The Desert Prince's Mistress (12 page)

Lara tossed and turned, her frustration mounting as she heard Darian’s immediate steady breathing. As the night wore on tiredness gave way to anger and hot tears began to scald at the corners of her eyes. She felt alone and afraid and abandoned.

That’s only because it’s the middle of the night, she told herself. The lowest ebb of all is the hour just before dawn, when you seem to be the only person in the world.

Darian woke to a sound. A little sniff. In the darkness, he frowned, wanting to ignore it, but there it was again, another tiny little sound, and he sighed. ‘Why are you crying, Lara?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m not.’

‘I know this must be a difficult concept for you to embrace, but couldn’t you just try telling the truth for once?’ he drawled sardonically.

She contemplated ignoring him, but just the sound of his voice reached out and comforted her, like a warm fire. A human voice in the dead of night. ‘Why do you think? It’s bloody uncomfortable on this thing!’

‘Well, you do have a choice,’ he remarked sagely.

Yes, she did. She could lie here like a martyr, or she could take a little decisive action. Picking up her pillow,
she walked back over to the vast bed and slid in beside him, taking care to lie on the very edge.

‘Be careful you don’t slip off.’

His voice sounded amused, and it was the amusement which finally made the anger and frustration inside her snap. She flicked the light on, sat up and glared at him, spirals of hair tumbling all over her face. She impatiently pushed them away with the back of her hand.

‘Just why did you bring me here, Darian?’

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’

‘I’m serious!’ she hissed.

He could see that. The woman who had so entranced him with her feistiness at the casting was back. And how. Her cheeks flamed like roses and her eyes sparked a bright sapphire fire. His eyes drifted to her breasts and he felt his body jerk in reaction.

‘Why do you think I asked you?’ he asked tightly. ‘Because I was angry with you.’

‘Surely if you were angry with me then the most sensible solution would have been to wish me as far away as possible?’

‘But sense doesn’t come into it when sex is involved,’ he said bluntly. ‘Does it?’

His voice was curt, almost cruel. ‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘It doesn’t.’

He had planned to have his fill of her. To make love to her over and over again, in every way and in every position. To learn every inch of her body like a man conquering a brand-new country. And only when he had done that would he move on and forget her.

But the time had not been right. Not before dinner, and strangely enough not now, even though they were in bed together and he was naked beside her.

If it had been any other woman he would have started to kiss her. He was experienced enough to kiss away her
doubts and have her sighing with pleasure, a consummate enough lover to know how to make her beg for him. But he saw the dried track of a tear, the sudden tremble of her mouth, and something stopped him and he knew that he could not. Not when she looked so cold and so lost and so damned vulnerable.

She’s just
acting
again, he told himself furiously, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. And deep down he didn’t think she was acting at all—she wouldn’t bother pretending not to have been crying quietly in the dark if she was, would she? He got out of bed and slid on a pair of boxer shorts before climbing back in.

‘What are you doing now?’ she asked, a slight tinge of hysteria to her voice.

‘Allaying your fears that I might try it on in the middle of the night,’ he said gravely. ‘See? I’m quite decent now, Lara.’

Decent? If he had swathed himself from head to toe in voluminous sackcloth, then ‘decent’ would still be the last word she would have used. And now she was confused—from being fearful that he
would
try it on, that she would have trouble resisting him, her self-esteem had taken a great plummet. Didn’t he want her any more?

‘Come here,’ he said, almost gently, and pulled her against him.

‘No.’ She tried to resist the impact of that warm, living flesh. ‘Go away,’ she mumbled, but she didn’t move.

He smoothed the silken tumble of her curls, thinking how soft they felt, the scent of her shampoo drifting towards his nostrils with its wholesome fragrance. For the first time in his life he felt disarmed by a sense of protectiveness—he didn’t know how and he didn’t know why. He just knew that it couldn’t have come at a more unwelcome time. ‘Just go to sleep, Lara,’ he sighed.

With one final sniff she snuggled against him, and it felt
like coming home. Like walking into a room with a fire when you had been outside in the cold. But that was all an illusion, she reminded herself. A wish and a dream and a desire—all mixed up in her head and a million miles away from reality simply because she
was
a million miles from reality.

Yet the warmth of his embrace was irresistible, as was the rhythmic movement of his hand stroking her hair as he lulled her into a state of utter defencelessness. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, and she didn’t want to.

Her last thought before drifting off into a fitful and dreamless sleep was that this was the kind of thing you should do with a man before you had sex with him. Being intimate without being too intimate. Building something slowly instead of grabbing at it. She felt like a child who had gobbled all the icing off the top of the cake. And how she wished she hadn’t.

When Lara’s eyelids fluttered open, it was to find Darian’s space beside her empty. In fact, the room was empty. She blinked her eyes and rubbed them just as the door opened and in he walked, carrying a pile of clothes. Her heart flipped over when she saw him.

It’s just because he’s wearing jodhpurs, she thought—all men looked good in jodhpurs.

The cream trousers defined every sinew of his muscular thighs, clinging to the narrow jut of his hips and the high, hard curve of his buttocks. His shirt was loose and cool, though the fine, filmy material did nothing to disguise the rocky torso and the broad span of his shoulders. Long, soft black leather riding boots completed the ensemble, and for the first time in her life Lara understood why leather was considered synonymous with sex.

But sex was not what she wanted from Darian, she real
ised, her heart sinking. Or rather, not sex on its own. She wanted more. She wanted affection and respect and tenderness and regard. There was a word for what she desired, and that word was love.

And, judging by the cool, non-committal look on his face, she wanted far more than she could ever have.

‘Good morning,’ she said, feeling almost more shy than if they
had
had sex.

‘You slept.’ It was a statement. He knew it for fact simply because he had not. The moment she had got into bed with him had been the moment when sleep became, for him, a distant memory.

He must have been out of his head. Playing the protector and the carer when all he’d really wanted to do was drive himself into her sweet and yielding flesh, over and over again. Punishing his body with the nearness of hers and the sweet, feminine scent of her which had invaded his senses until the sun had risen, and unable to do a damned thing about it. He had never known such an acute and excruciating sense of frustration in his life.

‘Yes. Yes, I did get to sleep,’ she agreed. ‘Eventually.’ This was awful—she felt as if he was someone she had just met in the doctor’s waiting room. She looked instead at the pile of clothes he was carrying. ‘What’s that?’

He dropped it onto the foot of the bed. ‘Riding clothes,’ he said shortly. ‘Khalim sent them for you. They belong to Rose and he says you’re pretty much the same size. I’ve eaten breakfast and I’m just off to the stables—so do join us when you’re ready. If you’re still inclined to.’

The dark, unfriendly note in his voice told her that he would rather she didn’t, and with something which she supposed was a smile he was gone, leaving Lara staring after him, wondering what she had done to make him look as if he had been eating something with a distinctly sour
taste. Was it sexual frustration he felt? Or frustration that he
had
actually ended up playing the gentleman?

Wasn’t it crazy that just lying innocently in his arms, with him stroking her hair like that, should have made her feel so…so…dreamy? But tenderness could mean so much more than even the most spectacular orgasm in the world. Even if it
was
only pretend tenderness.

She showered and put the riding clothes on. Khalim was right—the two women were pretty similar in size, though Lara was taller and, judging by the shirt, her breasts were now smaller than Rose’s. But Rose had had one child already, and everyone knew that pregnancy changed your shape.

Lara stared in the mirror, at her slim hips and breasts untouched by childbirth, and a sudden yearning stabbed at her. Babies were something she had never even considered before, yet now she saw a sharp, snapshot image of a baby at her breast, a beautiful baby with golden eyes and dark ruffled hair.

Stop it, she thought impatiently. Just stop it. He’s gorgeous and he’s a challenge. He’s good in bed, and occasionally he can be tender—but that’s all. You aren’t in love with him, and he certainly isn’t in love with
you.

And she tied her hair back so tightly that it made her wince, then set off for the stables.

L
ARA
burst into a peal of laughter and was met with a furious gold stare.

‘It isn’t funny,’ he growled.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Darian, but it is. Very.’ She held her hand out to him. ‘Here.’

He eyed it suspiciously for a moment before grasping it, and then swung himself up from the dust onto which he had just tumbled, bringing himself right up close to Lara, enjoying the immediate darkening of her eyes.

‘Do you like watching me fall, Lara?’

Actually, it was strange watching him not being perfectly proficient at something, to see him cast in the role of novice. Strange and almost
endearing
. If it had been anyone else she might have said
cute
, except that four-letter words like
nice
and
cute
didn’t really sit well on Darian.

‘A fallen man?’ she mused. ‘Yes, I
do
think I like it!’ She could smell the sweat on him, and it gleamed on his skin as brilliantly as on the highly polished flanks of the Akhal-Teke horse from which he had just plummeted.

He let go of her hand and placed both his own on the horse again.

‘You’re getting back up?’ she asked, in surprise.

‘Isn’t that the first rule of riding?’ he questioned. ‘That you get straight back on?’

She nodded as he swung himself up. He was persistent; she would say that for him. From having been shown the rudiments of riding by Khalim himself, he had persevered
with learning the new skill every spare minute, like a man driven to conquer.

He was up by first light, out helping the grooms to muck the horses out. He told her that he was determined to learn as much as possible about this creature who seemed so reluctant to have him on its back. Lara was quickly learning that there were no half-measures where Darian Wildman was concerned.

Khalim had found him the most beautiful palomino—the usual metallic sheen even more pronounced in this case. The horse’s coat gleamed as golden as the eyes of the man who rode him. And when he did manage to stay astride Darian made the most magnificent vision, Lara was forced to admit. Though that shouldn’t have surprised her. Nothing really surprised her where he was concerned.

The night when he had held her in his arms had completed her captivation. He had disarmed her with his gentleness, leaving her happily open to the suggestion that they become lovers once more. Except that no such suggestion had been made, and neither had that comforting and innocent night been repeated—because Darian had taken to sleeping on the uncomfortable divan beneath the window.

She
was the one all alone in the big, comfortable bed now, and
she
was the one who was lying awake until the small hours, while he slept as deeply as a child.

‘How’s that?’ he called.

She watched him trot around the dusty paddock and nodded. ‘Better,’ she called back. ‘But not so tight on the reins!’

He relaxed his grip by a fraction, enjoying the feel of the powerful animal between his thighs. He was getting the hang of this riding thing now, and about time, too. It had been galling to accept that not only was Khalim a superb rider but that Lara was, too. All those years of
wholesome upbringing in the English countryside had made her into a confident horsewoman. She looked good on a horse—but then she looked good doing just about anything.

They had been here for just over a week, and this morning Khalim had had to go off to meet with a visiting dignitary and had left Lara in charge of Darian’s riding lessons.

‘You will take my place and teach him?’ he’d asked her softly.

Lara enjoyed the flash of irritation which sparked from the golden eyes. ‘Of course. I’ll enjoy cracking the whip!’ she joked.

‘You can try,’ Darian whispered softly.

Lara looked down at the dusty ground, afraid that Khalim would see the naked look of desire in her eyes, and afraid that Darian would see it, too. Horseriding was supposed to be an innocent pursuit, yet somehow he had managed to make the atmosphere heavy with tension and expectation—shimmering like the heat from the sun above them.

‘You won’t mind taking orders from a woman?’ she questioned, once Khalim had gone.

His tone was dry. ‘It will be another new experience.’

‘And do you enjoy new experiences?’ she asked, her eyes slanting at him.

Darian smiled. ‘Oh, yes,’ he murmured.

She was flirting with him again, he noted now. Indeed, she had been doing that ever since the night when he had held her so chastely in his arms. Women could be so contrary. Put something out of reach and they immediately wanted it! But the trouble was that now the boot was on the other foot he wasn’t sure that
he
wanted it. Not any more.

Because sex with Lara would be complicated this time
around. He recognised that with a grim kind of certainty. And wasn’t his life complicated enough already? So much had happened—and not just between the two of them. He was only just getting used to the fact that he had a brother, a brother who he was getting to know little by little—not easy when both were men who rarely let their guard down, Darian through instinct and Khalim through necessity.

The two of them would sit up late at night, talking—sometimes into the early hours. They had described their childhoods to each other, and Darian had done his best not to feel envy at the privilege of Khalim’s early years. But the Prince had sensed it with an intuitive sensitivity.

‘Yes, I had the riches, Darian,’ he had said softly. ‘But you were given the gift of freedom. Riches can be earned, but complete freedom cannot—not when you carry the responsibilities which come with having royal blood.’

It was a different way of looking at things—but then, didn’t this place make you look at things differently anyway? And, yes, Khalim had all the burdens and responsibilities which came with governing his country—but his life was clearly defined in ways that Darian was growing to envy.

Because for all the paraphernalia and trappings which came with his royal status—the palaces and the servants—Khalim enjoyed such simple pleasures. Perhaps it was because his riches had always been taken for granted that he was able to look beyond material things. It was another lesson to be learnt.

Khalim had taken Darian walking beneath the star-filled skies, pointing out constellations which were not visible even from his penthouse apartment in London. There were no cars out here in the isolated splendour of the countryside which surrounded the palace. Nor noise, nor crowds.

In fact, the only blot on this surreal landscape remained Lara herself. With his self-imposed sexual limits, he had
begun to get to know her. And to like her. Even though liking her was something he had tried to put up barriers against, telling himself that she was an actress, that she had deceived him, and if she could do it once she could do it again.

Which was why he had taken up riding with such fer-vour. Apart from wanting to excel at it—which was inherent in his nature—he also used it as a form of diversion, driving himself at it, hour after hour, so that by the time he fell onto that damned concrete block of a divan he was so bushed that he slept the night through.

And he would be lying if he did not admit to taking a certain amount of pleasure at the sight of Lara’s dark-rimmed eyes which met his each morning.

A servant arrived, bearing a tray of iced orange water, and he watched while he set it down in the shade and Lara sat down prettily in her jodhpurs and beckoned him over.

His throat felt dry as he dismounted, but it was a dryness caused by more than mere thirst. Khalim had gone, and for the first time it was just the two of them. As he approached he could see the shape of her breasts peaking beneath the fine silk shirt, and he felt the debilitating jerk of desire as he imagined slowly peeling the shirt from her body.

Forget it, he told himself. Lara’s trouble. She’s been trouble since the moment you first set eyes on her, and if you get involved with her then there’s plenty more where that came from.

But that didn’t stop him from issuing a curt command to the groom, who bowed his head in response.

Lara had been watching the little interchange and looked up at him in surprise as he approached. ‘Wasn’t that Marabanese you were speaking to the groom?’

‘It was.’

‘Who taught you?’

The golden eyes glittered. ‘Khalim has been instructing me in the basics of the language.’

He sat down beside her, took the glass from her and drank deeply, putting the empty glass down and wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

‘You’re acting more and more like a sheikh every day!’ she teased.

‘Yeah.’ He stared moodily into the middle distance.

‘And sounding like one, too!’ She wished she knew what was going on in that head of his. She’d thought they were supposed to have abandoned hostilities and declared an unspoken truce of sorts. Were they or were they not able to exist in relative harmony? In theory, yes, of course they were—except that there was this terrible hunger bubbling away inside her. An overwhelming longing to feel his lips on hers once more.

Maybe it was one-sided. Maybe he just didn’t feel it any more and the way she had deceived him had killed his desire for her stone-dead. They were sharing a bedroom, but that was the one place she barely saw him. He crept into the bedroom in the early hours, completely ignoring her and the large, empty space in the bed beside her, and was gone when she woke in the morning.

She watched while the groom led the horse away. ‘Exotically beautiful, isn’t he?’ she remarked.

‘Mmm,’ he said, non-committally.

‘They’re a unique breed, you know.’

‘Are they?’

Lara drew a breath. ‘Yep. Arguably the oldest surviving cultured equine breed.’

‘You don’t say?’

Well, she had to say
something,
or else she was going to come out with something like,
Don’t you find me attractive any more, Darian?

‘They’re known for their speed, stamina and intelligence,’ she continued, the words coming out in a flurry.

He turned his head to look at her, drowning in the blue of her eyes, then looked away again. ‘A little like me, then?’

Her heart pounded. ‘A little, I guess.’

There was a split-second pause, and when he spoke his voice was lazy. ‘What else about them, Lara?’

‘They’re hot-bloods, definitely not warm-bloods.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘And unusually sensitive to the way they are treated,’ she rushed on. ‘They’re responsive to gentle training, and can be stubborn or resentful if treated rudely.’ She paused and held her breath as he turned to her again, only this time he didn’t look away. ‘A little like me, in fact.’

He saw the pulse at her temple begin a frantic little beat, and suddenly all his defences left him. He brushed a line over the fine skin there and felt its throbbing beneath his fingertip. ‘Is that so?’ he murmured.

‘Y-yes.’ She held her breath as his fingertip traced its way down her cheek, lingering on the line of her jaw, then down to the hollow of her neck. She could feel the flutter of her heart and the honey-rush of sweet desire, but she didn’t dare move. It was like being in the middle of a spell—one wrong word or gesture and it would be broken, and she would be back to frustrated longing once again.

‘What else?’ he murmured, only now his fingertip was teasing the tip of her breast.

Lara swallowed. ‘Their eyes are…’

‘Are what, Lara?’ He felt the nipple bud and harden and he sucked in a breath.

‘Are 1-large and expressive. And sometimes almond-shaped.’

The golden blaze almost blinded her. ‘Like your eyes,’ he observed softly. ‘What else?’

Now his hand was drifting down over her torso and she could scarcely breathe.

‘Tell me, Lara,’ he urged. ‘I want to know.’

‘Their…their bodies are long and lean.’ She swallowed again. ‘The muscling well-defined, s-smoothly hugging the bone.’

‘That’s me,’ he whispered. ‘Isn’t it?’

By now his fingertip had edged down to the fork in her legs, drifting forward and back, forward and back, so that Lara closed her eyes and gasped.

‘Isn’t it, Lara?’

‘Well, yes. You know it is.’

‘Don’t you want to feel for yourself how it feels?’ he purred. ‘Feel the muscle which hugs the bone…?’

She didn’t need to be asked twice. Her hands flew to his chest, feeling the masculine heat of him through the damp shirt, and all the while his finger continued its erotic little dance, the material of the jodhpurs both restricting and heightening her pleasure.

‘Darian!’ she gasped.

‘Mmm?’

‘We can’t do this here!’

‘Do what?’ he questioned innocently, enjoying the way her thighs were now parting, revelling in the urgent little grind of her hips. ‘We’re not doing anything, are we? Not really. I’m just playing with you a little. Touching you there.’ He felt her squirm. ‘And
there.
’ He increased the pressure of his finger and her head fell back.

‘Someone might come!’ she protested, in a thick, slurred voice which didn’t sound like her own.

‘I think someone might,’ he agreed unsteadily. ‘But all the grooms have gone, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Too late, she realised just where he was taking her. ‘Kiss me, Darian,’ she pleaded on a moan. ‘Please. Just kiss me.’

‘No.’

The single word should have terminated her pleasure with all the finality of a bucket of cold water being thrown over her, but it did no such thing. If anything, the cold, harsh word only increased her ascent into that tantalising, nebulous place which made such mockery of almost everything else which existed. Maybe she wasn’t so like the Akhal-Teke at all, she thought desperately, for there was no resentment on her part about the way he was treating her—and shouldn’t there have been?
Shouldn’t there have been?

But then it happened, great wave upon wave of engulfing pleasure, and she opened her mouth, the pleasure so intense that she wanted to scream. And that was when he kissed her at last, swallowing up her cries with the fierce, hard pressure of his mouth, clamping his hand possessively over her jodhpurs while she still pulsed with sweet, dying spasms and her head fell uselessly to his shoulder.