Heather Graham (9 page)

“This is not the United States,” he said quietly.

Chills swept over her as she was trapped again by that strange feeling of déjà vu. She knew no one in the United Arab Emirates, and yet she could have sworn she had seen his eyes before, felt that contact, heard that deep, husky voice.

Calling upon every reserve of willpower within herself, Alex inhaled and exhaled and attempted to start over, diplomatically.

“Yes, you’re right. This is not the United States. But please, if you will just tell me who you are …”

He rose and came toward her once more, a dry, grim smile tightening the fullness of his mouth. “That will depend upon who is asking.”

He stopped right in front of her, and she suddenly found that her throat was terribly dry and her lips were desert parched. That faint aroma of sandalwood and musk and masculinity seemed as overwhelming as his black-clad physique before her. She could feel his breath against her cheek, and she could faintly detect the added scents of mint and Turkish tobacco. She noted vaguely that his large hands were neatly groomed, that the shoulders beneath the black robe were very broad.

And yet all these were secondary to the feeling of being electrically charged simply by being near him. She had to swallow to attempt to speak, and all the while her eyes were locked with his, and she was keenly, painfully, aware that all that lay between them was a matter of inches and that all that protected her was that misty gauze of silk.

“Alex,” she managed to choke out. “My name is—
Ismi
—Alex Randall.” Great, now that she knew he could speak English, she was remembering some basic Arabic. “Dr. Alex Randall.”

He smiled with a slightly derisive crook of his lip as he cocked a brow mockingly. “Dr. Alex Randall,” he repeated softly. “You are very nervous, Dr. Alex Randall. Come and sit down and drink something. You must be very, very thirsty.”

Alex nodded jerkily. She was thirsty, agonizingly thirsty. But despite herself, she jumped as his hand came down upon her upper arm. He smiled again, fully aware of her reaction and mocking her for it. She ground down hard on her teeth for control and forced her feet to move as he led her to the crimson divan nearest the central Persian rug.

“Sit, Dr. Alex Randall.”

Alex sat uneasily upon the edge of the divan, folding her hands nervously in her lap. Be diplomatic—but forceful, she told herself. “I have told you who I am. Now, please, answer my questions.”

“Ahh … but you haven’t told me who you are,” he corrected pleasantly. He poured her a little ceramic cup of the rich, thrice-boiled coffee, and she had the feeling that even as he hunched with coordinated agility to perform the little task, he was watching her. “You have given me a name that tells me nothing.”

Her temper flared again when it shouldn’t have. Alex drank her coffee in a gulp, burning her mouth and adding fuel to the flames of indignation seething within her. “A name is a hell of a lot more than you’ve given me!”

He still smiled—which, combined with that smoldering jet sizzle in his eyes, was a sure sign of danger. He rose and sat beside her, lifting her damp and tangled hair from her neck. “Dr. Alex Randall,” he murmured. “No. Here you are not Dr. Alex Randall. Here you are nothing more than a woman with a very pretty shade of hair and light eyes—a valuable combination.”

Alex wished dearly that she could slap his hand. She felt his touch with her entire body. That electricity was within him; it was within his fingertips. It shot through her nerves from head to toe, searing a heated path to her very center.

She clenched her folded palms, digging her own nails into her flesh. Don’t! she warned herself. Don’t strike out, don’t react at all.

“I am a scholar of some repute,” she said softly, trying to block out that feel of lightly callused fingertips upon her nape. “There are people …” She caught her breath for a moment as his fingertips stroked her shoulders, trailed slowly—excruciatingly slowly—down her spine, vertebra by vertebra. “There are people who know where I was—ah—” She gasped as those roving fingers splayed caressingly over the small of her back, almost absently and innocently massaging her hips and buttocks. His eyes had remained upon hers as she spoke and as he moved. The light in them was still one of amusement. His countenance was a rigid deadpan, but his eyes—they did register his amusement and challenge. He was taunting her, she knew, discovering how far he could push, how she was going to handle the situation.

“What was that?” he asked politely.

“What?” Alex demanded in confusion.

“There are people who know where I was, uh …” he mimicked.

“Oh, ah.” Alex swallowed. She closed her eyes briefly and cleared her throat, then smiled sweetly at him while she reached behind her to capture his hand and set it upon his own lap gently but firmly.

“There are people who know exactly where I was heading today. You see, you must release me immediately—” She broke off again as she watched his long fingers begin a new trek from her kneecap upward along her thigh. The touch was so like a lap of fire that she longed to shriek again and bolt in pure panic. But she did nothing for a moment, mesmerized as she watched those trailing fingers.

“You were saying?”

Polite inquiry again; as if nothing at all were happening.

Alex caught his fingers again as they began an intimate climb upward along her inner thigh. It was either that or scream.

Flattery, she thought desperately. He was not fighting her attempts to fend him off; he was taking her actions with surprisingly good grace. She held his hand, which seemed to burn with a coal fire as great as that within his eyes, and smiled sweetly. “You are Islam, sir—a man who submits to God. Surely your Allah cannot condone your taking prisoner—”

“An unbeliever in the true faith,” he finished for her solemnly. “No, my God will not mind. The Koran even allows us to make war in the cause of the one true faith.”

She was getting nowhere, and panic was rising within her again. His gaze and his touch were like the hypnotic power of a cobra. She was desperate to get away, and yet she was not repulsed. She felt as if she were being drowned in quicksand, and if she didn’t get out while her head was still above the surface, she would be forever enmeshed.

And he was a kidnapping, cocky, insolent, superior bastard!

The outrage of the situation once again rose to outweigh careful diplomacy. Still fighting for control, Alex dropped the hand she held and sprang to her feet, moving across the tent.

“Who are you and just what do you intend to do with me?” she demanded with a show of bravado. Unfortunately, her last words quivered.

He was behind her quickly—too quickly—his hands once more caressing her shoulders, his fingers slipping beneath the silk to touch her bare flesh.

“You still have not told me who you really are, or why you are here in the desert,” he reminded her smoothly.

Behind her, he was able to smile freely. He could feel her shivering beneath his touch—he had definitely taught her a lesson. Let her spout all the controlled dignity she could manage, he knew he had her scared—very scared. It was unlikely that she would do anything so reckless again as cross an alien desert alone.

Yes, he was definitely getting to her. But he had to be an idiot masochist himself!

It was difficult to tell where the silk left off and where her flesh began. She was warm and incredibly vibrant and softly, femininely alive. The perfumes supplied for her bath were about to drive him crazy, and he realized ruefully now that he kept touching not to taunt, but because he was compelled to touch. Who is torturing whom here, he wondered vaguely.

His hands suddenly dropped to his sides. He felt a yearning within him—a natural but painful yearning that was an instinctive, physical thing, a heated arousal, which this woman, in this state of dress, would evoke in any halfway healthy male. But it went deeper than that. He felt strangely as if sparks had flared and met, negative and positive, forming a perfect whole. He sensed within her a subtle but deep sensuality, and it was tempting, terribly tempting, to play out his role to the hilt. He wanted her so badly that simply the scent of her, the touch of her, sent a haze saturating his mind against all else.

He turned abruptly away from her, grinding his own teeth, balling his fingers tightly into his palms. He was being a fool, letting desire for a beautiful woman cloud the objective mind he had nurtured so carefully. He had learned his lesson once; women came to him now, and he took care to appreciate them for what they were without losing his heart. He did not become an idiot over a nice pair of legs … or a rear … or an enticing chest … or rare amber-lime eyes or stardust hair.

Crosby’s woman! he reminded himself, and the reminder straightened him out. He needed to make her realize that she had behaved foolishly, then pack her back home to some elegant little house in the suburbs. Except he wanted to know first just what she knew, just what her relationship with Crosby was.

A man did not, he chastised himself firmly, fall into lust with a respected friend’s woman—even if he was ready to throttle her half the time.

“I am looking for Ali Sur Sheriff,” she finally said softly, her back still to him. Then she spun around, and the silks and her hair floated beautifully about her. “Are you Ali Sur Sheriff?”

He walked back toward her, remembering his resolutions. He saw the defiant demand in her eyes—eyes fringed by those unbelievably dark and thick lashes—and he suddenly found himself smiling again. He had tortured her and himself enough, he reasoned. Then, perversely, he changed his mind. Not quite enough.

He slipped his hands around the swan column of ivory that was her neck. With his thumbs he caressed her cheekbones as she stared at him with tense expectancy. His fingers combed through her hair, tilting her face to his, pulling her close, so close that they both became acutely aware of exactly what they were: a man and a woman, alone, touching.

Alex felt as if she had been drugged. She was furious; she had never felt so powerless. She was so accustomed to being heard when she spoke, to having social codes rule the actions of the stronger male, that she still refused to accept what was happening. And yet even as she drew her hands between them to press against his chest, she knew that she didn’t protest out of loathing.

She tried to tell herself that she was trying to reach him with diplomacy—and to an extent that was true. She wasn’t going to be able to stop this man if he chose to do anything. A struggle would leave her the loser—and her loss would be all the greater coupled with the indignity of a skirmish.

But there was more to it than that. Analytically. Oh, yes, analytically. She felt again that electricity that coursed from him, and she felt the heat that emanated from his tightly muscled body. That scent, so pleasant and yet so masculine, was part of the drug, as were the cobra eyes that mesmerized.

He was from a world she didn’t understand, a world totally against the equality of the sexes. She certainly couldn’t say she liked the man—surely she hated him! And yet he drew a certain respect, a certain admiration. There was simply something basic, raw and primitive about him; a rugged strength and sexuality that inexplicably existed.

And as he held her, capturing her eyes, she felt that sexuality as if no cloth existed between them as barriers. More basically than words could ever communicate, that sizzling contact spoke.

She didn’t want it. It was more humiliating than anything that had been done to her because it was a feeling from within herself. It frightened her to the core. No, it terrified her, it was quicksand. And she would never accept his insolence, could never accept being used.

Her hands pressed furiously against his chest as he continued to hold her close, his eyes a curious enigma as they studied hers.

Let her go, D’Alesio, he warned himself. Remember Crosby.

“What are you doing?” Alex gasped weakly, trying to break his hold and tear her eyes away from the hypnotism of his.

He smiled, his teeth flashing white against the bronze of his skin and the darkness of his beard and mustache. “Just trying to decide whether I shall keep you myself or have you sold at the next auction.”

He released her with that cool smile still in place and turned away. He shrugged. “I think you would be worth more on the auction block,” he said idly.

“What?” Alex breathed. If she had a dagger, she truly might have killed him at that moment. She was literally being played with like a toy, and now this despicable man was casually finding her lacking.

Dan found it difficult not to laugh. She might be a Ph.D., she might be the most sophisticated woman in the world—but she had been insulted to the core because a “Bedouin” had held her and decided she might not be worth keeping!

He kept walking across the tent, his head lowered, his hand to his mouth to hide his secret smile. “But we shall see. …” he murmured quickly and nonchalantly, turning back to her in time to note that she had first become a snowy shade of white and then flushed to a becoming shade of red. “Tell me exactly what you are doing out here, and why you traveled across a desert to reach Sheriff.”

“Are you Sheriff?”

“I am the one asking the questions here.”

Still tense and more explosive with anger than she thought a person could be and still live, Alex replied tersely and condescendingly. “I doubt if you would understand.”

“Try me.”

She exhaled through clenched teeth. “I am looking for Sheriff because a man named James Crosby has disappeared.”

“Go on.”

“In his last letter to me Jim Crosby said that I should get in touch with Ali Sur Sheriff should anything happen.”

Alex was startled to see the Bedouin’s brows rise with both surprise and concern. His dark lashes lowered quickly over his eyes.

“And who is this Crosby to you? Why do you take stupid risks on his behalf?”

“Because he is my father,” Alex said simply.

“Your
what?
”

The question was so vehement that for a moment she didn’t notice that the Arabic accent had left the husky voice.