Penny Jordan Tribute Collection. PENNY JORDAN
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stay.
She would have to find Umm Faisal and Zahra and bid them goodbye, Felicia thought wretchedly when Nadia had gone. And then there was small Zayad and helpful Selina, so many people who had touched her heart during her short stay in Kuwait, so much pain when she had to leave them.
She eyed her reflection with distaste. Her hair was all tumbled, her skin flushed from its exposure to the sun. Her body felt gritty with the small particles of sand which had clung to the lotion Raschid had applied. She needed a bath, she decided tiredly, collecting her towel and wrap. Perhaps when she felt clean and fresh she would feel more inclined to tackle her packing.
Although her bedroom possessed a shower, there was only one communal bathroom in the women’s quarters, and her footsteps echoed across the tiled floor as she opened the door. The room really was huge, she thought, and the bath positively enormous. She turned on the taps, pouring essence of roses into the water and watching the oil turn the clear water into milky foam.
It felt good to immerse herself in its warm silkiness, and she soaped herself vigorously, as though by doing so she could wash away the memory of Raschid’s hands on her body.
The warmth of the water induced her taut muscles to relax, tempting her to linger, soaking in its perfumed embrace.
She never heard the door open, only the decisive footsteps crossing the marble tiles. She glanced up curiously and froze.
Raschid! Wordlessly she clutched the sponge protectively against her breasts, trying to sink beneath the milky cover of the water.
‘Why do you want to leave us?’
So Nadia had betrayed her!
‘What possible reason is there for me to stay, in a house where I’ve been abused, reviled, made mock of, tormented….’
‘Tormented?’ His sharp eyes fastened on her trembling hands.
‘Please go, Raschid,’ Felicia begged. ‘If Zahra or your sister were to….’
‘Interrupt us? They won’t. They decided to spend the night with Saud’s family, and Nadia has been warned not to intrude upon us. To make sure that she does not, I have taken a small precaution.’ He reached in his pocket and produced an intricately carved key. ‘So you see, my dear Felicia, you are completely at my mercy. Divine justice, one might say. I want to talk to you,’ he said suddenly, ‘and I cannot do so while you wriggle about in there like a shy fish searching for a lily pad. Besides,’ he added sardonically, his eyes resting on the soft curve of her breasts, luminously pale against the water, ‘I am quite sure the water must be getting cold.’
It was, but her wrap was on a chair out of reach, and she had no intention of leaving the comparative protection of the bath while Raschid remained in the room.
‘If you’ll leave me to get dressed, I will come down to your study,’ she suggested, avoiding his amused, comprehensive glance.
‘Leave you?’ Was it her imagination or had his voice suddenly become slightly husky? His glance impaled her, a curious melting sensation running through her bones. In that moment he swooped, lifting her out of the bath and holding her against him, uncaring of the water soaking through his silk shirt, or the shivers that coursed through her as she tried to hold aloof.
‘Last night when you denied me I thought you either the shrewdest little bitch I had ever met, or appallingly innocent,’ he said suddenly, making her tremble with the swiftness of his attack. ‘Why do you want to leave us, Felicia?’
‘You know why,’ she answered tremulously. His touch was completely impersonal, but she was not going to let him trick her a second time, betrayed by her inexperience into mistaking retribution for desire.
‘Do I?’
She trembled convulsively, tears spilling down her cheeks to lie damply against his throat.
His muffled imprecation reached her as his arms imprisoned her. ‘By Allah, Felicia. I want you!’ he groaned against her lips, stifling her protests. ‘I have wanted you from the moment I saw you. Last night when I discovered that Faisal had not touched you I didn’t know who I hated the most, you or myself.’
He broke off, as his body shuddered uncontrollably against her, cradling her against him, while he murmured something under his breath. She couldn’t move. She was frozen with terror—What was he trying to do? Make her betray herself again? She looked at him, her eyes wild with pain, her expression that of a trapped, tormented animal.
‘What do you want?’ she whispered in anguish. ‘Haven’t I paid enough? Just let me go.’
His skin flushed darkly as he looked at her, and she tensed, waiting, dreading what he would say.
‘Very well, I will let you go,’ he said quietly, ‘but only if you listen to me first.’
When she nodded her head slightly he swung her up in his arms, carrying her over to one of the low divans and sitting down with her still in his arms.
‘You shame me, Felicia,’ he said at last. ‘You shame me as no other human being has ever done. When I left you last night I felt sick to my soul, not only for misjudging you, although that was bad enough, but for teaching you to think that I would actually go to such lengths to part you from Faisal.’
‘But you said….’
He placed his fingers to her lips. ‘No—no more misunderstandings. Let me tell you the truth. Initially it is true that I did want to destroy the love Faisal bore you, for Faisal’s own sake,’ he admitted wryly. ‘He is fickle and too young to settle down, especially with a girl not used to our ways, sophisticated, and perhaps more in love with his wealth than with him. This would not have been the first time I have had to extricate him from such a situation, and shall we say that his track record to date has made me somewhat cynical.
‘But it didn’t work out like that. For one thing you were so beautiful, so proud and spirited, and I found myself less and less concerned with Faisal and increasingly determined to make you turn from him to me, at the same time despising myself for being attracted to a woman of the type I thought you to be.
‘I told myself I was a fool, letting your beauty steal away my common sense. But it was my heart you took, driving me mad by coming to life in my arms like the desert after rain, and yet still insisting that you preferred Faisal.
‘I wanted to crush your resistance, to force you to admit that you loved me, but always you eluded me, until at last I thought that you had guessed my feelings for you and were playing on them to make me accede to your betrothal to Faisal. Then I knew bitterness indeed. I admit now that I let my prejudice blind me, seeing only what I wanted to see—what experience had taught me to see. When you walked openly in the street I admit you played straight into my hands, but I didn’t write to Faisal. I could not bring myself to denounce you to him, much as I longed to part you. When you accused me of knowing that your romance with him was at an end I had no idea what you meant. You see, I hadn’t read his letter. While we were in the desert I meant to read it, but there never seemed to be time.’ He shrugged. ‘To tell the truth, I did not want to read it. I thought he would be begging me to allow him to return to further your romance, and I planned to keep you apart, hoping that you would turn from him to me.
‘When I discovered that you were missing…. Never as long as I live do I want to go through that torment again. My relief at finding you, coupled with your own stubborn refusal to admit your response to me, drove me over the edge of sanity. This morning I telephoned Faisal and told him that I had received his letter—which I have now read. It seems that Yasmin wrote to him after seeing us together in Kuwait, and her letter provided him with the loophole he had wanted. Unlike me, he had the wit to see your essential innocence, and he had decided that you would never enter the kind of impermanent relationship he most enjoys. When Nadia came to me and told me that you were leaving I knew I had to stop you. My pride was as the sand beneath my feet…. Marry me, Felicia,’ he begged. ‘I want you now and tomorrow and for all our tomorrows. I want to be the man who will unfasten the