‘When?’
She heard the raw anger in that one stark word, and flinched. ‘Almost a month ago.’
A different jigsaw now, and these pieces slotted into place with insulting ease. He looked directly into her blue eyes and gold accusation flooded over her in a hot, sizzling shower. ‘You came looking for me,’ he seethed slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘You chased the job as the face of Wildman.’ His dark lashes shuttered by a fraction. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
The lashes moved again, and now there was an odd expression in the strange and beautiful eyes, the cold, cruel smile which glittered over her. She knew what the next accusation would be almost before he had a chance to form the words, and her gaze begged him not to ask it—not here and now and in front of Khalim. But he ignored the silent plea, his voice taking on a bitter, hard timbre she had never heard before.
‘Is that why you slept with me, Lara?’
Lara glanced at Khalim, who was observing and listening to the fraught interrogation session in interested silence. Only the faintest elevation of his eyebrows indicated that he had registered Darian’s final damning question, but Lara knew that Marabanese men knew the value of silence. He would not interfere in something which did not concern him. She was on her own here.
‘I don’t think that now is an appropriate time to discuss this—’
‘Oh, don’t you?’ His sarcastic words sliced through her half-formed sentence like a knife through butter. ‘I don’t really think that you’re fit to be the judge of what is or is not appropriate, Lara!’
He remembered the way her vulnerable blue eyes had made him soften and melt, and then made love to her in a way which had blown his mind, and he cursed silently at his blind stupidity. Of course she would be adept at pulling heartstrings—she would know every trick in the book, about how to behave and how to manipulate. She was a god damned actress, wasn’t she?
He sucked in a deep breath. His rage and his retribution with her could wait. He turned his head towards Khalim again.
‘So why are you here?’
‘To see you,’ said Khalim simply. ‘To see whether it was true.’
‘But you can’t, can you?’ drawled Darian. ‘You can’t tell just by looking?’
‘Oh, yes, I can,’ demurred Khalim quietly. ‘I saw it as soon as you entered the room today. You have the blood of a true Marabanesh running in your veins.’
Something in the way he said it made a small shiver of something unknown snake its way down Darian’s spine. Not fear—no, he had never felt fear, nor would he ever give in to the false and futile pressure of fear. Something else—something which momentarily made him feel as if things were edging out of his control. But he deliberately blocked the feeling, substituting it instead with the strength and single-mindedness for which he was known.
‘Even if I have—so what?’ he challenged, in a low, deep voice. ‘It doesn’t change my life—how can it? So do not worry, Sheikh—the secret will remain just that. You can go back to your kingdom safe in the knowledge that my life is fulfilled and complete. I have no need of your wealth or power and I will make no claim on it. I give you my word.’
Khalim’s eyes narrowed into icy black shards. ‘You have no wish to see Maraban?’ he demanded, as if Darian had raised a fist and hit him.
Again that tantalising feeling. As if some scarcely heard and hypnotic music were luring him to run away and dance. Darian shook his head, furious with himself for such a bizarre flight of fancy.
‘You must come as my guest,’ continued Khalim.
The two men stared at one another.
‘Why?’ demanded Darian simply.
Lara thought again how peculiar it was to have Khalim spoken to like that, and for him to accept it.
‘I should like to get to know you better,’ answered Khalim. ‘Man of my blood.’
If Darian had heard a statement like that even an hour ago he would have given a sardonic laugh. It was not the kind of thing men said to one another—not in his world. But something had inexplicably changed. This whole crazy and bizarre situation was linked to a past of which he knew nothing, and it was that fact which troubled him.
His past.
But the past held no interest for him, he reminded himself. Life lay with the present and the future. His life was here, and it was good.
He shook his head. ‘No. I can’t see the point.’