His long arms enclosed her and he gave her a mighty squeeze that lifted her feet from the ground before, with a final kiss and saying, ‘Take care,’ he was back behind the wheel.

Morgan waited while he drove away, one hand lifted in a silent farewell. She didn’t know how long she would be away, but she knew she would miss her Gold Coast family and her new niece. Then the car turned onto the road and disappeared from view, and the fingers of her open hand curled as a prickling sensation needled its way down her spine. This was it, the point of no return, and that realisation sent excitement vying with a menacing anxiety inside her. But she’d told Maverick she’d be fine. She’d better start believing it, given she’d be on the plane in less than eight hours.

With a sigh, she bent down to pick up her bag. It was whipped out of her reach from behind. She gasped and reeled around, only to find a mountain standing between her and the door.

‘Where have you been all this time?’

‘You startled me,’ she managed to say, her hand covering a thumping heart she knew would never completely settle back to normal—not while she was in this man’s presence. ‘I can carry my own luggage, thank you.’ She held out her hand to take the bag, but he ignored it.

‘Why are you so late?’

Shock turned to indignation. ‘I didn’t realise you were going to wait up for me. What an honour.’

She regretted the jibe the moment it had left her mouth—what was it about this man that brought out the worst in her?—but he merely brushed it aside by slashing his free hand in the direction of the departed vehicle. ‘Who was the man you were whispering to? That you were kissing?’

‘Why, Sheikh Tajik,’ she purred, with more bravado than she had ever known, ‘I didn’t realise you cared.’ Then she attempted to coolly brush past the looming mountain in her path, knowing that if he could hear the blood thumping in her veins he would know she was anything but cool.

But his hand shot out and circled her wrist before she could pass, trapping her alongside the long, hard length of him. ‘You told me you had no boyfriends.’

‘And you think I lied? Shame on you for your lack of trust.’

‘Then who was he?’

‘What possible business can it be of yours?’

‘Tell me!’

Her chest heaving, she glared up at him, not missing the way fury had tightened the skin covering his features and turned the tendons in his throat to steel pillars. ‘It was my brother-in-law! My very happily married brother-in-law, I might add. There,’ she said, as her news sank in, sweet satisfaction dripping from her voice, ‘are you satisfied now?’

The ragged sound of his breathing was his only response—that and the turmoil in his golden eyes, filling the silence with an atmosphere more threatening than any words.

She gasped and tried to pull away, but his grip was made of iron, his hold relentless.

‘Why did you not tell me you were going out?’

She twisted her arm, still fruitlessly trying to free herself. ‘Your mother knew. Why didn’t you ask her?’

‘Nobilah is in bed.’

‘Which is exactly where I intend to be, once you deign to let me go!’

Silence followed her outburst. Silence heavy with a new kind of tension. Heavy with desire. She could sense it thickening the air between them. She could see it in the set of his jaw and the glimmer of his eyes. Once more she cursed herself for her ill-chosen words.

‘Now, there’s an idea,’ he said, in little more than a growl, sending tremors skittering up her spine anew.

In the instant before it happened she saw it coming. Which meant she had less than an instant to act to prevent it.

And yet she did nothing, mesmerised by the alluring touch of his fingers angling her chin higher, by the deeply seductive lure of his mouth as it dipped to meet hers.

And then his lips touched hers and she knew she’d waited too long to stop him. She tried to tell herself she cared. And she would care later, she knew. But for now she was content to drink in the power in the coaxing caress of his lips, to feel his desire like the gentle hiss of the ocean pulling back before the next inevitable wave crashed in.

His mouth moved over hers. Intoxicating. Seductive. And if he picked up on her inexperience, he didn’t let on. But then, he made it easy to follow his lead—just as he made it impossible not to want to. Not when he tasted of power and strength and all things exotic, an intoxicating mix that had her melting against him.

There was a sound—her bag hitting the tiled floor—before she felt herself enclosed in his embrace, his strong arms moulding her to him length to length, his hands holding her tight, and suddenly it wasn’t just her mouth and lips involved in this kiss, it was every part of her. She could barely think. She could hardly breathe. And what oxygen there was seemed only to fuel the blast furnace of their kiss.

And then, before she could assimilate all the sensations, before she could make sense of what was happening, it was over.

His head pulled back, his arms slid away, leaving her trembling like an adolescent who’d just had her first kiss.

And realisation dawned on her like a cloud-filled morning. If Tajik had been looking for an excuse to leave her behind, a reason to doubt her lack of sexual experience, she’d just handed it to him on a platter.

Desperately she searched for some of her earlier bravado. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, wishing she could wipe the entire experience away as easily. ‘What the hell was that for?’ she said, trying to quell the shaking in her voice.

He looked down at her, all golden power and dark desire, his breathing heavy. ‘I told you that you were beautiful when you were angry,’ he said, his voice little more than a coarse rumble that tugged at her raw nerve-endings and refused to let them settle. ‘But it is nothing to how beautiful you are when you are aroused.’

‘Oh, n…no,’ she stammered, shaking her head as she took a wobbly step back. ‘I was hardly—’ But she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. By saying it she would be admitting it, and by admitting it when she was about to board a plane with him for Jamalbad, for goodness knew how long, she would be in real trouble.

‘So you always kiss men like that when you are not aroused?’

‘I don’t kiss men like that—period! You just took me by surprise.’

His eyes proclaimed a victory that made no sense to her. How could it be victory when he hadn’t won that kiss? She’d damn near volunteered it. And why that didn’t have him terminating her contract on the spot, when he’d been so insistent on her virtue before, made even less sense.

‘By surprise, you say? And I say you are proving to be a more delightful surprise by the minute.’

‘And you are proving to be more irritating by the minute!’

For a moment he looked too shocked to respond. She was wondering if she’d well and truly overstepped the mark—here was a man used to people kow-towing to him, a man who could put paid to any idea of her entering his country—when he suddenly threw back his head and laughed.

It was too much. Indignation lent strength to her backbone. She reached down and grabbed her bag. She needed to be in her room.

No, it was much simpler than that. She needed to be anywhere he wasn’t. She reached for the door handle and turned it.

The laughter stopped behind her just as suddenly as it had started. ‘Miss Fielding.’

His voice rang out like an order. Her hand paused and reluctantly she looked over her shoulder, half wishing she was more like her sister. Giving anyone lip had never been Morgan’s forte. Why had she ever expected to go head to head with a man like this and get away with it?

She took one look into his eyes, shocked at what she saw. Under the night sky he could have been some kind of jungle cat, golden eyes glistening with hunger and the guarantee of a certain kill. She shivered, her heart thumping afresh, certain that he was about to terminate her services, if not her.