Sheikh's Castaway (5 page)

There was cutlery in the picnic basket, but Bari ate using his fingers or bread as his only tools. Somehow, she didn't know how, this added to the sensual impact of the moment. Then she realized that it was because he was a sensualist. Bari ate with his hands because the sensation of touch added to his pleasure in the food.

Just so, a part of her whispered, would he take pleasure in her body, if she allowed it. Touch, taste, scent…he gloried in his senses, and his senses would glory in her flesh.

He lifted a piece of chicken and tore it apart, offering her a morsel from fingers slippery with melted butter and olive oil, then watched in appreciation as her white teeth closed on the tidbit. He grunted when her lips brushed his skin and, in half-involuntary mimicry of his sensual approach, she closed her lips around his fingertip and sucked the spiced oil from his slightly raspy skin.

A bolt of electricity shot through her, all the way to her toes. Her eyes lifted as if he forced them up to lock with his gaze.

She was on very dangerous ground, but a treacherous part of her, the part that wanted to give in, kept telling her that nothing had happened. He hadn't even kissed her, let alone got close to making love. They were only eating.

But another part of her knew that Bari wasn't like other men, and that this attraction was like nothing she'd ever felt before, and that the point of no return was almost upon her.

The hungry part, the part that was desperate to experience Bari's sensuality at the deepest level, won out, and in involuntary temptation she licked her lips and smiled.

His eyelids drooped, and a possessive gleam shot out from under the lowered lids to tell her that she was lost. He scooped up another morsel of food and fed it to her with one hand, while the other tenderly stroked her throat and chin.

Her skin ignited like dry brush at a lightning strike. Noor opened her eyes and her mouth, but though his face was so close, he did not kiss her.

A delicate assault on her senses began. Resting his elbows on the table, Bari leaned forward to murmur in her ear that she was beautiful, desirable, and that no man could see her and not want her. Then he made her drink from his glass. Like a child—but not like a child.

He stroked her neck, her shoulder above the pretty gauzy sarong she had tied over her bathing suit, her hand, her wrist. He poured wine into her cupped hand and sucked it out with a sexual need that she felt as a blow. He explored her palm with his tongue and lips as if she, too, were heady wine.

As they ate, one desire was sated, but another grew. She felt her body's need for him hammer its urgent message in her blood, her brain, her skin, her breasts, her abdomen. His need for her was in his lips, his tongue, his trembling hands, and in his dark, approving eyes.

Meanwhile, across the sky, dark clouds were massing and moving closer. A rumble of thunder breached the silence now and then, and warm wind whipped at the canvas canopy that protected them from the sun. She felt that her body was like the parched earth that had longed for the sky's blessing for long months and years, and now that he was near it would be sin and worse than sin to turn away into dryness and infertility again.

Down inside the cabin there was a stateroom, and a bed. After an endless time, Bari drew her up from her
seat and led her there, pushing her down onto the soft cushions and following to stretch his hungry body out beside her. Then he took her ruthlessly into his arms and, for the first time, let slip the tight rein he had kept on his passion….

 

Something landed in her lap, bringing her out of her reverie. She blushed, as if Bari might have guessed her thoughts.

“And what's this?” She lifted the little plastic envelope. She was shivering in earnest now.

“A foil blanket. It is dangerous to attempt buddy warmth with only two people in a four-man raft,” Bari said. “All the weight in one place could destabilize the raft.”

His voice was so full of contemptuous dismissal that she burned with embarrassment, as if she
had
been offering him sex and been rejected.

She didn't believe what he had just said. He simply didn't want to touch her. The rage and hurt of this morning's discovery flooded her mind once more. She was in a ferment to shake him out of his damned supercilious contempt, his smug calm.

“What gives you the right to look at me as if—as if…I was asking for
comfort!
” she shouted. “When did I
ever
throw myself at you? You were the one! Right from the beginning—as if I were water in the desert!”

Tears stung her eyes, but she would
not
be so weak!

“Instead you were a mirage,” Bari said harshly, as her emotions succeeded in igniting his own.

“Me?” she exclaimed, choking on the injustice. “
I
wasn't the mirage!
I
never lied!”

“What was it when you said you would marry me, if not a lie?”

His voice was cold with fury. In the red glow cast by the canopy he looked unfamiliar, an angry stranger.

And that was what he was. She didn't know him at all.

“What was it when
you
said you wanted to marry me?” she countered hotly, the pent-up words bursting from her. “You don't want to marry me, and never did! And before you deny it, I overheard your aunt and your cousin talking. You're only marrying me because your grandfather wants an alliance with his old friend's family. He ordered you to marry me, and you were furious about it. You have to marry me to inherit the family property, isn't that right? You don't love me!”

He watched her steadily, one eyebrow lifted.

“Do you!” she prodded.
“Do you!”

“No, Noor,” Bari replied in a slow, calm voice, not at all the voice of a man caught out. “No, I don't love you. Why are you pretending outrage when you have always known it?”

N
oor's mouth opened in slow, appalled disbelief, but Bari gave no quarter.

“I never told you I loved you. You didn't ask to hear it. What you wanted was a wealthy, socially connected man who would cater to your desire for a life of selfish pleasure. That was what I offered you. That was your price, Noor.”

“My
price!
”

“So the discovery that you say you have now made—that love is not part of our bargain—will not serve as an excuse. I ask you again—why did you back out of the agreement that both of us understood from the beginning? And why did you choose such a moment, such a grotesque and offensive way to do it?”

His teeth and eyes flashed in an angry smile.

“It's not true!” she cried, but if he heard the dismay in her voice it left him unmoved.

“What is not true? What part of what I have said do you dispute?”

“If you didn't love me, why didn't you tell me that when you proposed?”

“You never asked. My reasons for wishing the marriage formed no part of our bargain. You could have made it so, but you did not choose to know.”

“Only because I thought—I thought—”

“What did you think?” His eyes narrowed. “You thought I loved you?” Fierce laughter erupted from him. “You got it all, is that what you thought, Noor? I offered you wealth and social connections, and my family's honour, and now you say you thought you had my love, too—and what were you offering in exchange? Not love, for you love only yourself.”

“That's not true!” she cried, stunned by this battering. “Anyway, I didn't need your wealth or social conn—”

“Your name, that was the sum total of what you brought to our agreement. That you are the descendant of a man my grandfather remembers with love and respect.”

His voice dripped with bitterness, and she knew then without a doubt that what she had overheard his cousin and aunt saying was the truth. He had been brutally angry over his grandfather's decision.

“Why do you flinch from admitting it?”

She could feel tears burning her eyes, but not for the world would she let Bari see how affected she was, her skin crawling with humiliation and shame.

“You pretended!” she accused him, her voice hovering on a sob. “Try and deny that! Don't call me a fool when you know perfectly well you acted as if you were besotted with me!”

He lifted a hand, a shoulder, in an expressive shrug. “You are a sexually attractive woman. But if you had re
ally wanted my love, Noor, you would have acted like a woman who wants to be loved, not like one who knows she can do no wrong. When did you concern yourself with my good opinion? With the regard of my mother and sisters? With anyone's well-being but your own? Nothing is as important to you as your own wishes, it seems. Whose opinion matters to you? Whose feelings do you consider?”

“That's a lie!”

“So sure are you of your worth that you didn't notice I never spoke of love! Yet—you tell me now—all the time you were assuming that I loved you passionately. Is that the attitude of a woman with a heart? To take love for granted?

“And if you had ever believed you loved me, you would have told me so. Even when there is nothing but sex a woman will say
I love you.
But not you.
Oh, Bari, isn't it wonderful!
That is what you said. But no word of love.”

Anger and humiliation scorched her. She had never been so insulted, so bitterly condemned.

“I was a virgin! Why do you think I waited all that time, if not for love?”

He smiled. “You waited for a husband. You said to me,
only with my husband, or my future husband,
not
only with the man I love.”

“It went without saying. Of course I expected to love the man I married!”

His black eyes fixed her, as if with pins to a board. “And did you love him, the man you nearly married?” Her heart fluttered a protest.

“I—” Her mind seemed to stumble.

“Go on, Noor. Tell me you love me,” Bari challenged mockingly.

Was he right? Was it the image she had loved, and not the man at all? What was love? She hesitated, and he laughed outright.

“You can't expect me to say it
now!
” she cried.

“If you imagine love is so easily killed, then you know nothing of love. You are suffering from bruised pride, and you imagine you have been crossed in love!”

“That is so untrue!”

He eyed her coldly. “And is this truly why you ran from our wedding ceremony minutes before it was to begin, leaving all our guests, without a word of explanation to them or to our families or to me? Because of an insult to your pride? Because of a conversation you overheard?”

Noor could hardly take it in. How could he be throwing her accusation back in her face like this? She had been on a rock, and with a wave of words he had changed that into shifting sand.

This isn't really happening!
her brain kept insisting.
This is a dream!

How had she gone from being an excited, beautiful bride, wearing the most exquisite dress in the world and a diamond worth a sultan's ransom, waiting for her wedding to a man who was crazy for her, to this—having flown through a terrifying storm in fear for her life, and crash-landed at sea, she was now lying in a storm-tossed life raft waiting for rescue that might not come, her makeup streaked, her nails broken and torn, her hair in rat's tails, wet, naked and shivering, and squashed into a tiny space with that same man who now despised her?

But worst of all was what she was hearing about herself. Did she act like a woman so used to being loved she took it for granted?

It wasn't true. If she had believed Bari loved her it
was because of the way he had treated her, not because that was her first assumption.

“I don't take love for granted!” Noor felt another chill sweep through her and, suddenly reminded, she sat up and tore the plastic bag from the tiny packet he had thrown her. She unfurled a sheet of rustling gold foil that glowed and glittered even in the dimness.

“Silver side in for warmth,” Bari said, and began working a small air pump.

She wrapped herself in it. Whatever the strange foil was, it had an immediate effect on her chill. But it offered poor protection against Bari's accusations. They had already hit home.

“It looks like the Sultana's robes at the coronation,” she muttered, tweaking the folds around her, trying to dispel her own gloom, trying to prevent herself hearing what he had said, what he really thought of her.

Could it be true? People had always loved her. Everyone she knew loved her. And not just her mother and father and her brothers and Jalia and her friends. At school she had been popular with everyone—except for a few girls who were jealous, she amended carefully…but no one was loved by everybody in the world! You couldn't be human and not have
some
enemies! Some girls were jealous of her because her family spoiled her, she'd always known that. She'd had lots of spending money and the freedom to do what she liked, and of course people hated that….

Bari's family had been cool with her, some of them. But she couldn't have cared less what they thought of her. Why should she? Bari was right about that—she'd taken no trouble to make them like her, not Noor! If they didn't like her as she was, that was their problem. Any
way, she'd told herself, it was only jealousy because Bari had fallen for her so hard.

But if it turned out Bari hadn't fallen for her, and they knew it, what did that mean?

That they disliked her for herself?

What had she ever done to deserve dislike? When had she ever hurt anyone?

As if in answer, her brain suddenly conjured up the scene her flight must have created. Jalia and the bridesmaids coming to the door of her bedroom, one of the women going to the bathroom to call her…had they gone searching through the house? And when she was nowhere to be found—what would they have thought? Her parents—what had they imagined? What were they going through now?

She thought of the guests, and what bewilderment they must have felt—were probably still feeling. What she had done was a personal insult to them all. She had treated them as if they didn't matter in the least. Bari was right—she had thought her own concerns of overriding importance. Some of their guests had flown halfway around the world to celebrate with her, and she hadn't even done them the simple honour of telling them that she had changed her mind and the wedding wouldn't take place.

As if that understanding unlocked a door in her heart, a host of other visions suddenly flashed through her unwilling mind, one after the other. Moments in her past when she had acted selfishly, even cruelly. Girls at school whom she had cut, or insulted, or laughed at when they tried to be popular, or wore the wrong clothes. Friends she had dropped without explanation, a boy she had mocked when he asked her out…

All the time believing she was in the right. Noor
Ashkani could do no wrong. She brooked no criticism. Dare to doubt Noor's actions and you were out of the charmed circle before you took another breath.

All her life she had acted as if she were the person who mattered. She hadn't believed that consciously, but she could see with painful clarity now that it had been the unconscious basis of her actions.

The discovery that Bari didn't love her had cut to the quick her self-importance, and she had reacted with pure arrogance. She had hurt and insulted everyone.

Noor looked up. Bari's expression was grim, but even if it hadn't been, she couldn't tell him what thoughts and what painful self-realization poured through her. Not Bari, of all people, who sat in such harsh judgement and had never loved—probably didn't even like—her.

Bari watched his bride impassively, her chin trembling as she struggled against emotion. She sat with head bent, her hands hiding her face, tears trickling down her cheeks. He let her cry for a few minutes. It was probably no more than the shock of the crash being released, and he was angry enough to remain unmoved. But when the choked sobs began to become a wail, it was time to call a halt.

“That's enough,” he ordered without apology, tossing another packet at her. It landed on the rustling gold blanket. “You can't afford to waste any more energy.”

Noor's breathing shifted into a series of panting gasps, like a child, as she struggled to stifle her tears. She wiped her face and blew her nose on her beautiful dress, picked up the little plastic box and gazed at it stupidly.

“What is it?”

“First aid kit,” he said.

Why had she asked for the kit? The mixture of shame
and misery kept her head bent, and she found relief in wrestling with the plastic seal. She reached for the flashlight and shone it briefly on the contents. The first thing her eyes fell on was a vial of seasickness pills.

As if there were a direct causal link, Noor's stomach heaved. With a strangled cry she tossed the kit and the flashlight aside and dived for the entrance, her gold foil cloak rustling wildly. She ripped the flap down and, thrusting her head out into the storm, clutched the side of the raft, leaned over, and heaved up the shock and grief and shame and the million other undefined things she was feeling, until there seemed to be nothing left, either in her stomach or in her heart.

When it was over at last, she reached her hand down into the sea and scooped up handfuls of water to wash her face and rinse her mouth. The salt stung her eyes and tasted on her lips, but the coolness of the water seemed to bring her back to herself.

When she was through she felt purged, cleansed. She drew her head back inside and sealed the flap again. Bari ignored her.

Well, she wasn't asking for his sympathy. She wasn't asking for anything from him. She had learned something about herself in the past half hour, and it had been a very painful lesson. Some fundamental shift seemed to have happened in her, and for the second time in a few months she had the sensation of not knowing who she was.

But there was no way she was going to try to tell Bari that. He would probably think she was making it up.

“The storm is passing,” she said, wrapping herself securely in the rustling golden foil again. “I think I saw land.”

He nodded without looking up. He was still working the air pump, and the floor was slowly inflating.

“May I have a drink of water?”

He tossed her the little plastic cup he had been bailing with. “Catch some rainwater in that.”

Noor bit back an indignant response. She supposed his caution was appropriate, even praiseworthy—if they were going to be lost for any length of time the water conservation started now, even if that was land she had seen.

But he could have been less rude about it.

“I see we aren't going to be bound by any silly code of polite conduct while we're stuck here,” she rashly remarked.

Leaving herself wide open, of course, and she realized it as soon as it was too late to call the comment back. Bari lifted an eyebrow, and though his face was in shadow, she could guess the expression in his eyes.

“You are speaking, of course, as someone who isn't bound by any code of conduct at any time.”

There was no winning that one. Noor lifted the cup up to the sleeve as she had seen him do, but he had pushed it inside out. She fiddled with it for a moment, without discovering the trick. She glanced over at Bari, but he was working the air pump, his head bent.

Fine! She wasn't nearly as helpless or stupid as he obviously believed, and she'd be
damned
if she would ask for his help!

After a few moments she was rewarded with the sound of water dripping into the cup.
Nyaaa,
she told him in her head, but not by so much as the tip of her tongue did she let him see her triumph.

The rain funnelled down more slowly than before, and she suddenly realized how the rain had slackened, and how far away the thunder was. She filled the cup three times and drank the curiously tasteless liquid, then glanced at Bari.