Desert Prince, Defiant Virgin

CHAPTER THREE

‘I CANNOT be the first person to tell you that you have…talent.’

The harsh emphasis Tair placed on the last word confused Molly. ‘It’s a hobby…it’s just for my own amusement.’

And did it amuse her to steal another woman’s husband? The muscles of his brown throat worked as he regarded her with distaste.

His rigid disapproving stance made her shift uncomfortably, and she dropped her gaze. Seeing her glasses lying on the floor, she bent to pick them up with a grunt of relief. Unfortunately Tair did too, his brown fingertips brushing the skin of her wrist as he reached them just before her.

The brief contact sent a surge of tingling sensation through her body. She stepped back, almost stumbled, then, breathing hard, she straightened up.

Tair watched as she nursed one hand against her chest, his eyes drawn to the visibly throbbing blue-veined pulse spot at the base of her throat.

The air was dense with a sexual tension you could have reached out and grabbed with both hands. It hung in the hot, humid air like a crackling field of electricity.

Tair viewed this unexpected development with as much objectivity as he was able—which wasn’t very much when he was seeing life through a hot hormonal haze.

It hadn’t been slow burn, it had just exploded out of nowhere and it still held him in its grip.

Tair’s jaw clenched as he struggled to reassert control; he was not a man who let his appetites rule him. Of course he had experienced his share of lustful moments but he’d never been drawn to anyone in such an elemental way before.

This personal insight into what this woman could do to a man ought to have made him feel sympathy for his cousin, but it was not empathy he felt when he thought of Tariq following up on the sort of impulse he had just resisted.

Resisted, even though he was free to follow his urges, unlike his cousin.

His hooded gaze slid to her mouth.

‘It’s just for my own amusement,’ she repeated hoarsely.

His own amusement was very much in Tair’s thoughts as his eyes stayed on the soft full outline of her lips. If he followed up on his impulses it would be because he chose to and not because he couldn’t help himself.

He had control.

So why had he been staring at her mouth for the last two minutes as if it were an oasis and he were a man who needed water?

Hands clenched at his sides, he removed his eyes from her lips. If he did kiss her it would be at a time and place of his choosing.

Pushing back strands of loose hair from her brow, Molly extended her hand towards him. ‘Thank you…’

As he looked at her fingertips Tair thought about them trailing over his damp bare skin. A spasm of irritation drew his lean features into a frown. His problem was that there had been too much work in his life recently and not enough sex.

His problem, he acknowledged, was her mouth.

To Molly’s utter dismay, instead of handing her the spectacles Tair held them up to his own eyes.

She watched his dark brows lift towards his hairline and thought how it was typical that the only person who had ever seen past her harmless charade had to be him.

‘Clear glass…?’

He struggled to hide his extreme distaste at his discovery. Presumably the clothes and unmade face were all part of the same illusion. The one that made other women dismiss her as no threat, but every man she came into contact with knew different.

He knew different.

Molly, feeling an irrational level of guilt as though she had been caught out in some shameful crime, shook her head mutely.

She was not about to explain that when arriving at university via an educational hothouse scheme for gifted children, aged sixteen and looking fourteen, she had come up with the inspired idea of looking older by adopting a pair of heavy spectacles. She realised now that they hadn’t made her look older but over the years they had become a safety blanket.

‘A fashion accessory.’

‘I think you should change your fashion guru.’

The suggestion drew a forced laugh from Molly. ‘Fashion isn’t really my thing.’

‘But wearing clothes two sizes too big is?’

He didn’t come right out and say that she looked like a dowdy bag lady, but that was clearly the message in his comment. The voltage of Molly’s smile went up and her muscles ached from the fixed and slightly inane grin her facial muscles had frozen into.

She was comfortable in her own skin, and if this man with his perfect face and better than perfect body couldn’t see past superficial things like make-up and clothes that was his problem. She only had a problem if she started caring what men she met casually thought about her.

It could be she had a problem.

She looked at his fingers holding her glasses. They were rather incredible; long, tapering and the lightest contact with them had sent her nervous system into meltdown. She was sure there was a perfectly logical explanation for what happened—a build-up of static electricity and a freakish set of circumstances that couldn’t be repeated if she tried.

But Molly wasn’t about to put her theory to the test. As far as Prince Tair was concerned she had a strict no-touch policy—her body was still shaken by intermittent aftershocks from his light touch. Anything more intimate and she might well end up hospitalised.

Just as well him getting more intimate with her was about as likely as snow in the desert.

With the fixed smile still painted in place, she reached out to carefully take her glasses from his fingers.

He gave a sardonic smile that Molly didn’t choose to respond to, her cheeks pink as she slid the spectacles onto her nose while expelling a shaky sigh of relief. Of course he knew he was gorgeous. Of course he knew women fainted away when he deigned to throw them a smile, but, God, she didn’t want to be one of them.

It was all so shallow and silly. It seemed a good moment to remind herself that she was neither.

‘I’m meeting Tariq,’ she explained, hoping he would take the hint and go away. There were only so many times a girl could make a fool of herself. ‘He should be here any minute now.’

‘I know.’

‘You do?’ Then why hadn’t he just said so straight off instead of giving her the opportunity to act like a total imbecile?

‘He asked me to deliver a message.’

She gave an encouraging nod. Dragging a sentence out of this man was like dragging blood from the proverbial stone.

‘He is not coming.’

Molly’s face fell. ‘Right, well…thank you.’ She urged him to go—her system couldn’t take all this undiluted testosterone.

‘Beatrice is not well.’

Molly’s mask fell away. ‘Beatrice…’ She pressed one hand to her mouth and, all hint of self-preservation gone, she caught his arm with the other. ‘What happened?’ she asked, her mind turning over the events of two days earlier when she had come across Beatrice sitting with her head between her knees recovering from a slight dizzy spell.

Molly’s first inclination had been to get help, but Bea had begged her not to, saying that Tariq was already wildly overprotective and he would worry himself silly over a moment of light-headedness.

She shouldn’t have let Bea dissuade her, she thought. She should have told Tariq.

Tair felt the fingers curled over his forearm tighten.

‘Apparently she had a…troubled night.’

‘Troubled? What do you mean troubled?’

Anyone who hadn’t seen Tariq come out of her room the previous night might have believed that wide-eyed concern. The mouse was clearly a very good actress, although earlier she had not been good enough to hide her response to his touch. The shocked expression in her widely dilated eyes had been a total give-away.

‘The doctor came this morning.’

‘Doctor…oh, God!’

Tair watched the rest of the colour leave her face. Her fainting on him hadn’t been any part of his plan.

‘And he advised she be transferred to hospital.’ Presumably her reaction had more to do with guilt than genuine concern, or if it was it was a very selective form of that sentiment.

‘Is she…is the baby…? She hasn’t gone into labour yet?’ She quickly reminded herself that lots of babies were born perfectly healthily at thirty-five weeks.

‘As far as I know it is just a precaution…?’ He deliberately injected a questioning note into his voice.

Molly let go of his arm and lifted a hand to her head. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against a tier of elaborately carved cast-iron shelves spilling with lush greenery. ‘This is my fault.’

Tair saw no reason to let her off the hook. If she was beginning to realise that her selfish actions had consequences it was long overdue, he thought grimly.

‘What makes you say that?’

She inhaled deeply and opened her eyes. ‘A few days ago Bea sort of fainted—well, she said not, but I think she did. She asked me not to say anything to Tariq… I knew I should have told him…’ She shook her head and gave a self-recriminatory grimace as she slapped the heel of her hand hard against her forehead. ‘If she’s ill, if anything happens to the baby, it’s my fault.’

She was either a brilliant actress—and no one was that brilliant—or this woman had a seriously skewed take on morality. How could she care about the wife and cheat with the husband?

‘Do you know what’s wrong? Is there something you’re hiding? Is Bea in danger?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not hiding anything. Tariq wasn’t that forthcoming.’

‘He must be frantic!’ If anything happened to Bea or the baby she knew he would be utterly devastated. Her half-brother’s obvious adoration of his wife had been one of the first things that had made her warm towards him.

‘I’m going out to the hospital so I could take you if you like? I’m sure you will be a great comfort to Tariq.’

Molly, deaf to the ironic inflection in his steely addition, turned to him with a beam of gratitude.

‘Really?’

‘I’m sure Beatrice would like to have such an old friend around.’

She smiled and reached out impulsively to touch his arm again as she said, ‘It really is kind of you.’ Then Molly saw he was looking at her hand and with a self-conscious grimace she let it fall away.

‘Not kind.’

The strange way he said it made her throw him a frowning look of enquiry, but his expression told her nothing.

‘Come.’

Molly responded to the command, falling into step beside him as he went through a door that linked the glasshouses with the main building. ‘I was thinking, perhaps I should ring the hospital? They must have left in a hurry. Maybe,’ she mused, quickening her pace to keep up with Tair’s longer stride, ‘there is something Bea would like me to bring for her…’

Molly knew if the positions were reversed she would like to have a few personal things around her to make her hospital room seem more homely.

‘There is no shortage of people to bring the princess what she needs.’

Molly gave a rueful grimace and felt foolish. ‘Of course there is. I just can’t get used to that.’

‘To what?’

‘The fact that there are people to tie her shoelaces if she wants.’ And Beatrice seemed so normal.

‘I forget that you knew Beatrice before she was married. Have you been friends long?’

Molly, never comfortable with the lie, shrugged and mumbled, ‘It feels like for ever.’ Which was true; her rapport with Beatrice had been instant. She doubted she could have felt closer if Bea had been one of her own sisters.

When they reached the courtyard a four-wheel drive was waiting there for them. Tair spoke to the man behind the wheel, who got out and, with a courteous nod in her direction, retreated.

‘I prefer to drive myself.’

Molly dragged her eyes from the vehicle to the man she was going to share it with and felt her stomach muscles tighten nervously. Suddenly this didn’t seem like such a brilliant idea.

‘Should I change?’ she asked, lifting a hand to her head. ‘I should probably tidy up and get something to cover my hair. Look, you don’t have to wait for me—you go. I’ll make my own way to the hospital.’

‘You look fine as you are.’

Tair slid into the driving seat but still Molly hung back. She recognised the reason for her reluctance and knew it was ridiculous, but the thought of being in an enclosed confine with this man and his sexual magnetism scared her witless.

Though wasn’t magnetism meant to work both ways? If so this must be something else because he wasn’t drawn in her direction, reluctantly or any other way!

He glanced across at her, with one dark brow elevated, looking more like a dark fallen angel than ever. ‘Are you coming?’

‘I was just…’ She stopped, her eyes sliding from his as she realised she could hardly tell him his aggressive masculinity made her feel raw and uncomfortably vulnerable.

A spasm of irritation crossed his dark features as she continued to hesitate. ‘Do you want this lift or not?’

Molly told herself to calm down. This was just a lift; she wasn’t signing away her life. All she had to do for Tariq and Bea was to survive for twenty minutes in this man’s company.

‘Well, if it’s no bother.’

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