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‘Now you can go and take it off and get changed,’ Raj informed her thickly.
Zoe turned back to him, catching the harsh edge to his voice and looking up at him to see the dark glow of his eyes accentuated by the flare of colour over his high cheekbones. ‘Raj...what’s wrong?’ she questioned helplessly.
‘How honest can I be?’ Raj asked.
‘I want you to feel that you can always be honest with me. In fact, that’s very important to me.’
‘Even if it embarrasses you?’ Raj prompted.
‘Even if it embarrasses me,’ Zoe confirmed without hesitation.
‘You are half naked and very beautiful,’ Raj breathed huskily. ‘I have sworn not to touch you but I am still a man and you tempt me. You can still trust me to keep my word but I would be grateful if you...’ He fell silent because Zoe had already backed into the bathroom, her face as startled and as red as fire.
Only ten feet from him, separated only by tent walls, Zoe looked at herself in the last shift and she burned all over with mortification. She’d had no idea quite how sheer the shifts were because at no stage had she seen her reflection in them in the mirror. Half naked seemed like an understatement when she was showing everything she had got! Shame and chagrin enveloped her. He had said she tempted him. Dear heaven, did he think her display had been deliberate? No, surely not. She peeled off the last shift, laid it carefully to one side and stepped into the shower, hoping it would cool her off. She didn’t want to go back into the bedroom and look him in the eye again.
Cold water drenched her and she stood there as long as she could bear it, before, shivering, she got out and grabbed a towel off the pile. He had been frank with her and she was glad of that, she reflected ruefully. If they were to live in close proximity, she would have to be more careful, more aware in a way she had never had to be before. His T-shirt fell past her knees and she put on the boxers, although they struck her as overkill.
‘Zoe?’ Raj murmured quietly.
She peered into the bedroom and he handed her a toiletries bag.
When even her teeth were clean, she had to return to the bedroom but she looked nowhere near him as she crossed to the bed and climbed in straight away.
Raj went for a long cooling shower and tried to remember when he had last had sex. It had been weeks and weeks. He should make more effort in that department, he told himself firmly. Had he formed the habit of regular sex, he was convinced he wouldn’t have been so tempted by Zoe. But then, it had been years since he had enjoyed regular sex, he acknowledged ruefully. These days he had occasional one-night stands and he never spent the night because he had discovered that spending too long with the same woman only encouraged the kind of entanglements and expectations that made him feel trapped. ‘One and done’, he called his routine. He didn’t do relationships, he didn’t do girlfriends, he didn’t do dates. Nabila had sent him flying off such a conventional path.
But Zoe, the wife he could not touch, he was learning to his cost, was a whole new ball game...
Zoe peered out from under the sheet as Raj strode across the tent, his long, lean, powerful body clad only in boxers. Her eyes widened, drawn by the flex of steel-hard muscle across his bronzed torso. He was a work of art, she thought numbly, barely able to accept that such a thought could be hers and that for the first time ever she was admiring the male body, which had until that moment inspired her only with fear. But then Raj was something else, Raj somehow fell into a totally different category and she didn’t understand how that was or even why. Yet he was one of the most masculine men she had ever met. Everything about Raj from his innate poise to the rough stubble now darkening his jaw line and the well-honed strength of his physique screamed male. She closed her eyes tight, blanked her mind and slowly, inexorably fell asleep.
The nightmare that assailed her was an old familiar one. She was sprawled on the floor of an old hut, sneering thugs surrounding her while another cut off her clothes with a terrifyingly sharp knife. She was trapped. Shouting or screaming only earned her another punch and she was already in a great deal of pain because one arm and a leg were broken and, she believed, several ribs. She could barely see out of her swollen eyes but there was nothing wrong with her ears and she could hear every one of the filthy, perverted things they were threatening to do to her. She was petrified, lapsing in and out of consciousness, fighting the sickening effects of concussion...and outside a thunderstorm was crashing and banging like extra evidence that she had been plunged into a living hell.
‘It’s OK...it’s OK,’ a vaguely familiar voice was assuring her and she clung to that voice like a drowning swimmer, letting it pull her fully out of the bad dream.
‘No,’ she croaked in a shaken whisper. ‘I’ll never be OK again.’
Outside the thunder crashed deafeningly loud and she flinched and gasped, registering that there really was a storm outside, just as there had been the night she had almost been gang-raped. ‘I don’t like storms,’ she muttered, clutching at his warm, solid body for support.
‘You were having a nightmare, moaning, shouting for help. I tried to wake you up,’ Raj admitted. ‘But it took a long time to bring you out of it.’
‘The storm confused me, probably woke me in the end... There was a storm in the nightmare too...except it wasn’t really a nightmare, it was something that happened to me...but it’s been years since I dreamt about it,’ Zoe framed shakily. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t need to apologise. We can’t police our dreams,’ Raj dismissed, leaning away from her to light the lantern by the bed.
Her anxious eyes widened at the sight of him because being in bed with a half-naked man felt so very alien to her. And Raj was all male as he stretched, that fantasy V-shape flexing across his lower rock-hard abdomen as he shifted to reach for a glass of water and handed it to her.
Colour rising, Zoe gulped down water as if she were suffering from dehydration. She didn’t like the way her brain was spewing random sexual thoughts at her. It was scary being that close to Raj and wanting to touch him. Touch him? What insanity was attacking her? Since when had she wanted to touch a man? Yet all of a sudden she could imagine touching Raj, smoothing a hand over that satin-smooth golden skin laid down over muscle. She sat up and put the glass down just before another deafening crash of thunder boomed and it sent her careening into the shelter and security he offered like a homing pigeon.
Raj had never before found it a problem to have an armful of fragrant woman in his arms. But when the woman was Zoe, it was a major problem. He had heard her shouting for help and saying, ‘No, please...’ over and over again and a kind of unholy rage had gripped him that someone so small and defenceless had been driven to begging, her fear and desperation palpable. Only it became complicated when she got too close to him and his body reacted against his will. He was so hard he dared not leave the bed for fear that she would notice and get scared that he couldn’t be trusted. But he was not made of stone.
He closed his arms round her, murmuring soothing things in his own language, doing his best to resist urges that he felt should shame him. ‘Were you raped?’ he asked in a roughened undertone.
Zoe flinched, her slender body trembling in his hold, and she looked up at him. ‘No. I was lucky. I was beaten up but I was rescued before it got that far.’
Raj’s level black b
rows lifted. ‘Lucky?’ he derided, not only stunned by what she had told him, but also feeling honoured that she had trustingly bestowed such a terrifying secret on him.
And Zoe laughed and spontaneously smiled. ‘Yes, very lucky. I’m a survivor.’
That glorious, utterly unexpected smile was more than Raj could withstand. Zoe looked up into eyes as bright as liquid starlight and marvelled at the beauty of them. He lowered his head and claimed her soft pink mouth with his.
The thunder boomed beyond the tent. Lightning strafed the ground, lighting up the walls, but Zoe didn’t hear or notice any of that because there was a kind of magic in Raj’s kiss and it was like no kiss she had ever had before. And yes, she had had kisses before, had tried several times at university to get into the spirit without succumbing to the terror of getting out of her depth with some guy who might then get angry and refuse to listen to her protests. When Raj slid his tongue between her parted lips, an insistent heat she had never felt before flared between her thighs. His hands stroked through her hair and she felt her breasts swell and her nipples tighten and tingle. The warmth of his skin and the weight of him against her led to the discovery that her body liked those masculine aspects of him. Even more did she appreciate the aromatic smell of him, an insanely attractive combination of musky male and designer cologne, which tugged at something very basic inside her. His tongue brushed hers and withdrew, leaving her aching for more, every nerve ending on fire.
And then he set her back from him and dragged in a shuddering breath while still looking at her as though she were the only woman in the universe, a gift of his that yanked at her heart strings. ‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed in a raw undertone. ‘I broke my promise not to touch you.’
‘Do you see me running or screaming?’ Zoe demanded, shaken by his sudden withdrawal while her body was still humming and pulsing like an unfamiliar entity.
Raj’s slightly swollen and very sensual mouth compressed, dark eyes glittering with angry regret. ‘I will not make excuses for myself but I assure you that this will not happen again. Go to sleep, Zoe. You are safe.’
