Page 13 of A Question of Honor

‘Cheese? Salad?’

The exclamation of annoyance from behind her should have warned her, but she was so determined on not looking at him that she missed it completely. All she knew was that she was suddenly grabbed from behind, snatched up into the air and carried forcibly back into the sitting room. There Karim dumped her unceremoniously on to the settee and pushed her back into the cushions with a firm hand when she struggled to get up again.

‘Stay there,’ he said in the sort of voice he might use to control a dog. One he expected to be obeyed.

Clemmie decided against fighting him over this. He’d been right about her ankle, though it galled her to have to admit it, and the warmth of the fire was welcome after the sneaking chill of the kitchen. She huddled closer to the grate and hugged a cushion tightly for comfort. It did nothing to wipe away the burn of Karim’s touch, ease the uneven lurch of her heart. The scent of his skin still lingered on her sleeve where he had held her and, believing he was occupied with the food, she couldn’t resist the primal urge to rub her cheek against it, inhaling deeply.

‘Food... Such as it is.’

She jumped like a startled cat as a plate came over the back of the settee, pushed almost into her face. Had he seen anything? Had he caught the betraying reaction she’d just given in to? With the scent of his hands still in her nostrils she felt the nerves in her body spring into painful pins and needles life as Karim came close to the fire. Would he sit beside her on the sofa? She didn’t know if she could bear it, cope with it, if he did. But in the same heartbeat she wanted it; longed for it with a burn that scorched her nerves.

So it was impossible to snatch back the sigh that escaped her when Karim took the only other seat in the room, pulling the battered brown armchair up to the fire as he sat down with his own sandwich on a plate. She saw that the sound had caught his attention, watched that warning frown appear between his dark brows, and nerved herself for the inevitable sarcastic comment.

Surprisingly it didn’t come.

‘Why do you live here? Like this,’ Karim demanded instead.

The way he looked round the room, dark eyes assessing, made her grit her teeth. She knew the cottage was shabby. But she liked it that way. It was the way that Nan had left it when she’d died and it brought back such wonderful happy memories of those brief childhood visits.

‘I’m sorry if it’s not the sort of palace that you are used to.’

‘Nor the sort of palace you are used to,’ Karim parried. ‘And very definitely not the sort of place you will be living in from now on.’

Don’t remind me! Did he really think that would be the sort of thing that would make her think differently about this cottage? That she would actually prefer the marble palace of Rhastaan where her life had been signed away as a child and from which she could never hope to escape?

‘But this place is my own! All mine and no one else’s.’

And until Karim’s arrival, no one from Markhazad or any of the surrounding desert kingdoms had known anything about it. He had invaded her privacy, stalking into her home like some dark, arrogant wild cat, taking with him her last traces of seclusion and solitude. From now on her life would not be her own. She would live in the public eye if she ever set foot outside the palace. And inside... Her mind skittered away from considering the prospect of life with the husband who had been chosen for her, the emptiness of a political marriage from which she had no escape.

If he had looked like Karim, though...

‘Yours?’ Karim queried.

She really had his attention now. That probing gaze, dark with disbelief, was fixed on her face, and a frown had snapped his black brows together.

‘My grandmother lived here, and I visited sometimes when I was a child. She left me the cottage in her will—and—well, there didn’t seem much point in changing it seeing as I was only here for such a short time and...’

She had foolishly taken a small bite of her sandwich and now her throat closed sharply over the bread so that she almost choked. She grabbed at the glass of water, all they had to drink, and swigged it desperately, hoping that he would miss the tears in her eyes or at least take them for the result of her coughing fit rather than a reaction to the cruel combination of past memories and the prospect of the future that had assailed her. Karim didn’t move an inch, didn’t even blink, his own sandwich part raised from his plate but frozen in mid-air. She could feel the burn of his searing stare, those dark eyes seeming to strip away a defensive layer of skin and leaving her raw and vulnerable underneath.

‘Two day-old bread!’ she managed by way of an explanation, waving her own sandwich in front of her face in the hope of distracting him. ‘Too dry.’

It was too, she realised with a grimace as she made herself force another mouthful down. She had been expecting to move on from the cottage, so her supplies of food had been deliberately run down.

‘So you were planning on going back?’ He’d picked up on what she had been about to say without her having to complete the sentence.

That brought her head back, her chin coming up in defiance as she blinked the betraying tears away from her eyes in order to be able to face him. In the firelight, shadows flickered and danced across his rough-carved face, making it impossible to read what thoughts the black ice of his eyes really held deep inside them.

‘Don’t sound so surprised. Of course I was going back.’ The prospect of what might happen if she hadn’t made her shudder inwardly. ‘In fact there was no need for your father to send you—or anyone else to come and fetch me.’

Oh, but there was. Karim prayed that his reaction didn’t show on his face. He had no wish to have her panicking and making things so much worse. If they could get any worse.

His appetite vanishing in the blink of an eye, he tossed his sandwich down on to his plate and slammed it on to the small coffee table. He was supposed to be out of here now, and well on his way back to Rhastaan. In fact they should have been there already, landing at the airport where Nabil’s security men would be waiting to take over. He would be free of his duty, of the promises that had been made, free of the burden of responsibility for Clementina, and on his way back to his own life.

Except that the changes in that life meant that he would never again be really free. No longer the ‘spare’ to Razi’s heir, with the extra degrees of independence that had brought, he was now learning what it meant to be the future Sheikh of Markhazad. Belatedly, he felt he had begun to understand just why a sense of rebelliousness, of restlessness had driven his brother. He also had to try to be both sons to his father, who had felt the loss of his heir so terribly.

But to think of Clementina as a burden grated against something deep inside. Her position and the promises his father had made, the peace treaties that were at risk now, were what made this situation so difficult. Without them, being with this beautiful woman, whose face was lit by the flames in the hearth, putting a glow into her eyes, tinting her skin with gold, would be no burden at all.

Hell, no!

Ferociously he slammed a door shut in his mind, cutting out the dangerous thoughts. But it was too late. Already his senses had responded, his blood flooding with a heat that had nothing to do with the burning coals that were only making the smallest impact on the encroaching cold. His gaze fixed on the softness of her lips, gilded by the light, so full, so soft that his own mouth hungered to take them, to plunder their sweetness, feel them give way under his, yield to the invasion of his tongue. He wanted to tangle his hands in the fall of her hair, inhale the intimate scent of her body, feel the softness of her breasts against him as he had when he’d carried her into the house after her fall in the snow.

Damnation, he wanted more than that. He wanted her on her back on this rug right in front of the fire. He wanted her under him, holding him, her body arching up to meet his, pressing herself closer...

No.

Grabbing his glass of water, he downed the entire contents in a series of harsh, powerful gulps that did nothing to douse the fires inside him. His body ached, the hardness between his legs making it impossible to sit comfortably, so that he pushed himself to his feet and paced around the room, finding a new frustration in the impossibly small space that confined him. What he needed was a brutal workout, a punishing run for miles until he was exhausted, or an ice-cold shower to subdue his demanding libido.

All of which were impossible for him, even the cold shower. Unless he went outside into the snowstorm, of course. And he could just imagine Clementina’s reaction if he did any such thing.

And, the way he was feeling, he doubted that even jumping into one of the snowdrifts would do anything to cool the heat that had been building up inside him ever since he had first met Clementina.

She was watching him now, her eyes wide with confusion and bewilderment, and who could blame her? He was acting like a captured wolf, trapped in too small a cage. He had to get a grip and distract himself from the hunger that was eating at him.

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