Page 22 of Royally Promoted

His touch...scorching her skin and shooting her body down pathways that were confusing and electric.

‘I get it that you introduced me to your mother because you felt you had no choice, not really, but that’s as far as it goes.’ She was breathing heavily, and he hadn’t moved his hand, which was making thinking difficult.

Ahead of them, the brightly illuminated palace shone, nestled amid its opulent greenery, the ocean of sand just dark shadows all around.

Malik stared. He could actually hear his own breathing but then fancied that he was imagining it.

Yet he was gripped by something that made the words still in his throat. He was driven to look at her breasts, heaving as she breathed fast, and had to grit his teeth to resist the urge. Her skin under his fingers was soft and smooth. Her tumbling vanilla-blonde hair tempted his fingers to explore. He released her abruptly and sat back but he knew that he was shaking.

‘Spot on,’ he said coldly. He raked his fingers through his hair, barely aware of his driver patiently waiting until the order was given for him to open the passenger doors. Malik duly rapped on the privacy glass separating them, and at once the driver leapt out to open Lucy’s door.

‘Back to the routine tomorrow, Lucy, but I’m glad we understand one another.’

He broke eye contact and pushed open his door to vault outside into the humid air, only taking a couple of seconds to breathe in deep and stamp down the unexpected surge in his libido that had taken a sudden battering ram to his self-control.

CHAPTER FIVE

HE WAS GLAD they understood one another?

Malik Al-Rashid might be a prince, but Lucy truly hoped that he wouldn’t think what he had said would be conveniently forgotten. How was it a crime to have shown some interest in his parents? How had that been crossing his precious boundaries?

He’d politely introduced her to his mother and she’d politely given him some feedback. It was the first time she could recall him ever really knocking her back and it hurt. She resolved not to say anything more about it because, on reflection, it wouldn’t get anyone anywhere, which didn’t mean that she didn’t spend the following day simmering.

Several times as she looked at him, reclining in the black leather swivel chair in the huge wing of the palace which had been adapted for use as offices, she had to bite down the temptation to have it out with him.

He was as cool as a cucumber. He’d said his piece and put it behind him, but he’d never reminded her of her status before, and she’d been an idiot to think that, because he never had, then it followed that he never would. It had been enough that she’d known which lines couldn’t be crossed at home but, over here, the lines were blurred, she’d crossed them and his harsh reminder had been a slap in the face. Yes, of course he was her boss, and well within his rights to reprimand her for going beyond the brief, but surely they were more than boss and secretary, with all the formality that that implied?

Were they perhaps friends? Or had she got that completely wrong?

Shorn of her customary self-confidence around him, she worked more or less in silence for the duration of the day. She noticed that he didn’t say a word about that, didn’t once crack any jokes about her being practically mute. He would have done that in London. He would have teased her, coaxed her into telling him what was wrong. He might not have seen that as the strands of a friendship between them, but she had, and as the day drew to a close she wondered whether she’d spent years being a fool.

Had that easy familiarity between them just been a manifestation of him humouring her? Had he put up with her idiosyncrasies because she was a talented worker, and putting up with idiosyncrasies had just been him taking the path of least resistance?

Lucy was mortified to think that she’d somehow drifted into the trap of thinking that she occupied a special place in his life. He had his glamorous, clever women, but she had the guy who laughed at stuff she said, who stopped being the forbidding leader of the pack who was so good at intimidating the opposition.

She’d fancied that she’d somehow accessed the man not many people saw. Had that illusion fed the low-level attraction she felt towards him? Because there was no denying that she was attracted to him.

Well, that thought didn’t exactly fill her with joy and rapture. Yet being near him was like being close to the creamiest chocolate: drool-worthy, but of course off-limits because it was bad for you.

He tempted her, an innocent temptation, and she could acknowledge that she enjoyed that temptation. It made the time she spent at work exciting and she liked that. In a way, she’d become almost addicted to it. Of course, she had lots of friends, and of course she’d dated guys on and off over the years, enjoying their company, but never enough for any of those relationships to develop into anything of significance. She was appalled to think that throughout all those pleasant enough but short-term relationships there had hovered a comparison between those men and her boss.

Ages ago, she had teased her best friend, Helen, that she had a crush on her boss. She knew now that she was guilty of the same weakness, although in Helen’s case that crush had turned to love and had ended in a very happy place.

Her crush, if it could even be called that—and the jury was out on that one—was now revealed as a silly bit of nonsense and the guy in question actually thought a lot less of her than she’d imagined.

‘You’re quiet,’ Malik said flatly, just as she’d slammed shut the lid of her laptop and was preparing to return to her quarters.

‘Am I?’ She tugged her hair over her shoulder and met his questioning dark eyes with a blank expression, and then forced herself to crack a polite smile. The offices where they worked were cold. Very efficient air-conditioning meant that it was vital that she wear a cardigan, and she now shrugged on the patchwork one she had thankfully brought with her.

‘Going to tell me, or are we going to have a round-the-houses guessing game?’

‘I have a headache,’ Lucy told him, reaching down for her laptop and shoving it into the bright-orange vinyl case she’d bought for it.

‘Why do you have a headache?’

‘I really don’t know, Malik. Once I complete my medical degree, maybe I’ll work that one out.’

Malik tilted his head to one side and looked at her without saying anything. He’d been sitting behind his desk and now he vaulted upright to perch on the edge of it, where he continued his silent appraisal until she began to feel hot under the collar.

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