The Call of the Desert (9 page)

“W
OULD
you like some champagne, Dr Somerton?”

Julia looked at the impeccably made-up Burquati air hostess and decided she could so with a little fortitude. She smiled tightly. “Yes, please.”

The woman expertly filled a real crystal flute with champagne, and then passed a glass of what looked like brandy to Kaden, who sat across the aisle of his own private jet.

It was dark outside. It would take roughly six hours to get to B’harani, the capital of Al-Omar. They’d been scheduled to leave that afternoon, but Kaden had been held up with business matters—hence their overnight flight.

Julia’s brain was already slipping helplessly back into the well-worn groove that it had trod all day.
Why
had she decided to come? A flush went through her body when she remembered back to that morning, as dawn had been breaking. She’d been exhausted. Kaden had been ruthless and remorseless all night. Each orgasm had felt like another brick dismantled in the wall of her defences.

Kaden had hovered over her and asked throatily, “So, will you come to Al-Omar with me?”

Julia had sensed in him a tiny moment of such fleeting vulnerability that she must have imagined it, but it had got to her, stripping away any remaining defences. Stripping away her automatic response to say no and do the right thing, the logical thing. Lying there naked, she’d been at his mercy. To her ongoing shame, she’d just nodded her head weakly, reminding herself that this was finite and soon she would be back to normal, hopefully a little freer of painful memories.

“You don’t need to look like you’re about to walk the plank. You’re going to be a guest at the society wedding of the year.”

Julia clutched the glass tightly in her hand now and looked at Kaden. Since she’d got into his car just a couple of hours ago outside her house he’d been on the phone. And he’d been engrossed in his laptop since boarding the flight. But now he was looking at her.

Unbidden, the words tumbled out. “Why are you doing this? Why are we here?”
Why have you come back into my life to tear me open all over again? And, worse, why am I allowing it to happen?

It was as if she had to hear him reiterate the reasons why she was being so stupid. Kaden’s dark eyes held hers for a long moment and then dropped in a leisurely appraisal of her body. Julia was modestly dressed: a plain shirt tucked into high-waisted flared trousers. Her hair was coiled back into a chignon. It should have felt like armour, but it didn’t. Kaden’s laser-like gaze had the power to make her feel naked.

His eyes met hers again. “We are doing this to sate the desire between us. We’re two consenting adults taking pleasure in one another. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Julia swallowed painfully. “There’s more to it than
that, Kaden. We have a past together. Something you seem determined to ignore.”

Kaden turned more fully in his seat, and Julia felt threatened when she saw how cynicism stamped the lines of his face. And something else—something much darker. Anger.

“I fail to see what talking about the past will serve. We had an affair aeons ago. We’re different people now. The only constant is that we still want each other.”

Affair
. Julia cursed herself for opening her mouth. Kaden was right. What on earth could they possibly have to talk about? She was humiliatingly aware that she wanted him to tell her that he hadn’t meant to reject her so brutally. She didn’t feel like a different person. She felt as if she was twenty all over again and nothing had changed.

Incredibly brittle, and angry for having exposed herself like this, she forced a smile. “You’re right. I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

Kaden frowned now, and his eyes went to her throat. “Why do you keep doing that? Touching your neck as if you’re looking for something?”

Julia gulped, and realised that once again in an unconsciously nervous gesture her hand had sought out the comforting touch of her necklace. Panic flared. She wasn’t wearing it, but she’d broken her own rule and brought it with her, like some kind of talisman. She blushed. “It’s just a habit … a necklace I used to wear. I lost it some time ago and I haven’t got used to it being gone yet.”

His eyes narrowed on her and, feeling panicky, Julia put down her glass and started to recline her chair. “I think I’ll try to get some sleep.”

Kaden felt the bitter sting of a memory, and with it an emotion he refused to acknowledge. It was too piercing. He’d once given Julia a necklace, but he had no doubt that wasn’t the necklace she referred to. It was probably some delicate diamond thing her husband had bought her.

The one he’d given her would be long gone. What woman would hold on to a cheap gold necklace bought in a marketplace on a whim because he’d felt that the knot in the design symbolised the intricacies of his emotions for his lover? His lover. Julia. Then and now.

He cursed himself and turned away to look out at the inky blackness. He should have walked away from her in London this morning and come to Al-Omar to make a fresh start. He needed to look for a new bride to take him into the next phase of his life. He needed to create the family legacy he’d promised his father, and an economically and politically stable country. It was all within his grasp finally, after long years of work and struggle and one disastrous marriage.

He glanced back to Julia’s curved waist and hips and his blood grew hot. He still wanted her, though. She was unfinished business. His hands clenched. He couldn’t take one step into the future while this hunger raged within him and it
would
be sated. It had to be.

Arriving in B’harani as dawn broke was breathtaking. The gleaming city was bathed in a pinky pearlescent light. It was festooned with flags and decorations, and streets were cordoned off for the first wedding procession, which would take place later that day.

Kaden had barely shared one word with Julia as they’d sped through the streets to the imposing Hussein Castle.

There, they’d been shown to their opulent suite, and Kaden had excused himself to go and see his sister.

Now Julia was alone in the room, gritty-eyed with tiredness and a little numb at acknowledging that she was back on the Arabian Peninsula with Kaden. She succumbed to the lure of a shower and afterwards put on a luxurious towelling robe. The massive bed dressed in white Egyptian cotton was beckoning, and she lay down with the intention of having a quick nap.

When she woke, some time later, the sun was high outside and she felt very disoriented when she saw Kaden emerge from the bathroom with a tiny towel slung around his hips. He was rubbing his hair with another towel, and he was a picture of dark olive-skinned virility, muscles bunching and gleaming.

Julia sat up awkwardly. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

He cast her a quick glance. “You were exhausted. There’s nothing much happening till this evening anyway. The civil ceremony took place this morning, and Sultan Sadiq and Samia are doing a procession through the streets this afternoon. This evening will be the formal start of the celebrations, with more over the next two days. On Sunday they will marry again in a more western style.”

“Wow,” breathed Julia, while trying to ignore the sight of Kaden’s half naked body, “That sounds complicated.”

Kaden smiled tightly, seemingly unaware of his state of undress. He flung aside the towel he’d been drying his hair with, leaving it sexily dishevelled. “Yes, quite. In Burquat things are much more straightforward. We just have a wedding ceremony in front of our elders at
dawn and then a huge ceremonial banquet which lasts all day.”

Against her best effort to focus on what he was saying, Julia couldn’t stop her gaze from dropping down Kaden’s exquisitely muscled chest. He really had the most amazing body—huge but leanly muscled. The towel around his hips looked very precarious, and as she watched, wide-eyed, she could see the distinctive bulge grow visibly bigger.

Her cheeks flamed and her gaze jumped up to meet Kaden’s much more mocking one. His hand whipped aside the towel and it fell to the floor along with the other one. Gulping, she watched as he walked to the bed. He lay alongside her and pushed aside the robe, baring her breasts to his gaze. Once again Julia was a little stunned at this much more sexually confident Kaden and how intoxicating he was.

Weakly, she tried to protest, “What if someone comes in?”

“They won’t,” he growled, and bent his head to surround one tight nipple with hot, wet, sucking heat.

Julia moaned and collapsed back completely. Kaden’s other hand slid down her belly, undoing the tie on the robe as he dipped lower and between her legs, to where she was already indecently wet and ready.

He removed the robe and within seconds she was naked too, with Kaden’s body settled between her legs, his shoulders huge above her. She could feel him flex the taut muscles of his behind and widened her legs, inviting him into more intimate contact. When he thrust into her Julia had to close her eyes, because she was terrified he would see the emotion boiling in her chest. As he started up with a delicious rhythm Julia desperately
assured herself that this was just about sex, not emotion. She didn’t love him any more. She couldn’t … Because if she did, the emotional carnage was too scary to contemplate.

Later that evening Julia paced the sitting room, barely aware of the gorgeous cream and gold furnishings, carpet so thick her heels sank into it.

She’d been whisked off that afternoon to be pampered in readiness for the banquet—something she hadn’t expected. And while there she’d had a selection of outfits for her to pick from. Too unsure to know whether or not she could refuse, she’d chosen the simplest gown. Deep green in colour, it was halter-necked, with a daringly low-cut back. She’d been returned to the suite and now, made-up and with her hair in an elaborate chignon, she felt like a veritable fashion doll.

And there was no sign of Kaden. Julia paced some more. Being dressed up like this made her intensely uncomfortable. She’d caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and for a moment hadn’t even recognised the image reflected back. Her eyes were huge and smoky grey, lashes long and very black. Her cheeks had two spots of red that had more to do with her emotions than with artifice.

The door suddenly clicked, and Julia whirled around to see Kaden striding in, adjusting a cufflink on his shirt. The breath literally left her throat for a moment. It was the first time she’d ever seen him in a tuxedo and he looked … stunning. It nearly made her forget why she was so incensed, but then he looked at her with that irritating non-expression. The irrational feeling of anger surged back.

She gestured to the dress. “I agreed to come with you to a wedding. I’m not your mistress, Kaden, and I don’t appreciate being treated like one.”

He put his hands in his pockets and looked her up and down, and then, as if he hadn’t even heard her, he said, “I’ve never seen you look so beautiful.”

To Julia’s abject horror her mind emptied and she stood there, stupidly, as Kaden’s black gaze fused with hers. She read the heat in its glowing depths. She’d always veered more towards being a tomboy, and had truly never felt especially
beautiful
. But now, here in this room, she did.

It made the bright spark of anger fade away, and she felt silly for her outburst. Of course Kaden didn’t see her as his mistress. She couldn’t be further removed from the kind of women he sought out.

She half gestured to the dress, avoiding Kaden’s eye. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s a lovely dress, and the attention … wasn’t all bad.” She looked back up. “But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t expect or even want this kind of treatment. I’m not like your other women. This … what’s happening here … is not the same …”

He took his hands out of his pockets and came close. Julia stood her ground, but it was hard. Black eyes glittered down into hers. A muscle throbbed in his jaw and she saw how tightly Kaden was reining in some explosive emotion.

“No, you’re not like my other women. You’re completely different. Don’t think I’m not aware of that. Now, let’s go or we’ll be late.”

After a tense moment she finally moved. Kaden stood back and allowed Julia to precede him out of the room.

Feeling off-centre, he didn’t touch her as they walked down the long corridor. She wasn’t and hadn’t ever been like any other woman he’d been with. It was only now that he was noticing the disturbing tendency he’d always had to judge the women he encountered against his first lover—noticing the faint disappointment he always felt when they proved themselves time and time again to be utterly different. Materialistic. Avaricious.
Less.

He was used to being ecstatically received whenever he indulged a woman, and wondered if this was some ploy or game Julia was playing—affecting uninterest. But with a sinking feeling he knew it wasn’t. Years ago she’d have laughed in his face if he’d so much as attempted to get her into a couture dress. She’d been happy in dusty jeans and shirts. That crazy safari sunhat.

There’d only been one moment when she’d worn a dress. When he’d presented her with a cream concoction of delicate lace and silk that he’d seen in a shop window and hadn’t been able to resist. As dresses went, it hadn’t been sophisticated at all, but Julia had put it on and paraded in front of him as shyly as a new bride. It had been the first and only time she’d worn a dress, and that had been the night that he’d realised just how deeply—Kaden shut the door on that unwanted thought that had come out of nowhere. His insides clenched so hard he could feel them cramp.

Breathing deep, he brought his focus back to the here and now. To the woman by his side who was blissfully unaware of his wayward thoughts. He was vitally aware of the smooth curve of Julia’s bare back in the dress. The pale luminescence of her skin. And the vulnerable part of her neck, which was revealed thanks to her upswept hair.

The dim hum of the conversation of hundreds of people reached them as they rounded a corner. Kaden took Julia’s arm in his hand and felt her tension. Good. He wanted her to be tense. And unsettled. And all the things he was. They walked across a wide open-air courtyard and pristine Hussein servants dressed all in white opened huge doors into the glorious main ballroom.