The Mistress Bride

What he wasn't seeing was the anxiety lurkin

g behind the coldness-thank goodness - because now that she actually had him here in the flesh Evie had cravenly decided she needed time before she said what she had to say to him.

So her barely perceptible shrug sent one of his sleekly defined black silk brows arching, and in two very economical and outwardly innocent gestures war between them was declared. It was not a new aspect of their relationship. In fact the whole foundation of it had been built on a refusal on both parts to pander to the arrogance of the other. Evie refused to pander to his god-like ego and Raschid refused to pander to her ice-princess image.

'I have responsibilities,' he clipped out. 'Really?' Evie drawled.

His eyes began to spark. 'My time is not always my own to do with as I please.'

'So it didn't please you to keep me waiting for almost an hour?' Her turn to use sarcasm, his to respond - or not -depending on his mood.

What he chose to do was to begin walking towards her with the sleek soft tread of a predator ruthlessly stalking its prey. Her nerve-ends began to tighten, sending out electric signals to all parts of her body as she watched him grow in height, in power, in skin-flaying mastery the closer he came to her.

The man was sheer poetry in motion. So lean and lithe and dark and deliciously dangerous that, by the time he came to a stop mere inches away from her, the breath had completely seized in her chest, and tiny tight tingles of a very familiar excitement were beginning to shimmer through her blood.

And this, Evie told herself helplessly, was why she could not bear to consider the prospect of giving up this man.

He touched parts of her no other living being had ever touched.

Liquid gold eyes held iced blue in challenge. A hand with long, lean brown fingers that knew how to be cruel if the moment presented itself came up to take hold of her tilted chin.

'Word of warning,' Raschid murmured softly. 'I am in no mood for temperament tonight. So be wise, my darling, and drop the disgruntled act.'

'But I am disgruntled.' Evie' immediately defied the warning. 'You treat me like a lackey and I don't like it.' 'Because I arrive late once in a while?'

'You arrive late more often than you arrive early,' she grimly pointed out.

To her annoyance, his mouth twitched, an unexpected dash of wicked amusement entering the battle. 'And aren't you ecstatic that I am such a latecomer, hmm?' he countered lazily.

It took her a few moments, but when his meaning did manage to' sink in Evie sighed, wrenching her chin from his grasp as a wave of pink ran into her cheeks. 'We weren't talking about your sexual prowess!' she admonished.

'Ah,' he sighed. 'That is a great shame.'

'Raschid!' Evie flashed him a look of irritation. 'I'm not-!'

In the mood for this, she had been going to snap at him-but he silenced her with a kiss, his arms snaking around her body and crushing her against him while his arrogant mouth took burning possession of hers.

But the real crime here was that she didn't attempt to make a protest-didn't even pretend to struggle but simply dived right in there with him. She couldn't stop herself. For Raschid tapped a hunger inside her that had not abated in two long years of being fed exclusively by him.

Two years involved in a relationship that had kept their two families pulsing in the background in simmering disapproval, and had kept the world's tabloids waiting with bated breath to see which one of them would eventually end it. Because it had to end some time, everyone knew that. The heir to a wealthy sheikhdom was expected to marry one of his own one day. While Evie had already blotted her copybook once by turning her back on a marquis to be where she was now. But the pressure was still on for her to do the right thing and marry into her own class, outdated, outmoded and in danger of extinction though that class might be.

But it was the undisputed knowledge that the end was as inevitable as night following day that helped keep their relationship this hot and this fevered.

'So, do we eat or do we continue to fight?' Raschid murmured as his kiss-warmed mouth lifted away from hers.

For 'fight' read 'love', Evie ruefully translated, and knew without a single doubt which one she wanted tonight.

Needed, she thought tragically, how she needed him tonight!

She needed his strength, his dark and driving sensuality.

She needed to soak herself in him, drown herself in him, die in him. For this one night she needed to pretend that nothing was different between them. Be the woman he knew and loved so that he could be the man she loved so desperately.

For he was truly all man, this Arabian lover of hers. A man who could make love with just his eyes-as he was doing to her right now. Teasing, knowing, lazily seducing, and so indolently aware of his power over her senses that he didn't need to read the darkened look in her eyes to know how much she wanted him.

'Are you wearing anything at all underneath this?' she asked, playing for time by stroking her palms along the lean, tight contours she could feel beneath the smooth white tunic.

'Why don't you open it and take a look?' he invited, and began nibbling at the corner of her mouth in encouragement while his fingers played tantalisingly with the thin straps that were holding up her dress.