Heart of the Desert. Carol Marinelli

had kissed her onto the bed, he pulled the straps on her dress and licked down her chest, his hand pushing up the hem of that hateful dress, but not all the way, because her hips rose so high into him he was blocked. It was urgent, urgent and desperate and completely delicious, her body responding as if it had been waiting for ever to join him. She tore at his jacket, his shirt, her mouth in his hair, on his ear, her hands on his back, her stilettos tearing the silk of his trousers as their legs entwined, wishing the heat from their bodies would melt their clothes so they could connect with skin.

      It mattered.

      She could not ignore it—could not forgo her strange principle. As she knelt on the bed and lifted her hem as Ibrahim lowered his head, not knowing whether or not it would matter to him, Georgie said, ‘We can’t …’

      He liked her game.

      ‘We can.’

      He liked her feigned reluctance.

      Liked the sudden shyness as his mouth met her stomach.

      ‘I can’t.’

      ‘You can,’ he breathed as his hands pulled at her panties and brushed off the hands that sought to keep them on.

      ‘Ibrahim, please …’ And he realised then that it wasn’t a game. Or rather that she’d been playing a very dangerous one, because he could not have been closer, could not have been closer. He was still hard and he was back to angry and for a moment there he did not like his own thoughts, but he hauled himself from her, looked down at his torn clothing, could feel the scratches from her nails in his back and shot daggers at her with his eyes.

      ‘I’m sorry …’ Georgie gulped, and wondered how could she explain it suddenly mattered.

      ‘I’m not like that.’

      ‘You pretending to be demure was lost in the hallway.’

      ‘I haven’t—’

      ‘Don’t try to tell me you’re a virgin.’ He gave a nasty smirk. ‘A condom-carrying virgin.’

      ‘I’m not.’ She wasn’t and she certainly wasn’t about to explain to him in this mood about the Heathrow gods. ‘I didn’t mean to lead you on.’

      ‘You meant it,’ he said. ‘You meant every second of it.’ He wasn’t hard any more, he was just pure angry. He’d been told she was trouble and he should have listened. ‘What are you holding out for, Georgie?’ It dawned on him then. ‘Jealous of your big sister, are you? Want a rich husband of your own?’ He mocked her with a black smile. ‘Here’s a tip for the future—men like a little or the lot.’

      She was angry too. Angry at herself and now at him for not letting her explain. And she was embarrassed, which wasn’t a great combination because she bit back with harsh words of her own.

      ‘Oh, so you’d have loved me in the morning?’ She answered her own question. ‘As if.’ He was a bastard, a playboy and she’d been playing with fire from the beginning, she just hadn’t known it at the time.

      But there was a beat, a tiny beat where their eyes met.

      A glimpse of a tomorrow that might have been, which they’d lost now.

      That made him even angrier, ‘I wouldn’t touch you again if you were on your knees, begging. I’ll tell you what you are …’ Ibrahim said, and he added an insult that needed no translation and it hurtled from his mouth as he walked from her room.

      She pulled up her knees as he slammed closed her door and then pulled a shaking hand across her mouth because how could she tell him what had suddenly mattered?

      Georgie wasn’t looking for a husband.

      She already had one.

      CHAPTER THREE

      IT DID not abate.

      Ibrahim Zaraq rode his horse at breakneck speed along the paths, across the fields and back along the paths, his breath white in the crisp morning air, and, despite the space, despite the miles available to him to exercise his passion, today, this morning, and not for the first time lately, Ibrahim felt confined.

      London had been the place that had freed him, the place of escape, and yet as he pulled up his beast, as he patted the lathered neck, Ibrahim, though breathless, wanted to kick him on, wanted to gallop again, to go further, faster, not follow a track and turn around.

      There, in the still, crisp morning, in the green belt of a city, the desert called him—just as his father had told him it would.

      And though Ibrahim resisted, again he felt it.

      This pull, this need for a land that supposedly owned him, and for just a moment he indulged himself.

      ‘You would love it.’ He climbed down and spoke in Arabic to his stallion, a beast who kicked and butted the walls of his luxurious stable, who paced the confines of his enclosure and bit any stranger who ignored his stable-door warning and was ignorant enough to approach. ‘For there,’ he said to the beast, stroking the rippling muscles, hearing the stamp and kick of his hooves, ‘you would finally know and relish exhaustion.’ Only the desert could sate. Again Ibrahim glimpsed it—the endless dunes, the fresh canvas the shifting desert provided each morning. He did not just glimpse it, he felt the sting of sand on his cheeks, the scarf around his mouth, the power of a horse unleashed between his thighs.

      Yet his life was in London.

      A life he had created, business and riches that came with no rules attached, because he had built them and they were his. His mother was here—forbidden to return to Zaraq because decades ago she had broken the rules.

      ‘I’ll take him, Ibrahim.’ A young stablegirl he sometimes bedded made her way over and he handed her the reins. Ibrahim saw the invitation in her eyes, and perhaps that would help, he thought, as she unstrapped the saddle. Ibrahim took the weight of it from her, saw her hands soothe the angry beast, saw the stretch of her thighs as she put on the horse blanket. He waited and wanted to feel something, for it would have been easier, so much easier to soothe the burn of his body and the turmoil in his mind with his favourite solution. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ Hopeful, beautiful, available, she turned to him—and the answer on any other morning would have been yes.

      It wasn’t today.

      Neither had it been the other night.

      After seeing Georgie, he had directed his driver to his date’s home instead of his and had declined her invitation to come in.

      ‘Come to bed, Ibrahim.’ Her mouth and her hands had moved to persuade but Ibrahim had brushed her off and when tears hadn’t worked, she’d got angry. ‘It’s that tart from the nightclub that’s changed things, isn’t it?’

      ‘No,’ Ibrahim had said coolly. ‘It’s entirely you.’

      ‘Ibrahim?’ The stablegirl smiled and he looked down at her breasts, which were pert and pretty. He gauged the length of her hair and then walked away because, though her hair was dark, it was long and thick and her frame too was slender. Ibrahim knew he’d have only been thinking of her.

      Of Georgie.

      He did not want to think of her and his mind turned to the desert instead.

      He picked up pace, his boots ringing across the yard. He would go to his property in the country this weekend, for he knew if he was in London he would end up calling Georgie. He did not like unfinished business, did not like to be told no, and seeing her again had inflamed things, but more trouble with his family was the last thing he needed now. The country was a good option—there he would find space, there he could ride for ever, except as he climbed into his sports car he glanced at the sat-nav and felt as if he were staring at an aerial map. He could see the fields, the houses, the hedges, the trees, the borders …

      And his father had been right, and so too his brothers, who had told him that one day the desert