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  Instinctively her hand touched her belly. Could her baby feel what she was feeling? Was he or she right now uncurling and basking in the same glow of happiness that was engulfing her?

  Xavier’s hand covered hers and that small gesture brought immediate emotional tears to her eyes as she turned to look at him without any attempt to hide her emotions from him.

  ‘I didn’t know you loved me,’ she whispered.

  ‘You know now,’ Xavier responded.

  She could see the bleakness in his eyes and the pain. Her body could feel the warmth of his hand even through her own. Gently she pulled her own hand away and leaned into him so that he could feel the growing swell of their child, her gaze monitoring his immediate and intense reaction.

  Xavier would never do what her father had done, instinctively she knew that, just as she knew too how much time she had wasted, how much that was so infinitely precious to her she had risked and nearly lost because of her frightened refusal to allow herself to believe that not all men were like her father.

  Alongside her bubbling happiness she could feel another emotion she had to struggle to identify. It was freedom, she recognised; freedom from the burden she had been carrying around with her for so long, and it was Xavier who had given her that freedom by giving her his love, by being man enough, strong enough to reveal his vulnerability to her!

  She took a deep breath and then held tightly to her courage and even more tightly to Xavier’s arm.

  ‘It isn’t true what I said,’ she told him simply. ‘It wasn’t just sex. I tried to pretend it was to myself because I was too afraid to admit how I really felt, but I think I knew even before, and then afterwards when I still wanted you...’ Her skin turned a warm rose as she saw the way he was looking at her.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she protested. ‘Not yet, not until I’ve finished telling you... Otherwise...’

  ‘Still wanted, in the past tense or...’ Xavier pressed her huskily.

  ‘Still wanted then,’ Mariella informed him primly. ‘And still want now,’ she added, her own voice suddenly as husky and liquid with emotion as his had been. ‘I still want you, Xavier!’ she repeated. ‘And I don’t just want you, I need you as well. Need you and love you,’ she finally managed to say, her voice so low that he had to bend his head to catch her shaky admission.

  ‘You love me? But do you trust me, Mariella? Do you believe me when I tell you that I shall never, ever let you down or give you cause to doubt me? Do you believe me when I tell you that you and our child...our children, will always have my love and my commitment?’

  Mariella closed her eyes and then opened them again.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied firmly, and her melting look of love told him that she meant it!

  ‘Xavier,’ she protested unconvincingly as he started to kiss her. ‘The others will be coming back.’

  ‘Shall I stop, then?’ he asked her, brushing his lips tormentingly against her own.

  ‘Mmm... No...’ Mariella responded helplessly, sighing in soft pleasure as his hand covered her breast, his thumb probing the aroused sensitivity of her nipple. Her whole body turned liquid with desire, making her cling eagerly to him.

  ‘Every night I’ve thought about you like this,’ Xavier told her rawly. ‘Wanted you...ached for you in my arms. Every night, and every day, and if I’d known that there was the smallest chance that you felt the same I would never have let you go. I warn you, Ella, that now that I do know I will never let you go.’

  ‘I will never want you to,’ Mariella responded emotionally. ‘Take me to bed, Xavier,’ she begged him urgently. ‘Take me to bed and show me that this isn’t all just a dream...’

  She was in his arms and being carried from the salon into his bedroom almost before the words had left her mouth. And even if she had wanted to retract them it would have been impossible for her to do so with Xavier kissing her the way that he was, with all the passion and love, all the commitment she now recognised that she had secretly ached for all along.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘WELL, what do you think of your anniversary present?’ Mariella asked Xavier lightly, whilst she watched him with a secret anxiety she was trying hard to hide.

  She had been working on this special gift for him on and off ever since their marriage, only breaking off for their six-month-old son’s birth and the early weeks of his life.

  Xavier shook his head, as though he found it hard to comprehend what he was seeing. ‘I knew you were working on something, but this...’

  The stern note in his voice broke through her self-control, forcing her to reveal how much his approval meant to her. ‘You don’t like it—?’

  ‘Like it! Mariella.’ Reaching for her, Xavier wrapped her tightly in his arms.

  ‘There is nothing, excluding your sweet self and our noisy and demanding young son, that I would value more,’ he told her emotionally as he swung her round in his arms so that they could both look at the series of drawings she had spent the early hours of the morning displaying around their private salon to surprise him when he woke up on this, their anniversary morning.

  As a wedding present from her new husband Mariella had asked to be allowed to travel in the desert with the tribe. Conscious of her pregnancy, Xavier had initially been reluctant to agree, but Mariella had been insistent. It had been on that journey that she had made the secret preliminary sketches for what was now a visual documentation of the tribe’s way of life, a visual documentation that betrayed, not only her fine eye for detail, but also her love for the man whose people she had drawn.

  ‘I do have a gift for you, although I haven’t followed Tanya’s advice and booked a luxury holiday,’ Xavier told her ruefully.

  Following the direction of his amused glance, Mariella laughed.

  Fleur, who was now walking was sitting on the floor next to her six-month-old cousin, the pair of them deep in some personal exchange, which involved lots of shared giggles and some noisy hand-clapping from Ben.

  ‘Don’t you dare do any such thing. There’s no way I want to be parted from these two!’

  With Tanya and Khalid living around the corner, both the families saw a lot of each other, and the two young cousins could grow up together.

  ‘I may have another present for you,’ Mariella announced semi-hesitantly, the way her glance lingered on their son informing Xavier of just what she meant.

  ‘What? We said we’d wait.’

  ‘I know...but this time it’s your fault and not mine. Remember your birthday, when you didn’t want to wait until...’

  ‘Mmm.’ He did a rapid mental calculation. ‘So in another seven months, then...’

  ‘I think so... Do you mind?’

  ‘Mind? Me? No way. Do you?’

  ‘I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’m right,’ Mariella admitted. ‘Although I’m pretty sure that I am, and if I’m not...’ she gave him a flirtatious look ‘...then I’m sure we can find a way of ensuring that I soon am! Anyway, what about my anniversary present? You still haven’t told me what it is.’

  ‘Come with me,’ Xavier instructed her, bending to pick up their son and hand him to Mariella before lifting Fleur up into his own arms.

  ‘Close your eyes and hold onto me,’ Xavier said as he led her out into their own private courtyard, and through it to the new courtyard that had been developed behind it.

  Mariella could smell the roses before he allowed her to open her eyes, and once he did so she drew in her breath in delight as she saw the new garden he had been having designed for her as a special surprise.

  A softer and far more modern planting plan had been adopted for the new garden than the one favoured by Xavier’s grandmother. The design was reminiscent of an English country garden with the flower beds filled with a variety of traditional plants, but it was the wonde
rful scent of the roses that most caught her attention.

  ‘They’re called “Eternity”,’ Xavier told her softly as she bent her head to touch the velvet-soft petals of the rose closest to her. ‘And I promise that I shall love you for eternity, Mariella, and beyond it. My love for you is...eternal!’

  Warm tears bathed Mariella’s eyes as she smiled at him.

  ‘And mine for you!’ she whispered lovingly to him.

  Silently, they walked through the garden together, his arm around her drawing her close, her head resting against his shoulder, the children in their arms.

  * * * * *

  The Sheikh’s Blackmailed Mistress

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PROLOGUE

  ‘Ohhhh, no!’

  Her anxious warning protest had come too late, and now she was pressed hard against the very male body of the robed man who had been turning the corner at the same time from the opposite direction.

  Her startled cry and the clear visual imprinting her eyes had relayed to her brain—of a tall, broad-shouldered and very arrogant-looking handsome male, with the most extraordinarily green eyes she had ever seen—was all there’d been time for before that image had been blanked out by her abrupt and far too intimate contact—visually and physically—with his body.

  Now, with her face virtually buried against his shoulder, her senses were being assaulted by that intimacy in every sensory way that there was. She could feel the heat of his body, and smell its personal slightly musky male scent, mingled with the cool sharpness of the cologne he was wearing. She could feel, too, the heavy thud of his heart beating out a demand that called to her own heartbeat to follow it. Lean, strong fingers gripped her arm, bare flesh to bare flesh setting a panicky, firework-intense burst of lava-hot sensation spilling through her own body.

  The manner in which they had collided had brought her up against him in such a way that she now realised she was leaning against one of his thighs, her own having somehow softened and parted to admit its muscular male presence. The lava flow changed from a rolling surge of heat into an explosion of female arousal that wrenched any kind of control over her body from her and claimed it for itself. Quivers of female recognition at his maleness were softening her flesh into his. Breathing was becoming a dangerously erotic hazard that leached her small soft moan of longing into the once sterile silence of the corridor.

  She mustn’t do this. She mustn’t raise her head from the muscle-padded warmth of his shoulder to look up into his face. She mustn’t let her desire-dazed gaze dwell yearningly on his mouth. She mustn’t quiver and then sigh, and then place her hand on his chest, whilst lifting her gaze reluctantly from his mouth to his eyes, so that her own could whisper to him how much she ached to trace the sensuality of that full lower lip set beneath its sharply cut partner with her fingertip, or better still with her tongue-tip, caressing it into a reciprocal hunger for the kiss she now wanted so badly.

  No, she must not do any of those things—but she was doing them, and he was looking back at her as though he wanted exactly what she wanted, and for all the same reasons.

  The air in the corridor hadn’t changed, but she still shivered and trembled and then moaned as he lowered his head to hers, his free hand sliding into the untidy tangle of her honey-streaked curls.

  She could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin—feel it and taste it, with its erotic mix of promised delights. Longingly she watched the slow descent of his mouth towards her own, savouring each millimetre of movement that brought him closer—until finally he stopped. Then she looked up at him, her face relaying a message that was a mixture of female pride and passionate longing. His eyes blazed with emerald fire and the pure intensity of male sexual arousal, burning the air between them.

  Sam raised herself up on the tips of her toes, her lips parting on a shaky breath of urgent need, clinging to his robe as she did so to support herself. What she was inhaling and tasting now was an aphrodisiac far stronger than any wine.

  He brushed her lips with his own, their touch warm and hard and yet exquisitely sensual and caressing, and then drew back to look at her. She moved closer, pressing herself to him in a silent plea for more. Lifting her face towards him, he kissed her briefly again, and then again, until finally he did what she knew she’d wanted him to do from the first and drew her to him in a kiss that possessed her as totally as the desert possessed those whose hearts it stole.

  A commotion further down the corridor out of sight from them had them springing apart. Her face on fire, Sam fled, all too conscious of the fact that she was now going to be even later for her appointment than she had already been. Her heart was thumping with a mixture of shock and disbelief.

  She was here in the Arabian Gulf on business, not to behave in the reckless and out-of-character way in which she had just behaved.

  Her impromptu trip out into the desert this morning might have increased her longing to get this job she had come so far to be interviewed for, but it had also meant that she had not really left herself enough time in which to get ready for the interview—which was why she had been hurrying at speed down the hotel corridor in the first place.

  Now she had less than half an hour in which to shower and change and get to her appointment—and that was why her heart was thudding so fast and so erratically, not because of what had just happened with the man she had bumped into.

  What on earth had come over her?

  After all, she knew perfectly well that if anything it was even more pertinent in this part of the world than it was in the west for a woman who wanted to be taken seriously professionally and respected to behave in a way that did not compromise her status—with no inappropriate sexual behaviour towards Arab men.

  And as, according to the lectures she had attended to prepare herself for this interview, inappropriate behaviour here in the Arabian Gulf could mean something as simple as a woman reaching out to touch a man on the arm, or engaging him in eye contact, what she had just done definitely came under the heading of very inappropriate behaviour indeed.

  Even now, despite that knowledge, and despite the fact that normally she wouldn’t have dreamed of acting as she had—would indeed have been shocked if anyone had suggested she might—she was still so aware of the swollen ache deep inside her that even breathing as hard as she was doing right now was enough to make her grit her teeth. Uncharacteristic longings seemed to have taken control of her thought-processes. Longings which were making her wish...

  Wish what? That he had taken her to a bedroom and made mad, passionate love to her? A bedroom? Mad, passionate love? Who was she kidding? The kind of behaviour she had just indulged in was not conducive to that kind of encounter—and it would be naïve of her not to understand that. She was weaving ridiculous fantasies inside her head of mutual overwhelming passion at first sight.

  She needed bringing to her senses and some icy water thrown on the sexual heat that was now tormenting her.

  What was this? She had heard that the desert could turn people crazy, but surely not after a mere couple of hours’ viewing from the inside of a luxurious four-by-four air-conditioned vehicle? Oh, but he had been so handsome, and she had wanted him so much—still wanted him so much. She had never experienced anything remotely like the longing that had rolled over her when their bodies had made contact. It had been as though an electric surge of emotion had somehow bonded her to him, fusing them together, so that now she actually felt a physica
l pain, as though they had been forcibly wrenched apart.

  One look into his eyes had been all it needed to complete her subjugation to what she had felt. If he had spoken to her then, and asked her to commit herself to him for the rest of her life, Sam suspected that she would quite willingly have agreed.

  She tried to laugh herself out of her own emotional intensity, deriding herself for being silly and telling herself that she was probably simply suffering from too much sun. It wasn’t much of an explanation for what she had felt, but it was way better than the alternative—which was to admit that with one single look she had fallen in love with a stranger to whom she would now be emotionally bound for ever.

  CHAPTER ONE

  VERE looked through the window of his office in the palace of Dhurahn, thinking not of the beauty of the gardens that lay within his view, which had been designed by his late mother, but of the desert that lay beyond them. The familiar fierce need that was stamped into his bones was currently possessing him. He wanted to put aside the cares and complexities of rulership of a modern Arab state and enjoy instead that part of his heritage that belonged to the desert and the men who loved it.

  Which in one sense he would soon be doing. In one sense, maybe, but not wholly and freely. On this occasion it was his responsibility to his country and his people that was taking him into what was known as the ‘empty quarter’ of the desert, to the boundary they shared there with the two of their Gulf neighbours.

  As he crossed to the other side of his office to look down into the courtyard, where his household were preparing for his departure, the remote and aloof air that was so much a part of him, which those who did not know him thought of as regal arrogance, was very much in evidence. Vere felt the weight of his responsibility towards the birthright he shared with his twin brother very deeply. He was, after all, the elder of the two of them, and his nature had always inclined him to take things more to heart and more seriously than Drax, his twin.