Girl in the Bedouin Tent. Annie West
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air. Were the guards still on duty around the tent, making it impossible to escape even if she could break the barbaric chain that marked her as his possession?
A hand closed around her elbow and she jumped, alarm skittering through her. She whipped round to find impenetrable dark eyes fixed on her. His scowl had gone. In its place something like sympathy softened his features.
‘You cannot run. Mustafa’s guards would seize you before you got ten metres. Besides, you’d stand no chance alone in the mountains, especially at night.’
Cassie sucked in a desperate breath. Were her thoughts so obvious? She tilted her chin. ‘Mustafa?’
‘Our host. The man who presented you to me.’
Holding her arm, he half pushed, half supported her till her legs gave way and she plopped onto a pile of cushions. Instantly he released her.
A moment later, with an easy grace that held her unwilling gaze, he sank to face her across the low table.
Even seated he loomed too big for comfort. He crowded her space, dominating her senses. Cassie registered his scent: sandalwood and spicy male. Her nostrils flared and reaction feathered through her, jangling her nerves with something other than alarm. She sat straighter, making herself meet his gaze head on.
The flickering light of the brazier accentuated the strong lines of his face. A face that surely belonged in a storybook tale of Arabian nights and proud princes.
His deep voice broke across her hectic thoughts.
‘Now, Cassandra Denison, you can explain what’s going on.’
CHAPTER TWO
CASSIE’S eyes flicked from his flattened mouth to the tiny trickle of blood drying on the burnished skin of his neck. She drew a slow breath as he picked up the paring knife, but relaxed with a shiver of relief when he merely wiped it clean on a snowy cloth and began to pare an orange. Mesmerised, she watched the precise way he sliced the peel, the supple flick of strong wrists and the deft movements of his long fingers.
‘I’m not accustomed to waiting.’ Steel threaded his smooth voice and she started.
‘And I’m not accustomed to being abducted!’
Straight black brows winged up. ‘Abduction? That changes things.’ He stilled, his eyes on her.
Cassie had the feeling he saw deep, beyond the overdone make-up, the decorative henna on her hands and feet and the dark cloak. That he saw right down to the woman trying desperately to conquer fear with bravado.
The silence lengthened. She should be pleading, demanding help. Persuading him with her eloquence. Words were her stock in trade, after all. Yet something in his steady, assessing gaze dried the words on her tongue. Her agitated pulse slowed a fraction.
When at last he spoke again his tone was light. ‘You must forgive my curiosity. Being attacked with a knife is something of a novelty. It makes me inquisitive.’
His lips quirked up at one side and Cassie’s heart gave a tiny jump of surprise.
She wanted to trust him, but could she?
Was he in cahoots with her abductors?
‘You mean the chain didn’t give it away? The fact that I might be here against my will?’ Cassie lifted her chin. If only anger could melt the hard metal that kept her captive!
‘I’m afraid I had other things on my mind.’
She felt an unwilling flicker of appreciation at his self-deprecating humour. He was a cool customer. Being attacked by a desperate woman wielding a knife hadn’t ruffled his composure one iota!
Nor had it affected his exquisite manners. With another graceful movement he reached for a ewer and bowl and silently invited her to wash her hands. Despite her dire situation, or perhaps because of it, his old-fashioned courtesy soothed her shredded nerves.
Slowly Cassie extended her hands over the bowl. He poured water over her fingers, waited till she rubbed them clean, then poured again.
He passed her a towel of fine cotton, careful not to touch her. Cassie drew in a quick breath of relief and dried her hands, trying not to notice that even his hands were attractive—strong and well shaped.
Instead she concentrated on the soft comfort of the towel. How different the luxury here compared with the Spartan tent where she’d been held!
Only the best for a royal sheikh.
‘Besides,’ he continued as if uninterrupted, ‘the chain could have been a ploy.’
‘A ploy?’ Cassie’s voice rose and her body froze in outrage. ‘A ploy? You think I’m wearing this thing for fun? It’s heavy and uncomfortable and … inhuman!’
And it made her feel like a chattel, a thing rather than a person.
Cassie pulled the thick cloak tighter round herself, seeking comfort in its concealing folds.
The abduction had been shocking and terrifying, but being tethered with a chain like an animal plumbed the depths of her darkest fears. It put her captors’ intentions on a new and horrible level.
Even her mother, whose life had revolved around pleasing a man, had never faced a reality so brutal.
‘As you say. Even in this lawless part of the world, I didn’t expect to find kidnap and slavery.’
At her wide-eyed stare he went on. ‘In the old days, centuries ago, slaves were held that way.’ He nodded curtly to the chain that snaked across the floor towards the bed. ‘It’s a slave chain. I thought it possible Mustafa had used it symbolically, rather than seriously.’
‘You thought I might have agreed to this? That I chose to dress this way?’ Cassie snapped her mouth shut, remembering her struggles as the women had stripped her clothes away. The horror when they’d produced this gaudy outfit that barely covered her breasts and drew attention to every curve.
She remembered too the searing look, quickly veiled, in this man’s eyes when she’d been brought before him in the communal tent. It had heated her as no fire could.
‘I didn’t know what to think. I don’t know you.’
Cassie drew a calming breath. Finally she nodded.
He was right. He knew as little of her as she did of him. The chain could have been a stage prop worn for effect—there to spice the jaded appetites of a man who got turned on by the idea of a woman totally at his mercy. A woman with no function but to please him.
Was Amir that sort of man?
Without warning that ancient memory broke through her weary brain’s defences again. The one memory she usually kept locked tightly away. Of Curtis Bevan, who’d been her mother’s lover the year Cassie turned sixteen. How he’d strutted around her mother’s apartment with condescending pride, knowing everything there was bought with his money. Even his lover. How he’d turned his proprietorial eyes on Cassie that day she’d come home for Christmas—
‘Cassie?’
The sound of her name in that soft-as-suede voice shattered the recollection. She looked up into a cool obsidian gaze that she would swear saw too much. Her breath snared and for a moment she foundered, caught between her nightmare past and the present.
Deliberately she straightened her shoulders.
‘For the record, I don’t want to be here! When you came in I thought …’ Her words dried at the recollection of what she’d thought. That he’d come here for sex. That it wouldn’t matter if she was unwilling.
‘You thought you had no choice.’ His voice was low and his expression softened. ‘The pre-emptive strike was a good move. A brave one.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘Just desperate.’
It