LITMIR.BIZ

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of that. Why do you want to leave the castle?’

      ‘Because there’s no longer a reason for me to be here.’ She stared at him, her eyes sending a challenge she didn’t care to voice. ‘My stay was only ever temporary. I’m fine, my ribs are fine—’ Colour burned her skin but she ploughed on, ‘As you know.’

      When Rafiq got to his feet in one swift movement, she had to stop herself from flinching. He loomed, and although Lexie knew she had nothing to fear from him she had to resist her immediate impulse to leap up so that she faced him on slightly more equal terms.

      He was deliberately being intimidating, she realised, her hand closing around the handle of a knife. Why?

      Calmly, yet with an edge of authority to his voice as though reasoning with a rebellious teenager, he said, ‘There is no need for you to go. I understand your feelings, and I agree—this has happened so fast that we don’t know each other very well. But fleeing is not the way to deal with it.’ His eyes dropped to her death grip on the handle of the butter knife. ‘I refuse to believe that you are afraid of me.’

      ‘I’m not!’ She dropped the knife back onto her plate. The sharp little chink broke into the soft air like a small explosion.

      No, she wasn’t afraid of him; she just wanted him so much that her last shreds of prudence dictated flight, before she made a total fool of herself by falling madly and hopelessly in love with him.

      ‘Perhaps you should be,’ he said, and the silence between them became suddenly charged with a menace that sent shock waves through her.

      Disbelievingly, she stared at him as he leaned down and caught her wrist, urging her upwards. His mouth came down on hers; she resisted for a second, then sank into his warmth and strength, even as part of her mind fought this insidious entrapment.

      The sensations—potent, arousing—were the same, yet she knew something was different. Behind his passion she sensed an icily restrained anger and a determination that made her extremely wary.

      When he released her she commanded furiously, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

      He examined her with hooded eyes, flinty and cold. As she watched the anger faded, and he said something in a raw, harsh voice in the local language.

      Lexie didn’t have to understand it to know that he was swearing.

      Between his teeth he said in English, ‘I will not touch you again until you ask me to.’

      ‘I— All right,’ she snapped, hoping her uncertainty wasn’t humiliatingly obvious.

      He scanned her face, his own devoid of expression. ‘I am not normally so crass,’ he said curtly. ‘You affect me in a way I haven’t had to deal with before. I’m sorry.’

      Lexie bit her lip, trying to repress a forlorn hope. Surely he couldn’t mean that he was as lost to emotion as she was? She didn’t dare hope that.

      His eyes hardened. ‘Tell me, do you want to leave because we made love?’

      After a few tense seconds she decided that the truth was the only way to go. ‘Yes.’

      Not because of their loving—never that—but because afterwards the odd sense of alienation, of rejection, had pained and confused her.

      Rafiq watched her expression, still shuttered against him, and wished again he’d managed to rein in his hungry desire. Making love had infinitely complicated the situation; he felt smirched by his own behaviour, although it had never occurred to him that she could be a virgin.

      He couldn’t let her leave the castle because Gastano still wanted her, and he was dangerous.

      After witnessing that carefully stage-managed kiss at the party last night, the self-titled count must know he’d lost his passport to the world of the very rich and privileged. During the past twelve hours he’d have learned that his world was shattering around him, the empire he’d built with such ruthlessness in chaos, and Interpol hot on his heels.

      And although he might not yet know that the man who’d taken Lexie from him was responsible for all that, he would very soon. He’d react with all the viciousness of a cornered rat.

      Warning her would achieve nothing; she clearly had no knowledge of Gastano’s criminal life, and why should she believe Rafiq?

      Unless he told her about Hani…?

      Not now, he thought. Everything in him refused to reveal his sister’s humiliation and suicide. But although he hadn’t been able to protect her, he could make sure Lexie was safe.

      Choosing his words carefully, he said, ‘I promised a few moments ago not to touch you until you asked me to. I made that promise in anger, but it holds. You will be perfectly safe here.’

      Lexie sensed rather than saw the inflexible line of his mouth, and wondered what was going on behind the handsome, arrogant features.

      Fighting back a bleak disappointment, she said, ‘I know that. It’s— You were right, everything’s happened so quickly…’

      So quickly it didn’t seem possible that the emotions that gripped her could be true. Until she remembered that her sister had taken one look at Prince Marco of Illyria and instantly fallen into lust.

      And although that initial fierce attraction had grown into love, just because it had happened for Jacoba didn’t mean it was going to be her fate too.

      Rafiq smiled, and the green eyes—so uncompromising a minute ago—warmed. ‘It will be difficult keeping my hands off you, but by the exercise of great—immense—restraint I think I can manage it.’

      And he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it, then turned it over to press another kiss into the palm.

      A painful delight throbbed through her. Somehow their lovemaking the previous night had made her even more sensitive, as though she’d been trained to react infinitely more strongly to his powerful presence.

      If she were cautious or even sensible, she’d leave the castle and find a room in another hotel. She’d run fast and far—as far as New Zealand—from this reckless delight.

      But she wasn’t going to. Whatever happened she would always be glad that she’d met Rafiq, that her initiation to sex had been so wonderful, that here on this magical island east of Zanzibar she’d found something rare and precious, something she wasn’t going to let fear forbid her.

      ‘Perhaps,’ she said solemnly, those swift kisses still tingling through her bloodstream. ‘But how do you know I’ll have the same self-control?’

      ‘I rather hope you don’t.’ The deep voice was amused and tender. ‘But not today; I have a council meeting that will take all day. So relax.’

      * * *

      He didn’t come home until after she’d gone to bed, but he’d rung twice, and at the sound of his voice she’d melted. Rafiq. Always and for ever Rafiq, she thought later, lying in bed alone and watching the stars drift slowly across the velvet sky as she remembered the previous night. Eventually she slid into sleep, and into turbulent dreams.

      Several hours later Rafiq asked abruptly, ‘Where is M’selle Sinclair?’

      ‘She went up to her room shortly after she had dinner, sir.’

      ‘Thank you.’ He strode up the staircase, slowing a little when the passage forked to go to Lexie’s room.

      Damn, he wanted her! After that moment’s hesitation, he went on past. In his own room he swore beneath his breath when he saw the red light blinking on the communication device that connected him to the head of security.

      ‘Yes?’ he barked into it.

      ‘Sorry, sir, but there’s just been an attempted robbery in the strongroom at the citadel. It looks like an inside job on the fire-diamond vaults.’

      Rafiq’s

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