скачать книгу бесплатно
She didn’t want him here.
Like others before him, he didn’t believe that she was in danger, which meant that the danger was suddenly increased, because he would be distracting her when she should be alert.
And he was extremely distracting.
Warmth curled inside her as she acknowledged the other reason that she was reluctant to travel with him. It wasn’t just that she didn’t trust him, was it? It was more than that. She didn’t want Karim with her because he made her feel like a woman for the first time in her life. He confused her, with his macho decisiveness and raw sexuality. There was something about the way he looked at her that she found profoundly disturbing. He’d made her feel things she didn’t want to feel at a time when the only thing on her mind should have been reaching Zangrar safely.
Alexa groaned aloud with frustration.
She didn’t want this now.
Not when she was on her way to her wedding. This was not the time to discover that there was actually an intensely passionate side to her nature that had never previously been exposed.
Telling herself that her feelings for the arrogant bodyguard weren’t relevant, she dressed swiftly. This wasn’t about her; her feelings didn’t matter and they never had.
All that mattered was reaching the Citadel safely and marrying the Sultan.
She was relying on the Sultan’s wealth and influence to help restore Rovina to prosperity.
But if the Sultan refused to help her …
He wouldn’t, she told herself firmly as she stuffed her old clothes back into the case. Ruthless he might be, but he was also said to be scrupulously fair. Their fathers had been friends. Surely the Sultan would want to honour the bonds of that friendship?
And as for Karim—well, he was just going to have to learn to follow orders.
Having calmed herself, she walked back to the front of the plane, wearing sand-coloured combat trousers tucked into sturdy desert-boots, and felt a flicker of satisfaction as she saw the surprise in Karim’s eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’ She put the case down by her seat. ‘You were expecting high heels and a tiara? Don’t believe everything you’ve heard about me, Karim. I knew we had to make at least a short journey through the desert. I’ve dressed accordingly. What I didn’t realise was that it was a four-day journey. I need some time to adjust our travel plans.’
‘I have already made the necessary arrangements.’ His authoritative tone made her pause.
‘I make the plans.’
‘Not when you are travelling with me, Your Highness. I am your bodyguard. You do as I say at all times. You go where I go and you sleep where I sleep.’
He made it sound impossibly intimate, and suddenly a dangerous heat exploded inside her. ‘No way. I’d rather travel on my own.’
‘A fool crosses the desert of Zangrar without a guide.’
‘A bigger fool trusts another with her life.’
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘You doubt my ability to protect you? There is no need. You’ll be quite safe.’
Safe.
It was a word that hadn’t been part of her vocabulary for sixteen years. The whole concept of ‘safe’ was a distant fantasy for her. ‘How can I be safe when you don’t even believe I’m in danger? How can you protect me from a threat you refuse to even acknowledge?’
‘The desert is in my blood. If anyone is following us then I will know.’
Alexa stared at him helplessly. She wanted to refuse, but she had to face facts—there was no way she could handle a four-day journey through the desert without expert help. She hadn’t planned for that. ‘You know the desert well?’
Her reluctantly voiced question drew a faint smile. ‘You could drop me blindfold in the middle of it and I would be able to find my way back to the Citadel.’
Arrogant.
That was the other word she’d apply to him. Powerful and arrogant.
Alexa looked away from his firm, sensual mouth, trying to think clearly. Relying on anyone else for anything was completely alien to her, but what choice did she have?
She hadn’t anticipated a journey of four days.
If she was navigating a complex route, she would never be able to protect herself.
‘All right. You do the navigation.’ She spoke the words reluctantly, comforting herself with the knowledge that she was still responsible for herself. He was merely providing the transport. ‘We travel together.’
But she wasn’t going to go where he went, and she certainly wasn’t going to sleep where he slept.
Two hours later she was beginning to feel relieved that she hadn’t attempted the journey alone. The desert was vast, and although the road was clear enough, it was also exposed. There was no way she would have been able to drive and keep watch. There was nowhere to hide and nowhere to run to.
‘Can we drive any faster?’
‘Not if you wish to reach the Sultan alive with all your limbs still attached to your body.’ Karim drove with relaxed ease, sunglasses shielding his eyes from the vicious glare of the sun. ‘If your uncle is that desperate to prevent this wedding, then I’m surprised you haven’t had doubts yourself.’
‘It’s the right thing for me.’ Uncomfortably aware of his hard, powerful body so close to hers, she kept her eyes forward. It felt bizarre to be discussing her forthcoming wedding while feeling the most intense sexual attraction towards another man. ‘You talk a lot for a bodyguard.’
‘In our country intelligence is as great an attribute as physical strength, and both are equally necessary.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘The hunter cannot hunt if he cannot first find his prey, Your Highness.’
Alexa shivered. For the past sixteen years of her life she’d been someone’s prey. She’d thought she’d finally escaped, but looking at the dangerous gleam in Karim’s dark eyes she suddenly felt the fleeting control she’d had of her life slip through her fingers. She had no doubt that he was now the one in charge, and the thought made her desperately uneasy. Did she want to cross the desert with this man for company? No, she didn’t. She didn’t want or need other people in her life. She was so much safer alone.
Trying to control her fear, Alexa checked the mirror again for signs of another vehicle, and then tried to relax by studying the scenery.
Before they’d landed in Zangrar she’d seen the desert as nothing more than a land feature that they were going to have to cross. But as Karim had accelerated towards the highway that led through the desert she’d been astounded and then captivated.
Now, as she looked, she saw endless dunes stretching into the distance, the colours myriad shades of burnt orange.
‘Like my hair,’ she murmured, and Karim glanced towards her.
‘What is?’
‘The desert. It’s the same colour.’ For a moment she forgot about William as she gazed out of the window. ‘It’s astonishing. Fabulous. I never knew that there would be so many colours. I mean, it’s just sand, but—’ She broke off and shaded her eyes as she squinted towards the top of a steep-sided dune. ‘I never thought they’d be that high.’
‘Clearly you have never been to the desert before.’
‘I’ve never been anywhere before.’ Alexa steadied herself as the vehicle bumped over uneven ground. ‘This is a better road than I expected.’
‘Yes, when you can see it. When the wind blows it lies buried under sand.’
‘So how do you find your way when that happens?’
‘Modern equipment. And if that lets me down then I rely on experience and more traditional forms of navigation.’
‘Such as?’
‘The position of the sun, the direction of the wind, the smell of the air.’ He shrugged. ‘The desert tells you much if you are willing to listen. Why are you asking me, when you apparently intended to travel it yourself with no assistance? Presumably you already possess all these skills?’
‘I would have been fine.’ Something on the horizon caught her eye. ‘There’s something moving. I can see something.’ Her heart-rate doubled, but Karim didn’t slow the vehicle.
‘It’s a camel train. It’s how many people still choose to get around in the desert.’
‘Camels?’ Alexa stared, fascinated now that she knew it wasn’t a threat. ‘Can we go closer?’
‘You wish to take a closer look at a camel?’
‘Is that a problem?’
A look of incredulity crossed his bronzed features. ‘No, but it’s surprising. A close encounter with a camel wouldn’t be high on most women’s list of coveted life-experiences.’
‘Maybe not. But most women haven’t been trapped in one place all their lives. Have you any idea what it’s like to see the real thing after staring at a picture?’
‘You are telling me that you’ve never left Rovina?’
Unsettled by her impulsive admission, Alexa clamped her mouth shut. Why had she told him that? She knew better than to confide details of her life to anyone.
Ignoring her lack of response, Karim frowned. ‘Your uncle is clearly extremely protective of you. You should be grateful that he cares so much. Do you not feel that you have betrayed him by running away in the night?’
Protective? ‘If you always take things at face value then you’re not going to be much use as a bodyguard. Let’s just say that my uncle and I seriously disagree about the direction of my future.’
‘You are to become Queen in a year. I expect he feels that you should be in the palace, learning everything you can about your new role.’
Alexa leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She could have told him the truth, of course, but she’d long ago learned the dangers of confiding in anyone, so she stayed silent.
But the reminder of Rovina and William had extinguished her innocent enjoyment of the desert, and suddenly Alexa felt sick. There was still so much that could go wrong in the few days before her birthday and the wedding.
She glanced sideways at Karim. If it came to a fight, would he help her?
He was certainly capable of it. He was dressed in combat trousers and sturdy boots, and would have looked like a soldier were it not for the dark stubble that hazed his strong jaw after a night of travelling. Part soldier, part bandit, she thought dizzily. His hair gleamed blue-black in the harsh desert sunshine, and his bronzed skin betrayed his desert heritage.
He was strikingly handsome and more male than any man she’d met before, his face all hard angles and bold arrogance. He regarded the world with something that came close to disdain, and she knew instinctively that there would be few situations in life that this man wouldn’t be able to handle.
Alexa wished desperately that they hadn’t shared that explosive kiss. Until that moment she hadn’t known how a kiss could feel, and she wished she were still living in blissful ignorance. At least then she wouldn’t be using all her energy trying not to stare at his mouth.
With the hunger of an addict contemplating the next fix, Alexa’s eyes lingered on his powerful shoulders, slid down to his flat, muscular stomach and settled on the hard muscle of his strong thighs. He had the hard physique of a soldier and there was no spare flesh on his lean, powerful frame. The deadly blade of the knife glinted in his belt, and she had no doubt that the gun was also around somewhere close.
‘Stop staring at me, Your Highness,’ he drawled softly. ‘Or is the heat of the desert firing your blood? It has that effect on some people. To be in the desert is to return to life at its most basic and primitive.’
Colour flooded into her cheeks and she looked away immediately, hideously embarrassed that he’d been aware of her scrutiny. ‘I wasn’t staring.’
‘Once you are married to the Sultan you will need to hide the fact that you are attracted to other men.’ The vehicle lurched suddenly, and he muttered something under his breath and swung the wheel, skilfully compensating for the deficiencies of the terrain.
Clinging to her seat, Alexa felt her face burn, and suddenly the heat in the car seemed increasingly oppressive. ‘I’m not attracted to you.’
‘You were gazing at me as you would a lover. The same way you looked at me last night, when you came to my bedroom.’
She’d never had this type of conversation with anyone before, and the breath jammed in her throat. ‘I came to your bedroom to find my passport. And I certainly wasn’t looking at you as I would a lover. Trust me on that one.’
She’d never had a lover, and after one particularly traumatic experience when she was sixteen she hadn’t wanted a lover. Until this moment.
The thought startled and shocked her, and she rubbed her fingers over her damp forehead, trying to return her mind to its previous state of indifference to romance. The experience of her youth had taught her an important lesson. Once—just once—she’d trusted a man and she’d been paying the price ever since. She hadn’t been so much burnt as fried to a crisp. But in a way, that experience had made it easier to do what had to be done. Marriage to the Sultan had somehow seemed less daunting, knowing that love and romance were never going to be an option for her.
Trying to ignore the way Karim made her feel, Alexa stared out of the window, feeling the solid ground of her belief system shifting dangerously beneath her feet. She didn’t want to feel like this. She didn’t want to think these things.
‘Try and stay in character, Your Highness,’ Karim advised. ‘You can’t be bold and feisty one minute and embarrassed the next.’
Angered by his remark, Alexa turned. ‘That depends on the conversation topic.’
He glanced briefly in her direction, a faint smile touching his hard mouth. ‘Thinking about sex is a perfectly natural mind-progression between people of a certain age, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No, I wouldn’t! And I’m not thinking about sex.’ But now the word was out there in the open she felt her pelvis burn and her stomach flip. And suddenly she could think of nothing but sex. And not sex in the abstract or in general—sex with Karim.
With a feeling close to desperation, she felt her eyes stray to his bronzed, capable hands. He handled the vehicle with skill, but the lightness of his touch didn’t fool her for a moment. She knew that Karim was in control. The master. And then her capricious mind imagined those same confident hands moving over her body, and she suddenly felt as though she’d been seared by the flame of a blow torch. ‘Is the air-conditioning working?’
‘You grow hot, habibati?’ His mouth tightened, and it was evident that he didn’t welcome the chemistry any more than she did. ‘You are worried that you are having such explicit thoughts about one man only a few days before your wedding to another? It’s inconvenient, I agree.’
The fact that he’d so clearly guessed her most intimate thoughts left her mortified. ‘I’m not thinking about you at all.’
‘No?’
‘No. And if you think that then you’re delusional.’
‘I’m honest, Your Highness, but I realize that honesty is not a trait that most women possess, especially when they have their eye on the higher prize.’
‘I’m marrying the Sultan in four days.’
‘Precisely.’ He glanced towards her, but the sunglasses made it impossible for her to read the expression in his eyes. ‘You should save those hot, longing looks for your wedding night.’
His words tied her in knots. She didn’t want to think about her wedding night. ‘I don’t want to talk about this any more.’
‘Why? It’s the future you’ve chosen. Why wouldn’t you want to talk about it?’ He turned his attention back to the road. ‘I would have thought you would be interested in knowing about the Sultan.’
Her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. Perhaps talking about the Sultan would return her mind to reality. ‘All right. Tell me about him.’ It didn’t actually matter what they talked about as long as it took her mind off the dangerous chemistry that was pulsing between them.
‘He is a typical only child.’
‘Overindulged?’
Karim gave a faint smile. ‘I was thinking more of the fact that he is a high achiever who is perhaps most at home in his own company.’
‘People must fall over themselves to obey his every wish. It must be difficult. He’s probably surrounded by people who say what he wants to hear, and he can’t really trust any of them because they all have their own agenda.’ Her words were greeted by a long silence, and when she glanced towards him she saw that his jaw was tense.
