Their eyes held for a moment. His held bemusement that she should take their duel right up to the line. Finally there was a glimmer of respect.
With a shrug that mirrored the ones he’d given at the gaming tables, he pushed the cheque over to her, with the name still blank. Then he rose to his feet and made as if to fasten the necklace back in place. But Fran prevented him.
‘You keep that. I’ll keep this,’ she said, indicating the cheque. ‘After all, I don’t want to be greedy, do I?’
Ali returned to his place opposite her and raised her hand to his lips, watching her all the time with eyes that were heavy, yet curiously alert. They were always alert, she realised, no matter what he was saying.
‘Not many women can claim they’ve bested me,’ he confessed. ‘But I see you’re used to playing games, and very good at it. I like that. It intrigues me. But what intrigues me even more is that smile you’re giving me.’
‘Smiles can convey so much more than words, don’t you think?’ she asked innocently.
‘But what is conveyed without words can so easily be denied. Is that what you’re doing, Diamond? Protecting yourself against the moment when you’ll want to deny what is passing between us?’
It was like being naked, she thought, alarmed. He saw too much.
To divert his attention from the dangerous point she put the cheque in her purse. ‘It would be very hard to deny that that has passed between us,’ she observed.
‘How true. I was sure a sharp wit lurked behind those innocent eyes.’
‘You don’t trust me, do you?’ she asked impulsively.
‘Not an inch. But we’re equally matched, for I have the strangest feeling that you do not trust me.’
Fran’s wide-eyed stare was a masterpiece of innocence. ‘How could anyone doubt Your Highness’s probity, rectitude, virtue, morality, righteousness—?’
He laughed until he almost choked, his eyes alight with real amusement, and he kissed her hand again, not seductively this time, but with a kind of vigorous triumph, as though he’d just seen his best hope romp past the winning post.
‘What man could resist you?’ he asked. ‘Certainly I cannot. But stop calling me “Your highness”. My name is Ali.’
‘And mine is—Diamond.’
‘I wonder. I begin to think I shall call you Scheherazade, for your wit, which is beyond the wit of all other women.’
‘I’m cleverer than quite a few men too,’ she riposted, and couldn’t resist adding, ‘You wait and see.’
He nodded. ‘The waiting is half the pleasure. Will she say yes or no? And if she says no will her voice contain a secret invitation nonetheless?’
‘I can’t believe you ever have that problem. Don’t tell me that any woman denies you.’
He shrugged. ‘A man can have all the women in the world, yet not the one he wants. If that one denies him, what are all the others?’
Fran regarded him with wry amusement, not fooled by this. The words were humble but the tone was arrogant. Implicit was the fact that no woman refused him, but he felt it was polite to pretend otherwise.
‘I’d have thought all the others were a good deal,’ she said. ‘They’d leave him no time for pining.’
‘You speak like a woman who has never had her heart broken. I wonder if that can really be true?’
‘It’s true.’
‘Then you have never loved, and that I find impossible to believe. You are made for love. I saw it in your eyes when they met mine in the casino.’
‘You weren’t thinking of love. You were thinking of money,’ she said lightly.
‘I was thinking of you and the spell you cast. It was that spell that turned my luck.’
‘Oh, please! That’s very pretty talk, but it was just chance.’
‘For some there is no chance,’ he said seriously. ‘Whatever is written in the book of fate is what they put there themselves. I try to discern my fate through the smoke that surrounds it, and I see your handwriting.’
‘And what—what else do you see?’ she faltered.
‘Nothing. The rest is hidden. There is only you.’
As he spoke he drew her to her feet and straight into his arms. Fran had believed herself prepared for this moment, but when it came her well-laid plans seemed to fall away. His little teasing kisses in the car had carried the promise of what was to come, and now she knew that there was no way she could ever have left Ali tonight, without discovering if the promise would be kept.
It was kept magnificently. He enfolded her in his arms in a way that shut out the rest of the world, as though only she mattered. That alone was a seductive experience. Fran bestowed a brief thought on Howard—the man in her life as far as there was one. Howard was a banker, and he kissed like a banker, as though estimating profit and loss. Strange that she’d never thought of that before. Then Ali Ben Saleem’s lips moved decisively over hers, and there were no thoughts left for any other man.
She told herself that she was merely laying the ground for the piece she would write, but her honesty wouldn’t let her get away with that. This was the kind of experience a woman dreamed of, and it was irresistible.
His mouth was curved, strong, yet immensely subtle, and it knew what she wanted it to do before she knew it herself. He lightly caressed her mouth before brushing his lips over her eyes, her jaw, her neck. With unerring precision he found the little spot beneath her ear where she was unbearably sensitive and drew a soft, whispering line down the length of her neck. Nothing could have made her repress the sigh of pleasure she gave.
Her head was cradled on his arm while he searched her face, seeking there the answer to some question that was beyond words.
‘Are you playing with me now?’ he growled.
‘Of course. A game that you don’t understand.’
He liked that. ‘When will I understand?’
‘When it is ended.’
‘When will it be ended?’
‘When I have won.’
‘Tell me your secret,’ he demanded.
A smile touched her lips. ‘You know the secret as well as I do.’
‘With you, there would always be a new secret,’ he said huskily, and covered her mouth again.
He half urged, half carried her the few steps to the couch by the window. She felt the cushions beneath her back and the moonlight on her face. He was caressing her with his lips while his hands began a gentle exploration of her body. She gasped at those soft touches. She hadn’t known that she had such a body until his reverent fingertips told her, and told her also what it was for.
It was for giving and taking in an ecstasy of pleasure, and she hadn’t suspected until this moment, when he made her understand what was possible beyond anything she could have imagined.
Her mouth moved feverishly against his, not receiving now but seeking and demanding with an urgency that astonished him—delighted him too, if his response was anything to go by. His insistence became fierce, and suddenly she could feel the hot breeze of the desert against her skin, see the dark red sun in its last moments before oblivion. He carried these things with him and no woman could lie in his arms without being aware of them as part of his soul.
All through the grey, chilly years this had been waiting for her, and now she had found it there was no turning back. He had said she was made for pleasure, and he was showing her that it