He removed his eyes from the sketch-book and turned his attention to her, his dark gaze drifting over the outfit that was not what most women would have selected for a meeting with a lover, but clearly Tariq was able to see past the dowdy disguise. The thought of his smitten cousin brought a dark scowl of disapproval to his face and it was still in place when their eyes connected.
Molly went to push up the glasses on her nose only to discover they weren’t there. She experienced a moment of total panic, the sort she felt in nightmares.
She didn’t need his approval, she told herself sternly, and she didn’t need a safety blanket either. The glasses had been useful once, but she was no longer a precociously bright but gauche kid plunged into the university environment among people who were older.
Tair had seen the gesture. ‘You have mislaid your spectacles… Can you not see without them?’ It amused him that the teacher was looking at him as though she were a pupil expecting a reprimand from a headmaster.
She gave a shrug. ‘They’ll turn up.’
‘The picture is very good.’ He handed back the sketchbook, which she took and slowly closed.
A gratified smile lifted the corners of her sensual lips, and her eyes looked like polished amber as they shone with pleasure. The permanent groove above his hawklike nose deepened. Her reaction struck him as a wildly over-the-top response to what had been a grudging observation.
As if the same thought had suddenly occurred to her, the smile vanished and she lowered her eyes. ‘Thank you.’
‘I CANNOT be the first person to tell you that you have…talent.’
The harsh emphasis Tair placed on the last word confused Molly. ‘It’s a hobby…it’s just for my own amusement.’
And did it amuse her to steal another woman’s husband? The muscles of his brown throat worked as he regarded her with distaste.
His rigid disapproving stance made her shift uncomfortably, and she dropped her gaze. Seeing her glasses lying on the floor, she bent to pick them up with a grunt of relief. Unfortunately Tair did too, his brown fingertips brushing the skin of her wrist as he reached them just before her.
The brief contact sent a surge of tingling sensation through her body. She stepped back, almost stumbled, then, breathing hard, she straightened up.
Tair watched as she nursed one hand against her chest, his eyes drawn to the visibly throbbing blue-veined pulse spot at the base of her throat.
The air was dense with a sexual tension you could have reached out and grabbed with both hands. It hung in the hot, humid air like a crackling field of electricity.
Tair viewed this unexpected development with as much objectivity as he was able—which wasn’t very much when he was seeing life through a hot hormonal haze.
It hadn’t been slow burn, it had just exploded out of nowhere and it still held him in its grip.
Tair’s jaw clenched as he struggled to reassert control; he was not a man who let his appetites rule him. Of course he had experienced his share of lustful moments but he’d never been drawn to anyone in such an elemental way before.
This personal insight into what this woman could do to a man ought to have made him feel sympathy for his cousin, but it was not empathy he felt when he thought of Tariq following up on the sort of impulse he had just resisted.
Resisted, even though he was free to follow his urges, unlike his cousin.
His hooded gaze slid to her mouth.
‘It’s just for my own amusement,’ she repeated hoarsely.
His own amusement was very much in Tair’s thoughts as his eyes stayed on the soft full outline of her lips. If he followed up on his impulses it would be because he chose to and not because he couldn’t help himself.
He had control.
So why had he been staring at her mouth for the last two minutes as if it were an oasis and he were a man who needed water?
Hands clenched at his sides, he removed his eyes from her lips. If he did kiss her it would be at a time and place of his choosing.
Pushing back strands of loose hair from her brow, Molly extended her hand towards him. ‘Thank you…’
As he looked at her fingertips Tair thought about them trailing over his damp bare skin. A spasm of irritation drew his lean features into a frown. His problem was that there had been too much work in his life recently and not enough sex.
His problem, he acknowledged, was her mouth.
To Molly’s utter dismay, instead of handing her the spectacles Tair held them up to his own eyes.
She watched his dark brows lift towards his hairline and thought how it was typical that the only person who had ever seen past her harmless charade had to be him.
‘Clear glass…?’
He struggled to hide his extreme distaste at his discovery. Presumably the clothes and unmade face were all part of the same illusion. The one that made other women dismiss her as no threat, but every man she came into contact with knew different.
He knew different.
Molly, feeling an irrational level of guilt as though she had been caught out in some shameful crime, shook her head mutely.
She was not about to explain that when arriving at university via an educational hothouse scheme for gifted children, aged sixteen and looking fourteen, she had come up with the inspired idea of looking older by adopting a pair of heavy spectacles. She realised now that they hadn’t made her look older but over the years they had become a safety blanket.
‘A fashion accessory.’
‘I think you should change your fashion guru.’
The suggestion drew a forced laugh from Molly. ‘Fashion isn’t really my thing.’
‘But wearing clothes two sizes too big is?’
He didn’t come right out and say that she looked like a dowdy bag lady, but that was clearly the message in his comment. The voltage of Molly’s smile went up and her muscles ached from the fixed and slightly inane grin her facial muscles had frozen into.
She was comfortable in her own skin, and if this man with his perfect face and better than perfect body couldn’t see past superficial things like make-up and clothes that was his problem. She only had a problem if she started caring what men she met casually thought about her.
It could be she had a problem.
She looked at his fingers holding her glasses. They were rather incredible; long, tapering and the lightest contact with them had sent her nervous system into meltdown. She was sure there was a perfectly logical explanation for what happened—a build-up of static electricity and a freakish set of circumstances that couldn’t be repeated if she tried.
But Molly wasn’t about to put her theory to the test. As far as Prince Tair was concerned she had a strict no-touch policy—her body was still shaken by intermittent aftershocks from his light touch. Anything more intimate and she might well end up hospitalised.
Just as well him getting more intimate with her was about as likely as snow in the desert.
With the fixed smile still painted in place, she reached out to carefully take her glasses from his fingers.
He gave a sardonic smile that Molly didn’t choose to respond to, her cheeks pink as she slid the spectacles onto her nose while expelling a shaky sigh of relief. Of course he knew he was gorgeous. Of course he knew women fainted away when he deigned to throw them a smile, but, God, she didn’t want to be one of them.