She quickly shook off her rapt expression, looking away and silently blaming her fascination with the carnal curve of this man’s mouth on the situation... Everything that had happened felt more akin to an out-of-body experience than reality.
‘I’d prefer not to stop,’ she said.
‘Is that a fact?’
His tone made her flush. ‘I just meant...the thing is... I wasn’t alone when they—’ She stopped as, without warning, a wave of revulsion tightened like a fist in her stomach, an echo of the fear she had felt when she had been thrown in the truck. It took her a couple of swallows to regain enough composure to finish huskily, ‘When they took me.’
He watched her thoughtfully as she fought for control.
‘They, the rest of the group I was travelling with, are stranded—we have to...’ She stopped, frustrated because he didn’t seem to grasp the urgency.
‘They are three grown men.’
Relief rushed through her; she’d asked her captors what had happened to the men left behind but the only response she’d had she hadn’t been able to understand. ‘You saw them?’ she said eagerly.
He tipped his head in acknowledgement.
‘They’re not hurt? Did they get the car going?’
‘They have shelter; they can survive a night in the desert.’
‘You haven’t reported their whereabouts to anyone?’
‘Following you seemed a priority at the time.’
She bit her lip. ‘And obviously I’m very grateful. I’m just worried about my friends.’
‘One special friend perhaps?’
The insinuation made her flush. ‘They are work colleagues. I’m a model. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to go and check, just to be sure.’
‘Be my guest.’
* * *
He took a step back and spread an arm in a sweeping gesture towards the miles upon miles of undulating ochre sand. The first fingers of the rising sun had drawn a line of deep red along the horizon and he knew she was seeing a vast, terrifying emptiness, but Zain also knew that it teemed with life and all around them the nocturnal creatures that inhabited the vastness were hiding away from the oncoming day and the heat it brought.
‘Which way do you suggest we go?’
She took refuge from frustration in a childish retort. ‘So what you’re telling me is to shut up and do as I’m told because you know best.’
Head tilted, he considered her comment. ‘In the desert, I definitely know best,’ he retorted calmly. ‘You coming down?’
‘Where are we?’
Not civilisation; the pale grey light of dawn revealed that much. There was something that looked like grass under their feet and a few scrubby trees to their left which blocked the view beyond. Behind them lay the seemingly endless miles of bare, bleak desert blushed pink by the dawn. She shivered again.
* * *
He had never seen skin so smooth, features so crystal-clear... He brought his list of her attributes to an abrupt halt. Her beauty had made her a victim today, but it was inevitable that there had been many occasions when it had played to her advantage, when men had made fools of themselves over her.
Zain dragged his eyes, which were inclined to linger on the long length of her slim, shapely legs, upwards. The twist of his lips held self-mockery as he observed, ‘It’s a bit late in the day for caution, don’t you think?’ His heart might be in cold storage but it seemed his libido was still active and functioning.
Maybe that was the way forward?
Not here, not now and definitely not with a woman who probably didn’t even realise how vulnerable she was. But empty sex, while not exactly an original way to move on, was a tried and tested method and appealed to him a hell of a lot more than drowning in self-pity or becoming celibate.
Sex was healthy if you kept it free of emotions. And he had learnt to control his years ago...mostly... Unbidden, the moment he had got his first glimpse of the kidnapped woman flashed into his mind.
When he set out to find her he’d had no mental image in his head of the woman he was seeking—she hadn’t actually been a person for him. Regardless, nothing he could imagine would have come close to the reality.
He hadn’t needed the cacophony of competing music blaring from the trucks to cover his entrance into the ramshackle encampment. All attention had been fixed on her. In a heartbeat the electric air of anticipation in the place had been explained. It had taken Zain a moment to absorb every detail of her lithe, lush body, the impossibly long legs, the sinuous curves, the pale skin and tangled skein of flaming auburn hair. There was nothing plastic or air-brushed about her—just a warm, luscious, desirable woman.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine her on a billboard selling anything and maybe causing a few accidents. She was the sort of woman to make a man forget about his troubles. Not that he was that man but, even so, the last few miles with her soft body pressed against his had made for an interesting journey—just him, the sleeping girl and his testosterone. There was a simplicity to it that, after a day of his calculating his every expression and verbal intonation, had been a strange sort of relief.
* * *
It took a couple of seconds for Abby’s exhausted, stress-racked brain to pick its way through the man’s critical comment.
‘You think it was my fault I got kidnapped? I asked for it maybe...? You know, one of the things I despise most is victim-blaming...not that I am—a victim, I mean—but...oh, hell!’ She threw up her hands, immediately losing her balance and a couple of wild, flailing moments later falling straight into his open arms.
The impact of hitting a chest that was as hard as steel expelled a soft whoosh of air from her lungs as the arm banding her ribs loosened enough to let her slide slowly all the way to the floor. It was obvious before she made land fall that the rest of him was equally hard—the man was built of solid muscle—and falling had felt less alarming than the head-spinning, stomach-fluttering sensation that made her world spin. The sensation was so strong it was a breathless moment before she managed to get her erratic breathing under control enough to protest.
‘Let me g...go!’
He did, with a care that bordered, unexpectedly, on tenderness. ‘I’m not the one doing the holding,’ he pointed out, angling a quizzical look at her fingers still clutching the sleeves of his robe.
Before she could react to the taunting reminder, the blades of his dark brows drew into an interrogative straight line above his spectacular, dazzling blue eyes. ‘What’s that?’
She lifted a hand to the puffy, swollen area on her arm where his accusatory glance rested. ‘A bite, I suppose.’
He laid one hand on her forehead, caught her wrist with the other and extended her arm, bending in closer to inspect the area.
‘Do you mind? That hurts!’ she protested, turning her head away and tugging on her arm; after what had happened it seemed bizarre that he had fixated on this minor problem.
‘So you dress like you’re off to play a game of beach volleyball, and for good measure don’t use mosquito repellent. Do you know how dangerous this desert is?’
Fighting the urge to pull at the hem of her shorts to cover herself from his contemptuous gaze, she lifted her chin a defiant notch and cut across him.
‘It was a photo shoot. I don’t choose what I wear, and I did use repellent.’ It had been in the sunscreen that she had virtually bathed in. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer