ABBY GREEN - Seduced By The Sheikh - Jewel in His Crown / The Call of the Desert

‘None close that I’m aware of. Distant cousins, certainly.’

His ability to efficiently feed them both set Ruby’s teeth on edge. He could cook on an open fire with very limited ingredients and produce an edible meal while she would have been challenged to do so even in a modern kitchen. Her mother had been a poor cook and Ruby’s own repertoire was limited to the making or heating of simple snacks. While she lived with Stella, a very competent cook, her lack in that field had not seemed important but somehow in Raja’s presence it annoyed the hell out of her.

Feeling helpless stung Ruby’s strong pride. She hated feeling reliant on Raja and was painfully conscious that to date she had proved more of a burden than a help. That sense of inadequacy drove her into ceaseless activity that afternoon. She tidied up her clothes, ashamed of the fact she had left the garments lying in a tumbled heap beside her suitcase. She folded the quilts, shook the sand off the mats and took care of the few dishes and then she wandered round the grove of date palms busily gathering twigs and dried foliage to keep the fire going. The heat sapped her energy fast and she was filled with dismay at the prospect of what the much higher summer temperatures had to be like to live with. Her hair sticking to the back of her neck, she headed up to the pool to cool off again. The cold water felt glorious. Wrapped in the sarong, she sat down wearily on a rock in the deep shade to knot her hair and hold it off her perspiring face, wishing she had something to tie it back with. She looked across the pool to see her desert prince approaching, all six feet plus of his leanly muscled commanding figure pure poetry in motion, and she pursed her lips.

There he was drop-dead gorgeous and rich and he could cook, as well. She marvelled that he had stayed single so long. Of course that authoritarian streak might be a problem for some. He knew best… always . Her shoulders were pink and slightly burned as he had warned before lunch and she wasn’t one bit grateful that his forecast had come true but she knew that she ought to be grateful that he was so well able to cope when she was not. He was also equally keen to protect her from her own mistakes.

‘Watch out for—’

Ruby lifted her hands in a sudden silencing motion, brown eyes lightening with temper. ‘Just let it go, Raja. I’ll take my chances against whatever it is! You’re just about perfect and you know everything and you could probably live out here all year but I’m afraid I’m not cut from the same cloth.’

‘The desert is home to my people and yours,’ the prince contradicted in a tone of reproof. ‘We design and maintain beautiful gardens and parks in Najar but when our people want to get back to basics they come out into the desert.’

Ruby snatched in a sustaining breath and she kicked a rock with a sneaker-clad foot to expel her extreme irritation.

‘Ruby!’

As the rock rolled over and something moved and darted from beneath it Raja almost leapt forward in his haste to haul her out of harm’s way. From several feet away, plastered back against the solid support of his hard muscular frame, Ruby stared in horror at the greenish yellow insects rushing out.

‘Scorpions. They shelter in dark places during the day. Their sting is very painful,’ Raja informed her as she went limp against him, sick with repulsion at how close she had come to injury. He removed her to a safe distance.

‘I don’t like insects either,’ Ruby confided in a shaken rush. ‘Especially ones that size and anything that stings—’

‘There are also poisonous snakes—’

‘Shut up… shut up !’ she launched at him fiercely. ‘I’m not on an educational trip. I don’t want to know!’

Raja turned her round and stared down at her, eyes shimmering with reluctant amusement.

‘I don’t care what you say either,’ Ruby added truculently. ‘Give it a rest—stop trying to train me into being a stuffy royal who never puts a foot wrong!’

This time Raja al-Somari laughed out loud, his ready sense of humour finally breaking free of his innate reserve, for Ruby was very much an original and not at all like the women he was accustomed to meeting. She didn’t flirt—at least if she did, she didn’t bother to do it with him. Indeed she used no feminine wiles that he could identify. She staged no enticing poses to draw attention to her body. She made no attempt to appeal to his ego with compliments or to pay him any especially gratifying attention and she had not told him a single story calculated to present her in a flattering light. He had never in his entire life met a woman as uncomplicated as she was and the more he was exposed to her frank, fearless style, the more he liked it.

‘So, you do have a sense of humour after all. My goodness, is that a relief!’ Ruby exclaimed, shaking her head in emphasis, a wealth of damp strands escaping her loose knot and spilling across her shoulders.

Raja stared down at her stunning face and the teasing smile on her ripe rosy lips. He lowered his handsome, dark head almost jerkily as if he were being yanked down to her level by some mysterious but very powerful outside force. He found her soft, sultry mouth with his and although that kiss started out gentle and searching it heated up at supersonic speed. Desire rose to gush through Ruby in a floodtide. Nothing had ever felt so necessary as the hard pressure of that sensual mouth on hers and the taste of him drowned her senses like a shot of alcohol on a weak head.

Without a word, Raja released her with startling abruptness and pressed a hand to her spine to urge her back down the slope towards the tent.

Ruby had never experienced such a charge of hunger before and, suddenly deprived of that connection with him, she was in a daze. The tip of her tongue snaked out to explore the reddened and swollen contours of her lips and all she could think about was how much she wanted his hot, hungry mouth back on hers again. The strength of that craving shook her. Her nipples were tight and tingling and her legs felt shaky. Putting one foot in front of another was a challenge. And at the same time, gallingly she was desperate to know what he was thinking.

Outside the tent Ruby shot Raja a sidewise glance brimming with curiosity. His hard profile was taut and he skimmed a look back at her, eyes brilliant with a wealth of stormy emotion. That shook her and in response her heart started beating very, very fast. ‘Don’t play games with me, Ruby,’ he spelled out in a roughened undertone.

Games? Ruby was offended by the suggestion and she lifted her chin in denial. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about— you kissed me —’

‘But you made no objection. When you have said that you don’t want me to touch you what else is that but a game?’

‘I don’t calculate things to that extent. You are so suspicious,’ Ruby condemned, flushed and flustered by the reminder and by the embarrassment of her own uncharacteristic behaviour. ‘It’s being in this situation… I simply forgot and got carried away for a moment.’

‘Every action has consequences,’ Raja pronounced, rigid with the pent-up force of arousal he was restraining, his lean hands clenching into fists, for his body was not one half as disciplined as his quick and clever brain.

Ruby sank down on a mat inside the tent. It was hot but nothing was as hot and disturbing as the hum of unnatural warmth at the centre of her body, which was shockingly new and demanding. She could not relax. She lifted a hand, watched it tremble and tried and failed to laugh at the state she was in. One kiss and it had been earth-shattering, even more so than the last. Now she felt cheated. She wanted more, she wanted to know what it felt like to make love with a man who attracted her to that extent. The hurricane-force potency of that attraction was certainly a first. She had not experienced anything comparable with other men when intimacy had often felt like more of a threat and a nuisance than a potential source of pleasure. More than once her unenthusiastic response had led to her being asked if she was frigid or gay. She had often had to fight her way out of over-keen encounters. She had had to shout, she had had to defend and justify her boundaries because the easy availability of sex was often taken for granted in relationships. But not once, not once in the five years since she began dating had she actually wanted to make love.