Prince of the Desert - PENNY JORDAN

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at him and smiled. And then she closed them again. By the time he had exhaled, very, very slowly, she had fallen asleep again.

      Still frowning, he pulled the covers over her. At least that way her body was concealed and could no longer be the source of any kind of temptation to him. He should feel nothing but disgust for himself. He did feel disgust for himself, Tariq decided grimly. How could he have wanted a woman who sold herself to any man who could afford to buy her? What hitherto unknown to him part of himself had she managed to reach in order to arouse a desire in him strong enough to overwhelm his self-control?

      The blending of East and West that was his heritage had given him the advantage of not having any desire to experience the wanton sexuality so freely exhibited by so many Western women. He had never, as other Arab men he knew did, felt any urge to provide himself with the services of a Western mistress, a woman with whom he could have sex without censure and whom he could dismiss from his life when he chose.

      Zuran’s exclusive hotels did not permit the kind of behaviour indulged in by young Westerners in other foreign resorts. Topless sunbathing, any kind of intimacy with a man in public—these things were banned by law. But there were men, rich men, who brought with them to Zuran women who were quite plainly not their wives. And, as he was discovering, Zuran had now become a target for the kind of sordid, seedy lifestyle he deplored, for drugs and prostitution racketeers. He was under no illusions; it was common knowledge that the two went hand in hand.

      But, even knowing all of that, he had still been unable to stop himself from reacting to the skilled sensuality of a woman he simply shouldn’t have wanted to touch.

      How many of the other men in the gang had shared this woman’s favours? One of them? All of them? Together?

      First thing tomorrow morning he would find out who she was and arrange for her to be deported. He didn’t want to find her waiting for him a second time, he told himself savagely. He wasn’t going to risk another night like tonight. Nor did he want to have to share his bed with her. But, since she was already deeply asleep in it…He looked towards the bedroom door. He had converted the second bedroom into an office, and the furniture in the living room was not conducive to a decent night’s sleep. Anyway, why the hell should he give up his right to sleep in his own comfortable king-sized bed because it already had an occupant?

      He reached for the covers.

      Sunlight pouring through the unshuttered windows slanted gold bars across Gwynneth’s face, its heat drawing her reluctantly from sleep. Unfamiliar images and sensations curled like autumn smoke through her thoughts and her body, making her frown in rejection and try to ignore the way her heartbeat picked up.

      Cautiously she opened her eyes, exhaling in relief when she found that she was lying in the same bed she had originally gone to sleep in last night—and, more importantly, she was lying there alone. But she had not slept there alone during the night, she recognised, her face starting to burn as she saw the telltale imprint of another head on the pillow next to hers. So last night had not just been a fevered dream or a trick of her imagination.

      She pushed back the covers and swung her feet onto the floor, tensing as she did so. She certainly wasn’t imagining the small bruises on her skin where hard hands had held her. She wasn’t imagining either the heavy fullness of her breasts or the sensitivity of her nipples. There was an unfamiliar ache deep inside her. Of fulfillment? Or of longing for what she had not had? A longing for more of what she had had, for the satisfaction of being totally and completely sexually possessed?

      She shook her head, trying to disperse the images that clung to her mind as betrayingly as the scent of him still clung to her skin.

      She had no idea what had caused last night’s aberration in her behaviour, the total deviation from the controlled pathway she normally imposed on it. She could come up with a variety of theories, though, ranging from mundane jet lag to some kind of delayed reaction to her father’s death.

      Since she did not know what had been responsible for the way she had acted, the best thing she could do now, she told herself sturdily, was to put the entire incident behind her and refuse to give in to the self-indulgence of spending time and energy focusing on it. Like anything else, once starved of energy it would quickly shrivel to nothing.

      But the man who had shared the wild passion of the night with her—who was he? How had he got into the apartment? Logic suggested that he must have a key, which further suggested that he must be employed to look after the apartments in some capacity. Was what had happened last night a regular occurrence? Something he considered to be a perk of the job? If so, she had had a very lucky escape. She shuddered to think now of the kind of health risks she had run in coming so close to unprotected sex with a stranger. Why hadn’t she stopped him?

      Inside her head she could hear her own voice, taunting her that she was after all her parents’ daughter, and that all the years of struggling to deny the fact, to reject it and prove to herself she could never be caught in the trap of her father’s sexuality, had been swept away by her physical desire for a stranger.

      Her parents’ marriage had been the result of her father’s uncontrollable sexuality and her mother’s equally out-of-control emotional neediness. In a word: lust. She had sworn she would never be like them.

      So what had happened?

      She didn’t drink, and she most certainly didn’t do drugs, so she couldn’t blame either of them.

      She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As she had already told herself, she couldn’t change what had happened, but she could refuse to dwell on it or endlessly analyse it. She could choose to ignore it, to seal it off and lock it away where she would never need to think about it again. And, thankfully, there was no reason why she would have to think about it again.

      In three days’ time she would be back in London, having arranged for ownership of the apartment to be put in her name and having put it up for sale.

      She just hoped it would sell quickly. Her plan was that once the apartment had been sold she would have all the money put into a trust fund for Anthony and Teresa. They were both her late father’s responsibility after all. Teresa was little more than a girl and Anthony was his son.

      Gwynneth dried herself quickly, ignoring the small marks on her body that were evidence of last night’s passion. A mental image of herself raking a tanned male shoulder with her teeth, clawing a male back in hunger, flashed through her mind. Defensively she dipped her head, hurrying to get herself some clean clothes. As she left the room, she hesitated. What if he was still here somewhere in the apartment, waiting….? Waiting for what? A repeat of last night? Her belly clenched fiercely around the distinctive and very betraying surge of hot excitement that stirred inside her. He wasn’t here, she told herself. Instinctively she knew that. Taking a deep breath, she opened the bedroom door and stepped resolutely into the hallway.

      Half an hour later, having been delighted to find some coffee in a kitchen that was otherwise bare of provisions, she was ready to leave for her appointment. Picking up her handbag, she frowned as she saw the thick wad of Zurani currency stuffed into her passport. How had that got there? Uneasily she removed the money from her handbag, her eyes widening as she saw the note that was with it. The words To professional services for last night were written firmly on the paper, and it was abundantly plain just what they meant.

      Automatically she stiffened in angry rejection of both the meaning of the note and her own reaction to it. How could she possibly feel hurt because a man who was a complete stranger had made an error of judgement? Although even though he was a stranger, it was a very insulting error of judgement, she reminded herself shakily. After all, he was the one who had invaded her privacy and entered the apartment uninvited. Even so…

      Hadn’t she always believed that she had to be guardian of her own reputation and her own values? That she had to do everything she could to prevent herself being labelled as her father’s daughter?

      Maybe, but surely a woman could have sex with a man without being labelled a whore? By what right did a man who walked into an unknown woman’s apartment and then had a sexual

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