With a wary eye in her direction he stripped and bathed for the second time that day. She might be cold but he was much too hot and the dust clogging the air and falling on every surface made him feel unclean. Freshened up, he unrolled his bedding by the fire and with a suppressed groan stalked down to check on his guest again. He touched her hand and it felt like ice and he swore under his breath. Taking a deep breath, he bent down and lifted her, praying that she wouldn’t wake and assume that he was making some kind of sexual approach when his sole concern was that if she got any colder she might develop pneumonia or some such thing. She weighed very little, which he thought was a sign of fragility and unhealthiness. No wonder she was feeling the cold so badly. Keeping her wrapped in the cloak, he lay down with her and almost groaned again. Once she recovered her body heat, she would make him too warm.
Molly stirred, aware of the hard ground below her hip and the furnace-like heat at her back that made her feel deliciously cosy. She curled back into that reassuring warmth with a drowsy sigh.
‘Be still. It is not yet dawn,’ a familiar voice intoned, far too close for comfort.
‘Azrael?’ she squeaked in consternation.
‘Who else?’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ Molly snapped defensively. ‘I went to sleep alone.’
‘You were shivering with cold. I had to do something.’
Stiff as a block of wood, Molly rolled her eyes in the dimness and shifted position.
‘Stop moving about. You’ll keep me awake,’ Azrael complained, already aching from the effects of a warm, curvy woman moving against his groin.
Well, at least she didn’t need to worry that he was about to make a pass at her, Molly thought sourly. He was more concerned with getting back to sleep, but her eyes widened as he shifted and she recognised the hard thrust of his arousal against her bottom.
‘Sorry, I’m not used to sleeping with anyone,’ she mumbled, hot-faced at what even she knew to be a natural morning condition for a man.
Azrael thought about that. ‘How is that possible?’ he queried in audible surprise.
And that fast Molly wanted to slap him again.
‘And you suggested that I might be prejudiced?’ Molly scoffed helplessly. ‘Forget about all those well-worn clichés you’ve heard about Western women. Like many others, I don’t sleep around.’
‘You don’t have to sleep around to be accustomed to sharing a bed,’ Azrael countered.
‘Don’t know what you mean by that,’ Molly framed drowsily lacking in comprehension because she was deciding that the heat he provided definitely overruled his unfortunate personality. ‘But I’m still a virgin.’
And with that simple statement, she stunned Azrael into silence. Was it possible? He lifted his tousled dark head to look down at her and a faint sleepy snore escaped her, proving that if she had said it for effect she wasn’t staying awake to see if it had worked. He blinked, long black lashes fanning back down as he settled back again. He was not prejudiced, he reasoned fiercely. But it was possible that the casually sexual women who had entertained him in the past had somewhat skewed his expectations, he conceded thoughtfully. A virgin. And Tahir had kidnapped her! It was little wonder that she had been so shattered by her ordeal. Azrael removed the hand he had resting on her hip and backed off from direct contact. His aroused body screamed a protest but he studiously ignored it, his handsome mouth set in a rigid line. Once again, after all, he had been guilty of an assumption that had been an insult.
* * *
Molly was roughly shaken awake and urged to tidy up. She scrambled up, eyes alighting on Azrael, who was pacing and muttering.
‘What on earth?’ she began in bewilderment, her brow pleating as she heard the racket of helicopter rotor blades and raised voices.
Azrael held his fingers to his mouth in the universal silencing gesture. ‘There are soldiers outside the cave,’ he told her at low pitch. ‘We are being rescued.’
‘That’s wonderful...why are you being so—?’
Teeth visibly gritting, Azrael strode towards her. ‘Because the Djalian council declared an emergency and organised a totally unnecessary search for me, which in turn created a nationwide panic. Now there are journalists waiting outside and far too much interest in our plight has been stirred up,’ he ground out in exasperation.
‘OK...’ Molly dragged out the acknowledgement reflectively and quite unthinkingly reached up to twitch his wildly tousled black hair back into some sort of order, belatedly recognising where the greyish film that rose in the air came from. ‘You’re covered in dust—’
Azrael caught her fluttering fingers in his. ‘You will not speak when we go outside. I will handle everything...’
‘Relax,’ Molly urged him gently, believing that she understood the source of his apprehension. ‘I have no intention of saying anything about Tahir. His name won’t cross my lips—’
‘Nothing must cross your lips,’ Azrael told her tautly, wondering if she was always so naïve while cursing his brother and the predicament he had put them both in.
It did not seem to occur to her that if they could not tell the truth about why she was in Djalia, they would both be plunged into a maelstrom of demeaning conjecture. Azrael had never been publicly associated with any woman and he and Molly had spent the night alone in a cave. He could already hear Molly dismissing that reality as trivial and marvelling that anyone could possibly be interested in such a fact. Azrael, however, was less naïve. He knew his people would assume that Molly had been staying at the fortress with him because she was his secret lover, and nobody would be that shocked that he had a lover because he was a single man.
But, even so, it would still be unthinkable for him to stand back in silence while Molly’s reputation was tarnished for ever by speculation that she was his mistress. Had Molly not, through no fault of her own, already suffered enough? Tahir had brought her to Djalia without her permission and Azrael had refused to let her go home. That was the only reason she had fled into the desert where she had almost died. Azrael lifted his arrogant dark head high, secure in the conviction that he was a king who did know right from wrong and that he did take responsibility for his mistakes. It was his duty to protect Molly from the consequences of Tahir’s insanity and his own misjudgement.
And there was only one way to achieve that feat. For the first time in his life he would tell a lie to his people, he reflected grimly, but it would be a relatively harmless lie that would pull a mantle of respectability over their predicament. And by the mere voicing of that single lie, all the sleazy speculation and undertones would miraculously die a natural death. Molly would then go home. The episode would be forgotten and her good name would remain unblemished because he would announce that they were married. A few months down the road there would be a discreet mention in the press that he had obtained a divorce.
Impervious to Azrael’s brooding silence, Molly splashed her face in the pool and dried it again on the soggy towel before digging her feet into her shoes. Freshened up, she hurried back to Azrael. He reached for her hand and she shot him a startled look.
‘All you do is smile and in minutes we will be leaving,’ he assured her bracingly.
‘And I’ll be going home?’ she pressed.
‘Within