Raking long brown fingers through his black hair, Zahir sat up in the tangled sheets, the white linen providing a striking foil for his golden skin. He tensed and swore and, assuming his reaction was the result of her sudden exit from the intimacy of the bed, she flicked him a bitter glance. Yes, he was still unquestionably gorgeous, but she hated him, totally hated him, wanted to be gone now as fast as possible, escaping the scene of the crime. No doubt he thought he had used her but it was the other way round and she would have liked the freedom to tell him that, but was still not prepared to spill her deepest secrets to him.
‘I want you to stay until tomorrow,’ Zahir admitted in a low-pitched tone evocative of anticipation.
Her blue eyes flashed. ‘No. I’m done here. I want to go home right now.’
Zahir, gloriously unaccustomed to being in receipt of a negative female response since his divorce, stared back at her with faint but perceptible hauteur while he wondered what had gone wrong. ‘I don’t do one-nighters.’
Her lovely face without expression, Saffy dealt him an impatient glance, eyes as unemotional as stones. ‘I do and, as I said, I’m done.’
Determined not to meet his gaze, Saffy focused on the neat pile of freshly laundered clothes sitting on a chair and wondered when they had arrived, where they had contrived to get washed and ironed and when they had been returned, for all of those inconsequential thoughts were safer than thinking about the insane passion she had just shared with Zahir. She scooped her clothes up and headed at a brisk pace for the bathroom.
Zahir leapt out of bed and reached the door a step ahead of her, one brown hand bracing on the door to keep it shut. ‘There’s something I should tell you first.’
Refusing to look directly at him, Saffy grimaced. ‘What?’ she asked impatiently.
‘The condom I used broke…I suspect I was too passionate. I assume that you’re on the contraceptive pill and that there’s no risk of conception?’ he pressed with the evident belief that that was the natural order for a woman like her.
For a split second her eyes narrowed and she paled as she assimilated that shocking information, suddenly grasping what had most probably provoked his curse mere minutes earlier, and although a chill of dismay gripped her she nodded immediate agreement. ‘Of course,’ she lied, wanting him to believe that she was already taking that precaution against pregnancy because she slept with other men, for that belief best conserved her pride. And she also knew how much that belief would annoy him…for he was possessive to his backbone. At least, he had been when she knew him, she qualified grimly, but who could say what drove him now? Five years’ separation, a lot of other women and possession of a throne had changed him: of course, they had. It would be very naïve of her to think otherwise.
‘I’ll organise transport,’ Zahir breathed grittily. ‘And see that the film shot of the commercial is also delivered to you before you depart.’
‘Is that my reward?’ Saffy enquired drily, concealing her relief that he was willing to hand over the film, well aware that the film crew and her clients would be going mad over its confiscation.
His handsome features clenched. ‘If you choose to see it that way—’
‘Oh, I do,’ Saffy asserted, watching gold glimmer like a flame in his dark as midnight eyes and loving the burn of it, knowing she had annoyed him as he threw open the door for her to leave the bedroom section of the tent. ‘And while I remember it, I would advise you to look more closely into the disappearance of that five million pounds you mentioned—because I’m telling you now, I didn’t receive a penny of it!’
Zahir inclined his arrogant dark head in grudging acknowledgement. ‘I will have the matter investigated,’ he conceded, coldly formal in tone.
Was he offended that she hadn’t appeared to want a repeat of their intimacy? Saffy stepped into the shower and washed her skin clean of the scent of him. She felt sore, every movement of her lower limbs reminding her of his passionate possession. It was done. She was no longer a virgin. She had surmounted her fears. She was finally a normal young woman and now in a condition to consider a relationship as a potential part of her future. That was good, she told herself firmly. She forced her stiff facial muscles into a determined smile and had just wrapped a towel round her dripping body when a knock sounded on the door and heralded Zahir’s reappearance, his lean bronzed body still clad only in boxer shorts.
‘Yes?’ Saffy prompted tightly, not having wanted to see him again because seeing him hurt, made her think of the other women he had been with and, even though it wasn’t fair or even rational when she had been unable to consummate their marriage while they were together and they were now divorced, she hated him for having found pleasure and satisfaction when she could not.
‘I must have hurt you…there’s spots of blood on the sheet,’ Zahir informed her grimly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Hot colour flew into her cheeks like a banner of scarlet. It had not occurred to her that there might be any detectable physical proof of her innocence and she was mortified by his discovery. ‘You didn’t hurt me…er, it’s been a while for me, so perhaps that explains it,’ she muttered awkwardly through clenched teeth of discomfiture.
‘Why has it been a while for you?’ Zahir demanded bluntly. ‘You live with a man.’
Somehow he contrived to voice that statement in a manner and tone that implied she regularly sold her body on street corners. ‘That’s my business,’ Saffy responded flatly, her eyes veiled.
‘You should see a doctor,’ Zahir informed her curtly. ‘I can contact someone—’
‘No, thanks.’ Her cup of humiliation now truly running over and threatening to drown her, Saffy moved towards him and opened the door for his exit. ‘Excuse me, I’d like to get dressed.’
‘Sapphire…’ Frustration stamped on his lean dark features, Zahir glowered down at her, smouldering golden eyes alight. ‘Why are you behaving like this? Is this a habit of yours? Do you often indulge in casual sex?’
She refused to look at him and her lush mouth compressed so hard that her lips turned bloodless. ‘That would be kissing and telling, which I definitely don’t do.’
SAFFY RESTED BACK in her cream leather reclining seat in Zahir’s incredibly opulent private jet, but beneath the skin her every muscle was tense and she could not relax.
Even so, Zahir had certainly ensured that she was travelling back to London in style. She frowned at the acknowledgement because she would have preferred to consign every image and conversation of the past twenty-four hours to a mental dustbin sealed with a good strong lid. She had slept with her ex, no big deal, she told herself with rigorous resolve. It was only a major event for her because having sex had been something she had, until relatively recently, been afraid she couldn’t ever do. She had used him. That was how she had to look on what had happened. If he knew that his temper would have gone nuclear because Zahir expected everything on his own terms. In that spirit he had married her and in the same spirit he had decided to divorce her again. Nothing had ever been equitably discussed: he had been happy to make his mind up for both of them.
Five years ago, they had landed in Maraban as a newly married couple and that too had been very much on his terms, with her not having the first clue about the dysfunctional royal family she had joined. His father, King Fareed, had been livid that his younger son had married a foreigner and had initially refused to even meet her. She had met Zahir’s older brother, Omar, and his wife, Azel. Omar had died in a car crash a few months after Saffy arrived.