LITMIR.BIZ

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table with such a distinct crash that she fully expected to see the delicate crystal shatter into a thousand glistening pieces. The next moment he was on his feet, covering the space between their chairs in two long, forceful strides.

      ‘It doesn’t matter!’ he declared, his tone rough and hard. ‘Can’t you see? It doesn’t matter a damn!’

      Before Lydia could quite register what was happening, he had clamped hard fingers around the tops of her arms and hauled her up out of the chair with such force that she fell against him, her own hands going out frantically, desperately seeking support. Beneath her clutching fingers she felt the hard muscles bunch and tense as Amir took her weight.

      ‘Who I am, or what I am, has no bearing on this situation.’

      ‘No bearing…’

      It was difficult to speak. Almost impossible to think. The strength of his arms was all that held her upright. The heat of his body seemed to reach out and enclose her, enfolding her in sensual warmth. And the clean, spicy scent of his skin coiled around her senses, tantalising her nostrils, reminding her of the burning kisses they had shared until she could almost taste him again on her tongue.

      ‘But it has to! It has to change so much!’

      ‘Lydia, listen to me.’

      Amir gave her a small shake, not rough but just hard enough to break through the buzzing haze of response inside her head and draw her eyes to his face. The fierce emotions that she saw there transfixed her, holding her unable to look away, every ounce of her concentration centred on him.

      ‘When I’m with you, there is just you and me. Nothing else matters a damn. When I’m with you I’m just a man—as you are just a woman. We are simply male and female, Amir and Lydia. Money, position, our place in life, all become totally irrelevant. I don’t think differently because I am the son of a sheikh. I don’t act differently. I am just like any other man. When I do this…’

      He bent his proud head and took her lips in a long, deep kiss that made her senses reel. The blood burned in her veins, melting away all resistance until she was pliant against him, every muscle weakening, her bones seeming to melt.

      ‘I am a man kissing a woman—my woman. The woman I want to possess so much that I ache with it! The woman who has stolen my soul from me—my mind, leaving me incapable of thinking of anything beyond her.’

      She was crushed even closer, pressed so hard up against him that she felt the burn of the swollen evidence of his desire and shivered in response. This Amir was no longer the civilised, controlled man she had met just hours before but a fierce, arrogant, Bedouin warrior, with the heat of the desert in his veins, the burn of the sun in his eyes.

      ‘I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. I…’

      Abruptly he broke off as a light tap came at the door. Amir froze, muttered something roughly, then looked down into Lydia’s stunned face, probing her eyes searchingly.

      Apparently what he saw there satisfied whatever question was in his mind because he gave a swift, brusque nod and turned his head towards the door.

      ‘Come!’

      It was all command, pure autocrat, giving Lydia a swift insight into the other Amir, Sheikh Amir Al Zaman.

      The middle-aged, dark-haired woman who came halfway across the threshold then paused, bobbing a hasty bow, clearly knew that man only too well. She kept her head bent, her eyes on the ground as Amir fired a question at her in a language Lydia could not understand. She answered in the same language, receiving a nod of approval for her pains, and was clearly thankful to be dismissed, almost scuttling away in her haste to be gone.

      ‘Did you have to speak to her like that?’ Lydia protested indignantly when they were alone again.

      ‘Like what, precisely?’ Amir enquired, looking down his long, straight nose at her.

      ‘Ordering her about that way! She clearly couldn’t wait to get out of here.’

      ‘So you speak Arabic—and the Kuimar dialect?’

      His mocking tone set her teeth on edge. He didn’t have to tell her she had got things wrong. It was there in every inflexion, every word. Deciding discretion was the best policy, Lydia refused to let herself be provoked into rash speak and waited instead for him to explain, as she had no doubt that he was going to do.

      ‘Jamila had come to tell us that the meal she has prepared is ready. Naturally, she was embarrassed at intruding on what she felt was a very private moment. I assured her that she was not to blame if my lady friend did not understand the conventions…’

      Did he know how ambiguous he had made that ‘lady friend’ sound? Lydia wondered, irritation stinging sharply. She very much suspected that he did—and that it had been quite deliberate. Her teeth snapped shut as she bit off the angry retort she was tempted to make.

      ‘I understand the conventions only too well,’ she managed with a stiffly clenched jaw. The irony of the situation only added to her annoyance, Jonathon’s accusation of being a stick-in-the-mud sounding sharply in her head.

      ‘But not as Jamila sees them. In Kuimar, no respectable woman would be seen alone with a man in his home at night.’

      ‘No respectable woman!’ He was really intent on compounding the insulting effect of that ‘lady friend.’

      ‘We are not in Kuimar now.’

      ‘No, we’re not.’

      The hint of a curl at the corners of Amir’s carved mouth seemed to indicate that he was only too aware of the struggle she was having to keep her voice reasonable and that, infuriatingly, he found that distinctly amusing.

      ‘Which is what I told Jamila before I gave her the rest of the night off. Are you hungry?’

      ‘Am I…?’

      Lydia found the question difficult to consider, and not just because of the speed with which Amir had jumped from one topic to another. The realisation that the housekeeper, whose presence had seemed such a comfort only a few minutes ago, had now been dismissed for the night put her into a distinctly uncomfortable state of mind. She would be alone with Amir after all, and alone with him in a way that ‘no respectable woman’ should ever be.

      Shouldn’t that be her cue to say that she’d changed her mind? That she couldn’t stay here after all. That she found she actually preferred the thought of the hotel room so would he please send for Nabil, or a taxi, and she’d head straight back to the airport?

      Except that, as she had just said, they weren’t in Kuimar. And the truth was that, even if it was safer, more respectable—more sensible—she didn’t want to go.

      Jonathon would never recognise her in the woman who knew she wanted to throw caution to the winds and stay here, ignoring every warning, every scream of self-preservation from the cautious ‘stick-in-the-mud’ part of her.

      ‘Hungry? Yes, I’m starving!’

      To her consternation, Amir met her response with a faint frown. One long finger touched her cheek as his beautiful mouth tightened disturbingly.

      ‘Not the right answer, my dear Lydia.’

      The thought of what the right answer should have been made her toes curl tightly inside her shoes.

      ‘Not the right one, maybe.’ She tried for laughter only to find that it broke revealingly in the middle. ‘But an honest one!’

      Amir’s thoughtful pause made her heart jolt uncomfortably as she waited for his reply.

      ‘It was not the answer I hoped I’d hear,’ he murmured silkily. ‘But you are lucky that I am in an indulgent mood. Shall we go through to the dining room?’

      He held out his hand and Lydia had no choice but to put hers into it.

      If this was Amir in an indulgent mood, she couldn’t

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