‘Can we talk now?’ Already Raschid was removing his clothes in quiet, economic movements.
‘I have no desire to talk.’ In the soft light shadows obscured his expression.
Tension formed an iron band across her temples. She had already opened her case, but little within was suitable for a desert sojourn. What might have been comfortable would not be deemed respectable among nomads, whose women were shapelessly if colourfully covered from head to toe. Pulling out a lawn nightdress, Polly hesitated, her fingers coiled tight in the fabric. ‘I was crying and he was comforting me. He kissed me…I didn’t kiss him.’
He grated an Arabic profanity, his teeth a feral white slash against his sunbronzed features. Frustration and strain summoned tears to her eyes. Granted more privacy than tent walls, she would have dared his anger and persisted. Edgily she began to undress again. Never had she been more conscious of Raschid, never had skin seemed more indecently naked.
Impatient fingers wrenched the nightdress from her grasp and flung it aside before she could drop it over her head. As she collided in shock with incandescently blue eyes, the brand of fear she could taste flooded her mouth. ‘No…!’ she shuddered in stricken understanding.
Raschid doused the lamps, plunging them into darkness. He found her with ease. There was no place to go, no room for evasive action, and if she cried out, the whole camp would hear her. Whatever she did, it would not turn Raschid from his cruel purpose. He was in the merciless grip of a murderous rage which had smouldered unabated for over five days. The icy mask of disdain he had shown her at Ladybright had been a fa;alade, no more indicative of his real feelings than a smile would have been.
He laced a hard hand into the silken fall of her hair. ‘Let me show you how I would treat a whore,’ he invited with soft, biting menace. ‘If I thought of you as my wife, I would kill you with my bare hands. Yes, you succeeded, aziz. Celebrate your hour of victory now, for the glory will be brief. You twisted my guts with jealousy, and for that education, I am ungrateful.’
‘There’s nothing between Chris and…’ His hand clamped over her lips.
‘I doubt if he’ll want you back when I am finished with you. That lingering and so appealing innocence of yours will be gone. And then he would have to wait a very long time. For as long as it amuses me you will remain in Dharein, and when I wish, I will lie with you,’ he swore with muted savagery. ‘You have no rights. I grant you none, and I thank you for revealing your true self. I have you on my terms now, and I will yield you no quarter.’
Polly was paralysed by the raw force of his invective. A sleeping tiger had been kicked into wakefulness and uncaged. She had yearned for the power to pierce his detachment, but not with the violent, destructive drive of emotions that had splintered his control. For that sin and for this vengeful act of subjugation he intended, Raschid would never forgive her. He would despise himself for using force with a defenceless woman. Her brain functioned frantically as he joined her, his lean body achingly familiar, but the hands sweeping her shrinking flesh were coolly set to shame, not to pleasure.
‘I…I need to go…outside,’ she stammered in desperation.
Releasing his breath in a hiss, he folded back. Barely able to credit the success of her gambit, Polly blindly fumbled for some clothing and footwear, pulling on what she suspected was his discarded woollen tobe.
‘Don’t get lost.’
For once, intuition was letting him down. Until he cooled off, Polly had no other objective inside her panic-stricken head. Raschid was not presently accessible to reasoned persuasion.
Fortunately their tent was set some distance from the others near the edge of the camp. As a dog barked she quickened her step. Her energy level was on an adrenalin boost. Moonlight cast a black and white photographic clarity on the desert, and she ran like the wind. Glancing back to check that her flight had gone unnoticed, she hurried on again without looking—and stepped into mid-air. She went head over heels down a slope that had lain concealed by shadow, sand gritting her mouth and her nose, but she didn’t cry out. At the bottom, winded, she got up and shook herself, her heart thumping fit to burst.
It seemed common sense to travel along the meandering valley of low ground between the dunes rather than exhaust herself trying to climb. Besides, she wasn’t planning on straying too far. The air was surpris-ingly humid, lacking the frost she had expected, and she settled into a half trotting, half walking pace in the eerie, supernatural quiet. Raschid would look for her, and by the time he found her—lord knows, a herd of camels couldn’t have left clearer tracks—she prayed that he would have calmed down. Should anyone else be involved in her disappearance, he could say that she had lost her bearings. Nobody would suspect that it hadn’t been an accident. Well, what else could she have done?
Raschid was half out of his mind with jealousy. A dark, profoundly sexual jealousy, new to his experience, had ripped the lid off his outer skin of cool to reveal the passionate turbulence of the emotions beneath, and the strength of those emotions had shattered her. If he had felt like that, why had he left her with Chris in England?
Without warning the entire surrealistic landscape around her was brilliantly illuminated by a forked flash of lightning. A fine mist of sand sprayed her shocked face as a wind came up out of nowhere and the first drops of rain sprinkled down. Above her the black velvet heavens were suddenly ripped asunder by spearing arrows of blinding light that jetted down into the ground with a ferocity that terrified her. Like a strobe disco display magnified a thousand times, the elements began to go mad.
The rain now fell in a lashing blast, plastering fabric wetly to her limbs, stinging her exposed skin. Instinctively she crouched down, trying to protect herself from the incredibly heavy downpour. When an animal leapt at her, she was knocked flat, and since she hadn’t seen what had attacked her, she screamed so loudly that she hurt her throat. The dog stood over her whining, while its panting mate raced up and licked at her hand.
Raschid barked a command and the dogs retreated. The noise of the thumping rain prevented Polly from hearing what he slung at her. Water streamed down his face as he lifted her and practically threw her up on to Marzouk’s back. Her instant of unholy relief at first sight of him was limited by the realisation that he had put his saluki hounds on her trail. He had hunted her down like an animal.
It was a nightmare trek back to the camp. Her teeth chattered convulsively, her skin numb from a cold that penetrated to her bones. Raschid had to carry her into the tent.
‘If I took a whip to you now, no man would blame me!’ he roared at her above the storm. Ablaze with dark fury, he dropped down to strip the sodden tobe from her shivering limbs.
‘You put dogs on me, you brute!’ she gasped.
He produced a towel and began to rub it roughly over every complaining, squirming inch of her. As her circulation revived, the exercise became painful. Unsympathetically he glowered at her. ‘What were you waiting out there for?’ he demanded. ‘Noah’s Ark? You lie in a shoeb…a dry torrent bed. Didn’t you see the water pooling? Within minutes it would have flooded. In winter there are flash floods in the desert. My own people have drowned. The storms come suddenly
and it’s not always possible to reach higher ground!’
‘Stop shouting!’ she begged.
He rolled her dexterously into a quilt and tugging her forward, towelled dry her dripping hair. ‘Another few minutes and the salukis would have lost your scent in the rain,’ he bit out rawly. ‘You could have died. Your tracks would have been washed away and the sands above you would have slipped down to conceal your body. Allah be praised that you are saved and that no man lost his life in pursuing the most stupid, reckless…’ At that point words seemed to fail him and he subsided. Rain-washed violet eyes framed by spiky wet lashes surveyed her pallor with grim satisfaction.
In the electric silence, he slowly breathed in and screened his eyes. ‘I shout at you, but the blame is mine,’ he asserted in a roughened undertone. ‘In threatening you, I have shamed myself more than you have shamed me in the arms of your lover.’
Polly’s eyes ached. Her hand crept up uncertainly on to the brown fingers resting tautly on his thighs. ‘He’s not my lover—I was telling the truth. It was an emotional moment and Chris made a mistake,’ she cited unsteadily. ‘But if you won’t believe me, if you won’t listen, what more can I do to convince you?’
Raschid’s hard-set profile was unresponsive. He looked at her small hand and it retreated immediately. He got up. ‘You should not have returned,’ he said very quietly. ‘But what choice had you? I placed you in an intolerable position with your family.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I must attend to Marzouk.’ He vanished back out into the slackening rain before she could utter the heresy that his horse was more expendable than he was and he was still soaking wet.
An opportunity to vent some of his pent-up anger had made him more approachable, and even in anger he had automatically taken care of her needs. What agonised her was the suspicion that, guilty or innocent, she was no more welcome. Then that scarcely fitted his behaviour. Jealousy suggested…what? Caring? She grimaced. It was more likely to be the reaction of a very possessive male, enraged by the slur on his masculinity and the insult to his pride. He had walked away from her in England. Yet he had arrived that day with flowers and an evident intent to surprise her. It didn’t make sense.