All he should be feeling was anger and betrayal. He’d been deceived again, trapped—this wasn’t Aziza, was it? But it was intensely disturbing to realise that there was so much more. The desire was only part of it.
‘It was you.’
‘Me! Are you mad, woman? Are you actually claiming that I...?’
Aziza—or Zia—or whatever her name was—had obviously had enough of being down on the floor. She put her hands to the floor and pushed herself upwards, scrambling to her feet as she faced him boldly, her neat little chin set into a firm declaration of defiance. Strangely, she looked even more defenceless standing before him like this when she had clearly tried to draw herself up to her full height.
‘You are the one who asked me—who picked me out as his prospective bride.’
‘Not you...’
He was remembering the moment when he had seen her and her mistress—Jamalia—through the two-way mirror, recalling the hot wave of physical hunger that had swept through him just from touching her, kissing her, on the balcony. The same hunger that had alerted him to the fact that something was not as he had anticipated when he had fed her the sugared grape at the banquet table.
When he had caught the scent of her perfume.
‘I never chose you.’
Aziza winced under the sting of that lashing dismissal. She had been so overjoyed to think that Nabil had chosen her. That he wanted her above all the other candidates. The beautiful women he could have chosen. Even her sister. But he had picked her. The one her father had always believed was second best.
But now Nabil was saying that he hadn’t chosen her—he didn’t even want her! Her mind flashed back to the scene in the crowded, brilliantly lit banqueting hall. The knowing looks of the guests who had watched as Nabil had stood up and grabbed hold of her hand.
She had thought she knew what that meant. She’d believed that very soon she would be a proper wife, sharing her husband’s bed. But now what would happen?
I never chose you.
How would she ever face everyone all over again and let them know that Sheikh Nabil—the man she had thought was to be her husband—had taken one look at her face and rejected her out of hand?
How could she go from being Queen one moment to a nobody—a rejected, spurned nobody—in less than a couple of hours? And how could she ever cope with knowing that Nabil had decided she was not the person he wanted? The thought of confronting her father’s rage at her failure was as nothing when compared with the prospect of having to leave now, when it had seemed that so much—her dreams and fantasies—had been within her grasp.
Her body still thrummed from the sensual tension that had seared through it. Every nerve was stretched so tight she felt it would snap if she moved, and the stinging, burning need that his kiss, his touch, had woken so newly in her refused to subside while he was still so near, so close that she only had to reach out her hand...
It was only when she saw the way Nabil’s head came up, the wary tensing of his long body, that she realised she had done just that, and somehow added fire to the suspicions he was already harbouring against her.
‘You asked for Jamalia’s sister,’ she managed, stumbling over the words.
‘And got her maid instead.’ Could he put any more darkness, any further rejection, into the words? ‘So what is this—some sort of plan to trap me, tie me into marriage with you?’
‘Oh, no, no! Why would I want to trap you?’
Just the horror at the thought that he might actually believe she had wanted to do that propelled her forward jerkily, both hands coming out this time, reaching for him.
She never actually saw him move; never even registered the sudden blink that revealed his reaction, the swift, flash of action that intercepted and reversed their positions so that suddenly, instead of facing him, she had been grasped by the wrist and twisted round against him. Her back was tight up against the hard strength of his chest, her body imprisoned by the iron-hard bands of his arms.
And in his hand was the polished gleam of metal, the narrow shape of a wicked, sharply honed knife held so tight in Nabil’s fist that his knuckles showed white where he gripped it hard.
‘Nabil, no!’
Aziza tried to turn to face him, realising her mistake when his arms tightened round her even more and she could hear the thud of his heartbeat against her ear. It was that rapid and uneven pulse that told its own story, making her realise the truth. She should have thought; should have remembered. Now, too late, the recollection of the way he had started when a door had banged in the banqueting hall came back to haunt her with a new and disturbing significance. The terrible memory of the day that he had survived the assassination attempt flashed behind her eyes.
‘You don’t need that—really you don’t.’
Immediately she made herself react, letting her body go limp against his as she held her own hands out in front of her, fingers splayed so that he could see there was nothing hidden there.
‘I’m sorry—I’m not really Jamalia’s maid—and there is nothing in this that was ever against you.’
At least she prayed not. Her father had seemed content enough with the marriage negotiations. He had never shown any inclination to turn his loyalties to the lingering group of revolutionaries who had threatened rebellion. But did Nabil suspect that he would?
‘I would never harm you—I promise. We were friends once.’
Friends...
The word seemed to have so much more significance than he could ever have imagined, Nabil acknowledged. She had said that she was not Jamalia’s maid and yet she was very definitely the woman he had met that night. If she truly was Aziza, his promised wife, the child who had been his friend now grown up, then he wanted to believe her—he wanted to trust her. But wanting to trust and being able to do so were two totally separate things, and the ability to think straight and read the signs accurately were severely compromised by the position he found himself in.
Her body was soft and lush against his, her waist where his arm was clamped around it impossibly narrow, and the curves of her hips and buttocks crushed up against his pelvis tormented his still aroused and hardened manhood. If she squirmed against him as she had done when he had first grabbed her then he would be lost. But instead it seemed that she had given up on any thought of action, her whole body loosening, almost sagging in his arms.
‘I was friends with an Aziza once,’ he said slowly. ‘A long time ago.’
A lifetime. Everything that he had believed he had in that time had been taken from him and destroyed, shattering into tiny irreplaceable pieces. Had he hoped for something of that life to be returned to him when he had thought of Aziza, only to find that his choice had rebounded right into his face?
‘And we never truly knew each other.’
With a sudden movement he spun her round in his arms so that she was facing him, golden eyes blazing straight into his. But it wasn’t just defiance that he saw there. Instead it was something new, something infinitely disturbing. He had seen just such an expression in the eyes of a puppy when he had once kicked it accidentally on his way out the door. The elaborate make-up that adorned her face, even behind that blasted veil, had started to wear off, leaving her looking paler and strangely vulnerable. And the elaborate coils and braids of her hair had started to come loose in their struggle just moments before. She looked younger, gentler—more like the maid who’d had such a disturbing effect on him ever since that night on the balcony.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he growled, refusing to let himself admit to just what effect that spin of her body had had as it pressed her breasts and hips against