She flushed, wanting only to be taken in his arms again, to be reassured in the most basic of ways that he was telling her the truth.
But that wasn’t going to happen. ‘I’ve already told you I did,’ she said, her tone aloof and edged with more than a hint of defiance.
He laughed softly, and for a transparent second she thought he was going to put paid to the tumbling whirlwind of her thoughts and emotions with another sensuous kiss and the addictive security of his arms.
Then his face closed against her, and he stepped backwards with an inclination of his head. ‘Goodnight. Sleep well,’ he said formally.
‘Goodnight.’ She closed the door on him before the hot tears could reach her eyes.
As always he’d been considerate, but even though he’d liked making love to her he might still be regretting that it had happened. After all, there was a huge difference between an experienced woman of the world, who knew how to conduct an affair with style and grace, and a virgin with no skills or experience when it came to matters of sex.
He might even now be trying to find a way to tell her that it was over—a kind, considerate way, of course—she thought on a spurt of fresh anguish.
She woke the next morning with one decision fixed in her mind: she’d go back to the hotel.
‘No,’ Rafiq said unemotionally when she told him at breakfast on the terrace that overlooked the lowlands.
Lexie’s brows shot up. Pleased with the cool crispness of her tone, she stated, ‘I’m not asking your permission. I’m perfectly well, so the hotel no longer has any reason to object.’
He leaned back. A stray ray of sun struck across his face, and she glimpsed a corsair, dark and dangerous—a leader of men even more desperate then he was.
‘It is not possible,’ he said evenly. ‘Your accommodation has been given to another guest.’
Stunned, she closed her mouth with a snap. ‘Who made that decision?’
‘I told them to,’ he said with a controlled assurance that grated across her nerves. ‘The hotel opening was a huge success—bookings have come in from all over the world. It would have been foolish not to take advantage of that. Why do you want to leave the castle?’
‘Because there’s no longer a reason for me to be here.’ She stared at him, her eyes sending a challenge she didn’t care to voice. ‘My stay was only ever temporary. I’m fine, my ribs are fine—’ Colour burned her skin but she ploughed on, ‘As you know.’
When Rafiq got to his feet in one swift movement, she had to stop herself from flinching. He loomed, and although Lexie knew she had nothing to fear from him she had to resist her immediate impulse to leap up so that she faced him on slightly more equal terms.
He was deliberately being intimidating, she realised, her hand closing around the handle of a knife. Why?
Calmly, yet with an edge of authority to his voice as though reasoning with a rebellious teenager, he said, ‘There is no need for you to go. I understand your feelings, and I agree—this has happened so fast that we don’t know each other very well. But fleeing is not the way to deal with it.’ His eyes dropped to her death grip on the handle of the butter knife. ‘I refuse to believe that you are afraid of me.’
‘I’m not!’ She dropped the knife back onto her plate. The sharp little chink broke into the soft air like a small explosion.
No, she wasn’t afraid of him; she just wanted him so much that her last shreds of prudence dictated flight, before she made a total fool of herself by falling madly and hopelessly in love with him.
‘Perhaps you should be,’ he said, and the silence between them became suddenly charged with a menace that sent shock waves through her.
Disbelievingly, she stared at him as he leaned down and caught her wrist, urging her upwards. His mouth came down on hers; she resisted for a second, then sank into his warmth and strength, even as part of her mind fought this insidious entrapment.
The sensations—potent, arousing—were the same, yet she knew something was different. Behind his passion she sensed an icily restrained anger and a determination that made her extremely wary.
When he released her she commanded furiously, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’
He examined her with hooded eyes, flinty and cold. As she watched the anger faded, and he said something in a raw, harsh voice in the local language.
Lexie didn’t have to understand it to know that he was swearing.
Between his teeth he said in English, ‘I will not touch you again until you ask me to.’
‘I— All right,’ she snapped, hoping her uncertainty wasn’t humiliatingly obvious.
He scanned her face, his own devoid of expression. ‘I am not normally so crass,’ he said curtly. ‘You affect me in a way I haven’t had to deal with before. I’m sorry.’
Lexie bit her lip, trying to repress a forlorn hope. Surely he couldn’t mean that he was as lost to emotion as she was? She didn’t dare hope that.
His eyes hardened. ‘Tell me, do you want to leave because we made love?’
After a few tense seconds she decided that the truth was the only way to go. ‘Yes.’
Not because of their loving—never that—but because afterwards the odd sense of alienation, of rejection, had pained and confused her.
Rafiq watched her expression, still shuttered against him, and wished again he’d managed to rein in his hungry desire. Making love had infinitely complicated the situation; he felt smirched by his own behaviour, although it had never occurred to him that she could be a virgin.
He couldn’t let her leave the castle because Gastano still wanted her, and he was dangerous.
After witnessing that carefully stage-managed kiss at the party last night, the self-titled count must know he’d lost his passport to the world of the very rich and privileged. During the past twelve hours he’d have learned that his world was shattering around him, the empire he’d built with such ruthlessness in chaos, and Interpol hot on his heels.
And although he might not yet know that the man who’d taken Lexie from him was responsible for all that, he would very soon. He’d react with all the viciousness of a cornered rat.
Warning her would achieve nothing; she clearly had no knowledge of Gastano’s criminal life, and why should she believe Rafiq?
Unless he told her about Hani…?
Not now, he thought. Everything in him refused to reveal his sister’s humiliation and suicide. But although he hadn’t been able to protect her, he could make sure Lexie was safe.
Choosing his words carefully, he said, ‘I promised a few moments ago not to touch you until you asked me to. I made that promise in anger, but it holds. You will be perfectly safe here.’
Lexie sensed rather than saw the inflexible line of his mouth, and wondered what was going on behind the handsome, arrogant features.
Fighting back a bleak disappointment, she said, ‘I know that. It’s— You were right, everything’s happened so quickly…’
So quickly it didn’t seem possible that the emotions that gripped her could be true. Until she remembered that her sister had taken one look at Prince Marco of Illyria and instantly fallen into lust.
And although that initial fierce attraction had grown into love, just because it had happened for Jacoba didn’t mean it was going to be her fate too.
Rafiq smiled, and the green eyes—so uncompromising a minute