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And Razi was dead, his reputation buried with him.
But at least these rules were simple. It was, after all, just a child’s game, with die and counters, cartoon images of brightly coloured snakes, ladders of various lengths. It did help to distract him—barely. The truth was that he could play the game with just one quarter of his concentration, the rest he tried to fix on other matters—keeping the fire alight, removing the guttering stubs of candles and replacing them with new ones, checking his phone, his computer, to see if the connection had been restored. It never had, only adding an extra mental burn to the rage of his physical frustration.
At the same time, there was a strangely intense relaxation in what he was doing. If someone had told him at the start of this mission that he would end up sitting opposite the gorgeous, sexy, beddable woman he had been sent to collect—playing a child’s game and actually enjoying it, Karim told himself half an hour or so later, he would never have believed them. And if they had told him that the woman he was sitting opposite was the woman who made his body harden and hunger in a way no woman in the rest of the world had ever done—and he hadn’t been able to do a thing about it— he would have declared that they were crazy. Totally out of their heads. There was no way he was going to accept any mission that put him into such a position, and to hell with the repercussions.
But no one had told him, no one had warned him. And he was here, now, with irresistible temptation in the female form sitting opposite—so close—too close—and he was having to clamp down hard on every carnal impulse that made him a man.
But at least she had calmed down. She seemed to have pushed away the realisation that there was a possible threat to her, a danger from the plotters and manipulators who didn’t want her marriage to go ahead. She had lost that look of the startled rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, and she was focusing on the game. She was also fiercely competitive, biting her lip in disappointment when she hit a snake, or crowing in delight when he did the same, especially when it was the longest snake on the board.
‘Down!’ She laughed, the sound tangling round his insides and pulling hard. ‘Go on—right down to thirteen again! I’m going to win this game.’
‘Not if I can help it!’
Glancing up into Karim’s face, lit for a moment then shadowed again as the flames played over his features, Clemmie saw the way his mouth had softened slightly, his eyes less like deep black ice. He thought he’d settled her down, she knew. He believed he had distracted her from the thought that out there, in the wildness of the storm, someone was hunting them—hunting her. And he had almost succeeded.
He’d be doing a better job of it if he wasn’t so intent on looking at his phone, tapping the screen of his tablet, to check on what was happening. The small frequent movement set her teeth on edge, reminding her that not all was as peaceful and warm as the small firelit room.
And yet, in the strangest way, she felt a relaxation such as she had never known before. Not since she had played these games with her grandmother. The simple moves of the game, the heat of the fire, the flickering light of the candles, all created an enclosed space, a sanctuary, where there was just the two of them, and the rest of the world was shut out beyond the thick stone walls of the cottage. The desultory conversation drifted over a range of topics, nothing too deep, nothing too controversial. She had never felt so free in her life. Never believed that she could actually say what she wanted, express herself openly, and not be slapped down verbally as she was at court, or warned with a black frown or worse from her father if she ventured into forbidden territory.
She even felt comfortable with the physical sensations that were racing through her body, stinging at her nerves, as she shared this confined space with the big dark man who had invaded her life. She wanted to know the fizz of excitement that made it almost impossible to sit still. She wanted to hear the rough texture of his voice scraping across her skin, allow herself the luxury of leaning forward, apparently to move her counter over the board, but in fact to inhale the scent of his body and let it intoxicate her in the most sensual way.
‘Five...’
Karim totted up the number of dots on the bright red die and counted the spaces as he moved his counter along, narrowly missing the same long ladder that had taken her own token almost within reach of the end goal. She was so intent on watching his long-fingered hand, the tanned skin, the clean, cared-for nails...imagining what that strength, that control would feel like on her own skin, how it would be if it lost control, that her breath quickened in her lungs, her mouth drying fast.
‘My turn...’
As she reached for the die and the shaker, her hand touched his, the burn of electricity sizzling over every nerve, making her gasp in uncontrolled shock.
‘What?’
His dark head came up sharply, black eyes burning into hers so that she almost flinched away from their force on her skin.
‘N—nothing...’
Her voice cracked and broke in the middle as she tried to swallow to ease the tension in her throat.
‘My turn,’ she managed again.
‘OK—no!’
It was worse this time because he reached out to still her hand, long fingers closing over hers, warm and hard and... She tensed herself to pull away, then found she couldn’t make herself do it.
‘Not your turn—not yet. I have to...’
His attention was back on the board, allowing her a moment to snatch in a much needed breath. Was it confusion or the rush of loss as he released her hand that clouded her thoughts? Karim was counting again.
‘Thought so.’
Blankly, she watched as he took his counter back to his original square on the board and one elegant finger stabbed at the following numbers. Then he moved his token, not to the long ladder but to one of the most fearsome-looking snakes and slid down it, right to the tip of its tail, six rows below.
It took a couple of unsteady heartbeats for her to realise what she had just seen and to count back again, checking it out.
‘That’s five,’ she managed at last.
‘And I originally made a mistake and counted six. It’s fine now.’
‘You didn’t have to.’ Was the snow falling even more heavily outside, whipped up by the wind, or was that the race of her heart pulsing in her ears? ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
Of course she hadn’t noticed. She’d been so busy watching him, watching his hands, the down-dropped lids as he focused on the board. The jet-black arc of his long lashes resting above those knife-sharp cheekbones, shadowing the olive skin. She’d been watching the movement of his lips as he counted the squares, imagining how it would feel, how it would taste to have those lips on hers. Wanting his mouth on hers.
‘I didn’t see...’
Her tongue stumbled over the words, tangling up on itself so that she wasn’t sure that what she said was even comprehensible.
‘But I did—’
His eyes lifted again, seeming to spear her on his intent gaze. Hot colour flashed over her skin, making it burn so fiercely that she was grateful for the flickering shadows that hid the changing colour of her complexion.
‘And if I had not corrected it, it would have been cheating.’
He made it sound like the worst sin possible.
‘And you are such a man of honour.’
The look he turned on her made ice drops skitter down her spine. It was both challenge and agreement. Don’t ever doubt it, he might have said, and she didn’t doubt it. How could she possibly? But there was a darkness and a tension behind the words that tightened her throat in a sense of apprehension at the thought of something coming closer, growing more dangerous, like a premonition that would affect her life in an ominously threatening way.
Feeling cold through to the bone in a way that no warmth from the fire could banish, she forced her eyes away from his, focusing intently on the board in front of her. Up another ladder, down a snake...straight up to the last few numbers and then...
‘I won!’
The triumph was a soaring rush of adrenalin, a dangerous mix with the fast beat of her heart, the hungry need she had never known before. And yet, underneath it all, that worrying chill still lingered disturbingly.
‘You won...’ Karim conceded and then he took all that triumph and excitement away, leaving only the chill, by yet another glance at his watch, his phone. ‘Another game?’
‘No, thanks. I’m tired.’
It was true. With the rushing away of all that heated response, pushed from her soul by bitter disappointment at the realisation that her imaginings were just that— fantasy—she felt drained and lost, bone-weary. She nerved herself for the sarcastic comment—something on the lines of running away—or hiding.
It didn’t come. Instead, with another of those infuriating glances at his watch, Karim simply nodded, picking up the counters, the die, and tossing them back into the box.
It was like riding some emotional roller coaster, one moment allowing herself to go up, up into the heady air of believing he was interested—that he might know something of the way she was feeling, and experience it too. Only to be knocked right back down again in the space of a heartbeat as one more casual glance at his watch told its own story.
