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The loud throat-clearing from beside them had them both swinging round.
‘Congratulations, you two,’ Phillip Carstairs said with an avuncular smile on his face. ‘I would suggest you start planning the wedding as soon as possible.’
The heat that still pounded between Orla’s thighs and burned on her lips exploded into her cheeks like a mushroom cloud.
Khan let go of her face at last as he turned to his solicitor. ‘Thanks, Phil, now perhaps you’d like to get lost, so my new fiancée and I can have some privacy.’
Carstairs gathered up the papers Orla had just signed, then sent them both a mocking bow. ‘I’d say enjoy your engagement, Karim,’ he said. ‘But I can see there is really no need.’ He held the papers up. ‘I’ll send the engagement contract through to the Zafari Ruling Council so they can inform your father of the good news.’
Orla felt Karim tense beside her, before Carstairs bid them both goodbye and left the room.
The door closed behind him.
‘I should go too,’ Orla murmured, brutally aware of the embarrassment scalding her cheeks and the heavy weight that had swollen to impossible proportions in her sex. Luckily Khan seemed a million miles away, his expression both strained and annoyed.
She had no idea what had caused his displeasure. But before she could make a quick getaway he snagged her wrist.
‘Not so fast,’ he said, drawing her to a halt. ‘That kiss was unexpected.’
‘I… I was just trying to be convincing,’ she said, not even convincing herself with the desperate lie.
She could see she hadn’t convinced him either,
when his brows drew together, the puzzled expression doing nothing to cool the passionate intensity in the golden brown of his irises.
‘You did an extremely thorough job,’ he said, the mocking tone making it very clear he knew her response had been entirely genuine.
She tried to look away to hide the mortification running riot on her cheeks now, but he tucked a knuckle under her chin and forced her gaze back to his.
‘Just tell me one thing—are you a virgin?’ he demanded.
Her eyes widened. How had he guessed?
‘Because if you are,’ he continued, the dark frown on his face accusing her, ‘we’ll have to call this off.’
‘I’m not a virgin,’ she lied, finally managing to gather her wits enough to shake her head. ‘I’ve had several lovers,’ she added. ‘Lots of lovers. I was… I was engaged five years ago,’ she continued, desperately trying to dispel the scepticism lurking in his eyes. She couldn’t lose this deal—the chance to stay at Calhouns, to secure a future free of debt, to continue to work with the horses she loved. But somehow those reasons seemed shallow and insignificant as the desire continued to spark and sizzle.
‘Do you really think I would have kissed you like that if I was?’ she finished.
Once upon a time, she’d been a terrible liar, but she’d had considerable practice in the last five years, convincing everyone from jockeys to trainers to racing managers that Calhouns wasn’t struggling to stay afloat. She drew on every last ounce of that experience now to convince him.
He continued to study her, the desire he was making no attempt to hide both disturbing and yet at the same time terrifyingly exciting.
‘No, I suppose not,’ he said finally.
He shook his head slightly, as if trying to jog something loose, then let go of her wrist abruptly.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers, he continued to stare at her, the penetrating gaze both intrusive and disturbingly intimate.
She folded her arms over her midriff, feeling exposed and desperately wary, far too aware of the stinging on her lips where their kiss had got so far out of control.
But she forced herself not to relinquish eye contact. If she was going to persuade him she wasn’t a virgin, she needed to be bold now, even if her hormones were still rampaging through her body like toddlers on a sugar rush… And she’d never felt more insecure or unstable in her entire life.
She didn’t know what the heck had happened to her. Maybe she didn’t have very much experience, but she’d never responded like that to any of Patrick’s kisses.
How had she forgotten so easily who he was, and that this ‘engagement’ was a charade? The minute his lips had claimed hers, even before that, the minute he had looked at her with that intense focus back at the stable yard, it was as if her body were no longer her own. That it belonged to him, and he could command it and destroy it at will.
She couldn’t let that happen again, or she would lose. Not just this deal, but also her sense of self.
