Prince of the Desert Read online

  That what? That she was vulnerable to him? That she might want to repeat what had happened? That she might wanthim ? Well, she didn’t. And even if she had done she would not have allowed herself to go on doing so, Gwynneth assured herself fiercely.

  Another man might have been fooled and flattered into succumbing to that note of emotional vulnerability in the soft shakiness of her voice, Tariq acknowledged. But he was not that other man. He was not so easily taken in.

  Not mentally or emotionally, maybe, but what about physically? What about the way he had reacted to her last night, and then again earlier today? That had not been the reaction of a man who was fully in control of himself and his body, had it?

  It irked him that he had to subject himself to such inner questioning and probing, and he gave Gwynneth a look of razor-sharp cynicism, his voice cutting and arrogant.

  ‘But this morning, when you found the note I had left, the money, you must have realised—’

  That flash of disdain in the cool grey eyes, accompanied by a dismissive downward curl of the mouth that only last night had so hungrily tasted her own, infuriated Gwynneth.

  ‘I must have realised what? That you are the kind of man who regards women as a commodity, to be bought and used and then discarded?’ she challenged him with angry heat. ‘Yes, I did realise that. And I told myself that once I had put in hand all the necessary paperwork to transfer my father’s apartment into my own name I would try to find out how you had managed to gain access to the apartment so that I could ensure you couldn’t do so again.’ She gave a very creditable imitation of his own earlier contemptuous shrug. ‘Of course, one knows that men like you exist—men who are so inadequate emotionally and mentally that they are unable to have a normal relationship with a woman, and by “normal” I mean one based on real feelings and true respect—but I would never have willingly debased myself by having a relationship with such a man.’

  ‘We did not have a relationship,’ Tariq interrupted her icily. ‘We had a night in bed.’

  ‘We?What we?’ Gwynneth countered wildly. ‘There was no “we” involved. You used my body to gain sexual gratification, and then you—’

  ‘Are you seriously trying to tell me that you found no pleasure in what we shared?’ Tariq interrupted ominously. ‘Because if you are—’

  ‘So you get off on turning women on sexually,’ Gwynneth flashed back. ‘That doesn’t alter the fact that you have to pay to do it!’

  ‘Haveto?’

  No one, never mind a woman, had ever spoken to or looked at Tariq with contempt. He was a member of the ruling house of Zuran, and, more than that, he was the sole descendant of a noble house of great antiquity—the living, breathing reality of a royal name born out of mystery and legend. He possessed incalculable wealth; he was used to being treated with respect and deference; he considered himself to be a stringently moral man. Had anyone suggested to him even two nights ago that he would lose himself so completely in lust that he would take to his bed a woman of dubious morals he would have vehemently denied that he could ever do such a thing.

  And now, to have this woman accusing him as she had just done, and with the contempt she had just shown, dug into his pride like the talons of a falcon tearing at its prey to leave its bloodied entrails spilling out onto the hot sand.

  He wanted—no,needed to take hold of her and punish her for what she had said, for what she was making him feel.

  ‘I do nothave to pay any woman to give herself to me. As I am more than happy to prove to you—right now,’ he informed her grimly

  Gwynneth fell back as Tariq strode purposefully towards her. But it wasn’t fear that was turning her belly liquid as she wrenched her overheated gaze from his mouth and searched wildly for some way to disperse the sexual tension invading the small space.

  He wanted her! How could that be? Furious with himself, Tariq stepped back from her, half turning away to conceal the evidence of his arousal as he demanded, ‘Since you are now aware that I too consider this apartment to be my property, presumably you have informed the authorities accordingly?’

  Gwynneth slid her tongue-tip over her suddenly dry lips. ‘Not as such,’ she said. Silence greeted her admission, and she filled it with defensive speech. ‘It isn’t up tome to register your interest—and anyway how could I? I don’t even know your name. I did say that there was someone who believed they might own it, but the authorities said that no one else had registered any interest.’

  ‘And of course that pleased you. Especially since you can expect to gain an additional bonus because of the rise in value of the apartment since your father purchased it.’

  ‘And why not?’ Gwynneth retorted angrily.

  Tariq remained silent, leaning back against the doorframe and folding his arms. Where the sleeve of his robe had fallen back Gwynneth could see the tanned bare flesh of his forearm, sinewy and muscular and possessed of a strength she had seen last night, when he had lifted her and held her.

  A treacherous physical memory of sensual pleasure gripped her achingly. Immediately she banished it.

  ‘If youreally believe this apartment is yours, then why haven’t you registered your interest yourself?’ she asked him, making it plain that she didn’t believe his claim.

  Tariq had had enough. ‘Do you dare to accuse me of lying?’ he demanded incredulously.

  Gwynneth could see how much her deliberate insult had angered him. She could feel how that anger was filling the enclosed space in a wave of hostile tension. She flinched as Tariq unfolded his arms, half expecting him to take hold of her and demonstrate his anger physically, but to her relief he remained where he was. The look he was giving her, though, said that he had seen and relished her fear, and for Gwynneth that in itself was a form of punishment. But she wasn’t going to give in—either to it or to him. Until she was officially told that her father had not owned the apartment, she was staying right where she was.

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t worked out what all this is about,’ she told him. ‘You’re trying to bully me into leaving. But I’m not going. We have a saying in England—possession is nine-tenths of the law—’

  ‘We have a similar belief here,’ he interrupted her.

  ‘You mean you intend to stay here as well?’ Gwynneth didn’t even attempt to conceal her dismay.

  ‘I have as much right to do so as you. Probably even more,’ Tariq told her truthfully.

  Now what had she done? She didn’t want to back down, but the last thing she wanted to have to do was share the apartment with him and risk a repetition of last night. When she had thrown that challenge at him it simply hadn’t occurred to her that he would retaliate in kind. But she couldn’t back out now just because of the images crowding into her head, Gwynneth warned herself. She had Teresa and baby Anthony to think about.

  ‘I’m staying. It’s what my father would have wanted me to do.’

  ‘And he meant a lot to you, obviously. After all, his death left you so grief-stricken that you spent virtually three whole weeks grieving for him before coming out here to claim your inheritance.’

  Tariq waited for her to deny his charge and to fake crocodile tears, but to his surprise she simply said quietly, ‘No, we didn’t have a particularly close relationship. My parents divorced when I was eight. I hardly saw my father after that until I was in my late teens. Neither he nor my mother really wanted me.’

  Tariq started to frown. Was this the reason for her focus on material wealth? Or was she trying to gain his sympathy?

  ‘So who brought you up?’

  Gwynneth smiled mirthlessly.

  ‘I was brought up in a very expensive boarding school, paid for by my stepfather. Neither he nor my mother wanted to be reminded that she had once been married to my father. My stepfather is a very wealthy man, so when he returned to Australia with my mother I was left behind in England. It was easy enough to pay someone else to take over the responsibility for me.’

  Tariq looked away from her. He
too had attended an English boarding school, and experienced the loneliness that brought.

  ‘But my childhood was a long time ago and in the past,’ Gwynneth said lightly. ‘This is the present. My father had a peripatetic lifestyle. This apartment is virtually his only financial asset, and as his daughter—’

  ‘You want your blood money?’ Tariq suggested unkindly.

  ‘I want what is right and just.’ Gwynneth sidestepped the question neatly. She had already answered far too many questions, told him far too much about herself. Oddly, given their relationship, she didn’t want to reveal her father’s weaknesses—but, as she quickly discovered, Tariq had an even more uncomfortable question for her to answer.

  ‘Is that why you have sex with men you don’t know? Because you see it as a way of getting back at your parents for your childhood?’

  ‘I don’t—’I don’t have sex full-stop , she had been about to say, but stopped herself in time, saying instead, ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you. All you need to know is that I am going to stay here in this apartment until ownership of it is resolved, and nothing is going to change my mind. So, like I’ve just said, if you are planning to browbeat and bully me into leaving, you are wasting your time.’

  This was a wholly untenable situation, but he had no option other than to accept it. And with it her presence here in the apartment.

  For only that reason? Was he sure about that? Was he sure that his decision, his determination to stay at the apartment, didn’t have anything to do with last night and the fact that a part of him could still taste her, still hear her, still feel her in his arms, body-to-body with his own flesh?

  He wasn’t a boy, he was thirty-four years old, but though he had a man’s needs he also had self-control. He’d had the occasional liaison with an understanding, experienced woman, but he felt nothing but contempt for the gold-digging females who went from one man to another.

  He could, of course, marry. But his parents’ marriage had left him cynically wary of such a commitment. They might have claimed to be deeply in love with one another when they had married, but that love had not lasted. His father had walked out on both his wife and son when Tariq had been a mere four years old. Tariq could still remember how devastated he had been, and the tears he had wept. The experience had left him wary of ever being governed by his emotions. Emotional celibacy was something he had deliberately chosen. Physical celibacy was more of a state he had moved into by default rather than choice, but it was a state he preferred to any of the other options available to him.

  ‘If you want to stay—’

  ‘What I want is for you to leave,’ Gwynneth burst out. ‘And the sooner the better. We can’t both stay here,’ she added, when he made no response. ‘For one thing, there’s only one bedroom.’

  ‘Mybedroom,’ Tariq agreed. ‘Or were you hoping that I might invite you to share it with me?

  ‘After last night?’

  It was the wrong thing to have said.

  ‘I don’t recall hearing you complain. In fact—’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Gwynneth told him fiercely, almost running out of the kitchen.

  Her heart was pumping and her whole body was protesting at the strain she was imposing on it. It was almost evening and she had no idea where the day had gone. Her head was throbbing almost as much as her heart was pounding. She needed some fresh air—and a breathing space, she acknowledged, but she dared not go out just in case he managed by some Machiavellian means to prevent her from getting back into the apartment. He wouldn’t think twice about locking her out or changing the locks, she decided darkly as she pushed open the door to the apartment’s main living room and realised that although she hadn’t seen it last night there was actually a huge private terraced area beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the living room.

  Fresh air. Eagerly she made her way towards them.

  Tariq glanced at the plain gold watch strapped to his wrist, his mouth compressing. What motivated a woman like Gwynneth Talbot? Didn’t she ever think about the danger she was risking when she gave herself to his sex? Or was danger part of the allure? Did she crave the hedonistic excitement her sexual encounters brought her? Didn’t she care about the dark, seedy underbelly of the life she was living? Didn’t it ever occur to her that she could end up physically harmed or even dead?

  She was not his responsibility, he reminded himself angrily as he strode across the floor of the spacious living room after her. He owed her nothing. She meant nothing to him.

  It was now dark outside, and unfamiliar scents filled the warm night air. The tantalising smell of food for one, making Gwynneth’s stomach growl with hunger. What on earth had she got herself into? She, of all people, who normally lived her life so carefully and cautiously…

  ‘So you’re out here, are you?’

  She turned round very carefully. The sensation prickling across her skin was arousing emotions that even she could recognise were dangerous. Apprehension, anger, hostility: they might be expected and acceptable, but that hot flare of excitement coupled with that searing mental flashback to last night was very definitely not! Caution urged her to ignore him, go straight to the study and lock herself back inside it. But, inexplicably, she was ignoring caution in favour of something far more confrontational and reckless.

  ‘I needed some fresh air,’ she told him pointedly. ‘And I—’

  Tariq interrupted her, demanding angrily, ‘What is it that makes you take such risks? Have you any idea of the danger you could have been in?’

  Of all the male moves she had ever experienced, this one had to take the prize. How dared he try to cloak his own behaviour in some kind of faked concern for her?

  ‘Like you’d care!’ she scoffed cynically. ‘Or was that what you were doing last night—showing me your caring side?’

  ‘My concern last night was directed towards the rather more personal issue of good sexual health,’ he told her frankly. ‘Something I should have thought would also be of primary importance to a woman of your obvious experience. Didn’t last night teach you anything?’ he added harshly. ‘Or does the danger of what you’re doing excite you in some perverted way?’

  His anger ignited her own temper, pushing her over the limit of her own self-control. ‘For your information, what happened last night isn’t something—I’d never—Look, last night was a mistake, all right? It shouldn’t have happened but it did. Not that it’s any of your business. I don’t have to explain myself to you, and I don’t care what interpretation you choose to put on what I say or do.’

  ‘No?’ he challenged her.

  ‘No,’ Gwynneth asserted, and believed that she meant it.

  ‘But you obviouslydo care that your behaviour last night led me to believe that you are a woman who is prepared to have sex with a stranger—and obviously not for the first time.’

  Not for the first time? She was tired, she was hungry, and she was still in shock from everything she had experienced. In short, she had endured more than enough! ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ Gwynneth contradicted him angrily. ‘And, what’s more, last night wasn’t only the first time, it was also the last time! I’d rather remain celibate for the rest of my life than—’ Dammit, dammit,dammit. She wasnot going to cry in front of him! ‘Than be subjected to the…the humiliation you forced on me last night!’ It was as though his words had applied such unbearable pressure to the place inside her heart that hurt—very badly that she just wasn’t able to stop herself from reacting to the pain.

  How right she had been to repress her sexuality; how much she wished she had continued to do so. And how very, very much she wished she had never methim !

  ‘Celibate?A woman like you?’

  His contemptuous disbelief burned away what was left of her restraint.

  ‘A woman like me? You mean that because I’m a virgin my sexual curiosity will drive me to sex? After last night?’ She shook her head and laughed mirthlessly. ‘I promise you, that
was experience enough for me to know that celibacy is what I want.’

  ‘You—a virgin?’ Tariq shook his head incredulously. ‘You’re lying!’ His rebuttal of her words was as emotionally charged as her own rejection of his accusation.

  ‘No, I’m not lying,’ Gwynneth said wearily. ‘But I can see that you have a vested interest in refusing to believe me. Believe what you like. I don’t care.’ Her fierce inner emotional conflagration had burned itself out, leaving her feeling drained and vulnerably close to tears, unable to understand why she had made such an intimate disclosure to him.

  She had to get away from him before he destabilised her emotional balance even more. Without waiting for him to say anything, she turned away from him and hurried back inside, automatically heading for the protection of the small study and its lock.

  Her heart was pounding and she felt wretchedly overwrought and upset as she leaned against the door and closed her eyes. How had he done this to her normal emotional stability and balance? The stability and balance she had dedicated her life to providing for herself?