‘Well, then…’
‘Is that what you think this is all about? Do you think me so corrupt that the money you offered me at the restaurant isn’t enough to buy my co-operation?’
‘What else am I to think?’
Khalil sat back, his arms folded over his chest. ‘And just how much do you think you’re worth?’
Joanna’s jaw tightened. ‘Don’t play with me, Khalil. I don’t like it!’
‘Ah.’ Amusement glinted in his eyes. ‘You don’t like it.’
‘That’s right, I don’t. It’s bad enough that you’ve kidnapped me—’
‘And I don’t like your choice of words.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What would you prefer me to call it? Shall I say that you’ve decided to take me on a sightseeing trip?’
His face turned cold and hard. ‘What I do, I do because I must.’
Joanna sat forward, the blanket dropping unnoticed to her waist. ‘All you had to do was say you wanted more money. My father would surely have been willing to—’
‘Money!’ His lip curled with disgust. ‘You think there is a price for everything, you and your father. Well, this is what I think of your pathetic attempts to buy me!’
He dug the envelope she’d given him from his robe, folded it in half, and ripped it into pieces that floated into her lap like a paper sandstorm. For the first time, she permitted herself to admit that he might have kidnapped her for some darker, more devious reason.
‘Then—then if it’s not for the money…’ She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. ‘I see. You want to hurt my father.’
Khalil’s mouth narrowed. ‘Is that what I want? It must be, if you say it is. After all, you know everything there is to know about me and my motives.’
‘But you won’t hurt him,’ she said, leaning forward towards him. ‘You’ll just make him angry. And—’
‘I don’t give a damn what he is!’ Khalil reached out quickly and caught her by the shoulders. ‘He can be angry, hurt, he can slash his clothing and weep for all I care!’
‘Then why—if you don’t want money, if you don’t care how my father takes the news of my kidn—of my abduction, what’s the point? Why have you done this?’
A quick smile angled across his mouth.
‘Ah, Joanna,’ he said, very softly, ‘I’m disappointed. You seem to know so much about the kind of man I am—surely you must have some idea.’
She stared at him, at those fathomless dark blue eyes. A tremor began deep in her muscles and she tensed her body against it, hating herself not only for her fear but for this show of weakness she must not let him see.
Before she’d left New York, the same people who’d teased her about her chances of running into the ghost of Humphrey Bogart had teased her with breathless rumours of a still-flourishing white slave trade, of harems hidden deep within the uncharted heart of the desert and the mountains that enclosed it.
‘And what a prize you’d be,’ a man at a charity ball had purred, ‘with that pale skin, those green eyes, and all that gorgeous red hair!’
Everyone had laughed, even her—but now it didn’t seem funny at all. Now, with Khalil’s fingers imprinting themselves in her skin, she knew it was time to finally come face to face with the fear that had haunted her from the moment she’d found herself in this plane.
‘My father won’t let you get away with this,’ she said in a low, taut voice.
‘Your father will have no choice.’
‘You underestimate him. He’s a powerful man, Khalil. He’ll find where you’ve taken me and—’
‘He will know where I’ve taken you, Joanna. It will not be a secret.’
‘He’ll come after me,’ she said, her voice rising, becoming just a little unsteady. ‘And when he rescues me, he’ll kill you!’
Khalil laughed, a soft, husky sound that made the hair rise on the nape of her neck.
‘I am not so easy to kill. Abu Al Zouad will surely tell your father that.’
‘How about my government? Do you think you can make a fool of it, too?’
‘Your government?’ His dark brows drew together. ‘What part has it in this?’
She smiled piteously. ‘I’m a US citizen. Perhaps, in your country, women are—are like cattle, to be bought and sold and—and disposed of at will, but in my country—’
‘I know all about your country, enough to know your government won’t give a damn about one headstrong woman who runs off—’
‘I didn’t run off! You—’
‘—who runs off with a man on a romantic adventure.’
‘Me, run off with you on a romantic adventure?’ She laughed. ‘No one would accept that! Anyway, my father will tell them the truth.’
‘He’ll tell them exactly what I authorise him to tell them,’ Khalil said coldly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Why would he lie?’
‘This thing is between your father, Abu Al Zouad, and me. No one else will be involved.’
‘You’re unbelievable,’ Joanna said, ‘absolutely unbelievable! Do you really imagine you can tell my father what to do? Maybe you should have spent more time in the West, Khalil. Maybe you’d have realised you’re only a man, not a—a tin god whose every insane wish has to be obeyed!’
‘I’m impressed,’ he said, with a condescending little smile, as if she were a pet he’d just found capable of some clever and unexpected trick. ‘Any other woman would be begging for mercy, but not you.’
Joanna’s chin lifted. ‘That’s right,’ she said, determined not to let him see the depths of her fear, ‘not me! So if that’s why you abducted me—so you could have the pleasure of seeing me grovel and weep for mercy—you’re out of luck.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Joanna, but my reasons were hardly so petty.’ He gave her a slow, lazy smile. ‘I took you because I can use you.’
Her eyes flashed to his. ‘Use me?’ she repeated. ‘I don’t—I don’t understand…’
His smile changed, took on a darkness that made her breath catch, and his gaze moved over her lingeringly, from her wide eyes to her parted lips, and finally to the swift rise and fall of her breasts.
‘Don’t you?’ he said softly.
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‘Khalil.’ She swallowed, although the effort was almost painful. ‘Khalil, listen to me. You can’t—you can’t just—’
‘Shall I have you sold at the slave-market?’ He took her face in his hands and tilted it to his. ‘You would bring a king’s ransom in the north, where eyes the colour of jade and hair like the embers of a winter fire are very, very rare.’
Oh, God, Joanna thought, oh, God…
‘You wouldn’t do that,’ she said quickly. ‘Selling me would be—’
‘It would be foolish.’ He smiled again, a quick angling of his lips that was somehow frighteningly intimate. ‘For only a fool would sell you, once he had you.’
‘Abducting me is foolish, too!’ She spoke quickly, desperately, determined to force him to listen to reason. ‘You must know that you can’t get away with—’
‘What would you be like, I wonder, if I took you to my bed?’
Patches of scarlet flared in her cheeks, fury driving out the fear that had seconds before chilled her blood.
‘I’d sooner die than go to your bed!’
He laughed softly. ‘I don’t think so, Joanna. I think you would come to it smiling.’
‘Not in a million years!’
His fingers threaded into her hair; his thumbs stroked over her skin.
‘How would your skin feel, against mine?’ he said softly. ‘Would it be hot, like fire? Or would it be cool, like moonlight against the desert sand?’
There it was again, that sense of something dark and primal stirring within her, like an unwanted whisper rising in the silence of the night.
‘You’ll never know,’ she said quickly. ‘I promise you that.’
Khalil’s eyes darkened. He smiled, bent his head, brushed his lips against Joanna’s. A tiny flicker of heat seemed to radiate from his mouth to hers.
‘Your words are cool, but your lips are warm,’ he murmured. Her breath caught as his hands slid to her midriff. She felt the light brush of his fingers just below her breasts. ‘Fire and ice, Joanna. That is what you are. But I would melt that ice forever.’ He pressed his mouth to her throat. ‘I would turn you to hot flame that burns only for me,’ he said, the words a heated whisper against her skin.