Page 12 of Shamed in the Sands (Desert Men of Qurhah 2)

‘I was behaving as other women sometimes behave,’ she protested. ‘Spontaneously.’

‘But most women aren’t being pursued by bodyguards at the time,’ he continued. His voice lowered, and she could hear the angry edge to his words. ‘What would have happened if they had burst in and found us in bed together?’

Leila tried desperately to block the image from her mind. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, I think you’ve got a pretty good idea. What would have happened, Leila?’

She swallowed, knowing that he was far too intelligent to be fobbed off with a vague answer. ‘You would have been arrested,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘I would have been arrested,’ he repeated grimly and nodded his head. ‘Destroying my reputation and losing my freedom in the process. Maybe even my head?’

‘We are not that barbaric!’ she protested, but her words did not carry the ring of conviction.

‘It’s funny really,’ he continued, ‘because for the first time in my life I’m feeling like some kind of stud. Wham and bam—but not much in the way of thank you, ma’am.’

‘No!’ she said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Really? Then what was it? Love at first sight?’

Leila picked up her goblet of black cherry juice and drank a mouthful, more as a stalling mechanism than because she was thirsty. His words were making her realise just how impulsive she had been and how disastrous it would have been if they’d been caught. But they hadn’t been caught, had they? Maybe luck—or fate—had been on their side.

And the truth of it was that her heart had leapt with a delicious kind of joy when she’d seen him again tonight, in his charcoal suit and a silver tie the colour of a river fish. She had stared at the richness of his hair and longed to run her fingers through it. Her eyes had drifted hungrily over his hard features and, despite everything she’d vowed not to do, she had wanted to kiss him. She had started concocting unrealistic little fantasies about him, and that was crazy. Just because he had proved to be an exquisite lover, didn’t mean that she should fall into that age-old female trap of imagining that he had a heart.

Because no man had a heart, she reminded herself bitterly.

‘Love?’ She met the challenge in his eyes. ‘Why, do you always have to be in love before you can have sex?’

‘Me? No. Most emphatically I do not. But women often do, especially when it’s their first time. But then I guess most women aren’t just spoiled little princesses who see what they want and go out and take it—and to hell with the consequences.’

Leila didn’t react to the spoiled-little-princess insult. She knew people thought it, though no one had ever actually come out and said it to her face before. She knew what people thought about families like hers and how they automatically slotted her into a gilded box marked ‘pampered’. But what they saw wasn’t always the true picture. Unimaginable wealth didn’t protect you from the normal everyday stuff. Glittering palace walls didn’t work some kind of magic on the people who lived within them. Prick her skin and she would bleed, just like the next woman.

‘It was an unconventional introduction, I admit,’ she said. ‘To bring my work to your hotel room unannounced like that and ask you for a job.’

‘Please don’t be disingenuous, Leila. That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.’ He sounded impatient now. ‘Which guide to interview technique did you study before you started removing your clothes and climbing all over me? The 1960s Guide to Sexual Behaviour? Or A Hundred Ways To Make The Casting Couch Work For You?’

‘You didn’t seem so averse to the idea at the time!’

‘Funny that,’ he mused. ‘A beautiful woman comes up to my suite, turns her big blue eyes on me and starts coming on to me. She brushes my arm so lightly that I wonder if I’d imagined it, though my senses tell me I hadn’t. Then she pirouettes around so that there can be no mistaking the tight cut of her jeans or the cling of her blouse as she shows off her amazing body. She gazes into my eyes as if I am the answer to all her prayers.’ And for one brief moment hadn’t he felt as if he could be?

There was a pause as Leila forced herself to scoop some jewel-coloured rice onto her fork—terrified that someone might notice that she hadn’t eaten a thing and start asking themselves why. Had she done everything which Gabe had accused her of? Had she behaved like some kind of siren? She lifted her head to look at him. ‘You could have stopped me,’ she said.

Gabe stilled as he met the challenge sparking from her blue eyes. Because hadn’t he been thinking the same thing ever since it had happened? He could have stopped her. He should have stopped her. He should have waited until her bodyguards had gone and then told her to get out of his room as quickly as possible. He could have dampened down his desire, using the formidable self-control which had carried him through situations far more taxing than one of sexual frustration. He could have told her that he didn’t have a type, but that if he did—she wouldn’t be it.

He didn’t like women who were obvious. Who had persistent exes or brothers who were sultans. He had an antenna for women who were trouble and it had never failed him before. He resisted the tricky ones. The

neurotic and needy ones.

But something had gone wrong this time.

Because he hadn’t resisted Leila, had he? He had broken his own rules and taken her to bed without knowing a single damned thing about her. And he still couldn’t work out why. He shook his head slightly. It had been something indefinable. Something in those wide blue eyes which had drawn him in. He had felt like a man whose throat was parched. Who had been shown a pool of water and invited to drink from it. He had felt almost...

His eyes narrowed.

Almost helpless.

And that was never going to happen.

Not twice in a lifetime.

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