It had been an emotional evening. She had drunk mineral water and jasmine tea, but right then she needed a drink. ‘I’d love one.’
He poured her a glass and put it down on one of the small tables, keeping his voice deliberately casual. ‘So. Good evening, was it?’
Sabrina dropped her shawl over the back of one of the chairs and went to sit down on one of the sofas. It hadn’t been the evening she’d been expecting. But then she hadn’t expected to find herself weeping quietly on Khalim’s shoulder and telling him that she was in love with Guy—and that if he ever said anything to Guy about it, she would never forgive him.
And Khalim, still slightly shell-shocked from the first rejection he had ever encountered, had given a rueful smile and smoothed a tear-soaked strand of hair away from her cheek with a gentle finger.
‘You think I would risk you not forgiving me?’ he’d mused. ‘You know, Guy is a strong man, not a stupid man—and he is behaving like one if he ignores this most precious gift which is his for the taking.’
Sabrina had bitten nervously at her lip. How could she possibly tell Khalim the truth? That she’d fallen into his friend’s arms in Venice with such indecent haste that he probably had no respect left for her.
‘He’s not interested in me that way,’ she’d told him stolidly. ‘Not any more. I know he’s not.’
‘Then for the first time in my life I must question his judgement,’ Khalim had replied in a hard, cold voice.
‘And anyway,’ she’d said, in a small voice, ‘even if he was, I don’t think I could bear to make myself that vulnerable again. If you love someone, then losing them is just unbearable.’
His dark eyes had narrowed. ‘Explain,’ he’d ordered quietly. And she’d told him all about Michael and he’d listened thoughtfully.
‘So you see,’ she’d finished, ‘it’s much too soon for me to fall in love with someone else—it does a disservice to Michael’s memory.’
The hard lips had curved briefly into a smile. ‘But love has no respect for convention, Sabrina,’ he had sighed.
And from that moment on he had behaved almost as though she was sick, and in a way maybe she was. For the pain in her heart was real enough, surely? As real as the sharp pierce of longing which ripped right through her whenever she thought of Guy.
Khalim had made her eat a little something, and told her something of his homeland. His voice had lulled her and soothed her, and his softly accented descriptions of his upbringing had transported her to another world.
Just as Guy had transported her to another world.
But it wasn’t her world.
‘It was certainly different,’ she said to Guy, as she remembered.
He forced himself to keep the jealous monster at bay. ‘Oh?’
She sat down, picked up her glass and sipped at it gratefully, acutely aware of the glittering grey gaze which held her fast in its dazzle. She thought that he looked almost strained tonight, with a strange kind of restlessness about him.
‘How was Jenna’s party?’
‘Boring as hell.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. But I don’t want to talk about Jenna’s party. I’m much more interested in your evening.’
‘Oh, Khalim had hired a private room in the most amazing restaurant you’ve ever seen,’ she said, still slightly reeling from the experience. ‘Imagine—a whole room to ourselves!’
Behind the hard line of his mouth Guy gritted his teeth. Just a taste of Khalim’s average over-the-top seduction technique. ‘How very impressive,’ he said steadily.
He really did seem to be tense, as if he was hanging onto his self-control with difficulty, and Sabrina stared at him, willing her heart not to wrench, but it was hopeless. Every time she looked at him she felt nothing but an unbearable sense of longing.
‘It was. Very,’ she said simply. No need to tell him that she’d barely eaten a thing, or that the spectacular surroundings hadn’t registered. She might as well have been sitting in some scruffy old café for all that she would have noticed—because Guy hadn’t been there. And the world was just not the same place when Guy wasn’t there.
‘And are you going to see him again?’
Something in the harshness of the question made her go very still, and she gazed up into the hard contours of his face. ‘And if I am?’
There was a dangerous pause. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘You don’t like it?’ Sabrina stared at him. She thought about his rage when she’d told him she was going to accept Khalim’s offer of a date. If she thought about it rationally, all the facts added up to jealousy. So, was Guy jealous of Khalim and, if so, why, when he had shown no signs of wanting her for himself? ‘Why not?’
‘Why do you think?’ he snapped. ‘Because it’s doing my head in to think that he wants you when I want you so badly for myself.’
Joy mingled with disbelief. ‘You…want me?’ she repeated, her voice trembling.
‘Of course I want you! Haven’t I wanted you ever since I made the foolish suggestion that you come and live here?’
‘Why was it foolish?’ she breathed.
He knew that now was not the time for his habitual evasion. ‘Maybe I was just fooling myself into thinking that what happened in Venice was a reckless one-off.’ Hadn’t part of him secretly hoped it had been? He shook his head. ‘But my feelings for you haven’t changed.’
Sabrina stared at him. He’d used the word ‘feelings’, but she suspected that he really meant desire. But, however he chose to phrase it, it didn’t really matter—because nothing could change the way she felt about him. Nothing.
‘Haven’t they?’ she whispered.
‘Not a bit.’
Guy watched her eyes darken involuntarily as their eyes locked, and saw the soft tremble of her lips. And suddenly he knew that neither logic nor reason could stop what he was about to do.
With a hand that wasn’t quite steady he put his glass down on the table, walked over to the sofa and stood looking down at her. He saw the sudden parting of her lips as she read the answering hunger in his eyes.
‘Guy?’ she said breathlessly.
‘Sabrina?’ came the soft mocking response. ‘Do you think we’ve played the waiting game for long enough?’
She could barely get the single word out. ‘Y-yes.’
He held his hand out to her and she took it. In an instant she was in his arms, and his eyes were hard and bright and hungry as he brought his lips down to kiss her.
And just that first heady contact set her on fire. Blazing. With a tiny moan, she coiled her arms around his neck like a snake and he pulled her hard into his body so that their hips melded, and she could feel the hard, powerful jut of him throught the fine linen of his trousers.
He kissed her with a frustration that went bone-deep, and Guy found himself lost in the sweetness of her mouth, as if he could never get enough of plundering its honeyed moistness. He pulled her even closer, feeling the tips of her nipples as they strained against the sheer, silky fabric of her dress.
With an effort he pulled his lips away from hers, and she made a murmured little protest as he looked down at her, his eyes glittering black, opaque with desire.
‘Is this what you really want, princess?’ he groaned. ‘Because if you don’t, we’d better stop this right now.’
Her