‘Khalim!’ Her startled word streamed out like the wind which whipped through her hair.
‘Do not be frightened, sweet Rose,’ he murmured against her windswept hair.
But it was not fear she felt, it was something far closer to exhilaration. He held her tightly against the hard, lean column of his body, and he handled the horse with such control and mastery that Rose instinctively felt safe.
Safe? Was she mad? Galloping full-pelt across an unforgiving landscape towards the mountains with this dark, enigmatic prince who was taking her who knew where?
Yes, safe. As if this was somehow meant to be. As though all along this had been meant to happen.
As the mountains grew closer, time and distance lost all meaning for her, she had no idea how far they had ridden, or for how long, when, just as suddenly as he’d begun, he steered the horse to a halt in some kind of valley.
Rose could see fig plants and forests of wild walnut trees. And surely down there was the silver glimmer of water?
He jumped down from Purr-Mahl and held his arms up to her and there was a moment of suspended silence while she stared into the enticing glitter of those ebony eyes before sliding down into his arms.
‘Sweet Rose,’ he said softly.
Had she thought he would kiss her then? Because she was wrong. Instead he took her by the hand and led her towards where she thought she had seen water, and indeed it was, with dense dark thickets of green growing alongside.
He sat down where it looked most hospitable, and patted the ground beside him.
This is a dream, thought Rose. This is a dream. And why not? Was Maraban not the land of dreams as well as contrasts?
He pointed to the distant peak of one of the towering mountains.
‘When I was a boy,’ he said, and his voice softened with memory, ‘my father and I used to wait for the first thaw of spring to melt the snow on those mountain peaks, and to flow down to swell the icy river. And we would ride here and drink the crystal waters from a goblet—’
‘Why?’
He turned and smiled, and she had never thought that he could look so impossibly carefree. ‘Just for the hell of it.’ He shrugged, sounding as English as it was possible to be. He took the leather bag from his shoulder and drew out a small golden goblet, studded with rubies as wine-dark as the robes he had been wearing the other night. ‘Always from this goblet.’ He smiled.
Rose took it from him and studied it, turning it round in her hands. ‘It’s very beautiful.’
‘Isn’t it? Thousands of years ago my ancestors carried it along with many other treasures, when they trekked to this fabled mountain oasis to establish their kingdom.’
But even as he painted beauty with his words, he also painted sadness. For in that moment Rose gleaned some sense of his tradition, his history. He was not as other men. He could not make the same promises as other men. She’d been right from the very first when she had said to Lara that he was not able to offer commitment. And as long as she could accept that…
He put his hand inside the bag again, and drew out a flask in the same gold and claret-coloured jewels as the cup. ‘When I was seventeen, he brought me here as usual, only this time we did not drink water; we drank wine.’ He smiled. ‘Rich, Maraban wine, made from the wild grapevines which grow in the mountain valleys.’ His eyes grew soft. ‘Will you drink some wine with me, Rose?’
She knew a little then how Eve must have felt when the serpent had offered her the apple, for the question he asked was many-layered. ‘I’d love to.’
He tipped some of the ruby liquid into the cup and held it up to her lips. ‘Not too much,’ he urged gently. ‘For Maraban wine is as strong as her men.’
She closed her eyes as she sipped and felt its warm richness invade every pore of her body, and when she opened them again it was to find Khalim staring at her with such a transparent look of hunger on his face that she started, and a droplet of wine trickled from her lips and fell with a splash onto her wrist.
It lay there, a tiny crimson-dark star against the whiteness of her skin and they both stared at it.
‘Like blood,’ said Khalim slowly. ‘The rose has a thorn which draws blood.’
She raised her head and so did he and the look they shared asked and answered the same question, and the goblet fell unnoticed to the ground as he bent his head to kiss her.
Her lips fell open to his velvet touch and she heard herself making a little sound of astonished delight, because she had wanted this for so long. Oh, too long. Much, much too long.
He tangled his fingers in the silken stream of her hair and deepened the kiss. ‘Rose,’ he groaned against his sweet plunder of her mouth and they fell back against the coarse, desert grass. ‘Beautiful, beautiful Rose.’
Her fingers greedily explored the magnificent musculature of his torso through the thin, billowing shirt he wore, kneading her hands against his back as though he were the most delicious kind of dough.
Khalim felt that he might explode with wanting. But more than that—he knew that this woman above all others deserved his honesty. And that had to come now, before it was too late.