Awakened by Her Desert Captor (10 page)

But as Arkim's hand slipped even lower, precariously close to where Sylvie suddenly wanted to feel him explore her, she had a startling moment of clarity—this man hated her. He believed that she was little more than a common tart, debauched and irredeemable, and she was about to let him be more intimate with her than anyone else had ever been.

Disgusted with her lack of control, Sylvie took Arkim by surprise and pushed herself free of his embrace. For a second when he opened his eyes they looked glazed, unfocused, and then they cleared and narrowed on her. She felt hot and dishevelled. And exposed.

She put her arms around herself. ‘I told you. I don't want this.'

Colour slashed Arkim's cheekbones. He was grim. ‘You want this, all right—you're just determined to send me crazy for wanting it too.'

Something enigmatic lit his eyes, and for a split-second Sylvie had the uncanny impression that it was vulnerability.

That impression was well and truly quashed when he said coldly, ‘I don't play games. Go to bed, Sylvie.'

He turned on his heel, and he was walking away when something rogue goaded her to call after him, ‘You don't know a thing about me. You think you do, but you don't.'

Arkim stopped and turned around, his face etched in stern lines. It made Sylvie want to run her fingers over them, see them soften. She cursed herself.

‘What don't I know?' he asked, with a faint sneer in his tone.

‘Things like the fact that I'd never sleep with someone who hates me as much as you do.'

He walked back towards her slowly and Sylvie regretted saying anything. He stopped a few feet away.

‘I thought I hated you...especially after what you did to ruin the wedding...but actually I don't feel anything for you except physical desire.'

Sylvie was surprised how strong the dart of hurt was, but she covered it by saying flippantly, ‘Oh, wow—thanks for the clarification. That makes it all
so
much better.'

To her surprise, Arkim just looked at her for a long moment, and then he reached for the robe that lay on the ground near their feet and handed it to her, saying curtly, ‘Put it on.'

Now
he wanted her to cover up... Why didn't that make her feel vindicated in some way?

She slipped her arms into the sleeves and belted the thick material tightly around her waist. Arkim was still looking at her intently, but it had a different quality to any expression she'd seen before. She felt exposed, and a little disorientated. For a moment when he'd handed her the robe she could have sworn he'd seemed almost...apologetic.

As much as she didn't want to hear his scathing response again, she was tired of playing a role that wasn't really her. ‘There's something else you don't know.'

Arkim arched a brow.

She took a deep breath. ‘I've never actually...stripped. The main act I do in the show is the one with the sword. I do other routines too, but I've never taken all my clothes off. What I did just now... I made it up... I was just proving a point.'

He frowned, shook his head as if trying to clear it. ‘Why don't I believe that?'

Sylvie lifted her chin. ‘Because you judged me before you even met me, and you have some seriously flawed ideas about what the revue actually is. Why would I lie? It's not as if I have anything to lose where you're concerned.'

She saw a familiar flash of fire come into Arkim's eyes and went on hurriedly.

‘The man who runs the revue—Pierre—he knew my mother. They were contemporaries. When I arrived in Paris I was seventeen years old. He took me under his wing. For the first two years I was only allowed to train with the other dancers. I wasn't allowed to perform. I cleaned and helped keep the books to pay my way.' Sylvie shrugged and looked away, embarrassed that she was telling Arkim so much. ‘He's protective of me—like a father figure. I think that's why he doesn't allow me to do the more risqué acts.'

When she glanced back at Arkim his face was inscrutable. Sylvie realised then that he probably resented her telling him anything of the reality of her life.

When he spoke his voice was cool, with no hint of whether or not he believed her. ‘Go to bed Sylvie, we're done here.'

She felt his dismissal like a slap in the face and realised with a sense of hollowness that perhaps she should have been honest from the beginning. Then they could have avoided all of this. Because clearly Arkim had no time for a woman who didn't match up to his worst opinions.

He turned to walk away again and she blurted out before she could stop herself, ‘What do you mean, “we're done”?'

Arkim stopped and looked at her. He seemed to be weighing something up in his mind and then he said, ‘We'll be leaving as soon as the storm has passed.'

Then he just turned and walked out, leaving Sylvie gaping.
‘We'll be leaving...'
She'd done it. She'd provoked him into letting her go. She'd finally made him listen to her—made him listen as she tried to explain who she really was. And now he didn't want to know. Yet instead of relief or triumph all Sylvie felt was...deflated.

* * *

‘I don't feel anything for you except physical desire.'
Arkim's own words mocked him. He couldn't get the flash of hurt he'd seen in Sylvie's eyes out of his head. And he tried. He couldn't deny that it made him feel...guilty. Constricted.

He'd lied. What he felt for her was much more complicated than mere physical desire. It was a tangled mess of emotions, underscored by the most urgent lust he'd ever felt.

He didn't ever say things to hurt women—he stayed well away from any such possibility by making sure that his liaisons were not remotely emotional. Yet he seemed to have no problem lashing out and tearing strips off Sylvie Devereux at every opportunity.

It should be bringing him some sense of pleasure, or satisfaction. But it wasn't. Because he had the skin-prickling feeling that there was something he was missing. Something in Sylvie's responses. He would have expected her to be more petulant. Whiny. More obviously spoilt.

She'd shown defiance, yes, and even though her dash into the desert had been foolhardy she'd shown resilience.

Arkim sat in his book-lined study with its dark, sophisticated furniture and classic original art. He'd always liked this room because it was so far removed from what he remembered of his childhood in LA: his father's vast modern glass mansion in the hills of Hollywood. Everything there was gaudy and ostentatious, the infinity swimming pool full of naked bodies and people high on drugs.

And now he felt like a total hypocrite. Because when Sylvie had stood in front of him in some parody of what strippers wore—because
he'd
all but goaded her into it—he'd been as hard and aching as he could ever remember being. The insidious truth that he really was not so far removed from his father whispered over his skin and made him down a gulp of whisky in a bid to burn it away.

He'd brought her here and asked for it—and she'd called his bluff spectacularly. She was turning him upside down and inside out with her bright blue and green gaze that seemed to sear right through him and tear him apart deep inside. Showing up everything he sought to hide.

The fact that she'd seemed intuitively to sense the maelstrom she inspired within him had galvanised him into kissing her into submission. And yet she'd been the one who had stood there proudly and told him she wouldn't sleep with someone who hated her.

He'd walked away from her just now because she'd shamed him. The irony mocked him.

Arkim couldn't deny it any more: Sylvie made no excuses for what she did and she had more self-worth than most of the people he encountered, who would look down their noses at her. As he had.

When she'd mentioned going to Paris at seventeen he'd felt a tug of empathy and curiosity that no other woman had ever evoked within him. He'd been seventeen when he'd last seen his father. When he'd told him he wasn't coming back to LA and when he'd decided that he would do whatever it took to make it on his own.

Arkim stood up and paced his study. It felt claustrophobic, with the shutters closed against the storm which raged outside—not unlike the turmoil he felt within.

The truth was that he wanted to know more about Sylvie—more about why she did what she did. About her in general. And he'd never felt that same compulsion to know about her sister.

He'd told Sylvie that they'd be leaving as soon as the storm was over—a reflexive reaction to the fact that she affected him in a way he hadn't anticipated. He'd thought it would be easy, that she'd be easy. The truth was that the storm might pass outside, but it would rage inside him until he quenched it.

If he left this place without having her she would haunt him for the rest of his life.

* * *

When Sylvie woke the next morning everything was dark and quiet. She got up and padded to the shutters over her windows, not sure what to expect. Maybe the castle would be completely buried in sand? But when she opened them she squinted as beautiful bright blue skies were revealed. What looked like just a thin layer of sand lay over the terrace—the only clue to the formidable weather of the previous evening.

Her mind skittered away from thinking of what else had happened. She wanted to cringe every time she thought of how she must have made such a complete fool of herself—prancing around in those stupid clothes. Even more cringeworthy was recalling how for a few moments she'd got really into it, and had seriously thought she might be turning Arkim on.

But he'd been disgusted. Yet not disgusted enough not to kiss her. And she'd responded—which said dire things about her own sense of self-worth.

Thank God she'd managed to pull back. To show some small measure of dignity. If she hadn't, she could well imagine that Arkim might have laid her down on that stone floor and had her there and then—and discovered for himself just how innocent she was. Sylvie balked at that prospect.

The sunlight streaming into the room reminded her of the fact that Arkim had said they'd be leaving. She sank back on the bed. She'd done it. She'd managed to resist him and disgust him so completely that he was prepared to take her home. In spite of the mutual physical lust that sparked between them like crackling fire whenever they got close.

She hated to admit it, but that sense of deflation hadn't lifted. Had she enjoyed sparring with Arkim so much? Had she wanted him to take her in spite of what he thought of her? In spite of her brave words last night?

Yes
, said a small voice, deep inside.
Because he's connected with you on a level that no other man ever has.

Sylvie felt disgusted with herself. Was she so wounded inside after her father's rejection of her that this was the only way she could feel desire? For a man who rejected her on every level but the physical?

Someone knocked on the door and she reached for her robe, pulling it on. Halima appeared, smiling, with breakfast on a tray. She set it up on a table near the French doors and opened them wide.

‘The storm has passed! It will be good weather for your trip with the Sheikh.'

‘My trip...?' Sylvie said quietly, assuming Halima meant her trip home.

The other girl chattered on. ‘Yes, the oasis is so beautiful this time of year...and the way it emerges from the desert—it's like a lush paradise.'

Sylvie frowned, confused. ‘Wait—the oasis? Arkim—I mean, the Sheikh isn't leaving to go home today?'

Now Halima looked confused. ‘No, he is preparing for his trip and you are going with him. I am to pack enough things for a few days.'

Sylvie's heart-rate picked up pace, along with her pulse. What was Arkim up to now?

She rushed through her breakfast and got washed, and when she re-emerged into the suite Halima was waiting with her bag packed.

Sylvie had dressed in simple cargo pants and a T-shirt. Halima took one look and tutted, saying something about more suitable clothing. Sylvie followed the girl into the dressing room, which Sylvie hadn't explored fully yet, having been intent on using her own clothes. But now Halima was opening the wardrobe doors, and Sylvie gasped when she saw what looked like acres of beautiful fabric: dresses, trousers... All with designer labels.

‘Whose are these?' she breathed, letting the silk of one particularly beautiful crimson dress move through her fingers. The thought of them belonging to another woman—or women—was stinging Sylvie in a place that was not welcome.

‘They're yours, of course. The Sheikh had them delivered especially for you before your arrival.'

Shock made Sylvie speechless for a moment, and then she said carefully, ‘Are you sure they aren't left over from the last woman he had here?'

Halima turned and looked at her, incomprehension clear on her pretty face. ‘Another woman? But he's never brought anyone else here.'

Sylvie knew she wasn't lying—she was too sweet...innocent. Her heart started beating even harder. She'd assumed this exotic remote bolthole was one of Arkim's preferred places to decamp with a mistress. She would never have guessed she was the first woman he'd brought here.

‘Here—you should change into this.'

Sylvie blinked and saw Halima holding out a long cream tunic with beautiful gold embroidery. Like a more elaborate version of the tunic Arkim had put on her when he'd found her in the desert.
‘You're burning.'
His reprimand came back.

‘Is this a cultural thing?' Sylvie asked Halima as she slipped out of her trousers.

‘Well, yes. Where you're going
is
more rural, and conservative. But it's also practical. It protects you from the heat and sun.'

‘Where you're going.'
Sylvie was very aware that she had given no indication to the girl that she was
not
going on this trip. Was she going to just...
go
? Acquiesce? Her pulse tripped again at the thought, and a wave of heat seemed to infuse her skin from toe to head.