The Arabian Mistress

Lean fingers twitched the book out of her nerveless grip. He studied the scantily clad Viking hero on the cover with very male amusement. ‘Colourful.’

‘Just something to pass the time—’

Stunning eyes glittering, Tariq studied the rising pink in her lovely face as she sat rigidly upright in the bed. ‘But now I am here…’

‘So?’ Faye lifted her chin.

‘I am much more accessible than the guy in the book…better taste in clothes too.’ Sinking down on the side of the bed, Tariq closed his lean hands to her slim shoulders to tilt her forward into his arms.

I will freeze him out…I will not respond, she swore vehemently to herself.

‘Ice is a challenge to those born in the desert,’ Tariq breathed with audible amusement, the sun-warmed scent of him flaring her nostrils as he toyed with her tremulous lips in a provocative, darting foray. ‘You know that you burn for me too.’

No more, she told herself feverishly. Ten ones are ten, she chanted inside her head as he pressed her lips apart and she quivered, suffering not only from temptation but also from the sheer weight of her anticipation. Ten twos are twenty, she continued, struggling not to lean into him, struggling not to moan as he let his tongue flick in a sexy intrusion between her parted lips. Parted lips? Close them! Think about something else, desperation urged.

Tariq laced one hand into her hair and kissed her slow and deep until the blood drumming in her veins hit fever pitch and her heart was hammering. A second wife hurtled up to grab her memory at the last moment, for during the afternoon she had wondered whether one of the reasons for remarrying that he had not declared was his responsibility for three young children. She jerked her head back from his, a sudden chill dousing her shameless heat and said jerkily, ‘Last night, you used the expression “a second wife”…’

‘Yes.’

‘That suggested that you had had another wife…so I want to know if that was me you were sort of referring to?’ Faye pressed awkwardly.

‘Who else?’ Tariq confirmed drily.

All of a sudden Faye had no need of multiplication tables to keep her brain focused. She drew back from him with a bewildered look. ‘So you are saying that we were really married…properly married, even if it didn’t last long?’

‘What else?’

What else? What else? In complete shock as the reality that they had been truly married that day a year ago sank in, Faye snaked back from him, taut spine bracing to the banked-up pillows behind her. She studied him with huge, shaken eyes. ‘But you told me that that wedding ceremony was a total sham!’

‘No,’ Tariq contradicted with extreme coolness. ‘I told you that the essential meaning of a ceremony into which I felt forced was a sham but I never at any stage suggested that it was not a true marriage in the eyes of the law.’

Faye was transfixed as he made that outrageous nit-picking distinction. She just gaped at him. ‘You mean I was genuinely your wife after that ceremony?’

‘What else could you have been?’ Tariq asked even more sardonically. ‘You were my bride.’

‘Your b-bride…?’ she stammered, all wits having deserted her. ‘Percy told me the ceremony could only have been some kind of Jumarian mumbo-jumbo when I told him that you had already divorced me again—’

‘But I had not already divorced you and there is no mumbo-jumbo in the law of Jumar,’ Tariq ground out, his dark, deep-set eyes hard with disgust. ‘But how typical that offensive suggestion was of the man who made it! How could your stepfather have made that judgement when I forbade him the right to attend? Naturally it was a legal marriage and, considering that we were first wed by a Christian man of the cloth, how could you pretend to believe otherwise? Unlike your stepfather, I am a man of honour.’

Faye was staring at him with a heart sinking further with every second that passed and every word he spoke. ‘I’m not pretending, but the Christian minister didn’t use a word of English either and I wasn’t sure he was what I thought he was. I only believed it was all a sham because you said it was… And you knew I thought that—’

‘I know you say you thought that now. When we talked at the Haja, that is certainly the excuse you attempted to employ for your behaviour in accepting that bank draft and fleeing the embassy last year,’ Tariq outlined with daunting precision. ‘I soon realised that.’

‘The excuse?’ No matter how hard Faye tried to master the stupor of shock settling over her, she failed. Only two days back, she was recalling that when they had sheltered from the storm Tariq had made comments that had struck her as utterly incomprehensible. ‘In the cave, you said something about me not having followed you back to Jumar…you said a true wife would never have left the embassy. At the time, I didn’t understand because your saying that made no sense—’

‘I see no point in rerunning this drama so long after the event,’ Tariq spelt out coolly.

Faye studied his lean, strong face fixedly. ‘But I have a right to know. Are you telling me that a year ago you would have accepted me as your wife if I had stayed or later flown out to Jumar?’

‘I have no crystal ball to tell me what I might have done in a set of circumstances that did not arise…so that is a foolish question.’

‘A f-foolish question,’ Faye parroted but inside her had sparked a flame ready to surge into a towering inferno of incredulous raging pain. ‘I didn’t notice you trying to haul me back from running away that day—’

‘Naturally not—’

‘Because you couldn’t get rid of me fast enough! At least, be honest about that,’ she urged him bitterly.

‘Understandably I was still very angry with you but I was not responsible for the decisions that you made—’

‘But I didn’t know I was making any decision…I thought the decision had been made for me! For goodness’ sake, I believed that you had divorced me within minutes of our wedding, so there wasn’t the slightest chance that I would have hung around, was there?’ she argued with feverish emotion.

Tariq dealt her a shimmering appraisal, his lip curling. ‘Perhaps you would like to be my wife now that the money I gave you then is spent—’

‘I won’t even dignify that with an answer!’ In receipt of that ultimate put-down, Faye felt a convulsive sob clog up her throat. ‘You let me walk out on our marriage and you didn’t come after me—’

‘Why would I have done so?’ Tariq countered with sardonic bite. ‘You were in the wrong…I was not. You made no attempt to discuss our differences or defend yourself at the time. You simply took the money and ran.’

Faye trembled. All too late she was recognising Tariq’s worst flaw. A level of stubborn, unyielding pride that appalled her. He had been so stubborn and so proud that he had let her walk away from their marriage for ever, never once allowing for the fact that she might have misunderstood the situation or that she might have been innocent.

‘What else would I have done when I believed you had just divorced me and I had no idea there was a bank draft in that envelope for I never opened it? You misjudged me, yet I would have forgiven you for that…’ An unsteady laugh empty of humour fell from her lips. ‘But

you can’t believe that you could be wrong about anything. Aside of lying about my age which is something teenagers the world over do, my only sin was just accepting your marriage proposal—’

‘Faye—’

She moved a shaking hand, too wounded to look at his lean, bronzed features. ‘But you were offering me what I wanted more than anything in the world. I loved you… And, yes, guilty as charged, I desperately wanted to be your wife!’

Tariq closed a strong hand over hers but his own hand was not quite steady and she was able to detach her fingers with ease. ‘No one of us may change the past.’

Faye turned her back on him, bitterness enclosing her along with a mortification so deep it hurt. How could she talk as she had to him? How could she reveal so much? What was the point? He had never wanted to marry her in the first place, so naturally he was proofed against her every attempt to argue in her own defence.

‘I’ve got only one more thing to say.’ She breathed unsteadily. ‘You know about as much about real love as I know about ruling Jumar so don’t kid yourself that that was love you were feeling! Your horse has got more sensitivity. Percy tried to make a fool of you and that outraged you because I bet no one had ever dared to do that to you before. So you took it out on me and you’re still taking your hurt pride out on me…’

The silence that followed seethed and sizzled.

‘Are you quite finished?’ Polar ice would have been warmer than that ground-out question.

She squeezed her eyes shut in misery. Hurt pride. Two words her macho desert warrior would never forgive her for. But then he was no good at forgiving anything, so why should she care? He thought she was a horrible little gold-digger, an inveterate liar and schemer, still set on trying to feather her own nest. But, worst of all, he had cared so little for her that he had let her leave him even though she had been his wife. You were in the wrong…I was not. She shuddered. No, that had not been love, not what she recognised as love, so she need not torment herself with the belief that she had lost his love, but tears still coursed silently down her cheeks.