Master of the Desert. Susan Stephens

he was caressing her intimately. There was just one thing wrong. She could be as bold and determined as she liked, but she was way out of her depth here, and he frightened her. She was a flirt, a tease, and was used to getting her own way, but she had never met a man so hard—so hard on her. She wasn’t used to indifference. She was spoiled—she was the first to admit it—spoiled, both by a brother who adored her and by the attention of half the world’s men. If anything, there were times when she wished herself invisible. This was not one of those times.

      But why should the man be interested in her? He was out of her league—older, tougher, better looking and more experienced in every way. She had left her comfortable cocoon back in Rome to learn about life, but never had she anticipated learning quite so much quite so fast. She didn’t even know if this man was more trustworthy than the pirates, and only had the fact that he had bathed her wounds to go on. Would he have done that if he had intended to harm her?

      However caring that might make him seem, she refused to be reassured, or to relax her guard. There was something dangerous about him. At least when the pirates had attacked she’d had the chance to jump overboard, but she suspected this man had lightning reflexes and slept with one eye open. Right now he was talking on the radio in a husky tongue she guessed must be Sinnebalese. She had studied the language before setting out on her journey, and could pick up a word or two, but frustratingly not enough. She could learn more from his manner, Antonia decided, which was brisk, to the point and carried an air of authority. He was someone important—someone people listened to—but who?

      He made no allowances for the fact that she was young and vulnerable, and she couldn’t decide if she liked that or not. Her brother smothered her, believing she required his constant supervision, whereas this man was more like a warrior from one of her fantasies, and had no time to waste on indulging her. Tall, dark and formidably built, in her dreams she would think of him as a dark master of the night, intense and ruthless, the ultimate prize—in reality, he made her wish she had never left home.

      She continued to watch him furtively through a curtain of hair. She’d had no alternative but to board his yacht. She had swum to the point of exhaustion, and when she’d seen his boat looming out of the mist she hadn’t thought twice about seizing her chance.

      As soon as he finished the call, she quickly drew up her feet and locked her arms around her knees, burying her head to avoid his penetrating stare. But he was ignoring her again, she realised, peeping at him.

      She studied him some more as he moved about the cabin. He was spectacularly good-looking, with deeply bronzed skin and wild, black hair that caught on his stubble. The firm, expressive mouth, the earring, the look in his eyes, his menacing form all contributed to the air of danger surrounding him. He might look like her ideal man, but this was not one of her fantasies, and she was so far out of her comfort zone she was having to make up the rules as she went along. But there was no question he could melt hearts from Hollywood to Hindustan, and would certainly make a great Hollywood pirate, with those sweeping, ebony brows and that aquiline nose.

      Then she remembered that real pirates were scrawny, smelly, ugly and mean.

      As she whimpered at the memory of them, he whirled around. ‘What’s wrong with you now?’

      ‘Nothing,’ she protested. She’d get no sympathy here.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ‘YOU must never put yourself in such a vulnerable position again,’ he told the girl sternly.

      She looked at him in mute surprise, but he cut her no slack. If he eased up she’d think taking chances in the wilderness was acceptable, whereas he knew that if the visibility had been better, and helicopter gun-ships from his air force had been flying over the yacht when she boarded, his snipers might have shot her.

      ‘My boat was attacked by pirates,’ she protested. ‘I jumped overboard and swam for my life. What else was I supposed to do?’

      He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had challenged him. In a world of bowed heads and whispering obedience, it was almost a refreshing change. But the girl’s safety came first, and for the pirates to be captured he had to warn her off ever doing anything similar again, and find out everything she could tell him. ‘Save the attitude,’ he barked, ‘And stick to the facts.’

      She blinked and rallied determinedly, and as her story unfolded his admiration for her grew. It also made him doubly determined that she must learn from the experience. ‘You seem to have confused some romantic notion with reality,’ he observed acidly when she paused for breath. ‘This part of the Gulf is no holiday resort, and you’re lucky these are only scratches.’

      It had been a relief to find that none of her injuries was serious and was what he might have expected after hearing she’d jumped overboard. ‘This will sting,’ he warned, loosening the top on a bottle of iodine. To her credit, she barely flinched as he painted it on. The only sign that it hurt her was a sharp intake of breath. She had beautiful legs, coltish and long, and her skin was lightly tanned, as if she had only recently landed in the Gulf. ‘What brought you to these shores—a gap year?’

      ‘Sort of.’

      She winced—from fear of discovery that she was doing something she shouldn’t, he guessed—but before he could question her she hit him with, ‘What brought you here?’

      No one questioned him. He had to forcefully remind himself that here on this desert island they were anonymous strangers and she couldn’t know who he was. He shrugged. ‘The storm.’

      That was the simple answer. Sailing grounded him; it reminded him he was not only a king but a man, and that the man owed it to his country and his people to go hunting for his humanity from time to time. Whether he would ever be successful in that quest, only history would judge. ‘And where did you say you were heading?’ he prompted.

      ‘I didn’t say, but I’m heading for Sinnebar,’ she admitted grudgingly when he held her stare.

      She was hiding something, he concluded when her gaze flickered away.

      ‘Do we have to talk now?’ she muttered, playing the hard-done-by card.

      ‘If you want the pirates to escape…’

      ‘No, of course I don’t,’ she declared, staring him full in the face.

      ‘Good. So tell me where the attack took place. Did you get a fix—coordinates?’ he pressed when she didn’t answer right away.

      ‘I know what you mean,’ she flared, but for the first time he thought she seemed disappointed in herself because she couldn’t give him the detail he required.

      He gathered from what she went on to tell him that the pirates had taken advantage of the poor visibility to target an unsophisticated boat that lacked the latest radar equipment and alarm systems. ‘So you weren’t sailing your own boat when the pirates attacked?’ he guessed.

      ‘No.’

      Burying her head in her knees, she tensed, but with the criminals still on the loose this was no time to go easy on her. ‘Sit up,’ he barked.

      She snapped upright, and the look in her eyes suggested she was only now realising she might have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. He felt some sympathy for her. Dressed in cut-off shorts and faded top with a shark knife hanging from his belt, he was hardly a reassuring sight. ‘Come on,’ he pressed impatiently. ‘I need this information now, not sometime next week.’

      She bit her lip and then admitted in a voice that was barely audible, ‘I hitched a lift on a fishing boat.’

      ‘You hitched?’ Words failed him. The girl’s naivety appalled him; the danger she had put herself in defied reason. ‘What were you trying to prove?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      He doubted that. There would be someone back home she wanted to impress. ‘Couldn’t you have caught the ferry? Or was that too easy for you?’

      ‘I