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What was happening? How could she be aroused by his outrageous behaviour? They were having an argument, for goodness’ sake?
But then she saw the matching passion in his eyes, the brutal knowledge—and her confusion turned to panic. Could he sense her body’s response?
‘This isn’t over,’ he snarled, then bent and lifted her into his arms.
She gasped and had to grab his neck as he hoisted her up as if she weighed nothing at all and dumped her onto the horse’s saddle. She grasped the pommel, the robe riding up to her knees as she straddled the wide leather, trying to prevent herself from slipping off the other side.
Her heart was hammering so hard now, she couldn’t hear anything. The horse jolted and she squeezed her knees together, clinging on.
A large hand landed on the saddle in front of hers and Zane leapt up behind her in one fluid movement, landing at her back, his long legs and that enticing scent engulfing her.
The horse bucked and Cat let out a yelp.
‘Easy, Pegasus,’ he crooned, his breath hot at her earlobe as he banded his forearm around her waist, jerking her firmly into his lap.
Reaching around her, he grabbed the reins with the other hand and she became brutally aware of everywhere their bodies touched. His chest was a solid wall of muscle against her back, his thighs gripped her hips, keeping her anchored in place, and his groin pressed intimately against her bottom.
His size and strength felt overwhelming, almost as overwhelming as the brutal arousal that had sprung from nowhere—and which she seemed incapable of controlling. She watched in a trance as he yelled an order in Narabi and one of his men reached down to lift Kasia onto the back of his mount.
Suddenly Pegasus jerked forward and then launched into a gallop. Her bottom bounced against the saddle, her heavy breasts pressed against Zane’s forearm as he bent them low over the horse’s neck and controlled the stallion with one hand. Her fingers gripped the Arabian saddle so hard she was sure she must be scoring the leather.
They shot upwards, climbing out of the marketplace. The enormous horse was surprisingly surefooted on the scrabble of sand and rock as they crested the rise and took the desert track back towards the palace, the walls looming like a great golden edifice in the distance.
Her world seemed to shrink to the pounding of the horse’s hooves and the patient rise and fall of Zane’s breathing and the jerky spasms of her own lungs as she tried to draw in a coherent breath. The desert track raced past so fast it felt as if they were flying, her body bombarded with sensation as every place he touched her burned hotter than the midday sun.
And the husky statement before he’d lifted her onto his horse began to play through her dazed and disorientated mind on a loop.
This isn’t over.
While her confused, overloaded body tried to figure out why the snarled words seemed more like a promise than a threat.
* * *
Zane was so angry by the time they reached the stables he could barely breathe, let alone think. And the few tortured breaths he could drag into his lungs were filled with the clean, refreshing scent of chamomile and honey.
He’d bullied and belittled her, and she’d called him out on it. But damn it, he had been terrified—that something might have happened to her. Thoughts of his mother and all the ways he’d failed her had been snapping at his heels as he’d ridden to the marketplace to find her.
And maybe he’d overreacted. But as they’d ridden back through the desert, her ripe curves bouncing in his arms, that provocative scent invading his senses, the struggle to bank his fear had become something a great deal more volatile.
Pegasus clattered to a stop in the yard, and one of the stable boys rushed forward to grab the reins. Zane disentangled himself from his passenger and dismounted. Holding her around the waist, he dragged her off the stallion. His temper spiked as he noticed the long robe, the hood dropping back to reveal her wild hair, which had been ruthlessly tied back to disguise her appearance from the guards, but was beginning to escape in tantalising tendrils.
Blood rushed to his groin and he cursed the effect she had on him.
The irrational fear got the better of him again.
She’d put herself in danger. Had deliberately disobeyed his orders. And then had the temerity to defy him when he’d arrived to see her safely back to the palace.
She clasped her arms around her waist, her gaze wary but direct as she watched him. As if waiting for him to explode again.
That she looked so wary but determined not to show it only infuriated him more.
He snagged her wrist, still too upset to speak, and hauled her out of the yard towards his private quarters.
‘Where are we going?’ she said, leaning back, trying to slow his steps.
He carried on walking. ‘Somewhere private,’ he managed around the huge boulder of barely suppressed fury, and something else, in his throat. He wasn’t even sure any more if he was angry with her, or with himself.
At last they reached the doors to his quarters. He dismissed the guards outside.
