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‘Where are we?’
Not civilisation; the pale grey light of dawn revealed that much. There was something that looked like grass under their feet and a few scrubby trees to their left which blocked the view beyond. Behind them lay the seemingly endless miles of bare, bleak desert blushed pink by the dawn. She shivered again.
* * *
He had never seen skin so smooth, features so crystal-clear... He brought his list of her attributes to an abrupt halt. Her beauty had made her a victim today, but it was inevitable that there had been many occasions when it had played to her advantage, when men had made fools of themselves over her.
Zain dragged his eyes, which were inclined to linger on the long length of her slim, shapely legs, upwards. The twist of his lips held self-mockery as he observed, ‘It’s a bit late in the day for caution, don’t you think?’ His heart might be in cold storage but it seemed his libido was still active and functioning.
Maybe that was the way forward?
Not here, not now and definitely not with a woman who probably didn’t even realise how vulnerable she was. But empty sex, while not exactly an original way to move on, was a tried and tested method and appealed to him a hell of a lot more than drowning in self-pity or becoming celibate.
Sex was healthy if you kept it free of emotions. And he had learnt to control his years ago...mostly... Unbidden, the moment he had got his first glimpse of the kidnapped woman flashed into his mind.
When he set out to find her he’d had no mental image in his head of the woman he was seeking—she hadn’t actually been a person for him. Regardless, nothing he could imagine would have come close to the reality.
He hadn’t needed the cacophony of competing music blaring from the trucks to cover his entrance into the ramshackle encampment. All attention had been fixed on her. In a heartbeat the electric air of anticipation in the place had been explained. It had taken Zain a moment to absorb every detail of her lithe, lush body, the impossibly long legs, the sinuous curves, the pale skin and tangled skein of flaming auburn hair. There was nothing plastic or air-brushed about her—just a warm, luscious, desirable woman.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine her on a billboard selling anything and maybe causing a few accidents. She was the sort of woman to make a man forget about his troubles. Not that he was that man but, even so, the last few miles with her soft body pressed against his had made for an interesting journey—just him, the sleeping girl and his testosterone. There was a simplicity to it that, after a day of his calculating his every expression and verbal intonation, had been a strange sort of relief.
* * *
It took a couple of seconds for Abby’s exhausted, stress-racked brain to pick its way through the man’s critical comment.
‘You think it was my fault I got kidnapped? I asked for it maybe...? You know, one of the things I despise most is victim-blaming...not that I am—a victim, I mean—but...oh, hell!’ She threw up her hands, immediately losing her balance and a couple of wild, flailing moments later falling straight into his open arms.
The impact of hitting a chest that was as hard as steel expelled a soft whoosh of air from her lungs as the arm banding her ribs loosened enough to let her slide slowly all the way to the floor. It was obvious before she made land fall that the rest of him was equally hard—the man was built of solid muscle—and falling had felt less alarming than the head-spinning, stomach-fluttering sensation that made her world spin. The sensation was so strong it was a breathless moment before she managed to get her erratic breathing under control enough to protest.
‘Let me g...go!’
He did, with a care that bordered, unexpectedly, on tenderness. ‘I’m not the one doing the holding,’ he pointed out, angling a quizzical look at her fingers still clutching the sleeves of his robe.
Before she could react to the taunting reminder, the blades of his dark brows drew into an interrogative straight line above his spectacular, dazzling blue eyes. ‘What’s that?’
She lifted a hand to the puffy, swollen area on her arm where his accusatory glance rested. ‘A bite, I suppose.’
He laid one hand on her forehead, caught her wrist with the other and extended her arm, bending in closer to inspect the area.
‘Do you mind? That hurts!’ she protested, turning her head away and tugging on her arm; after what had happened it seemed bizarre that he had fixated on this minor problem.
‘So you dress like you’re off to play a game of beach volleyball, and for good measure don’t use mosquito repellent. Do you know how dangerous this desert is?’
Fighting the urge to pull at the hem of her shorts to cover herself from his contemptuous gaze, she lifted her chin a defiant notch and cut across him.
‘It was a photo shoot. I don’t choose what I wear, and I did use repellent.’ It had been in the sunscreen that she had virtually bathed in. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to go straight back to my hotel,’ she announced.
He looked startled, then, after a short, stunned-seeming silence, gave a laugh. ‘I am not a taxi service.’
The amused hauteur in his response made her feel marginally less awful about coming across like some sort of snooty tourist, but she could see he had a point.
Her descent from snooty was rapid and clearly not at all what he’d expected. ‘Of course not. Sorry. And I suppose it’s a bit late but I’m tremendously... Thank you,’ she said, her gratitude as genuine as her hope he really was one of the good guys. She felt the ball of fear in her stomach tightening and refused to acknowledge it.
The groove between his brows deepened. Her rescuer hadn’t expected the back-down and it threw him, as did the obvious genuineness of it. ‘I don’t require your thanks.’
The lingering shock in her system made her response teary. ‘Tough, I’m grateful.’
‘What were you doing all the way out there alone anyway?’ His question had an unexpected throaty quality.
