Girl in the Bedouin Tent. Annie West

Mustafa?’

      It didn’t make sense. His host had no reason to wish him dead. Nor could he think of anyone who’d resort to royal assassination. Yet the trickle of blood across his skin was real.

      This was one hell of a way to spice up a distasteful duty visit!

      Curiosity and fury vied for dominance as he surveyed those lush, scarlet lips now parted to drag in air. The impossibly violet kohl-rimmed eyes, huge beneath thick purple eyeshadow.

      ‘Who are you?’ He leaned over her, his face bare inches from hers, but her expression was blank, as if schooled to show no fear no matter the threat.

      Cursing, he rose on one arm. The movement pressed his groin harder against her body and part of his brain registered her satisfying softness, an innate invitation he couldn’t quite ignore despite his scorching anger.

      He forced his mind into action. This was no time to be distracted.

      If she had one knife there might be others. He rolled to one side, careful to keep her thighs pinioned with one of his and her hands imprisoned.

      Her breathing shallowed as he surveyed the expanse of bare skin revealed by her belly dancer’s outfit. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, threatening to pull free of the skimpy bodice. Surely there was no room for a lethal weapon there.

      His gaze dropped, skimming her smooth, pale torso, past the dip to her neat waist accentuated by a decorative chain and the flare of her hips. The old-fashioned coin belt sitting low on her hips might be wide enough to conceal something, but her side-slit skirt was too filmy for a hiding place.

      Amir lowered his palm to her belly, registering the flinch of her velvet soft skin. He paused. In all his years he’d never touched an unwilling woman. His mouth flattened in distaste. This had to be done—it wasn’t sexual, just self-preservation.

      Deftly he slid his hand under her belt.

      Instantly she erupted in convulsing movement. Her hips bucked and writhed, her torso twisted, her legs scrabbled fruitlessly for purchase.

      ‘No! Please, no!’ The words rang hoarsely. Not in any of the local dialects but in a language rarely heard here.

      ‘You’re English?’

      Amir whipped his head round and froze as he saw the expression in those wide violet eyes. Sheer terror.

      It was his stillness that finally penetrated Cassie’s panic. That and the fact he’d slipped his large hand free of her clothes and held it, palm outward, as if to placate her.

      Her heart thudded high in her throat and clammy sweat beaded her brow as she stared up at him. She couldn’t get her breath, though she gulped in huge, racking breaths.

      ‘You’re English?’ he said again in that language, and his black eyebrows drew down in a scowl that accentuated the hard, sculpted lines of his face. He looked fierce and frightening and aggressively male.

      Would it matter if she was English? Frantically her mind scrabbled to work out if her nationality would make a difference. Was one nationality safer than another in this place where travellers were abducted and imprisoned?

      ‘American?’ His head tilted to one side and tiny lines of concentration wrinkled his brow.

      He didn’t look angry now, but the weight of his solid thigh, the firm grasp that bound her wrists, reminded her she was still at his mercy. He could subdue her with ease.

      Her eyes flicked to the scarlet dribble of blood at his throat and she shuddered, fear rising anew. She’d thought to save herself with a pre-emptive attack, knocking him out with the brass pot, but he’d been too quick for her. Too quick, too strong, too dangerous.

      ‘Please.’ It was a hoarse whisper from a throat tight with dread. ‘Don’t do this.’

      Every muscle and tendon in her body tensed as she waited for his response.

      His sensual mouth lifted at one corner in a snarl of displeasure and his eyebrows shot up. ‘You want me to release you? After this?’ He gestured to his wound.

      Cassie let go a quivering breath. His deep voice with its crisp English and just a hint of an exotic accent had broached her defences. And sharpened the nightmare horror of her situation.

       This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t!

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just.’ Her eyelids fluttered as the world began to dip and swirl about her.

      Desperately she clawed back to full consciousness. Fear and fury had kept her strong through the last twenty-four hours. She refused to faint now! Not when she sensed she’d be safe only as long as she kept him talking.

      Cassie snapped her eyes open to find he’d bent closer. She saw the slight shadow darkening his strong jaw, a pale scar to the side of his mouth, the way his nostrils flared as if scenting her. The gleam of eyes so dark and so close they looked black and fathomless.

      ‘Please,’ she choked. ‘Don’t rape me.’

      Instantly he reared back, letting cool air rush between them. His eyes widened and his fingers tightened convulsively around her wrists. She bit her tongue rather than cry out her pain.

      ‘You think …?’ He gestured to her skirts with his free hand and suddenly it was distaste she read in his expression. ‘You really think …?’ He shook his head slowly and said something under his breath in Arabic.

      She flinched at the violence in his tone but refused to look away. She was already at his mercy. To appear weak could be a fatal mistake.

      His mouth snapped shut, his eyes zeroing in on her face. She felt the intensity of his stare like the burn of ice on bare flesh.

      He drew a breath that expanded his chest impressively. Sickly she realised she had no hope if he forced her.

      Memories swirled. The metallic tang of terror filled her mouth again as she recalled being pinioned against a door by a man twice her size and three times her age. She’d been only sixteen, but even now she remembered the feel of his meaty hand thrusting inside her shirt, his other hand bruising her thigh, his weight suffocating as he tried to—

      ‘I would not stoop to such an act. No matter what the provocation.’ The stranger’s voice rang clear with outrage, shattering the past.

      Cassie blinked up at a face carved of stone. His jaw clenched as if she’d offered him the worst imaginable insult and he tilted his head, looking down at her as if he’d never seen her like.

      ‘I prefer my women willing.’

      His headscarf had come off in the tussle. Glossy black hair was cut close to his well-shaped head. His eyes flashed and emotion drew the skin tight over an impressive bone structure for which any of the leading men she’d performed with would give their eye teeth.

      This man would have no trouble finding willing women.

      ‘Then let me go.’

      Lying half-naked beneath him, she couldn’t trust his word no matter how indignant he looked. She was too aware of his big, hard body, all heavy muscle and bone, imprisoning her. Of his callused hand encircling hers with almost casual dominance. Of the intrinsically male scent of his skin in her nostrils.

      ‘When I’m sure you’re not hiding another weapon.’

      Cassie’s eyes bulged. That was what he’d been doing? Looking for concealed weapons? If she’d had something other than that little knife they’d left beside the fruit platter she’d have used it as soon as he walked through the door. When she’d felt his hand thrusting down into her skirt she’d been sure—

      She choked as a bubble of desperate mirth rose from tight lungs. She tried to force it away but the idea was ludicrous. As if there was space in her skimpy clothes to hide anything! Her vision blurred as she gasped for breath over the ragged, sickening laughter she couldn’t stifle.