The sheikh's chosen wife(7)

She closed her eyes again, and he watched her make a mental inventory of  herself then give a small shake of her head. 'I think I'm okay.' She  opened her eyes again, looked directly into his, saw his concern, his  anguish, the burning fires of guilt-and then she remembered why she'd  fallen.

Aching tears welled up again. From coldly plunging his imaginary knife  into her breast, he now felt it enter his own. 'You really went and did  it,' she whispered.

'No, I did not,' he denied. 'Get out,' he told their two witnesses.

The room emptied like water down a drain, leaving them alone again,  confronting each other again. It was dangerous. He wanted to kiss her so  badly he could hardly breathe. She was his. He was hers! They should  not be in this warring situation!

'No-remain still!' he commanded when she attempted to move. 'Don't even  breathe unless you have to do so! Why are females so stupid?' he bit out  like a curse. 'You insult me with your suspicions. You goad me into a  response, and when it is not the one you want to hear you slay me with  your pain!"

'I didn't mean to fall down the stairs,' she pointed out.

'I wasn't talking about the fall!' he bit out, then glared down into her  confused, hurt, vulnerable eyes for a split second longer. 'Oh, Allah  give me strength,' he gritted, and gave in to himself and took her  trembling mouth by storm.

If he had kissed her in any other way Leona would have fought him with  her very last breath. But she liked the storm; she needed the storm so  she could allow herself to be swept away. Plus he was trembling, and she  liked that too. Liked to know that she still had the power to reduce  the prince in him to this vulnerable mass of smashed emotion.

And she'd missed him. She'd missed feeling his length lying alongside  her length, had missed the weight of his thighs pressing down on her  own. She'd missed his kiss, hungry, urgent, insistent...wanting. Like a  banquet after a year of long, hard fasting, she fed greedily on every  deep dark, sensual delight. Lips, teeth, tongue, taste. She reached for  his chest, felt the strong beat of his heart as she glided her palms  beneath the fabric of his top robe where only the thin cotton of his  tunic came between them and tightly muscled, satin-smooth flesh. When  she reached his shoulders her fingers curled themselves into tightly  padded muscle then stayed there, inviting him to take what he liked.                       
       
           



       

He took her breasts, stroking and shaping before moving on to follow the  slender curve of her body. Long fingers claimed her hips, then drew her  against the force of his. Fire bloomed in her belly, for this was her  man, the love of her life. She would never, ever, find herself another.  What he touched belonged to him. What he desired he could have.

What he did was bring a cruelly abrupt end to it by rising in a single  fluid movement to land on his feet beside the bed, leaving her to  flounder on the hard rocks of rejection while he stood there with his  back to her, fighting a savage battle with himself.

'Why?' she breathed in thick confusion. 'We are not animals,' he ground  back. 'We have issues to deal with that must preclude the hungry  coupling at which we already know we both excel.'

It served as a dash of water in her face; and he certainly possessed  good aim, Leona noted as she came back to reality with a shivering gasp.  'What issues?' she challenged cynically. 'The issue of what we have  left besides the excellent sex?'

He didn't answer. Instead he made one of her eyebrows arch as he  snatched up her spritzer and grimly downed the lot. There was a man at  war with himself as well as with her, Leona realised, knowing Hassan  hardly ever touched alcohol, and only then when he was under real  stress.

Sitting up, she was aware of a few aches and bruises as she gingerly  slid her feet to the floor. 'I want to go home,' she announced.

'This is home,' he replied. 'For the next few weeks'. Coming just as  gingerly to her feet, Leona stared at his rigid back-which was just  another sign that Hassan was not functioning to his usual standards,  because no Arab worthy of the race would deliberately set his back to  anyone. It was an insult of the worst kind.

Though she had seen his back a lot during those few months before she'd  eventually left him, Leona recalled with familiar sinking feeling  inside. Not because he had wished to insult her, she acknowledged, but  because he had refused to face what they had both known was happening to  their marriage. In the end, she had taken the initiative to be away  from him.

'Where are my shoes?'

The surprisingly neutral question managed to bring him swinging round to glance at her feet. 'Rafiq has them.'

Dear Rafiq, Leona thought wryly, Hassan's ever-loyal partner in crime.  Rafiq was an Al-Qadim. A man who had attended the same schools, the same  universities, the same everything as Hassan had done. Equals in many  ways, prince and lowly servant in others. It was a complicated  relationship that wound around the status of birth and the ranks of  power.

'Perhaps you would be kind enough to ask him to give them back to me.'  Even she knew you didn't command Rafiq to do anything. He was a law unto  himself-and Hassan. Rafiq was a maverick. A man of the desert, yet not  born of the desert; fiercely proud, fiercely protective of his right to  be master of his own decisions.

'For what purpose?'

Leona's chin came up, recognising the challenge in his tone. She offered  him a cool, clear look. 'I am not staying here, Hassan,' she told him  flatly. 'Even if I have to book into a hotel in San Esliban to protect  your dignity, I am leaving this boat now, tonight.'

His expression grew curious, a slight smile touched his mouth. 'Strong swimmer, are you?' he questioned lazily.

It took a few moments for his taunt to truly sink in, then she was  moving, darting across the room and winding her way between the two  strategically placed chairs and the accompanying table to reach for the  curtains. Beyond the glass, all she could see was inky darkness. Maybe  she was on the seaward side of the boat, she told herself in an effort  to calm the sudden sting of alarm that slid down her spine.

Hassan quickly disabused her of that frail hope. 'We left San Esteban minutes after we boarded.'

It was only then that she felt it: just the softest hint of a vibration  beneath the soles of her feet that told of smooth and silently running  engines. This truly was an abduction, she finally accepted, and turned  slowly back round to face him.

'Why?' she breathed.

It was like a replay of what had already gone before, only this time it  was serious-more serious than Leona had even begun to imagine. For she  knew this man-knew he was not given to flights of impulse just for the  hell of it. Everything he did had to have a reason, and was always  preceded by meticulous planning which took time he would not waste, and  effort he would not move unless he felt he absolutely had to do.

Hassan's small sigh conveyed that he too knew that this was where the  prevarication ended. 'There are problems at home,' he informed her  soberly. 'My father's health is failing.'

His father... Anger swiftly converted itself into anxious concern for  her father-in-law. Sheikh Khalifa had been frail in health for as long  as she had known him. Hassan doted on him and devoted most of his energy  to relieving his father of the burdens of rule, making sure he had the  best medical attention available and refusing to believe that one day  his father would not be there. So, if Hassan was using words like  'failing', then the old man's health must indeed be grave.                       
       
           



       

'What happened?' She began to walk towards him. 'I thought the last treatment was-'

'Your interest is a little too late in coming,' Hassan cut in, and with a  flick of a hand halted her steps. 'For I don't recall you showing any  concern about what it would do to his health when you left a year ago.'

That wasn't fair, and Leona blinked as his words pricked a tender part  of her. Sheikh Khalifa was a good man-a kind man. They had become  strong, close friends while she had lived at the palace. 'He understood  why I felt I needed to leave,' she responded painfully.

You think so? Hassan's cynical expression derided. 'Well, I did not,' he  said out loud. 'But, since you decided it was the right thing for you  to do, I now have a serious problem on my hands. For I am, in effect,  deemed weak for allowing my wife to walk away from me, and my critics  are making rumbling noises about the stability of the country if I do  not display some leadership.'

'So you decided to show that leadership by abducting me, then dragging  me back to Rahman?' Her thick laugh poured scorn over that suggestion,  because they both knew taking her back home had to be the worst thing  Hassan could possibly do to prove that particular point