Nan Ryan (26 page)

A cold mask had dropped
over the Sheik’s handsome features. His black eyes, looking out from between their thick lashes, were hard and flat and totally unreadable. With an air of bored indifference he walked directly toward the table, and Temple realized, sickly, that he was feeling none of the attraction and excitement and wild desire she felt for him.

Mortified, she flushed hotly and hoped that her taut, aching nipples, pressing against her gown’s tight bodice, were not visible. She’d die of shame if he had only to look at her and know exactly what his presence had done.

Sharif reached the table, pulled out a chair, and waited. Temple didn’t move. He finally spoke.

“Have you already had dinner?”

“No, I was waiting for … No.”

She moved toward him unsteadily, seeking his eyes as she sat down on the chair he held for her. But he withheld his gaze. Still, when he pushed her chair up to the table Temple half expected him to place his warm brown hands atop her lace-covered shoulders, lean down, and brush a kiss to her cheek.

He didn’t.

Sharif moved lithely around the table, took the chair across from her, draped a damask napkin over his knee, and lifted a domed silver lid from a steaming platter of curried lamb. He held out his hand, and she automatically passed him her plate. After two or three attempts at making conversation, Temple gave up and the meal was consumed in strained silence.

Temple wasn’t hungry.

She forced herself to eat a little. It seemed that the longer she chewed each mouthful of food, the larger it became, until she felt as if she couldn’t possibly swallow one more bite. She laid her heavy sterling fork on the plate and looked at him from beneath lowered lashes—and was startled to find he was watching her coldly, the cruel lines around his mouth more clearly in evidence than ever.

She was relieved when—after the longest half hour of her life—he finally laid his napkin on the table and rose. He came around, helped to her feet, then turned and walked away. Temple remained standing at the table, busying herself pouring hot black coffee from a long-beaked pot into two fragile demitasse cups.

Not trusting her unsteady hands to carry both at once, she took a steaming cup to the Sheik where he stood just outside the tent’s open entrance, smoking a cigarette, gazing out at the moonlit desert.

“Thank you,” he said politely, taking the cup but avoiding her eyes.

“You’re very welcome,” she replied bitingly, and went back inside, at a loss, wondering what she could have done to so displease him.

He was far too complex for her to understand. The mystery of the man into whose hands she had fallen was beyond her solving. She had seen him go from cruelty to tenderness in the blink of an eye. And then back again. She had watched him show infinite patience with Rhikia, genuine affection toward Tariz, and respect to the loyal men who served him.

At the same time he had exhibited no compunction about wielding his jewel-hilted dagger to slit the throats of the raiding Turks. Nor did he hesitate to mete out harsh punishment to one of his tribe if he felt strict discipline was warranted. And while he had never raised a hand to her, he had treated her with a coldness that bordered on cruelty.

She didn’t know why his mood was so black this evening but could only suppose that with last night’s loving he was satisfied he had conquered her fully, had tamed her as completely as one of his harem girls, so he was now finished with her.

He was, she knew, extremely cunning. He had never made a move to force her. He had never really attempted to seduce her. He had simply made her live in very close quarters with him until she had weakened and walked right into his arms. Now he’d had her and that was that. She was no longer a challenge, and he was no longer interested.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, and Temple had no one to blame but herself. For the first time in her life she was getting a dose of her own medicine. And it hurt. It hurt badly.

Temple went back to the table, lifted the demitasse to her lips, and took a sip of the strong black coffee she’d come to like. She realized with a jolt of astonishment that she had come to like many things about this simple, basic life in the Sheik’s desert village.

She finished her coffee and carefully set the empty cup back on the table. Then she turned about and saw the Sheik walk back into the room and shrug out of his tuxedo jacket. He was offhand, cool. Without so much as an inquiring glance in her direction, he went to the long divan and, as if she were not there, lay down.

Temple braced herself against the table as she looked at his tall, lean body stretched out in repose. The steely strength of his long arms and legs was more than conspicuous even in the relaxed attitude in which he was lying. The soft black cotton of his pleated shirt clearly contoured the iron muscles of his chest. And beneath the fine fabric of his tuxedo trousers, the sinews in his long hard thighs bunched and pulled as if rebelling against their restraint.

Her fingertips gripping the table’s edge, she watched the way his deep, slow breaths caused his broad chest to expand, his drum-tight belly to contract so that the waistband of his pants fell away, leaving a space between trousers and man. Temple bit her lip.

She was assailed with an almost overwhelming desire to go to him. To fall to her knees beside the divan, lay her hand on his stomach, and slowly slide her fingers down inside his trousers. Imagining her fingertips gliding over the smooth cotton of his shirt and the hot flesh beneath, her gaze guiltily moved lower. His full groin was appealingly cupped by the fabric of his tight trousers, and Temple felt her own groin stir inside the lace-and-satin confines of her French underwear.

She turned her head quickly, clutched the table until her knuckles turned white, and took a couple of quick breaths to compose herself. When she was fairly confident that she was capable of walking—that her weak knees wouldn’t fold beneath her—she released her death grip on the table. For a moment longer she stood there working up her nerve, then bravely she crossed the large room to stand before the tall ebony bookcase.

Pretending to deliberate over her choice of reading material, Temple stared unseeing at the dozens of leather-bound volumes before taking one from the shelf. Swallowing with difficulty, she moved to a big comfortable hassock, sat down, carefully crossed her legs, and began to read. Or to act as if she were reading.

The silence in the room was deafening.

Each turn of the page resonated; each breath she drew was amplified. The beating of her heart reverberated like the throbbing of a bass drum.

Temple stood it for as long as she could, which was only a few minutes. She slammed the book shut. It sounded like a pistol shot. She laid it aside, rose to her feet, and said, “If you’ll excuse me, I …” Her words trailed away.

Sharif didn’t look up. He didn’t move a muscle. His dark head didn’t even turn. He continued to lie there stretched out on the long divan, smoking a cigarette and staring at the billowing white tent ceiling overhead.

“Good night,” she said evenly, trying to sound calm, desperate to hide her hurt from him.

“Night,” he replied, and his deep, soft voice in the quiet room made her jump.

Temple forced herself to walk across the room at a normal, unhurried pace. It was a dreadfully long walk. Finally she reached the dividing curtains, stepped through sedately, and allowed them to fall back in place behind her.

She expelled a long, painful breath as her eyes filled with burning tears.

Once she had gone, Sharif’s dark eyes closed helplessly in misery. He clenched his teeth together so strongly, pain shot up his jaw. His breath was labored, and he felt as if someone had ripped open his chest, reached inside, and viciously squeezed his heart.

His belly contracted.

His groin expanded.

He was in agony.

Purposely he had stayed away from camp all day. He had sought complete solitude in an all-out effort to clear his head of her. He had berated himself for what he had done to her. Had reminded himself exactly who she was and why he had brought here. And he had sworn to himself that he would not touch her again.

Sharif opened his eyes, swung his long legs to the floor, sat up, and reached for a cigarette.

He shook his dark head in despair.

When finally he had returned to the village and stepped into the tent, the sight of her had taken his breath—and his self-control—away. Never had she been more beautiful, more bewitching. It was as if she had deliberately made herself irresistibly seductive in order to undermine his resolve.

Sharif lighted his cigarette, badly needing to calm his raw nerves. He took a long, deep drag on the aromatic cigarette. He closed his eyes, but it did no good. He opened them.

Open or closed, he saw Temple. Temple in the stunning black lace gown standing there with one knee slightly bent, the long dress molded to her tall, slender body. He couldn’t forget the way the gown clung like a second skin to the tempting roundness of her buttocks and stretched across her flat stomach and the arch of her hips. He hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that her shoulders and back were the same as bare, covered only with alluring black lace.

Sharif reached up and jerked open his shirt collar as the recurring sight of pale, full breasts swelling beneath black lace made him feel as if he were choking. A muscle jumped in his lean jaw at the recollection of tempting nipples, conspicuously taut, rising in twin points to push provocatively against the gown’s tight bodice. His lower belly spasmed as he recalled the fleeting glimpse he’d caught of her rigid right nipple when she’d raised her arm to push a fallen lock of hair back up in place.

Impatiently Sharif snuffed out the smoked-down cigarette and reached for another. But he didn’t light it. Teeth grinding again, a vein pulsing on his tanned forehead, he dropped the cigarette back into the silver box. His head swung around and he stared at the curtains behind which was the pale-skinned blond beauty in black lace responsible for his suffering.

Sharif knew he would find no peace. He would not sleep this night. The woman on the other side of the curtains was already in his blood, and he knew there was only one way of getting her out of it.

His dark eyes icy with determination, yet smoldering with heat, the Sheik rose to his feet.

Temple blinked back the tears
.

She refused to let herself cry. Gritting her teeth, she began dispiritedly to undress. Or attempt to get undressed. Her arms behind her back, her fingers tugging and pulling, she struggled with the tiny hooks of her black lace gown. But her trembling hands were inept, and the hooks were stubborn. After much wasted effort, she managed to get only a few undone.

It was futile.

“Damnation!” she muttered in rising frustration, tears threatening again.

Exasperated, she whirled about and sank onto the edge of the Sheik’s large black-silk-covered bed. She sighed heavily, made a terrible face, and shook her head in despair. She had always prided herself on being intelligent and self-reliant and resourceful. She was none of those things! She was a foolish woman at the mercy of an imperious male, and she couldn’t even undress herself!

Forced to wait for Rhikia, Temple sat on the bed with her arms crossed, humbled and humiliated by her helplessness.

Emerald eyes snapping with self-reproach, she turned her head quickly when the curtains parted. Expecting Rhikia, she was speechless when she saw the Sheik. Her lips parting in stunned surprise, she rose to her feet and started to speak. But what she saw in his glittering black eyes silenced her before she could utter a word.

In their fathomless depths was a hunger that bordered on savagery.

Temple trembled as he decisively approached, but it was not with fear. It was from her undeniable physical attraction to him.

Sharif reached her, stood towering over her, his wide black-shirted shoulders blocking the light spilling into the bedroom through the open curtains. Wordlessly he held out his hand to her. Hurt pride made her refuse to take it.

“No,” she warned, finding her voice at last. “You touch me and you won’t live ’til morning.”

“A chance,” he said, unfazed, “I will have to take.”

He reached out and eased her half-open black lace dress off a pale shoulder. She trembled at the touch of his warm, gentle fingers.

“I do not want this,” she protested in a shaky, unconvincing whisper, knowing even as she said the words that she couldn’t resist his dark power, couldn’t combat her unholy attraction to him. She drew a shallow, ragged breath and stared, entranced, at this virile, nonworshiping lover whose passionate embrace, though deadly, was addictive.

Nonetheless she managed to say a bit more firmly, “And I do not want you.”

“Then I shall have to make you want me,” he replied, wrapping a long arm around her waist, tempting her into complicity with his overpowering maleness. Pressing her up against his tall, hot body so ropy hard with muscle that she winced from the sudden electric contact, he bent his dark head and buried his lips in the curve of her neck and shoulder.