Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

Quickly Petra suppressed it. Blaize was no prince, Arabian or otherwise, and as for the dancing girl…

But where was he? Virtually the whole camp seemed to have settled down to sleep, and yet there was no sign of him.

Restlessly Petra paced the small pavillioned sitting area, tensing as the opening flap was abruptly pushed back and Blaize came in. He was stripped to the waist, a towel round his shoulders, his hair damp, and as he came in he brought with him the scent of the night and the desert—and of himself.

Petra felt her insides turn softly, compliantly liquid, longing pulsing through her as she gazed helplessly at his body.

She hadn’t truly appreciated its magnificence the first time she had seen it, hadn’t been able to sense its male capacity for sensuality and female pleasure, but now she could.

Abruptly her eyes narrowed, her gaze focusing on the angry claw-marks on his arm, which were still oozing blood slightly. Immediately the earth rocked beneath her feet and she was savaged by her own jealousy.

He had been with the dancer, and she had clawed her mark of possession on him!

Her mark of passion!

Before she could even recognise what she was doing, never mind stop herself, Petra had clenched her hands into small fists and advanced on him, demanding furiously, ‘Where have you been? As if I didn’t know! Was she good? Better than the rich tourists who pay you for your favours?’

‘What…?’

Like lightning the changing expressions chased one another across his face, frowning disbelief followed by a warning, taut concentration. In its place followed an even more dangerous flash of sheeting anger and his mouth compressed and a tiny nerve pulsed in his jaw.

But Petra was in no mood to heed warning signs, and her eyes glittered with a fury every bit feral as his as she stated sarcastically, ‘Silly me! I thought the whole purpose of us being here together was to convince the outside world that we are lovers! But obviously I was wrong and it’s not! No—what’s obviously far more important to you than honouring the arrangement we made is enjoying the… the sexual favours of an… an oversexed belly dancer. But then of course the two of you have something in common, don’t you? You both sell your sexual favours for money and—’

Petra gave a small squeak as she was suddenly lifted off her feet. Her arms were in a vice-like grip as Blaize held her so that their eyes were on the same level.

‘You should check your facts before you start throwing insults like that around,’ he told her, biting the words into small barbed insults, his mouth barely moving as he hurled them lividly at her. ‘If you were a man—But you aren’t, are you?’ he demanded, his voice suddenly changing to a soft sneer as he added, ‘You aren’t even much of a woman… just an over-excited, over-heated virgin, aching with curiosity to know what it’s all about. No, don’t deny it. It’s written all over you—all over every single one of those big-eyed looks you keep on giving me when you think I don’t notice. You’re just desperate to find out what sex is, aren’t you? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you just don’t have what it takes to encourage me to let you find out!’

Every single word he had uttered had found its mark, and Petra felt as though she was slowly dying from the pain of the wounds he had inflicted. But there was no way she was going to let him see that—no way she was going to stop fighting…

‘You mean that I haven’t offered you enough money?’ she taunted him recklessly.

‘Enough money?’ To Petra’s disbelief, he threw back his head and laughed harshly.

‘Despite what you so obviously think, it isn’t money that turns me on, Petra, that makes me want a woman, ache for her so I can’t rest until I possess her in every way there is. Until I wake up with her beside me in the morning, knowing that her body still wears my touch, inside and out, that she is so much a part of me that she still smells of me. But you don’t know anything about that, do you? You know nothing about a man’s desire… the compulsion that drives him to want a woman. Shall I show you? Is that what you want?’

Petra knew that she ought to deny what he was saying… refuse what he was offering her. But all she could do was let her gaze cling helplessly to his, her body motionless in his arms as he lowered his head towards hers!

As his lips touched hers she made a tiny almost mute sound at the back of her throat. Now she knew what it was like to be driven by a need, a thirst so all-consuming that it burned the soul as well as the body—to crave something, someone, to the point where the pain of that craving was an eternal torment. No Nomad lost in the desert could crave water with anything like the same intensity as she craved Blaize right now!

She moaned as he kissed her, wrapping her arms as tightly around him as she could, savouring the hot, deep thrust of his tongue and pressing close to him.

She could feel the anger pulsing through his body, but she was beyond caring which emotion drove him just so long as he never, ever lifted his mouth from her own.

And then, before she could stop him, he was wresting his mouth from hers, telling her savagely, ‘Why the hell am I doing this? I must be going crazy! The last thing I need—or want—right now is—’ He had stopped speaking to shake his head, but Petra could guess what he was thinking! What he had been about to say!

The last thing he needed—or wanted—was her!

Driven by the pain of his abrupt rejection of her, held deep in the grip of a primitive urge, an emotional, immediate reaction to his cruel taunting words she couldn’t control, Petra lashed out at him, her hand raised.

And when, more by accident than anything, her hand hit the side of his jaw his own shock was mirrored by the expression in her eyes as they rounded and darkened. She shuddered convulsively, as though he had been the one to hit her.

She felt him release her and her feet hit the ground. She knew she must have moved, because suddenly she was in her own bedroom, lying curled up in the centre of the lavish bed whilst her whole body trembled with shock and pain, but she had no awareness of having got there—no awareness of anything since that awful moment when she had felt as well as heard the crack of her open palm against his skin.

How could she have done such a thing? She was totally opposed to all forms of violence. It disgusted her to the point where she felt physically sick that she had acted in such a way, but her dry aching eyes refused to provide her with the comfort of cleansing tears to wash away her guilt.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PAINFULLY Petra stared into the emptiness surrounding her. It was barely twenty minutes or so since Blaize had left her, but to Petra each one of those minutes had felt like an hour as she fought to come to terms with the shock of her own uncharacteristic behaviour. She was being tormented—not just by her unwanted love for Blaize, but by her guilt at the way she had behaved as well.

No matter how righteous her cause or how much provocation she believed she had been made to suffer, she still could not excuse or forgive herself for what she had done. To have been so driven by her own demons that she had resorted to physical violence! A shudder of self-loathing and moral outrage gripped her body.

According to the code by which she had been brought up by her parents, she owed Blaize an apology. Never mind that his own behaviour was open to question—his behaviour was something she was not responsible for. Her own was a different matter.

Apologise to him? After what he had said? After what he had done? After the way he had inflamed her senses, her body, until she had ached so feverishly for him that her longing overwhelmed everything else and then rejected her! Never, never. Never, not even on pain of torture, Petra swore dramatically to herself.

But five minutes later, with her conscience digging into her painfully, refusing to be ignored no matter how tightly she cocooned herself in her righteous indignation and tried to smother its nagging little voice, Petra finally gave in. If she waited too much longer she would be disturbing Blaize in the middle of his night’s sleep!

Nervously, she reached for her robe and took a deep breath.

In the outer room the oil lamps had burned low, casting soft long shadows against the darkness.

Surely her apology could wait until morning? a craven little voice urged her. Blaize might well already be asleep. But Petra refused to allow herself to listen to it. She had done something wrong and now she must make amends!

Taking a deep breath, Petra lifted back the entrance fabric to Blaize’s bedroom. In the few seconds it took her eyes to adjust to the darkness she could hear the noisy, anxious slam of her own heart against her ribs, and instinctively she placed one hand against it, as though trying to silence it.

The full moon outside lifted the darkness just enough for her to be able to make out Blaize’s sleeping form beneath the bedcovers. He was lying on his side, with his face towards her, but turned into the pillow so that she could not tell whether he was awake or not. Tentatively she whispered his name, but there was no response. Was he asleep?

If she left now he would never even know she had been here. Longingly she looked back towards the exit, but the stubborn pride her father had always teased her about, that she had inherited from her grandfather, refused to allow her to make a craven escape without first checking that he was actually sleeping.

Head held high, she walked over to the bed. Like her own it was easily wide enough for two people. Uncertainly she looked at Blaize. Was he asleep? He certainly wasn’t moving. Quietly she crept a little closer, automatically balancing one knee on the bed as she did so in order to get a closer look at him.

Tentatively she whispered his name. If he didn’t respond and was asleep then she could return to her own bed with a clear conscience and save her apology until the morning, knowing that she had at least tried to deliver it!

He hadn’t uttered a sound. Exhaling softly in relief, Petra started to back away—and then froze as with shocking speed he reached out and gripped her wrist, demanding tauntingly, ‘Sleepwalking Petra?’

His fingers burned against her skin, and as though he had guessed his thumb probed the uncoordinated thud of her pulse as though he was monitoring her reaction to him.

‘Your blood is racing through your body like a gazelle fleeing from the hunter.’

‘You… you startled me. I thought you were asleep!’

She winced a little as he released her, gritting a soft expletive under his breath. Moving with the swift stealth of a panther, throwing back the bedclothes, he reached out to relight the oil lamp on the table beside the bed, taunting her softly, ‘If you thought I was asleep then what exactly are you doing here?’

Far from being asleep, he sounded dangerously alert, Petra recognised.

As she gave a small nervous shudder his expression changed abruptly. Frowningly he questioned her, ‘What is it? What’s wrong? Don’t you feel well? The desert air can sometimes…’

‘I’m fine,’ Petra assured him quickly. ‘It isn’t…’ Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she struggled to drag her distracted… besotted gaze away from his naked torso. Like her, he obviously did not favour pyjamas. But unlike her, she suspected, from the brief glimpse she had just had of one lean muscular hip and the telltale dark shadowing of hair running down over his taut flat stomach, Blaize did not even adopt the modesty of wearing briefs to sleep in!