‘This, of course, is the apartment in which you are now living?’
‘It seemed a good way to reinforce his belief in my greed. I’ve also claimed that I’m short of ready cash because the inheritance from my mother is being kept from me and controlled by you. Although to cover myself I have let it be known that this is not public knowledge.’ Tariq shrugged. ‘After all, we must assume that whoever it is who is helping them will know who I am, and of my family’s wealth, so they have to believe in my grudge-bearing and acquisitive nature.’
‘I sense that you are not entirely happy with the role you have been called upon to play,’ the Ruler remarked sympathetically. ‘But you are one of the few people in whom I have absolute trust, Tariq, and this is a very sensitive matter.’
‘Indeed! So far all the victims we know about have stated that they bought their property via a supposed “official agent”. Unfortunately,’ he added dryly, ‘since this agent dressed in traditional Arab dress, had a beard and wore very large sunglasses, none of them felt able to recognise and identify him. We must assume that he either was or is connected with the Zurani official who is helping the gang. That being the case, if what is happening becomes public knowledge in the international arena it will damage Zuran’s reputation very badly.’
‘That must not be allowed to happen. This man must be found and unmasked,’ said the Ruler sternly, his expression softening as he added, ‘I know that I can trust you to do whatever is necessary.’
Having dismissed his car and driver a safe distance away from the apartment, Tariq paused to breathe in the warm late-night air. It was on nights like this that the desert called to him so strongly that his desire to leave the city behind and satisfy his need to return to it became a hunger in his soul.
He thought with contempt of the corrupt gang of men he was currently involved with. Only last night their leader had promised him the services of one of the skimpily dressed prostitutes who were also on board the yacht, as a further reward for Tariq’s support.
Of course he’d had to pretend to be flattered by the offer, even though in reality he had been utterly revolted by the sleaziness of both the gang and their leader’s offer. He had declined to accept, using the excuse that he was afraid that it might get to the ears of his cousin the Ruler, who would then be even less inclined to allow him control of his inheritance.
Despite the fact that he had been celibate for the last eighteen months—since the termination of a discreet relationship he had shared with an elegant divorced Frenchwoman who, like him, had had no desire to commit herself to marriage—the sight of the skimpily clad young women with their surgically enhanced breasts and vacant eyes had not aroused him at all. How many other members of the gang had enjoyed their favours? Some of them? All of them? And more? Other men as well?
His mouth curled in contemptuous disgust as he recalled how the gang leader had offered slyly, ‘Why don’t I arrange to have one of them sent up to your apartment so that you can enjoy her in private?’
‘Thank you, but no,’ Tariq had responded, feigning regret.
He reached the apartment block, and, reaching for his pass key, inserted it into the lock and waited for the doors to open.
Once inside the apartment Tariq strode through to the bedroom without bothering to switch on the light or glance towards the bed, stripping off before going into the wetroom attached to the en suite bathroom and then standing beneath the fierce lash of the shower.
Gwynneth woke up abruptly. Her face was on fire whilst her body ached with a different kind of heat. Why was this happening to her now, after all these years? Why had physical desire chosen now to voice its protest at her denial of it?
Her father had laughed at her and accused her of being unable to understand sexual desire. But she did understand it. She understood it all too well, she admitted. She understood her own vulnerability to it—which was why she had forced herself to learn to control it, to repress and restrain it, out of fear that it would lead her to become like him. But now, suddenly, she couldn’t control it. It pulsed hotly and urgently within her body, clamouring for release, shocking and confusing her.
Abruptly she sat up in the bed—at the exact moment that Tariq opened the door from the en suite bathroom.
Gwynneth stared in mute disbelief at the man standing in the doorway, framed by the light from the bathroom behind him. Like her, he was completely naked. Well, no, he was not actually like her at all, she thought feverishly. His skin was warmly tanned where hers was pale, his shoulders broad, his chest softly furred with silky dark hair, his belly flat. He was, she acknowledged, the most sexily physically perfect man she could ever have imagined. Tall, dark and handsome. Plus he had that edgy, dangerous male air that produced a female frisson of erotic fear within her—the kind of fear that was not fear at all, but rather an excitement that was morally shocking. One brief glance. That was all she needed to tell her that everything about him pushed all the right buttons for her. How on earth had she conjured him up? She blinked determinedly. This couldn’t really be happening. He was an illusion, a figment of her imagination.
Only he was still there, and no amount of blinking seemed to be banishing him. Which meant…Which meant that he had to be real! Hurriedly Gwynneth looked away from him, her face starting to burn.
It was that over-acted fake look of confusion with which she turned her head and then let it droop on the pale stem of her neck that was responsible for the savage increase in his anger, Tariq decided as he demanded bitingly, ‘How did you get in here?’
As if he needed to ask. He knew perfectly well what she was and who was responsible for her presence here in his apartment—and in his bed.
Striding towards her, he said curtly, ‘No, don’t bother answering me. I already know the answer—just as I know exactly what you are!’ He gave her a look of icy disdain. No way was she staying here. He wanted her out of the apartment—and speedily, even if that meant he had to dress her himself.
Her naked man wasn’t an illusion at all, or a figment of her imagination. He was very much real, and he had almost reached the bed, Gwynneth realised in panic, her trapped gaze skittering away from his chest.
She cried out in protest as his fingers tightened round her upper arm, instinctively trying to pull away from him as he virtually hauled her off the bed.
At least these breasts were real, Tariq couldn’t help thinking, as he monitored the gentle bounce produced by her agitated movements and remembered the unmoving plastic look of the surgically enhanced breasts of the girls he had seen on the yacht and thought so repulsive. A woman’s breasts surely should be soft and malleable, just big enough to fill a man’s cupped hand, as this woman’s breasts would surely do. He could almost imagine how they would feel, her skin warm, her nipples tightening against his touch, her breasts swelling with arousal just as his own body—
The shock of what he was experiencing exploded into savage disbelief. He couldn’t possibly be aroused by her.
‘What are you doing? Let go of me!’ She couldn’t just give in to him, Gwynneth told herself wildly as she pushed frantically against his chest with her free hand.
‘Where are your clothes?’
Her clothes? His question bemused her, making her frown slightly.
Tariq could feel the silky length of her hair brushing his chest as she dipped her head and tried to raise her arms to conceal her naked breasts. Her skin looked milky pale against his own, the movement of her arms bringing the fingers he had wrapped around her arm into contact with the soft flesh of her breast. Her eyes were a deep jade, her lips the soft pink of the inside of a shell dredged up from the depths of the gulf.