Heart of the Desert. Carol Marinelli

she told me when I rang this afternoon.’ It had been a hell of a phone call but he had not backed down from it, had sat and listened and listened some more.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      He wanted her to say she understood, so he could mock her.

      He wanted her to say she knew how he felt, so he could scathingly refute it.

      He did not want a hand that was surprisingly tender to reach out and brush his cheek. But on contact Ibrahim wanted to hold her hand and capture it, to rest his face in it, to accept the simple gesture.

      And he could never know, only her therapist could know, how momentous that was, that her hand had, for the first time with a man, been instinctive. She felt the breeze carry the warm heat of the desert and it seemed to circle them and all she wanted to do was stay.

      ‘You should go,’ Ibrahim said, because Karim had warned him about this woman, warned him sternly to remember Zaraq’s ways while he was here.

      And she did that. She turned and left him staring out at the desert, and as she walked she was reeling, her fingers burning from the brief touch, her mind whirring at to the contact she had initiated.

      ‘I thought you said they were stuffy.’ Abby interrupted Georgie’s memories, ones she had tried to quash. ‘He doesn’t look anything like I imagined.’

      ‘It’s different there,’ Georgie said. ‘There are different ways, different rules …’ She didn’t want champagne, she didn’t want to dance with the man who was offering, but it was Abby’s night and, yes, it was rather more fun being inside than in the queue outside. Not for a second did Georgie let on to her friend that her mind was elsewhere, but even Abby seemed more interested in Ibrahim than in the club itself, because in the early hours of the morning the conversation turned back to him again.

      ‘You’re going over there next week,’ Abby reminded Georgie, and gave her a little nudge. ‘Will he be there?’

      Georgie shook her head. ‘He goes as little as possible—he went for the wedding and again when Azizah was born, and he’s just been recently. He’ll be back in a few weeks when the future king is born, that’s more than enough for him. I’ll be long gone by then so I won’t be seeing him for ages.’ She took a gulp of champagne. ‘Let’s dance.’

      And they did.

      They danced, partied and Georgie was a good friend and stayed till 4 a.m., laughed and had fun.

      Even though she’d rather be home.

      Even though she’d rather be alone.

      To think of his kiss.

      To think of him.

      It had never dawned on her that he too might be sorry.

      CHAPTER TWO

      SHE did leave the balcony, as he had told her to.

      Georgie had left him staring out at the desert.

      And he shouldn’t have turned and neither should she.

      He shouldn’t have turned, for his mind was angry, damaged by the desert, because when he turned, when he saw her looking back over her shoulder, he saw a familiar escape.

      And he should not walk to her, but instead go up to his suite, pick up the phone and summon safe pleasure—for there were women chosen to please a prince or king. They, his father had long ago warned, were his only option when here in Zaraq.

      And they were beautiful women and had more than sufficed, he reminded himself, except there was grit in his eyes from the desert wind and there was darkness in his soul tonight. He could still feel the cool trace of her fingers on his cheek and he had never cared for rules and he chose not to now.

      He walked to her.

      She waited.

      She had every opportunity to leave and yet she did not. Her room was behind her, but she chose not flee. She faced the terror and the beauty of the man who was striding to her and fought not to run to him. There was no logic. Only madness could explain it, a charge in the air, a line that connected, an inevitability she desired, because as he pulled her into him, as he lowered his head, she was waiting and willing, and wanted that surly, delicious mouth on hers.

      And now it was.

      A mouth that tasted not of smoke or whisky but the clean taste of man.

      Until now she’d never enjoyed kissing just as she’d never really enjoyed sex. But held in the arms and caressed by the lips of a master, Georgie changed her mind. His mouth pressed into hers, his jaw harsh against her skin, but there was moist relief in the centre and his tongue was cool against hers and made her burn. His hands were as skilled as his lips, because her hair was freed from the braid, and she knew only by the weight of it tumbling. He caressed her long blonde hair as if he was confirming it was how he had pictured it. He smelt as he had on the dance floor, as if he had stepped out of the shower and splashed on cologne, and she wanted to kiss him for ever.

      Her fingers felt the hair she had admired as his hands now roamed her waist and just when she thought nothing could be better, he pulled her hips into his, so purposefully, so specifically that for a second she thought she would topple, except he was holding her and the wall was behind her and her shoulders met it as he pulled her in.

      She felt it then.

      As his mouth savaged hers, as his erection pressed in, she felt all the promise in that lithe, toned body, glimpsed the delicious place to which they were leading. Always she had shied from that path, but she felt tonight as if she wanted to run down it. They could have been in Peru or at a bus stop, they could have been anywhere, and it didn’t matter because she was absolutely lost in the moment he made.

      It was Ibrahim who had control, because he stopped then, pulled that noble head back just a fraction and looked as no man, no person, no soul had ever looked. He looked so deeply into her eyes that she wanted to climb into him, to dive into the beauty they mirrored.

      ‘Come …’ He had her hot hand in his and he would take her to his bed, right now. He would lead her, and soon he would have her, but Georgie was greedy, she was hungry and she could not wait, could not climb a single stair if it kept her from the moment that was waiting to be made. She was out of control and for the first time she liked it, because somehow with him it felt safe.

      ‘Here.’ Her room was here behind her, her bed was here, and she wanted them both safe and unsafe behind closed doors, but Ibrahim was a prince and his seed so precious, the orders so ingrained, that he hesitated.

      ‘We need …’ His own room would be better. There were discreet drawers, regularly replenished for the women sent to entertain the young prince, but in the guest rooms there would be nothing,

      And, yes, they did need. Her scrambled brain, her rushing thoughts were grateful for his care yet she raced to a speedier solution and her voice leapt in delight as she recalled.

      ‘I’ve got some.’ She thanked the gods watching over Heathrow Airport who’d taken the two pounds she’d put into a machine and delivered not the mouthwash she had selected but a little parcel she hadn’t wanted, but she was very grateful for it now.

      And worlds collided for Ibrahim.

      That she came prepared was perhaps to be admired. In London he would not give it a thought, but here …

      He did not belong here, he reminded himself.

      The rules did not apply.

      So why the pause?

      Why did it matter?

      It did not, he told himself as they moved into her suite, and then when he kissed her again, he didn’t have to tell himself any more because it simply did not … matter.

      It did.

      For Georgie something else mattered.

      She closed her eyes to his