A Cinderella For The Desert King

CHAPTER THREE

‘TIME TO STRETCH your legs.’

Abby murmured sleepily and ignored the voice but couldn’t ignore the creak of leather and the abrupt removal of the hard warmth she had been pressed against—as illusions of security went, this one was on an epic scale.

Abby fought her way through the layers of sleep and blinked... The ground was a long way off and the horse she sat astride was stamping and snorting restlessly.

She’d been asleep. How on earth had she actually slept?

She arched her back to stretch out the cricks in her spine and felt herself slip, so she grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a piece of horse mane—to regain her balance. Feeling slightly more secure, she risked letting go for a moment to brush away the hair that had fallen across her face, effectively blinding her.

She was half-inclined to pull the silky curtain back in place when her eyes connected with those of the tall man standing, arms folded across his chest, watching her.

Of their own volition, her eyes made the journey up from his dusty boots to the edges of the gold embroidery along the traditional gown he wore. Her throat drying as they reached his face, she lost interest in moving away. He was beautiful in a sharp-intake-of-breath, tummy-clenching way. The carved symmetry of his dark, dramatic features framed by the pale head-covering was riveting.

She quickly shook off her rapt expression, looking away and silently blaming her fascination with the carnal curve of this man’s mouth on the situation... Everything that had happened felt more akin to an out-of-body experience than reality.

‘I’d prefer not to stop,’ she said.

‘Is that a fact?’

His tone made her flush. ‘I just meant...the thing is... I wasn’t alone when they—’ She stopped as, without warning, a wave of revulsion tightened like a fist in her stomach, an echo of the fear she had felt when she had been thrown in the truck. It took her a couple of swallows to regain enough composure to finish huskily, ‘When they took me.’

He watched her thoughtfully as she fought for control.

‘They, the rest of the group I was travelling with, are stranded—we have to...’ She stopped, frustrated because he didn’t seem to grasp the urgency.

‘They are three grown men.’

Relief rushed through her; she’d asked her captors what had happened to the men left behind but the only response she’d had she hadn’t been able to understand. ‘You saw them?’ she said eagerly.

He tipped his head in acknowledgement.

‘They’re not hurt? Did they get the car going?’

‘They have shelter; they can survive a night in the desert.’

‘You haven’t reported their whereabouts to anyone?’

‘Following you seemed a priority at the time.’

She bit her lip. ‘And obviously I’m very grateful. I’m just worried about my friends.’

‘One special friend perhaps?’

The insinuation made her flush. ‘They are work colleagues. I’m a model. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to go and check, just to be sure.’

‘Be my guest.’

* * *

He took a step back and spread an arm in a sweeping gesture towards the miles upon miles of undulating ochre sand. The first fingers of the rising sun had drawn a line of deep red along the horizon and he knew she was seeing a vast, terrifying emptiness, but Zain also knew that it teemed with life and all around them the nocturnal creatures that inhabited the vastness were hiding away from the oncoming day and the heat it brought.

‘Which way do you suggest we go?’

She took refuge from frustration in a childish retort. ‘So what you’re telling me is to shut up and do as I’m told because you know best.’

Head tilted, he considered her comment. ‘In the desert, I definitely know best,’ he retorted calmly. ‘You coming down?’

‘Where are we?’

Not civilisation; the pale grey light of dawn revealed that much. There was something that looked like grass under their feet and a few scrubby trees to their left which blocked the view beyond. Behind them lay the seemingly endless miles of bare, bleak desert blushed pink by the dawn. She shivered again.

* * *

He had never seen skin so smooth, features so crystal-clear... He brought his list of her attributes to an abrupt halt. Her beauty had made her a victim today, but it was inevitable that there had been many occasions when it had played to her advantage, when men had made fools of themselves over her.

Zain dragged his eyes, which were inclined to linger on the long length of her slim, shapely legs, upwards. The twist of his lips held self-mockery as he observed, ‘It’s a bit late in the day for caution, don’t you think?’ His heart might be in cold storage but it seemed his libido was still active and functioning.

Maybe that was the way forward?

Not here, not now and definitely not with a woman who probably didn’t even realise how vulnerable she was. But empty sex, while not exactly an original way to move on, was a tried and tested method and appealed to him a hell of a lot more than drowning in self-pity or becoming celibate.

Sex was healthy if you kept it free of emotions. And he had learnt to control his years ago...mostly... Unbidden, the moment he had got his first glimpse of the kidnapped woman flashed into his mind.

When he set out to find her he’d had no mental image in his head of the woman he was seeking—she hadn’t actually been a person for him. Regardless, nothing he could imagine would have come close to the reality.

He hadn’t needed the cacophony of competing music blaring from the trucks to cover his entrance into the ramshackle encampment. All attention had been fixed on her. In a heartbeat the electric air of anticipation in the place had been explained. It had taken Zain a moment to absorb every detail of her lithe, lush body, the impossibly long legs, the sinuous curves, the pale skin and tangled skein of flaming auburn hair. There was nothing plastic or air-brushed about her—just a warm, luscious, desirable woman.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine her on a billboard selling anything and maybe causing a few accidents. She was the sort of woman to make a man forget about his troubles. Not that he was that man but, even so, the last few miles with her soft body pressed against his had made for an interesting journey—just him, the sleeping girl and his testosterone. There was a simplicity to it that, after a day of his calculating his every expression and verbal intonation, had been a strange sort of relief.

* * *

It took a couple of seconds for Abby’s exhausted, stress-racked brain to pick its way through the man’s critical comment.

‘You think it was my fault I got kidnapped? I asked for it maybe...? You know, one of the things I despise most is victim-blaming...not that I am—a victim, I mean—but...oh, hell!’ She threw up her hands, immediately losing her balance and a couple of wild, flailing moments later falling straight into his open arms.

The impact of hitting a chest that was as hard as steel expelled a soft whoosh of air from her lungs as the arm banding her ribs loosened enough to let her slide slowly all the way to the floor. It was obvious before she made land fall that the rest of him was equally hard—the man was built of solid muscle—and falling had felt less alarming than the head-spinning, stomach-fluttering sensation that made her world spin. The sensation was so strong it was a breathless moment before she managed to get her erratic breathing under control enough to protest.

‘Let me g...go!’

He did, with a care that bordered, unexpectedly, on tenderness. ‘I’m not the one doing the holding,’ he pointed out, angling a quizzical look at her fingers still clutching the sleeves of his robe.

Before she could react to the taunting reminder, the blades of his dark brows drew into an interrogative straight line above his spectacular, dazzling blue eyes. ‘What’s that?’

She lifted a hand to the puffy, swollen area on her arm where his accusatory glance rested. ‘A bite, I suppose.’

He laid one hand on her forehead, caught her wrist with the other and extended her arm, bending in closer to inspect the area.

‘Do you mind? That hurts!’ she protested, turning her head away and tugging on her arm; after what had happened it seemed bizarre that he had fixated on this minor problem.

‘So you dress like you’re off to play a game of beach volleyball, and for good measure don’t use mosquito repellent. Do you know how dangerous this desert is?’

Fighting the urge to pull at the hem of her shorts to cover herself from his contemptuous gaze, she lifted her chin a defiant notch and cut across him.

‘It was a photo shoot. I don’t choose what I wear, and I did use repellent.’ It had been in the sunscreen that she had virtually bathed in. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to go straight back to my hotel,’ she announced.

He looked startled, then, after a short, stunned-seeming silence, gave a laugh. ‘I am not a taxi service.’

The amused hauteur in his response made her feel marginally less awful about coming across like some sort of snooty tourist, but she could see he had a point.

Her descent from snooty was rapid and clearly not at all what he’d expected. ‘Of course not. Sorry. And I suppose it’s a bit late but I’m tremendously... Thank you,’ she said, her gratitude as genuine as her hope he really was one of the good guys. She felt the ball of fear in her stomach tightening and refused to acknowledge it.

The groove between his brows deepened. Her rescuer hadn’t expected the back-down and it threw him, as did the obvious genuineness of it. ‘I don’t require your thanks.’

The lingering shock in her system made her response teary. ‘Tough, I’m grateful.’

‘What were you doing all the way out there alone anyway?’ His question had an unexpected throaty quality.

Abby took a breath, feeling tears press against her eyelids, and tried to flatten out her emotional response. Facts, she could do facts.

‘We were meant to be much closer to the city, but nobody had factored in the wedding. Did you know? Sorry, it doesn’t matter.’ All her efforts focused on not sounding weepy, she avoided his eyes. That bright, glittering stare made it hard for her to concentrate. ‘But it did complicate things—there was a no-fly zone, diversions and a lot of restrictions.’ They had sat in an airport lounge drinking coffee while emails between the firm paying for the jaunt and the director decided their fate. ‘I even wondered at first when I was...’ Catching herself up short, she gave a self-conscious little nod. She swallowed, her hand pressed to her throat as she relived those awful moments when the men had grabbed her. ‘I wondered, actually hoped it was a set-up for publicity...’ She swallowed again and rubbed her hands over her forearms, remembering the sensations of total, overwhelming helplessness. ‘I feel grubby.’ She wasn’t talking just about the sand clinging to her skin and hair or the assorted smears of dirt on her inadequate clothing.

‘Then come.’ He tipped his head towards the trees. ‘Bathe.’

She blinked at the unexpected response.

‘A horse needs water.’ He took hold of the horse’s reins and approached the scrubby undergrowth.

The incline had not been apparent from where they had stood but it explained why she hadn’t been able to see the taller trees or the palms. An oasis meant water and soon they reached it, a bubbling trickle that rose up from the ground and ran in a thin silver ribbon through the trees. Neither horse nor rider paused; instead they carried on, the reason becoming clear a few moments later when the stream fed into a pool of turquoise water framed by palms.

Her exposure to life’s ugliness had given her a new appreciation of life’s beauty, and emotion deepened her voice as she stared at the shimmering, postcard-perfect image and gasped. ‘It’s beautiful!’

The stranger watched her battle to subdue the tears, blinking and sniffing but stubbornly determined not to add any new tear tracks to her face as she pressed a hand to her soft, trembling lips. Standing there, bedraggled, her face filthy and scratched, she knew she looked ridiculously fragile. Stubborn pride was the only thing holding her up.

‘We need to do something about your arm.’

The first hint of gentleness in his voice released the floodgates and the tears began to overflow, sliding down her cheeks as first one sob escaped her lips then another. They just kept coming...deep, subterranean sobs that shook her entire body.

* * *

Without thinking, Zain reacted to her distress. He moved in closer, took her by the arms and stood there, bodies close but not touching, his chin on her head while she wailed like a banshee. One look at her tear-filled eyes and the fear warring with pride there had touched him in a corner of his heart he hadn’t known existed.

The sobs and tremors shaking her body subsided and finally she pulled away, looking embarrassed rather than grateful.

‘I must look terrible,’ she sniffed, not quite meeting his eyes.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, too distracted by the scene playing in his head to display any tact.

She was under him, her warmth pushing up into him, her body arching as he slid deep inside her.

He’d known her barely a few hours and already it was becoming a recurrent theme that his imagination was intermittently adding erotic details to. More a man for action, Zain had never thought fantasies were any substitute for reality. What he hadn’t realised until this moment was just how frustrating they were!

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