She felt the whole impact of his personality focused on her. It was a tangible thing, a potent force. There was a rushing in her ears, like water flooding past, blocking the sound of nearby traffic. The late afternoon sun seemed to dim as she stared back at him, aware of her skin prickling on her neck and her lungs squeezing tight.
She had to be careful with this man. The feelings he evoked were too much. Too potent. Too new. Too tempting.
‘I’ll have you back to your hotel soon.’
She opened her mouth to explain that she wasn’t staying at a hotel and then snapped it shut. Better if he didn’t know she was staying alone in the house Rafiq had organised.
Arik had been a perfect gentleman all afternoon. Yet there was a restlessness about him, an edginess that warned her he wasn’t as easygoing as he seemed. Something simmered behind that relaxed expression. Self-preservation cautioned her against revealing where she was staying.
‘Thanks,’ she said as they approached one of the two hotels on this coastal road. ‘You can drop me here.’
‘I’ll see you to your door.’
Rosalie sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ He stopped the car and regarded her through narrowing eyes, his brows rising.
‘You’re not exactly incognito.’ She remembered the excited pleasure with which he’d been greeted wherever they went. ‘So I’d rather go in alone.’ She wondered if he saw through her subterfuge. It was true as far as it went. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
‘Very well.’ He inclined his head. ‘We will not court gossip.’ Then he got out and fetched her canvas bag from the back while she fumbled with her seatbelt.
His hand was warm and hard as he helped her out. A tremor shot up her arm at his touch, ripping right through any illusion that she was impervious to him.
‘Thank you for the pleasure of your company, Rosalie.’
He lifted her hand to his lips. Her eyelids flickered as he pressed a kiss there. A jolt of something very like lightning speared through her. The swirl of reaction in her abdomen grew to a spiralling twist of aching emptiness.
It lasted an instant, only that. But it was enough to jolt Rosalie back to her senses.
She tugged back her hand as if stung. That empty yearning feeling was too real, too powerful to be safe.
‘Until tomorrow, then.’ His eyes were fathomless, deep as the night and just as impenetrable.
Rosalie turned away. Tomorrow, if she had any sense, she’d take the first flight out from here.
She was late. Arik narrowed his eyes against the slanting rays of dawn light and stared down the beach.
Had he erred yesterday? Should he have pressed his advantage when he’d read the need so clear in her eyes?
No. He’d given his word he’d respect her wishes. She was nervous, fighting to resist what was between them. As if she could push back the inevitable flood-tide of desire.
He wondered at her naïvety. Their attraction had been instantaneous, so urgent and all-consuming that even he, with his experience, couldn’t ignore it. It was a constant fire in the blood, a gnawing hunger in the pit of his belly. He felt wired, restive and alert. Sleep was elusive, replaced by hours imagining her in his bed. Or naked, almost anywhere: in the window seat of his room, on a silk-covered divan or down here on the fine-grained sand.
The only way out was to assuage this need for mutual satisfaction. His lips curved in a taut smile. Prolonged mutual satisfaction.
Rosalie had much to learn and he would enjoy contributing to her education. Anticipation hummed through him, tightening his groin, his thighs, his hands on the reins. He nudged Layla till she gathered herself into a thudding gallop. The thunder of her hooves teamed with the beat of blood in his ears: heavy, urgent, racing.
They reached the point and there was Rosalie, walking from the next beach. Arik reined in, watching her falter to a stop. Her stance was wary, as if she were in two minds whether to scurry back to the safety of her hotel.
Eventually, as he’d known she would, she resumed her stride towards him. He should be pleased. Triumphant even. He had her now, he knew. Or close enough that, with a little effort, he could have what he wanted from her.
Yet the emotion filling him wasn’t triumph. It was fury. At the unprecedented level of his earlier disappointment. At the unadulterated relief that swept him now, making him for a few moments light-headed.
Since when had he been dependent on any woman? Pleasure, companionship, mutual enjoyment—that was what he sought from the women in his life. But this raw, visceral need that threatened all sense of proportion? That drove him with the force of pure compulsion? This wasn’t right.
He watched her approach, her head up to meet his gaze, a gesture at odds with the defensive way she clutched that bag to her. Arik felt a surge of unexpected protectiveness.
But it was overborne by anger that she should unsettle him so. He was aroused to the edge of pain just watching her. And his indecisiveness as he’d debated ringing her hotel had been uncharacteristic. He was too needy.
Lust had never been like this. It shouldn’t be like this. It had always been a pleasure to be savoured. Now for the first time, desire was a blood-deep craving. As if more was at stake than the pleasure of a woman’s body. As if he felt far more than physical need.
Arik clenched his jaw at the absurd notion, angrier still at that flight of fancy. He urged his mount forward.
Rosalie wished she’d stayed away. What did it matter if her painting remained unfinished? Or if she never saw him again? She knew now that with effort she would paint. And as for her reaction to him…better to ignore that.
Yet like a moth to a candle she was drawn against her will along the beach. With every step she’d known this was dangerous, the sort of impetuous act she’d always avoided.
But then, a demon inner voice taunted, where did playing safe get you? She’d been perennially sensible, so cautious with men, and look where that had landed her!
She clasped her bag closer, wondering yet again how big a mistake she was making.
Then she saw him, a study in masculine grace and arrogance as he sat his magnificent Arab mount. Instantly she had her answer. Error or not, she couldn’t have stayed away. The rapid-fire tumult of her pulse, the constriction of her lungs, the swirling heat all told the same story. She had to be here. Owed it to herself to discover what it was about this man that spoke to her innermost being, to the self she’d kept hidden for years now. The self that, at nineteen-and-a-half, had been brutally silenced, locked away by the force of grief and hate and despair.
More than three years had passed and suddenly that other Rosalie Winters, the one who’d secretly yearned for fantasy and adventure, was back, slipping under her guard.
She gritted her teeth and resumed walking. Foolish she might be, but she’d never again be the unthinking innocent she’d been at nineteen. She’d learned her lesson well. If she took any chances they’d be on her terms.
Nevertheless, as Arik’s horse plunged close, its hooves lifting high to a resounding rhythm, she couldn’t repress a thrill of mixed trepidation and excitement.
‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ His deep voice held a note of accusation as it rumbled in her ear.
‘I almost didn’t,’ she replied, annoyed as he circled. Man and beast together were awesomely beautiful—as he knew. He probably stayed up there so she could admire him.
That was the sort of man he was, she reminded herself, ignoring yesterday’s revelations. She squashed the fact that he worked hard despite his wealth.