Desert Nights: Falcon's Prey / The Sheikh's Virgin Bride / One Night With the Sheikh

‘It seems that Zahra purchased a gift for you on my behalf this afternoon. I only trust you will think of me when you wear it.’

The package was flung at her feet. Speech would have been a complete impossibility, as she stared up at him with hate-filled eyes.

‘Pick it up,’ he commanded inexorably. ‘Otherwise I shall be obliged to deliver it again—in person, and since the gift has been given twice, it will have to be paid for twice.’

‘You’re nothing but a barbarian!’ Felicia choked. ‘I was a fool to think you could ever understand what I feel for Faisal… or any other human emotion!’

She bent down, picked up the parcel, and fled before he could retaliate, clutching the tissue paper in trembling fingers. In her room she flung it against the wardrobe door, and the fragile paper tore on the sharp edge of the handle, releasing a froth of sea-green chiffon.

She paled, staring at the silky fabric. The nightgown! Zahra had bought it for her! With Raschid’s money! She was shivering with reaction and despair. In the mirror she could see the redness on her lips from his kisses. Her neck and shoulder burned from the searing heat of Raschid’s practised kisses and her breast was on fire from the arrogant sureness of his hard caress. Her body stiffened with rage.

How dared he treat her like a woman he had bought for the night! She suppressed a wild sob. He had tainted her—stamped on her pride and destroyed the protective shield she had thrown around herself. Never again could she assert that desire was nothing without love and that she could never experience the former without the latter, because for one fleeting moment she had known desire; and it was that more than anything else that caused the hot tears to roll down her cheeks as her fingers curled furiously into her palms and she found some slight surcease in contemplating Raschid’s muscular body writhing in mortal agony.

As for the nightdress… She stared disparagingly at the fragile silk she had coveted not so many hours ago. She would burn it before she allowed it to come anywhere near her body!

CHAPTER SEVEN

BEMUSED, Felicia asked herself how on earth order would ever result from such chaos. The household was preparing to move to the oasis, and Zahra, lifting yet another armful of dresses from her wardrobe, said impishly that it was no wonder that Raschid had absented himself from the house. His excuse had been that he would go on before them to make sure that everything was in readiness for their arrival, but Felicia believed that if he had the smallest spark of decency he would be as anxious to avoid her company as she was his.

Never, if she lived to be a hundred, would she forget the emotionless destruction of her flimsy barriers, the calculated assault on her senses, and the bitter lessons she had learned. When she slept at night she dreamed of him, of his cold, jeering face, and most of all of his knowledgeable, caressing hands, and she would wake, trembling with anguish, tears cascading down her cheeks.

It was no wonder that she was losing weight. Several times she had started to pen a letter to Faisal, telling him as gently as she could that their love had died, but every time she reached the part where she had to beg him to send her the money for her fare home, her pride stopped her. She was reaching the point where she was contemplating paying a visit to the British Embassy, but Zahra’s delight that she would be with them for her birthday celebrations prevented her from making a move until they returned from the oasis. She could manage for a few more days, she told herself, trying to believe that it was true.

‘It’s a pity that Raschid cannot spare Faisal,’ Zahra mourned. A pity indeed, Felicia agreed, although she knew that the supposed ‘emergency’ that kept Faisal in New York was no more than a figment of Raschid’s Machiavellian imagination.

She was helping Zahra with her packing. She had not imagined that a girl could possess so many clothes at the same time, and said as much.

Zahra grinned. ‘Raschid makes me a very generous allowance.’ She indicated a filmy harem outfit comprising baggy trousers in flame chiffon and a matching sequinned top. ‘What do you think of that? I bought it for a joke. Raschid would be furious if he knew.’ Felicia’s raised eyebrows prompted a defensive outburst. ‘Saud said it was a pity that harem dancers no longer existed, outside the imagination of Hollywood producers, and I thought….’

‘I can see what you thought,’ Felicia murmured drily, amused and touched to see Zahra blushing a little. What business was it of Raschid’s if the younger girl chose to play the harem dancer for her undoubtedly appreciative bridegroom? She folded the outfit briskly.

‘It won’t go in this box, it’s full,’ Zahra complained.

‘Never mind, give it to me. I’ve plenty of room in my case.’ Felicia looked rather quizzically at Zahra. ‘Why do you want to take it? You won’t be wearing it until you are married, I trust?’

‘I daren’t leave it here in case one of the maids sees it,’ Zahra confessed. ‘Mother wouldn’t understand.’

‘I can see why,’ Felicia agreed, thinking of the transparent chiffon. It was obvious that Zahra was very much in love with her Saud, and Felicia wondered a little enviously what it was like to prepare for marriage basking in the warm approval of one’s family. Had she ever anticipated Faisal’s caresses with the enthusiasm with which Zahra looked forward to Saud’s?—and not for the first time she questioned her ability to respond to a man’s lovemaking. Had her uncle’s cold rejection of her as a child destroyed her ability to give and receive love? And yet she had responded to Raschid. But she did not love him. She hated him. He was determined to destroy her, she thought bitterly, gathering up the small pile of garments which would not fit into Zahra’s boxes and putting them in her own case. And he did not care what means he had to use to do so. She straightened up and her breast throbbed pulsatingly as it had done when he had touched her. Her face flaming, she squashed the impulse to place her own hand against her quickening flesh in an effort to eradicate the tingling memory.