Lynne Graham: The Sheikh's Collection

‘You and your colleagues shot your commercial without first lodging a request for permission to do so from the Ministry of the Interior.’

‘I know nothing about that!’ Saffy proclaimed in instant dismissal of the charge. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with the legal requirements or arrangements for filming abroad—I’m just the model. I go where I’m told and you had better believe that Maraban was the last place on earth I wanted to come!’

Zahir tensed, an even brighter sliver of gold lightening his dark eyes. ‘Why so? Maraban is a beautiful country.’

‘Surely that view depends on your standards of beauty?’ Saffy snapped back with lashings of scorn. ‘Maraban is eighty per cent desert!’

The gold effect in his eyes heightened to flame level. ‘Had you still been my wife I would have been ashamed of your narrow outlook!’

Saffy loosed a cutting laugh. ‘Mercifully for me I’m no longer your wife!’

The insult made him tense even more, his big shoulders squaring, the wall of his strong abdominal muscles tightening visibly below his shirt. His eyes held her fast, held her as completely as if he had her pinioned to a wall, those extraordinarily beautiful eyes of his set below well-defined ebony brows, eyes rimmed with thick curling black lashes and stormily bright with aggression. ‘Mercifully for us both,’ he murmured levelly.

Inexplicably his agreement wounded her and she sucked in a sudden surge of air to fill her deflated lungs in the seething silence and decided to concentrate on basics. ‘So the shoot took place without permission from some authority—what does that mean?’

‘That the film was confiscated at the hotel where you and the crew were staying,’ Zahir advanced grimly.

Saffy took a hasty step forward. ‘Confiscated? ’ she repeated in horror. ‘You can’t do that!’

‘I can do anything I like when people break the law in Maraban,’ Zahir responded levelly. ‘Filming was not authorised.’

‘But you have the power to overlook it. I’m sure the company just made a mistake if they didn’t seek permission. The location was changed at the very last minute—there probably wasn’t time!’ she protested. ‘Is that why you’ve brought me here? To tell me this?’

‘No…I wanted to see you again,’ Zahir confided with shocking cool.

And she remembered the shock of that honest streak of his, his ability to cut through all the rubbish people could spout and hit the bottom line without hesitation or embarrassment. ‘Why would you want to see me again?’ she prompted stiltedly.

‘You only have to look in the mirror to know why,’ he fielded without skipping a beat. ‘I want you. Just once I want what should have been mine when I married you and what you have since given to other men…’

Shock engulfed Saffy in a tidal wave. She moved back from him again in dismay, disbelief and bewilderment. Her ex wanted her to have sex with him?

‘Unless, of course,’ Zahir murmured silkily, ‘you truly do find me physically repulsive…’

Saffy backed away another step, thinking that there was surely not a woman alive who could find Zahir repulsive. She certainly didn’t; never had, in fact. Was that the impression she had left him with? Guilt rippled through her, for she was agonisingly aware that he could not possibly have overcome her problems for her five years earlier. It had taken years of therapy for Saffy to find the solution and to come to terms with what she had learned about herself during the process.

‘If you can convince me that you do, I will let you go,’ Zahir purred, literally stalking her across the room with fluid steps.

Zahir wanted to sleep with her. So, tell me something new, a wry little voice said inside her head. It was like being plunged back into her marriage without warning, unable to give him what he wanted and needed. The most appalling sense of inadequacy gripped her afresh. She had failed him and not surprisingly he was bitter. But that was no excuse whatsoever for his current behaviour. ‘You virtually kidnapped me!’ she accused rawly.

‘I sent you flowers and an air-conditioned limo. How many kidnappers do that?’

‘You’ve got to be crazy… I mean, are you even thinking about what you’re doing?’ Saffy gasped, stepping back against a piece of furniture and sidling sideways to avoid it and to keep moving further out of his reach.

‘I don’t think around you,’ Zahir muttered flatly. ‘I never did.’

Saffy was more than willing to kick his brain back into gear. ‘Zahir, you’re a king…royalty doesn’t do stuff like this!’

Zahir flung back his darkly handsome head and laughed with rich appreciation, even white teeth flashing against his bronzed skin. ‘Sapphire…my father kept a harem of a hundred concubines in this palace. Until very recently indeed, royalty did indeed do things that were neither socially nor morally acceptable.’

‘Your father? Had a harem here?’ Saffy parroted in consternation, her heart beating so fast as he stalked closer that she was convinced it might burst right out of her chest. She refused even to think of that nasty old man, Fareed, having had a hundred unfortunate women locked up to fulfil his gruesome requirements. It wasn’t a surprise though: her father-in-law had been an out-and-out lech.

‘I have no harem…no wife,’ Zahir pointed out.

‘Those are the only positives you have to offer in your own favour?’ Her voice was careening up and down as if she were on a vocal seesaw. She was locked into his eyes, those amazingly beautiful amber eyes, which had struck her like a thunderbolt at eighteen across a crowded department store. ‘Stay back…’

‘No, been there, done that, paid the price,’ Zahir countered, running a forefinger slowly down over her cheekbone so that in some strange way it seemed perfectly normal to turn her cheek into his hand.

Saffy looked up, clashed with his eyes, experienced a light-headed sensation that did nothing to collect her wits, and swallowed painfully. How could he be so gorgeous that she couldn’t breathe? Why was it as if the world had stopped turning and had flung her off into space? She was completely disorientated by his proximity, the very heat she could feel filtering from his lean powerful body towards hers even though their only connection was the hand resting against her face. ‘Zahir?’

He lowered his proud dark head. He’s going to kiss me, he’s going to kiss me, a crazily excited voice chanted inside her head and both anticipation and denial warred inside her. And then he did , firm, sensual lips circling hers, the pressure steadily deepening even as a shriek alarm of shock shrilled through her trembling body. He parted her lips, let his tongue dart between and it felt like the most erotic caress she had ever experienced because the taste and the flicker of movement inside her mouth were indescribably sexy. Heat burned in her pelvis, her nipples swelling taut, abrading the cotton covering them. That intoxicating intense physical reaction was exactly what she had wanted to feel for a long time but he was the very last man on earth she wanted to feel it with.

And yet she couldn’t will herself to break free while his tongue tangled with hers, touching, tasting, savouring , a low growl breaking from his throat while his fingertips stroked her neck where it met her shoulder. Unholy pleasure was ricocheting through her treacherous body as it awakened to sudden life, hot, damp sensation tingling at her feminine core while her breasts swelled and ached. Gathering every atom of her strength, she pushed her hand forcefully against a wide muscular shoulder and broke free. ‘No…no, I don’t want this!’

His gaze filled with sardonic amusement, Zahir studied her hectically flushed face with satisfaction. ‘Liar,’ he said thickly. ‘You always liked my mouth on you.’