowds and   saw a vehicle parked at the height of a giant rolling ochre-coloured   sand dune with a robed figure standing nearby holding something in his   hand that glinted in the sun.

* * *

Zahir had his high-definition binoculars trained on his stunningly   beautiful ex-wife. With her glorious mane of golden hair blowing back   from her face like a sheet of gleaming silk and seated atop a pile of   giant fake ice cubes, she would have looked spectacularly eye-catching   by any standards. But in the beauty stakes, Sapphire occupied a category   all of her own and the sight of her took Zahir's hot-blooded temper to   new and dangerous heights. He was outraged that she was appearing in   public in Maraban clad in only a couple of scraps of azure silk that   displayed the surprisingly bountiful mounds of her breasts, the smooth   skin of her now bejewelled midriff and the incredible svelte stretch of   her very long and perfect legs.

He watched the men involved in the shoot dart slavishly around Sapphire,   offering her drinks and food and fussing with her hair and her face,   and he wondered with vicious coarseness which of them had had the   pleasure of her beautiful body. After all, she might live with Cameron   McDonald, but the UK tabloids had, nonetheless, exposed the fact that   she had had several affairs with other men. Clearly she was anything but   a faithful lover. Of course, it was possible that Cameron and Sapphire   enjoyed a civilly negotiated 'open' relationship, but Zahir was not   impressed by that possibility or even by the concept of open   relationships. He didn't sleep around, he had never slept around even   when he finally had the freedom to make such choices. His ex-wife had to   be a bit of a slut, he decided with dark brooding bitterness, his lean   strong face set granite hard at the acknowledgement. He had married an   embryo slut and, worst of all, she was a slut he still lusted after.  At  that final disturbing admission, Zahir ground his even white teeth  while  perspiration beaded his upper lip, his tall, powerful body  furiously  tense and aggressively aroused by his perusal of that perfect  body and  even more perfect face.

Sapphire, the one mistake he had ever made and the payback had been   unforgettably brutal. He had endured indescribable punishment to keep   her as his wife for even a year. She owed him, she definitely owed him   for twelve months of unadulterated hell. Add in the millions she had   received from him since the charade of their marriage finally ran   aground in a divorce and he had every right to feel ill-done by, every   right to still be aggrieved and hostile. She had used and abused him   before walking away unharmed and considerably richer. Maybe it was   finally payback time, Zahir reflected grimly, his adrenalin spiking at   the idea. And bearing in mind that she and her film crew had chosen to   come to Maraban and film without the permission of the relevant   authority, she had put herself and her precious high-flying career in   his power. And the very thought of Sapphire being in his power was the   most seductive image that Zahir had indulged in for years. He lowered   the binoculars, thinking fast, squashing the disconcerting logical   objections already trying to assail him to persuade him to restrain his   primal responses. It wouldn't be the same between them now, he reasoned   angrily; he was not the same man. This time around he had the weapons  to  make her want him back.

That process of self-persuasion was incredibly seductive. Throughout his   life Zahir had very rarely done what he wanted to do, for the  necessity  of always considering the needs of others had taken  precedence. But why  shouldn't he put his own desires first for once? He  had already checked  Sapphire's schedule and she was due to leave  Maraban within hours, an  awareness that merely made him all the more  single-minded. Zahir made  his plans there and then with ruthless cool  and the same kind of fierce,  almost suicidal resolution that had once  persuaded him to take a  foreign wife without first asking his despotic  father's permission. As  that reality and comparison briefly occurred to  him he stubbornly  suppressed the piercing shard of unease it awakened.                       
       
           



       

* * *

With a sense of merciful release from the strain of being on show, Saffy   stepped into the site trailer to change. She shed the skimpy silk   bandeau and slashed skirt and peeled off the fake navel jewel before   donning white linen trousers and an aqua tee. In a couple of hours she   would be on her way home and saying goodbye to the joys of Maraban   couldn't come quickly enough as far as she was concerned. After all, it   was the last place in the world she would have chosen to visit, but   civil unrest in a neighbouring country had led to a last-minute change   of location and nobody had been willing to listen to her necessarily   vague objections. But then the fact that nobody had a clue about her   past connection to Maraban or Zahir was a relief. Thankfully that period   of her life before fame had claimed her remained a deep dark secret.

So, in spite of all he had once had to say on the score of corrupt   hereditary rulerships, Zahir had still ended up taking the throne to   become a king. But then, according to what she had read in the   newspapers, the citizens of Maraban had not had a clue what to do with   the offer of democracy and had instead rallied round their popular hero   prince, who had rebelled with the army against his old horror of a   father to protect the people. There were pictures of Zahir everywhere:   she had noticed one in the hotel foyer with a vase of flowers set   beneath it rather like a little sacred shrine. Her lush mouth twisted as   she questioned the thread of bitterness powering her thoughts. He was   honourable, a big fan of justice and was very probably an excellent   king, she conceded grudgingly. It really wasn't fair to resent him for   what he couldn't have helped. Their marriage had been a disaster and   even now her thoughts slid away from the memories with alacrity. He had   broken her heart and dumped her when she failed to deliver and she   wasn't really sure that it was fair to hate him for that when by that   stage she had been urging him to divorce her for months. Everyone made   choices, everyone had to live with those choices and a happy ending   wasn't always included.